Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Political Desk: The Port

The Port of Seattle has been in the news recently mostly for the wrong reasons. Stuff like moving through the permission to have a Shell arctic drill rig park here without telling the public, or fighting against the $15 dollar wage at the airport or talking about oil and coal trains running through downtown. So yeah, this is one of those moments when a good stiff shock to the system will bring them back into line.

Two positions are currently in play. Position 2 pits Courtney Gregroire (incumbent and daughter of the former governor, so that's where you heard the name before) against perennial candidate Goodspaceguy. Now everyone expects this to be a blowout against Goodspaceguy, but let's put the jokes aside and let's hear from perennial candidate himself in the Voter's Guide:
There are several people (some brilliant) who have been writing and producing under Goodspaceguy’s name (perhaps to cause him vote loss?) This is entirely unnecessary because Goodspaceguy can lose votes all by himself just by saying that the anti-free-market, minimum wage should be abolished so that less-productive, disadvantaged people can easily get work at their low market value.
Sigh. OK, bring back the jokes. His argument is that we can have full employment if only we don't have to deal with actually paying people for their work.  Let me be honest, Goodspaceguy has for years run on the idea that our answers lie in space. Now it is apparent that, having surveyed all of space, the model we should emulate is the Spice Mines of Kessel. So. Courtney Gregoire it is!

Over at Position 5, we have a real race between Marion Yoshino and Fred Felleman. Both are good, and Fellemen is stronger on the environment from his background. But Ms. Yoshino comes from the airport side of the equation, and makes a valid point that our airport is part of the port system, but doesn't get a lot of attention or representation on the board. Let's change that - Marion Yoshino.

More later,