We have often reflected in this column about the remarkable qualities that emerge in everyone when people of all abilities — including people with developmental conditions like autism, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, and so on — engage fully with each other. Why is this, and how does it work?
I like to keep an eye out for the dirt-cheap bookings my condo association offers for last-minute cancellations. So when one popped up at Whistler we tossed some things into a bag and headed north. North took us past that vacant stretch of developers’ dreams between I-5 and Old 99 where leveled and staked FOR SALE acreages sit like empty tables in a restaurant at 4 p.m.
Several factors are influencing our state’s tax collections outlook, which dictates the overall state budget. Unfortunately, the record $32.4 billion 2011-13 budget passed last May will likely be adjusted downward based on lagging tax collections due to continued job losses and hesitant consumers.
All eyes of state government will be fixated on the state’s economic and revenue forecast when it is released Thursday, Sept. 15. This forecast not only predicts the direction of Washington’s economy by using complicated formulas and indicators, but it also projects incoming revenue to the state based upon the economy and consumer spending. The state budget is built using those revenue projections.
Before every election, strips of land like the one between the BNSF tracks and Old Highway 99 are thoroughly decorated with signs. It’s a mess that must cause members of Marysville’s Arts Commission to tear their hair. Either Marysville’s City Code is a little murky on the posting of political signs or the city hasn’t found it practical to enforce or strengthen it. Whatever, the result amounts to a civic eyesore.
Our organization and many others like it were founded originally because people with disabilities needed us. But along the way, we discovered something as amazing as it is self-evident once you think about it — that is, people of all abilities need each other and are better together.
My pet traffic-peeves are getting out of Marysville and getting through Seattle. Planners claim that replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct with a tunnel will help relieve the Seattle issue, though at an astronomical cost. Something has to be done, as any traveler of the Viaduct will confirm. We can only hope that with the economy in a slump, the State and Feds will be able to come through with expected support.
“If everybody is thinking alike, somebody isn’t thinking.” Gen. George Patton. The letter writer who used this quote is a perfect example of somebody who “isn’t thinking.” This is a baseless argument since the writer has no idea what individual members of the Republican Party think; therefore, no “group think.”
