June 27, 2005
Monorail Radio
Seattle Monorail Project director Joel Horn is at this hour struggling to defend his insane boondoggle on KUOW's Weekday. State Auditor Brian Sonntag is also on the program, representing the voice of reason.
Listen and call in with your questions.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at June 27, 2005
10:16 AM | Email This
1. Joel Horn goes from job to job, with high salaries. His title is "Director of Marketing for the Emporer's Tailor". That's all he does is sell invisible projects, but he manages to make everybody believe him, all the way to the bank.
2. In the private sector, how long would this project have lasted before the corporate 'powers that be' would have cut it?
Democrats often speak of "corporate welfare" - meaning, high-dollar gov't hand-outs to big corporations (we are to infer that the $ then goes into the pockets of rich corporate leaders). Reality is that Democrats engage in this practice wholesale; SMP is a prime example.
I actually am in favor of SMP - I want to see how much Seattle money Democrats can waste.
3. Why doesn't Sonntag ever run for Governor?
I mean, assuming the R's nominated someone like Rossi or McKenna, I'd still vote R, but he'd sure be a good Governor for a D.
I guess that's the problem: He wouldn't make it past the primary.
4. for being such a mess the monorail seems slow to die.Sontag & Murphy are right!!
5. Horn needs to go back to Paul Allen. Armed w/ the Supreme decision on takings, he now has the smarminess and money to pull off another commons.
6. As if that hideous music museum is not enough . . . Paul Allen's "thank you" to Seattle for not building the Commons project. Who knows what else Seattle could be stuck with if Joel gets at the helm of another project with Paul Allen's money, it fails (as all of Joel's projects do), and we get another "thank you" from Paul Allen.
7. How can anyone in good conscience go about selling the idea of mortgaging the future of the city to tune of 5 times the project cost?
Amazing!
8. Just don't come to Olympia asking non-Seattlites to bail y'all out, Mr. Horn
9. Is that my radio static or someone justifying another bad deal?
How long from the State Treasurer's "dump it" to the time the Mono-brueaucracy is disbanded or no longer draws a paycheck? Time's a tickin'.
10. And what did Sonntag say on that radio show, Stefan? He said if he lived in Seattle he would vote for the monorail and hope it got built, that it is merely his job to question projects, and he had no reason to believe there was anything wrong with the project. Admittedly not the impression he gave with his letter of last week. But that's what he said on KUOW. Soon we are going to see an apples-to-apples comparison of monorail debt and maintenance with regional road and transit projects, and trust me, monorail will then look like a hell of a deal. Martin Selig and the Seattle Chamber, those road-lovers, opened this box and they'll soon wish they hadn't.