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There's No Turning Back

Apparently determined to out-boondoggle Portland, Seattle has an ambitious, nearly $4.5 billion project underway: replace the aging Alaskan Way Viaduct with a big tunnel. Unsurprisingly, they've run into a few issues. Their huge tunnel-boring machine broke before they bored much more than a thousand feet, and has been sitting six stories beneath Pioneer Square ever since, now for about a year. 

They plan to dig a big pit so that they can haul out the cutting head and fix the bearing, but in order to do that, they have to "dewater" the area around the machine (which translates into "pump out the groundwater"). That didn't seem like a particularly workable idea, but that's what they went with. Now, another problem has emerged:

The newest crisis related to the project to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct with a tunnel widened on Monday, when state officials said 30 buildings in Pioneer Square sank about an inch.

On Friday the Washington State Department of Transportation disclosed the viaduct sank 1.25 inches, likely as a result of pumping out groundwater to build the pit to access and repair the broken tunnel machine Bertha.

But following a meeting with WSDOT, Seattle City Council President Tim Burgess opined: 

"There's no turning back at this point. The entire Alaskan Way Viaduct Replacement Project must be completed.”

“The tunnel project is 70 percent completed.”

There's still a mile and a half to go; they've only bored a thousand feet. Tim's math seems a little rusty.

You may be wondering why they're dinking around like this; just back the thing out and fix the borer's bearing, right? Well, the tunnelers can only move forward. And when the blades break or a bearing gives out, you're stuck. So they have a five-story tall boring machine stuck six stories beneath Pioneer Square, and they have to dig down to get to it.

As it stands now, they're about a year behind schedule, but they hope to be able to get to the borer's head in April. But let's say they fix it and get her running again. 

It broke after covering a thousand feet; there's another 1.5 miles of stuff to grind through. Is the repair warranty good for 1.5 miles? What happens if it breaks again? It's easy to see how a nearly $4.5 billion project could easily double in cost.

This is par for the course, however, where "public works projects" are concerned:

In a 2002 report in the Journal of the American Planning Association titled "Underestimating Costs in Public Works Projects: Error or Lie?," researchers Bent Flyvbjerg (the guy from Oxford), Mette Skamris Holm, and Søren Buhl discussed how megaprojects are misrepresented. "Cost underestimation cannot be explained by error and seems to be best explained by strategic misrepresentation, i.e., lying." They add: "The use of deception and lying as tactics in power struggles aimed at getting projects started and at making a profit appear to best explain why costs are highly and systematically underestimated in transportation infrastructure projects."

Here in Porkland, we've seen it fairly regularly; the aerial tram quadrupled from its original liars' budget before it was completed, for example. Of course, taxpayers voted against the tunnel project, but Seattle City Council overrode them and decided to build it anyway. In that sense, they're a lot like Tri-Met, here in the Portland area.

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Oregon Governor Falsified Ethics Document - Media Silent

His First Squeeze isn't the only one of this pair with ethics issues. He gave the recently-admitted felon an office in the state capital, from which it appears that she conducted her "green energy" consulting business, using her title of "Energy Advisor to the Governor". In other words, she was effectively functioning as a lobbyist, and Oregon's Retread governor was well aware of that.  Nonetheless, he falsified a document that's required to be sent to the Ethics Commission. The news website, GoLocalPDX, published the document on Saturday, October 25. The document is here. To date, no other media outlet appears to have been willing to mention that particular transgression.

In a Statement of Economic Interests document obtained by GoLocalPDX and filed with the Oregon Ethics Commission, Kitzhaber stated that his household received income from two companies, Energy Foundation and Resource Media, that had contracted with Hayes' consulting firm E3 Strategies. 

But under a section that required him to disclose “any compensated lobbyist who was associated with a business with which you or a member or your household was associated during 2013” Kitzhaber simply put “N/A” or not applicable.

That is an outright, and intentional, lie.

Not to worry, Portland voters will re-elect him. He's a Democratic, after all. He's just running down the clock. Because he's all about integrity.

Election Porn

If it seems like all you see on television these days are political ads, that's because prettty much all you see on television these days are political ads. In fact, according to a Washington Post article today, Senate campaign ads alone are approaching the 1 million mark:

One million ads. This election cycle, campaigns and supporters of Senate candidates will soon have aired one million ads -- and if Senate races in Louisiana and Georgia go to run-offs, thousands more afterward.

Helpfully, they put this into perspective for us:

By comparison, every episode of "Jeopardy!" ever filmed -- starting back in the 1960s -- comprises nearly 220,000 minutes of airtime. Meaning that the amount of time spent on Senate ads this year could have been used to show every episode of Jeopardy twice.

Add to that the ads for House campaigns, state legislative and gubernatorial campaigns, and ballot measure initiatives, and it's no wonder that so many folks are just tuned out; we're being carpet-bombed with political ads every time we swith on the screen. Oddly, the campaign managers can't seem to buy a clue - over time, the constant barrage backfires, alienating the very folks they're trying to reach. And the solution is not to buy even more air-time.

Here in Oregon, ads about marijuana "legalization" (we already have medical marijuana, and possession of less than an ounce will, at most, get you a citation) and GMO-labeling ("big, out-of-state corporate special interests don't want you to know what's in your food!", rail the ads being run by big, out-of-state corporate special interests) are running constantly; often twice in a 90-second period. Don't know about you, but my view is that whenever people from out-of-state are spending this much money to pass measures, it's unlikely to be in my best interests to vote for them.

At least the flyers stuffing the mailbox have a use, as they make excellent fire-starters.

Not Sayin' Anything, Just Observing

Our country doesn't have a problem. Our Democratics do.

They'll vote by rote. As long as there's a (D) next to the name.

She's Baaack.

Oh my, Oregon's gov. Retread's been getting help doing his re-election campaign thing from an old friend in the Neil Goldschmidt network. Yep, good old Patty McCaig's in on the action again, and Retread's been violating state law by not reporting it.

Nothing to see here, just Portland Democratics being Portland Democratics; laws, after all, are for the Little People.

Recently, McCaig has been spending time advising Kitzhaber’s campaign and managing fallout from what has become the governor’s biggest political liability, the Cover Oregon debacle.

Oh, that's not likely Retreads biggest political liability, as a lot of folks are pretty upset with his "go it alone" effort to build a light rail bridge across the Columbia River, and a lot are also a bit perturbed with his "We welcome illegal aliens with open arms" statements. But certainly, the "Cover Oregon" mess isn't exactly something to brag about.

Doubtless, this latest legal abuse will be passed off as a simple, inadvertent oversight, and quickly corrected (now that it's been discovered).

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Is This A Campaign Ad?

Oregon governor John Kids-hobbler is up against a relatively strong but inherently evil Republican in the coming election, and the Democratic really needs something to distract attention from the exploding cigars that have peppered his term in orifice: the hundreds of millions of dollars blown on the "Cover Oregon" Obamacare debacle, the desperate efforts and more millions to force a light rail bridge across the Columbia River into another state, the failure of his hand-picked "education czar" to do anything at all, and more. John seems to have found the perfect vehicle, which is now appearing within weeks of the November elections:

It's illegal to use public resources for campaign purposes, but Johnny seems to have found a way around that. It's one of the few things that can be widely disseminated, costs his campaign no money, and portrays him in a benevolent light just prior to the election. As Festus would say:

I ain't sayin' it's illegal; I'm sayin' it 'pears illegal.

How Politics Should Be Done

Refreshing, No?

GOP Establishment v. Conservatives

Game on. True the Vote, a conservative elections watchdog organization, has taken action against the GOP in Mississippi, alleging voter fraud.

A conservative election-watching organization has filed a motion for a restraining order against the Mississippi Republican Party, declaring it has evidence of tampering in runoff records.

Mississippi GOP Chairman Joe Nosef dismissed the complaint. 

He also said the state party now plans to take action against the group.

“We will not only defend ourselves but will seek sanctions against every single plaintiff because of this frivolous litigation brought against the MSGOP,” Nosef said.

If establishment Republicans devoted even half as much in resources and effort fighting Democratics as they do fighting conservatives, they'd likely control both the House and the Senate by now. And if anybody still believes that establishment Republicans differ in any substantive respect from Democratics, this should be an eye-opener.

Rather than welcoming a transparent and open investigation, they're behaving like AlGore in the famous "hanging chads" case. Apparently, they've forgotten that AlGore lost. And much like the Democratics, it won't be surprising to see establishment Republicans hauling carts around during the next election, hollering "Bring out yer dead!"

 

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Requiring ID Is Only Raciss When States Do it

The Obama administration is asking several hundred thousand people with subsidized health insurance to provide documents proving their identity and eligiblity.

The government is asking consumers for additional documents to verify their income, citizenship, immigration status and Social Security numbers, as well as any health coverage that they may have from employers.

The government has a long list of documents that consumers can use to establish their eligibility. These include copies of birth certificates, Social Security cards, high school diplomas, driver’s licenses, pay stubs and voter registration cards.

Apparently when there's money involved, requiring identification isn't raciss - it's only raciss when states enact voter ID laws. Glad that's all cleared up; it'd be embarassing if Holder started suing federal agencies for being raciss, after all.

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Almost Right

Scott Keyes, writing in The Atlantic, produces a tight and descriptive depiction of the largest bioterror attack in U.S. history, noting that it was part of a larger scheme to take control of an election. The account of the Rajneeshies' time here in Oregon is well-done, but he unfortunately then leaps to an entirely erroneous conclusion:

What does this bizarre, made-for-Hollywood episode tell us about voter fraud?

First, it’s really hard to pull off. Even for a group with thousands of loyal followers, millions of dollars, and a willingness to use germ warfare, it couldn’t achieve its relatively small goal of winning two county commissioner seats.

Voter fraud is exceedingly rare precisely because it is extraordinarily difficult to pull off.

Second, voter fraud is exceedingly rare precisely because it is extraordinarily difficult to pull off. If it were as easy as many conservatives claim, it would be ubiquitous, but that’s just not the case.

What he fails to note is that with the passage of vote-by-mail, Oregon Democratics greatly simplified things for fraudsters. Since nobody goes to polling places any longer, there are essentially no voter identification checks in place. This makes it relatively trivial for multiple ballots to be mailed by the same individual, and as might be expected, County officials even have trouble sending out the correct number of ballots in the first place; in the days leading up to the May 20 election, a gentleman noted in local media that although he's lived in his home for a decade, he still receives ballots addressed to the two former residents - despite contacting the County elections division and notifying them of the issue.

Since the days of the Rajneeshies in the early and mid-1980's, things have changed in terms of voter security in Oregon, and not for the better.

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