Washington State is in more or less good shape. Two Senators (Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell) both Democrats. Nine Representatives: six Democrats (including the outspoken Jim McDermott from the 7th district—mine) and three Republicans.

Local elections were a bit spotty. The initiative sponsored by the controversial Tim Eyman limiting annual automobile license tab fees to $30.00 passed. The last time this went through, ferry fares went way up and lots of needed highway repairs didn't get done because one of their main revenue supports (license tabs and gas taxes) had been yanked. Some people never learn. But anti-taxes seemed to be the main thrust of the voters this time, failing to take into consideration what services would be lost or drastically cut, including a lot of safety issues.

It's close (absentee ballots yet to count), but it looks like the monorail is going to go through. Seattle has the nation's third worst traffic gridlock, and other than a bus system that further clogs up the streets, no public transportation system. The light-rail system on the drawing boards is a bad joke—a billion dollar tunnel under the Lake Washington Ship Canal and Capitol Hill that's turning out to be an engineers and geologists nightmare—and endless bitching and complaining from the people it's supposed to eventually serve, provided they live long enough. The new monorail will be a lot neater than the current Seattle icon that just runs a mile and a half from Westlake to the Seattle Center. It will be cheaper and faster to build, runs above the streets, leaving them fully usable, can climb steeper grades than light-rail (making tunnels unnecessary), won't get involved in traffic accidents, is non-polluting, and it will be a whole lot less expensive to operate. Also, if the routes don't work out, it's a fairly easy job to remove the pylons and tracks and put them somewhere else. Can't do that with a tunnel. Yet for some totally bizarre and unexplained reason many of the Powers That Be have tried to stop it despite the fact that the voters have voted for it three times now. I think that a lot of the people who voted against it this time didn't realize that the planned Ballard to West Seattle run is only the first of a potentially area-wide system, hopefully replacing the cockamamie multi-billion dollar light-rail plan. Maybe this time the monorail will make it beyond the drawing boards.

It didn't seem to be much of an issue this time around, but I still wonder why it is that the Powers that Be in Seattle can't seem to find the funds to do something for the 7,000 homeless, in this area, most of whom are working poor—but they can find the money to build two brand new sports stadiums (stadia?). But that sort of thing seems to be the general thrust of the whole nation's domestic policy. Screw the people. Follow the money.

Better hunker down. Our foreign policy is a real goat's breakfast, and the international situation is going to be a real doozy.

Don Firth