Schrammie: Treating us like frightened children

Are we being coddled or are we being duped?

To answer those ponderous questions, I'd like to invite the State Department of Transportation to stop staring at the Richter scale and come on down.

A few years back the DOT paid $80,000 for a video simulating the collapse of the Alaskan Way Viaduct in the aftermath of a powerful earthquake.

$80,000 of our hard-earned tax dollars forked out so that we could actually see what had already been described to us.

But a curious thing happened.

State officials decided that you and I would be too frightened and too disturbed if we saw the video.

Maybe they figured we'd have nightmares.

Or maybe they figured we'd actually demand a quicker decision on what to do about the Viaduct's doomsday scenario.

At any rate, they figured it would be prudent if they just kept the animation we paid for their own little secret.

They deduced it would be better to have an uninformed public than a panicked one.

Now, with the viaduct replacement becoming a hot political potato, the DOT says it was forced to release the video just prior to the general election.

Isn't that a curious coincidence!

So for treating us like frightened little children; for sitting on information that we paid for and deserved to have, and for expecting us to buy the line that politics had nothing to do with releasing the video now, I'd like all you State Department of Transportation officials to take a bow, because this "Schrammie" is most assuredly for you.

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