Wait, where is the required 2/3 vote by the Citizens for any tax-exemption renewal and the No Seattle Tax Dollars in Eastern Washington (Lincoln) part ...

I thought "we" all want the surface transit option instead of replacing 520 anyway... and that voting on everything is good... ???

Once the ST/WSDOT agreement is finalized, it will be too late to be undone by this initiative (assuming it's legal, which in Eymanworld, is often subject to question).

Laws don't work ex-post-facto.

Not to sound like a dum-dum, but I have never understood why Kemper Freeman so vehemently opposes light rail. Wouldn't it be a boon to have more shoppers at his malls? Or am I missing something completely?

@4

Wrong kind (color?) of shoppers.

Kemper's a racist with delusions that Bellevue is something more than a more scenic version of West Omaha.

But it's not really his fault. The poor thing had a dreadful father who hated Asians, and I don't real think Kemper got out much.

He's very old, so I don't know why this is so important to him, but my wish is that he will live to see link trains running through downtown Bellevue.

Somebody find that quote he made about the customers he saw at SouthCenter, and how he doesn't want his mall to become like that....

@5 & @6

What are you basing that on?

@7 Well... South Center is a shithole... I'd like to see the quote, and fuck him if he got all racial, but generically saying, "I don't want my mall to be like South Center" (or North Gate for that matter) sounds like a reasonable statement to me...

It would also make it impossible it seems for the state to ever sell a road.

I heard about some morons with clipboards outside of walmart$ asking people for sigs. on lowering the gas tax. Because as you all know the state raises gas prices (and gets rich) all the time.

*rolls eyes*

@8 Look up "Strawberry Days" on Amazon and read it. (Or see http://us.macmillan.com/strawberrydays)

#11: I don't drive and would completely support lowering or eliminating the state gas tax. That's probably the only absolute way to kill the tunnel, get a progressive income tax, and/or another tax that can be used for transit.

@8, Here, my dear.....

http://horsesass.org/?p=24209

http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/Japan…

The quote about Southcenter was from a Times article
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.c…

the big scandal was this ""When you walk through the [Southcenter] mall, the way the customer dresses just to shop there — the light blue and pink hair curlers, the shoes that flop, flop, flop along — it's a completely different customer."

Personally, I didn't really see where that was anything but self-agrandizing. After all, Southcenter (Penney's, Macy's, Nordstrom) and Bellevue Square (Penney's, Macy's, Nordstrom) might get slightly different "classes" of people, but it's all a wash at the end of the day. The same people buying basically the same merchandise, with a bunch of seniors and teens thrown in for good measure.

@12

I didn’t know that Kemper was responsible for the Japanese internment camps. I thought FDR was running things then…

Fairly amazing to learn it was Kemper, and not FDR, who “evacuated” the Japanese from Seattle. Especially considering he would have been about 1 year old when it happened...

@3 um, guy, the DBT is not official until the following legally occur:

a. All THREE EIS portions must be complete (we're not even half done yet)

b. All THREE mandatory EPA hearings are complete (none have even begun)

Don't count your Tunnels before they're slaughtered in cold blood.

@8 Thanks! Had not seen this info.

But...

“When you walk through the (Southcenter) mall, the way the customer dresses just to shop there — the light blue and pink hair curlers, the shoes that flop, flop, flop along — it’s a completely different customer,” said Freeman. “Yet we are 12 miles apart.”

That’s racist???... Because Asians are, as we all know, so partial to “light blue and pink hair curlers”???...

Classist, maybe, old fuddy duddy, probably (my sainted grandmother thought it was deplorable that men no longer wore proper hats!) but not racist.

I’ll grant that he would seem to prefer to have the “upper class” shopping in Bellevue, and maybe he’s elitist for that, (or maybe he just thinks it's better for his business) but to assume he’s racist because his grandfather took advantage of some of FDR’s more deplorable policies seems like a stretch to me.

I meant @14 not @8... :-/

17, I agree with you (as I said in my post) that I didn't think that was racist. Just kind of dumb.

And you are right about Roosevelt and internment. That was inexcusable, and a stain on an otherwise fine presidency. However, it should be noted that he was under extreme pressure by west coast agricultural and business leaders to remove the Japanese from the west coast. They were threatening not to go along with the war mobilization. Some, like Miller Freeman, were influential publishers, who could rally racists to a populist cause. All saw the advantages in relieving the Japanese from their land. Roosevelt made a deal with the devil to make sure the army and the nation would be fed.

I take it back that Kemper is a racist. His grandfather undoubtedly was. But Kemper has had to live, and profit, off a Bellevue that is more racially diverse than Seattle. instead, I would say that he is a person who judges others solely on their economic clout. Given the growing disparity in income in this country, and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a very few (of which he is not one, even for all his money) it's probably not the best business plan. But, like I said, he is old.

@19,

Miller Freeman was more than an influential publisher. He was the president of the "Anti-Japanese League of Washington State." Really.

Wait...so tolling on the 520 is OK because it's paying for the bridge. But, raising fares on public transit to pay for itself is not because drivers should also be footing that bill?

Yes.

I thought these initiatives have to legally be on only one "topic". This should be challenged in court.

@21 that argument would be valid if gas taxes and tolls actually paid for the full price road construction/maintenance.

Nice callback to the original name of your blog.

What @24 and the Military Industrial Complex subsidized by US taxpayers said.

@24 Your counter-argument would be valid if all transit costs was covered by fares.