All apologies to Secretary Wayne Clough— “a geotechnical engineer who reads and writes poetry,” a quote Michelle Obama gets laughs with in a pretty good speech— but I’m pretty sure this public exchange at the end of his introduction was the part more of the United States public was interested in:
In other design news, the Stranger put up (giant file size) versions of the draft environmental impact statements for the Deep Bore Tunnel. Crowdsourcing in the hope of somebody finding a chink in the armor, I think. Nothing I’ve seen so far strikes me as nearly so meaty a target as the fact that the WSDOT geotechnical report totally bungles our tectonic setting— no megathrust mention, attributing Nisqually to a shallow thrust “associated” fault, slickensides in boreholes downtown…
Sam and I are hitting in the streets to patronize a local establishment but, man, were we happy to read this story before leaving the house—
(Sheriff Joe) Arpaio has launched — either on his own or in conjunction with the county attorney — high-profile criminal investigations against a who’s who of Maricopa County politicians and officials. The list includes the mayor of Phoenix, a former police chief, two members of the board of supervisors, Superior Court judges, and even a former state attorney general.
The charges have included public corruption, misuse of taxpayers’ dollars, bribery, rape and even child molestation. What all these investigations hold in common is that they were launched with great public fanfare, but rarely resulted in convictions. Among the investigations recounted in this report, the only conviction has been on the misdemeanor charge against Dowling.
Nail him to the wall, federal grand jury! What an asshole.
(Phoenix Mayor Phil) Gordon came under Arpaio’s scrutiny, he says, after speaking out against the sheriff’s neighborhood sweeps to round up illegal immigrants.
The mayor says he received a torrent of records requests from sheriff’s investigators, and he was later told that he was under investigation on possible child molestation charges. Gordon says the sheriff “bragged that he was watching my office from his office with a telescope.”
Meanwhile— have you ever seen a cross-section of what the Seattle deep-bore tunnel would look like? What a beast!
The picture’s from the WSDOT geotechnical report. Thanks to Dominic for the link!
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