Seattle Socialists Strangle Golden Goose

[Speaker to Animals]

Apparently Seattle socialists just needed to reframe the issue as one of the poor woman "sacrificing" for the welfare of the city, while the mean male-dominated Amazons of the city walk away with the lion's share of the communal wealth. DB is down with that. Paint Jeff Bezos as a Matt Lauer-level asshole and it's all good.

[JohnDonne]

Maybe your premise that Seattle spent a billion dollars a year is wrong.

How is the Seattle city council responsible for the budget of the entire Puget Sound area when they only set aside sixty million a year for the homeless?

It has been a wide ranging discussion, beginning with the head tax (which was never a billion dollars) and covering a multitude of topics including the region’s billion dollar expenditure on homelessness in general.

However, everyone from the right, to the extreme leftists at The Stranger, to the ex-Mayor of Seattle himself, agrees that the money has been ill-spent. This has not led to any reform on the side of the government, nor any politicians being voted out by a self-aware public. It has only led to more demands for money to “fix” the problem with promises of some sort of oversight this time.

Not really a wide ranging discussion, more of a false premise (which I should have caught earlier, admittedly) based on you (intentionally?) confounding two different things, region expenditures versus a city’s homeless budget. Basically, everything said about the Seattle government’s spending on your side has been wrong by several orders of magnitude.

That doesn’t give you pause?

[DBTrek]

Everything I’ve said has been accompanied by citation when relevant facts were asserted. You’re not having much luck playing the far-away liberal trying to correct the longtime resident on local policy issues game. Of course, you should’ve known that would be the outcome going into this - but sometimes folks overestimate their abilities.
/shrug

[JohnDonne]

Lotta words but I got my answer. I’ll just keep pushing for more information, more analysis, more critical thinking, more nuanced positions...you keep doing you.

[Okeefenokee]

Before or after you learn how to work a gas pump?

[DBTrek]

Lotta words but I got my answer. I’ll just keep pushing for more information, more analysis, more critical thinking, more nuanced positions...you keep doing you.

We’ll all be right here, absolutely riveted to see what your additional “information, analysis, and critical thinking” turn up. It’s too much to hope that they’ll find a billion dollars that mysteriously vanished into a pie chart, but if they turn up something more than a leftist talking point or subject diversion I reckon we’ll all be impressed.

[Kath]

I’ll just keep pushing for more information, more analysis, more critical thinking, more nuanced positions...you keep doing you.

By all means, we are all eagerly waiting for you to apply more critical thinking to your posts.

[DBTrek]

To assist with your research:

You know about the Seattle Head Tax which has hit the pause button on our major employers, so the Seattle Council can fund less than 5% of their affordable housing by sticking it to "big biz".

Back in 2015 they were blowing through $37 million year by turning public land into unsanitary tent cities, with zero plan beyond shuffling the tent cities around every now and then. You need $37million for that? That shit happens naturally, by doing nothing.

Seattle (former) Mayor Ed Murray, in 2017, admitting there was no real plan after throwing $50million at "homelessness" in 2017. His statement - “We cannot spend money and expect success without having a strategic plan informed by national experts with accountability measures to make sure what we are funding is working,” he said during his speech last week. “We have that plan now.”"

Here's an article on the $200million Seattle and King County spent in 2017, and the long list of excuses as to why "Oops, well that's not enough money. We need twice that. That's why you're not seeing results". (Paraphrasing, don't waste time telling me it's not a direct quote)

The radical-leftist The Stranger even recognized that spending was out of control, and these guys are easily to the left of Elizabeth Warren.

I already mentioned Two hundred million (dollars) was spent in King County last year, $17,000 for every man woman and child, and the problem got worse

Outside experts recently told Seattle that it would actually take about $400 million a year to "solve" homelessness. A year? That doesn't sound like a solution. You could hand every homeless person $33k+ in cash for that amount. That's an annual income freely handed to people.

And we've already covered the $1billion spent by the Puget Sound area that is unaccounted for. Unless, of course, you consider tapping a colored pie chart and saying "Well, some went here, and some went here, and some went here" while pointing to organizations that don't keep records is "accountability".

So there's a cliff-notes course on what's been going on the last 3 years. Missing from this lesson are the roving RV meth lab and prostituion caravans, the murders and sex crimes going on in homeless tent cities, the needles turning up everywhere, the judges declaring cars are houses and people cannot be towed (evicted) for parking where they please and living there, etc. etc.

Long pattern of throwing crumbs down for seagulls, and then screaming "holy shit there's a TON of seagulls here ... QUICK, GET MORE CRUMBS!"


Not part of any Seattle Council Member's calculus - "How is life for the 714,000 citizens that AREN'T drug addicted and homeless in Seattle? How are our plans and taxes affecting THEM?"

[Ex-California]

Someone gots to pay for less than 5% of Seattle’s “affordable housing”.
Cough it up, G.
We’re all progressives now.
Lulz

AZs annual bill for the head tax is =341000 * 250 = $85,250,000.

That's going to help how many people? 600? That's $141,000 per homeless person. I'm moving to Seattle to get me a city job.

$141k to be homeless? Why do I work?

[jediuser598]

Maybe your premise that Seattle spent a billion dollars a year is wrong.

How is the Seattle city council responsible for the budget of the entire Puget Sound area when they only set aside sixty million a year for the homeless?

It has been a wide ranging discussion, beginning with the head tax (which was never a billion dollars) and covering a multitude of topics including the region’s billion dollar expenditure on homelessness in general.

However, everyone from the right, to the extreme leftists at The Stranger, to the ex-Mayor of Seattle himself, agrees that the money has been ill-spent. This has not led to any reform on the side of the government, nor any politicians being voted out by a self-aware public. It has only led to more demands for money to “fix” the problem with promises of some sort of oversight this time.

Not really a wide ranging discussion, more of a false premise (which I should have caught earlier, admittedly) based on you (intentionally?) confounding two different things, region expenditures versus a city’s homeless budget. Basically, everything said about the Seattle government’s spending on your side has been wrong by several orders of magnitude.

That doesn’t give you pause?

John, he can bullshit faster than you can deconstruct it.

That's just a law of nature, man. Even when it's shown, he doesn't stop.

That's the fight you're in.

There's a reason I call him a "thought leader." He's got a cadre of people following him around huffing all of his nonsense. If you're trying to convince anyone in that cadre, good luck.