Last week I called the editor of the West Seattle Herald in order to give him his quarterly ration of good natured "how can this absurdity be" harassment.

Usually it's a one-topic harangue, but this time I had two. About half way into my pitch, Jack says, "Okay, so write it up." Now I ain't no writer, mind you, but I do know how to affect change. Words do provoke thoughts and thoughts do provoke actions!

Absurdity No. 1:

Our city, and for that matter, our state's education system is producing a product that's ranked in the lowest quartile nationally and 28th globally. This simply won't hunt when global competition is going ballistic.

In the last year alone I've cut out over 50 articles from various news publications all talking about cutting this and cutting that or selling this or closing that, all for the lack of $1.5 million here, $5 million there, etc. Believe me, the money's there. It's the absence of integrity, awareness, courage and will that's not.

Last year in Oregon, with a population of 3 million-plus folks, the state took in over $500 million - in voluntary taxes - which they then used to enhance their state's education system.

You see in Oregon, they took a more fair, equitable and constitutionally balanced approach to an industry that's not going to go away - recreational gaming, which is now legal in 38 states.

In Oregon they in fact do what our state's constitution says is to be done, that there shall be no special class and no special privilege about anything in our state.

This statement is the antithesis of tolerating a monopoly.

In Oregon, there also is tribal gaming, however, unlike our state, there's also private sector gaming using the same electronic lottery video terminals the tribes have exclusive use of here.

In Oregon, the state-owned electronic lottery video terminal system is licensed to 1,800 small mom-and-pop businesses, businesses that also employ tens of thousands of folks. Each of these privately owned licensed businesses could have up to six state-owned machines.

So let's contrast this to Washington's approach to recreational gaming. In our state, our 28 recognized tribes with only 125,000 members have over 26,000 machines. The Muckleshoots alone have 2,600. Meanwhile, the state's private sector has zero and its 6.2 million citizens, including children, get zero benefit from this hypocrisy, or if you think double standard is more appropriate, I'll give you that one.

Our state's tribes are now taking in and making billions of dollars a year, all tax-free. These are billions that used to be spent in and were taxed at private sector businesses, before the advent of our tribe's gaming monopoly.

The transfer of these billions of dollars from the private business sector in the pursuit of recreation to the tribal business sector for the pursuit of recreation has cost the cities, counties, and state's treasuries over a billion dollars a year in lost revenue.

Our new Governor Gregoire's $1.5 billion tax increase immediately after she took office in order to make up for previous cumulative tax losses that had gone to the tribes' treasuries.

The bottom line: the tribes won big and we lost big.

So here's the dirty little secret of how all of this really happened.

First, Gov. Gardner, a big D, opened the crack in the dam letting our state's recognized tribes have house-banked cards, roulette and craps as an offset to our state's charities Reno Night fund-raisers. Back then our state had approximately 300-plus private sector card rooms which got zero benefit from Gardner's largesse. He now believes he made an error in not keeping the playing field level.

Second, Gov. Gary Locke, another big D, totally opened the flood gates to the tribes when he gave the tribes an exclusive monopoly on electronic lottery video terminals, aka slots, as an offset to our state's own lottery system, which is now tanking because folks prefer to play the tribal system versus the state system.

Third, our state's tribes quickly figured out the political system and how it really works just prior to the 2004 political election bought themselves $10.5 million of insurance in order to keep their monopoly. During that last election cycle the tribes gave our state's politicians $10.5 million for their reelection campaigns. Ironically, 10 percent, or $1.2 million, went to the Republicans and 90 percent, or $9.3 million to the Democrats. Well, gee, so the tribes have now become our state's Democrat's reelection campaign piggy banks.

So who's selling out our kids for political expediency? It clearly looks like the Democrat's to me. Do you think they just wanted to keep them dumb and beholden? Personally, I like to teach people how to fish so they can feed themselves, and the D's?

Okay, how about fair and balanced, so let's level the playing field now and take the billion dollars a year that we'd get for doing so for our state's education system just like the Oregon system does. And let's not just put those new billions into the former educational abyss in order to maintain the status quo, let's put those new billions to work differently in order to ensure that our state has the best education system and produces the best product in our nation. In doing so, it is my belief that our students would be ranked in the top five in the world versus 28th. Think of the businesses that we would attract from around the nation and around the globe, the new jobs that we could create and how ultimately we could all pay lower taxes.

This is a total paradigm shift. Think about it as a 220 days a year system. Full-time jobs with full-time pay for teachers at $70k to $100k a year with two teachers per classroom, dramatically reducing administration costs. A salary of $70 to $100k for 220 days of work would attract the top third of our state's SAT scores to education versus the current bottom third as it is now. Use total technology, big screens projecting the best teachers of all subjects teaching all of our children. Computers for both students and parents using video training syllabuses, not just for our kids, but for parents too, thus using the audiovisual training systems to educate both. Parents could then help to teach our kids and, whoa, the net result would be smarter kids and smarter parents, too.

Oh, yeah, Absurdity number two:

I just completed a motorcycle ride across Hoover Dam, the first dam on the mighty Colorado. It's super huge and it was built between 1931 and 1934. It took approximately three years to build. It too was an emergency project, not unlike our viaduct project, which is supposed to take eight years to build, and god knows how long our emergency 520 bridge project will take.

The difference is Hoover Dam was built using a different paradigm than what we're living with today. It was worked on 24/7, 365 days a year until it was complete, sort of like California's approach to replacing all of it's big bridges and viaducts in response to the big quake which knocked them down. It took them only six months to replace those emergencies.

Just think of it, both the Seattle viaduct and the 520 bridge being rebuilt in 2 1/2 to 3 years and at probably one-half the currently projected costs and one-third of the time now projected.

Think of all the new employment our state would generate and think of the economic stimulation that would be generated by it. It's just amazing what can be done in a true emergency, as opposed to the currently proposed approach, a massive 8-year boondoggle or payback for those who put the democrats in power. This kind of arrogance and abuse should not be put on the backs of the taxpayers in our state, clearly the goal of less time, less money, less obstruction should be the goal. The fact is, we could do both projects in the same time for the amount of money proposed to be spent on a tunnel replacement for the viaduct alone.

Gerald Robert Kingen is founder of Red Robin, and Salty's Seafood Grills.