So… where is Dino Rossi on I-912, the initiative that would repeal the recent gas-tax hike (9.5 cents over four years) and the transportation improvement package it would fund? Here’s a clue:
Dino Rossi’s 6% voting record with the Washington State Labor Council ranks among the worst and most partisan of any legislator during his 1997-2003 tenure in the State Senate. He managed only five positive votes in 77 chances, and those were on issues with which labor, business and the leadership of both parties were all in agreement. For example, his one positive vote out of 15 in 2003 was to approve the 5-cent gas-tax increase to fund transportation improvements.
That’s right… in 2003, one of the most partisan, anti-labor legislators in Olympia votes with labor on a single bill… a 5-cent gas-tax increase. Why? Because he’s a passionately pro-business politician, and business desperately wants transportation improvements.
Hmm. So where’s Rossi on I-912?
912 by 15. Lie about it. Call it what it ain’t. Get the PI to write stoopid crap. Ain’t gonna matter. Until there is fundamental reform, the bank is closed.
Rossi figures when the viaduct pancakes, that’s 100 fewer liberals. Now that’s what I call Culture Of Life!
Not a fair remark Goldy, “6% voting record with the Washington State Labor Council ranks among the worst and most partisan of any legislator”
I’m sure many of your left wing guys were like 99 to 100% calibrated w/ the Labor Council, thus equally if not more “partisan”
Righton – C’mon, it’s not “partisan” if you vote left. Voting left is “the right thing to do”.
The ways donks see it, there are two kinds of people:
1) Reasonable intelligent moderates like themselves.
2) Right wing kooks.
Anyone who disagrees with them is automatically #2 above.
No, anyone who refers to others as “donks” is a kook regardless of political affiliation. Reasonable, intelligent moderates have the credibility to do more than reinforce their opponents’ point of view while making total asses of themselves.
Uhhh, LiberalDave: Have you been asleep at the switch lately? Anytime we right thinkers challenge the HA status quo with MSM quotes or other types of “banter”, we are sworn off the HA reservation, called baby-killers, religious fanatics, right-wing nut jobs, H O U S E – N I G G E R S, etc. So for RUFUS to make it plain and call you donks is a “nice” way of saying we right side thinkers ABSOLUTELY reject much of your world view.
LiberalDave, it looks like Goldy has expanded his sanbox word list. Waiting for it’s release.
Goldy is like the average liberal, he voted for the wrong person, but is looking to Rossi’s leadership for information on where to turn since his canidate has an absolute lack of leadership skills.
Voting left is “the right thing to do”.
Building roads is now “voting left?” Funny how being anti-roads used to be a radical environmentalist position — and now apparently the conservatives have become radical environmentalists.
Bax @ 8
“Building roads is now “voting left?” ”
If it were a matter of actually building the roads, no-one would argue this.
Unfortunately, we’ve all see this before. A democratic, “emergency” platform that needs to be adressed or else we are all going to die. Once the legilslation is passed and tax dollars are collected, We’ll have to have a new government agency to deal wirth this, 8 managers per employee to fill out various government forms, and 6 labor workers to be on the road watching one guy smoke a cigarette on the side of the road.
Of course we’ll need to first have focus group to discover how people will feel that the Viaduct has been torn dow & pay for therapy for those drivers who feel displaced. Then, drag out the bidding process for several years and vote on the replacement model.
Meanwhile, because of cost of living ibncreases over the 5 year peiod where we will have done nothing, we’ll need to increase this tax to catch up with the current value of the dollar.
See monorail for an example
his canidate has an absolute lack of leadership skills.
Funny how Gary Locke got the nickel increase passed without too much trouble after disastrously putting an increase to a “vote of the people”.
Now Gregoire and the legislature are being punished for doing the job we put them there to do.
This is not about the money – the dollar or so increase in the price per gallon over the last year puts the lie to that.
It’s about right-wing sore losers and their bottomless rage.
PRR; you forgot to add Peter Steinbruck (city council) plan to add a Salmon beach to the new viaduct/tunnel, whatever it is..
By the way, have all you “right-thinkers” made your check out to the WSGOP? Last time I looked the party was still in debt to Davis, Wright, Tremaine for the excellent case they made before Bridges.
Reward excellence.. Reward Chris Rants’ excellent leadership. Your party is in debt. Give…
Goldy; we’re on day 5 of “Where’s reform in the elections department”????? Still waiting… Or was the victory the only reform you all needed?
The P-I Viaduct “story” this AM is typical of the LEFTIST PINHEAD strategy. When all else fails, you simply tell folks we are all gonna die, you write a story that is 90% propaganda of the MORE TAXES crowd and you stuff a few Brett Bader comments in the very end of the “story”(so you can pretend to be fair & balanced) and then give the MORE TAXES crowd the final word. The P-I is obviously trying to guilt folks who vote YES on I-912 into thinking that if the AWV and I-520 Bridge collapse, it is THEIR fault.
The P-I ignores, except for a glancing blow, that many pro I-912 believers are upset about accountability and priorities of existing dollars. A very, very legitimate question is that if the AWV is so, so dangerous, why has the Seattle and KingCo not made this the absolute TOP PRIORITY and done something with existing dollars??? Instead they build stadiums and pour hundreds of millions of dollars into alternative transportation projects. Nothing would have precluded Seattle and KingCo so-called LEADERS from focusing entirely on the AWV the past 10 years….putting ALL available resources into this pending disaster. That is where the blame belongs. To come along now, when the middle and lower-classes are struggling the most and force a regressive GasTax on them is LUDICROUS!!!!
Also, dollars pissed away on planning the TUNNEL option is arrogant and a total misguided waste of money. How much was pissed away here???
Rebuilding Bridges is costly…no doubt. Is it the top priority??? If so, create a program with combined local, state and tolls as the funding source (primarily tolls) and GET R DONE! Don’t try to do it on the backs of all state citizens with a REGRESSIVE GasTax.
I thought you LEFTIST PINHEADS (aka LENIN’S USEFUL IDIOTS) were PROGRESSIVES??? Not by your actions assholes.
Ron Sims: Is another $60mm on an elections building really more important than fixing broken highways?
irrelevant@14
Not to be mean, but people who “are upset about accountability” in the current, amazingly productive and transparent DOT are either dupes or morons.
We’ve been over this like a million times, but they’ve been doing an excellent job over the last few years, and theres no reason to believe they won’t continue to do so.
Admit it cynical, you just wanna hurt and impede the powers that be in washington. When beating up on the other side is more important than transportation projects that’ll improve safety and help business (isn’t that a republican thing…?) statewide, isn’t it time to rethink your priorities some?
Which is more important… Hurting the Democratic leaders in Washington State, or having a healthy business environment and safe roads?
From today’s Seattle Times: “A recent campaign poll of voters, largely paid for by big business, found most people want to repeal the 9.5-cent-a-gallon gas tax the Legislature passed earlier this year. In fact, THE MORE VOTERS LEARN about the initiative, THE MORE THEY LIKE IT.” (emphasis added).
912 by 15 ! ! ! ! !
I cover this more in a post to be unearthed soon, but..
Why do you righties want to hurt Washington state so badly? Is it really all pure partisanship, or something more pathological?
Windie – We’re tired of seeing our money wasted. We want fundamental reform of the system.
1) Adults in charge.
2) Integrated solutions that actually fix the problem.
3) One financing package that pays for everything.
4) Efficiency in design and construction.
5) The People get final say.
MTR at 18; item 5a; 1 live human, 1 vote
MTR, etc
We need a bumper sticker: Would you trust these guys with your paycheck? (photo of Sims, Joel Horn, any Sound transit windbag)..(maybe a photo of I-90 sinking, bus tunnel with wrong rails, etc)
@18-20 because all of those have so much to do with the successful and accountable current DOT.
Blaming the state for county failures? Are you really that dumb?
Misdirected hate is sure a positive element in government… or maybe you’re actually ignorant enough to think that Sims, Horn, et al. actually work for WSDOT?
Windie; thanks for reminding me about the I-90 boulders. Bet ya’ll need some more money to study gravity and rocks in mountains..
18
Adults in charge? People like Brownie and the Grand Old Spending Party?
Windie – Take me down point by point @ 18.
24 prove to me point by point htat those are problems.
starting with obvious hyperbole like your point 1) (damn those child labor laws!), doesn’t exactly help your point.
ps, moving on to day 6 :p
ROSSI’s A PUSSY!
MRT; hang on, Windie’s flustered cuz he’s some WSDOT staffer trying to estimate the effect of gravity on boulders up at the pass…
When will we get our freeway back?
Mr. C seethes about the Times (not the P-I, btw) “guilt[ing] folks who vote YES on I-912 into thinking that if the AWV and I-520 Bridge collapse, it is THEIR fault.”
It will be their fault, if 1) they pass I-912 and 2) then the Viaduct collapses or 520 sinks, as we expect them to. Imagine if Louisiana were ready to fix the New Orleans levees last year, and the state’s voters passed an initiative to stop any money being raised to fix them. Because, hey, money’s more important than your life and your neighbors’ lives, right?
“tell folks we are all gonna die”
No, not all of us. Just some of us.
You doubt this?
“many pro I-912 believers are upset about accountability and priorities of existing dollars.”
WSDOT is transparent and accountable; you can track any project they’re doing and planning to do. And they’ve been doing nearly all their projects on time and under budget, managing things very well in the last few years. Hard to complain about a state agency doing things right.
As far as priorities, I would think you’d agree that life-saving repairs and improvements should be the top priority. Which is exactly what this gas tax is paying for. So stop being upset, relax a bit and thank the nice folks at WSDOT for trying to save your life.
“A very, very legitimate question is that if the AWV is so, so dangerous, why has the Seattle and KingCo not made this the absolute TOP PRIORITY and done something with existing dollars???” (righton adds: “Ron Sims: Is another $60mm on an elections building really more important than fixing broken highways?“)
Legitimate questions, I suppose, but not very enlightened. First, the 520 and the 99, including the AWV, are STATE HIGHWAYS, remember? They’re not city roads or county roads. You can rant all you want about who you think uses the highways, and whose cargo you think travels on them, but they’re simply not local roads. The 99 isn’t Seattle’s road any more than I-5 is Cle Elum’s. It’s out of Nickels’ and Sims’ purview. Nickels can puff himself up promoting a tunnel and try to raise awareness, but it’s WSDOT’s responsibility to replace those bridges, not his.
Second, what “existing dollars” do you think are being overlooked??? I do believe there are not $2-3 billion lying around just in case of occasional transportation projects. The Viaduct has been a top priority since the 2001 earthquake, and if the funds were there, something would already have been done about it. But there ain’t enough money in the budget…shall we go back to the old threads about how, after adjusting for inflation, the gas tax was lower in real terms than it was ever since 1929? We can’t pay for something with nothing.
And if you’re complaining that politicians haven’t been paying enough attention over the years to fixing the Viaduct and 520, well, look what happens when they finally do. They get I-912. Great.
“Also, dollars pissed away on planning the TUNNEL option is arrogant and a total misguided waste of money.”
You’ve gotta give Gregoire credit for putting her foot down last week: If Nickels can’t come up with enough local money to pay most or all of the difference between a new elevated viaduct and a tunnel, he can forget about the tunnel, because we have to get going on replacing the AWV. The ball is in his court, and rightly so.
“create a program with combined local, state and tolls as the funding source (primarily tolls) and GET R DONE! Don’t try to do it on the backs of all state citizens with a REGRESSIVE GasTax.”
Again, Mr. C., it’s a STATE road. And you should be supportive of a user fee like the gas tax being used to pay the costs of road construction and maintenance; those who use the roads more pay more. Otherwise, you’re right: financing should come from the state, from local funds (in the case of a tunnel) and from tolls. And I believe that’s the plan. The problem with I-912 is it would take away all the state funds. And then we’re left with no replacement.
re 18: Your point 5 is the spanner in the works. The people have had their “final say” several times on the monorail and it seems that final is not final when it comes to the will of the people. I think what you’re really trying to say is that Republican neo-con opinions are the final will of the people.
I don’t think you have a chance in hell of pushing your rabid agenda anymore. Points one and two are meaningless rhetoric. What the hell does : “Adults in charge”, mean? It could only mean that the people in charge now are not adults in your view and must be replaced by someone you approve of. Republican successes on this front are non-existent. “Integrated solutions that actually fix the problem”, is so vague as to be meaningless. As far as financing goes, that would be easier if ,as with the monorail project, Republican obstuctionists were not constantly delaying the project with their legalistic machinations, thereby forcing the project to be financed at ever higher rates of interest because of the “iffY” nature of the project which has been CAUSED by the obstuctionist delays. That is the most hypocritical part.
Lucy – I hesitate to respond to you because you’re a fucking idiot… but I’ll do it anyway.
“Adults in charge” means having engineers and business guys in charge. If you want an example of what NOT to do, look at the monorail board. None of them have any experience in engineering or management of large projects. Lawyers, eggheads and activists all.
“Integrated solutions that fixes the problem” means “pour fucking concrete”. Not trains, or monorails, or carpool lanes or bike trails.” Miles and miles and miles and miles of wide general purpose freeway lanes.
On financing… give us the total bill for everything in one package. Not piecemeal crap like we do now with a little for roads, a little for trains, a little for monorail… with none of them being completely or viably financed. Hell, I’d for FOR a gas tax of $2/gal if I was convinced it would be spent responsiblity and would actually fix the problem.
On giving The People a vote… this is a slap at the “emergency” that was declared to do the gax tax. Fercrissakes, it isn’t any kind of real emergency. It was done purely to thwart the will of The People, and it should be jammed down their throats on this basis alone.
One more thing… if you reply with your usual “fascist neo-con” bullshit as usual, I’m ignoring you from now on. If you can’t discuss anything intelligently, get the fuck off this board.
re 32: So adults in charge DOESN”T mean lawyers, cronies and Arabian horse guys? Thanks for clearing that up.
Good reply Lucy. Glad I spent the time to try to educate you.
re 32 :Thanks for the amplified definitions! I would never have guessed that, “Integrated solutions that fixes the problem”, meant , “Pour the f***** concrete!!!” We’ll need the best engineers and businessmen we can find to do that.
Oh, and get the f*** off the board yourself you vaseline-palmed freak!
Lucy – Actually, I didn’t finish that one. To be more complete, what it means is that most of the money (like 70% to 80%) should be spent on general purpose freeway lanes because that’s how most people travel. Where it makes sense, (like maybe inside the McDermott Zone) it would be OK to build public transit. But the public transit pieces (bus, train, monorail, etc) need to work together, and integrate with the nice wide freeways.
re 32: And once again I point out to you that your zeal for protecting the expression of the true will of the people seems only to apply when it fits your obstructionist agenda. That is why we call you hypocritical naysayers who have no plan for improvement except to make the rich richer. That’s what makes you a house-coloured.
re 37: I agree with your basic concept, except that integrated pubic and private transportation should cancel the need for lots of x-tra freeway lanes. We need more public transportation 1st— in my opinion.
I didn’t mean “pubic” transportation, although I’m not opposed to it. I meant , “public.”
Mark;
You mean give up on Train stations that don’t have bus stations near by? Or trains to the airport that require bus shuttles? Or car pool lanes that are sometimes of different sides of the freeway, or say Bellevue’s transit center being built 10 yrs ago and now Sound Transit wants it 2 blocks away…
You can’t be so heartless as to demand responsible planning and execution.
We need to stick w/ the bozo’s that gave us 520 with almost no conventional exits, bus tunnel and I90 w/ whackjob lack of true rail capacity, blah, blah
Nothin wrong with layin pipe Lucy. But the fact of the matter is that people in Murka like their cars. That’s just part of our culture, and it’s NOT gonna change. We’re not some bullshit European nation state or a hopelessly overcrowded place like Tokyo where mass transit might work. Myself, I like driving my luxury SUV, listening to my satellite radio, having private phone conversations, and being able to stop on the way home from work to do errands. And I’m not unique.
mark and lucy;
Different slant; what i love about Europe and Japan is the transit is RAPID, but in seattle its only MASS.
I’ll give up my car for RAPID, not for sweating it out w/ 50 other slobs.
You’re not unique, but there’s a limit to how much of that the environment can take . You can choose not to see the future, but that won’t change it. That’s why people like you are called REACTIONARIES– because you’re always “reacting” instead of foreseeing and preventing or enabling. You’re just trying to hold on to what you have and have it never change. But the world is not like that. Change is inevitable. And bigger and better is not what that always means.
I think you know who said that he who tries to save his life will lose it…
Lucy – First, good job takin yer meds and staying on topic without your usual screeching. Isn’t this nicer? Thank you.
If your strategy is to suggest that the era of the car is over, you’re going to lose. Maybe in 300 to 400 years, we’ll be as crowded as Tokyo and need mass transit, but we’re not there now. Not even close. There’s no reason to abandon our way of life.
MTR & Lucite: I see both points. MTR, you make perfect sense. Your argument is cogent and the points are dead on. Lucite, you speak to rhetoric, spun in with some emotion and then you completely punted with Mr. Brown. Damn Lucite you were actually holding 6/5ths (because Lucite’s brain has to work faster to keep up with MTR) of you own against MTR and I was really cheering you on until the Mr. Brown episode. MTR you really make me laugh. Thanks.
Lucite have you ever watched a public works project around here? I have. The funniest (saddest) thing is having to watch a new paving project complete and then the water or sewer department comes along and digs up the beautifully paved boulevard to replace pipe scheduled for replacement many years before. You ask why? I know why. It’s make work for your holier-than-thou unions. Once they stop the paving they have to bring back the same guys later to fix the new hole just dug. Then they have to lay down sealing tar around the hold and you look and say WTFH?
Now if they have this Monorail project in discussion for all these years why didn’t the bus board talk to the monorail board? Why? Why? Because, these Democratically controlled city departments are run as fiefdoms. Not communication outside their environment. That’s what we talk about when we say accountability. So yes we are reactionary. We are reactin to stoopidity by your side! Get it? You think all we’s talkin ’bout is $$$? No it’s da peeples who don’t communicate wid each udder under DONK administrations!!
BTW, laying pipe in da ghetto has other meanings.
“Integrated solutions that fixes the problem” means “pour fucking concrete”. Not trains, or monorails, or carpool lanes or bike trails.” Miles and miles and miles and miles of wide general purpose freeway lanes.
Dave Ross’s show today laid out how much it would cost for two more GP lanes each way on I-5 from one end of Seattle to the other: $22-25 billion dollars. That’s roughly a 40 cent per gallon gas tax increase just for that one project. Extrapolate those costs out to other projects and to build “miles and miles and miles and miles of wide GP freeway lanes” you’re talking at least $2-3 a gallon in new gas taxes.
Considering you’re bitching about 9 cents a gallon now, it’s pretty obvious that you really aren’t in favor of the state building more roads. I don’t buy for one second that you’d be willing to pay the costs to build the GP lanes you say you want. Because you just like to bitch about the problem and not offer up any real solutions.
bax, had you not quoted from DAve Ross, i might have listened.
the guys’s a tool for the left. no thanks.
righton @ 43: Yeah, that’s the problem with mass transit (and the reason more people keep driving cars): stopping every 2 blocks (and then changing buses/trains) is slooooooow. If only PRT was already in service somewhere, so we could point to a real solution…
re 45: You call driving around on freeways for another 300 years and further constricting the flow of the wild animals a vision for the future? You call that a way of life , I call it a selfish and narrow long-term debacle.
How boring can your life be when driving around in your SUV is your biggest pleasure? I have a top of the line SUV myself and a commuter car. But I don’t consider them a “way of life.” I just need them for now.