Stuck on stupid: the democratian's CRC fetish resurfaces.

For the past several years now, our local newspaper has been stuck on stupid over the Columbia River Crossing issue.

So this morning, we see another idiotic demand that the Washington State Legislature ignore the people of Southwest Washington and facilitate the construction of their light rail project.  The title of their editorial:

In Our View: Washington, Revive CRC
State Legislature must help fund new I-5 Bridge without light rail -- for now

First and foremost, anything that these clowns demand concerning the CRC Scam, has, at the end of their tunnel, light rail.  This entire project has been about nothing but light rail.  There are numerous and multiple frontal attacks, exaggerations, outright lies, threats, the endless lists of fallacious reasoning as to why we shouldn’t that this entire County from the next 45 years of ever-increasing tolls, starting with the hundred million dollars a year being sucked out of our local economy having failed…  They now shift target slightly, and suggests that a bridge should be built that’s light rail capable.

There is no difference between building the CRC with light rail, and building a CRC that can be retrofitted for light rail.  Or, in the parlance, “loot rail ready.”  In reality, there’s no difference at all.

When the entire purpose to build the bridges to run light rail into Vancouver/Clark County…  How long do you think it would take to suddenly apply light rail to a light rail ready bridge to make that happen?

The reason…  The only reason…  To replace this bridge, as illustrated by the Oregon State Supreme Court decision that addresses the issue, was entirely to ram light rail down the throats of the people of Clark County.  It doesn’t matter how much lipstick they put on this pig, it’s still a pig.

Nothing that they’ve written in this editorial changes anything.  The state of Oregon has made it clear, repeatedly, that with no light rail there will be no bridge.  And that’s fine, as the people of Clark County, who drive over into Oregon by the tens of thousands on that same bridge, know that the arguments that they used a backfill their justification, are just that.

Here’s the excerpt from the Oregon state Supreme Court decision that lays it all out:

Now, it seems, no less than the Supreme Court of Oregon agrees... with me.

The Oregon Supreme Court has succeeded in doing what scores of public meetings, thousands of pages of reports, and endless public relations spin could not: Give us the original rationale behind the proposed $3.5 billion Columbia River Crossing.
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The answer, according to the court: The massive Interstate 5 bridge and freeway project is a “political necessity” to persuade Clark County residents to accept something they previously didn’t want—a MAX light-rail line from Portland to Vancouver.  (To read the Feb. 16, 2012 Oregon Supreme Court decision regarding the Columbia River Crossing Project, click here (PDF, 18 pages))
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Project opponents filed a legal challenge to the way Metro, the regional planning agency, granted sweeping land-use approval to the project.  The Oregon Supreme Court sided mostly with Metro.
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But Chief Justice Paul De Muniz, writing for the majority, highlighted an inconvenient set of facts for CRC backers.
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He wrote in the Feb. 16 opinion that most of the project—namely the 10-lane freeway bridge and new interchanges—was put forward to get Clark County to agree to the light-rail line.
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De Muniz cited statements that Metro made in the land-use process and Metro’s lawyer repeated before his court.
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“It was politically impossible for the light rail project to proceed without also building new interstate bridges across the Columbia River,” De Muniz wrote.
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“Or as Metro later summarized it: ‘There is no light rail without the freeway bridge[s] being replaced.’”
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Backers have cited traffic and safety issues as the top reasons to build the CRC.  But the court ruling means those and other justifications were created after officials decided to give a sop to Clark County, now worth $2.5 billion.

The democratian’s idiotic editorial this morning changes nothing in that regard.  Furthermore, it puts to light the hypocrisy of our local newspaper, which has repeatedly claimed that the Washington legislature’s input is not needed in this “Oregon go it alone” program.

This blogger has repeatedly stated that such an effort would be illegal from the outset, and such was obviously true, their efforts to bluff people believing that the legislature; specifically the Washington State Senate, could be ignored in this matter and that somehow the Governor of Washington can simply work around them.  Obviously false on its face, here’s the RCW that addresses that issue:

RCW 39.34.080
Contracts to perform governmental activities which each contracting agency is authorized to perform.   

Any one or more public agencies may contract with any one or more other public agencies to perform any governmental service, activity, or undertaking which each public agency entering into the contract is authorized by law to perform: PROVIDED, that such contract shall be authorized by the governing body of each party to the contract.  Such contract shall set forth fully the purposes, powers, rights, objectives, and responsibilities of the contracting parties.

And who is one to believe the governing body of each party in such a contract actually is?

While I can’t speak for Oregon, the governing body in Washington State is known as the legislature.

So once again, the Democratian dredges up the same old timeworn rejected arguments in favor of their pet project, that flies in the face of the demands of the people of Clark County.  There’s nothing new in this rant from the Democrat in, nothing new at all.  It’s not even repackaged.  This entire project as illustrated above has been about light rail, and in the minds of the Democrat in continues to be about light rail.  The people of Clark County have made it clear at the polls, and in many other locations, the light rail is not an option that we want to discuss.

It seems incredibly strange at this point for this fringe left rag to suddenly concern itself with the waste of the hundred $80 million that’s vaporized in the pockets of the various consultants and engineers with their fallacious plans, (and we still don’t even have a plan $180 million later!)  And that we should just continue to shovel more money down that rat hole is a mentally masturbate over how they can continue to screw us.

One of the problems the newspaper has (and boy do they have a lot of problems) is that they have lied so much about so many things concerning the CRC Scam; they have attacked, extorted, exaggerated, belittled, and generally ignored the wishes of the people of this County for so long, that when they suddenly make a lurch to the right in an effort to try and convince us that they are just concerned about how bad off were going to be if this thing is not built…  Well, it’s difficult to get past all the years where they didn’t give a rat’s ass about the people or what we wanted.

And here’s the thing: at base, this is an about what the Democrat in wants, it this is an about what the downtown Mafia wants, this is an about what the chamber of horrors wants, this is an about what identity Vancouver wants.

This is entirely about what the people of Clark County want.  If the ramifications of this bridge being replaced are so far reaching, and so important, then let the federal government pay for it all.  But I have yet to read the study from the same newspaper that lays out what the removal of $100 million a year plus from our local economy to pay tolls, is going to do to our local small business community…  A small business community that depends on its very existence on a disposable income that will be vacuumed into the coffers of the CRC should this thing ever be built.

I’ll begin to believe that the Democrat in his actually concerned about the people of Clark County, the moment they publish the findings from a study from nonpartisan sources that have no dog in this fight, that are not paid for by the special interests of the CRC, that lay out what the impacts will be on the people of this County.

It’s not difficult to illustrate the negative impacts of $100 million being sucked out of the pockets of people with marginal or low incomes.  It is certainly not hard to figure out what the ripple effects will be on small businesses like pizza parlors and ice cream shops in movie theaters and other independent stores that require access to the disposable incomes of the people of this County.

I have been closely following this entire situation for the past several years…  From its inception…  And I have yet to read anything about what those impacts would be to the families, and the businesses depending on disposable income for their very survival.

And at this point, if we don’t know?  It’s because we don’t want to know.

I will be continuing to urge my Southwest Washington legislators (minus of course those from the Vancouver Soviet) to do all they can to kill this hydra.  Recycling the same idiotic babble, as if it suddenly becomes more credible after years of discrediting their arguments only to find ourselves continuing to be faced by the already shown to be untrue positions of the newspaper does nothing to move their ball forward.

When confronted with the evidence made clear by the Oregon Supreme Court that safety and age of the bridge has not and is not a consideration in this equation, one finds oneself not moved by arguments the claims that this is a matter of safety, and that somehow the economic freedom of the Western World depends on replacing a bridge that’s already paid for and certainly functional.  Reusing the safety/economy argument is simply vacuous because at the end of the day we all know that if the bridge in fact was unsafe, if it felt below any nominal safety level of operation and use, they'd close it.

The safety issue went out the window when the governor of Oregon, while on one of his numerous “trips” at taxpayer expense informed us that the issue was “no light rail, no bridge.”  As honest as that declaration was, it destroys any of the Democratian arguments on this issue as it lays bare at its essence the entirety of the reasoning behind replacing our current functioning and paid for by I-5 bridge. 

And none of the reasons cited by the democratian in this editorial changes any of that.