Tim Eyman has a new radio ad up—”our first ever advertisement,” he says—and guess what? It’s aimed at sinking Initiative 1098, Bill Gates Sr.’s plan to tax the filthy rich, but a lot of the ad’s information is misleading or just plain false. Let’s take a listen:
Eyman’s ad begins:
Gregoire and the Democrat party in Olympia really screwed us this year. First, they overturned voter-approved tax limits. Then they raised taxes $6.7 billion…
What they did, says Washington Office of Financial Management spokesman Glenn Kuper, is cut about $5 billion over the current two-year budgeting period while also raising taxes by roughly $670 million a year. Over 10 years, sure, that’s about $6.7 billion in taxes. But the ad talks about “this year,” and this year taxes are only going up by $670 million.
The ad goes on:
Now Gregoire’s Big Labor backers are spending millions of dollars to trick voters into establishing a new state income tax. Voters don’t want an income tax imposed on everyone, especially an income tax that’s in addition to the other taxes we already pay.
You hear this and you think that not only did Gregoire and the Democrats impose $6.7 billion in new taxes this year, but they also want to impose a new income tax on everyone via I-1098. False. I-1098 would only apply to Washingtonians earning over $200,000 a year as individuals or over $400,000 a year as couples.
More from Eyman’s ad:
Washington’s already the 5th highest taxed state in the nation—if we don’t keep politicians on a short leash, they’ll take us to number one.
Says Sandeep Kaushik, spokesman for I-1098: “Actually, in terms of state and local taxes we are around 30th.”
All of which is somewhat separate from whether this ad will be effective. Listen to it again and pretend you’re a voter who knows none of the above. Are you outraged? Do you plan on voting against I-1098? The answer is probably yes and yes.
Eyman always did prey on the gullible.
maybe the media companies that he’s buying time from should ask him to provide factual backup for the ad’s claims.
oh shit i crack myself up.
1098 is a Tax on the Middle Class.
Vote NO on 1098.
What’s wrong with being 30th? That’s a contest I don’t really want to win
4: Actually, we’re 35th, according to the Tax Foundation in looking at state and local tax burdens. Washington has been dropping steadily since 1989, when we were 16th. But you won’t hear that FACT from Eyman.
Timmy never lets the facts get in the way of his lies.
has timmeh ever told the truth? i am guessing no. professional liar sans a real job. is he still dunmire’s ‘benefactor’?
‘beneficiary’
Here’s a TV segment by Tim Eyman in which he explains his opposition to I-1098:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iinr6hUfG…
This is why I am opposed to the whole notion of voter initiatives: it is comically easy for the process to be hijacked by demagoguery of the rankest sort. Laws should be passed in a forum that is accountable to the people, but insulated from wild-eyed herd panic and subject to procedures to ensure proper deliberations. Hence, we have legislatures.
Allowing uninformed voters to tie the hands of the legislature and overturn carefully considered laws defeats the whole point of having a legislature and is a form of mob rule. We have initiatives where I live, too – and I am voting NO on all of them!
If we are going to have initiatives, however, we should at least have a law to forbid false and misleading statements in political advertising. Such a law would be good even if all we ever voted on was candidates, but initiatives make such a law an obvious necessity. We already mandate honesty from people trying to sell products, we should mandate it of people trying to sell leaders and laws too!