What I would love to see is our corporate leaders, the ones who "claim" to be progressive, take a stand and say if Metro is forced to cut bus service that they would need to consider relocating their corporate offices to a city with a strong public transit ethic.

LOL!!!! Oh my god I make myself laugh sometimes. What the hell AM I smoking today?!?!?!?

@1 must be playing the Obama Debt Speech drinking game.

But you only get to light up wacky weed when the Pres legalizes and taxes it, so ...

@2, come on...I'm working on my "Cooking with Cat Food Cookbook for Seniors". Anyone under 50 will be wanting to buy that best seller!!

PvR said, after the Seattle meeting (where he was excoriated for being one of the absentees) that the results of that public comment session were "Seattle results," and he expected to see very different results in south King County.

Um. Wrong. Very, very, very wrong.

Did he bail, or just go to the can?

@5, Still no PvR. No Dunn at the moment either.

Is the unconstitutional 2/3 needed for passage based on the number of Councilmembers or voting Councilmembers?

If it's the latter, it would only take 5 votes to pass the fee if PvR and Dunn stay away.

@7 Number of council members.

Amazing. Seattle liberals demanded categorically their right to a bus service paid for by those who rarely or never ride the bus!

Who could have imagined it?

@4

BTW-

The rich pay far more than their fair share of the common tax burden. It's the poor who don't, or who directly get paid for being citizens.

While the earned 20% of the income last year, the top 5% of income earners paid nearly 40% of the taxes.

How much is fair, to you? 60% of their income stolen for your benefit? 70%? You far left communists really need to start defining your distorted notion of fair so that the rest of us can get a good laugh.

@10,

That the top ONE percent of earners, and that statistic doesn't include highly regressive sales and excise taxes.

Stuff your lies up your ass, and fuck off.

Man, Goldy, thanks for hanging in there!

I got there before 3 PM when the Council were still discussing a criminal justice issue that was pretty damned important and Dunn must have gotten up 10 times in an hour and gone out for water/whatever; the rest of the time he looked almost asleep. And he wants to be Attorney General.

thanks for hanging in there, Goldy!

@9 that's thanks to people like yourself. our entire tax code is set up to produce tension & conflict around public infrastructure investment. making car drivers pay a tax for bus riders is exactly the type of maneuvers conservatives have been using for decades to thwart public investment. congratulations, the fact that we even have to have such a discussion means that you're won. not sure why you are so crabby about it. oh, that's right. because it doesn't matter how stacked the deck is to the right, people like yourself will never be happy; the solution to every problem is to move farther to the right. that's a large part of how we've ended up w/ a conservative party (the democrats), and a nihilist party (the republicans.)

as for @10, you're set of assumptions & understanding around taxation is so ass-backwards there's no point in starting up a discussion.

WOW. So sorry you sat through all that for no resolution. This is fucked.

My husband and I watched this whole thing on TV all day long. All of these people, disabled, etc...gave of their time and wanted to be heard, and at least half of the council members got up and left through at least half of the testimony. They could not make an important decision to save their lives let alone ours. A simple vote, and they could not even come together, it is still all about the politics. Just remember all of these council members when they come up for re-election. Not one of them should have a seat on the County Council again.

My husband and I watched this whole thing on TV all day long. All of these people, disabled, etc...gave of their time and wanted to be heard, and at least half of the council members got up and left through at least half of the testimony. What kind of message did they send? All of you people are unimportant, how rude they were. They could not make an important decision to save their lives let alone ours. A simple vote, and they could not even come together, it is still all about the politics. Just remember all of these council members when they come up for re-election. Not one of them should have a seat on the County Council evere again. I don't even take the bus, but I would vote for the $20 tab.

8:09 PM - vote delayed : http://www.seattlepi.com/local/transport…

What's with the ee cummings punctuation?

You're laboring under a misapprehension. The tax code is set up to collect the money we need for our various levels of government. While corruption and undue influence happen, it's simply a fact that the wealthy pay far more in taxes both as a percent of the total and as a percent of income than anyone else. Nearly half pay no taxes if you include things like welfare, subsidized housing and so on.

Think corporations should pay higher taxes if they ship jobs overseas? So do I. Take it up with your congressperson. Think the rich don't pay enough? Again, for you, how much should they pay? Currently the top 20% pay 60% of all taxes collected. The bottom half pay nothing. What's fair to you, the bottom 90% paying nothing with the top 10% paying for all of their fellow citizens? Give me some numbers, if you're so certain our code is regressive.

@ 21, "Currently the top 20% pay 60% of all taxes collected."

What's your source for this? I couldn't find anything supporting this figure from a non-ax grinding website.

If true, there's a pertinent question - what percentage of INCOME does the top 20% make?

Even more pertinent, what does income tax have to do with $20 plate fees in King County?

@22

"Even more pertinent, what does income tax have to do with $20 plate fees in King County?"

Take it up with the ee cummings copycat. He or she brought it up, not me.

@22

"Even more pertinent, what does income tax have to do with $20 plate fees in King County?"

Take it up with the ee cummings copycat. He or she brought it up, not me.