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Snohomish pols won’t back transit plan

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Aaron Reardon wants to join Ron Sims in the “Politicians who will never become Governor” club:

Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon and Edmonds City Councilwoman Deanna Dawson, who both serve on the transit board, said they oppose the 12-year plan, partly because it doesn’t bring light rail to Snohomish County.

“I will vote no on it,” Reardon said. “I will actively campaign against it.”

This is why “regionalism” will always fail. King County voters want transit and are willing to tax themselves to get more of it. The nature of Sound Transit’s governance structure makes it necessary to seek Reardon and Dawson’s approval for King County voters to tax themselves for transit. The problem is, the Seattle sub area doesn’t have the tax capacity to build enough light rail to reach their sub area to the north. So unless Snohomish County wants to spend their money building light rail outside their sub area, they won’t get light rail soon.

This highlights the flaws of sub area equity. Expensive projects are slowed because we don’t have flexibility to spend money where it should be spent. Imagine if a massive freeway overpass project in Yakima couldn’t be built because their taxing authority was too narrow? They wouldn’t stand for it, and they would expect, as they always have expected, that parts of the state that pay more in transportation taxes than they receive (hello city folks!) would subsidize their overpass. We do this in our Department of Highways, but it’s impossible to do when paying for transit. This makes no sense.

Starry-eyed regionalists in the legislature (hi Rep. Deb Eddy!) who want to dilute King County’s urban transit-loving majorities should watch Aaron Reardon in action. This guy really knows how to throw the brakes on.

[H/T Seattle Transit Blog]

$100K = 20 days = Thanks!

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$100,000. That’s how much we raised for Darcy Burner last week via Act Blue alone, much of it coming over a 48 hour period. Wow. Simply wow.

That’s roughly equivalent to twenty days of early July fundraising, and it has lifted a huge burden off Darcy’s shoulders as she’s taken time off from her grueling campaign schedule to tend to herself and her family after losing their house in a fire. Now, thanks to her many friends online, Darcy can devote the time she needs to getting her life back in order without giving up any ground to Dave Reichert.

So a huge thanks to the dozens of blogs nationwide who joined in this effort, and to the thousands of members of our broader netroots community for this extraordinary show of affection and support. And of course, if you haven’t already given, it’s never to late to help buy Darcy a little extra time.

Build rail now

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Is Osama bin Laden’s Bush-aided victory destroying the American way of life? Apparently, that is, if you’re vision of American prosperity is one of endless suburban sprawl:

A Portland economist predicts that buyers soon will choose where to live based on what they would spend for gasoline.

That, eventually, will devalue suburban housing while strengthening in-city home prices, says Joe Cortright, whose Portland consulting firm, Impresa, recently released a report saying as much to U.S. mayors.

“The new calculus of higher gas prices may have permanently reshaped urban housing markets,” said Cortright, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit Washington, D.C., think tank. “What this really means is that as people move, they’re going to look for places that enable them to drive shorter distances and avoid places where they have to drive a lot.

I know conventional wisdom still suggests that now is the wrong time for Sound Transit to come back with a ballot measure, just one year after the defeat of Prop 1, but the conventional wise men are missing the point: 2008 isn’t 2007. The era of cheap gas is over, and Americans—even Seattle-Americans (and yes, I know, Seattle is different from every other city in the world)—are beginning to change their behavior in response. Voters get that, even if our politicians and editorialists don’t.

Traffic congestion has far from disappeared as a volatile political issue, but public demand for affordable transportation alternatives is rising at least as fast as the price of gas. And the thing is, whether it’s cheaper and more efficient or not, when current drivers envision their future mass transit commute, they much prefer to envision themselves riding on a train, than on a bus. People like trains; that’s a fact. And if I were an elected official, I’d probably want to focus on delivering the services that the people want.

And need. And without a doubt, we need to extend light rail north, at least to Northgate, and east to Bellevue and eventually Redmond, providing reliable, comfortable and affordable transit both within and between our densest population and work centers. Congestion pricing and increased bus service alone may ease the region’s traffic problems, but it sure as hell won’t make people happy.

So put a light rail measure on the ballot and give us people the opportunity to vote yea or nay. And if it fails, come back again in 2009, when gas is pushing $6 gallon or higher. Eventually, the market will change our behavior… even at the polls.

Bin Laden wins!

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Via Think Progress:

In a 1998 interview, Osama bin Laden — the terrorist organizer of 9/11 who still roams free — listed as one of his many grievances against the U.S. that Americans “have stolen $36 trillion from Muslims” by purchasing oil from Persian Gulf countries at low prices. The real price of a barrel of oil should be $144, bin Laden demanded.

Ten years ago today, the price of a barrel of oil was just $11. Heading into this holiday weekend, the price of a barrel of oil rested at $144 — a thirteen-fold increase.

One month after 9/11, the New York Times wrote of possible “nightmare” scenarios that would deliver bin Laden’s goal. Neela Banerjee warned that among the “misguided decisions” that would put oil supplies at risk would be “that the United States attacks Iraq.”

I’m guessing Osama is sending a big bouquet of flowers to George W. Bush, without whom none of this would be possible.

Dear Senator Murray;

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For the love of Jesus and all the saints, don’t vote for the shitty FISA law on Tuesday. Yeah, you already voted the wrong way once, and I don’t hold out too much hope that you’ll do the right thing. Still, I couldn’t let myself not write you on this. I couldn’t let myself not be on the record opposing this.

The 4th amendment clearly spells out the notion that, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” There is no reason to go back on this basic, fundamental, wonderful principal: Not because we’re in a digital age; not because we’re afraid; certainly not for political expediency. So I’m appealing to you morally to do what’s right: don’t weaken the protections in the FISA law, and don’t let those law breaking telecoms get away with violating our rights.

Sincerely,
Carl Ballard
HASeattle

Looking to Oregon

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In arguing in support of I-1000, I’ve often asked people to look at the experiences in Oregon to see how it’s been an effective law. Now that the State Department of Health has released draft limits for medical marijuana patients that closely mimic Oregon’s limits, I think we should again look to Oregon to make a comparison. I’m cautiously optimistic that these limits will provide some level of protection for the patients, but there are certainly some problems that will need to be resolved at the next hearing in Tumwater on Monday, August 25. In the meantime, I understand that a lawsuit will be filed this week against the Department of Health over the fact that they ignored the testimony from medical professionals in arriving at the limit. I’ll post more on that as more information becomes available.

“Freedom and luxury” redefined

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This is actually happening:

Evidence is mounting of a wholesale change in the way Americans commute. Motorists have driven roughly 30 billion fewer miles in the past six months compared with the same period a year ago, according to federal government estimates.

Meanwhile, commuters took 10.3 billion trips on public transportation last year, the most in 50 years — when the population was about 60 percent the current size — according to the American Public Transportation Association. Ridership is up 3.3 percent in the first three months of 2008 and 30 percent since 1995.

Those trends suggest growing numbers of Americans are reaching their tipping points in how much they’ll spend for the freedom and luxury of personal automobile transportation.

Cars do give you freedom, but that freedom takes you only as far as the bumper of the car in front of you. If it takes 45 minutes to creep your way to the edge of the 520 bridge, how free are you?

To me, freedom is actually going somewhere.

And luxury… If you’re driving a luxury automobile, at least you have something more pleasant to get stuck in traffic in.

HA news this Monday

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…stay tuned. Until then, I want to say thank you to everyone who’s had my back since I left my campaign gig a while back. It’s been tough, especially since the gig I went back to (this one) isn’t a paying one.

So if you can chip in a few bucks, I’d be pleased as punch.

Wow, that was quick. Thanks!

Personally, I’m proud of the Second Boer War, but that’s neither here nor there

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Deadenders:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she’s “proud” of the U.S. decision to wage the Iraq war and insisted that the world is not more dangerous than it was when George W. Bush took office.

Um, which world is she talking about?

“We’re now beginning to see that perhaps it’s not so popular to be a suicide bomber. We’re beginning to see that perhaps people are questioning whether Osama Bin Laden ought to really be the face of Islam,” Rice, 53, said in an interview to be broadcast this weekend on Bloomberg Television’s “Conversations with Judy Woodruff.”

Osama bin Laden is the Tupac of terrorists. Even though he’s supposed to be dead, he keeps releasing new tracks.

And what’s the baseline of exactly how “popular” being a suicide bomber should be? For a job where the only qualification is “blowing yourself up,” you’d think it would be really, really unpopular. You know, less popular than working at the Westlake Hot Dog On A Stick.

Also, I’d be less worried about who people think is the face of Islam- bin Laden, Cat Stevens, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar- and more concerned about who they think is the face of the anti-Muslim movement.

Which, if you asked them, would be us. Yes, the same country that defended Kosovo, saving the lives of Muslims, has been successfully rebranded as “anti-Muslim.”

Is Condi proud of that?

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