The Seattle City Council finalized its legislative agenda last week, Seattle Met’s Publicola noted, and its contents probably won’t shock you. The legislative agenda directs the city’s lobbyists as they advocate the council’s priorities to the state Legislature.
You didn’t think they were going to call for no-new-taxes, did you? No, not the Seattle City Council. They have a much more “ambitious” agenda. Kshama Sawant’s fingerprints are all over it.
You can read through the whole thing here, or we can sum it up for you:
- Let’s make it harder for federal authorities to do their job against illegal immigrants, but
- Let’s make it easier for bicycle messengers to deliver pot
- It’s time to end the statewide ban on rent control laws because rent control laws are such a success elsewhere, and
- The state shouldn’t enact any kind of levy swap to meet the McCleary decision on schools funding because Seattle schools are so good already
With a rock-solid agenda like that, Seattle is well-positioned to be pretty much ignored by legislators this year.
With a rock-solid agenda like that, Seattle is well-positioned to be pretty much ignored by legislators this year.
Oh, please. Whenever Republicans control at least one house of our legislature, we’re pretty much guaranteed to get at least one “stick it to Seattle” bill. It’s like schoolboys shooting spitballs, only with taxpayer money — and with far less dignity.
Republicans don’t control squat in our legislature and haven’t for a generation, comrade. Who signs the “stick it to Seattle” bills? Our Republican governor? You’re talking your usual nonsense loser.
Republicans don’t control squat in our legislature and haven’t for a generation, comrade.
Shift seems to believe otherwise. They claim Republicans have controlled our state’s Senate for years:
In 2013, the Majority Caucus Coalition (with GOP Sen. Andy Hill as budget writer), the state budget re-prioritized spending…
You and Shift can fight that out among yourselves. Once you’ve lost that, you can work on your ever-hopeless reading comprehension problem:
Who signs the “stick it to Seattle” bills?
I never claimed any of these bills ever actually went anywhere; they’re just petulant, bitter grandstanding by legislators who can’t actually solve our real problems, and who resent Seattle voters’ resultant rejection of them. From a recent example, the SR-99 tunnel project:
That’s a cost overrun Seattle should eat, as far as Ed Orcutt, R-Kalama, is concerned.
That’s right, punish the very taxpayers who are already most affected by the project’s delay. And what was the brilliant “solution” the good Republican proposed?
… he’ll resist a proposal to pay another $17 million, to keep transit buses moving through the construction zone.
Yes, that’s right– he proposed worsening the very traffic congestion the project’s delay has caused. Stick it to Seattle, indeed.
“I never claimed any of these bills ever actually went anywhere”
Kinda like Gov. Carbon Pollution’s ridiculous Cap and Tax scheme? You know, the joke he couldn’t even get fellow traveler Choppster to bring up for a vote in the House?
“That’s a cost overrun Seattle should eat, as far as Ed Orcutt, R-Kalama, is concerned”—“That’s right, punish the very taxpayers who are already most affected by the project’s delay”
“he’ll resist a proposal to pay another $17 million, to keep transit buses moving through the construction zone”—“Yes, that’s right– he proposed worsening the very traffic congestion the project’s delay has caused”
Who will benefit the most IF the SR-99 boondoggle is ever completed? Why should the citizens of Kalama pay for “cost overruns” on an uncompleted fiasco in Seattle? You’ve always told us how the economic powerhouse of Seattle pays for everything statewide and now it seems you want the citizens of Kalama to pay for a tunnel in Seattle they may very well ever neither see nor use. Da, comrade! We’re all brothers in the glorious collective! Citizens of Kalama, unite! and pay for stuff in Seattle you will probably never use! Fail.
Why don’t you respond to shootings in Seattle being up 24% in the first full year of I-594? Indeed.
You’ve always told us how the economic powerhouse of Seattle pays for everything statewide…
Yes, the urban-planning powerhouse that is Kalama has received far more dollars from Seattle than it has sent. Maybe they can reciprocate someday.
… you want the citizens of Kalama to pay for a tunnel in Seattle they may very well ever neither see nor use.
I want the citizens of Washington state to pay for a Washington State highway. Please do tell us what, exactly, you find objectionable about this.
Da, comrade! We’re all brothers in the glorious collective!
Then our good comrades in Kalama will have great pride in contributing to your glorious socialistic motoring subsidy!
Fail.
Bingo.
“I want the citizens of Washington state to pay for a Washington State highway”
So you finally are cool with the freeway in Spokane. What was all your bitching on that subject about?
You’ve always told us how the economic powerhouse of Seattle pays for everything statewide and now it seems you want the citizens of Kalama to pay for a tunnel in Seattle they may very well ever neither see nor use.
Since each inhabitant of Cowlitz County receives $1.39 in state government services for every tax dollar paid to the state, the chance any of Kalama’s two and a half thousand inhabitants ever paid for anything in Seattle without personally visiting here is tiny at best.
So you finally are cool with the freeway in Spokane.
Um, no, just for those projects which have economic justifications. (I keep forgetting you have no idea what that means, and so I must explicitly state it each and every time.) Baumgartner’s desperate need for peddling pork to buy his re-election shouldn’t interfere with WSDOT’s actual work. Please let us know how my expressing that simple concept bothers you.
Economic justifications? Like the economic justifications for freak flag crosswalks and unused bike lanes? What an idiot. Face it, the only reason you don’t like the Spokane freeway is who proposed it. If the Choppster had a relative with a construction company he needed to funnel some graft to and he proposed a freeway starting in Elliott Bay and ending in the middle of Lake Washington with no on and off ramps, you’d be singing praise’s for it far and wide in your usual hyper-partisan fashion and you know it.
And speaking WSDOT’s actual “work”, you’ll probably deny hearing the latest news from the tunnel that will never open. In an uncharacteristic move, our ineffective governor pulled his head out of his Carbon Pollution fog and stopped work on the tunnel fiasco after a giant sinkhole opened up mere yards downstream from the pit where the money drilling machine sat idle for 2 years. Now the citizens of Kalama and every other Washington taxpayer will have to pay more and more for this idiocy until the plug is finally pulled for good. Now that’s some economic justification there comrade.
Why don’t you respond to shootings in Seattle being up 24% in the first full year of I-594?
Number of murders in Seattle, 2013: 19
Number of murders in Seattle, 2014: 23
Number of murders in Seattle, 2015: 22
Any idea why the murder rate dropped? (Your “explanation” for how I-594 couldn’t possibly have reversed the upward trend should be pretty entertaining, even by your standard for grasping reality.)
Murders in Seattle:
2001 – 25
2002 – 26
2003 – 34
2004 – 24
2005 – 25
2006 – 30
2007 – 24
2008 – 29
2009 – 22
2010 – 19
2011 – 20
2012 – 23
2013 – 19
2014 – 23
2015 – 22
Any idea why you would claim that there was an “upward trend” that was reversed? There was an “upward trend” from 2004 to 2006 that was “reversed” in 2007 and an “upward trend” from 2010 to 2012 that was “reversed” in 2013. What gun control legislation was passed in 2006 and 2012 that led to these “reversals”? None. You might have had a point if I-594 had passed in 2003 with the dramatic decline the next year. As it is, your only point is on top of your head. I-594 is a spectacularly ineffective failure that does absolutely nothing to reduce crime and only makes law-abiding citizens register their guns for future confiscation efforts. That’s grasping reality. Maybe you should stick to finger painting for your entertainment.
Let’s make it easier for bicycle messengers to deliver pot…
So, what exactly is wrong with improving conditions for local businesses which sell Washington state’s agricultural products? Why is Shift opposing a pro-business policy in Seattle?