Newsroom Archives by Year: 2003

December 6th, 2003

Eyman fails to crash union gubernatorial forum

Announcements

Allies in opposition to Tim Eyman succeeded in stopping Eyman from breaking into a private union event and creating a scene. David Goldstein, of HorsesAss.Org, helped ensure that Tim’s plan to go into the “lion’s den” was foiled.

Tim had planned to bring a throng of supporters to ask questions of several Democratic and Republican candidates for governor. However, even though Tim was dressed in a fancy suit, he couldn’t get in. Goldstein, who helped alert the union to Tim’s plans, said the following of the event:

Originally, anybody could have just walked in, but they roped things off, checked ID, and hired extra security. They also talked to the media ahead of time, so if Tim had made a scene, they would be aware that he was crashing a private event.

Thanks to the work of opponents, Tim was prevented from rudely crashing another event intended for members only and wasn’t given the opportunity to rant in front of the press corps.

Tim Eyman’s antics demonstrate that he will go to any lengths to aggressively promote his badly-crafted plans- even attempting to interrupt private events.

October 7th, 2003

Eyman claims premature victory on I-776 court ruling

Election PostmortemIn the Courts

Tim Eyman, notorious for making sensational predictions, lying about finances, being deceptive to voters and declining to face the reality of his own tax cuts, has declared victory in the I-776 court ruling which has not yet been made public. Eyman’s “victory” statement is an unfounded gamble based on wild speculation and wishful thinking. On Monday, October 6th, Eyman sent an email which was titled:

Supreme Court to uphold Initiative 776 this Thursday, derailing Sound Transit’s light rail and its pursuit of $500 million in federal funds

The body of the email includes sentences like:

“But the Supreme Court wasn’t buying Sound Transit’s delusional second-subject fantasy…….”

“That’s why it’s so satisfying to watch them suffer with the Supreme Court’s affirmation of I-776. I-776 blows a huge 20% hole into the side of Sound Transit’s battleship.”

“Two days from now (Wednesday afternoon) on the State Supreme Court’s website (www.courts.wa.gov), they will announce that their decision on I-776 will be released on Thursday. Once they do affirm I-776 on Thursday, just sit back and watch the taxpayer-financed political hacks at Sound Transit go into full-blown damage control.”

Once again, Eyman is trying to act as our political meteorologist. The only problem is that he never studied judicial weather and he predicts an overturning downpour when there may be a upholding sun.

Eyman is making big, wild gambles that are based solely on what he heard the judges say to Sound Transit’s lawyers in one day in the courthouse, and what he desperately hopes. Furthermore, his quotes from the email are only ones aimed at Sound Transit. The article doesn’t mention any questions justices asked the Attorney General, who is defending the initiative as required to by law.

PD conducted an investigation following the reception of the email to see if a leak had enabled Eyman to learn the ruling in advance. This is what the State Supreme Court said in an email response to our inquiry:

The court does not announce its decisions in advance, even to the parties of the case. It does try to announce one day in advance which opinions will be published, but the result is never given in advance.

The Attorney General’s office said:

We certainly have no independent knowledge either when the opinion is coming out or what its contents are. In the past, most of the hot “tips” we’ve heard about cases coming down turn out to be unfounded rumors. We will be anxiously awaiting the official ruling when it comes out.

Premature victory declarations will not help Eyman to continue to destroy the State of Washington. Sensationalized messages, as in this case, are as pointless as the tax cuts Eyman promotes, for they come at the heavy cost of uprooting public services.

September 20th, 2003

Permanent Defense says “Yes!” to two newspapers

Announcements

Permanent Defense has endorsed the Committee for a Two-Newspaper Town, which is fighting to keep both the Seattle Times and the Seattle P-I open. Permanent Defense agrees that two newspapers are essential for fair media coverage and good reporting. PD recognizes that many stories, especially dealing with the anti-tax movement spearheaded by Tim Eyman, were only carried by one paper.

The P-I, in fact, which is in danger of being closed, was the paper that brought Eyman’s pocketing of $300,000.00 to light in February of 2002. Lose a paper and you lose a voice. Permanent Defense’s Mission states that,

“We will work to oppose Tim Eyman in every appropriate means through the use of the Internet and technology.”

Both the P-I and the Times have carried stories that PD links to on its website. In addition, both papers have extensive and free archives, allowing PD to link to stories that relate to its issue.

If one newspaper went away, the other might start simply charging for archive use. The fact remains: two newspapers are an important facet of our life in Puget Sound.

August 18th, 2003

Seattle Times fails to update Associated Press story on Eyman complaint

Eye on Money: DevelopmentsRethinking and Reframing

On Friday, August 15th, 2003, the Seattle Times published an Associated Press story about the PDC’s dismissal of Steve Zemke’s complaint. Permanent Defense News checked the length and content of the Times’ version against a similar story published on the Seattle P-I’s website the day before.

Oddly enough, the P-I’s story seemed to be double the length of the Times’ story, and had comments from both Eyman and Zemke. The Times version had only comments from the PDC and Eyman- and then the story was cut off.

Permanent Defense wrote a letter to the editor asking why the story was so different from the one on the P-I’s website. After some internal investigation, a Seattle Times editor replied and said that the paper’s metro editors had failed to update the story as they should have- leaving out Mr. Zemke’s comments by mistake.

“The reason our story didn’t include Zemke is that we used an earlier version of the AP piece and did not update it once a new version moved on the wires.”

-Seattle Times Management, Response to PD Inquiry

We chose not to link to the Times version the day it was published because the P-I version was longer and more accurate than its shorter counterpart.

July 12th, 2003

2003 July Relaunch brings many site improvements

Announcements

Note: The following is a post from the Permanent Defense archives that describes improvements made to the website in the summer of 2003. These improvements have been since superseded by multiple new versions of Permanent Defense’s website.

Permanent Defense has been working hard to improve the experience of supporters and visitors. We’ve made the following improvements to our site which we think make it easier to read and use.

Access

Getting to Permanent Defense and viewing its content has never been easier! Permanent Defense now has its own domain name! You can access PD by typing in its new URL, www.permanentdefense.org. Our old URL will continue to work as before.

Site speed

Elements were eliminated that made homepage loading slow. The Permanent Defense homepage should now load in less than 20 seconds over a 56k modem, and even faster on DSL, cable, or a fiber optics line.

New, more accessible archives!

We’re reorganized older content to make it easier to find. A new landing page has been created to house the Permanent Defense archives — find it here. You can read all the old essays, press stories, and web pages from 2002 and earlier in 2003.

Goodbye, errors

Dozens of broken links have been fixed, and incomplete pages finished! There should no longer be any broken internal links of any kind. If you do find a broken link, either internal or external, please promptly report it.

New menus

Permanent Defense’s website now utilizes menus to aid in navigation. Menus make important text stand out clearly and they serve as guides to content.

Reduced font size

To reduce the need to scroll, we reduced font sizes on most pages, while trying to keep it at a readable level. This should make it easier to view more content at once.

June 9th, 2003

Eyman launches 2004 attack on public services

Threat Analysis

Tim Eyman has unveiled his newest initiative effort for 2004 after the apparent failure of Initiative 807- axing property taxes by 25 percent. The profligate initiative filer’s latest attempts at controlling the state fiscally appear to be failing, with I-267 falling apart last December and I-807 now short of money and signatures.

Eyman promised a “voter veto” of any taxes passed in Olympia this year, a blatant attempt to intimidate Legislature. There is no such thing as a “voter veto” in this state or this country (a referendum is not a veto, it is a forced public vote on a bill). Tim is trying to goad people into believing that there is. To “get revenge”, he’s going to try to slice property taxes again- meaning that public education, parks, pools, police, fire, healthcare, and libraries would have to suffer once more.

Eyman will be attempting to get this initiative on the November 2004 ballot.

February 14th, 2003

Statement on Initiative 848

Ballot WatchdoggingStatements & Advisories

Tim Eyman’s frustration with his poorly written initiatives and terrible public policy has led him to write a shortsighted, egocentric initiative that is clearly motivated only by one thing: his anger at a public agency that has worked very hard to turn itself around and is now moving ahead with the support of the President of the United States, coincidentally from Eyman’s own party.

Tim Eyman will never understand that initiatives are not a citizen’s tool to strip away government. The initiative process exists to help citizens make government work better. This latest scheme is a Valentine’s Day blitzkrieg on Sound Transit… and it needs to be stopped.

Refuse to support the latest lie from Tim, which would ask voters statewide to vote on a locally funded, locally enacted project.

Filing initiatives to halt public projects because you don’t like them (even if you’re not paying for them) is blatantly ridiculous and unconstitutional.

January 18th, 2003

The impact of Initiative 695: One commuter’s story

Election PostmortemRethinking and Reframing

Christine Dorsey of Kitsap County writes:

I live in Kitsap County and Eyman’s antics have thoroughly disrupted my life. I commuted by ferry to Seattle, so I was very dependent on transit to get me from my home to the Kingston ferry.

When the car tabs initiative passed [I-695] ,I lost my bus route, so I had to drive 16 miles to the ferry terminal and pay an additional 50.00 a month for parking, then the ferry fares jumped dramatically.

I then lost my job in Seattle because I couldn’t get a bus to my office on time and the transit times were cut. All around Tim Eyman’s initiatives wrecked my job and my lifestyle. There still is no bus route in my area and I wonder what the elderly and school age kids do if they don’t have a car.

This is one of many examples of damage resulting from Tim Eyman’s initiatives. I-695 has hurt many people. Yet most conservatives are oblivious to this. They, of all people, should know, yet they continue to support Eyman’s ridiculous anti-tax rhetoric. Have they failed to notice that ferry fares have skyrocketed since the 1990s?

In part, that’s due to the recession, but the implementation of Tim Eyman’s I-695 is primarily to blame.

We have a simple message for our fellow Washingtonians: Don’t let Eyman get away with wrecking your life. Don’t let a fraternity watchmaker from Mukilteo dictate our government’s money flow.

Decline to sign Initiative 807.

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