About the only local political issues worth talking about these days are the massive new developments planned by YarrowBay in Black Diamond and Maple Valley. Sorry, employee non-salary benefit review; you’re just not sexy enough for the front page.
After watching our local governments in action recently, I’m convinced that the spirit of the Wild West is still among us. Only nowadays, we’re using lawyers instead of guns. The saloon poker games have been replaced by conference calls and depositions, and peace treaties with neighboring tribes are now called interlocal agreements.
Sometimes I sit in my office and think, “when are people going to figure out that my company is just a big phony”.
The company doesn’t seem all that complicated. There are a handful of computers, some office furniture, phones and tables with some merchandise sitting on them. I made a Web site, but there’s nothing ground-breaking on it. It was put together with an old software program that hasn’t even been made for over eight years.
What gets someone so upset that they’ll burn their own house down and make a suicide run with a plane into an office building? If you listened to the media this week, the leading reasons that Joe Stack re-enacted 9/11 are because he was enraged at the IRS, upset that his wife left him and angry at big corporations and the Catholic church.
My forehead did feel a little warm, and after taking my temperature it was confirmed: I have Olympic fever.
I tried to pretend that I didn’t have it. I told myself, “Don’t buy into this! This elitist event is nothing more than a subsidized ski vacation for corporate sponsors, Olympic committee hacks, and local dignitaries at the expense of Vancouver taxpayers!”
You might have noticed the news item last week that our state Senate passed an update to the cell phone law to make it a “primary offense” to use a cell phone while driving. I’m sure you’re all resting easier now that this public menace is finally under control. The streets will finally be safe again!
The other night I said to my wife, “Let’s go out for dinner.” OK, so what do we want to eat? Nothing that comes in a paper wrapper, I have to be seated when the food is brought to me, and I’m not willing to carry my own drink to my table.
Last week, I finished my opinion piece by offering to take up the cause of those people who are against the school levies (if they could convince me). About a third of the voters vote against them, and I wanted to know why. Here are their top reasons.
I’m always curious about the reasons why 35 percent of us vote against school levies. Maybe you’re in this group, and you have good reasons, but we just haven’t heard them yet. No one filled out a statement against (for Tahoma School District levies) in the voter’s pamphlet this year.
I can’t blame you for not wanting to go to the informational meetings and open forums put on by our local governments and schools; I’ve had more fun in hospital waiting rooms.
But what happens when nobody shows up is that a tiny handful of people get to make all of the decisions. And then we get angry when the tiny handful don’t make the decisions that we like. The consequences of some decisions aren’t fully revealed until many years later, and we’re left to blame the bad decisions on a lack of foresight. Except now we’re five years behind.
Sometimes I feel like I was born to be a cranky old fart, and I’m just suffering through my youth until I can realize my true self.
So right now, I’m in the middle of forming my 20-year window of the “good old days,” which I can use as a lens to view everything through when I’m finally old.
A lot of us get trapped into our routines. Admittedly, it’s far easier to simply go through the motions instead of seeking out a better way of doing things.
Merry Christmas. And bah, humbug.
I get to say both, because I work in retail. Or more accurately, I’m supposed to say “Happy Holidays,” so I can neither offend nor please anyone. Working in retail means I have to be like the Switzerland of conversationalists, being neutral on any topic and never really taking a stand on anything.
There’s a lot of competition for your attention these days, and the pitchmen are getting a lot more aggressive.
Forget about simply window shopping at the mall; the kiosk dwellers have now been instructed to hustle you for sales, and you’ll find yourself saying “no thanks” a dozen times before you even reach the Cinnabon. If you’re like me, you don’t like being hustled on an empty stomach.
“You can really tell a lot about a person by the kind of….”
Nearly everybody I know has an answer for this, such as the kind of shoes they’re wearing, the kind of car they drive, or their e-mail address. The last one is especially true; you don’t want to let your daughter date a guy whose email is sxxxy@hotmail.com (please don’t spam me).
The professional schmoozers are in disarray at the moment. President Obama has dropped registered lobbyists from their government advisory committees, in an effort to have advisers that are more “reflective of America” not just Washington D.C. It’s started a strange letter-writing war that’s had lobbyists lobbying for their own lobbyist powers.
It’s budget time for local governments, and you can tell by the nervous look in the eyes of city staffers. Much like a herd of antelope anxiously watching the circling lions, they know that it’s hunting season for budget cuts, and that usually means city staff jobs. In Maple Valley, the two antelope on the edge of the herd this year are the city attorney and one of the three building inspectors.
I don’t envy the job of the lions, though. The Great Recession has left a lot of city coffers somewhat emptier than they are used to, and that leaves Council members wondering whether to increase taxes, cut services, cut staff or some combination of all three.
They just don’t make them like they used to.
That’s a phrase I hear fairly often from old-timers and old-timer-wannabes (like me), usually just after something breaks. My version of that phrase also includes a blistering, profanity-laced criticism of manufacturers who reduce the quality of their items to hit the retail pricing “sweet spot” of $19.99. Don’t get me started.
Now that the 2009 election postmortems have been completed, the People In Charge are already looking ahead to February’s election, which promises to be full of bonds and levies designed to relieve you of your excess cash.
The last votes are still being counted. However, the real voting hasn’t even started yet in Maple Valley.
