Troubled Waters II

(NOTE: This was originally part of the previous post, "Troubled Waters, I.")

According to the Seattle Slimes, candidate for King County Executive Susan Hutchison believes we should "Send In The Marines" to help prepare with potential flooding in the Green River valley.

Now, when I saw the headline "Hutchison: Call in the Marines to help prepare for Green River flood" I had a true "Wisconsin Tourism Federation" moment, because, of course, a county executive has no authority to call in any military personnel for such a thing, unless, of course, the county has some sort of militia organization. The thought of a King County, WA, militia is, well, risible...

After a few paragraphs build-up, they quote her as saying

that if elected she would "move immediately through jurisdictional channels to call up the engineering units of the local Marine, Army and Air Force at nearby Fort Lewis and McChord to work under the direction of the Corps of Engineers to build up the most at-risk sections of the levees."

Ahhh, the old "through jurisdictional channels" dodge.

The Governor has the authority to have the National Guard get involved, of course, but any active duty, or Reserve (as opposed to National Guard) activity would be subject to approval in "the other Washington", even with a Presidential Declaration of Emergency--which we do not have, as you don't get a Presidential Declaration without first getting the Governor to do the same, and you don't get that without an actual emergency. "We may have a problem sometime this winter" is not enough.

Which the Seattle Slimes article points out.

At length.

Meanwhile...

Reading Ms Hutchison 's statement about the flood on her website, the one that caused the Slimes to publish their piece, it is pretty clear that she is "out of the loop" about preparations on-going, and what will and can be done. My question is, why? Why hasn't anyone in her campaign been filling her in on what is happening?

Frankly, I give her kudos for trying to provide leadership--especially since actually doing something is unheard of around here--but whoever is supposed to be advising her on emergency management and public safety needs to go back to flipping burgers for a living.

I suspect that, the whispering campaign that the Seattle Slimes tried to start to derail Ms Hutchison's campaign in the primary having failed--she's (gasp!) a closet Republican! (shudder!)--this may be the best they can do to make her look bad.

In the meantime, her opponent, Dow Constantine, is on the King County Council, and has been for years, and has had serious allegations arise about, shall we say, improprieties. (Hey, look! The SEIU!) Allegations that the Slimes seems to be sitting on, or ignoring. (And, by the way, Liberty Belle says that there is to be a protest at the Seattle Slimes building today, 6 October, to demand that they un-ignore the story...)

Frankly, the flood doesn't worry me as much as the mess that is Washington State politics. Maybe Hannah Giles and Jim O'Keefe can come out here to do some filming...