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Whenever I talk with a city employee about how they can spend money on pet projects while important issues (like potholes) go unresolved, I get the same answer: buckets. It’s every day’s excuse du jour.

I posted previously about watching crews bury electric wires from tree to tree so that the city could put up Christmas lights when signs were posted across the street telling us to vote ‘Yes’ on funding for emergency services. And when I asked a city employee about it, the answer was ‘buckets’. There was money in the Christmas bucket but none in the emergency services bucket. So everyone who didn’t need an ambulance would have a brighter holiday.

So imagine my surprise last night as I listened to the city council respond to a citizen who brought up the issue of how they were taking money out of one bucket to fill another bucket, which was empty because that bucket was used to fill another bucket that was empty because of a bad decision by city council.

I guess creative bookkeeping can only be used when it’s to cover the mistakes of the city council. But when it’s the public that needs money from an empty bucket, it’s up to the taxpayers to refill it.
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There’s a lot to be learned from economic bubbles. Have you ever stopped to think about who it is that actually blows the bubble in the first place?

Whenever there’s money to be made the ‘used car salesmen’ show up trying to get their mitts on some of the cash that’s floating around. Since they’re seldom able to add any real value to what’s happening (no real business skills, no tech skills, etc.) they find places to apply what little skill they do have.

The skill I’m talking about is a combination of emotionally manipulative banter and a lack of scruples. It’s the skills that created the stereotype that comes to mind when used car salesmen are mentioned.

Unfortunately, people with that ’skill’ aren’t restricted to peddling cars for a living. They’ll push any wares that are attractive to or needed by a large and ignorant audience. You’ll find them anywhere that you can find a lot of people willing to buy something that they don’t completely understand.
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Is this what conservatives have needed? A few techno-conservatives have banded together to create a new site called ‘The NextRight‘ that they hope will shift the center of gravity on the Internet back toward the political right (h/t NewsBusters.Org). Here’s what they say about what they’re planning:

The Next Right is the place for wired activists to build a new Republican Party and conservative movement. As a community-driven grassroots action website for the right, we’ll feature in-depth political analysis, on-the-ground reports, and strategic discussion and debate.

Sounds cool to me. It sounds like they’re on the right track (pardon the pun), but many questions remain.

Will they be able to provide the tools to make it happen? Will anyone want to use the tools? Will anyone (such as the McCain campaign) try to exploit it for votes? Will real conservatives find a home there or is it just another attempt by RINO’s to sport their fake conservative credentials?
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I’ve been around or in the computer industry since the Altair 8800 appeared in Popular Electronics magazine in Dec. ‘74 and Jan. ‘75. I’ve seen a lot of new technologies splash onto the scene. I’ve seen a lot of them sink and I’ve seen some swim for varying lengths of time.

Some new ideas really are new ideas. Most are just a rehashing of old ideas from other sectors of the industry or other industries altogether (the entertainment industry has provided some ideas along the way).

Most of the micro-computer industry’s ideas were taken from other places, most notably Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). It’s the home of Mac’s graphic user interface (GUI), Ethernet, our current email approach and some others of lesser note.

As new ideas come along they initially face the uphill climb of distinguishing themselves from other ideas, some of which are solid and established, some may have failed in the past and some of which are doomed to fail. Those that are able to establish themselves (speaking metaphorically) have a shot at catching on. Unfortunately, in some cases, the ones that catch on aren’t the best ideas.
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I stopped by the new waterfront location of Northern Fish Products on Ruston Way today and chatted with the folks getting ready to open it up. They’re hoping to open before the copper river salmon show up just after the15th of this month.

They’ll be selling fish products in what appears to be a market style, and will be selling things that will appeal to the foot traffic. It’s a great idea since that street probably has more foot traffic during the summer than even the busiest streets downtown. I’m guessing only the mall can compete with the numbers they’ll see going by each day during the summer.
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Tacoma’s city council, Economic Development Board and some special interest groups continue to cling to failing fantasies of a financial district in downtown Tacoma. All the while they’re wasting taxpayer money and letting opportunities slip through their fingers.

There have been so many warnings they can’t even be referred to as harbingers anymore. The list of businesses that have left Tacoma is long and represents thousands of jobs. The latest company to announce their intent to depart is Davita, a health services company that has a data processing center in downtown Tacoma.

The dream has been to build a financial services district in downtown Tacoma, and with that comes a number of other exploits that are supposed to build the kind of atmosphere that will attract the kind of companies that these people are looking for. The problem is that the people in charge of our tax dollars can’t tell the difference between a good idea and a bad idea.
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It appears that yet another group of liberals is trying to claim that they speak for conservatives. The Republican party if full of those, from John McCain, as de facto head of the party that’s supposed to represent us (who told us to calm down), to the Western Washington Republican party leaders who call themselves ‘conservatives’ while work against religious conservatives (who usually make or break Republican campaigns).

This latest attempt is from the religious left. A group calling themselves ‘Evangelicals leaders’ is claiming that ‘Evangelicals’ are tired of politics creeping into their faith. This is just plain wrong in so many ways.
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MoveRed.org, a group of young Seattle Republicans (sponsored by KCGOP) captured these dramatic, life-changing events in Bellevue, WA at the offices of Sen. Patty Murray.

Funny Video: MoveOn.org vs. Senator Patty Murray

If you watch closely you might see the senator’s security detail rushing her to safety. Surrounded by her guards you can only see her white sneakers scurrying away. (Just kidding. I’m sure she was at some other protest or an important subcommittee meeting with her mentor, former KKK leader Sheets Byrd.  Or maybe she was touring one of Osama Bin Laden’s hospitals or daycare facilities.)

Union workers shut down the Port of Tacoma today for an illegal protest of the war in Iraq.

What do unions have to do with foreign policy? The short answer is nothing. So why do they think they can protest on company time and the taxpayer’s nickel?

In case you weren’t aware, it’s illegal for public employees in the state of Washington to strike. Unions do it all the time, but just because public officials and judges don’t do anything about it doesn’t change the law. These people should be put on trial for breaking the law. Not that it would do any good. The union would hire their lawyers (and probably get money from other unions to support their cause… exploiting employers and members) and the judges would likely dismiss the charges or suits after lengthy and costly appeals. But I wouldn’t mind my tax dollars going to strike a blow against these union thugs and in support of the rule of law in our state.

They claim they’re supporting the troops in this protest but that’s just double-talk. Nothing about what they’re doing is supportive of the troops. You can’t support the troops without supporting their mission, you can’t support the troops when you’re wasting money for the businesses that hire our troops when they’re not deployed and you’re not supporting the troops when you waste taxpayer dollars to do something that won’t do a bit of good for anyone.
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Op-eds by pinheads.

They actually got to paragraph two before going way, way wrong:

With RTID’s failure at the polls last November, we threw out highway expansion as the answer to our congestion problems.

No we didn’t. ‘We’ threw out an expensive and massive expansion of Sound Transit. Maybe they didn’t notice but there were two gas tax-roads packages approved by voters in the last few years totalling 14.5 cents per gallon of gas. People want roads and they proved it.

Gov. Chris Gregoire and the Legislature have changed the way we look at transportation and global warming – making huge strides towards dealing with the problem.

Who is this ‘we’ they keep referring to? Gregoire didn’t change anything, well, other than increasing spending by 33% in just 3 years. But there’s still time to overturn this garbage, pandering legislation.
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