All this time I thought the battle over how to replace the Alaska Way Viaduct mostly had to do with conflicting philosophies over things like mobility and urban design, or with more nuts and bolts concerns like construction jobs and how to best serve the intermodal needs of the port. But in gleefully congratulating City Attorney Pete Holmes on challenging the legality of the anti-tunnel referendum, Seattle Times editorial columnist Joni Balter unwittingly whittles her page’s stake in the conflict down to its knobby, arthritic bone:
One has to chuckle. Holmes, who several times earlier came out forcefully in favor of legalizing marijuana, is the darling of younger voters.
No doubt she’s chuckling over some imagined irony, but to get the joke you first have to squint at the issue through Balter’s cataractous eyes. For with all the sociological subtlety of an early John Hughes film, Balter and her cohorts seem to have distilled the entire Viaduct debate down to an emotional conflict between the oldies and youngies.
Chuckling now? Holmes is “the darling of younger voters” and he challenged the anti-tunnel referendum! Oh man that’s funny! Because… um… Holmes is old and mature, yet he was supported by all those young, naive, anti-tunnel voters. Or something.
Huh. Now that I understand that it’s intergenerational warfare that’s guiding the Seattle Times op-ed page, I can read their sclerotic ramblings in a whole new light. You know, once I put on my bifocals.
It’s Joni Balter, not Joanie.
See, Joni sold her soul to the Aged Billionaires and Millionaires who want you – the younger voters and Citizens – to pay for a Carbon-Doubling Pollution-Doubling Pricetag-Doubling Capacity-Halving No-Downtown-Exit-Having Congestion-Doubling Tunnel of Ten-Dollar roundtrip Tolls.
And if you vote, she knows you aren’t insane enough to vote for that, since they have to admit that on the ballot issue and give you actual prices.
It’s more Rich (which tends to be old) versus Poor (which includes anyone who isn’t already a millionaire, since 99.9 percent of you never will be, or you’d be saving 10 to 20 percent of your GROSS income at this minute).
Goaldie can you fix the header for this post? Thx.
I assumed that in his capacity as City Attorney, he had to file the suit. Am I wrong?
@1, @2,
Yeah… yeah… goofed in the headline. Got it right in the text though.
But then, I am kinda old, so gimme a break.
Hey, Geezer Goldy, to her credit Joni is a dues-paying member of the Guild.
Why not? Inter-generational warfare seems to be the new SOP for Republicans now.
@4 enjoy your Golden years, Goldy!
@6 i’m not actually sure Joni is Republican, unless she switched. Not that she likes to admit her preference.
Joni has been writing shrill proto establishment lesser seattle screeds for years. She strikes me as a Seattle version of DLC blue dog.
Balter is quite an asshole, isn’t she?
Don’t give Joni Balter credit for having any kind of opinion; she just parrots what she perceives to be conventional wisdom. The woman has never published a single original thought. She is the Mitt Romney of editorial page editors.
@10 published perhaps, but some of her insights back when Almost Live was on the air, during her Seattle Week in Review period, led to major positive changes.
Then she got sour for some reason.
Cataractic? Cataractous sounds like a dinosaur.
Holmes for mayor 2013!
Young people are the dumbest and most naive amongst us. The left needs non-Asian minorities, young people and women to vote in order to get elected. They rely on the dumbest Americans to win elections.
Maybe if the “other” candidates would share the same position, to stop throwing DRUG ADDICTS in jail with mandatory minimum sentences for possession alone, or trying to throw nightlife clubs out of neighborhoods because yuppies move in and want to sleep at 9pm on a Saturday, we wouldn’t decide entire elections on social issues. Instead maybe we could have focused on the kind of job the candidate was going to be in office and the kind of vision he had for the office.
I respect Pete’s decision to try and block the tunnel vote, but I’m not sure how/what/where he gets the kind of power to tell a large number of Seattle voters no to democracy, or what judge is going to say, “well, when the city council does something the voters in a city have no right to voice their opinion”. If this vote is like any other tunnel vote, the politicians are going to do it anyway, just later. Pete Homes is one of the many people who will be paying for the tunnel if it happens, his voice counts, just not more than everyone else who will, like in past votes, overwhelmingly oppose paying cost overruns on a project that is likely to overrun in the billions. Sure, this should have been thought about before, but I seem to remember vote after vote in this city against a tunnel that our own department of transportation says won’t get used more than the ballard bridge. Besides, if you asked me today if I’d change my vote for Homes based on this issue, no, I’m a little disappointed sure, but I’d rather get a tunnel rammed down my taxes than continue stealing the freedom away from drug addicts because they choose a drug the government doesn’t like. It’s no contest for me.