Live in Washington? Can I influence your vote?

Just a quick one. We have made our way down to San Cristobal de Las Casas in Southern Mexico and intend to spend the next few days here enjoying Halloween, Dia do Todos Santos and Dia de Los Muertos. On Thursday we plan on crossing the border into Guatemala and making our way towards Nicaragua. As before, we are healthy and happy and learning much.

Now onto the political prostelysizing (how the hell do you spell that?). So despite our best efforts our ballots never caught up with us on our trip and there are two big decisions to be made. I am sort of hoping that, since our votes won´t be counted in this election we might sway a few folks. As a result this blog is dedicated to influencing your vote if you are a Washington voter. I am assuming that if you are reading this blog you probably are already going to vote for the two things I will mention, but you never know.

First, initiative 933. This is a maddening initiative forwarded by the farm bureau in Washington State. We all like farmers, right? Well, Washington´s farm bureau isn´t made up of small farm Joe from your local area. Its made up of, shall we say, more powerful interests and lots of people that have nothing to do with farming. The initiative would require the state and local governments to pay land-owners for ANY possible demonstrable loss of value to their property from public planning or land-use regulations. Private property is obviously a very important component of our social system, but I firmly believe that we need mechanisms for protecting public health and the environment for all of us. This initiative would make those planning efforts and regulations far too expensive to enforce and eventually lead to their dismantling. It is simply not fair to allow a land-owner to do WHATEVER they wish with their property, the rest of the community be damned. Oregon passed a similar, but weaker, initiative last year and it is causing them many problems. It is also expensive, since the initiative also requires the state or local goverment to bear the burden of administrative costs for managing the changes the initiative requires. http://www.noon933.org/

Second, Maria Cantwell. Many Democrats are upset with Maria´s stance on the war with Iraq, and that is somewhat understandable. However, we have to credit Maria with standing up to some very powerful people in the Senate and elsewhere who wanted to remove regulations limiting the size of tankers in Puget Sound AND who continue to push for drilling in the artic national wildlife refuge. lets be clear - the arctic national wildlife refuge is a WILDLIFE REFUGE, authorized by congress. It plays a role and serves a function. Maria´s opponent has made it clear that he would vote to make the Puget Sound THE port of call for Alaska oil tankers, dramatically increasing the risk of an oil spill in Puget Sound. Washington has made much progress in reducing the risk of such a spill, which would be absolutely devestating, and I believe that we just can´t go that way. http://www.cantwell.com/splash/

Okay, after this back to our regularly scheduled programming. I promise.

Ian