No. The whole point of non-lethal force is not to act in place of lethal force. The point of non-lethal force is to act along the continuum of force, gradually responding to physical resistance until the subject de-escalates into cooperation.

By your reasoning, a police officer who chooses to use a wristlock to subdue an agitated subject during a domestic violence call is no different than a police officer who shoots said suspect with a firearm. That's just patently ridiculous, and a statement of absolutism I hope you would care to rethink.

Ignoring the parts of a post that are inconveniently and provably true...check.
Obvious lack of legal understanding...check.
Name-calling without the slightest shred of evidence (with bonus points for self-contradiction)...check.

You, sir, should run for Congress! You'd fit right in.

Your argument from the point of waste suffers from a number of fallacies in this case. If the government deduces that there is no possible conclusion reached through the bidding process than the one it has selected, then holding the bidding process will only add to government waste -- the very thing you are arguing to prevent.

When the U.S. military started the off-the-shelf program and allowed less bidding and more self-determination, the days of the $300 hammer ended. Sometimes removing the bidding process is a good and logical thing.

You obviously don't live in the area or drive on the 40th street overpass. I do. I don't work for Microsoft, and I would use that road several times per month just in the course of travelling to various entertainment venues. What we have here is a non-story about a project that is useful, estimated to cost between 15-36M, and which Microsoft has already dropped $11M on. Show me how many Seattle businesses are willing to put extra cash of their own (in addition to tax base they already supply) on the line to dig their fancy tunnel. Oh yeah, the only people in Seattle that regularly write checks for public works are retired Microsoft employees...weird.

"Taxation without representation is tyranny."

That's true. Fortunately for all of us here in Redmond, we have a representative republic in which we vote on the people who make these decisions. If the majority of stakeholders felt the way you do and elected a city council that opposed growth, then you wouldn't get the highway.

Since D.C. residents got the vote, I think you would be hard pressed to find many places in the U.S. anymore that are without representation. Just because your representation doesn't win all of the time, or because your representation represents the majority of the area you live in and not your personal views, doesn't make it tyranny.