Rantz: Desperate attempt to swindle voters on ST3

In an attempt to confuse voters as to the cost of investments in the multi-billion dollar Sound Transit 3 plan, Seattle activist organization Seattle Subway is pushing an inexcusably dumb meme popping up on urbanists’ Facebook walls.

Seattle Subway is angry that The Seattle Times editorial board appears to be anti-ST3. The main argument from the Times is that it’s too costly. With that in mind, Seattle Subway posts a meme that argues ST3 will only cost $5 more per person than an annual Seattle Times subscription. Seattle Subway goes on to encourage people to cancel their subscription to the Times because, you know, why live in a city with alternative viewpoints?

Related: Sound Transit spent over $850K tax dollars on party no one asked for

I’m not going to argue with their simplistic math. People on the Seattle Subway page, who support ST3, are pointing out their math is wrong and based on a whole lot of assumptions. Instead, I’ll focus on the remarkably silly comparison they’re making.

Seattle Subway thinks a person who willfully subscribes to a newspaper that they use on a daily basis is comparable to a tax on that same person for a transportation system they may likely never use or benefit from. That’s remarkably ignorant.

If you’re a 50-year-old homeowner in the Seattle area, for example, it’s slim you’ll ever use any of the proposed ST3 projects. Yet if you’re a daily subscriber to the Times, you’ll actually read the product you’re paying for.

Further, the Times is a business and if they falter, there are consequences. For example, if the Times is ten years behind schedule on delivering their daily newspaper, they end up going out of business.

If you’re Sound Transit, that’s ten years over-schedule for a project? You ask for more and more money and pretend you were on-schedule (and on-budget). You get total protection and even benefit from activist shills doing defense because, ideologically, they like what you stand for. Sound Transit even gives them a tax-payer funded party to thank them for their loyalty.

This isn’t to say ST3 doesn’t have any merit. It does. I’m a believer in light rail and I’m pro-transit (just not at any cost). There are a lot of reasonable arguments in favor of ST3 and fair-minded people can argue the merits in a meaningful way. But this meme is not a reasonable argument. It doesn’t present a reasonable argument at all.

Follow @https://twitter.com/jasonrantz