Especially striking after one has seen Dubai

Politics | No new state money requested for cracked, clogged Seattle stretch.

...the 2008 Legislature ends today, without an I-5 plan.

And that's not because the Legislature is controlled by a bunch of tree-huggers but simply that no one really knows what to do. Or if they think they know what to do, they can't get 51% of their colleagues to go along. I am not in the least arguing for a "benevolent autocracy" but there sure does seem to be something we could be doing better, besides simply being smarter, which is not something you can just do.