Various local Mandarins from Puget Sound counties have voted to approve a wildly expensive and deeply flawed transportation tax package for presentation to the voters in November. $12.6 billion for a combination of highway improvements and public transit upgrades. But Seattle officials don't like it because "too much" is spent on roads, and "only" $875 million is proposed for the infinite black hole of Sound Transit light rail. The high priests of the Seattle Train Cargo-Cult insist on $1.2 billion for Sound Transit, whose board is otherwise expected to kill the whole deal.

Sound Transit should be defunded altogether, so please don't ask me to pour another $875 million into that hole. The other problem with the package is that it includes more "high occupancy vehicle" lanes, the dumbest way to allocate road capacity that has ever been conceived. (I can use the HOV lane if I take my two-year-old to the shopping mall at rush hour, but not if I go by myself at noon. Give me a break).

I'll agree to vote on a big-ticket transportation measure if and when they implement market and congestion pricing for major highways. In the meantime, don't look to me for subsidizing other people's commutes. I work at home.