Some people say the initiative system has run amok –
handcuffing policymakers with ballot-box budgeting, its stated purpose of
citizen oversight subverted by the high cost of qualifying for the ballot and
the deep-pocket special interests that regularly spend what it takes. But if it
weren’t for the initiative system, we wouldn’t have stories like this one from Denver’s Rocky Mountain
News:

A video that purportedly shows a living,
breathing space alien will be shown to the news media Friday in Denver.

Jeff Peckman, who is pushing a ballot
initiative to create an Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission in Denver to
prepare the city for close encounters of the alien kind, said the video is
authentic and convinced him that aliens exist.

“As impressive as it is, it’s still one tiny
portion in the context of a vast amount of peripheral evidence,” he said
Wednesday. “It’s really the final visual confirmation of what you already know
to be true having seen all the other evidence.”

As explained in his petition, Peckman’s initiative would
create an 11-member commission that would “function, in part, as a kind of UFO
Truth Commission and hence can intensify the worldwide call for full
governmental disclosure of UFO-E.T. reality -“

Besides generally enlightening us on the aliens among us (in
case you didn’t get enough enlightening from Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones in “Men
in Black”), Peckman’s Web site says we also stand to learn about secret government
projects involving alien visitors and “clean energy technologies of extraterrestrial
origin, that could replace fossil fuels.”

In these days of $4.50 a gallon gas, maybe he’s on to
something after all.

— Jim Sweeney