| I could not agree more with your comment in the last issue about the hypocrisy of those opposing NASCAR while supporting the SEED project. It isn’t about being politically correct, as those supporters of SEED would have you believe, but about how our tax dollars are being spent.
Is SEED a good thing for our area? Who knows — it’s an unproven, 100 percent taxpayer funded, gamble, aiming to support the development of new technologies that may — or may not — have any application or impact upon reducing our dependence on foreign oil. This is not a government project, but one meant to attract and support private enterprise to this area. According to Mr. Tim Botkin, it may cost as much as $200 million before it’s all said and done — that’s 200 million of our tax dollars folks!
NASCAR on the other hand is a tried and true, repeatedly proven, private sector money machine that pumps a half billion private sector dollars into the local economy every single race weekend. If you actually read the funding proposal for it, you will see that it isn’t taxpayer funded, and that the bond money is nothing but a tax collection pass-through.
No matter how you feel about either SEED or NASCAR, it’s the hypocrisy of “no taxpayer dollars for private enterprise” that’s at issue here. If you oppose the funding proposal for NASCAR on that basis, and support SEED, you are, quite simply, a hypocrite.
Jamie Chenault
Bremerton |
