News items

I saw this article in the Seattle Times today. State legislators have finally put an end to all the talk of replacing the broken down I-99 viaduct with a tunnel. The idea of forking over billions of taxpayer dollars so that some real estate developers could get even richer off of the newly available waterfront land always rubbed me the wrong way. I say that if the guys who are going to get rich off it really want the tunnel, let them foot the bill. Besides, I always liked the scenic view you get from atop the viaduct. I don't like the idea of giving that up so some yuppie jerk can have a condo there. That jerk would be much happier with a view of my car driving by. Take my word for it. I'm glad to see that plan go down in flames. Now if we can just get a new 520 bridge built with twice the lanes and maybe some express lanes, we'd be getting somewhere. Of course, I know that wouldn't make much of a difference in the traffic since the bottleneck isn't the bridge, it's the limited number of lanes/large number of onramps leading up to the bridge in both directions, but let's just solve one problem at a time. Give me my bridge.

The second news item that caught my attention was this one. Apparantly a 9 year old boy from Lakewood was able to steal a car, lead police after a 90 mph chase, con his way onto not one, but 2 Southwest airlines flights without a ticket or identification, before finally being picked up by authorities in San Antonio. That really doesn't make me feel very good about the ineptitude of the TSA. And the boy is now back at home with his mother because the authorities won't put him in a juvenile detention center. Amazing.