In an unsettling instance of crony capitalism with special interests at the forefront of a procedural headache, King County adopted a helmet mandate for cyclists in 1993. While the implied premise was to save individuals from themselves, there was actually no concern for public safety, as council members and helmet manufacturers share in the accrued wealth of $30 citations pouring into the coffers and magically vanishing like the ethics of an International Olympic Committee endorsed ice skating judge rigging the competition with unctuous scandal.
With the homeless industrial complex crystalizing into the slumization of the county seat of Seattle’s downtown corridor, and tourists being forced to ponder the wondrous art of performance art Starbuck’s cups littering the sidewalk, when leadership is not rigging elections in avoiding election law, new and innovative public proclamations are being designed as a benefit to minorities and criminals, rather than law-abiding citizens. In the latest and greatest assault on the status quo, politicians have decided to rescind the bike helmet declaration, in a resoundingly reverse discriminatory decree that is just the tip of the proverbial of the iceberg for future bureaucracy that hinders the rights of a majority of the city’s population. To elitists, its not a health issue, but appeasing activists under intellectual dishonest racial pretense.
Supporters of the roll-back claim that people of color are disproportionally cited for not wearing the head protectors, while spewing rhetoric and disingenuous statistics claiming that cyclists in low income neighborhoods face a higher risk factor for related injuries and deaths. The decision to repeal the measure follows the city of Seattle police department choosing not to hand out infractions to helmetless bikers this January. In reality, the lame attempt at enacting an ineffectual sham of a public safety program backfired, as the projected revenue from handing out tickets was vastly overestimated. How does one enforce, when law enforcement response times to real crimes are already abysmal? Similar to the regressive gun tax implemented in 2015, which has ultimately chased firearms retailers from city limits in putting a hefty tariff on gun purchases, the endeavor has been an epic financial failure. So called “experts” failed to take into account the area’s nine months of inclement weather and hilly terrain which deters the majority of sane individuals from facing the elements, just like the faux-economists were oblivious that gun owners would simply drive twenty minutes to make a firearms purchase in another municipality.
While the approach in catering to the eclectic bike lobby has been pathological at best, and diabolical at worst, the city of Seattle is planning to construct lanes for cyclists in the Ballard neighborhood at $12 million per mile. The local bike culture consisting of brigades represented by factions of social justice warriors, militant lesbians, 365 power brokers, and endurance athletes is ecstatic over the expensive price tag, non-bikers and business owners are cringing at the assault on reason and their wallets. The exploitation of tax payers is made worse by the fact that the city along with the Cascade Bike Club is planning a nefarious scheme which will drive blue collar businesses out of the area and the subsequent multi-use developments will be a cash cow for developers and bureaucracy, as tech workers will fund the infrastructure in paying well above market value for rents with no pause.
As the last two calendar years have been horrific for moderate voters, with the King County council replacing the term “citizen” with “public” in its charter, influencing residents to void their power to elect a sheriff, and supporting the insane concept that “vehicle camping” is somehow an extension of one’s home, the bike helmet controversy is simply the latest black eye for a governing body that is self-serving. Allegedly, the contrived fetish in fostering equity and anti-discriminatory policy is more important than efficiently running the administration of a county. The irony is that the back and forth with the infamous Seattle City Council is like a contest to determine who can make the worst decisions for constituents, with quality of life at stake.
In stealing a page from the nightmarish decisions of German city leaders in 1918 liquidating the jail system and unleashing swarms of convicts and felons onto the streets, a slew of misdemeanors are not being prosecuted as politicians are embracing an anti-cop position of abolitionism, and making the streets dangerous. Add to this volatile environment a slew of entitled cyclists indifferent to traffic laws, and absolutely nothing can go wrong in the presence of unfettered idealism.
With causation and correlation confined to the anecdotal gulag, the insufferable politicians of King County and Seattle continue to embrace hope and not logic in compromising the rights of the individual, especially the freedoms of those they purportedly advocate for. This cautionary tale is a symptom of wokeness and will invariably fester on a national scale, unless those who have a vested interest in the future continue to challenge platitudes of discontent.
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