The Jeff Recommends: State Initiatives

Another day, another slot of Endorsements. I'm moving the state initiaitives up in the list because because a lot of folk are voting on state-wide measures right now by absentee ballots.

Oh, and for the younger generation, here's the skinny on Bilandic Snowstorm - Mayor Bilandic was Richard Daley's successor as Mayor of Chicago. As the annointed of the Chicago machine, he was considered to have a safe gig. Then a series of snowstorms besieged Chicago in 1979, and he couldn't clear the streets. People were willing to put up with machine politics, as long as the government lived up to its obligations. Bilandic lost the next election to Jane Byrne.

On to the state-wide initiatives.

I-297 - Clean up Hanford. Vote YES. This is to stop bringing stuff in until we’ve dealt with the stuff we have. The Hanford Nuclear Reservation is our own state’s night-light, and its time to throw on the brakes before it gets worse.

I-872 – Top Two Primary. Vote NO. Huh? But haven’t you ranted and raved AGAINST the current system imposed on us after the demise of the blessed blanket primary. Yep, I don’t care for the so-called and mis-named “open” primary, but I don’t think the Top Two is an improvement. Going to a Top-Two system is going to hurt the smaller parties, one of the things that Washington State does well.

The BETTER initiative (which someone should do) is that if the political parties are going to exclude people from the ballot, then the state should CHARGE the political parties for its time and resources for the primaries. Petty? You betcha. That’s what you get for making me vote a party line.

I-884 – Increased Sale Tax for Education. Vote YES (ow! I just got a pain in my wallet!). Here’s the skinny – every year we say that we’ll get better education by improving the business climate, yet as the business climate went up, education funds continued to go down. Lets put our money where our collective mouths are. I have no problem with an educated populace.

I-892 – The Slot Machines – Vote NO. I wish there was a HELL NO line on this one. This is the “everybody gets a pony” initiative. Something for nothing. Yet another tax on stupid people, which going to bring in a lot of cash for Canadian Gambling operations. The question is, are we stupid enough to bite?

R-55 - Charter Schools – Vote NO, with reservations. I think there are a lot of good charter schools. I also think there are a lot of snake-oil salesmen out there who will put corporate bottom-line ahead of your kids future. This has been shot down a couple times already, and deserves to be shot down again.

More later,