Unless you’ve been living under a hood at Gitmo for the last few
years, you’re probably aware that there’s a big, world-changing,
Bush-era-ending presidential race on. So what’s your excuse for missing
it?
Perhaps you think Barack Obama already has Washington State in the
bag. Or maybe your eyelids close at the thought of having to read over
the whole long, miserably confusing election ballot. Those excuses are
common. They are also lame.
First, if you think Obama has Washington State in the bag, check out
the recent SurveyUSA poll that found Washington voters declaring John
McCain the winner of the first presidential debate. (Yes, the same
presidential debate that most national polls and pundits thought Obama
won.) This state is blue, but it’s done crazy things before—like
backing Richard Nixon once and Ronald Reagan twice. Don’t take anything
for granted.
As for that long, scary, sleep-inducing ballot: never fear. Before
Election Day comes, The Stranger‘s election cheat sheet will be
in the paper and online to help you figure out what to think and where
to scratch your pen.
Plus, the local issues at stake are important—assuming, that
is, you ever plan on dying, commuting, using contraception, or shopping
at Pike Place Market. That’s you, right?
So let’s start with the dying. You’re going to do it one of these
days. As is everyone you know and love. How will it go? This year,
Washington voters get to weigh in on that question via Initiative 1000,
also known as the “death with dignity” initiative. It would allow
doctors to give terminally ill patients lethal doses of medication if
the patients’ conditions (and their medical directives) permitted.
Next, commuting. Everyone does it. Most people would like more,
faster, and better ways to do it; some people would even like to do it
by riding transit. But Initiative 985, the latest from notorious
election villain Tim Eyman, would take away those choices, redirecting
transit money (and money that pays for health care, education, and
prisons) to roads. It would also open up HOV lanes to solo drivers,
rendering them useless. Do you want to have more transportation
choices, not fewer? Then make it known at the polls.
And while we’re on the subject of commuting, voters in the Puget
Sound region will decide, via Proposition 1, whether to approve an
expansion of the Sound Transit light-rail system. Either way this goes,
you’re going to be bitching about it for years. Your gripes will have a
lot more cred if you back them up with a vote.
Continuing on down the ballot, you’ll find a $73 million
property-tax levy to fix up Pike Place Market. You’ll also get to vote
on a $145 million levy to expand and improve Seattle parks. Who doesn’t
love parks and Pike Place Market? You? Then you really better vote.
Oh, and then there’s the small matter of the governor’s race, a
rematch of a race that was decided by 133 votes in 2004. So every vote
counts. And the distinctions in this race couldn’t be more clear. For
example, Republican Dino Rossi thinks pharmacists should be able to
deny women access to emergency contraception; Democratic governor
Christine Gregoire thinks pharmacists should be required to dispense
legally prescribed medication. If you aren’t into forced pregnancy,
that means vote!
Other important posts on this year’s ballot include state lands
commissioner (the person who decides just how much destruction of
natural beauty is going to happen over the next four years), attorney
general (the person who’s going to have a good shot at the governor’s
office in a few years), and congressman/woman (a rematch in the
Eastside’s 8th Congressional District between incumbent Republican Dave
Reichert and Democrat Darcy Burner that will help decide how big the
Democratic majority is next year). 
I-1000 Fails The Smell Test
Something smells really fishy about the I-1000 Initiative, assisted suicide. Did anyone else notice this odor, too? I first noticed several things about it that did not add up. First, someone is throwing away a LOT of money to get this thing passed, and they are doing a really bang up job of marketing it to us, like some kind of breath mints. Are they doing it for a truly virtuous purpose? Well that depends on whose interests are being pursued. People don’t just spend $2.5 Million dollars for nothing. This is an investment. You can bet they want something for their money and they are interested enough in getting it that they are lobbying the public for it. Is it the families of the terminally ill that are behind this? Could be, but I doubt it. There aren’t enough of them and they aren’t organized or well funded to do it by themselves. Our government isn’t sponsoring it. It’s a post turtle. You know, the soon-to-be-famous turtle sitting on a post in the middle of the country? (You know it didn’t get there by itself, it doesn’t belong there, it doesn’t know what to do when it gets there, and you just feel sorry for it being there.)
Given the way We The People are being lately suckered by shock therapy promulgated from top corporations and financial interests lately into voting for unpopular and toxic measures that are represented to us as desperate emergencies that we do not have time to really consider carefully (Iraq, 9/11, gas prices, and now the threatened New Great Depression), we ought to sniff twice or more at whatever is being sold to us, and be very suspicious of where corporations and lobbyists are trying to lead us into the Corporate State.
Who really benefits from assisted suicide, enough to invest in such a determined campaign? One possibility is the insurance companies. I don’t know this for a fact, but they do have the kind of money that could support this effort, and they are purely driven by economics, not by moral virtue. Usually profits and money drives these things. They would benefit because it would be more economically profitable for them to merely pay for suicide instead of paying to give an insured person a break that would keep them alive. Many people are starting to realize this, like Martin Sheen and reader Tom Gaines above. Doctors know this, and all the medical societies has come out to say they don’t want to give HMO’s any more power to practice medicine. I think this makes a lot more sense than the theory that there are wonderful people out there with $2.5 Million dollars to throw around just to save someone pain that doctors know how to treat and control anyway. Instead of I-1000, we need quality affordable health care reform.
I am against it because I am a senior parent of a charming adult autistic child, who we raised from birth at home and provided with quality care. The state has inserted itself in our family and appointed a state guardian for her that she does not need who pretends to speak for her interests, and placed her in less expansive care for the state. We are still fighting it, but we have been kicked out of the picture as is we were legal strangers. If our economy tanks, the state guardian could decide, as Germany did in the 1930’s, that she is a “useless bread gobbler” costing the state too much money, and can be offed. I see I-1000 as a bad idea and first step down that slippery slope. If you know history, you know the outcome of where this is all going. PLEASE Washington voters, vote no on I-1000, so it can’t spread anywhere else.
Um, you can look at public records to see who is funding an initiative. Turns out I-1000 is funded by Gov. Booth Gardner and lots of people from all over Washington who have had personal experiences with spouses and loved ones dying.
Giving terminally ill patients the choice of death with dignity is the right thing to do. Vote yes on I-1000.
I think the death with dignity movement is seeing this measure as a litmus test- if it passes the movement can go forward and look at passing it in other states; if not, then the movement dies. Could explain the money from all over the country.
I am voting yes on 1000 because I am familiar with the illnesses that can render unquelled pain and a misery so profound words cannot properly describe it.
I have worked as a volunteer on this issue for a year shoulder to shoulder with many others who like myself have watched a loved one suffer at life’s end. I am working along side other volunteers who have found their loved one hanging in the woodshed, or shot and in pieces as their last image of them.
This initiative has more than a dozen safeguards, it is modeled after the decade-old law in Oregon and it is about choice.
It is access and a safer way to end terminally ill people’s lives than the ways that are currently being used. Read the data from Oregon, about three hundred people have used the medication but more than seven hundred others got the medication and knew, at the end, that they had that option.
That spiritual ease at the end of life should be allowed and legal. Vote Yes on I-1000.
Many of the numerous donors, supporters and volunteers for I-1000 have already lost loved ones. They have nothing to gain but to try to spare their friends, neighbors, and maybe you a slow, painful, undignified death. The memories have not faded, and their scars have not healed. It’s pretty offensive to them to insinuate that this initiative is being passed for the sake of greed. If you saw the elderly people gathering signatures, you know that they know more about the realities of death than most of us. Let’s honor these people who have personally witnessed their spouses, friends, and even adult children’s suffering in their final days by voting Yes on I-1000.
AAAHHHH John McCain is scary! Read more here!
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/make_believe_maverick_the_real_john_mccain/
Don’t poop out! At the bottom of the ballot is the Parks and Green Spaces Levy. Vote YES on Proposition 2 because you give a damn about your community and the future. Like Cal Anderson Park? – we can make four more of those over other reservoir lids (plus over 100 other projects). Learn more at http://www.seattleparksforall.org.