NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate is the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Tuesday, October 18th, 2011

Bank of America joins Keep Washington Rolling, donates $10,000 to beat I‑1125

A year and a half after donat­ing $10,000 to help Tim Eyman get I‑1053 on the Novem­ber 2010 bal­lot, Bank of Amer­i­ca (which we like to call Bank of Greed) has donat­ed an iden­ti­cal amount to beat Eyman’s I‑1125, new PDC data shows.

Keep Wash­ing­ton Rolling has been bol­stered by some $1 mil­lion in fresh con­tri­bu­tions received over the last week and a half, includ­ing Bank of Amer­i­ca’s dona­tion. Oth­er recent wealthy and cor­po­rate con­trib­u­tors to KWR include:

  • Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who chipped in $100,000;
  • Craig Mundie, chief research offi­cer at Microsoft, who donat­ed $10,000;
  • Cen­tu­ryLink, which gave $15,000;
  • HTNB Corp., which gave $25,000;
  • Alas­ka Air­lines, which gave $5,000;
  • Pre­mera Blue Cross, which put in anoth­er $10,000;
  • Nin­ten­do of Amer­i­ca, which put up $25,000;
  • AT&T, which gave $10,000;
  • Rus­sell Invest­ment Group, which gave $10,000;
  • T‑Mobile, which gave $7,500;
  • The Seat­tle Mariners, who donat­ed anoth­er $25,000;
  • The Wash­ing­ton Real­tors, who gave $25,000.

Boe­ing, mean­while, donat­ed $200,000 worth of adver­tis­ing yes­ter­day, join­ing Microsoft as one of the largest con­trib­u­tors to Keep Wash­ing­ton Rolling.

Please note, this isn’t a com­plete list.

In total, Keep Wash­ing­ton Rolling has now raised $2,267,157.76 and spent $1,293,846.9. It still has about a mil­lion dol­lars in cash to burn … and it like­ly isn’t done tak­ing in con­tri­bu­tions, either.

The only major Wash­ing­ton cor­po­ra­tions that don’t seem to have put mon­ey into the NO on I‑1125 cam­paign yet are Ama­zon and Star­bucks.

We pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed that sev­er­al of the cor­po­ra­tions and com­pa­nies that backed Eyman last year had donat­ed mon­ey to beat him last year. We’ve dubbed this group, which now includes Bank of Amer­i­ca, Tim Eyman’s fair-weath­er friends.

Written by Andrew Villeneuve :: 7:59 PM

Categories: Elections, Open Government, Policy Topics

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2 Comments

  1. Andrew — Thanks for the info on all these com­pa­nies! I just don’t see any rea­son to fund the oppo­si­tion to an ini­tia­tive that actu­al­ly stops a pub­lic agency — Sound Tran­sit — from cor­rup­tion — by ille­gal­ly using the Gas Tax to pay for Light Rail, which specif­i­cal­ly vio­lates the State Con­sti­tu­tion’s 18th Amendment.

    These com­pa­nies would be bet­ter served to give their mon­ey to the poor.

    I may start a boy­cott list of all of these com­pa­nies on my own web site, for their fail­ure to rec­og­nize that Vot­ers in 1944 in Wash­ing­ton State vot­ed for the 18th Amend­ment, because they want­ed gas tax­es to ONLY pay for ROADS.

    So I guess I might be a pro­gres­sive Con­sti­tu­tion­al­ists, since I respect the vot­ers in 1944. I know that you will dis­agree, but why do you and so many oth­ers NOT respect the vot­ers in 1944? 

    Isn’t that the same as not respect­ing our found­ing Fathers and the US Constitution? 

    Should­n’t we respect every­one who vot­ed for every amend­ment to both the state and nation­al constitutions? 

    Since the vot­ers in 1944 said “Gas Tax­es Only for High­ways, not for any­thing else,” then should­n’t we respect them? 

    # by Tom Lane :: October 19th, 2011 at 2:07 AM

    • Tom, you are sad­ly misinformed.

      Sound Tran­sit is not using gas tax­es to build light rail. Sound Tran­sit is fund­ed by region­al sales tax­es and motor vehi­cle excise tax­es. The peo­ple of this region have twice autho­rized Sound Tran­sit to build a light rail sys­tem to con­nect cities such as Seat­tle, Belle­vue, Red­mond, SeaT­ac, and Lyn­nwood. Those votes took place in 1996 and 2008. Sound Tran­sit is car­ry­ing out the will of the vot­ers by deliv­er­ing its projects on time and under budget.

      You seem to care a lot about a vote that hap­pened a long time ago. What about those votes in 1996 and 2008? They don’t mat­ter, but that vote in 1944 does? Nice dou­ble stan­dard you’ve got there. 

      Sound Tran­sit is not vio­lat­ing the 18th Amend­ment to the state Con­sti­tu­tion by propos­ing to run light rail over I‑90; you are wrong to assert oth­er­wise. You are also wrong in claim­ing that Sound Tran­sit is cor­rupt. It is one of the most heav­i­ly audit­ed agen­cies in the state, with a very com­pe­tent chief exec­u­tive (Joni Earl), cit­i­zen over­sight pan­els, and a high­ly involved board. 

      The Lacey V. Mur­row and Homer M. Hadley Memo­r­i­al Bridges over Lake Wash­ing­ton were most­ly built with fed­er­al mon­ey (the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment sup­plied around 80% of the funds), with the under­stand­ing that part of the lat­ter bridge would ulti­mate­ly be used for high capac­i­ty tran­sit. In fact, this was a con­di­tion agreed to by the state upon receipt of the fed­er­al money.

      Sound Tran­sit is ful­ly com­pen­sat­ing the state for the trans­fer of part of the Homer M. Hadley Memo­r­i­al Bridge. Sound Tran­sit is pay­ing for the express lanes to be replaced by two new HOV lanes, one west­bound and one east­bound, and they will also make reg­u­lar lease pay­ments. Because the state is being com­pen­sat­ed, there is no way you or oth­er light rail oppo­nents can cred­i­bly argue that any high­way mon­ey is being used for a “non-high­way” purpose.

      # by Andrew :: October 19th, 2011 at 11:53 PM

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