perrinelson

The stupidity and sheer gullibility of voters in the state of Washington, and in particular the city of Seattle, never ceases to amaze me. But then, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, since the vast majority of urban residents in the state of Washington are liberals who couldn't vote for a Republican without first checking into a psychiatric clinic to verify that they weren't losing their mind, or going to therapy afterward to assuage their “guilt.” And of course, the vast majority of voters in the state of Washington are urbanites. I present evidence of the stupidity and gullibility of Washington State's voters below.

Many years back there was a decent sized earthquake in the Puget Sound region. As earthquakes do, this one damaged some of the local infrastructure. That was the Nisqually Earthquake of 2001, and the damaged infrastructure was the Alaskan Way Viaduct in Seattle. The damage to the viaduct was so severe that it was called a “public safety emergency.” On February 13, 2007 I wrote about the six year-long public safety emergency mired in personal politics. That wasn't the first time I wrote about this mess, having previously written about the personal pride and childish behavior of mayor Greg Nickels and the Seattle City Council.

At the time, there were several options on the table to resolve this “public safety emergency.” One of those options was to simply repair the damage to the viaduct. Another option, estimated at the time to cost about $2.8 billion was to replace the viaduct with an elevated structure. A third option, favored by Nickels and the city council was a tunnel, estimated at that time to cost around $4.6 billion. The council and Nickels were acting childish about it too. They wanted the tunnel so much that they actually threatened to guarantee that an elevated replacement would end up costing more than the estimate for digging the tunnel.

Governor Gregoire stepped in. She called for a vote of the people. The city council, of course, balked. It was really a challenge to get a vote, and the city council tried to make the tunnel option more palatable by coming up with a way to save $100 million. Of course that wasn't really a significant savings. Going from $4.6 billion to $4.5 billion isn't really that much of a saving when your alternative (sans city council interference) plan only costs $2.8 billion. Nevertheless we got a vote — well, actually the city of Seattle got a vote. The rest of the state was excluded from the vote even though the funds would come from our taxes too.

Do you recall what the results of that vote were? The voters in the city of Seattle said NO! to both the tunnel and to the elevated replacement plans. That's right, they rejected the tunnel!

You'd think that an eight year long (It'll be eight years to the day on February 28th, not counting leap year.) “public safety emergency” would finally be resolved wouldn't you. After all it only took the Bush Administration 30 days (according to some wildly biased accounts) to respond to the state of emergency after Hurricane Katrina. Thank God that hurricane didn't swing by Seattle though.

Of course things are finally moving. Governor Gregoire, or “Queen Christine” as she's less than affectionately known by some of us on the right, has finally made up her mind what to do about this “emergency.” Greg Nickels and the Seattle City Council should be happy. The public should be outraged.

We're getting the damned tunnel. According to the Seattle Times…

Politicians are suggesting as much as $1.4 billion in new local taxes, fees and grant requests to pay for all the desired buses, streetcars, a sea wall, road work, utility relocations and parks associated with the tunnel.

Although a toll hasn't been proposed for the tunnel, it remains a possibility.

The money could be collected without a public vote.

Just as in the past with extortionist sports teams, the vote of the people apparently means nothing to our elected officials and “representatives.”

Tell me again… why do we keep electing these people, these politicians? It's clear they don't represent us.

The electorate in the great State of Washington are fools.

http://perrinelson.com/2009/1/14/1296.aspx