Newsroom Archives by Month: February 2013

Tim Eyman continues his ugly, stinky, and disgusting behavior with repugnant attack on Jay Inslee

Rethinking and ReframingStatements & Advisories

Yesterday, after the House Democratic caucus unveiled its proposal for a new package of transportation improvements funded primarily by an increase in Washington’s fuel tax, we had a feeling that a hyberbolic rant was on the way from Tim Eyman, who the media has turned into Washington’s most visible and powerful unelected politician.

And sure enough, this morning, such an email arrived, devoid of substance and laden with inappropriate metaphors and a vile personal attack directed at our new governor, Jay Inslee. Eyman wasted no time in striking a low blow.

Candidate Inslee repeatedly promised to veto any tax increase. He said no way to higher transportation taxes in 2013. Inslee said he’d grow jobs to generate more tax revenue. What a lying whore he turned out to be. In recent weeks, he’s made it clear he’ll sign any tax increase the Legislature unilaterally imposes.  Is there any doubt that Inslee would have lost by a landslide if he’d been honest about his tax-hiking plans during the campaign?

Emphasis is ours. Our assessment of this message is that Eyman is being deliberately provocative in order to get his name and viewpoint into follow-up blog posts and stories on the transportation package.

He may already be planning to “apologize” in a few days’ time for his inflammatory comments, so he can garner even more media attention.

We urge reporters, editors, and producers not to take the bait. This isn’t news. Let the only response to this despicable commentary be from his opposition.

Eyman deserves to be called out for his inappropriate and disparaging remarks, but he does not deserve more headlines and on-air mentions by the traditional press. He has already shown he has nothing to contribute to a sane discussion about the value of public services in our state.

So let us do the calling-out, and don’t give Eyman what he wants. Don’t reward his ugly, stinky, and disgusting behavior.

NPI’s Permanent Defense responds to the discovery of thousands of fraudulent I-517 and I-522 signatures

Eye on Money: DevelopmentsFrom the Campaign TrailStatements & Advisories

This afternoon, the Secretary of State Kim Wyman announced that, after reviewing petitions submitted for Tim Eyman’s I-517 and Chris McManus’ I-522, her office had asked the Washington State Patrol to open a criminal investigation into what she called “the worst apparent initiative fraud anyone can remember.” As many as eight thousand signatures for I-517 and I-522 may be fraudulent.

Since mid-spring of 2012, when we first learned that Tim Eyman and his friends Roy Ruffino and Eddie Agazarm were making an attempt to quietly and illegitimately collect signatures for a second initiative by piggybacking on the signature drive for I-1185, we have been watchdogging and monitoring the I-517 campaign as closely as possible… a difficult task, given that Tim Eyman and his pals ran the entire operation in stealth mode up until the very end.

Prior to today’s announcement, we had already documented a troubling set of discrepancies with the I-517 campaign, many of which were included in the complaint against the I-517 campaign filed with the Public Disclosure Commission by Sherry Bockwinkel last August. Sadly, the PDC has so far failed to launch a full-scale investigation in response to the complaint. We urge the PDC to bring the complaint out of limbo and open a formal inquiry immediately.

We thank Secretary of State Kim Wyman and her team for referring this matter to the State Patrol for a full investigation. We understand that the State Patrol is already investigating fraudulent signatures that were submitted as part of last year’s charter schools initiative, and we will be following that investigation as well.

However, we need more than an investigation into these fraudulent signatures. The signature gathering industry in our state has been operating for years out of the public eye with next to no oversight. Our research has found that our state’s signature gathering firms, like Eddie Agazarm and Roy Ruffino’s Citizen Solutions, have been exploiting their petition workers for years and failing to comply with our worker protection laws. It is time for lawmakers and the Department of Labor & Industries to fully investigate this industry and ensure that firms like Citizen Solutions are brought into full compliance with our laws. Instances of fraud are less likely to occur if regulators do their job.

We applaud the Secretary of State’s Elections Division for planning to meet with elections officials in Oregon to discuss how to toughen our state’s laws and regulations. We believe we should learn from Oregon’s experience so we can prevent the same kind of problems from getting completely out of hand here.

Tim Eyman would like us all to think that signature fraud is a problem that doesn’t exist. But as this and past incidents demonstrate, he is dead wrong. He’s against oversight anbd regulation of the signature gathering industry because it could negatively affect his profits.

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Permanent Defense works to protect Washington by building a first line of defense against threats to the common wealth and Constitution of the Evergreen State — like Tim Eyman's initiative factory. Learn more.

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