A fresh, Washington-grown item making the digital rounds reminds us why we’re in the mess we’re in. We speak of political gridlock and breakdown of rational discourse.
Last week, Washington state Rep. Ed Orcutt (R-Kalama), a ranking member of the state Transportation Committee, sent an e-mail to a Tacoma bike-shop owner after the owner objected to Orcutt’s notion of attaching a tax to bike purchases of $500 or more.
Bike riders have an “increased heart-rate respiration” while they ride, Orcutt wrote, which “results in greater emissions of carbon dioxide from the rider. Since CO2 is deemed to be a greenhouse gas and a pollutant, bicyclists are actually polluting when they ride.”
In a follow-up comment to Seattle Bike Blog, Orcutt opined: “You would be giving off more CO2 if you are riding a bike than driving a car.”
Orcutt subsequently backpedaled in an e-mail to Seattle Bike Blog, characterizing the carbon-emissions line as “over-the-top.”
In the next paragraph, he commented: “Although I have always recognized that bicycling emits less carbon than cars, I see I did a poor job of indicating that within my e-mail.”
“Poor job” is hardly accurate: Orcutt couldn’t have made himself more clear the first time around. He knew — or his advisors knew — that he had flat-out embarrassed himself, that’s all, and had nowhere else to hide.
A bicycle tax or no tax falls within the realm of rational debate, regardless of whether it’s wrapped up in a current proposal for a 10-cent-per-gallon gas tax increase.
But rational political debate is an endangered species: Not often enough is a flat-Earther like Orcutt caught so flat-footed.
A visit to the Olympia campus produces a twinge of nostalgia. Sight of the Joel M. Pritchard Library evokes a time when state Republicans — fiscally prudent, pro-business, environmentally aware and intellectually adventurous — represented an honorable political path. Some party leaders still do, but too many do not.
Pritchard, who lived in Magnolia and died in 1997, served in the state House and state Senate from 1959 to 1971 and in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1973 to 1985. He also served as lieutenant governor of Washington from 1989 to 1997. Like his friend, Dan Evans, former Republican governor and U.S. senator from this state, Pritchard, could work both sides of the aisle for the greater good.
We have too many Orcutts in Olympia and in Washington, D.C., who don’t hold themselves accountable for what comes out of their mouths the first time. A clash of informed views is one thing; a head-in-the-sand-but-still-talking stance is another.