The one way Seattle is actually dying: The Seattle Times asked 647 artists how much they make, and they confirmed what has become obvious: this city is too expensive for them. The paper’s survey found even the region’s most successful visual artists, writers, filmmakers, and other creatives can’t keep pace with the rising cost of living. Of the 611 artists who shared their income with the Times, 62% made less than $50,000, and 80% made less than $75,000. According to the MIT Living Wage Calculator, a living wage for a single adult living in this area is $59,696. A Consumer Affairs analysis of Zillow rent data estimated a single adult needs about $87K a year to live here comfortably.
Don’t light the grass on fire, kids: The National Weather service issued a red flag warning for our region over the possibility of dry thunderstorms and gusty, erratic winds, conditions ripe for quick-spreading fires. This week has been bad enough, so listen when I say outdoor burning is really not recommended.
One-third of our council may not get to vote on renters’ rights: Why? Conflicts of interest. Council Member Maritza Rivera makes $29K a year in income from a property in Ravenna, Council Member Tanya Woo owns at least 10 percent of the Louisa Hotel apartment building, and Council Member Joy Hollingsworth’s family rents out a triplex in the Central District. While Rivera is a landlord and Woo and Hollingsworth are not, the financial interests of their immediate families could disqualify them from voting. Hannah has more here.
GET YOUR NEW PARKING RATES! The Seattle Department of Transportation released new parking rates for the city and they’re fine, I guess. Half the rates will remain the same, a handful will decrease by 50 cents an hour, and the rest, in Seattle’s busiest neighborhoods, will now cost 50 cents extra per hour. On Pike and Pine in Capitol Hill, night rates hit six bucks. Pride month is definitely over.
New numbers in the Governor’s race: If the 564 likely voters surveyed were to cast their ballot today, 42% would vote for Attorney General Bob Ferguson, 33% would vote for former King County Sheriff and former Republican Congressman Dave Reichert, 7% percent would vote for Semi Bird, and 4% would vote for state Sen. Mark Mullet. While it looks like Ferguson has a comfortable nine-point lead over Reichert, 14% of voters don’t know who they’d vote for yet. Assuming that Mullet voters will party with Ferguson and Bird voters will flock to Reichert, the gap between the frontrunners would close to just six points. Jinkies. The Stranger endorsed Ferguson in the race, and you can read all about why in our 2024 primary endorsements. If you’re the TL;DR type, here’s our Cheat Sheet.
Adopt a sweet little guy: The Seattle Animal Shelter broke my heart yesterday afternoon when it posted a video of a packed kennel of sad, barking dogs to announce the shelter was full again. If you’ve got room in your home and heart, consider adopting! If dogs are not your speed, they’ve got cats and rabbits and lizards (and a “pigs” tab, but no pigs right now). For more information, visit their website.
There was reportedly a separate foreign plot to kill Donald Trump: The Secret Service had tightened security around Trump weeks ahead of the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania because US intelligence had briefed them on a separate, unconnected and alleged plot by Iran to kill him. Secret Service officials had also issued general warnings to the Trump campaign against holding outdoor rallies. Yet 20-year-old Matthew Crooks was still able to climb a rooftop and shoot. The inspector general of the US Department of Homeland Security has announced an investigation into the Secret Service’s handling of the rally.
Laughs nervously: Bird flu is spreading in the nation’s dairy farms, and while we’re testing cows for the virus, we’re not testing many people. As of Monday, the outbreak has spread to 157 herds of cows in 13 states, and only 60 people have been tested. While just four dairy workers and five poultry workers have tested positive so far, infectious disease experts believe many more have caught the virus and that we seem less prepared than we should be, given the fact that the virus is infecting more mammals and could mutate to jump from person to person.
Democrats perfect science of losing elections: Democratic National Convention leadership is presumably worried that the calls from voters and from Congress to replace Biden as the nominee will grow even louder than they already are, and they seem to think the best way to win back support and project party unity is to make sure that never, ever happens by accelerating the nomination process with a virtual roll call for delegates before the end of July.
Is that really a good idea? Polls conducted before the attempt on Donald Trump’s life show Biden is still lagging far behind in all seven swing states. Not one of Biden’s attempts to steady the ship–the George Stephanopoulos interview on ABC, the Lester Holt interview on NBC, the NATO presser, the speech after the attempted assassination of Trump, the interview with Complex’s Speedy Morman, the speech to the NAACP in Las Vegas yesterday–has done enough to assuage millions of ordinary Americans who will decide whether or not Biden will stay in the White House until January of 2029. Nevertheless, under party rules Biden remains the nominee unless he decides to release his delegates.
Dems aren’t giving up yet: In one incredibly long week that began on the hill with closed-door meetings about the future of the party and that culminated with the assassination attempt outside of Pittsburg, calls for Biden to step aside dropped down to terse whispers. Some Dems have told reporters that the election is as good as lost, and that trying to push Biden out will do more harm than good. But on Saturday, center-left Dems lambasted the President in a call meant to stem, rather than stoke, further defection. Politico reported that since June Nancy Pelosi, who is convinced Biden will lose, has privately worked the phones and plotted with top Dems to get him off the ticket. CNN reported Barack Obama is concerned about Uncle Joe’s ability to win, and that Dem pollster Stanley Greenberg, who advised Bill Clinton’s two winning campaigns, is sending out memos to Biden’s team about the impending loss of the Oval Office and seats in both Houses of Congress.
Lying does not help, DNC! On X, formerly known as Twitter, DNC chair Jamie Harrison justified the accelerated nomination timeline by claiming Democrats needed to lock in their nominee by August 7–before the convention in Chicago–to get on the ballot in Ohio. That is total bullshit. In June, Ohio Republican Gov. Mike Dewine signed a law that extended the deadline to August 31. Rest assured, whoever is nominated at the convention will be on the ballot in Ohio.
JD Vance’s secret speech: ProPublica discovered that in 2021, Trump’s VP pick JD Vance told a group of influential young conservatives they should stick up for “nonconventional” so-called truth tellers like conspiracy theorist Alex Jones of Infowars. According to Vance, Jones’s worldview was “a hell of a lot more true than Rachel Maddow’s view of society.” To review, Jones has spent three decades promoting baseless conspiracies about the Oklahoma City bombing, 9/11, Sandy Hook, and the demonic forces he believes to be controlling our world, which, by the way, is a theory Vance seems to agree with: “I believe the devil is real and that he works terrible things in our society,” Vance continued. “That’s a crazy conspiracy theory to a lot of very well-educated people in this country right now.” Yeah, you’re right, it is. Here’s a full transcript of the speech, and a video published by ProPublica. Vance is expected to be the belle of the ball at day three of the Republican National Convention.
There’s like a hundred batshit, credibility-destroying things that Vance believes and you talk about FUCKING TAX POLICY https://t.co/FWVuTZPIXJ
— P.B. Gomez (@pbgomez_) July 15, 2024
Unity-shmunity: According to the Washington Post, the same Republicans calling for civility and an end to violent political rhetoric after the attempted assassination of Trump on Saturday preached the apocalypse in Milwaukee on Tuesday. We’re so back? Gov. Jim Justice, a Senate candidate in West Virginia, warned the country would become “totally unhinged” if Trump was not elected. In a pre-recorded video, Trump accused Democrats of destroying the country. At one point, this dumb rap video played.
Oh my god this Republican National Convention Rap video that was just played to the entire Republican National Convention was embarrassing… and the audience was silent afterwards. pic.twitter.com/fWn3o3tgcr
— Erin Reed (@ErinInTheMorn) July 17, 2024
I doubt any stingy Republicans at the RNC are reading this, but:
nearly every Uber driver and waiter I have talked to has said the same thing https://t.co/Zb0vOG0WAR
— Robert Evans (The Only Robert Evans) (@IwriteOK) July 16, 2024
A virtual roll call before the convention seems quite undemocratic to me.
if the Rich
ever thought
you might Vote
to take away their
Power, they’d NEVER
allow Elections. or they’d
invent the ‘Democratic’ NC.
welcome
to eltrumpfster’s
dystopian Nightmare
@1 JFC people. It’s a roll call vote of the convention delegates. It’s the /same people/. The only difference is that the roll call happens a few weeks before the convention.
So Democrats are going to take the electoral gift that is JD “America’s Hitler” Vance and then declare that we can’t win? Fantastic.
I would love to make a living as an artist in an expensive, West coast city. I had no idea I was entitled to that, where do I sign up?
Violent crime rate is at a near 50 year low yet Republicans keep screaming they are going to make America safe again because everything is so scary! (especially those “illegals” who happen to have the lowest crime rate among us!)
Throughout history and on all continents, catapulting the propaganda (Thanks Georgie boy) about worsening lack of safety is a favorite conservative campaign strategy at all levels (city, state, federal) because the geezer cohort (they vote) and other homebodies are easily prayed on by demagogues
@4 People are “entitled” to art, which is impossible without artists
Who is the nominee and the president isn’t up to any incumbent but who the American people say it is with the vote. No amount of paid off media normalizing Trump and injustice and their preferred outcomes of their Musk chucklefuck gamesmen can disenfranchise we the people that know better. Biden is unfit. Less unfit than Trump, but we deserve the best our country has to offer and he ain’t it. Truck the haters (or worse).
3: Only technically. It’s an obfuscation. Optics and presentation are also in our political integrity. Standing by their signs yelling out the votes on the convention floor is germane.
4, How did you read a blurb about a survey of regional artists’ incomes and land here? I would love to peek under the hood and see how those gears turn.
The “technical roll call” is to ensure Biden is on the ballot in Ohio, where Repubs are invoking an old law that no one’s ever used before, against either party, and it’s just revenge against Dems for trying to kick Trmp off the ballot in other states. It’s a formality, to get around the petty jerks. It’s nothing to do with Biden and his electability (or fitness for office).
10 – I’ve heard Ohio worked out that rule so that it no longer applies and the virtual call isn’t needed.
Strictly speaking, the DNC has a point: the law changing Ohio’s deadline to Aug. 31 takes effect Sept. 1, so technically it doesn’t apply to this year’s election. But I agree with those who argue that keeping the national Democratic nominee off a state ballot would be a very bad look for Republicans nationwide, and Dems shouldn’t shy away from daring them to try. To me it seems like a much better fight to pick than the one the DNC seems determined to have with the majority of its own voters over Biden’s fitness to compete with Trump.
The Democrats are starting to look like the Republicans of 2016—loud whispers of a brokered convention, and in total fear of losing in a November landslide because their candidate is deemed “unfit” to be President.
The Republicans are starting to look the the Democrats of 2016—leading the polls and completely confidant that overwhelming victory will the theirs in November, because the other party’s nominee is totally cuckoo.
And yet, almost everyone was wrong in 2016.
Is it possible that Biden is doing terribly in the polls because so many people don’t want to actually admit they’re voting for him? I know I barely can.
@4 I can 100% guarantee you’re not qualified, your comment has the creativity and artfulness of a halibut.
What makes J.D. Vance a “dangerous fake”:
“ROBERT KUTTNER: Well, he’s a very dangerous fake. And his whole history, from writing Hillbilly Elegy to doing a 180-degree pivot from being a critic of Trump to being a loyalist to Trump, to pretending to be very favorable to working Americans, when in fact all of his votes have been the opposite, suggests both that he’s a fake, and he’s an attractive fake. He’s personally likable. I hate to say that. He’s an intellectual. He knows how to engage issues. He knows things that Trump is completely ignorant of. He’s young, whereas Trump is old. And when I wrote this piece yesterday morning, before Trump had made his selection, I wrote that if Trump is shrewd, he will name J.D. Vance, but I’m not sure that Trump’s own narcissism will let him do that, because the risk for Trump is that Vance will upstage Trump.”
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/7/16/trump_vance
@14
a halibut
run over by
a Steamroller
now That’d be Art.
Good god, artists (at least visual artists) do not have to live in a specific geographic area to BE artists. Stranger writers are too young to realize how much the internet/digital tools have changed how artists function. FURTHER – supply and demand is important. The barrier to entry is lower than it was in decades past when you had to get your work into brick & mortar galleries. There was no Instagram, Reddit, Etsy, out of box websites, DeviantArt or anything like that. Have talent and ambition? Start making art and market the fuck out of it on any number of platforms. Unthinkable in the last century. Instagram is full of talented, self-taught artists. The SUPPLY of art to procure is much, much more than it was decades past. There are only so many people looking to buy art. The democratization of art means more options for consumers, and less slice of the pie for each artist.
Shocking to see this old-school attitude. Sounds like the conversations we had in art school back in 1980 – when you HAD to move to NYC (east coast) or LA (west coast) to make a go of it.
@8 How is a convention count where people just yell out a name en masse more accurate than a roll call with actual enumerated votes? And how do you know that there won’t be a similar state-by-state call at the in-person convention for the optics?
It sounds more like you’re just having a sad because the DNC isn’t asking you.
@12 It would be a bad look, but that doesn’t mean that the Republicans won’t try it. They were basically strongarmed into passing the law as it is, and I can definitely see them pulling a no takesie-backsies after the current deadline passes. Or someone may sue and win because the Democrats didn’t meet the letter of the law. You can never assume Republicans will operate in good faith. Maybe in the future that will change, but I’m not holding my breath.
Unfaithful electors could be a real problem at this years Dem convention. They were enough of an issue in Obama’s 2012 campaign that each elector was assigned multiple staffers, armed with a campaign credit card and told to wine them, dine them but for fucks sake don’t let them talk to anybody who might get them to change their minds. And that was a low dissent convention that year. This year they must be really worried. I wouldn’t have a problem voting for Harris and I do think the grievances within the party need to be aired out.
The best way to be a working artist is to have a sponsor who provides you with housing. Else, you will burn through your time and creative energy making ends meet.
People are reading way too much into that artist post. They are using a specific population to illustrate the impact of the rising cost of living on the local culture. Seattle used to be an incubator for artists, musicians in particular, but that part of the community is dying.
It doesn’t imply anyone is “entitled” to a living wage or that artists must live in a specific community to sell their work. But it does demonstrate how the economy is changing the cultural landscape for Seattle. There is more value to having a thriving art scene in your city than artists’ ability to promote and sell their work, because there is more value to art than its commercialization.
@13 thank you for the delusional hope I’ll now choose to hold onto until November
@21 thank you too. I recall the John Adams quote (paraphrased) that he studies politics so his sons can study commerce so their sons can study art. The art community is what makes cities/neighborhoods attractive, but then prices increase until only rich white collar workers can live there so the art community is forced out and the culture dies. Everyone’s wringing their hands about forcing workers back to the office to stimulate downtown but the simple fact is nobody wants to visit a fucking office. A vibrant art scene could attract people back to the core, which would go a long way toward solving some of the city’s bigger problems. But nah let’s just tell them to stop being “entitled” and instead rent a room in Auburn and create an Instagram.
18: I suppose so, but what a silly projection.
@12- illegitimately blocking Supreme Courtominees was also a bad look for Republicans but they got right on it. I guarantee they’d fuck with ballot access in Ohio.
@22 It’s all we have.
@19 Do you have any evidence for that statement about 2012? I might possibly have believed 2008, but 2012 is wildly implausible.
PS Electors are not the same thing as delegates. Since electors are the 538 most faithful party members, unfaithful electors are vanishingly rare, and have never caused a change in outcome.
@22, 26 My delusional hope that I’m holding on to for November is that Trump has historically had a hard ceiling of ~45-48% of the popular vote. Even now, when Biden is behind, Trump isn’t cracking 50% in the swing states. When we get through the convention and people finally can stop hoping for a new unicorn candidate pooping rainbows and vomiting glitter, I think a lot of the undecideds will come back to the Democrats.
It may be delusional, but it has a veneer of rationality.
@27
I think you’re right about the elector/delegate distinction. A family member was an Obama campaign staffer and was assigned to mind a delegate. It was basically a perk of having been a campaign office manager in a large metro.
I’m a little surprised that Iran would want to whack Trump. Project 2025 is basically an Ayatollah’s wet dream if you replace “ChristoNazi” with “MoslemDictator”.
@17 Most artists would likely tell you that they do better work when they can live in close community with other creative types. To what extent this is true I don’t know, but “artists’ colonies” have existed throughout history and I’m inclined to believe they had a purpose beyond the merely economic. Conversely, I don’t think we gain anything by forcing creative people into geographically scattered isolation chambers, no matter how virtually “connected” they may be.
@30,
I was a little surprised by that as well. Though the whole notion of articulating a Trump “foreign policy agenda” is utterly comical. I’d be genuinely shocked if he could identify Iran on a map in less than five guesses. His policy (such as it exists) is entirely dependent on who he might actually convince to sit on his cabinet. And so we could end up with someone of a more Libertarian and isolationist bent (probably my preference if I’m being honest) or at the other extreme, maybe a John Bolton type who’d declare war on Antarctica if he could get congressional backing.
Maybe Iran was thinking it’d be nice to have some stability in that office, so that they might at least have something consistent to plan around and work with and/or against.
Regarding the arts in Seattle, the Stranger could have mentioned its own role in the decline of Richard Hugo House. The latter used to have a good financial position, and the pandemic actually helped to improve finances.
Then the Stranger started agitating for financial changes there (https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2021/02/16/55296692/writers-of-color-reassert-call-for-hugo-house-directors-resignation-ahead-of-key-board-meeting), which were made, with the result Hugo House now faces insolvency (https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/books/future-of-seattles-hugo-house-up-in-the-air/.