TODAY’S AN “OFF-OFF-YEAR” ELECTION, the kind where neither Presidents, Congresspeople, nor state legislators stand up for the picking.
My town holds its big municipal elections during odd-numbered years, so as to give its own politicians the spotlight.
And, as it happens, the Talk-Radio Right has one of its “across-the-board tax cut” schemes on the ballot, in the form of a state initiative.
And, as it also happens, the state initiative and the Seattle City Council elections both turn out to involve appeals to “We The People” against the common enemy of both rightish “populists” and leftish “progressives”–the corporate middle-of-the-road.
The eternally-lovable Jim Hightower likes to say there’s nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos. But so far, the center has managed to hold, at least in segments of the American system–albeit as a center that’s drifted steadily rightward.
The Religious Right has had fewer successes in its attempts at “morals” legislation in recent years; the prog-left has been equally unsuccessful at reforming health care or getting working folks a fairer share of the economic boom.
Instead, big business and its wholly-owned politicians have pretty much had a free run in the U.S. Executive Branch, in the Federal Reserve System, and in many state and local jurisdictions. All the talk in the post-Reagan era about new paradigms or the end-of-politics-as-we-know it has, thus far, still found the entrenched old-line powers-that-be still being.
That doesn’t mean they’re not running scared, at least around these parts.
Seattle news media are chock full of heavy-handed wrangling over the potential devastating effects of Initiative 695, which would replace graduated-rate motor vehicle taxes with a flat $30 fee–and would impose tuff referenda requirements any time the Washington legislature wanted to add any new revenue source.
As phony-populist “across the board” tax cuts go, this is a particularly clever fraud. It cuts just enough from average folks’ car taxes to seem like a sensible bargain to average voters. But it cuts hundreds or even thousands from what the big boys pay for their Lamborghini SUVs.
And the funds it cuts from include funds targeted for transportation (including the new regional light-rail scheme as well as road-fixing) and those used by the state to prop up county governments.
I-695’s so extreme, the business lobby loathes it. It would potentially cripple some of the basic infrastructure business needs to get its goods trucked around, and the referendum part would make it damn difficult for the state to create new business-subsidy plans, like those used for the new baseball and football stadia.
But the Washington State Republican leadership felt it needed the talk-radio gang’s rabblerousing capabilities more than business’s patronage, and endorsed 695. No matter what happens in today’s vote, a possibly permanent rift has been created between the Rabid Right and the corporate powers who used to be its chief beneficiaries.
Meanwhile, five of the nine Seattle City Council seats are for grabs (all are citywide races).
In four of these contests, self-styled “progressive” candidates (Curt Firestone, Judy Nicastro, Charlie Chong, and incumbent Peter Steinbrueck) not only won their primaries but won by big enough margins that they’re threatening, with fellow prog-candidate Dawn Mason and incumbent prog Nick Licata (whose re-election bid comes in the next half-cycle), to form a majority coalition that could push for renters’ rights, slow the pace of gentrification, and block new subsidies for corporate-backed development plans.
And oh yeah–they also just might, if given half the chance, officially call BS on city attorney Mark Sidran’s “civility” laws, a systematic war on poor people, black people, young people, and anybody else who doesn’t fit the downtown business establishment’s upscale-boomer target market.
So some members of Sidran’s upscale fan base, led by a Microsoft executive (as if those guys knew a damn thing about “civility”), are spending “soft money” on behalf of the progs’ opponents.
In a municipal system traditionally run by corporate-Democrat machine politics, we’ve got a real, essentially partisan, race here. Should be fun.
TOMORROW: A self-styled “alternative” magazine whines about not getting the opportunity to sell out to big advertisers.
ELSEWHERE:
