Today's Seattle Times reports that Greg Nickels (he of the 100-mile-a-day tax-payer-funded chauffeured limousine), is again telling the little people to drive less often:
"If we all pause before we make a car trip, we can make a difference," Nickels said at a news conference urging people to give their cars a summer vacation.Where was this news conference?
Nickels spoke at a Rainier Avenue South intersectionYou know, if Nickels thinks people should "pause before we make a car trip", why did he, his staff and members of the press have to get in their cars and make a special trip out to Rainier Avenue? Why not just e-mail out a press release and do a web video conference and avoid all those unnecessary car trips?
As Glenn Reynolds is fond of saying
I'll believe it's a crisis when the people who keep telling me it's a crisis start acting like it's a crisis.Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at May 22, 2008 10:52 AM | Email This
How bout they all get busy being public servants and doing their jobs and quit trying to tell the rest of us how to live our lives.
Posted by: Unkl Witz on May 22, 2008 10:44 AMIf Nickels really wanted to do some good, he could mandate that all Seattle City employees use the mass transit on which we've already spent billions Yeah, it would be an enormous inconvenience for them, but it might begin to use the systems that have so much built in waste. And government offices tend to be located right where the transit lines run. And government sure likes to use force to get what it wants. What better place to start than on itself?
Between private van pools, and public employees mandated to use the public transit, we might actually make a dent in congestion and fuel usage. But Nickels is content to continue with the status quo, and live his own fat cat life, while making useless and showy emotional appeals. Nothing but a typical Progressive.
And nothing but the Seattle all-talk and no-action continuance that will lead to nothing.
The guy is a freak. He'll be re-elected of course. Any challenge to Nickels in 2009 would be just for show, to make it look like local political campaigns still matter around here. That aside, he has absolutely no idea how to lead in the transportation arena. All he does is waste money and piss off the other (Dem) politicians in the state when it comes to transportation.
This light rail is a complete boondoggle. They could have added a couple of buses along MLK, given some priority streetlights, and accomplished exactly the same thing. Instead, Nickels just pours billions of dollars down a blue and white rathole called Sound Transit.
Posted by: cuthbert on May 22, 2008 10:50 AMHow bout they all get busy being public servants and doing their jobs and quit trying to tell the rest of us how to live our lives.
Posted by: Unkl Witz on May 22, 2008 10:44 AM
Wow, you actually made sense for once. Miracles do happen.
Posted by: FreedomLover on May 22, 2008 11:19 AMBut how many typical weekend travelers are going to drive from say, North of Seattle, down to some place in the Rainier Valley, where they can't find safe parking, and leave their car, to then hop on the light rail in to the Airport, when it would have been faster just to continue driving and parking in one of the preexisting airport parking lots. The number will be close to zero. So the daily commuter usage will consist of the few who live in Rainier Valley and need to get in to downtown. Because most of the rail route is through industrial Boeing Field area where there is little housing.
But just wait, Danny Westneat will be right there smiling and riding the rail while interviewing some Tukwila resident that works downtown and finds it convenient. There will be a tight shot from a photographer that hides the sparse number of passengers, or else they will simply wait until they happen to get a full train for a sporting event, etc. Or possibly even just stage the ridership for show. Seattle's Green/ Progressive leadership above Potemkin Trains? Doubtful, sounds right up their alley.
After a couple months, some organization like the EFF will do a real report on the light rail usage, and it will be shown to be a total joke, and mostly consisting of some population of subsidized riders, who otherwise would not have chosen the rail.
Billions spent, very little delivered. Nice going Seattle. Not a whole lot to show for decades of angst and waste.
Posted by: Jeff B. on May 22, 2008 11:28 AMI'm all for reasonable government and reasonable solutions, building infrastructure, incentives, good environmental stewardship, conservation, sensible recycling where it costs less than producing goods from scratch, as with glass, aluminum, etc.
But the whole waste culture of Seattle Greens and Progressives that is willing to spend billions for solutions that won't possibly dent congestion problems, while blocking every attempt to fix congestion, etc. is a total abomination. If we did anything at all sensible with our billions in tax dollars, I'd sign on in a heartbeat.
But we never do, all we get is bleating from people like David Goldstein that are convinced that one more transit folly will lead to utopia, when we know it will only scratch the surface of changing more than 100 years of habits and culture that have built our existing infrastructure. How many van pools could we have started with the Billions wasted on light rail?
My bro lives in Portland and drives a van pool of his fellow employees across town. Every day, the van is filled to capacity, it is subsidized by his company as an employee benefit. It saves fuel, is privately managed and maintained without high unions salaries of drivers, maintenance yards, etc. And it takes people from tight clusters of employee residence to where they are all going, and is much more flexible to individual schedules that the rigid schedules of the empty Tri-Met buses and Max trains that would take many transfers to accomplish the same trip.
It's just far more sensible to think outside the box, and incentivize private business to better locate employees, provide for transit, encourage flex schedules and telecommuting, etc. then to think that government can ever solve the problem with Trillions of dollars in centralized rail lines and empty bus lines.
All conservatives, moderates and reasonable Democrats know this to be true. And even extreme enviro-nuts and HorsesAss Progressives know this as well in their hearts, although they will never admit it, because they like the statism that goes along with such massive centralized infrastructure projects, and they've come to rely on they programmable Construction Union votes to keep their power base.
We possess all of the knowledge for solutions that can have an impact tomorrow, but we are never going to get their with the same doubting, halted, lame, discuss-it-to-death, environmental-impact-study-it-to-death Seattle and Puget Sound leadership.
It's time for citizens to reject these fools, and get on with solving our problems, creating energy, and being proud of human success, and achievement and the infrastructure it takes to make it happen.
Vote down all ST ballot measures. And vote for never-been-in-office-before candidates with solutions, and not just the same old asshats who work for Democrat controlled Unions. And if there's a Republican Union stooge or Construction Lobby rep, reject them as well.
It's time for citizens to get going today on solving our problems, our leadership has proven over decades that they have no such desire.
He's right. Before my next drive, I think I'll pause and think aloud "we need a new mayor in this Cowtown, I can make a difference and vote him out of office next election". The problem is the intellectual invalids on the left that would never think of doing such a thing.
Posted by: Rick D. on May 22, 2008 11:55 AMYeah that should work with all these hills around. It sure will keep the EMS busy with heart problems for bike riders trying to get to work!
Only Seattle.
Posted by: Army Medic/Vet on May 22, 2008 11:58 AMI saw a picture today of the Obama family getting out of a huge SUV. Wasn't he just telling *us* the other day that *we* can't drive our SUV's, and eat what we want, etc?
The rules do not apply to them. And yet there are people on this board who willingly forfeit their own personal freedoms for self-esteem issues.
Posted by: Gary on May 22, 2008 12:06 PMAnd I couldn't help but notice that when Ted Kennedy left the hospital yesterday, the reporter noted that he drove off in a (gas-guzzling) Chevy Suburban. I doubt Feinstein has given up her SUV, either. Nor likely has John Kerry given up "the family's" SUVs.
Think Obama was talking to Ted et al when he said we can't drive our SUV's? Nah....
Posted by: Michele on May 22, 2008 12:16 PM'Offset their carbon.' Oh for joy. And to think they're actually serious. These people aren't qualified to run anything, much less a country. (maybe the hemp festival)
Posted by: Michele on May 22, 2008 12:35 PM
#19: Give it to our Governor for her consideration and distribution and go back to selling real-estate
Posted by: Duffman on May 22, 2008 12:50 PMIt seems to me that Government workers driving their cars to work everyday is a major component of the gridlock we have around downtown Seattle on an everyday basis.
He's the mayor, he could order (at least) all of the city employees (if not state and federal) to ride the buses (or other public transit) to work every day or get fired. That would do several things:
1. Reduce the amount of greenhouse gases that cars sitting idling traffic emit.
2. Reduce the demand for gas (locally), thereby reducing the price
3. Set an example, and prove that he's not just trying to dictate how everybody else should live, but that he's actually willing to lead by example and not by dictating (that everybody else should ride the bus).
Not to mention parking, and wear and tear on the ridiculously under maintained roads in downtown Seattle, and increase the demand for public transit.
How about it Nickels - how about cleaning up things in your own house before you start fretting about what everybody else is doing...
As it is, he's a great example of what liberal thinking is - get people worried and fretting about "what everybody else is doing" instead of doing anything practical himself.
Posted by: thecomputerguy on May 22, 2008 12:52 PM
It seems to me that Government workers driving their cars to work everyday is a major component of the gridlock we have around downtown Seattle on an everyday basis.
He's the mayor, he could order (at least) all of the city employees (if not state and federal) to ride the buses (or other public transit) to work every day or get fired. That would do several things:
1. Reduce the amount of greenhouse gases that cars sitting idling traffic emit.
2. Reduce the demand for gas (locally), thereby reducing the price
3. Set an example, and prove that he's not just trying to dictate how everybody else should live, but that he's actually willing to lead by example and not by dictating (that everybody else should ride the bus).
Not to mention parking, and wear and tear on the ridiculously under maintained roads in downtown Seattle, and increase the demand for public transit.
How about it Nickels - how about cleaning up things in your own house before you start fretting about what everybody else is doing...
As it is, he's a great example of what liberal thinking is - get people worried and fretting about "what everybody else is doing" instead of doing anything practical himself.
Posted by: thecomputerguy on May 22, 2008 12:52 PM
Can you tell me why Obama was in an SUV today?
Posted by: Gary on May 22, 2008 12:52 PMSo. you're fine with these hypocrites telling us how to live? What to drive, what to eat, what to keep our thermostats at?
(I dread your answer)
Posted by: Gary on May 22, 2008 01:16 PMDuffman, Obama wants you out of your SUV, but not himself. Don't you agree that makes him a phony hypocrite?
(still dreading the answer)
Posted by: Gary on May 22, 2008 01:33 PMSo, Duffman, if Obama a phony or not?
Posted by: Gary on May 22, 2008 01:51 PMLike winning the "war on terror" by catching Osama bin Laden?
Nickels sure can't match that for hypocrisy or incompetence, can he?
Posted by: ivan on May 22, 2008 02:17 PMLike I said before... it's a cult. He walks on water.
Don't be a duffous, duffman. Reality simply doesn't work that way.
1. Virtually no one in my business or those even closely related can take public transportation. We must bring the tools of the trade with us. We need to move from site to site. The hours required often take us to times when the pt doesn't run. Same with delivery vehicles, aid vehicles, and any of a number of other occupations.
2. My daughter works in Seattle, but must work weekends. There is no combination of pt that will get her to work on time, because of pt schedules and limitations, not hers.
3. A close friend of mine is a Vet. Make farm calls on pt? Unlikely.
4. Parents w/kids, often in different schools, taking music lessons or dealing with soccer schedules? Impossible.
5. My sister lives just close enough to her job that it's closer to walk than take the bus. And it's a lot faster. Takes the bus sometimes when it rains.
6. My daughter lives a mile up the side of a hill. She takes her daughter with her nearly always. She's gonna take stroller, etc. on a rural bus that comes once every couple of hours? Don't think so. A simple doc visit would consume an entire day, and where, exactly, would she put the groceries?
I work most days on the Microsoft campus. I see scores of people every day that can easily avail themselves of pt. Still, a large percentage drive, for whatever reason. The fact remains that virtually no one in my personal life can use pt. Most of them read stuff like what you write, and realize that you have no clue how it is for a major part of the population outside your narrow view. You may not see the nameless and faceless people that make your insular life possible, but they do exist and find it insulting that people like you presume that they should forfeit having a meaningful life by being a slave to a pt system that does not meet--and cannot--their needs. Extrapolating from what a few want to the one-size-fits-all ersatz public good may work very well in your mind, but for the rest of us represents a return to a brutal feudal or caste system. Feeling good about being green is not a suitable substitute for quality of life, and that is your "feel good," not mine. That is why the presumption of placing nearly all the transportation dollars into pt rather than road capacity outrages so many and is fundamentally doomed to failure.
FWIW, I have used pt numerous times when attending sporting events. THAT use actually works for me. I'm rarely in the mood to stop and fix something on game day. Light rail, monorail, etc. are not necessary or even constructive solutions for a few, let alone the many. They are rigid in more ways than one.
Yes, the thread is about the hypocrisy of politicians, but the reason they are so outrageous is revealed in the ease with which you utter the word "EVERYone." As if improved behavior from them would remove justifiable grounds for complaint about pt, while actually it's merely a tangential issue. ST and related boondoggles must die for the public good, and not keep being resuscitated by pandering and disingenuous politicians...like the phoenix rising from the ashes.
Duffman, it's none of Obama's business what I drive, and why. He has reasons to drive an SUV, and so do I. But I don't demand that he, or you, behave in any way that I'm not prepared to. It's not my business.
Posted by: Gary on May 22, 2008 02:33 PMWhat the heck does that matter? I have reasons for everything I do. Butt out.
Posted by: Gar on May 22, 2008 02:40 PMTotal BS. A dodge. Any "solution" based on the normative beliefs of insular policy wonks that ignores reality is doomed to failure. Your response ignores reality and restates the false take on reality.
One step down the wrong road is a mis-step.
I'll be relieved when your Green Card from Oz expires.
Posted by: scott158 on May 22, 2008 02:51 PMLikewise Mr Obama...quit telling us we have to learn how to get by with driving less, or eating less. Bull! This is America. We lead. We don't get by. I've spent a liftime working my ass off so I don't have to "get by." How about showing me some spine and leadership and tell me what you are going to do to keep America a country that leads, and doesn't just get by?
Anyone remember "Why Not the Best" or whatever that mess was titled? "Best" as a euphamism for enjoying a plunge into the glories of stagflation.
Posted by: scott158 on May 22, 2008 03:19 PMhttp://www.americanthinker.com/2008/05/gore_celebrates_israels_60th_w_1.html
When my son worked at the AGs office in Seattle (05-06) he was able to buy a state employee "flex-pass" for $50/year that entitled him ridership on any mode of pubic transportation. He rode the train twice a day, 5 days a week, each and every work day for $50 per year as a state employee.
$50 per year
So let's round down to 250 work days per year... thats 0.20/DAY!
EACH AND EVERY DAMNED GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE SHOULD BE MAXING OUT STANDING ROOM ONLY TRAINS AND BUSES FOR 20 FLIPPIN CENTS A DAY!
Posted by: Ragnar Danneskjold on May 22, 2008 04:44 PMAnd what a classic scene. Our big, fat methane producing Mayor driving out with entourage to tell us not to drive.
As I always tell people, if Nickels says it is so, I know it aint.
Posted by: BananaLand on May 22, 2008 04:47 PMYou mean Palestinians, people who live in Palestine:
I'm sure Shark's concerned with them...
Posted by: Shanghai Dan on May 22, 2008 05:19 PMMy journey from left to right began years ago with the realization that it is the left that constantly tells us how they want us to live. They are also the "fear mongers" they claim right wingers to be. Nickels even scares children at Christmas with lies about Santa losing his home due to global warming.
And leftists scream about "wiretapping".
I'm ready for a martini.
Posted by: Bill Cruchon on May 22, 2008 05:42 PMI live in Maple Leaf, and at exactly 9PM tonight I'm heading out to the North Aurora Home Depot to buy a tree for your More Trees program and to sequester some dangerous carbon.
Will you please find me a passenger to help dimunize my carbon footprint? I only have room for one tree, and one passenger who needs to buy nothing less PC or larger than an aromatic hydrocarbon free rain barrel.
Should I plant the tree in my yard or your yard?
If I plant it in my yard, will you help me pay the tree watering part of my utility bill?
Wait! That means they'd have to ride with their client-base; the DSHS types and grumbling taxpayers. No chance of that, my friend, that would be riding with the unwashed.
Posted by: ClearView on May 22, 2008 06:46 PMHe doesn't keep good people around him.
He didn't push for any good resolution of how to deal with the rebuild on the Seattle side of the 520 rebuild. He fixated on a non-strarter tunnel in the tideflats of Elliot Bay.
He still refuses to say how the repair and rebuild of the I-5 stretch through Seattle is supposed to be paid for by his constituents. That's a $3 billion and rising cost, because Nickels keeps ignoring it.
Posted by: Carl Osterman on May 22, 2008 06:56 PMTwice the mileage of a normal commuter
Get his ass on a bus!
Hypocrits, the whole bunch of them.
Lead by example and people will follow.
Oh, you mean like Pres Geo Bush?
.....Get serious!
I got no use for the pious hypocrites.
Posted by: GS on May 22, 2008 07:50 PMNot surprisingly, Seattle libs did not support Chong even though he was a lib himself. His problem was that he was an honest lib.
Posted by: russell garrard on May 22, 2008 09:20 PMMeanwhile the Party of these self-important apparatchiks was hold a show trial for oil company executives in D.C. But the defendants were not co-operating with the script for a change. The execs defended themselves adequately and threw the blame back where it properly belonged:
The last theme that was sounded repeatedly was Congress's responsibility for the fact that American companies have access to so little petroleum. Shell's John Hofmeister explained, eloquently:
While all oil-importing nations buy oil at global prices, some, notably India and China, subsidize the cost of oil products to their nation's consumers, feeding the demand for more oil despite record prices. They do this to speed economic growth and to ensure a competitive advantage relative to other nations.
Meanwhile, in the United States, access to our own oil and gas resources has been limited for the last 30 years, prohibiting companies such as Shell from exploring and developing resources for the benefit of the American people.
Senator Sessions, I agree, it is not a free market.
According to the Department of the Interior, 62 percent of all on-shore federal lands are off limits to oil and gas developments, with restrictions applying to 92 percent of all federal lands. We have an outer continental shelf moratorium on the Atlantic Ocean, an outer continental shelf moratorium on the Pacific Ocean, an outer continental shelf moratorium on the eastern Gulf of Mexico, congressional bans on on-shore oil and gas activities in specific areas of the Rockies and Alaska, and even a congressional ban on doing an analysis of the resource potential for oil and gas in the Atlantic, Pacific and eastern Gulf of Mexico.
The Argonne National Laboratory did a report in 2004 that identified 40 specific federal policy areas that halt, limit, delay or restrict natural gas projects. I urge you to review it. It is a long list. If I may, I offer it today if you would like to include it in the record.
When many of these policies were implemented, oil was selling in the single digits, not the triple digits we see now. The cumulative effect of these policies has been to discourage U.S. investment and send U.S. companies outside the United States to produce new supplies.
As a result, U.S. production has declined so much that nearly 60 percent of daily consumption comes from foreign sources.
The problem of access can be solved in this country by the same government that has prohibited it. Congress could have chosen to lift some or all of the current restrictions on exportation and production of oil and gas. Congress could provide national policy to reverse the persistent decline of domestically secure natural resource development.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives2/2008/05/020571.php
Here is a comparison between Bush's home and Gore's:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/house.asp
Now, clearly Bush is more green than Gore. But, for some reason, I'm sure you still think Gore is better for the environment. It's the cult thing.
He is a Dem, so he can do no wrong, or does he need such massive amounts of electricity for just he and Tipper for "security reasons"?
Let me get this straight. Tim Eyman woke up one morning and had an idea that was not good for sound transit, and voila, it happened.
And here I thought that the people voted in favor of his idea. You see, he has the ideas and the people act on them. Do you hate people with ideas?
Posted by: REBEL on May 23, 2008 12:01 PMOr do you just hate the people?
Posted by: REBEL on May 23, 2008 12:18 PMHe is now more Conservative than me, and I was amazed at what he had to say about the massive waste every day
The head of Seaatle, Nichols is nothing but a hypocrite.
Case in point
How Green is Greg Nichols?
Just in getting him to and from work each day, I offer this example
Trip 1
His limo driver drives and reports to work in Seattle to pick up the Limo
Trip 2
His Limo Driver then drives from Seattle to Nichols home
Trip 3
His Limo Driver drives from Nichols home back to his office in Seattle
TRIPS DURING THE DAY...Ding...Ding....Ding...Then
Trip 4
His Limo Driver drives Nichols from seattle back to his Home.
Trip 5
His Limo driver drives the Limo back to Seattle
Trip 6
His Limo driver drive himself hom
So it takes 6 one way trips per day, costing thousands of dollars and how many times the polution of a normal driver, to get Greg Nichols to work and back each day.
Giving Nichols the keys to a metro bus would be cheaper and more secure.
Posted by: GS on May 23, 2008 11:13 PMWhat he's really concerned about is having to ride with shrieking, lice infested crazy people, and young thugs who routinely take over the back half of busses every afternoon. I've experienced public transit in this city. It ain't pretty.
Nickels is simply a hypocrite who doesn't want to have to interact with the mess nearly 40 years of Democratic rule has created. We haven't had a Republican mayor since 1969. It was a much nicer city then.
Duh!
Nichols and his friends are the major cause of Global warming in Seattle, so sell the limo, get on the bus or shut the F up!
Posted by: GS on May 24, 2008 02:38 PM