Search Results for: kemper freeman

Right wing slut Tim Eyman has gotten his John back.

Michael Dunmire, who apparently took a hit during the Bush Recession forcing him into a one-year hiatus from political bestiality, has come back this year and bought himself some more gen-u-wine Horses’ ass! $100,000 worth, paid right into Eyman’s personal services fund. (Apparently, Dunmire is okay with Kemper Freeman’s sloppy seconds.)

You have to give Eyman some credit for turning his life around and breaking into the big-leagues of political prostitution. It seems like just yesterday he was literally stealing money from his Johns….

Apparently, the dozen or so declared candidates in the Republican contest to get one’s ass kicked by Sen. Patty Murray this November are just as much in the dark about Dino Rossi’s intentions as everybody else. Though a quick read between the lines sure does suggest that a Rossi v. Murray matchup is not likely to happen…

Among the people Republican Don Benton consulted before announcing his candidacy for the U.S. Senate in early February was Dino Rossi.

Rossi, a friend of Benton’s and arguably Washington’s most prominent Republican, gave no hint that he might have designs on running himself.

Chris Widener, a Preston motivational speaker and author, said he would drop his bid for the Senate if Rossi were to run. […] Widener and his wife, Lisa, have been friends with Rossi since they joined the same baby-sitting co-op as new parents in 1992. The two men have remained close, and Widener said he speaks to Rossi regularly.

Yet, Widener said, he’s just as much in suspense as anyone about Rossi’s intentions.

These are folks who know Rossi, who are friendly with him, and who are already in the race. So you’d think if Rossi really intended to run, he’d have the courtesy to give them a heads up.

And then there’s Clint Didier, who hopes to ride a mediocre pro-football career and teabagger anger through the August primary. His campaign offers a different kinda hint as to what the Republican rainmakers expect from Rossi:

“I am a true conservative Republican,” said Didier, who has recruited Bellevue developer Kemper Freeman Jr. as his finance chair.

Freeman and his wife gave $8,600 to Rossi for his two gubernatorial campaigns, and now he’s the finance chair for a candidate destined to be an also-also-ran? Doesn’t really sound like Freeman expects Rossi to run, and as a nutty as he might be, he’s pretty much a consummate GOP insider.

So, yeah, once again, I just don’t see it.

Newly elected Bellevue Mayor Don Davidson on the future of light rail in his fair city:

“They haven’t figured out how to get across Lake Washington. It’s going to be quite a bit of time before we see light rail being laid here.”

Um… when are anti-rail, Kemper Freeman toadies like Davidson going to pull their collective head out of the sand (or whatever dark hole in which they keep it)?  Sound Transit has figured out how to get light rail across Lake Washington. It’s this fancy new technology they call a bridge. In fact, they plan to use the same center span of the I-90 floating bridge that was specifically designed to accommodate light rail in accordance with a memorandum signed by the city of Bellevue way back in 1976.

I understand that Davidson would prefer that East Link pass by the outskirts of Bellevue, or pass unseen through a half billion dollar tunnel (paid for by anyone but Bellevue taxpayers), or ideally, not be built at all. But statements like this one just makes him sound like an idiot.

Susan Hutchison says she supports light rail… but not the one we’re building out to the Eastside, and certainly not the light rail approved by 62 percent of King County voters last November.

In supporting Kemper Freeman’s lawsuit to block Sound Transit’s access to I-90, and in arguing against crossing I-90 but for choosing a 520 route instead, Hutchison is clearly stating her intent to obstruct ST’s efforts to build the line approved by voters. And with the county Executive appointing 10 of the 17 seats on ST’s board, don’t think she can’t do it.

Now I know there are many folks who would prefer a 520 alignment (for example, Darryl commutes from Redmond to the UW, so it would work out great for him), but if wishes were horses beggars would ride and all that… and they certainly wouldn’t be riding the train. I myself would have preferred a South Seattle alignment that went down Rainier AVE, and included a stop at S. Graham ST, but, well, you know, screw me.

The point is, as the transit wonks at Seattle Transit Blog explain in their usual wonky detail, the cross-lake issue has already been studied, debated and deliberated ad infinitum, and no amount of wanting or wishing would make the 520 alignment any more feasible. It would be more expensive, would take longer to build, and would generate less ridership and revenue than the I-90 route. And, the University Link tunnel simply wouldn’t have the capacity to handle all the extra north-south traffic.

But most importantly, moving light rail to a new 520 bridge span would put off construction by years, dramatically raising costs, and potentially killing the project altogether. A project, by the way, that voters overwhelmingly approved, knowing it would cross I-90.

After Sound Transit’s initial birth pains, its early mismanagement and poor projections, the Central Link line nearly died on the drawing board too. And it would have, if not for the willingness of elected officials like Ron Sims, Greg Nickels, Larry Phillips and yes, Dow Constantine to stick their necks out and spend political capital in defense of what many others at the time had already written off as a doomed vision.

Leadership matters, and in speaking out against the I-90 alignment while endorsing the Washington Policy Center’s anti-transit prescriptions and embracing the patronage of racist, anti-light-rail xenophobe Kemper Freeman, Hutchison has clearly signaled her intent to lead the effort in undermining ST’s voter-approved Eastside expansion.

So if you supported last year’s transit measure, and support building rail to the Eastside, vote for Constantine. Otherwise, a vote for Hutchison is clearly a vote to kill East Link, whether she’s willing to come out and say it or not.

The Transit Riders Union invited all candidates running for Seattle City Council, Mayor and King Executive offices to respond to a questionnaire regarding the concerns of transit riders. All but Susan Hutchison and Joe Mallahan responded.

While Mallahan has generally been pretty good about filling out these sort of questionnaires, Hutchison has typically failed to respond when her honest answers might hurt her with voters. Hence her refusal to comply with similar requests from NARAL, the Women’s Political Caucus, even the Downtown Seattle Association (she has repeatedly accused county government of being too Seattle-centric).

So while Hutchison vaguely denies that she opposes rail, her gushing praise for the Washington Policy Center’s anti-rail prescriptions (they call it “socialist”) and her refusal to answer basic questions from the Transit Riders Union indicates otherwise. Not to mention her tens of thousands of dollars of financial support from Kemper Freeman, who is suing to stop light rail from crossing I-90.

But then, that’s the sort of lack of transparency we’ve come to expect from Hutchison.

As reported earlier today on Publicola, an “independent” expenditure campaign on behalf of Susan Hutchison is about to hit the airwaves. As Erica reports, the group has booked $135,000 on cable and TV, but sources tell me that may only be the initial ad buy.

And who is behind the man behind the curtain?

That’s unclear, but one rumor has it that it’s Bellevue developer Kemper Freeman.

And that’s what I’m hearing too.

So, even though Hutchison says she supports light rail, she enthusiastically endorses the Washington Policy Center’s anti-light rail screed, while benefiting from a large IE paid for by a man suing to prevent light rail from crossing I-90.

Huh.

As I explained the other day, one of the impacts of I-1033 would be to reduce regular property tax levies in many taxing districts to, well,  zero, and as Danny Westneat astutely points out in today’s Seattle Times, this would only make our already regressive tax structure even more regressive, amounting to little more than a giant tax break for the rich.

• Eventually give the richest man in the world, Bill Gates, up to a $571,000 break on the $1 million in annual property taxes he pays on his Medina mansion.

• Slash the taxes on billionaire Paul Allen’s waterfront home, on Mercer Island, by up to $150,000.

• Over time eliminate $1.7 million of the annual property taxes that Bellevue mogul Kemper Freeman pays on just one of his malls, Bellevue Square.

Not that this should surprise anyone, as the net effect of all of Tim Eyman’s tax-cutting initiatives has always been to favor the wealthy at the expense of the poor and middle class. Take Timmy’s hallmark I-695, which essentially eliminated car tabs, which, imperfect as they were, at the time constituted our only truly progressive tax on the books. Households with expensive, fancy cars (like Eyman’s) saved thousands of dollars, while those driving junkers actually saw their car tabs go up. Meanwhile, ferry riders saw fares rise and service decline, while rural cities and counties saw the sales tax equalization payments they once relied upon virtually disappear, resulting in loss of essential services, and in some cases, insolvency and unincorporation.

Likewise, Eyman’s I-747 has had an equally devastating impact, particularly on rural and poorer communities, and especially those without the rash of new construction that somewhat buoyed tax rolls here in King County until the recent housing market collapse. Limit your local fire district’s revenue growth to one-percent a year, and you could end up saving tens of dollars annually on your property tax bill, but see your Public Protection District rating drop a couple notches in the process, and your homeowner’s insurance might double or even triple. That’s the sort of hidden tax on working families that Eyman’s rhetoric hides.

According to Eyman’s favorite source, the Tax Foundation, Washington state and local taxes have steadily fallen over the past fifteen years, from 10.4% of personal income in 1994 to 8.9% in 2008, and yet given what support there is for I-1033, many Washingtonians obviously don’t feel the cuts. Why? Because for the most part, they haven’t received them. Not because legislators and other elected officials have ignored the mandate’s of Eyman’s initiatives (to the contrary, they’ve slavishly obeyed the measures, even when they were thrown out by the courts), but because under Eyman’s pro-wealthy tax policies, Washington’s tax structure has grown even more regressive.

Is this an accident or an oversight or an unintended consequence? Hardly. Eyman could have targeted our highly regressive sales tax, or even unit-based “sin taxes” like alcohol and tobacco, the most regressive sort of tax of all. But instead he’s focused entirely on those tax cuts that would benefit the wealthy the most, all the while spewing his familiar faux-populist rhetoric about defending the average taxpayer.

It is ironic that if I-1033 is to pass, it can only do so with the overwhelming support of those it will harm the most. But then, that’s been the way of all of Eyman’s initiatives.

Word on the street, and from multiple sources, is that former Western Wireless CEO John Stanton has been telling folks he’ll raise a million dollar “independent” expenditure on behalf of closeted-Republican Susan Hutchison in this November’s race for King County Executive.

In addition to Stanton, you can expect the usual Republican suspects to pony up (Kemper Freeman, Skip Rowley, the various McCaws, et al). And don’t be surprised to see a big chunk of change from the normally apolitical Microsoft billionaire Charles Simonyi, who has long had a strangely close relationship with the former KIRO-7 anchor.

I’m one of those who strongly believes that demographics and party alignment strongly favors Dow Constantine in the race, but I’m also one who believes in the power of money to sway votes, especially in the face of our weakened political media. So as bizarrely unqualified and out of step with mainstream King County values as Hutchison really is, we can’t afford to be complacent, especially with R-71 potentially bringing conservative voters out to the polls in force.

I’ve already gone out on a limb by predicting that none of the challengers in the Seattle mayor’s race have the political chops to unseat unpopular yet effective incumbent Greg Nickels.  It’s not an endorsement of Nickels, I just calls ’em as I sees ’em.

So why haven’t I made a similar effort to handicap the King County Executive race? Well, because like nearly every other political observer I’ve talked to, I haven’t the foggiest idea who’s gonna eventually come out on top.

What I do know is the that the wet dream scenario for each of the four Democrats would be to face off against Susan Hutchison in November, but while she’s the only Republican, the only woman and the only candidate with name ID north of 30% in the race, I’m still not so sure this scenario is such a sure thing. Name ID and gender won’t do it alone, so if Hutchison expects to make it through the primary she can’t keep ducking interviews and candidate forums. And while I suppose the $58,200 she’s raised thus far is respectable, nearly $45,000 of it has come in the form of double-max donations from the usual suspects (Kemper Freeman, Bruce McCaw, John Stanton, et al), accounting for a stunning average of over $1000 per contributor. Thanks to contribution limits, at some point Hutchison is going to have to expand her base beyond the very, very wealthy if she expects to stay competitive, even in the money race.

Before Hutchison stepped in, the primary was shaping up to be a regional playoff, with Eastside legislators Fred Jarrett and Ross Hunter battling to faceoff in November against the winner of the Seattle bracket contest between Dow Constantine and Larry Phillips. But Hutchison is at the very least a monkey wrench that makes all efforts at prognostication nearly impossible. A fairly even split on one or both of the Democratic brackets works strongly in Hutchison’s favor, but even mildly lopsided outcomes in the regional contests could easily result in an early exit for the former newscaster. We’ll see.

As for the Constantine vs. Phillips, Hunter vs. Jarrett subplots, well, it’s too early to pick discernible favorites.  For a while there I thought Constantine was picking up momentum, but that appears to have stalled at least for the moment. And neither Jarrett nor Hunter have had time to do much campaigning or fundraising since the end of the legislative session.

So while I don’t know how interesting the debate will be, for the moment at least, it looks like an interesting horserace.

Jim Horn, the ornery chair of the Eastside Transportation Association and former state senator, just hates Prop 1’s expansion of light rail:

“It costs too much. It does too little. It is too late. And there is a better solution,” Horn said. […] “We can have people carpooling for virtually one-tenth of the cost and we can carry 50 percent more riders than the light rail does,” he said.

Yeah… carpooling.  (Or, as long as we’re proposing creative solutions, perhaps we could just follow the lead set by the grandfather of fellow transit-hater Kemper Freeman Jr., and just lock up the Eastside’s large Asian population in internment camps.  That’ll clear a lot of cars off the roads.)

And how does Horn propose we achieve this epic increase in carpooling?

The key to increasing carpool numbers across the region is in aggressive advertising, Horn said.

Aggressive advertising.  Now that’s a transportation solution I’m guessing Horn expects our struggling local media to get behind.

The only thing green about the anti-light rail “No on Prop 1” campaign are the greenbacks behind it, mostly coming from the deep pockets of the usual pro-roads/anti-transit suspects:  Kemper Freeman Jr., Mark Baerwaldt and the rest of the choo-choos equal communism crowd.  But according to The Stranger’s Erica C. Barnett, that hasn’t stopped the No campaign from attempting a little astroturffing.

Lacking the Sierra Club’s green gravitas, the anti-Prop. 1 campaign has seized on a little-known, 32-year-old political consultant named Ezra Eickmeyer—a self-proclaimed environmentalist whose list of industrial and business lobbying clients outweighs his thin environmental résumé.

Eickmeyer’s clients include a mining company that’s seeking to ship sand and gravel on barges from the Hood Canal, two septic-system manufacturers, and a Seattle real-estate developer. Although Eickmeyer puts an environmental spin on his choice of clients—for example, he argues that barges produce fewer greenhouse-gas emissions than trucks—numerous lobbyists and environmentalists say they either haven’t heard of Eickmeyer or don’t regard him as an ally. … [E]ven folks like the Master Builders’ Scott Hildebrand are skeptical—he notes, “I don’t know exactly who Ezra is associated with“…

Huh.  I don’t know exactly who Ezra is associated with either, but looking at his Tribe.Net profile (via Google’s cache), perhaps his environmental credentials are a product of his “magickal work”?

I live many paradoxes. I am a feral pagan with 9 acres creating an intentional community. I also am a professional contract lobbyist and political operative. I work for a mixture of corporate, small business, political, and environmental interests. I am a global warming activist and dedicated father and husband. I grew up in a very small town and now live outside an even smaller one where we are beginning to farm. I also travel frequently in a fancy car wearing suits and playing politics. I come from the Libertarian arm of the Democratic Party, meaning that I am a fairly anti-authoritarian liberal (except when it comes to the regulation of business). I have a very deep relationship with the creator/spirit and do a lot of praying and magickal work.

My wife and I are dedicated polyamorous and thinking it would be pretty cool if we met another couple interested in poly family-raising . . .

Yup, you can’t get much more paradoxical than a self-proclaimed “global warming activist” in his “fancy car,” whoring himself out to Kemper Freeman Jr., in an effort to kill our region’s last best chance at expanded clean, electric light rail.

Not that Eickmeyer’s personal life has anything to do with the anti-rail campaign.  But then, neither does environmentalism.

With a Sound Transit ballot measure looking more and more likely, Sound Transit Board Chair Greg Nickels fires a preemptive shot at the Master Of Asphalt, Kemper Freeman Jr.:

We know who is behind the curtain of the Eastside Transportation Association – the same people whose only answer to the problems of climate pollution and congestion are more freeways, more traffic, and more frustration. Under Sound Transit’s new proposal, light rail would be extended to Bellevue, as well as Lynnwood and Federal Way. Those who are lining up against this common-sense measure are stuck in their own personal Oz, a place where our most pressing challenges can be wished away by laying more asphalt. This November, we look forward to presenting our bus, commuter and light rail solution – a way forward that will cost the average driver the equivalent of one tank of gas a year. Because we know building a better future takes more than clicking your heels and hoping our gridlock will go away.

“Roads and Transit” was a much easier target, and Kemper’s radio ads raised the “tax” argument pretty effectively. But it’s 2008, and gas is even more expensive than it was last year. This time, voter turnout will be huge. This time, the “pro” campaign will be smaller, leaner, and tougher. This press release is just a first shot.

Photo Elaine Corets.

The folks at the Sierra Club are quite proud of their role in killing Prop 1, the Roads & Transit measure, grandiosely claiming:

“This is the first major public works proposal I know of to be defeated because it would worsen global warming.”

But according to a new poll conducted by EMC Research and Moore Information on behalf of Sound Transit… not so much. When asked to rate, from one to five, reasons for voting against the package, “global warming” came in dead last out of the eleven reasons offered, with only 20% of respondents rating it a four or five, compared to 75% for “blank check/no cost control” or 74% for “costs too much.” And when asked for the best reason to oppose Prop 1, only 1% of respondents chose the environment.

Yup, those cute kids in the polar bear costumes really got the environmental message out.

That’s not to say that the Sierra Club didn’t play an important role in defeating Prop 1 — it did — but it did so mostly by lending its name and credibility to the dishonest campaign of Kemper Freeman Jr. and the rest of the anti-rail/pro-roads camp. Cost and taxes were by far the top reasons given for rejecting Prop 1, a frame that makes passage of any future rail-only ballot measure all the more difficult. Rail isn’t cheap, and due to “sub-area equity” issues, Sound Transit can’t easily break it down into smaller projects. And when it comes to funding, Sound Transit is particularly hamstrung: only 23% of respondents support raising the sales tax to fund transportation improvements (compared to 51% for the MVET,) yet that is the only additional taxing authority available to Sound Transit under current law. Sure, there’s some talk of transit money eventually coming from congestion pricing (40% support,) but it would take years to implement such a plan, if ever.

The short term reality is that while light rail expansion remains popular in theory, its cost and available funding mechanisms do not, and it appears to be far from the region’s number one transportation priority, with 91% of respondents emphasizing the need to fix unsafe roads and bridges, compared to only 55% prioritizing building light rail east to Bellevue and Redmond. (Though ironically, only 57% of respondents prioritize replacing the 520 bridge. Go figure.) Light rail continues to substantially out-poll “bus rapid transit” in all five sub-areas, but without an adequate funding mechanism and a unified pro-rail campaign from the environmental community, it’s likely that BRT — whatever that ultimately means — might be all us common folk get.

How diesel buses choking in traffic on our existing roadways is supposed to save polar bears, I’ll never know. But if the ideological purists at the Sierra Club really have a viable plan for building a 21st century transit system in the Puget Sound region — and getting it approved by voters sometime before the 22nd century — now is the time for them to step forward and take the lead. They are the ones responsible for blowing apart the environmental coalition on transit, and they are the ones with the onus of putting it back together. If Sound Transit attempts to come back in 2008 with a rail-only proposition — and unless the legislature stops them, I’m not sure what choice they have other than gradually dismantling themselves — then the Sierra Club damn well better be prepared to spend the blood, sweat and money necessary to fix the damage caused by its collaboration with the Freemanites.

FYI…
The poll was conducted by phone, November 11-15, and is based on 1,013 respondents, +/- 3.1%. You can read the key findings here.

My EffU cohort Carl already noted Bill Virgin’s crazy column on transportation in the PI on Monday, but I have to pull out the most incredibly ridiculous part and share it over here. This is one of his suggestions for how to fix the transportation mess in this city:

Encourage businesses to move out of Seattle and closer to their employees. Actually, the city is doing a fine job of this already, what with tax and land-use policies. Many of those businesses’ employees are in the ‘burbs already, either because of housing prices or schools. As has been pointed out before, congestion is not just a matter of how many cars are on the road but how long they’re on the road and what direction they’re going. Moving places of employment closer to where the employees live would cut the congestion created by putting so many vehicles on a few corridors heading to the same destination at the same time.

The office I work at is located near downtown Seattle. We have less than 100 employees here, but they live in various places like Renton, Snohomish, Vashon Island, Silverdale, and Shoreline. A good amount of them also live within the city of Seattle too. Exactly where should our company move to in order to be “closer to their employees?”

Many businesses are already located in the suburbs. As I’ve gone job hunting in the past, I tend to find that about 75% of the positions I run across are located on the Eastside. This is already well-reflected in the traffic around here (on 520, the reverse commute from Seattle to the Eastside tends to be much worse than the Eastside to Seattle commute). In fact, as a Seattle resident, I’ve been reluctant to take a job on the Eastside because of the difficulty in commuting across the bridge. If anything, there’s a better argument to be made for having businesses located on the Eastside relocating west of the lake. But it’s still a terrible argument for fixing our transportation woes.

The answer, as it has been since I moved to this city 10 years ago, is to invest in rail transit that connects the main corporate/industrial centers across the greater Seattle region (Seattle, Tacoma, Everett, Bellevue, Redmond). The idea that we can fix our transportation mess by simply having companies relocate closer to their employees is completely absurd, especially in a time and place where people change jobs as often as they do. The infrastructure we have now already limits where anyone in this region can work, unless they don’t mind sitting in a car for 3-4 hours a day. It doesn’t have to be that way, and I’ve run out of patience with the clowns who think that there’s a solution that doesn’t involve some form of rail.

That said, I do sympathize with Virgin’s final suggestion:

Ban from regional transportation planning anyone who has uttered, or even thought, the phrase, “We’ve got to get people out of their cars.”

Here is a truth that, as blasphemous as it may sound within the corridors of officialdom in Seattle, needs to be understood: Many people like having a car.

They like driving, or at least find the convenience and flexibility to be worth the cost and occasional frustrations. So long as transportation planners consider those who favor the automobile as the enemy, to be herded, punished and reviled, the public will return the favor — and will likely shred Son of Prop. 1, the Return of Prop. 1, Prop. 1 Strikes Again, Prop. 1: Next Generation, Prop. 1: The Final Reckoning and all the other ballot-box sequels headed their way.

While I find little in common with the kinds of people who cling to their cars (my wife and I share a single car, but I hardly ever use it), the idea that we can get motorists to give up that lifestyle simply by trying to deny them the roads they want is just as crazy as the notion that we can relieve congestion in this city without rail. I can’t even begin to understand what the hell the Sierra Club was thinking when they actually convinced themselves that siding with Kemper Freeman to kill this plan would somehow lead to less roads (and therefore less global warming, as their “logic” went). The problem is that the roads are going to be built no matter what, because without rail and with suburban-based companies like Microsoft continuing to bring in more and more workers from out-of-state who increasingly have no other choice but to live in the suburbs, the demand for more roads will continue to increase. Granted, the demand for rail will likely continue too, and hopefully we’ll be able to expand on what we’ve already started, but this idea that we can shut down all road construction in this region out of concern for the environment has no basis in reality.

What scares me the most about how the Sierra Club, and certain other anti-roads folks, approached this issue is that it was eerily reminiscent of the neocon mindset. The neocons essentially took their fear of Islamic radicalism and internally rationalized that their fear of this problem allowed for them to react to it with any level of extremism and it was justified. The realities of human behavior, logic, common sense, etc…all of that flew out the window. What mattered was that there was a crisis and anyone who wasn’t part of the solution was part of the problem. Much like the neocons, the anti-roads contingency felt that they could establish their own notion of reality, one where an individual who relies on roads is somehow complicit in destroying the planet, and that people would in turn be completely compelled to alter their way of life. They felt that they could transfer their paranoia to the masses and that they’d have support simply by sheer power of will.

Global warming is a very real problem (as is Islamic radicalism, to continue the parallel), but the fight to stop it does not hinge upon whether or not we widen I-405. The calculus involved here was always way more complicated than that. We need to focus on alternative energy sources and favoring automobile technologies that pollute less. A lot of very cool new technologies exist that represent a path away from the status quo. If the Sierra Club wants to support a gas tax that pushes people towards more fuel efficient cars, I’m there. If the Sierra Club wants to support an initiative to put alternate-energy refueling stations along major highways, I’m there. But if the Sierra Club thinks that someone who lives in Auburn and commutes to Sammamish is going to sell the SUV and buy a bicycle because of global warming, they don’t deserve to be taken seriously.