Damn you, Mercer Island! You did this to us. Here's Judy Clibborn on democracy:
All this talk is just so much noise to Rep. Judy Clibborn, D-Mercer Island, who chairs the state House Transportation committee. "The state is building that tunnel," she said in an interview. "It's a done deal."
For a clue as to what a Seattle sans P-I might be like, look no farther than this Seattle Times article on the ragtag group of citzens--gosh, looks like they're the entrenched power elite, actually--that has pluckily banded together to force a tunnel down Seattle's throat, vote or no. Calling the group a collection of "business leaders, neighborhood activists and environmentalists," the story doesn't name any actual activists or environmentalists. There's attorney Tayloe Washburn, from the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce; Rob Sexton, Downtown Seattle Association; and David Freiboth, King Co. Labor Council. The car-friendly folks at the Discovery Institute's Cascadia Center are in on it, too. The group reminds us of the band of merchants in Westerns who are always willing to sell out the rest of the town if it means they won't be personally inconvenienced--or might profit in some way. And of course they always have the mayor's ear. Stakeholders is exactly right. They do think they own the place.
This morning we were down at the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce breakfast and regional economic forecast discussion, which opened with chair Tayloe Washburn being emotionally overcome while talking about how strapped food banks are for donations. (At which point we sorely regretted suggesting the chamber was "populated largely by jaw-dangling idiots," and wished we'd stuck to the rule of vilifying awful ideas rather than the people whose heads they're stinking up.)
