I re-read Seattle Times columnist Jim Vesely’s recent column, and I still don’t know what the fuck he’s talking about.
Meanwhile, there are ideas about deep tunnels under downtown Seattle; questions of a five-year boring-and-tunneling task right next to UW’s Husky Stadium and the havoc it would bring; the now-uncertain funding of the most distant Sound Transit rail lines; and the near-collapse of the Washington ferry system.
Bluebloods like Vesely and others are apoplectic about losing their prime tailgating spot to Sound Transit construction. The only people with “question” about tunneling near Montlake is the University of Washington, who fear losing the parking revenues from Montlake-area parking during construction. (The UW would never cop to it, but parking is a big, big deal to them. How many governments have their own cash cows?)
B12 is the answer. Instead of a plan B, the region could accomplish a road here, a replacement bridge there, rethink Sound Transit’s most ambitious plans, consolidate the ferries instead of creating new ferry districts run by the counties, join with pension plans for capital to build toll lanes — in short, a list of priorities instead of a list that prioritizes everything.
Using pension plans to finance road construction is the hallmark of the Discovery Institute’s Cascadia Center. Would you entrust your retirement with the folks who brought you Intelligent Design? Who are tearing down science and replacing it with their own theocratic world view?
I’m no legacy media whale, but even I can see that idea as the “tightly-coiled dogshit on the lawn” that it is.
I too read his piece and could make nothing out of it. If there is a point or two in there, they fail to emerge in any coherent sense.
Isn’t there an Editor on the Times’ Editorial Page, someone who can hand this shit back and say “try again”?
They could care less about pensioners, ’cause Jeezus is coming soon……………………
“questions of a five-year boring-and-tunneling task right next to UW’s Husky Stadium and the havoc it would bring”
I know what this is — it’s a reference to a cockamamie proposal to bury the western approach to the 520 bridge in a tunnel under Lake Washington to make a few high-income homeowners in Montlake and Broadmoor happy — and raise their property values … at taxpayers’ expense.
“rethink Sound Transit’s most ambitious plans”
The first thing to go should be the multibillion-dollar tunnel from the U. District to Northgate, in favor of a surface option — or not building it at all if adequate parking can’t be provided at Northgate. (If you have only 50 parking spaces, you’ll have only 52 riders.)
It’s important to understand that capitalism is an unsustainable Ponzi scheme. It used to take 40 workers to support a CEO, but now it takes 550 workers to support a CEO! Using this algorithm, within a few years the number of workers required to support 1 CEO will exceed the entire human race! Clearly, capitalism can’t continue in its present form.
The other side of the coin, though, is that when it takes 100 million workers to support 1 CEO, a 2% state income tax on 1 CEO would produce enough revenue to build a gold-plated 30-lane 520 bridge with tunnel, light rail all the way from Vancouver to Bellingham, and from Cle Elum to West Seattle, and have enough left over to modestly increase Roger Rabbit’s cheese ration.
[Deleted — Darryl, see HA Comment Policy]
Perfect Voter @1 – Jim Vesely IS the editorial page editor. If your suggestion played out .. he’d be handing his column back to himself.
The pension plan phrase refers to a method of infrastructure financing called “public-private partnerships”. This type of funding has gotten a superficially bad reputation due to some unfortunate anecdotes from other regions that probably have more to do with bad negotiating, poor contract terms than the financing method itself. Right now, it’s not favored here … but as choices narrow, it may merit another look.
Linking Cascadia to Discovery and creationism is fair, of course, but transportation financing methods and local non-profits’ favorite causes are really two different things … and I suspect that many of you already know that.
Vesely does not write well, rarely makes any sense, and comes off as a troglodyte. Yet, he edits the Times editorial page. I think the man needs to retire. I can’t even read his crap.
Here’s a crazy idea when you want to build rail.
1. give private corporationst the right to operate on the route.
2. it’s really expensive, so you have to give them resources. don’t want to give public money we got none. let them put their own money in it. so, in return they get profits and other goodies like land. they have to repay those investors somehow.
3. the private rr can’t buy a right of way everyone will hold it up and jack up the price. so, give the private rr the right to condemn land and pay fair market value.
Obviously this kind of public private partnership would never, ever work, and is impossible. A scientific examination of facts and evidence in the USA will show this: there are no rr’s that have ever been built this way.
In fact, none of the railroads in the USA that you may have imagined actually exist. They are just an illusion. They’re a dream — like intelligent design.
Conclusion: any other kind of public private partnership is doomed and is a batshit idea.
To reject it, don’t even think about it. Don’t look for facts or examples or evidence.
Take it on faith — OK?
Deb Eddy @ 7, thanks for weighing in. Fortunately, my retirement is not in a fund that might be recruited into such a venture. Methinks if such an investment is adequately sound, private money markets will fund it without having to put local pension funds at risk.
Re Vesely’s “B12” idea, another hodge-podge plan, only smaller, isn’t going to cut it. Let’s listen to what the voters are saying (what a concept!) and the result seems to be, at their most basic: Get busy building more light rail, fix the 520 bridge before it sinks, and fix the Alaskan Way Viaduct before the next earthquake.
An R&T2 plan with those items only (and not all the Christmas-tree projects added in by narrow-visioned pols) would get passed the region’s voters easily, especially in a high-turnout election like the one coming up in November
It’s important to understand that capitalism is an unsustainable Ponzi scheme. It used to take 40 workers to support a CEO, but now it takes 550 workers to support a CEO!
No shit!! Well if we cut taxes for everyone then it wouldn’t take 500 people to support a CEO. You libs screw up everything you touch.
Will, I think the answer to your question is: “crack.” Or maybe crank.
(Um… can you smoke crank? Maybe somebody from the Discovery Institute will chime and share their expertise.)
Will
WADR, your comment about the UW is FOS.
I can guarantee you that the UW does not make a fucking cent off of parking. For one thing, it would be illegal for them to do so. For another, there is a little matter called present value. Can you imagine the real value of the Husky parking lot if it were used for almost anything else???
Or maybe you think the Huskies make money ..ya know like the Sonics? Nope. Even with slave wages for the employee-students, it has been years since the Huskies even broke even. YOUR tax money at work providing little things like admin costs, free rent, free classes, yadda yadda. The UW is fun even if you do not get to study with Professor S.
As for the wealthy people across the bridge in Montlake, your standards of “wealthy” need some sharpening, maybe a lot of it. The community affected by this is obviously not poor, but in a spectrum from Hunts Point and Elite Downtown Condoes (I understand a condo in the 4 seasons may cost in the 10s of millions), to the Heights, Magnolia, Laurelhurst, Mercer Island Shorefront … yadda yadda .., y’all get to the Montlake neighborhood not far before you get to Greenlake, West Seattle, etc.
More to the point, what is wrong with the good folk of Montlake living in a nice neighborhood? YOU get hot n bothered when someone challenges the privileges of the Belltown Yuppyvillagers, is Montlake different? If these people get pricked do they not bleed? (sorry).
NIMBY IS a real issue in Seattle .. NIMBY in Montlake, NIMBY in Belltown, NIMBY in Broadmoor, etc. Some folks, e.g. the bizarro wealthy developers clearly have more political clout with Mayor Nickles than others. Hell, I live in a “wealthy” neighborhood … my house would likely buy two in Montlake and it may be at the bottom of our street. We can not even get the city to put a traffic slowing device in effin Aloha or the Holy Names School for Wealthy Catholic Schoolgirls to open their doors once or twice a year so us wealthy neighbors might enjoy the facility! (they do, of course politely use up all the in street parking for assorted money making occasions, not having a Husky parking lot! )
Were you here when the Downtown Business Ass Association forced the city to turn what was supposed to be a Union Square into any alleyway connecting Nordstrom’s and Macy’s?
What civic spirit they showed!
Anyhow, we are all on the same side when it comes to Seattle needing better leadership, someone to deal with Nimbyhooded Neighborhoods, a real transit system instead of the Escort Service Choo Choo, etc.
Here is my idea once again. Build a Boulevard using Montlake, Rainier, 23rd, and Lake City Way. Is there some reason not to? Hell we could even put light rail on it with spurs to Mercer Island and the 4 Seasons! Put some private cars of the train and I’ll betcha SLUM (Seattle Lakecity University Mercer) might be MORE popular than the SLUT!
As always, may the O be with you.
Goldy,
I anyone listening to the pablum show at KIRO tonite? Sounds like Lawrence Welk Hour on Qualudes!
I considered stripping nude and running back and forth in front of the studio camera then I remembered this is supposed to be radio.
I ‘spect you are not supposed to comment on the station, but this show could make me turn to one of the Jesus Saves Me stations!
Isn’t babbling on about nothing and pretending its really something the Seattle Way?
4 Uhhh, Roger? There already is a big park-and-ride at Northgate. Basically what happens is that if the light-rail line goes out there, the #41 bus goes away.
The only other person who tells Vesely what to write is Uncle Frank himself.
@15 Michael
Isn’t babbling on about something and pretending its really nothing the Seattle Way?
or?
PV @10: Do you know where your pension funds are right now? Point being, you are RIGHT that the private markets will register a project’s attractiveness … but many pension funds participate in larger market pools (sometimes to their benefit and sometimes to their detriment!)
Vesely’s column may have been a little obtuse, but in truth his recommendations are the same as yours, or mine or G. Darwin’s up the @9 … we’re all looking at the mobility problem around here with our own set of assumptions, preferences and expectations. We all pick and choose our arguments carefully to support our thesis, whatever it might be. That’s the nature of debate.
I don’t share your confidence in a November R&T2, because as much as we may all have disliked the @*$! “Christmas tree” that was Prop 1, that sort of localization of impact is usually necessary when public approval is required. I think we’ll get the SR520 issue solved, but AWV absolutely requires Seattle interests to rally around a solution … and that’s a big question mark, I think.
@18
“The Seattle Way usually is defined as circular consultation reaching indecision. But it also consists of an uninvolved electorate and public decisions taken carelessly, without regard for experience elsewhere and unmindful of consequence. Future columns will examine The Way’s many impacts on our lives. First, unresolved transportation issues”
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/.....dyk19.html
Deb Eddy @19, at this point it’s OT but yes, I do know where my retirement funds are – all in mutual funds.
Yes, I know all the conventional thinking that lead to the R&T Christmas tree, but I think the mood of the voters is that we need to be thinking unconventionally right now. Old approaches aren’t working so well these days (Iowa, New Hampshire…) And look at all the good the Christmas tree approach did – the campaign did almost nothing to detail out those ornaments for local voters — all the selling was at the macro level, leaving people dazed and confused.
And BTW, the LAST thing we need is a change of “governance.” Any new board or commission will invariably lead to years more delay, since voters will NOT approve new tax rates to be spent by a new and untested authority. They will rightly demand to see a track record for a few years before voting for added tax $$$.
Roads and Transit 2? Noooooo!
Sound Transit should be allowed to do what they were not, recently- to go to the ballot on their own, without being saddled with controversial highway spending.
Here’s hoping Olympia doesn’t blow it AGAIN.