Search Results for: fuiten

The cops are out in full force this Labor Day weekend looking for drunk drivers, so I suggest you follow Mike?™ McGavick’s example and just stay home, pull down the shades, pop open a 12-pack of Guinness and tune in to “The David Goldstein Show” on Newsradio 710-KIRO, tonight from 7PM to 10PM.

The lineup could change in response to breaking news, but here’s what I think I’ll be talking about tonight:

7PM: I was going to talk about Pastor Joe Fuiten and his efforts to evict a community of retired pastors, missionaries and lay people from the Cedar Springs Bible Camp. But apparently a peace offering has been made by Fuiten’s attorneys and I wouldn’t want to do anything to jeopardize a settlement that would allow the residents to live out their retirement in peace and security. So instead, I’ll just spend most of the hour slamming Mike?™ McGavick, who, as it turns out, may have a connection to the unfolding Alaska pipeline scandal.

8PM: Do I appease fascists? On Wednesday Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld compared critics of the war in Iraq to those who appeased Hitler, saying we suffer from “moral or intellectual confusion” for failing to recognize the rise of a “new type of fascism.” Hmm. I guess if anybody’s an expert on appeasing fascists, it’s Donald Rumsfeld.

Both Keith Olbermann and Frank Rich have spoken eloquently in response. I’ll attempt to stumble my way through a rebuttal too.

9PM: Sandeep Kaushik, spokesman for the No on I-920 campaign (and a Podcasting Liberally regular) joins me to talk about the initiative to repeal Washington’s estate tax, and what impact that might have on both the state and the nation. And you may not believe this, but it turns out I-920’s backers are shockingly selling the initiative with lies. Who’d a thunk?

Tune in tonight (or listen to the live stream) and give me a call: 1-877-710-KIRO (5476).

Apparently, the whole blogging craze has pretty much run its course, because other than me there wasn’t a single active, political blogger on the panel last night. (Political bloggers are so July.)

Joining me were non-bloggers Sandeep and Laura, former bloggers Will and Carl, and non-political blogger Gavin. So of course we led off our conversation with the biggest political issue of the day: Snakes on a Plane! No really… tune in and listen to how we cleverly connect this seemingly unrelated topic to Ned Lamont’s victory over Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut primary. Other topics of discussion included Mike!™ McGavick’s career path through Washington D.C.’s lucrative revolving door, the Seattle Storm’s imminent move to Oklahoma City after their fan support collapses in the wake of their disappointing playoff loss, the John Bircher behind WA’s estate tax repeal initiative, Will’s manly love for John Edwards, replacing the Viaduct with nothin’, the GOP’s intentional non-grammatical use of the term "Democrat" Party instead of the proper "Democratic" Party, Kyle Taylor Lucas’s strong challenge to faux-Democratic Sen. Tim Sheldon in the primary, and the hypocritical, mean-spirited Rev. Joe Fuiten.

The show is 53:49, and is available here as a 41.1 MB MP3. Please visit PodcastingLiberally.com for complete archives and RSS feeds.

[Recorded live at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. Special thanks to Confab creators Gavin and Richard for producing the show.]

From the No Shit Sherlock Department, the Christian right has apparently discovered that initiative monger Tim Eyman is a liar.

Gary Randall and Joe Fuiten of the Faith and Freedom Network have posted a detailed chronology of their tortured relationship with Eyman during the Referendum 65 signature drive, and the Mukilteo watch salesman doesn’t come off looking so good. The final blow to FFN was Eyman’s refusal to share the petitions, and his arrogant posturing that he was merely protecting the signers’ privacy. Here are a few of the key excerpts:

Tim Eyman has a demonstrated penchant for not telling the whole truth.

Tim has not been truthful in his telling of the story.

Eyman’s explanation … cannot be true,

He is just making up that completely fabricated charge…

Joe Fuiten … has tried to get Tim Eyman to honor the agreement he made with FFN. Eyman has not been willing to do so…

Of course the real reason Eyman won’t share the signatures is that he doesn’t want anybody to know how few he really collected… which I’m guessing is less than half the 105,000 claimed. If that’s not the case then Timmy shouldn’t have any problem letting a reporter go in there and count the signatures for himself. Yeah, like that’s gonna happen.

Of course, FFN’s chronology shows Fuiten and Randall to be pretty cynical themselves. Consider this passage:

On the first day that petitions were available for Referendum 65, Faith and Freedom published petitions. The FFN Referendum petitions had the FFN name on them as a return address and avoided the controversial titles of the Eyman version. Eyman’s version said “no quotas” even though there was nothing about quotas in the bill and the phrase alienated African American leaders. Eyman’s version was also titled “no gay marriage” even though the bill was only very obliquely related to gay marriage. FFN was concerned that the misleading titles might be used by opponents in a legal challenge to overturn the Referendum as they have done to other Eyman initiatives. FFN printed thousands of their version of the Referendum petition but without the questionable titles and without Eyman’s name attached. Eyman was upset and wanted all the petitions to come through his office and to bear only his name. In conversations that first weekend, Tim Eyman and FFN agreed that if FFN would withdraw its petitions, Tim Eyman would give copies of all petitions that came in to FFN. It was a simple agreement. That was the full agreement. There were no other conditions to it.

So what they’re telling us is that they knew the headlines on Eyman’s petitions were “misleading” (i.e. lies) but that their primary concern was that this might be used as legal grounds to overturn the referendum. And despite being fully cognizant of this blatant dishonesty, they cut a deal with Eyman anyway, knowingly permitting misleading petitions to be distributed in their churches.

During the whole “Referendum Sunday” spat I had strongly criticized ministers for repeating Eyman’s lies from the pulpit, suggesting that there might be a Commandment against that. Now it seems clear that Fuiten and Randall at least tacitly endorsed such lies.

As far as I’m concerned, when you deal with the Devil you get what you deserve.

Amen, Rev. Joseph Fuiten:

The lack of signatures, Fuiten said, tells him that “Tim Eyman has a knack for messing stuff up. He’s kind of an interloper on this whole thing, in my opinion. Part of the deal is resistance to him.”

I couldn’t go to bed without briefly commenting on the latest news from our state’s best known professional blowhard.

Supporters of an effort to overturn the state’s new gay civil-rights law sent out an e-mail Wednesday saying they’ve collected just a fraction of the signatures needed to get the measure to voters.

Tim Eyman sent the e-mail to supporters and the media, saying that only 8,718 signatures have been gathered. He needs 112,440 valid voter signatures by June 7 to get Referendum 65 on the November ballot.

Hmm. What to think?

Well, on the one hand, knowing what I know about Eyman’s organization (or lack thereof), it really wouldn’t surprise me to learn that R-65’s signature gathering efforts have been so anemic. But on the other hand… Timmy’s a pathological liar.

Further complicating the analysis is the fact that Eyman’s email touting his dismal performance is entirely out of character. Indeed, his usual M.O. is to flood supporters with upbeat proclamations that he’s “never seen this much excitement before,” but urging everyone to work (and give) harder because it always takes a “Herculean effort” to get any initiative on the ballot. Such guarded pollyannaisms are Tim’s norm, regardless of a measure’s actual public support.

I suppose it is possible this latest email could be a clever feint, but I fail to see the tactical advantage of portraying his campaign as weaker than it really is, and besides… Timmy isn’t really all that clever. So in the absence of even the tiniest scrap of evidence that the R-65 signature drive is gaining any traction whatsoever (you know, like actual people gathering actual signatures)… I’m going to have to reluctantly take Eyman at his word.

(Yuck.)

So… absent a sudden, six-figure infusion of cash, R-65 doesn’t have a snowball’s chance of making it onto the ballot.

Let’s look at the numbers. To qualify for the ballot Eyman must collect 112,440 signatures by June 7, but not all these will be valid. The Secretary of State recommends a cushion of 25 percent, but let’s be generous and say Tim can get by with only 10 percent, for a minimum target of 124,000 signatures.

As of yesterday, Eyman claimed to have collected only 8,718 signatures, while hateful, nutcase preacher Joe Fuiten claimed to have another 2,900. That left them about 112,000 shy of their target with only 42 days before the deadline. To put this in perspective, they’re now less than one-tenth towards their goal, more than halfway through the 90-day signature gathering period.

To qualify for the ballot, the R-65 campaign would have to collect about 2,700 signatures a day, 7 days a week, from now until June 7… not necessarily an impossible task if you can afford to hire an army of paid signature gatherers.

But Tim can’t.

For the past couple years, Timmy has essentially been a kept man, financing his campaigns (and his lifestyle) primarily through the generous support of one Michael Dunmire of Woodenville. His latest $30 Car Tab initiative is flush with Dunmire cash, but R-65… not so much. Eyman claims to have raised only $13,000 thus far, but most of this actually consists of loans from him and the Fagans. In fact, as of March 31, R-65 had raised only $1041.01 in cash contributions.

So what we’re looking at here is an all volunteer signature drive, a difficult endeavor under the best of circumstances, and something Eyman has never organized. I suppose the strategy, so to speak, was to rely on conservative church groups to gather signatures, and I guess the hope was that the effort would somehow organize itself spontaneously.

But with the exception of those rare ballot measures that simply catch fire, successful signature drives require either an immense amount of planning and organization, or an immense amount of money… and Eyman has neither. The truth is, without Dunmire’s money, Eyman brings little to the table other than a knack for garnering undeserved media attention, and a hateful measure like R-65 requires a helluva lot more resources than that.