Federal threats will make state angrier

I read with interest the Herald article on Jan. 18 titled, “Legislature urged to avoid public vote on roads plan.”

The article by David Ammons of the Associated Press states – and I’d like to paraphrase the content – that our esteemed senior senator, Patty Murray, will secure for us federal matching funds in excess of the amount we allocate to road projects, if we don’t bring the road package to a public vote.

The article forced me to consider some things. I hope that The Herald and Mr. Ammons get some satisfaction from that.

Firstly, I thought that if the federal government is able to subvert our state government through coercion and bribery, by returning our money to us, then it is probably time to seriously rethink our taxing system. I realize that this is standard operating procedure, but that doesn’t make it right. Secondly, I thought that this tactic was probably destined to fail, because if nothing else, our elected officials want to be our elected officials. I think that the federal bribe has to be much larger than promised to get them to commit political suicide. Thirdly, I thought that this may be a good thing. Sen. Murray obviously is trying to do her job and bring home the pork.

This brought me to my final thought; I thought of the universal law of unintended consequences – maybe we need the bribery, coercion and the subversion of our legislative process to anger the people enough to effect real reform in our taxing and representative systems.

Everett