Woot! What a day! What a month! Now all we need is for I-917 to fail to make the ballot...

TIM EYMAN...FAILURE EXTROADINAIRE

Hey, at least he's got a future somewhere - if it involves wearing his Darth Vader costume to children's birthday parties...

Oh, Jesus, no, spare the children the sight of that. I think the perfect career for Eyman is manager of a KFC outlet.

This is a very interesting decision. The judge's reasoning is that I-747 said it was ammending I-722, but I-722 had already been thrown out by the time I-747 was voted on. But I-722 wasn't thrown out until a month after I-747 was filed. So there is really no way the writers of I-747 could have done the right thing by this decision, unless they were prescient.

In effect, this decision appears to create a mechanism by which any initiative that changes a current law can be stopped. The legislature waits until the initiative is filed with the old text of the law (initiative are apparently required to quote the laws they ammend). Then the legislature changes the law in some non-material way (change "will" to "shall" or some such thing). Then claim the initative is invalid since it quotes the old text.

The thing about Eyeman is that, since the people who support him tend to be failures themselves (come on, if you have to worry about the cost of tabs, you can't afford the car) they will continue to rally around him, since they are used to failure, and can identify with it.

These are the people who respond to spam, who get taken advantage of by car salesmen, who get suckered into interest-only mortgages. They are, as Rhoda Moganstein would say, Feebs. And they will always support a fellow feeb.

Isn't the point of the opinion that voters did not recognize they were voting on a six to one percent reduction on the tax increase cap instead of a two to one percent reduction as I-744’s quotation of I-722 led voters to believe?

A non-material change such as "will" to "shall" would not be sufficient to trigger Article II, Section 37, as the purpose of that section is to "disclose the effect of the new legislation and its impact on existing laws." If the Initiative would have the same or substantially similar effect on the old law with "will" as it would on the new law with "shall," then it seems that courts would not be as fearful that voters failed to understand the impact of the initiative on existing law.

Opinion: Think about the logical votes for various classes of voters. Voters who favor of a cap in the 0%-1% range would vote for I-747 regardless of whether the 2% cap set by I-722 was in effect or not. Voters who favor of a cap of 6% or more wouln't vote for it whether I-722 was in effect or not. The interesting voters are those who favor a cap in the 2%-6% range. Presumably they voted against I-747 because they thought there already was a 2% cap in place. If they had known that I-722 had been thrown out, at least some would have voted for I-747 because they would prefer a 1% cap to a 6% cap. Their support wouldn't have changed the result, because those that wanted a cap of 1% or less already had a majority, but you can see that the only way the information that I-722 had been thrown out would likely have affected the vote would be to increase support for I-747.

Still, you might say, it is a material change because somebody might have changed his vote. Fair enough. But if you accept that logic, you make it essentially impossible to write an initiative covering an area of law that is presently being adjudicated (which means just about any law that anyone is likely to want file an initiative on). Your initiative has to quote the current law, and at any time betwen when you write the initiative and when it is voted on a court may alter that law, rendering your initiative void. I know a lot of people would prefer not to have initiatives, but obviously the state constitution does provide for them, and a ruling that, in effect, makes them impossible, in effect, underminines the intent of the state constitution.

KFC Manager Fnarf? I rather see him as a small, run down convenience store night clerk in Ephrata. At least I'm certain I'd never see him there- I do like my KFC from time to time...and its the part of the state in which he belongs.

Eyeman belongs where Bush belongs: In the appliance department at Sears, with sweat stains on their armpits because they aren't making their commission.

Of course, the salespeople who'd be beating them would be black, so they would be angry and muttering about "affirmative action"

Hey, I shop at Sears! Don't put Eyman there! Sam's Club or WalMart would be better.

Hey, I shop at Sears too! And I think my scenario shows the taste and intelligence of the average Sears shopper - that they wouldn't buy an appliance from W or Timmy. ;-)