Local NASCAR Track Still A Local Ripoff
In an article headlined "Local track doomed by local ignorance" on the front page of Sunday's sports section Jerry Brewer argues that the rubes in Seattle wouldn't know a good opportunity if it drove over them at 150mph. Actually, he points to a handful of distinct examples of our local ignorance. He points to comments by Frank Chopp in which the House Speaker from Seattle cites a non-existent DUI charge against Richard Petty and he points to comments by Larry Seaquist, D of Gig Harbor, in which Seaquist disparages all of NASCAR fandom and likely 80% of the country by stating, "These are not the kind of people you would want living next door to you. They'd be the ones with the junky cars in the front yard and would try to slip around the law." Brewer's right on this count--these statements are terrible.
Brewer's other example of local ignorance, however, is that the deal the ISC is offering Washington is so good there's simply no way we can pass it up, unless, of course, we're classist jerkoffs like Chopp and Seaquist. The deal goes like this: the ISC pays for half of a NASCAR track in Washington. Washington taxpayers front the other half. You can dress that up with a lot of talk about how the taxpayers will be repaid a hundred-fold in golden NASCAR doubloons, but it still sounds like a raw deal for the people who are going to take up the heavy end of those taxes, and it doesn't stop being a raw deal just because our lawmakers are a bunch of latte-sippers who don't understand anything about the world outside of their districts' boundaries. The comments are embarrassing, but not so embarrassing that we feel the need to slink into a NASCAR grandstand in Kitsap and bury our heads in a billion decibels of engine noise.
