I returned late yesterday from a brief visit with family in Boston. I left Seattle early Friday, so I missed the King County Council's vote on I-25. The punchline, as expected: the democracy-fearing Democrats obstructed urgently needed and widely demanded reforms until after the 2008 election, rejecting I-25 and forcing the voters to vote twice in order to change the county charter before we have the chance to elect our Elections Director.
See Toby Nixon's more detailed write-up of the Council's action.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at September 10, 2007 09:51 AM | Email ThisNot sure intent your partisan inconsistencies to be so easy to spot.
Posted by: Bill Anderson on September 10, 2007 10:36 AMHe is not inconsistent at all. He wants the voters to be able to decide about I-25. Democrats want to obstruct by asking the voters to "vote on voting". It is a calculated political move by the Democrat dominated council to pave the way for another stolen election in 2008.
Not sure you intended your partisan inconsistencies to be so easy to spot.
Posted by: pbj on September 10, 2007 01:44 PMYour posts are always so predictable. To use your own words, your partisan inconsistencies are so easy to spot!
Posted by: drw on September 10, 2007 03:13 PMI would like to post less often. For that to happen, Stefan must become accurate and consistent in all his postings. Here's hoping!
Posted by: Bill Anderson on September 10, 2007 06:46 PMBlind faith is just not good....
Posted by: Bill Anderson on September 10, 2007 08:20 PMFor that matter, having grown up in Boston, I wonder whether Mr. Sharansky knows anything at all about the city he called the "cradle" of liberty?
Mr. Shark, or whatever your real name is, if you had visited MY neighborhood in Boston we wold taken you and dumped you in the cauldron of freedom and boiled you like a red lobster! A fitting fate for a lapsed yid like you. You are trafe!
Shame shame!
Next time you want to visit my old home city, give me a call and I'll tell you where to go to see the real Boston.
Posted by: SeattleJew on September 10, 2007 09:07 PM
Read his stuff carefully...there are many inaccuracies, huge leaps and assumptions throughout his postings.
Mostly, as this post demonstrates, he runs right to the sensational to get attention. That alone should tell you a lot about the completeness and veracity of his postings.
Posted by: Bill Anderson on September 11, 2007 06:05 AMNo Bill, you do the work. If you're going to make those accusations, you post the evidence to back up the claims, don't make us have to ferret them out. Since I haven't agreed too much with your earlier postings, I would not necessarily be able to find your references.
Personally, I don't see Stefan's posts as contradictory. As to "sensationalism" - I suppose you no longer read any newspapers or watch any television news (broadcast or cable) because they always over sensationalize their stories...
After the debacle of the 2004 elections, Sims and Dean were asked why the King County Elections division had so many problems.
Many citizens were unimpressed with their responses. The citizens then began to redress their grievances by asking that the Council change the way the Director of Elections was chosen, i.e. - change the charter to allow the position to be elected, not appointed. The Council demurred and decided to put it off until 2009.
The citizens did not accept this response and started an initiative drive - I25. Now the request to move to an elected position was much more formal, backed by thousands of signatures.
Again, the council decided that it knows better than the people they are supposed to represent and again they demurred. This time, by sending I25 to the ballot in November, they basically said, "If you want us to pass this ordinance, make us, and by the way, this allows us to delay the decision and position for another year."
The people were not pleased with the original 2009 date given by the council and presented I25 to speed it up. By the council not adopting I25 and forcing two votes, they have effectively told the citizens - "So what?"
In this case, government is hiding behind forcing additional elections in order to avoid taking action they don't really want to do.
In the case of I960, additional elections are advisory and would have no direct effect on government's action (unless, of course, they followed the wishes of the people they "serve").
As for this area being a "grave"... Compared to two hundred years ago, do we really have more freedoms and liberty today? Are we such a fragile society that even the thought that something we say or do will offend someone will cause us to self-censor our thoughts, actions, and words?
Political Correctness has probably had more of an impact on the day-to-day lives of people in restricting their activities (right or wrong) than anything in the Patriot Act.
There is very much more government intrusion today in how we run our lives. Liberties we used to have with private property rights are mostly a fond remembrance of the past. Washington's GMA and the CAO's are prime examples. There are discussions to charge drivers with fees based on time and route of travel - by putting "tracking" devices in their cars to allow automatic billing. Now, if you use your car, the government can track your movements. This is liberty?
Government uses taxation and government largesse to forcibly modify societal behavior. Was this the attitude of our Founding Fathers?
I would submit that the ideals espoused by our forefathers of freedom, justice, and individual rights have manifestly changed over the centuries. At our founding, we were told that to have these rights required certain responsibilities from us. Today, we assert our rights, yet also assert that we have no responsibilities in order to retain them. Someone else is always at fault. Someone else is responsible to take care of us. Someone else is responsible to make us whole. Most of the time, it is either the government directly or government coercian that becomes "Someone else".
A far cry from our founding.