This cracks me up.  So true.

Jort you are the best!  Your comments provide me with so much joy, tears, and laughter.  I hope you keep it up forever!

Skeeter, thank you for those great ideas for my hypothetical “Car Paradise Party” universalist platform. There are so many things we could add to the platform. Don’t forget that the U.S. government already subsidized automobile purchases once before (Cash for Clunkers), why not just give every living and dead American two free semi truck-sized 47,000 hp pickup trucks?!?! Also, perhaps we could make cyclists personally liable to themselves for getting themselves killed or injured by car drivers?! Just think: you can drive your truck into a cyclist, kill them, and then go after the dead person’s estate to recoup damages to fix your truck and the emotional distress you experienced by being 10 seconds late to your appointment in Issaquah! People laugh – but this candidate would win by a landslide in American politics. People are so wired to believe in car supremacy!

Jort, your winning platform is missing a tax on bicycles.  To really get your voters fired up, you’d need to commit to taxing bicycles (1) at point of sale, new or used and (2) an annual bicycle tax with a state, county, and city tax component and (3) a mileage-based bicycle tax that charges bike riders a per-mile fee to use the streets and sidewalks.  You might also consider (4) a bicycle lane tax that charges bike riders an additional fee for each mile of bike lane.  Then for good measure you’d want to include a (5) bicycle electricity tax that pays for increased electrical infrastructure for any bicycle that charges on the grid.   Calculating and collecting these taxes would create an army of new jobs.  Bicycle riders would also be charged a (6) fee for tax collection costs.      

That is absolutely not what I am saying. I’m saying 90 percent of people think they need personal automobiles for the necessities of modern life. They’re wrong. Dead wrong. Country after country and city after city in the rest of the modern, developed world has proven this every single time. In the vast majority of the developed world this is not a controversial issue, and it is well-recognized that automobile dependence as the sole priority in transportation planning leads to disastrous outcomes in public health, land use planning, government costs and climate change impacts. The illustrative number of “90 percent” of Americans are, in fact, dead wrong about car supremacy and they deserve better than what our cowardly, timid politicians offer them.

So by your own declarations, 90% of people need and/or really need personal automobiles for the necessities of modern life. So why are so adamantly advocating for the 10%?

Dude! Have you bothered to look around? Actually walked downtown, taken public transportation, worked or played downtown in the past three years?! I just can’t even with your comment; frightened that someone actually believes it! 

Ditto!
I applaud Oliver; articulate and sharp, but I think she would have so much more impact for Seattle by running a homeless aversion program. Sara and Ken were spot on. The diversity of their experience will be invaluable for Seattle and keep the SC  buffoons in check and build relationships with law abiding, taxpaying citizens while advocating for us. Think Rude Seattle City Council (search the video). It’s time to have people who don’t have a SELF directed agenda.Theresa. Well, there’s that. 

Wilson claims the repairs are done. He is clearly either lying or has no understanding of the project. Yes, they’ve completed stabilization work, but permanent repairs have not yet begun. That is a fact. What information do you have, SF, that everyone else does not? Did they secretly finish all repair work and are now somehow hiding that from the entire world?

BINGO

Agreed.  The idea that money alone will fix moral problems is naive.  I would add to the lack of personal accountability the strange phenomenon that seems to be so in vogue with Seattle culture in not calling out bad behavior as bad behavior. For instance, not calling a thief a thief because we do not want them to think of themselves as thieves and lower their self-esteem. ??  Standards must be defined and upheld evenly.  This used to happen through the even application of enforcement for common-sense laws.

You are absolutely correct, GD. This man is selling bridge-fixing snake oil to people and, likely because of America and Seattle’s deep, population-wide affliction with Car Brain Disease, people are highly likely to eat this stuff up like it’s somehow a real solution. If I were a politician, and I wanted to win, I would run on a platform of “arrest left-lane campers, re-time all stoplights, plan around 100% autonomous vehicles solving traffic problems, zero traffic law enforcement, two mandatory parking spaces for every man, woman and child, abolition of bike lanes, abolition of road diets, quadruple freeway lanes, cyclists to pay insurance on behalf of car drivers, pedestrian bridges at every intersection,” and so on. I could run for president and I would likely get 90% of the American vote without even declaring a political party because people are just that unified in their beliefs about car supremacy. You think I’m exaggerating, but I’m not. People really do think this way. Most people do. We designed our entire country to make people think this way. It’s a tragedy.