Two weeks ago the lead editorial in The Herald asked the Republicans to set forth their programs for Seattle. Let us hope they don't respond, for if they do the echo of Iowa and Huckabee's born again followers will ring loud and clear.
Seattle doesn't need a Republican response - Seattle needs a common sense response to reign in the idiotic ultra-liberal Democrats who have taken illegal control of the so-called "non-partisan" politics of Seattle, King County and Washington State. Political parties are to have no hand in local elections and yet over 95 percent of the candidates for Seattle City Council have publicly declared themselves Democrats and sought, and received, the support of the Democratic political machine. Seattle doesn't need "non-partisan" elected officials, what Seattle needs are non-partisan voters. Voters who vote for what candidates stand for, not for the initial they stand beside.
How powerful is this machine? In 2007 the State Supreme Court ruled that an action to use revenues from Seattle City Light as if it were a tax was illegal, and that the city must repay City Light the $650,000 it had illegally spent. What did the Democratic machine do? It had West Seattle's state senator and representative act to change the law - so that now over $6.5 million dollars may be taken from City Light's income and given to multinational corporations.
The Herald's editorial also stated how the city's two major papers were no longer covering local issues so you may have missed this one. $650,000 was given to the DuPont Company by Seattle in 2007. In that same year the president of DuPont gave a speech to an industry group on the advantages of going green. He states that that policy had added $2 billion to DuPont's profits. Was over one forth of that additional profit the result of Seattle's gift to?
In 2007 over 60 percent of the west side residents (Ballard, Magnolia, West Seattle) voted for the viaduct. Yet less than a year later they overwhelmingly voted to reelect the city council member who headed the drive to tear it down, and replace it with a park and "the surface option."
Maybe, what Seattle needs is a new, grass roots, really "non-partisan" political party.
Frank Bradley
Gatewood