The following letter was published in Tuesday's Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
To have a real Earth Day, first we need to have a wake for Tim Eyman. After that, we could all breathe a huge sigh of relief and get down to creating a definitive, inexpensive transportation system in Washington.The letter is at best idiotic. None of the initiatives that Eyman promoted would have prevented an "inexpensive transportation system". On the contrary, they only would have made it harder to shift the costs of an obscenely expensive and inefficient transportation system onto those who don't use the system.Jay Kridner
Seattle
But the letter is worse than idiotic. It's appalling to publish a letter wishing for anybody's demise, let alone someone who has done nothing more than exercise his constitutional right to petition the government.
P-I Editorial Page Editor Mark Trahant displayed terrible judgment in publishing this letter and should apologize to Tim Eyman.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at April 25, 2007 07:02 PM | Email ThisI ain't gettin' what I'm waitin' for, and neither are you.
Posted by: mememememe on April 25, 2007 07:44 PMHere's the email I sent to supporters:
Whenever I hear opponents attack me, I automatically insert the word "voters" whenever they do. Because the reality is that it is the voters who consistently approve our taxpayer-protection initiatives.
I didn't repeal the state motor vehicle excise tax (I-695 in 1999), the voters did.
I didn't impose 1% limits on property tax collections by state and local governments (I-747 in 2001), the voters did.
I didn't kill off laws allowing local governments to impose local vehicle fees (I-776 in 2002), the voters did.
I didn't shrink the size of the King County council from 13 politicians to nine (I-18 in 2004), the voters did.
I didn't grant the state auditor the authority to do comprehensive performance audits of state and local governments (I-900 in 2005), the voters did.
I didn't save the citizens of Washington over $7.4 billion (so far) in tax savings from our initiatives, the voters did.
But intellectually bankrupt opponents have consistently granted me almost omnipotent power -- that all things are due to Tim Eyman.
I didn't see it, but fortunately a supporter sent me a letter to the editor published in Tuesday's Seattle PI that shows the full extent of our opponents' deranged obsession:
Eyman isn't doing much to help environment
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/312784_ltrs24.html
Excellent idea, free buses on a Sunday (for Earth Day). ... (But) To have a real Earth Day, first we need to have a wake for Tim Eyman. After that, we could all breathe a huge sigh of relief and get down to creating a definitive, inexpensive transportation system in Washington.
Jay Kridner, Seattle
-- END --
If only Eyman were dead, then we could make progress.
Wow.
Being just 41 years old and in pretty good shape, it's likely I won't be fulfilling our opponents' wish anytime soon.
The fact is that Jack, Mike, and I are extremely gratified working with all of you each and every year trying to give the voters a greater voice in the process. The right to initiative is guaranteed by our state's Constitution, and we're working as hard as we can to give the taxpayers better choices at the ballot box. Politicians are always at their most dangerous when the voters aren't looking -- and thanks to the initiative process, we're putting a much brighter spotlight on Olympia's activities.
Please help us with this year's Taxpayer Protection Initiative I-960 which puts Olympia on a much shorter leash.
Go to our website to learn more about it: http://www.TheTaxpayerProtectionInitiative.com
Posted by: Tim Eyman, co-sponsor of the Taxpayer Protection Initiative I-960 on April 25, 2007 08:55 PMShut down all public transit for a day and see if anyone misses it. Anyone who pays taxes that is..
Posted by: M167A1 on April 25, 2007 10:01 PMThere's a point when anonymous or almost anonymous publication goes beyond the pale, and contributes to general incivility. Those responsible for controlling and providing the "bathroom wall" have a responsibility to edit the worst of the graffiti.
Mark Trahant, disgusting, a new low.
Posted by: Jeff B. on April 25, 2007 11:48 PM~ Evening all
Save the earth, stop global warming, blah, blah, blah...
Posted by: anonymous poster on April 26, 2007 06:53 AMI'm just floored. Apply the same rules to the highway projects that you do to Sound Transit. I've seen people lately making claims that we're investing more in transit than roads (pointing to RTID), and then in the next breath saying that RTID doesn't fully fund the Viaduct or 520. What does the infrastructure investment cost split look like when you include the Nickel package, the 2005 Transportation Partnership, and county and city road funding? 5:1 for roads?
Then people say "Oh, but transit only accounts for 3% of trips!" 3% of trips of *what length*, in *what corridors*? What percentage of trips will Sound Transit carry between Seattle and Bellevue business districts? What would the equivalent cost be to add that roadway capacity? Hell, if you're going to complain about one project only carrying a certain percentage of trips, compare apples to apples - what percentage of trips in the region does the 520 bridge carry, and what is that compared to the cost of the project? I suspect it looks about the same.
Seriously, man. You just wrote about affordable housing, and some of the commenters are blaming "government". By and large, density from city core to edge of development looks like a microeconomic curve - and so do the prices per square foot. Remember that discussion last year about how I should live on the eastside if I work there? People and businesses don't choose to locate exactly where their income would stratify them along that curve - there are more factors in play that affect those decisions.
You end up with two choices: One, create a transportation infrastructure (road, rail, etc.) to make sure they have those choices. Two, subsidize housing in the higher parts of the curve so that people can live closer to where they work. Again, this is a matter of government creating choice - either you can use the subsidized highways to get to work, or you can live closer, or a mix. If you didn't do this, there would be for instance, no service level jobs for the higher points on the curve.
What is your real argument against mass transit? It's not like we're trying to build it to Arlington. We're building it in places where naturally occurring density (it's more profitable to build higher) requires more infrastructure to support. It's more efficient (cost and land) to make that connection from Seattle to Bellevue rail than new road. I'm sorry that WSDOT and ST haven't done a study to find out how much it would cost to add another bridge instead - but I don't think you'd trust it even if they did. I think you'd complain about how much the study cost.
Sometime, I'd love to sit down and talk to you about the real infrastructure issues, why we made the decisions we have, and why we're making the decisions we seem poised to make. I'd like to know why you so strongly prefer roads over rails, even when they both seem subject to the same criticisms. We might both end up with a better understanding of where the other is coming from.
Posted by: Ben Schiendelman on April 26, 2007 07:57 AMEverytime someone on the "impartial" tv news delivers a biased report or I read something blatant in the newspaper, I drop some cash into the bucket. (Usually just a quarter.) The bucket proceeds are donated to causes I believe in. It actually helps a lot.
In the last decade, I've donated the legal limit in Presidential and mid-term elections, and also made room to drop some money into the pockets of Tim Eyeman's group. Not all of that money came from the bias bucket - I don't watch that much local and national news anymore - but it's good for several hundred dollars a year. I don't miss the money much as I figure every dollar I spend probably turns into one I won't pay in taxes.
I recommend this kind of therapy to anyone and everyone.
Posted by: johnny on April 26, 2007 09:58 AMThe "mass transit community", on the other hand is a very small minority. The costs, for example, of the Everett Sounder are paid almost completely (90+%) by the gas tax paying communter, who is not served by your toys, even in the unlikely event that the went to somewhere they were going.
Do any of you folks have families? Most peoples daily commute (if they have kids) consists of dropping off at school, going to work, picking up a school, getting groceries, going home, or some variant on that. Are you advocating that someone's 7 year old daughter take the bus or trolley to school unsupervised? Get real!
At some point, we will have a department of transportation who seet their job as transportation, not social engineering us into a re-run of 1900.
Posted by: bfr on April 26, 2007 12:16 PMThe central economic mass of this region is no longer in downtown Seattle or downtown Bellevue. And it's not central. Drive the freeways and expressways of the Puget Sound. Look out on the thousands of small corporate business parks. This is where the mass of people are going to every day, and they are coming from every which way. People choose to live in many different parts of the sound for many reasons. And often they are attached to those locations and are willing to drive a ways for employment. This is reality. No amount of fantasy Urban Condo growth is going to change the number of already existing outlying homes. And as I mentioned above, it's wrong to assume that a dense urban setting is ever where employment is located. Many will commute out of Seattle from their Urban Condos to the business parks in the suburbs.
But the bigger flaw in Ben's argument is that he sees it as government's responsibility to mete out the inequity of housing costs or transit distance. If only it were that simple. Many people choose to live in places for other reasons besides costs or transit factors. And over time those reasons tend to trump everything else. That's why we call it home. The moment we allow government to build affordable housing here, then some other desireable employer or attraction pops up there and people are commuting. It's no use playing whack-a-mole with our transit tax dollars. Instead, we should reasonably invest in whatever we can do to provide for the vast majority mode of travel, roads with buses. And then if there is a few crumbs left, we think about what we might be able to do over a long period of time to make the region better in terms of a system.
It's nice to think about rail transit, but the cost is incredibly exorbitant for those it can actually serve because it is confined to rails. And its not just human traffic, but freight that uses the roads and NOT mass transit rail.
It would take 150 years to build a regional system comparable to that of say Paris or London here in the Sound. There are many obvious factors that benefitted Paris, London, New York, etc. when they built their transit systems. Most of those historical factors are not a reality here in the Puget Sound on the West Coast of the US in 2007. So given that any transit system would have to transcend the lack of factors that made the systems in other major cities possible, and that the costs of building rail are now rising astronomical, it just ain't gonna happen.
I'd be for some very low economic impact 150 to 200 year transit plan that was realistic in accomplishing the massive public works challenges that the geography of this area demands. And more importantly, realistic in distributing the cost and construction time over decades in tiny bites. But every local politicians wants their name on the train. And they want to be present soon at the ribbon cutting ceremony for the line to nowhere. And that puts us into a fiscally irresponsible position for the many other current needs we must address as a society. Not to mention the roads which obviously carry now, and will carry the vast majority of the transportation for decades.
The reality is that almost no one in a position of transit responsiblity in the Puget Sound today is calling for fiscally sensible or otherwise realistic goals in terms of transit. If they were, then they would be talking a lot more about buses and roads, and a lot less about trains.