ImageIn the P. T. Barnum department, you gotta love a guy who has made a career of selling himself as a man of the people through the state initiative process.  That is, until you remember that Tim Eyman is doing more than selling tickets to see the reptile man and the bearded lady, he’s peddling things that stand to genuinely hurt lots of people.

If Mr. Eyman’s latest initiative, I-1033, passes it will turn Washington into Mississippi (and I say this with all due respect to my friends and relations in Mississippi).

The state’s Office of Financial Management tells us that I-1033 would reduce funding available for education, health care, police, and fire services by $5.9 billion over the next five years. Cities and counties would lose $2.8 billion by 2015.  This is on top of the $9 billion that was cut from state services in the last legislative session.  More people would lose access to health care, roads wouldn’t get repaired, police and fire departments would be stretched beyond the limit of safety, schools would be gutted, and only the rich would have access to college.

Mr. Eyman is plugging this latest initiative by demonizing elected officials, pitting the virtuous “people” against slimy “politicians” (who are presumably not people) and “their insatiable appetite for higher taxes.”  He tries to scare us with the loss of the American dream: “Washington shouldn’t be a state where only rich people can afford a home.”  If I-1033 passes, Washington will be a state where only rich people can afford an education or a doctor or, if their house catches on fire, someone to put it out. 

I-1033 is so over the top that people from right and left, east and west have all come together to denounce it.  For a digest of reasons to vote no and people who think you should vote no, go to:

http://www.wslc.org/reports/2009/October/12.htm#Monday

So pick up the ballot that’s still lying there on your desk, connect the arrow for NO on I-1-33, sign it, put a stamp on it, and mail that sucker.