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There’s only one day remaining for you to submit questions for the two candidates running for Washington’s 8th Congressional District.

The Stranger coverboy incumbent Republican Dave Reichert squares off against Suzan DelBene. Interesting questions continue to pour in. My favorite comes from randydutton: “What will you do to make America rare earth element self-reliant?” Does Suzan DelBene—despite China having most of those those rare elements—have the power to create lanthanum deposits in American soil? Venture over to Electionland and answer away, intrepid souls.

Or here’s another one: “Why is this race important? If you had to pick one thing, what would it be?” Well, WHAT IS IT?

Dave Reichert may or may not actually answer your questions—perhaps because that would require his brain firing on all cylinders—but DelBene will answer for sure by tomorrow. Have at it.

5 replies on “Got a Question About the 8th District Race?”

  1. I imagine randy is talking about how we shut down all of our rare earth mining capacity and let china take over the world market. China then violated trade laws by cutting off Japan when they fought over that stupid island. We would be fucked if we ever pissed them off and they did it to us.

    Step up your game and one day you might be a paid intern.

  2. Del Bene gave a great speech today at the Obama rally.

    prompt is just upset that we are talking about not providing free military services in Iraq and Afghanistan to give his comrades in Red China cheap resources. tough.

  4. @1, not quite. What the questioner is doing over there is baiting Reichert into coming out against green technology like solar panel, wind turbine, battery and electric motor technology, all of which use copious amounts of these suddenly scarce rare earths, and using them for Boeing jets instead. It’s a new tack in the right’s War on Environmentalism.

    @3, I think Friedman is missing the real story here. Not only is China in control of the rare earth mining game in its own country, but it has assiduously been building mining infrastructure in Africa, which is the next frontier for these minerals. While the West poots around with counter-productive Bono-style food and dollar aid, which actually destroys African economies, and most of which goes to provide Range Rovers, generators and flown-in meals for white people anyways, the Chinese have been approaching African countries with an irresistible pitch: “we don’t give a crap about your elections, or your poverty, or whatever moral failings the Americans and British are busy lecturing about; all we want to do is invest a hundred mil building a railway, dam, and minehead”. Three years later, they’ve got them, while all we’ve got is a line out the door of starving people whose livelihoods we’ve systematically destroyed.

    China has won Africa. The game is over. And that’s where all the minerals are. And you can’t make a Prius or an iPad without them.

    This business with Japan is just the players jockeying for position as they wait for the corner kick to come in. But China’s got the big lead already.

  5. @ Fnarf — That was a really good summary of the Chinese gameplan in Africa, I think. I’ve read some longer pieces about the infrastructure work they’re doing that matches up exactly with what you said. The Chinese economic powerhouse would loom larger in my mind if only they weren’t sitting on such a huge property bubble.

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