There is an old saying that goes something like this. “If you always do the same thing over and over you will always get the same results.” That’s exactly what the politicians are doing about gun violence. What I am going to write will be a little bit extreme but the point I want to get across is that not one thing they have suggested doing is going to make us safer or cut down crime. In my opinion it will [Read more...]

About Ella Charms

Ella works with the Emerald City Journal part-time helping with guest posting requests and answering emails. She is passionate about Seattle and very informed with "cool" stuff happening in the area.

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Does Barack Obama still have what it takes to run this country and how will you vote in 2012?  The Obama 2012 Presidential election is coming soon.

Obama 2012 Election Seattle

About Ella Charms

Ella works with the Emerald City Journal part-time helping with guest posting requests and answering emails. She is passionate about Seattle and very informed with "cool" stuff happening in the area.

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This will be a general disgruntled taxpayer/worker diatribe about how it sounds when we get these promises from various branches of government. How often have your heard your President, Govenor or Mayor stand and say with a straight face that THEY have the funds to help you? Once they spend what they can get locally they begin to promise state or federal funds. They make it sound like the Easter Bunny is right there with his basket of money, and if he runs out Santa is standing by with his bag of money or they have the Good Fairy wave her wand and none of this will cost you a cent. Wow bring on the money. What most people don’t think about is that no branch of government has any funds that they didn’t take away from We the People first and skim a big percentage off the top. I am not trying to supply exact numbers or percentages. There are good articles on the website with dollar amounts squandered by the Washington transportation dept, the Seattle Washington Public Schools, Seattle welfare fraud etc. The IRS eats up the big portion of what they collect to pay their bloated salaries and perks and hire more agents to keep us paying out taxes. The state, county and city have to pay all the excessive wages and perks from what they screw away from us via sales, property, gas, and other assorted taxes. Most of the time there is nothing left after they pay for a few evaluations, studies, and meetings to do anything with. They blew over $500 million on the 520 bridge and not a shovel or hammer has been touched. They blew over $300 million on the tunnel that we the people don’t want and not one thing has been done except some shady deals done so they can say a referendum cant be binding now. The monorail money got ate up entirely. Check out the salaries of the heads of transportation, schools, University of Washington etc and you will agree its out of hand. We cannot afford that greedy bunch at all. Of course if they cut anything it will be crossing guards, foot policeman and teachers to punish us for voting down another levy. They cant let our local grade A students attend the University of Washington because they can sell his spot to a foreign or out of state student, but still take our tax dollars. We have to cut them off at the pocketbook. I hope people start to think when the president, governor, mayor stand up and promise you federal dollars. They have taken it away from our state, skimmed off at least 40% of it for salaries. They only take on huge projects so they can try to get more federal funds. The president tools around in his little Air Force One telling us to stick within our means while he is squandering millions traveling around for nothing but photo shoots. He can’t even give an interview without a teleprompter.

 Try to put this in perspective and think of it this way. You cash your paycheck and 4 robbers are waiting outside the bank. Their names are Federal, State, County and City. They take at least 50% and leave you with barely enough to pay your rent and eat. But they live way better than you ever have or will live. They pay big wages and perks to the people they give your money too and squander most of it. If it were a normal robbery you could fight back, but the law says you have to pay income tax or go to jail, pay property tax or lose your home, pay sales tax or you cant buy anything etc.

The government cannot give seattle welfare debit cards(that get spent in strip joints and on booze or sold on Craigslist) until they take the money away from some working citizen.  We have four pockets and somehow we have to find out how to put a zipper on them without going to jail.  Hope everyone starts to realize the government can’t give you anything.  They don’t produce anything.

About Ella Charms

Ella works with the Emerald City Journal part-time helping with guest posting requests and answering emails. She is passionate about Seattle and very informed with "cool" stuff happening in the area.

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Metro Transit does not care about their people who depend on buses to be independent and get to doctors or grocery shopping. In Georgetown metro has closed our bus stop. It is what they call the Carlton Ave Stop. I have caught the bus there for 45 years, but the other day when I went to that stop a bag was hanging over it, saying stop closed. There was no sign telling me where to go or what to do. That was a real shock. I came home and got on their website and it showed it was open. Two different people that answer the phone insisted it was open. See picture below. One girl said well just walk down to Brighton. From Corson Ave to Brighton is 2/10ths of a mile or more. I am 87 and after walking 2 ½ blocks to the bus I really cant walk 3 or 4 more blocks and still feel up to getting on the bus. The 124 from Federal Way to downtown on 4^th, the 131 and 134 that go to Burien(because the South Park Bridge is closed), the 60 bus that goes to White Center all stopped there. It is the only stop that serves the residential portion of Georgetown. Brighton is the stop for the South Seattle Community College. There is no reason why that stop is closed. We are not asking for a new bus stop. There never has been a bench or shelter, so we are not asking for that, there is no business that the stop is bothering. It is a real hardship for me, for my neighbors in wheel chairs, Mothers with babies in strollers and toddlers walking along beside them are having a terrible time. We don’t have bus service anymore. The same buses go right by so we are not asking for a thing except just stop and pick us up. They can’t say its cost saving. Wouldn’t it be better to stop and pick up a few paying customers than just pass us by?  In the afternoon a lot of workers from the factories around here use that bus stop.  This is plain crazy. I used to ride to Federal Way with my children who live there and then take the bus home to save them a long drive back and forth, but now the bus goes right by Corson and takes me almost to 4^th and Michigan and I have to walk back home with my shopping. Well they can’t blame Bush for that.

About Ella Charms

Ella works with the Emerald City Journal part-time helping with guest posting requests and answering emails. She is passionate about Seattle and very informed with "cool" stuff happening in the area.

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Finally a story in the paper got peoples attention about the University of Washington.  By now most everyone has heard of Brandon Stover. It is hard to believe that a local boy who graduated from high school with a 4.0 grade average was turned down at the University. He was valedictorian of his class. He needs to go to the University of Washington because he cannot afford to go unless he lives at home and keeps his job. You would think the University would be ashamed to turn him down. Hope this back fires big time. They have ran the wheels right off their bus. The House Dems’ say they have to raise tuition. NO THEY DON’T. Politicians blame the taxpayers for the severe cutbacks. The University says the UW budget cuts are because voters passed anti-tax measures. The University is not making any budget cuts and any taxpayer money to that place should end right now.

The House says a quarter of their budget (about $831.9), is dedicated to renovation projects at public agencies. The University is slated for a big remodel job. They should do it with their profits and their own cuts in salaries and expenses.

We taxpayers cannot afford to be screwed over by a bunch of greedy money grubbers. I will name a few, but for every one I name there are hundreds that have helped get them to that position and pay offs, favors, bloated salaries would break any business. UW President Mark Emmert would have been making $900,000 if he had stayed, but he has left for a better job. He was here a long time and his salary would have paid the tuition for $100 local students at $9,000 each. If taxpayers were given a choice which would they choose?  He was replaced by Phyllis M. Wise. Her salary is $535,000 plus deferred compensation. But she had to get a second job on the board of Nike to help her make it in these hard times. It gets worse. The football coach, Steve Sarkisian salary is $1.7 million. This morning in the Times 4-6-11 was the news that the UW hired a new womens basketball coach. His name is Kevin McGuff with a starting salary of $474,000.

Pieces started to fall in place when Governor Gregoire made a trace trip to China during the time she was slashing, cutting, losing sleep over the budget crisis. She took 80 people with her. It had to cost a bundle. She said it was for trade and higher education. I could not understand what that meat. It means she is recruiting foreign students willing to pay three times the amount to go to the UW. That is not the way to fix the budget. Her budget is trying to get all she can from the taxpayers. Someone has to rattle the cage and get the monkeys jumping around. If she was interested in getting the State of Washington back on track she would cap the salaries. Look at the fired Superintendent of school (Maria Goodloe Johnson), look at the Port of Seattle (Tay Yoshitani) Salary. These things are actually theft or embezzling from the students tuition and taxpayers. We were suckered into building two sports palaces for billionaires not we are making millionaires out of almost all the people running schools, city light, port etc. It has to stop.

We sure do not need a levy that doubles our property tax to give to these thief’s. Its pure and simple. Almost like in the third world countries where the dictator sits in a palace and takes money from the poor while they live in shacks and in the slums. We workers are sick of it. Its bad enough to take our money and hand it over to these people who do not want to work and prefer to stay drugged up or drunk, but this is worse to raise our taxes to give to the University of Washington who divides it around the top bracket of crooks. We should cut all ties with the University of Washington, let it run itself, and pay us back for the buildings we have paid for while they were  laughing all the way to the bank. It is sad that the University of Washington got so greedy.

About Ella Charms

Ella works with the Emerald City Journal part-time helping with guest posting requests and answering emails. She is passionate about Seattle and very informed with "cool" stuff happening in the area.

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The City Attorney just sued to block the Referendum against the Highway 99 Tunnel. Does he have the legal right to do that? He is an independently elected official. My view is he cannot strike out on his own and sue to stop a referendum to stop the tunnel that has enough signatures to be on the fall ballot. I think he has to be defending some branch of the city. The mayor didn’t ask him to sue. The Mayor is totally in favor of the referendum being on the ballot and the tunnel stopped. The city council is for the tunnel but had no meetings to take a vote about what to do with the referendum, so he isn’t working on their behalf. I would think it should be illegal for the city attorney to take it upon himself to sue for anything that he has not been instructed to do. He says he will save the city millions of dollars if he blocks the referendum. Well why doesn’t he block the school levy, it would save billions and billions? We the people have no choice about putting the school levy on the ballot, but we the people did have a choice about putting the tunnel referendum on. We have more than enough signatures showing we want to vote on it. The King County Council has not instructed him to stop it. He did it on his own almost the minute it was shown to have enough signatures.

For sure the city signed contracts before and during the time “we the people paying for it” were working to get a vote. It was a slimy, (not clever at all) way to muddle up the mess.

For City Attorney Peter Holmes to say he did it to save the taxpayers money and hold a straight face takes some fine acting. None of the politicians give one hoot in hell about saving taxpayers money. That is the one thing they do not even consider. They have proved that time and time again. The tunnel is the most expensive. How did that save me money?

About Ella Charms

Ella works with the Emerald City Journal part-time helping with guest posting requests and answering emails. She is passionate about Seattle and very informed with "cool" stuff happening in the area.

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