Comments

1
"By loudly connecting the dots for Seattleites..."

You mean the same Seattilites, including the entire staff of The Stranger, who spent all of last year debating which liberal Democrat should be mayor instead of helping defend a vulnerable Senate seat (which was subsequently lost to the Republicans, solidifying their hold of the Senate)?

Good luck with that.
2

I used to subscribe to Reuven's Feed on Facebook, until he basically said that he hated the suburbs and only liked Seattle.

That, in a nutshell, is why no one should vote on these omnibus bills because the people who spend the money are Seattle-centric-car-hating-house-hating-densifiers who would use our own tax money against us.

Rip the ideologues out of Olympia first, before you tax another nickel.

3
Let's start by passing a county equality bill which says that state expenditures in each county must average out to the share of taxes they pay. That would immediately help the Puget Sound region by preventing the flow of money to the more rural counties. And somehow I bet you could sell it to the more rural counties as in their best interest.
4
@3: Absolutely.
5
The argument against it is that what the House Democrats came up with was a transportation package that gave only 20% to maintenance and safety, 12% to transit, pedestrians, and bikes, and the lion's share - about 68% of the package - for new roads, mostly starting (but not completely funding) a host of huge, polluting highway projects across the state.
http://daily.sightline.org/2013/12/18/ol…

And those priorities only get worse once the Republicans join in.

So if what we're mainly doing is causing the transportation funding problem to get worse, while taking on more unsustainable and polluting road expansions in an era of climate change, then we need to just work harder to fund stuff at the local level.
6
Ed Murray has been mayor for nearly five months, and in every major decision made so far (staff, police chief, minimum wage, etc) he's displayed neither competence nor leadership. Thinking that this will change over the next three-and-a-half years is wishful at best.

For four years Seattle had a mayor who was a regional leader in funding and expanding public transit, but he was voted out in favor of the current clown sitting in City Hall. If you voted for Ed Murray and are a supporter of public transit, look in the mirror: YOU are part of the problem.
7
@3 - 100% correct

@6 - Let's not forget that Murray was the chief architect of the downtown tunnel. How's that working out for us?
8
"The only way we get anything through is if thereโ€™s a grand bargain," Carlyle said." Like the type of deal Carlyle gave to Boeing- that was contingent upon a transportation package?? Carlyle is the guy that blows a lot of hot air and works for the 1%.

There is a guy by the name of Perez that, according to the PDC, is running for Carlyle's seat. I hope we hear more from Perez.

Regarding Murray; Murray, during his campaign, would proudly boast about the transportation package he passed..YEARS and YEARS ago. He utterly failed to mention that he has failed transportation and education.
9
What is the argument against a statewide transportation plan, other than that taxes are a bummer?โ€

The argument is that any statewide transportation package -- Democrat or Republican -- will have an unacceptable amount of greenhouse gas, sprawl-inducing highway expansion in exchange for us merely keeping what we have in Metro. The highways would happen automatically while the buses would likely be subject to a countywide vote, which as we've seen as no slam dunk.

Don't believe the line the Senate Democrats are feeding you. The Republicans have been in charge in the Senate for less than two years, but the Metro funding crisis has been going on for SIX -- four years where the Democrats did nothing but apply band-aids for Metro, holding out until they could blackmail us with a highway package.

The Senate Republicans are, of course, horrible -- but at least they're inspiring gridlock, gridlock that's preventing a horrible highway bill from passing.
10
And by the way, the idea that Ed Murray is any position to affect the upcoming Senate election is complete nonsense. The voice of the Seattle Mayor as at best irrelevant and at worst massively counterproductive in Washington swing districts.
11
Carlyle and Inslee were the individuals, at the highest levels of government, that created the Boeing deal.

During the Boeing deal, Inslee sat before Carlyle's finance committee and spoke about transportation package that was being discussed. He was more than hopeful the transportation package would pass. Ah..how did that work-out?

It was BEYOND niave to trust Rodney Tom and the Senate.

In defense of the Senate: The tunnel project is beyond screwed-up.

Let's remember the legislator *cough- Reuven Carlyle-cough* that stood with Murray during the mayoral campaigns.
12
@11 This. So much this.
13
@9 this is what I can never get about the liberal fanaticism in Seattle. Its been a super majority in Olympia from Slade Gordons era up until this Rodney Tom scapegoating, and what do we have to show for it? People vote democrat and pat themselves on the back while Boeing bleeds us dry, Microsoft evades all taxes while demanding more services, and we cripple our funding to support the daft ideas behind initiatives that were unconstitutional.

The hostage politics of the PNWs liberals need to go, every vote includes a grand bargain that threatens kids, transit, or education while passing glut for roads, corporate welfare and regressive tax systems.
14
Without it this city this county this state this country will self immolate
15
"...make sure lawmakers outside of Seattle know that when they vote to bring needless suffering to the citizens of Seattle, they vote to end their careers."

And how exactly will they know that? Will they know it when they see the Stranger whine about the absolute purity of representation in deep-blue Seattle districts? Will that cause suburban moderates to quake with fear?

There is one way - only one - to get the attention of suburban moderates: fund their opponents in elections. Period. And use that money to make strong arguments.

Who's got that money? The same group of idiot political allies that lost the Senate majority in 2012 because they wanted to squabble over litmus tests in deep-blue Seattle districts instead of doing actual work and pumping serious money into the surrounding communities. Let's be clear: The Stranger was (and still is) the useful idiot for that strategy. Cheer for Seattle, scorn King County, lose more power. Repeat.

You want to blame somebody? Don't blame Carlyle. Don't even blame Murray, in spite of his increasingly obvious wimpiness. Blame those political funders. Hold them accountable, because their actions (and inaction) decide elections.

I dream of the day when someone at The Stranger develops enough political sophistication to figure this out, and writes something enlightening and sharp about the people who give the money instead of the people who get it. Hold those entities accountable. Ask them why they're so committed to losing and wait for the sound of crickets.

16
You mean the corporations that got all the tax exemptions instead of us actually doing something ...
17
Dear amnesia victims,
There was a guy named Tim Eyman.
This massive fuckup wasn't an accident, it was on purpose, on state-wide votes.
There are very fiscally conservative folks outside of the blue bubble that have created what they have wanted, what Carlyle points out as a low tax and low quality of life state. But it hasn't actually turned out that way for those fiscally conservative folks. They are getting the low tax portion but are getting a much higher quality of life than their taxes would actually support. They get to keep their cake and eat ours too.

The solution doesn't require the capture of the senate, it takes playing hardball in the House. Stop giving the conservatives what they insist they don't want to pay for, and have expressed many times through the ballot.
If the rest of the state really wants to live like South Carolina, let them.
Stop paying them to screw us.
Once they realize their utopia isn't as dreamy as imagined maybe they will actually begin to vote in favor of reaching into their pockets to pay for the world we are currently gifting to them right now.

Wake the fuck up to the incentives in the current system, and have the guts to do something about it.
18
@17 FALSE

nearly all Tim Eyman initiatives FAILED to pass constitutional muster, and were invalidated.

The liberal left super majority that made up the Washington legislature, crossed the isle to the conservative side and drafted new legislation for all the current restrictions we have. Blame Reuven Carlyle and Ed Murray for this, its their fault.

Tim Eyman scapegoating is as stupid as he is. learn to read:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Eyman
19
IncomeTaxNow!

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