Joe Kent is a MAGA Republican running for Congress against Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington state. He is opposed to replacing an aging bridge that crosses the Columbia River:
Mr. Kent, who denies the legitimacy of the 2020 election and has referred to those jailed for taking part in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol as “political prisoners,” has branded the reconstruction plan an “Antifa superhighway.” He has claimed that the proposed project, which includes a light rail and tolls, will bring unwanted urban elements from Portland into the car-centric, predominantly white community of Clark County, Washington, effectively serving as “an expressway for Portland’s crime & homeless into Vancouver,” as he wrote on social media.
Huh. I wonder what Kent's alternative is? Just keep the old bridge until it collapses someday? Tear it down so nobody can cross the river? Replace it with a ferry?
Every country has some lunatics. Some of them even get into office. But we sure as hell have more than our share these days.
Maybe he will just put up a sign on the bridge, "No Blacks Allowed". Problem solved for this racist POS.
And all this time I thought the crazies we on the East side of the state….
People from Skamania County are often referred to as Skamaniacs.
He's running in my district, and I call him "Smashmouth Joe" because he went on Bannon about 2020 rattling on about "We need to smash some mouths" referring to "Libruls". He beat Jamie Herrera-Beutler in the Open Primary and LOTS of her supporters voted for Marie. I expect they will again, because she represents the district well. The Dems are always bitching about her going off the reservation.
Emboldened by That One Idiot who got far with his similar idiocy, and the megaphone for stupidity that is the internet, plus bad actors like Russian troll farms who we know juice the spread of it, and are still doing it.
Maybe he thinks the district should be part of the Sovereign Republic of Greater Idaho? So that's no river down there, it's a moat.
Antifa Superhighway sounds like an Eagles hit from the '70s, and Mr. Kent from Clark County sounds like somebody only Lois Lane (and really not even her) would vote for.
"Every country has some lunatics. Some of them even get into office."
Speaking of Trump, the former guy got 646 (!) votes in the Washington, DC, primary today. His outreach to Black voters -- his mugshot and 91 felony counts ("I think that’s why the Black people are so much on my side now") -- may need a few tweaks as the campaign forges ahead.
And I hope that Biden rubs that in. Sure, he needs to do more & better on serious subjects, but this would really get under trump's skin.
Well Kevin, presumably he has said what his alternative is, in the very article from which you are quoting:
Sorry, there is no "magic bullet" $2 billion highway-only bridge on the horizon. It would certainly be nice, but the construction has to be "phased" because there's not much room between the new waterfront development and the old bridge. They have to build the southbound half and hook it in at each end, then demise the old southbound span, build the northbound span and hook it in at each end and then demise the northbound span. It's a complicated mess.
The two states have each ponied up $1 billion, the Feds are in for a combined $2.5 billion or so, but the whole thing will supposedly cost $6 billion. So tolls have to make up the $1.5 billion "gap".
Removing the LRT would certainly reduce the cost, but it also removes $750 million of Federal Transit Administration contributions, so just about the same funding gap remains. The bridge wouldn't get any smaller; instead of a steel rails transitway there would be a rubber-tired transitway, so structurally the bridge would be essentially the same.
Tolls have to be levied, and Smashmouth Joe can't do anything about it.
That's what I thought, even without reading the full article: it's the light rail by which he fears all the riffraff will get to Clark County. The tolls are a side issue from this: tolls won't make it easier for them to get there, but nobody likes tolls. Especially on a crossing which has never had any before.
It’s just another “if we build transit, criminals will ride transit to the suburbs to commit crimes” diatribe. Which somehow ignores that crime also occurs in places without any transit, possibly because many criminals have cars already. Stealing is much more lucrative as a career if you have a place to put all the stuff you stole and can make a speedy getaway without having to check a timetable or hide your face from all the security cameras and other bystanders sharing the vehicle with you. “I just stole this big screen TV and now I’m going to wait at the light rail station with it in full view for 15 minutes before catching a 45 minute ride back downtown” sounds scary to the anti-transit crowd, and just plain stupid to everyone else.
I'm not saying he has any justification for this belief. I'm saying that what he has in mind is obvious.
Both spans of the existing bridge were paid for in part by tolls. The southbound side, the oldest part of the bridge, was paid off in 1929. The newer Northbound span was paid off in 1967. The fact the bridge is so old, especially the Southbound side, that there hasn’t been a need for a toll in 57 years is kind of telling.
Apparently he thinks 'unwanted urban elements' prefer to pay for tolls and train tickets?
Apparently. I am reminded of Georgetown not wanting Metro stops…
However, it is clear that either Kevin didn’t read the full source article, or if he did, he chose to omit that bit from his mockery.
Except what you state about Georgetown is a myth, and revisionist.
Geography and geology were determining factors in not having a stop in Georgetown way back when
yeah those stations at GWU and Rosslyn are DEEP. dunno whether one in Georgetown would even have been possible, and even if so it would have been SUPER expensive.
What was the geological issue precluding a metro stop in Georgetown?
The bridge is estimated to cost $5 billion and $7.5 billion. How are the good people of Clark County going to pay for that?
USDOT money from the rest of us?
Obviously (I would think), projects like this aren’t paid for only by those who live nearby. A lot of the funding comes from the state transportation budgets of Oregon and Washington, whose taxpayers across their respective states (like me) will foot the bill.
Since it’s Interstate 5 which serves as a main route for freight up and down the west coast it benefits all of us
In case you didn't know, this bridge is I-5, one of the "cardinal" north-south interstate highways (5, 15, 25 ... 95). So, yeah, "USDOT money from the rest of us" (about $1.75 billion total from USDOT and $750 million from Federal Transit Authority) plus a billion from each state.
Tolls close the gap.
It's really wasteful to spend the money to rebuild the bridge without providing a valuable public transportation option, such as light rail, which will be used by Vancouver residents just as much as Portland residents.
Traffic on I-5 really bogs down on that section and light rail would relieve the pressure. Secondly, it'll connect to the line that goes to PDX, which is mostly useful for residents of the Couv.
It will be used far more by Clark County residents than by Portland residents.
Clark County needs the connection to Portland with all jobs and the tax-free shopping.
If all the people in Clark County disappeared, Portland wouldn't even notice.
There is, or at least used to be, a good reason for a Portland-area person to live in Clark County: no state income tax in Washington.
And no sales tax in Oregon, so Clark County residents can work in WA and shop in OR. Of course real patriots use the I-205 freeway bridge 5 miles upstream.
It's like everyone else is working for them.
If you work in Portland you pay income tax no matter where you live.
The main reason people live in Clark County is cheaper houses.
Now that the derp state has demystified medical science, they are tackling bridge engineers and their woke math.
The bridge would be cheaper, but less convenient, if instead of a high bridge it was a low bridge with a lift span, but Trump would demand the lift span be driven by steam, not electromagnitism.
A lift bridge on an interstate highway makes no sense at all, particularly one like I-5 that runs from the REAL Vancouver (BC) to Mexico. Would a lift bridge make any sense at all on I-95 back east?
Yeah, the idea that I-5 traffic would be halted multiple times each day for maritime traffic is crazy.
Portland resident here who closely follows this project and couldn't let this comment go. The whole "stop sign on an interstate" is propaganda by the pro-bridge folks (ie road builders who will profit magnificently from this project, ODOT, WSDOT, etc). The reality is this: there are a few builders east of the bridge that need significant clearance for their products when they pass under the bridge. This happens 300-400 times a year (ie on average about once a day) and can be strategically planned to occur in the middle of the night where traffic on I5 is very low. They are proposing a massive fixed-span bridge (six stories high where it enters Vancouver downtown) to avoid some lifts at 3am.
As noted above by Anandakos, this is a very complicated build with projected costs rising by the billion every year. I'm taking bets with anyone of my neighbors who will listen: I'll take the over on the final pricetag being over $10 billion when it's all said and done. That overage can be paid by higher tolls (the project leadership flatly says they won't do that) or by more federal grants (thanks folks in Illinois and Iowa for paying for this bridge) or by general fund dollars from Washington and Oregon (sorry schools, enjoy 35+ kids in that 5th grade classroom yet again).
It's a debacle. The project annually spends millions of public dollars on pro-freeway propaganda. And, the reality is, it's a freeway expansion (the new bridge is slated to be nearly a football field wide at 93 yards vs the current bridge of approximately 30 yards) of nearly seven miles rather than simply a bridge rebuild with the addition of transit.
Same sort of thing was said -- much more quietly -- to keep BART from being built down the SF Peninsula lo these many years ago: we don't want "the element" coming to our nice suburbs from the hellmouth that is the city.
It should also be noted that it was said that the money for the anti-BART campaigns came from local developers who were building big malls (yes, kids, there was a time when malls were being built) and didn't want suburban shoppers to have a nice easy way to get to stores in the city.
Developers even built a mall in San Francisco proper. Connected to BART even. It is, however dying these days.
Q: What does Joe Kemp have in common with Sara from https://jabberwocking.com/heres-the-secret-to-being-pro-life-and-pro-ivf/ and Monica Hesse from https://jabberwocking.com/divorce-rates-have-plummeted-over-the-past-20-years/?
A: They're all saying, in effect, "I've chosen to ignore the possibility that I might be wrong."
Q: What do far too many people that identify as Christian, capitalist, scientist, and/or American have in common?
A: They're all saying, in effect, "I've chosen to ignore the possibility that I might be wrong."
Q: What is the founding principle of Christianity (Luke 10:27), capitalism (Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiment), science (the first scientific principle), and America (we are all created equal) have in common?
A: They're all saying, in effect, "I've chosen not to ignore the possibility that I might be wrong."
Q: What question is the inner 5th grader in me asking?
A: What am I missing?
Science means making a hypothesis that can be disproven and performing experiments to determine if it is wrong.
The entire purpose of science is to find out if you are wrong.
Scientific thought changes all the time - because scientists find out they were wrong.
Charismatic Marie Gluesenkamp Perez barely beat him last time. She gets attacked by the Dem left, but she is exactly what the Democratic Party needs to win.
Does the Democratic Party need her charisma or her integrity? Maybe both.
If you spend more than 5 seconds reading about her, you will see she has plenty of integrity. She votes progressive when her vote is necessary to get a bill across the finish line, and votes as her constituents would want when it doesn’t really matter how she votes. What’s wrong with that? We get a D in a district that is very red and get her votes when it counts.
It is a barely red district l. Just lots of NIMBYs.
Alexander Sammon doesn't seem to share your views. Probably there are other views out there, but I spent more than 5 seconds searching and didn't find them
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/08/marie-gluesenkamp-perez-washington-congresswoman-sold-out-democrats.html
According to the voteview site, Perez has the most conservative voting record of any Democratic member of the House. You have examples of her voting with progressives when her vote is necessary to get a bill across the finish line?
Yes. And her connection to working people.
People fearing crime and not being able to afford housing is exactly what will propel Donald Trump into a second run in the White House.
Secession
Kent is an open Nazi, Vancouver is the town where proud-boy wannabes tried to run over BLM protesters and smashed up a police car and were let go.
Ugh. Hopefully he has no chance of winning, again.
It's really about the tolls and the inclusion of light rail. And even then, Vancouver is a town of people who live there to evade income taxes and shop in Oregon to avoid Washington's sales taxes. IOW, they're a bunch of tax-dodging folks who don't want to pay for anything, even as they complain about not having nice stuff.
I suggest blowing up the bridge and making them divert to Ranier - Longview and I-205. See how they like them apples...Oregon apples, that is.
It's the only meaningful way to block the Antifa folks from invading Vancouver, after all. /S