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June 25, 2007

Of Sizemore, Jail, Initiatives, and Karma

Though this headline might make your heart leap for joy: "Sizemore sentenced to 16 months in Prison," it's not a story about that Sizemore. Bill Sizemore is making headlines today, too, but he's actually having a good day: "All indications are pointing to Bill Sizemore turning in hundreds of thousands of signatures tomorrow." If Ted Piccolo is to be believed, and I don't doubt him on this, Sizemore has managed to gather far more signatures than he needed to put two measures on the ballot and will be turning in signatures a year early, leaving him plenty of time to work on even more measures.

One of the measures he will be turning in tomorrow is Initiative 3, which makes state taxes deductible on federal tax returns. He has not yet revealed which is the second initiative. You can look up all his various initiatives at the Secretary of State's website. I'm betting that by the deadline next summer he will have turned in signatures for several different measures, and may even be very close to finished on them already, but for now he will probably watch the response he gets to these two and base his next moves on that. In other words, when the Legislature's initiative reform bills are signed into law and then put into action by the Secretary of State's office, that's when we will see what his validity rates actually are. And that's when he will know how many more signatures he really has to collect.

I am fairly certain you can expect to see two other measures on the ballot next November -- a measure to prevent public employee unions from using payroll deduction to collect union dues if those dues will be spent in any way on political activity, and merit pay for teachers. He has several more that look more like his personal wish list and not necessarily very serious. If Dick Wendt and Freedomworks and Howard Rich are fully funding him, however, he very well might also go for it with all of them. In that case, we'll also see measures to block "incumbent" designations on ballots in judicial elections, eliminate the "single subject rule" for ballot measures, declare it bribery if a political contribution creates a conflict of interest, require two years of English immersion for students who don't speak English, and allow people to make "minor" improvements to their property without building permits (he knows all about this one). Dagnabbit, I might have to support one or two of these. Looks like we have some good discussions ahead of us here.

And that's not all. According to Piccolo:

There is other news in that Sizemore is also concerned with the legislature not playing fair with the drafting of the ballot title as the Democrats try to repeal the “Double Majority” law. The legislature is reportedly considering an attempt at repealing the Double Majority on this November’s ballot. Sizemore is concerned enough that he has drafted two other DM measures and prepared to circulate them for the 2008 ballot.

Watching Sizemore's resurrection is a surreal experience. I actually don't care that he didn’t go to jail, though a conviction would have undermined the credibility of his martyrdom claims. And I don't care that he's managed to weasel out of paying the millions he was ordered to pay to the unions because I'm fairly certain it has been personally costly for him to go through all of this. What I do care about is that he hasn't ever had to admit what he did; that many still believe he was unfairly targeted and thus are further cemented in their ignorant views so they can continue to be manipulated; that rich people with ulterior motives continue to support him and provide him with a platform; that he continues to inspire increasing restrictions on the initiative process; and that innocent people out there are destined to be scammed by him in the future as so many have been in the past. It all offends my sense of justice.

And it makes me very unhappy with Attorney General Hardy Myers, who refused to criminally prosecute Sizemore for fear it would appear politically motivated. Sizemore, like so many right-wingers, used to jokingly refer to him as "Hardly Matters." Sadly, it would seem Sizemore was actually right about that. So when those poor souls in the Justice Department (note tongue in cheek) are feeling overburdened with writing ballot titles for Sizemore's measures and dealing with challenges to ballot titles for Sizemore's measures, I don't feel sorry for them. And I won't feel sorry for them when they have to deal with the future inevitable appeals if the measures pass. The real cause of that problem lies at the feet of the head of their own department. In fact, I see their predicament as proof positive that what goes around comes around. Until I remember Sizemore, that is.

Posted by Becky at June 25, 2007 03:38 PM