It looks like I’m going to start blogging on holidays only, but that’s really not my plan.

Thanksgiving was really nice. Penny and I went to her parent’s house Wednesday evening and stayed the night there. On Thursday, we went to her Aunt Susan’s new place in Allyn. It really is a beautiful area and, as usual, I found myself thinking “I could live like this.” Of course, that’s absolutely not true. Past experience has shown that I’m not cut out for life outside of populated civilization. No matter how I many times I’ve tried otherwise, I only really enjoy myself when I live in a city.

I’ve spent the rest of the weekend working on a website for the 2006 LPWA Convention. Penny and I are running the event (don’t ask - we had a moment of optimistic lunacy) and the site has to be ready for action ASAP. We have advertisements that will start running in December and it would be stupid if we direct people to a non-working site. Anyway, things have come along pretty nicely on that. The next big step is to get the speakers confirmed so there’s a real reason to go to!

I plan to spend the rest of today cleaning the house, working on homework, and updating my resume. The latter has only become a necessary move because I’ve decided that it may be a smart move to get a job when I graduate. That may seem obvious, but I had been planning on putting all my energy into growing our promotional products and screenprinting business. Now I’m thinking it may make better sense to pay off all the capital investments we’ve made and build up a financial reserve before launching into that full time. We’ll still develop a few long-term clients, but it just won’t be the main focus of my time until we’ve paid things off. As much as I didn’t want to go to work for someone else, this move will make running the business a lot less stressful and a lot more fun.

I don’t agree with our nation’s foreign policy and I especially despise the tendency for military adventurism - but I am also constantly amazed that men and women will knowingly put themselves in harm’s way in order to ensure the continutaion of our heritage of freedom. Now, if we could just get our elected officials to respect the liberty these brave few willingly stand up to defend.

In response to my post from yesterday, I received the following comment:

I’m not sure I agree with the rejection of the monorail project. As much as I don’t like it, I find it ridiculous that the voters have passed the monorail four times prior to this election. It’s as if the government is saying “No, you really didn’t want to vote that way… try again.” I have a feeling had the outcome been “Yes”, we would have seen another vote next fall. I voted yes for the monorail on principle, though I didn’t agree with it one bit.

There is something that needs to be cleared up here. Namely, this idea that the citizens of Seattle voted in favor of the monorail four times before rejecting it on Tuesday. While there were, indeed, four previous monorail-related intitiatives (for a total of five), they did not represent the same thing. To be more clear, each of these initiatives inacted different laws and represented different goals and were, in the end, asking different questions.

Here’s the timeline:

November 4, 1997 - Seattle Initiative No. 41 is approved with 52.6% of the vote. Only 77% of those who voted in the election that year actually voted on I-41 (at at time when just over 40% of the voting age population typically voted*). Anyway, this initiative specified plans for a giant “X” shaped monorail system that expanded the 1962 line. It did not authorize any particular funds, but it did give the city council the authority to come up with funds via taxes, bonds, etc.

July, 2000 - The Seattle City Council passes Ordinance 120049 that ammended Initiative No. 41 removing from it the requirement for the city to fund the system (as opposed to using strictly state and federal dollars). It also eliminated the Elevated Transportation Company and replaced it with the Elevated Transit Committee tasked with conducting and reviewing an “Intermediate Capacity Transit Service Study” - allowing for the possibility that a monorail solution may not be the best solution.

November 7, 2000 - Seattle Initiative No. 53 is approved with 56.36% of the vote. Being an election year, voter turnout was higher with almost 58% of the voting age population actually voting*. In Seattle, 75.6% of those registered to vote actually did and of those 92.39% voted on Initiative No. 53. This measure was basically a response to Ordinance 120049, re-establishing the Elevated Transportation Company and giving it money. It also gave the re-instated ETC 2 years to come up with a monorail plan that would have to be voted on by the citizens in the election after it’s completion. In case you missed it, I-53 mandated another monorail election in 2002.

August 5, 2002 - The ETC approves the “Green Line” plan which creates a 14-mile, $1.2 billion monorail. It was to run between Crown Hill and West Seattle to Seattle Center, then through downtown Seattle, across the West Seattle Bridge, then along California Avenue SW to SW Morgan Street.

November 5, 2002 - Seattle Citizen Inititative No. 1 is approved with 50.23% of the vote - a margin of only 877 votes. Only 45.54% of the registered voters in Seattle actually voted in the General Election, though 96.31% of those people voted on Initiative No. 1. And all this in a year when under 40% of the voting age population bothered to vote at all*. Initiative No. 1 created the Seattle Monorail Project Authority and provided $1.75 billion in funding for the Green Line via a motor vehicile excise tax and bonds. This money was to include operating expenses. It also stipulated that voter approval would be required if the city needed to issue bonds in excess of $1.5 billion - in case you missed it again, Initiative 1 mandated another monorail election if the costs changed.

November 2, 2004 - Initiative No. 83 is soundly rejected with 63.52% of the vote. Voter turnout was extremely high in 2004, with 86.6% of registered voters casting ballots in Seattle - though nearly 9% of those casting ballots did not vote on I-83. It was also a year of increased voter participation in general, with 68.36% of the voting age population turning out*. If it had passed, I-83 would have prohibited Seattle from allowing any new monorail lines to cross or otherwise use city streets or sidewalks. It would have killed the construction of the Green Line, but it did not repeal the initiative passed in 2002, it did not prevent the city from planning a new monorail line, and most importantly it did not repeal the 1.4% Motor Vehicle Excise Tax! When all this is considered, rejection of I-83 should is not equivalent to approval of the monorail.

June 20, 2005 - The Board of the Seattle Monorail Project rejects a staff-proposed financing plan for the Green Line. The details of this plan stir up public discontent. At the heart of the matter was the 50-year $11 billion-plus debt service structure for the (now) $2 billion project.

August 10, 2005 - Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels gives the SMP until September 15, 2005 to come up with a new financing plan.

September 16, 2005 - Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels withdraws support for the monorail project and cancels the Transit Way Agreement. He also calls on the Seattle Public Monorail Authority to place an advisory measure on the November General Election ballot.

September 23, 2005 - The Seattle City Council unanimously passes a resolution supporting the cancellation of the Transit Way Agreement and prohibiting city departments from issuing construction permits to the monorail board. This effectively kills the monorail project.

October 17, 2005 - The Seattle Monorail Project accepts a new finance plan for a new monorail project running just 10 miles instead of the initial 14.

November 8, 2005 - Proposition No. 1 is soundly rejected by 64.4% of the vote. Of course, only 33.23% of the registered voters in Seattle bothered to vote - though 95.7% of those who cast ballots had something to say about this measure. Proposition 1 would have implemented the shortened Green Line route, though it would not have provided clear funding for that project. It was basically written to give the monorail project a little more time to figure things out. Seattle voters decided not to go along.

Now that I’ve laid this history out, I hope it is clear the the citizens of Seattle have not voted five times on the same thing. There is a long, complex history of trial and error going on here and the bottom line is this: whether or not you love or hate the idea of a new Seattle monorail, there is no way to pay for the construction of such a thing. I opposed the monorail for this very reason. It is simply not a viable option for our community.

The other important point to all of this as that far too few of us participate in our political system. But that discussion will have to wait.

* Note: the percentage of voting age population that voted is an estimated number based in part on the data available at the Secretary of State’s website. Information about Seattle turnout is based on election results published in various online resources, including newspaper articles. Information about the 1997 election is not specifically available, so I made an educated approximation. Please don’t cite these numbers as an authority. I include them to give some perspective on exactly what “majority support” for the monorail project really means.

Well yesterday was election day and once again I find myself struggling with pessimism. This time I didn’t have any delusions of Libertarian victories because I finally understand what winning campaigns are made of. This time my frustration is over the fact that the citizens of Washington State just passed Inititative 901, banning smoking pretty much everywhere. Now, I’m no longer a smoker (haven’t been for years), but the idea that over 2/3rds of the voting population think it’s okay to restrict the voluntary actions of others is just discouraging. Of course, it’s equally discouraging that nearly 2/3rds of those registered to vote - and even fewer of those eligible to vote - don’t even bother to fill out a ballot.

Of course, I’m not really surprised that I-901 passed given the amount of money the proponents raised. According to the PDC, the Yes on 901 PAC had a warchest of $1,560,666.93! Compare that with the meager $26,340.00 raised by the opposition and it’s easier to understand how this thing passed. And besides the money, I-901 was supported by some very well established and highly respected organizations like the American Cancer Society. Groups like that have years of experience in turning people into activists. Again, compare that with the fact that opposition group was run by an employee of a bowling alley and supported by a handful of bar and restaurant owners - hardly experienced political activists.

Money played big role in the failure of another intiative, I-912, that would have repealed the recent gas tax hike here in Washington. The proponents argued that the increase couldn’t be justified given the failure of transportation officials to address traffic congestion and given the history of ridiculous spending on pet projects like light rail and monorails. The opponents of I-912, and supporters of the gas tax, argued that the money was needed to repair the crumbling transporation infrastructure and make safety improvements. What I find funny is that the No on 912 (and yes on taxes) group fails to explain why we should give more money to the people who let our roads deteriorate in the first place. They also failed to explain why the tax revenue wasn’t going to be used to fully fund the correction of these safety problems.

Alas, it’s not about being correct. It’s about being well funded and well organized. In this case, the FIVE different PACs that organized against I-912 raised a combined total of $3,031,736.69, compared to the $614,247.53 raised by the I-912 supporters. Interestingly, the I-912 donors were mostly individuals while the opponents were funded mostly by corporations (like Boeing and Microsoft) and, of course, the Washington Asphalt Pavement Association. I heard on radio talk show host refer to the No On 912 campaign as the “coalition of rich people who want you to pay more taxes” - which I find as amusing as it is accurate.

Anyway, there were two bright spots yesterday. Voters across the state passed Initiative 900 that basically mandates and funds (from existing revenue) government performance audits. And here in Seattle, voters finally rejected the monorail project.

As for my Libertarian friends who ran for office, results were mixed. Larey McLaren seems to have won his bid for Alderwood Water District Commissioner, Pos. 3 and Kelly Haughton appears to have won his bid for Charter Review Commission Dist. 7 Pos. 2 in Pierce County. Both races were non-partisan and low-level in the scheme of things, but every race won is a race to learn from.

As for my fellow UW students who ran for office, Astrid Gielen got 19,807 votes (for a total of 26.71%) in her bid for Seattle School Board Pos. 4 - against a guy who spent $25,855.35 to win. Morgan Catha didn’t fare as well in his bid for King County Council. He only got 4.22% of the vote - but he was facing incumbent for life, Larry Gossett, and only 32,964 (28.34%) people voted on the race.

Anyway, I’ve been typing so long that I have turned a corner and I am once again optimistic about humanitiy. I just have a lot of work to do to make that optimism pay off.

Some of you may have noticed that my website was quite screwed up the past couple of days. It started with MySQL going down over the weekend. I contacted my hosting provider who quickly responded to my trouble ticket and fixed the problem. While they were messing around I took the time to do a complete backup of several of the sites I manage, including this one. As soon as they got the database server up and running again, two of my WordPress based sites were just fine but this one was all messed up. I kept getting the error:

‘Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/tmwright/public_html/wp-includes/functions.php on line 283′

Over and Over again. In fact, Google was kind enough to cache my site with the errors. Now I searched and searched for any help on this problem and I came up with nothing useful. What stumped me was the fact that two other WordPress sites on the same server were fine but mine was down. In the end I finally just backed up my database and customized pages, deleted everything on the domain including the database, and then uploaded everything again. I didn’t change a single line of code or a single database entry, but that seemed to do the trick. Technology is 90% voodoo.