Seattle Centric Thinking

Over the last few years, there has come to exist what is being called an urban, or "Seattle Centric" mindset among many in the Democrat party.  Following agendas that on the broad face, and at first glance seem reasonable.  As experience has shown with the heavy push for bio-diesel, once the realities involved come to light, the urban 'progressives' quietly leave the efforts behind in pursuit of the newest "green" effort. 

Such as the current emphasis on electric cars.  One of the current items in this year's supplemental budget is $75,000 for a study on how to facilitate the use of electric cars among low-income people of the state.  With an average sticker price of just over $26,000, the eight least expensive electric cars are still very close to being out of reach for most low-income people to purchase.  One of the possible ways of getting around that is a possible ride-share program similar to Seattle's bicycle ride-share program.  The main difficulties with that solution and ones that will affect most low-income people in the state are the lack of electrical charging infrastructure around the state, and the much greater distances to be traveled to and from work, etc. in rural areas.  But it would probably work great in Seattle and the metro areas.

Over the past several months it would have been amusing to watch if it hadn't had such serious effects across the State of Washington.  Issues such as; private water rights (urban water users receive their water from government sources and pay the government entity for their water, and couldn't seem to grasp that rural water users paid for their own wells and pumps  but were not protected by the same privileges of the urban water users sources), the use of foam fire retardant in rural/agricultural or industrial area areas to fight petroleum-based fires,  and others all fell upon deaf urban ears in the urban, Democrat-controlled legislature.  While I am saying there is a strong Seattle/urban mindset among the Democrats, I am not saying all Democrats are afflicted with this issue.  Many are able to look beyond the city lights when presented with solid evidence and see the value of ideas and concerns from the rural parts of the state.  Whether they will vote against their caucus is an entirely different matter altogether.

One final example of this Seattle Centric mindset is one I discovered this morning.  During her run for a House seat in the 25th Legislative District in 2014, 24 year old  Republican Melanie Stambaugh, was opposed by an incumbent Democrat.  One of the pieces of campaign art produced by the Democrats in opposition to Melanie's age stated that "State Representative is not an entry-level job".  The amusing part, and one that fully demonstrates the Seattle centric mindset can be seen in the image of that campaign art below.  It shows then-candidate Stambaugh with a city skyline in the background.  The problem with the image is the 25th Legislative District includes Puyallup, Fife, Midway, Summit, South Hill, and parts of east Tacoma and Parkland.  However, the skyline used was downtown Seattle, which is several districts away from the 25th.  Seattle was absolutely irrelevant in this campaign, yet the state Democrats who approved the art had no issue using Seattle's skyline to represent the 25th district.  Even the Capitol in Olympia would have had more relevancy than Seattle.  That is, unless your political mindset is that everything of political import is focused on Seattle.  So am I wrong?  What do you think, tell me.  I am looking forward to hearing back from you on this.

Catch you on the road sometime...