Comments

1

How are people having trouble finding dogs? Like 75 to 80% of people outside their houses have dogs. Just like... step outside.

2

Also in that Boeing story, they finally sacrificed a goat. It's not much but it's a start.

3

Best wishes for high-speed rail gaining momentum from Cascadia Rail Summit.
I hope participants don't get sidetracked by some Elon Musk type sideshow.
High speed rail is in place and working effectively all over the world, just choose the best proven model for our area and get a proposal ready to put before the voters asap.

5

@3: Is there enough demand for it? California dropped their plan as it became apparent that it wasn't economically viable.

6

@3 unfortunately the best proven model would be a line with stations at:
Surry - Sedro-Wooly - West Lake Stevens - Issaquah - Sumner - Winlock - Gresham
The existing rail rights of way are not suited to high speed rail and the existing urban centers are already pretty densely built. And nobody's going to vote for the Surry to Gresham line.

7

It's funny to joke around about the migrant crisis. Yeah, people die in the back of trucks pretty frequently, and you don't have to go to Europe to find examples. It's one of the ways people smuggle migrants. They are locked in back there, totally at the mercy of their transporters, and if something goes wrong, they are left back there to starve and freeze to death. Imagine those last moments, so funny, cold transport, ha ha ha ha.

Next let's crack a joke about the ones who wash up on the beach after drowning trying to cross the Mediterranean. Or the ones who die of sun stroke and dehydration in the desert. So much to laugh about!

8

High-speed rail is a wonderful thing, and it's wonderful that Microsoft has become a champion of high-speed rail. But how the heck are we going to muster the political will to pay for it? We're facing enough of a political challenge hanging on to the funding for expanding light rail and maintaining our existing transportation system with this latest assault through I-976.

What am I missing here?

Speaking of high-speed rail, I find it demoralizing and maddening that California is having such a struggle building high-speed rail and that their new governor, Gavin Newsom, has scaled back the project to the point of uselessness. If there was any place in the nation that desperately needed high-speed rail and would be needing it more and more desperately in the decades to come, it is California. What are they thinking? And CA is such a progressive and wealthy state too.

Then again, perhaps this goes back to my original question. How's it going to be paid for? How are we going to muster the political will to pay for it? It appears CA went ahead with the project without seriously answering that question.

14

Well, right on cue, @9's comment perfectly illustrates my point @8.

There's a significant portion of the population who would rather exist in the transportation equivalent of Hobbes's vision of the natural state of man than pay taxes to advance the common good transportation-wise. In fact, paying taxes on their automobile usage to fund transit is something they are constitutionally incapable of countenancing (forgive the big word there--haven't used "countenance" in a while).

For me, it's a minor miracle that we even managed to pass ST1 and ST2 and ST3, considering that it's only natural that we should be outnumbered by people who think this way. So forgive me for looking at fantasizing about high-speed rail as a bit of a silly distraction at a time when we've got more pressing concerns.

15

@11: Longtime viewers will recall a thing called a "surplus" in the federal government during the late '90s, brought about by modestly taxing the richest people and corporations. I dare not speak the name of the one responsible for this brief golden age of government though, because that name sends some less educated folks into an absolute frenzy.

I'm sure that method was a one-time thing and there's no way we could make similar strides by following similar policies today. Better to simply accept the crumbling infrastructure and lacking public services we've grown accustomed to, while a vanishingly small group of citizens enjoys more wealth than entire nations.

18

@8 a lane of high speed rail costs about the same as 2 lanes of highway in Eastern Washington. We have plenty of money to pay for it.

20

@18, it sounds like you're mistaking me for an opponent of high-speed rail. Just the opposite is true.

My point is not that we don't have the money for high-speed rail. It's that we don't have the political will to spend the money. It's questionable whether we have the political will to spend the money for transportation infrastructure lower on the hierarchy of transportation needs.

Also, let's not pussyfoot around just how much money it would cost. The big challenge is not building out the line between cities; it's sending the line into the population centers where the stations will be.

21

Sargon @11, you must admit though that you have a very different response to alleged wasteful government spending when it comes to building highways vs. building mass transit systems:
A. Highways: Complain but don't do anything.
B. Mass transit systems: Work to eliminate the project entirely.

In fact, I could more fully express your view as:
A. There is no amount of wastefulness and unaccountability that would lead you to fight for the elimination of a highway project.
B. There is no level of cost-effectiveness and accountability that would dissuade you from fighting for the elimination of a mass transit project.

These are really the philosophical underpinnings of I-976. Mass transit by definition is a waste of government resources. Highways by definition are necessary.

I just wish you folks could be a little more upfront about your true views. Nothing to be ashamed of.

22

“ was any place in the nation that desperately needed high-speed rail and would be needing it more and more desperately in the decades to come, it is California. ”

For all those traffic jams between Bakersfield, Palmdale and Merced?

23

@22, what point are you trying to prove by cherry-picking my comment? See: "Speaking of high-speed rail, I find it demoralizing and maddening that California is having such a struggle building high-speed rail and that their new governor, Gavin Newsom, has scaled back the project to the point of uselessness."

24

I voted YES on I-976. If there's anything that the City of Seattle has taught us is government doesn't have a revenue problem..it has a spending problem.

25

The problems in California were due to a mix of terrible planning, deference to real estate interests instead of riders, and a bias (a necessary one, unfortunately) toward adhering to overly optimistic federal funding deadlines. From the jump, the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) should have reached out to European/Asian entities with more experience building out multi-city rail planning and design, and baked in more time/cost into its estimates. Unfortunately, those mistakes now provide fodder for anti-tax/anti-government zealots like @9, and feed into a narrative that the entire endeavor of rail is somehow undoable, or inherently flawed. Which is obviously false, given that rail has been made to work fantastically elsewhere. But for a certain species of American, the rest of the world doesn't exist, and they'll hold up this example as an argument against not just high-speed transit, but any complex/expensive project that governments try to tackle for the collective good of the citizenry.

More for those who are interested: https://www.city-journal.org/californias-high-speed-rail-project

26

@24,
"government doesn't have a revenue problem..it has a spending problem."

Only republican governments. Democrats have long been known as the party of fiscal responsibility. Republicans spend like drunken sailors and then try to bail out when the check comes due. Democrats only buy what they can afford.

Try to learn some history before you comment. You sound very uninformed

28

@10 -- Gold Star comment.

@2 -- not to mention 346 passengers and crew.

If you're a Refugee, never get into the back
of a Semi without a Can Opener.

Way to shake the shack, Shaq!
Perhaps LeBrawn will waketf up, too.

Oh and, that's precisely what we Need
giving Zuck the keys to the New Treasury.

28

Has the Stranger weighed in on the case down in Texas where a 7 year old boy decided he is a girl and his mother fought for custody from his father so she could put the child on hormone treatment?

30

The other funny thing about the pro-I-976 crowd is that the same people used to be so offended by regressive taxes. We never heard the end of it about the regressiveness of the sales tax during the Sound Transit campaigns.

But now suddenly nary a complaint about a regressive tax. In fact, as we all know, a flat $30 car tab is the very definition of a regressive tax. In contrast, it makes the sales tax look PROgressive. Gee, makes you wonder if they were really so concerned about regressive taxes to begin with. ;-)

Hey, as Trump has taught us, brazenness is great if you can get away with it.

31

@29,

Funny thing is I actually started writing a comment similar to yours, that there's all this talk about "government spends too much" and "government has bad management." Well, who hired them? I figured it would fall on deaf ears though.

Yes, government IS us, so complaining about government is merely complaining about yourself. Though that's tempered by the fact that wealthy and powerful business interests hold too much sway over who gets hired in government. I'm ok with complaints about them as well.

Still, historically speaking, democrats have a slightly better national economic record than republicans. Neither are perfect, but one is doing better than the other.

32

@8 I agree with most of that but to be fair the skyrocketing costs didn't come from a lack of logistical planning, they came from rail opponents throwing down obstacle after obstacle in order to bleed the project dry. Now Newsom has a kinda sorta plan that literally no one is excited for that will likely die a sad, quiet death.

It's pretty depressing this could be nearly finished by now for a fraction of the cost it would cost than if we broke ground today. It's totally doable outside of some eminent domain issues the state needs to sort out.

33

@17: Well let's tax the rich at a reasonable rate while we reduce the size of our bloated military, and enter into a new golden age! Sounds pretty win-win-win to me.

@27: To be fair, Ansel was full of shit with ALL his coverage.

34

Congratulations, @24, you just got completely used by a known con man and convicted criminal!

35

@25.....Another problem with California is simply way too many people living on land that can't support them unless you alter nature. When you alter nature you get climate change; bring in more people then more alteration is needed and the climate change process speeds up.

36

Dougsf @32, it seems you're reading something into my comment that wasn't there. I said nothing about skyrocketing costs or why there are skyrocketing costs. My main point was that they had proceeded with the project without having secured anything close to an adequate funding source.

YOUR point, however, is absolutely right. We can't underestimate the ability of the opposition to inflict death by a thousand lawsuits.

38

@35 You're altering nature no matter where you build houses for people. And you're probably going to have a higher carbon impact if you plop them down on temperate rain forest after you've clear-cut it than you will if you stick them in a coastal desert and siphon your water from a straw thrown over the hills into a river.

No city on earth can independently supply itself with food, of course, but carting grain from the central valley to LA has about the same carbon impact as shifting it from the Columbia valley to Seattle.

Not that I'm planning to move to Phoenix any time soon, mind, but I think you've got hold of the wrong end of the stick there.

40

@39 so onward with chemical castration of 7 year old kids!

42

Roads, parking lots, and massive fuel subsidies for cars and airplanes is what america bought instead of a rail system.

Whether switching to railroads would be cheaper or more efficient or whatever is irrelevant when at least half the country is conservative. By the very definition of the word, they are resistant to change. Doesn't matter if they way they do it costs more and takes longer, it's what they're used to. It's what their pappy and grand-pappy did and by gum, it's what they're gonna do too!. You cannot change their minds.

43

@7 -- Spot on. Thank you for saying that.

"If Microsoft's vision comes true" . . . WHAT. THE. EVER. LIVING. FUCK.?!? "Microsoft's vision"? No no no no god please no.
1. We the People didn't ever ask for high-speed rail? I definitely did.
2. MS's product track record should be warning enough not to let them do this.
3. The state clearly needs to take more of their money away and build it's own high speed rail lines, so we don't get some MS-branded monstrosity that suffers bit-rot, software bugs, never-ending security holes & constant malware attacks. Jesus fcuking Christopher Christ.

@9, et.al. -- "the prime directive of government is to raise revenue,"
Do we need to talk about how money actually works? The Federal government simply issues money into existence by paying for things.. like Interstate Freeways, & National High-Speed Rail Networks. That's where money literally comes from. There is literally as much money as they need to do anything they want. Taxes are NOT "revenue"; taxes remove money ^out of the system^ to control inflation. Federal taxes -extinguish- money. It's not a "federal govt checking/savings account" you know. They actually print the stuff themselves. It's a sovereign currency for a reason.
STATE taxes do raise money, sorta, and that's a dumb process. But they could, you know, make the corporations pay their fair share for once. The corps clearly have too much and don't know what to do with it.
...jesus, why did I just waste my time?

44

@41..Welcome to FACTS!!

https://nypost.com/2019/10/23/texas-jury-rules-against-divorced-dad-trying-to-stop-7-year-old-sons-gender-transition/

Or does your Bot Program breakdown when facts are presented?

47

@38.....It's true where ever you build a house you alter nature. The thing is that the American Southwest is totally over built. or rather, over populated. The American government wanted to lay full claim to the area after the Civil war so they had to populate the area but there was not enough water. Then they started to create dames and reservoirs for both human use and farm irrigation; the land is simply not up to it. Look at Baja California; very few people live there, given it's size, because there is not enough water and nowhere get it from.

49

@47 So you're saying the populations of southern California and Arizona should be culled, but we should have as many people as we please living in nice green former temperate rainforests like Seattle and Portland?

I suppose you'll find plenty of people in agreement with you around here, but honestly, LA wouldn't have so many people in it if they hadn't figured out how to get enough food and water to them all, with about the same amount of effort as other cities.

There are whole developed nations out there that depend on food imports via air and sea. A bit of trucking between Fresno and Irvine is negligible by comparison, and definitely not the place you'd start if you wanted to get the biggest environmental impact for your effort.

50

No I'm not saying they should be culled; they are there and not necessarily going anywhere. The water was brought in via dams and reservoirs and now we are paying the environmental price. Ultimately it is all due to overpopulation. If we could maintain a zero growth for a while and work toward a natural reduction we might still have a chance but I'm not very optimistic. A lot of our fresh water is getting more and more saline.

51

@48 - Au contraire, mon frere.

http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2019/10/the-peoples-money-part-1.html

52

@48 - Oops, forgot to add this tidbit as well.

TAXES FOR REVENUE ARE OBSOLETE
by Beardsley Ruml ,Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York
-- https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/07/taxes-for-revenue-are-obsolete.html
This article was first published in the January 1946, issue of American Affairs.

54

Natalie is spot on. Since they don’t like I976 ignore campaign finance law but legal independent expenditures for political campaigns must be shut down. Oh look cm Gonzalez is proposing just that, of course it exempts unions.

55

@50 Seattle gets its fresh water from... dams and reservoirs.

LA just uses bigger pipes. No large city is supplying you with water that is in any way "natural" when you turn on the tap. Even when it's pumped up out of a nearby lake, as in Chicago, it has to be treated in a great big industrial plant before you can drink it safely.

56

@53 You remember TARP, right?

The US government also gets money by speculating in securities, commodities, and land, and has done so since the very beginning. Some of our early war finance was via roundabout speculation in precious metals.

And there's straight up seizure of assets, too. Not a whole lot of it these days, unless you're a bumbling drug kingpin, but there was a time when a monopoly on the legitimate use of force could be pretty lucrative when employed directly. Just ask the Cherokee, you know?

57

@55.... Well, with the population of the American Southwest growing and growing I suppose a pipeline (large of course) from the Columbia River would be the next logical step. The Colorado River is pretty well dammed up and as the the reservoirs silt up new water sources will be needed. Can't imagined any real complaints; it's not as if the pipeline would be transporting oil. Perhaps the North American Water and Power Alliance will come to be after all.

58

@57 - It's almost like, who cares if their needs are actually 'sustainable', as long as humans are doing something, we'll accommodate their needs, desires, and even whims.

The "American Southwest" can't realistically support increasing numbers of people. Maybe people shouldn't move there. And if they really want to live in an increasingly hot desert (sound dum to me, but idk), maybe they should "pipeline" water from the Caribbean and DESALINATE THAT. The Oceans ARE rising afterall, there's more water in them to be had.
I think the Sasquatch Militia might have something to say about diverting the Columbia. But again, IDK, never heard of them. Probably fictitious anyway.

@53 - Ya didn't read the links. That's ok, it's a difficult concept, I don't expect even semi-average people like yourself to get it. :>)

59

Gosh, if only there weren't some Way to extract fresh water outta sea water; if it's Expensive, powerwise, then it's a damn Shame we couldn't somehow Tap the Sun. It's still shining Brightly, isn't it?

Oooooh -- I just looked outside -- it's Still THERE!

60

@59 -- This just in!:

The World Can Make More Water From the Sea, but at What Cost?

Here's a comment from the article from "crystal," from Wisconsin:

"Watered palm trees, golf courses, swimming pools, lobby ponds, grass...in the desert. Until the human race stops wasting the water they do have, they'll never catch up to demand. All the technology in the world can't counter greed, selfishness and stupidity."

Not to mention, Overpopulation.*

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/22/climate/desalination-water-climate-change.html

*WHY is the GOP so PRO- (forced) -Birth?
& ANTI-Birth Control?!?!?! Does God want MORE Babies??!
Has anyone spoken with him, lately
(as in, the past few Centuries)?

61

@36 Agree, apologies for misreading you.


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