I’ve got a longer fisking in the works, but I just needed to pause for a moment to call out Susan Hutchison for a particularly infuriating piece of hypocrisy that local righties always seem to get away with:
Paula Hammond, the state transportation secretary and Sound Transit board member, said “I was surprised it (the 520 proposal) came up. I don’t understand it.”
“The voters have decided. It makes it a bit moot.”
Hutchison believes voters were really just approving a general endorsement of extending rail to the Eastside rather than of a specific route.
Get that? According to Hutchison, voters didn’t really know what they were voting on last November when Sound Transit put forth very detailed plans for Eastside rail expansion, so as county executive it would be her prerogative to change the plans as she saw fit.
Now to be fair, I happen to agree that voters often don’t fully understand the ballot measures on which they’re asked to vote, and that many, many such issues would be better decided through a deliberative legislative process rather than a thumbs up or down at the polls. But at least I’m consistent in my cynicism towards so-called direct democracy.
But not so our political and media establishment which almost uniformly stands up for the inviolability of tax-cutting, government-restricting ballot measures like those peddled by Tim Eyman, yet seems almost eager to second guess voters when it comes to their support for actually spending money and other policy priorities.
Car tab slashing initiative I-695? Well yeah, it was unconstitutional, but we better implement it via legislation anyway because that’s what the voters say they want, whatever the consequences. But the teacher pay and class size initiatives? Oh those silly voters… they were so irresponsible in not specifying a revenue source, so we’re pretty much free to suspend those whenever budgets get tight.
The renewable energy initiative overwhelmingly approved at the polls? Voters didn’t really understand the specifics and the consequences we were told, so legislators felt free to try to loosen the terms last session. But I-747’s arbitrary and unreasonable one-percent cap on revenue growth from regular levies? Again, unconstitutional measure, but we better call a special session to reimpose it because, damn, it was the will of the people you know.
Voters reject a baseball stadium, we get a baseball stadium. Voters reject replacing the Viaduct with a tunnel, and local and state leaders get together and compromise on, you guessed it, a tunnel. And hell, then there’s the Monorail. Boondoggle or no, it took five separate ballot measures before voters finally rejected the Monorail, but only that last vote was somehow considered definitive. Yet even dare to question the tax and revenue limits already in place, and an elected official is virtually guaranteed a scathing attack from our state’s opinion leaders, not to mention the usual, bullshitty, angry email-cum-fundraising-scam from our friend Timmy.
Huh?
I mean, if Dow Constantine were to imply voters didn’t understand what they were voting on in approving I-747 (which by the way, failed in King County), just imagine how he would be castigated by Eyman and the Seattle Times ed board for his arrogance. Yet Hutchison implies the same about last year’s excruciatingly deliberated, negotiated, debated and hard fought Sound Transit Phase II expansion — a measure that passed in King County with an extraordinary 63% of the vote — and nobody bats an eyebrow.
What a bunch of fucking hypocrites.
Well you can’t have it both ways. Either a vote of the people is carved in stone by the invisible hand of God, or it isn’t. And since after two years our state constitution gives initiatives the same standing as any other law, I’d say it is clearly the latter.
But either way, popular ballot measures like last year’s Prop 1 simply shouldn’t be abrogated via executive fiat, and any suggestion to the contrary should be roundly greeted with ridicule. It is Hutchison, not the voters, who clearly hasn’t been paying attention when it comes to regional transportation planning, and she desperately needs to be called on the table for her ignorance, if not her arrogance.
“Would it be feasible to shift light rail from I-90 to 520?”
That’s the headline in the local Newspaper Of Record, the Suzie Cute Shill, formerly known as the Seattle Times.
Perhaps sensing a possible Hutchison defeat, Frank Blethen’s rag has swung into full-court-press propaganda mode.
According to the article, “The biggest hurdle” to the 520 route is “convincing elected officials from across the region … to stop a transportation megaproject already in progress” and writing off $30 million in engineering costs spent on the I-90 route.
Another problem, the Shill says, is, “Approving a switch in routes would require a vote of the 18-member Sound Transit board.”
There’s absolutely no mention in the article of costs, feasibility, engineering problems, lane availability, the effect on ridership and general utility of shifting the route miles away from Bellevue’s downtown core, and the other practical, physical, aspects of Suzie’s off-the-napkin brainwave.
It’s like publishing a story about Boeing building an airplane that has no wings or engines without discussing whether it’ll fly.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....il23m.html
As I’ve already posted in the “Not Again” thread, Mount Vernon taxpayers got stuck with an $18,000 bill for GOP Mayor Bud Norris’ Glenn Beck lovefest. And that doesn’t count the costs to the State Patrol and other police departments that helped provide security for the event.
Initiative and referendum is a blight upon this state. It’s the worst thing that the Progressive Era foisted upon us.
Thankfully, Washington’s I&R isn’t as disastrous as California. Just imagine if Tim Eyman could rewrite the state constitution.
A change like Hutchison proposes requires a TWO-THIRDS vote of the 18-member Sound Transit board of directors.
Ain’t gonna happen.
Thanks, Goldy, for including last year’s 937 debacle in your list. I recently reminded a local utility official that his support for that crappy piece of legislation (which the City of Seattle actually supported) was contrary to the expressed wishes of his ratepayers. His response was the classic, “they didn’t understand it” to wish I replied “that is always what the losing side says, but that doesn’t make it true.” That always tends to end the conversation.
Apparently the Piece Of Shit, er, Port Of Seattle didn’t get Timmeh’s message because they’re plotting to raise port taxes while every other public entity is cutting back.
Speaking of not understanding what you’re voting on, how ’bout that R-26?
It’s sad, really, the Seattle Times has turned into a bombastic campaign flyer for Republican candidates and causes.
I think Butler is a Republican. But, he’s a common sense Republican. As opposed to the Hutchison moonbat variety.
Hutchison is decades behind on transportation and social issues – so being only 4-5 years behind on this one bridge is actually a major hight point for her.
Goldy’s obsessive hatred for Hutchison continues on…..YYAAWWWNNN…..
It’s not that she hates voters, it’s that she knows only clueless morons would vote for her. So she’s trying to convince everyone that they are clueless.
Yuk, yuk! Just read a new Rasmussen poll that says that the pendulum has now swung back to the Republicans in 9 of 9 key areas. It only took that fucktard Obama Administration 10 months to be held in lower esteem than that of the Bush Administration after 8 years.
Rasmussen? The latest Rasmussen poll reveals that 73% of GOP voters think Republicans suck.
No word from Rasmussen about what the rest of America thinks about those losers. I reckon it’s already understood that the rest of us think Republicans suck too. No wonder Washington State Republicans like Hutchison will do anything to ditch the party label.
Having been to lots of events populated by Republicans, here’s how the discussion goes.
The GOP candidate is intruduced to “‘so-and-so’, a loyal Republican and contributor to the Party and a great many good causes”. The citizen then spends about ten minutes bending the candidate’s ear about how stupid the the government is acting on one issue or another, and insisting that if they would just come out strongly in support of whatever the citizen believes in, then they are sure to win the election. After all, the citizen insists, they have their ear to the ground, and know the how the average voters are really thinking.
Now, I’m sure something similar goes on in Democratic circles, also.
But regardless of which party the candidate represents, the candidate has to know who to listen to and who not to listen to, have a sufficient knowledge base to be able to distinguish facts from partison bullshit, and realize that most of these citizens actually have a pretty small group they poll to support their opinions – often numbering only one, or at best the immediate members of their family (who are actually just nodding their heads in agreement at anything they say, because they don’t want to get into another argument when Dad goes off on his tangents again). When they encounter such persons, they need to know how to politely tell the citizen that “they will look into it”, and move on.
So what I suspect happened is Hutchinson got cornered at some function by someone who told her a tale about how crazy it is that money is going to be spent on light rail to Issaquah instead of the 520 core, and that lots of Bellevue/Redmond voters would support her if she changed the route to one which – you know – went near his business. Hutchinson should have asked someone who knew something about rapid transit and light rail before opening her mouth, but instead she didn’t – she just plowed ahead. Now she’s going to have to listen to a weekend of explanations about how the 520 plan isn’t going to work, and how she should have known that.
Personally, I think there should – eventually – be light rail on the 520 corridor. But first we have to build a system based on available funding and what’s feasible at the time, which is the I-90 route. When we get around to building the new 520 bridge, we should have it engineered so that it minimizes the costs of adding light rail to it later. We can install the actual light rail along 520 later, after the system has proven itself and we have the time and money to deal with the more difficult routing through that area.
I suppose open dialog and discussion is forbidden in Seattle, but us voters east of the lake really think I-90 link < 520 link.
I’ve been unable to figure out of Hutchison talked up the 520 bridge as a clever ploy to delay light rail across the lake perhaps forever, or if she said it because she’s ignorant of light rail history and how I-90 came to be chosen. Devious or ignorent? Hmmmm.
Jacob –
And who appointed you spokesmodel for the Eastside?