Rantz: Durkan’s ORCA plan a fine example of government waste

There are two things I find especially annoying: virtue signaling and government waste. When you combine the two, boy does it set me off.

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This week, Seattle Major Jenny Durkan announced all the city’s public school students will receive free, unlimited ORCA transit passes because, she believes, too many students are stressing over getting to school or work because they’re trying to figure out their transportation options.

This plan is great for low-income students who actually need it. But, as her plan currently stands, we’re giving free cards to families who can more than afford the $1.50 youth fare. I know Durkan and Progressives want to pretend that Seattle is so unaffordable, that no one can pay the rent, but, obviously, the opposite is true. The vast, vast, vast majority of Seattleites are able to live here. How do I know? Well, they, uhm, live here. No one wants to pay $2,000 for a studio apartment, yet, somehow, the rent is being paid.

By giving free ORCA cards to people who can afford them, you’re actually making the city less affordable. The money will come from tax dollars — taxes paid, perhaps, by some people who do, in fact, struggle to live here. (Perhaps Bill Gates, yearning for higher tax bills, would donate $4.8 million a year to this cause?)

This is wasteful spending, but Durkan has an ulterior motive. She’s pretending this is about making the lives of kids easier but this is likely more about getting kids to rely on taking transit, rather than cars (particularly single occupancy vehicles) to get around the city. That’s fine if that’s the plan; I get it. But rather than being honest, Durkan cakes this in some faux-concern for a kid with two Amazon parents earning $500,000 a year apparently struggling to deal with the stress of figuring out how to get to school for that calculus test Friday morning. Right.

This is a giant virtue signal. It’s not about kids, it’s about transportation policy, and since Durkan is being flippant with how she doles out our money to people who don’t need it, this is wasteful spending to boot.

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