Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Tim "the enviro-guy"Eyman

For the Seattle area folks. I have to give my props to the lastest initiative by Tim Eyman to repeal the gas tax.

Way to go Tim. It is high time Tim went green and I am proud to say he is doing it the right way. He clearly believes as I do that it is reckless for Washingtonians to continue to invest money (via a 3 cent per gallon gas tax) into an infrastructure that perpetuates the practice of people living in the burbs and working in the city. Without investment in the Seattle, and Washington state roads these commutes will gradually become so bad that gas prices will make it too expensive to live in the burbs. The roads will continue to worsen until they remain gridlocked all day long and with some luck in the next 5 to 10 years we will lose the Alaskan way viaduct with no funding and no plan to replace it.

Sure this will be bad for business at first and Washington as a whole will lose jobs because businesses won't be able to pay people enough to justify their commute, they will not be able to move their products, and trucks will not be able to get out of the Port. Sure people in eastern washington will lose manufacturing and agricultural related jobs as businesses start moving their products down the river to Portland or leave the NW all together because the Port of Seattle will become untenable in it's inability to move cargo, but gradually we will be forced to move away from a car based culture and begin to really get behind mass transit as a realistic alternative abandoning the roads and cars based infrastructure entirely.

Way to go man, you're living the dream and you may just be able to get enough voters that hate taxes behind you to achieve our goal! It's high time we stop subsidizing business with our tax dollars to perpetuate the fossil fuel based transportation infrastructure.

Editor's note: After discussion with the author, it was confirmed that this post is indeed thick with sarcasm. -A.

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