Tim Eyman continues attack on state Supreme Court, misquotes Orwell’s “Animal Farm”

With no ini­tia­tive on the bal­lot to sell this year, scan­dal-plagued ini­tia­tive pro­mot­er Tim Eyman has turned his atten­tion to launch­ing attacks on indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions he does­n’t like, name­ly the Wash­ing­ton State Supreme Court, Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates for office at all lev­els, and Sound Transit.

This after­noon, Eyman sent out yet anoth­er mis­sive exco­ri­at­ing the Supreme Court in the wake of yes­ter­day’s McCleary hear­ing. As much as Eyman loathes Sound Tran­sit and Demo­c­ra­t­ic elect­ed lead­ers like Jay Inslee or Dow Con­stan­tine, it seems he despis­es the Supreme Court most of all — for it is the Court that has struck down most of the ini­tia­tives he has got past the vot­ers, from I‑695 and I‑747 (lat­er par­tial­ly rein­stat­ed) to I‑960/I‑1053/I‑1185 and I‑1366 (not reinstated).

Eyman’s appar­ent­ly been read­ing some clas­sic lit­er­a­ture late­ly, because he opened his email today by bizarrely com­par­ing the jus­tices of Wash­ing­ton’s Supreme Court to char­ac­ters from George Orwell’s novel­la Ani­mal Farm:

For many years, this supreme court has inflat­ed its gov­ern­men­tal impor­tance, try­ing to estab­lish itself as a supe­ri­or branch of gov­ern­ment. In the nov­el “Ani­mal Farm,” the gov­ern­ing pigs ini­tial­ly paint­ed the words “All pigs are equal” on the side of the barn.

But as time went on and they accrued more pow­er, they changed it to “Some pigs are more equal than oth­ers.” That’s exact­ly what these 9 judges want every­one to think. That they are supe­ri­or to the leg­isla­tive branch, that they are supe­ri­or to the exec­u­tive branch. That some branch­es of gov­ern­ment are more equal than others.

I found it hard to stop chuck­ling after read­ing this. Eyman is so lazy and so accus­tomed to fab­ri­cat­ing that he can’t even be both­ered to accu­rate­ly sum­ma­rize or quote from a clas­sic, easy to read novel­la like Ani­mal Farm.

For those who don’t know: Ani­mal Farm (which Orwell ini­tial­ly sub­ti­tled “A Fairy Sto­ry”), is an alle­go­ry sat­i­riz­ing the for­ma­tion and ear­ly years of the Sovi­et Union, sparked by the Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion of 1917. The set­ting is a farm in Eng­land, intro­duced as the Manor Farm at the begin­ning of the novella.

(Warn­ing: spoil­ers lie ahead. Pause here or skip the next few para­graphs if you want to read the novel­la with­out know­ing the plot beforehand.)

The farm becomes Ani­mal Farm after its human own­er Jones and his farmhands are sent pack­ing by the ani­mals under their care — who they’d been neglect­ing — in a spon­ta­neous upris­ing. After this tri­umph, the ani­mals begin attempt­ing to gov­ern them­selves, with the far­m’s pigs (who, unbe­knownst to the oth­er ani­mals, had taught them­selves to read and write) as the self-appoint­ed leaders.

The pigs estab­lish a codex for the farm called the Sev­en Com­mand­ments, which is based on “Ani­mal­ism”, an alle­go­ry of Com­mu­nism. In Chap­ter 2, they paint the Sev­en Com­mand­ments on the side of the far­m’s barn:

1. What­ev­er goes upon two legs is an enemy.
2. What­ev­er goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
3. No ani­mal shall wear clothes.
4. No ani­mal shall sleep in a bed.
5. No ani­mal shall drink alcohol.
6. No ani­mal shall kill any oth­er animal.
7. All ani­mals are equal.

It is the last com­mand­ment that Eyman quot­ed — inac­cu­rate­ly — in his email. The com­mand­ments refer to ani­mals, not pigs, though they were paint­ed on the side of the barn wall by one of the pigs. If you’ve read the novel­la, then you appre­ci­ate the impor­tance of the dis­tinc­tion I just made, because the pigs in the novel­la are the char­ac­ters respon­si­ble for exploit­ing the oth­er animals.

As the novel­la pro­gress­es, the two lead­ing pigs (rec­og­nized as “the clever­est of the ani­mals”) become rivals, and one is forced into exile by the oth­er, who assumes dic­ta­to­r­i­al pow­ers. By the end, the remain­ing pigs and their auto­crat­ic chief have become as bad as the human own­er they dis­placed — Jones — if not worse, and the Sev­en Com­mand­ments have been oblit­er­at­ed and replaced with this:

ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL
BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS

If Tim Eyman had any integri­ty, he’d care about get­ting details like his quo­ta­tions right… but he does­n’t, so his emails are often rid­dled with infor­ma­tion that is sim­ply in error. And sad­ly, over the years, there have been many times where Eyman’s fab­ri­ca­tions have been repeat­ed in the press due to not hav­ing been fact-checked.

I hap­pen to have per­son­al­ly met most of the jus­tices cur­rent­ly serv­ing on Wash­ing­ton’s Supreme Court. From talk­ing to them and read­ing their opin­ions, I know how seri­ous­ly they take their oaths of office. The Court’s duty is to uphold our Con­sti­tu­tion, and that is what it has been try­ing to do in the McCleary case. It is the Leg­is­la­ture that is col­lec­tive­ly refus­ing to fol­low Arti­cle IX of our Con­sti­tu­tion by amply pro­vid­ing for the edu­ca­tion of Wash­ing­ton’s youth.

If the Leg­is­la­ture would sim­ply com­ply with the Court’s orders, there would be no risk of a con­sti­tu­tion­al cri­sis. But the Leg­is­la­ture has not been will­ing to do so. Law­mak­ers have been drag­ging their feet for years, and as a result, our kids aren’t get­ting the edu­ca­tion the Con­sti­tu­tion says they’re sup­posed to get.

That’s wrong. The Leg­is­la­ture’s cul­ture of fail­ure is unac­cept­able. That’s why the Court heard oral argu­ments yes­ter­day over pos­si­ble next steps in the case.

The Court’s nine jus­tices (by the way, Tim, they’re called jus­tices) are sup­posed to be stick­lers for the Con­sti­tu­tion. Our sys­tem of gov­ern­ment was designed with checks and bal­ances: each branch has a role to play in hold­ing the oth­ers account­able. The Court is hold­ing the Leg­is­la­ture account­able for its fail­ures — or try­ing to at least. Some mem­bers (ahem, Matt Man­weller) clear­ly resent this.

As the Court’s nine jus­tices are pop­u­lar­ly elect­ed from across the entire state, Man­weller, Eyman, and the right wing are seek­ing to defeat the three incum­bents who are up this year with their own slate of can­di­dates. Eyman has been using his email list to aggres­sive­ly pro­mote this slate of challengers.

In the Top Two elec­tion, only one of the three Supreme Court con­tests appeared on the bal­lot because the oth­ers drew only two can­di­dates. That posi­tion (Posi­tion #5) is cur­rent­ly held by Chief Jus­tice Bar­bara Mad­sen, who Eyman despises.

Despite hav­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars spent against her (with much of that mon­ey sup­plied by Ken­neth Fish­er, one of Eyman’s wealthy bene­fac­tors), Mad­sen cruised to a first place fin­ish with a whop­ping 63.9% of the vote.

Unde­terred by Mad­sen’s land­slide vic­to­ry and the mas­sive fail­ure of the large inde­pen­dent expen­di­ture against her, Eyman has con­tin­ued to pro­mote the right wing’s pre­ferred slate through a series of email mis­sives while urg­ing his fol­low­ers to pep­per the jus­tices with emails telling them how awful they are.

“If you think these judges have gone com­plete­ly rogue, then we want every­one — AND WE MEAN EVERYONE — to send them an email and tell them what you think.  Send them a mes­sage in your own words.  But send them some­thing right away, right now,” Eyman exhort­ed in his email today. (Empha­sis is his).

It is iron­ic that Eyman would com­pare our state’s Supreme Court jus­tices to the pigs from Ani­mal Farm when it is he and his wealthy bene­fac­tors who are most like the pigs. If you’ve read Ani­mal Farm, then you know that the pigs in the novel­la are self­ish wealth hoard­ers — not unlike Eyman’s wealthy bene­fac­tors. Con­sid­er this excerpt from Chap­ter 3 of the novel­la [spoil­er alert!]:

The ear­ly apples were now ripen­ing, and the grass of the orchard was lit­tered with wind­falls. The ani­mals had assumed as a mat­ter of course that these would be shared out equal­ly; one day, how­ev­er, the order went forth that all the wind­falls were to be col­lect­ed and brought to the har­ness-room for the use of the pigs. At this some of the oth­er ani­mals mur­mured, but it was no use. All the pigs were in full agree­ment on this point, even Snow­ball and Napoleon. Squeal­er was sent to make the nec­es­sary expla­na­tions to the others.

Here I will pause and note that Squeal­er — who is the Ani­mal Farm char­ac­ter that Eyman most resem­bles — serves as the spoke­spig for the oth­er pigs.

“Com­rades!” he cried. “You do not imag­ine, I hope, that we pigs are doing this in a spir­it of self­ish­ness and priv­i­lege? Many of us actu­al­ly dis­like milk and apples. I dis­like them myself. Our sole object in tak­ing these things is to pre­serve our health. Milk and apples (this has been proved by Sci­ence, com­rades) con­tain sub­stances absolute­ly nec­es­sary to the well-being of a pig. We pigs are brain­work­ers. The whole man­age­ment and organ­i­sa­tion of this farm depend on us. Day and night we are watch­ing over your wel­fare. It is for YOUR sake that we drink that milk and eat those apples. Do you know what would hap­pen if we pigs failed in our duty? Jones would come back! Yes, Jones would come back! Sure­ly, com­rades,” cried Squeal­er almost plead­ing­ly, skip­ping from side to side and whisk­ing his tail, “sure­ly there is no one among you who wants to see Jones come back?”

Now if there was one thing that the ani­mals were com­plete­ly cer­tain of, it was that they did not want Jones back. When it was put to them in this light, they had no more to say. The impor­tance of keep­ing the pigs in good health was all too obvi­ous. So it was agreed with­out fur­ther argu­ment that the milk and the wind­fall apples (and also the main crop of apples when they ripened) should be reserved for the pigs alone.

Tax cuts for the rich have been jus­ti­fied by right wing Repub­li­cans over and over again in a sim­i­lar con­de­scend­ing fash­ion. The false, fear-based argu­ments against tax­a­tion that get made on Fox Noise Chan­nel and Fox Busi­ness are not so unlike the argu­ments Squeal­er makes to the oth­er ani­mals on behalf of the pigs:

We rich peo­ple and the even more mas­sive­ly rich peo­ple we serve as mouth­pieces for on TV are job cre­ators. The whole man­age­ment and orga­ni­za­tion of this coun­try’s econ­o­my depends on us. Day and night we are watch­ing over your wel­fare. It is for YOUR sake that we need these tax cuts. Do you know what would hap­pen if our tax­es went up? Our state and coun­try would lose jobs! Yes, jobs would be lost! Sure­ly there is none among you who wants to lose jobs?

In real­i­ty, tax cuts for the wealthy and oth­er tenets of right wing eco­nom­ics lead to mass inequal­i­ty, stag­na­tion, and decline. Not jobs. Not prosperity.

To put it anoth­er way: trick­le down does­n’t.

But when we pool our resources accord­ing to abil­i­ty to pay, we can achieve great things togeth­er. We can afford qual­i­ty pub­lic schools, col­leges, and uni­ver­si­ties, a robust mass tran­sit sys­tem, safe bridges, parks and pools to recre­ate in, first rate police, fire, and emer­gency med­ical ser­vices, and much more. The avail­abil­i­ty of excel­lent pub­lic ser­vices is cru­cial to estab­lish­ing the best busi­ness cli­mate. Tax­es can be thought of as dues we pay to keep our com­mu­ni­ties healthy and vibrant.

Sad­ly, some peo­ple don’t want to pay their dues and pay it for­ward so the next gen­er­a­tion of work­ers and entre­pre­neurs can pros­per. Ken­neth Fish­er, Clyde Hol­land, Faye Gar­neau, and oth­er Eyman bene­fac­tors are self­ish wealth hoard­ers. They have cho­sen to fund Eyman in the past because Eyman has a gift for deceiv­ing peo­ple into vot­ing for schemes that enrich the few at the expense of the many.

Eyman is their Squeal­er — or at least he used to be. See, two can play at this game. Eyman has been fun­nelling a lot of the mon­ey giv­en by the afore­men­tioned bene­fac­tors into his own pock­ets and fail­ing to prop­er­ly report his activ­i­ties to the pub­lic as the law requires. That’s land­ed him in a lot of legal trouble.

Maybe it’s this trou­ble that has caused the bene­fac­tors to turn off the mon­ey spig­ot. Or maybe they’ve real­ized Eyman is real­ly, real­ly bad at writ­ing ini­tia­tives that stand up to scruti­ny, and they don’t want to fund anoth­er uncon­sti­tu­tion­al initiative.

What­ev­er their rea­sons for shut­ting off the spig­ot, Eyman’s ini­tia­tive fac­to­ry is present­ly idle. Eyman’s not on the 2016 bal­lot and does­n’t have the funds nec­es­sary to buy his way onto the 2017 bal­lot (at least not yet, any­way). That’s left him with a lot of free time. And so Eyman has been reduced to a pun­dit with an email list, tak­ing reg­u­lar pot­shots at his favorite tar­gets with­in the state… at least when he’s not admir­ing the courage of Don­ald Trump.