Van Dyk is a Crazy Old Man

Van Dyk (the guy who worked on Herbert Humphrey’s Campaign all the way back in 1968!!!) gives us another doosy of an old man rant in today’s PI:

King County Executive Ron Sims, a former Sound Transit chairman and sparkplug, broke ranks with the political establishment recently to publicly oppose Prop. 1. It was a difficult decision for him but the right one for his county. It is never too late to correct a mistake, especially if the mistake in question is a world-class whopper.

Oh man, it keeps coming back to Ron Sims. The man who was chair of Sound Transit during the planning phase. The man who appointed a majority of the people on the board. The man who said during planning, “We’re going to dig and dig and dig and dig until the light-rail project gets to Bellevue, gets to Everett, gets to Tacoma.” (That’s four digs) If it was such a difficult decision to make, why didn’t he make it back when it could have been easy, back when he chaired the board, back when he was appointing the majority on the board, back when the plans weren’t finalized?

That would have meant building a line from Sea-Tac Airport to downtown, throwing a party and using Sound Transit resources thereafter for more sensible transit alternatives. Instead, Sound Transit has willfully pursued with public funds a non-stop push for light rail expansion — even though it is a decade late and billions of dollars over budget in completing its so-called Phase I line from the airport to Northgate, with many initially promised stations cancelled.

Um, that’s not what the audit said… So do you just make up the requirements for Phase one completion, Van Dyk? I think I’m starting to see why Walter Mondale, who Van Dyk was a “senior advisor” to, carried only one state: if your advisors don’t read the documents before passing judgment, who’s going to find you credible?

The present misleading media campaign for Prop. 1 has been funded by contractors and outriders who see it as providing them a generations-long cornucopia of public money and who, coincidentally, are a major source of campaign funds for Prop. 1’s political sponsors. Major corporations locally have fallen into line, apparently buying the premise that a dreadful transportation proposal is better than none. CEOs of the corporations supporting the huge taxpayer-financed package would not tolerate for a moment the same wildly cost-ineffective allocations of resources within their own companies. Investors would demand their resignations.

Wow. This essay would not have gotten a B- in my 12th-grade writting class. Misleading in which way? How do you know that major corporations think this is a dreadful proposal? I know that my employer has never told me it was a dreadful proposal before they donated cash to the yes campaign. And whose resignations would be demanded? The CEOs? It’s a very confusing read.

Anyway, Van Dyk is not just a crazy old man, he is a classy old man:

I disagree in one respect with P-I columnist Bill Virgin’s characterization of it as an “8-foot-tall steaming pile of elephant dung.” I believe the pile to be at least 10 feet high.

Nice. Van Dyk, you are so old there’s no way you will either ride the trains or pay for them. What the hell do you care? Leave the decisions on the future to those who will be alive to live in it.