(This guest Slog post is by Erin Shannon, public relations director for the Building Industries Association of Washington [BIAW]. The voters' guide has more information about Initiative 1082 here.)

Yeah, we get it. The Stranger hates the BIAW because we support conservative candidates and sometimes say outrageous shit that no one else has the guts to say.

In fact, all the Stranger Election Control Board had to say about Initiative 1082 was that the “conservative fucks” at BIAW wrote it. Booga-booga. Vote no.

We know you’re only reading this out of morbid curiosity to see what crazy things we’re going to say next. Not that you’re at all interested in the facts; you’ve already made up your mind about us and Initiative 1082.

So why don’t we just let The SECB make the case for us?

Here’s what you do. Re-read the I-1100 endorsement in “Vote, Baby, Vote!” but replace “liquor” with “workers’ compensation insurance” and “beer industry” with “trial lawyers.” Here, we’ll get you started and throw in a few of our favorite lines from that screed:

Every year for the past [20+] years, lawmakers in Olympia made a choice. They could pass a bill before them to… fix the problems with the workers’ compensation insurance monopoly, or they could keep the system we have. The current system looks like this: Liquor Workers’ compensation insurance is only sold at a state-run store… in an homage to East Germany...

Lawmakers kept that idiotic system.

Why? The short story is that unions representing the employees in liquor stores the workers’ compensation insurance monopoly intimidated lawmakers into maintaining an inefficient status quo. So since the end of Prohibition, our liquor workers’ compensation insurance outlets have been difficult to get to and frequently run out of products money, inconveniencing bar and restaurant and other small business owners and underscoring how mindfuckingly stupid it is for the state to hold a monopoly over one industry.

You're going to hear a lot of arguments about why you should vote no... Those arguments all come from the state Democratic machine that was too lazy to fix the broken liquor workers’ compensation insurance system for the past [20+] years and the beer industry trial lawyers bankrolling its opposition campaign.

If you want to see what the anti-liquor workers’ compensation insurance initiative campaign is really all about, follow the money.

Most of that dough comes from the… trade association of major brewers trial lawyers. Their official arguments are bullshit. They oppose these initiatives because they want to protect the profits of beer megacorporations trial lawyers.

Anyone who tells you that the legislature will pass a better law on its own or that a party who doesn't have a financial stake in privatizing liquor workers’ compensation insurance will run a better initiative next year is lying to you. The legislature will never act, and someone's bound to turn a profit when the state gets out of a business it sucks at running and never should have been in to begin with. This is our best chance to shed a crappy system. There's plenty of opportunity to fine-tune the improved system in the next few years. Vote yes on I-1082.