Seattle Times owner Frank Blethen is in Olympia today to ask the legislature to give newspapers a fat tax break.

From the PI:

Under the proposed measure, the business and occupation tax on newspapers would be cut by 40 percent through 2015.

Blethen said a state tax break wouldn’t fix all that ails newspapers, but it would help them preserve jobs.

The loss of advertising revenue, mixed with the current economic climate, has put weekly and daily newspapers in the state under “tremendous financial pressure,” he said.

Blethen must have been in a hurry because, according to sources in Olympia, Blethen pulled his Porsche into the middle of the permit-only press lot “and beached it” before heading in to a meeting, where he told legislators that:

“Some of us, like The Seattle Times, are literally holding on by our fingertips today.

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It must be tough to be a Porsche-owning newspaper mogul these days.

Jonah Spangenthal-Lee: Proving you wrong since 1983.

24 replies on “Frank Blethen Parks Where Frank Blethen Wants”

  1. I wonder what would happen if we had an income tax for anyone who ‘earned’ $1 million or more a year (e.g. flat income tax with a $1 million deduction that counted all earnings – salary, bonus, options, dividends, etc.

  2. Oh, he earned that. I know “earn” is not something liberals understand very well. Or going to bat for your team.

  11. Blethen, you pathetic pussy.

    Your paper was in decline long before the economy went in the shitter. If you can’t keep afloat without a bailout after your only competition disappears, then you deserve to go under.

    No government handouts for you.

  13. In the coming, dying days of that turd-wrapper, Blethen’s circulation and marketing folks are going to get tired of his malfeasant bullshit. And they are going to have quite some stories to tell about how the P-I was handled, and the administration of the Operating Agreement.

    The Sherman Act is gonna’ get rolled-out and it is gonna’ get mighty interesting. Try holding onto family unity when the justice department comes sniffing with a criminal complaint.

    Keep blaming everyone else for your problems Frank! The Times’ malignant failure couldn’t POSSIBLY have anything to do with you. Right?

  14. Don’t worry Frank, these folks are angry because they are the kind of folks who have to clean cars like yours for a living.

    Class envy. So ugly. So silly.

  15. @2

    “Earn” is a concept that’s difficult to take seriously in a nation where teachers barely make a subsistence wage while sports stars pull in more money annually than they could spend in a lifetime playing and exercising, and CEOs of industries heavily subsidized by taxes on the middle class rake in bonuses higher than what most of us will ever earn in our entire careers.

    I find it hard to imagine what a media mogul could do to justifiably earn that much more than the reporters who actually make his industry work, especially given that the anachronistic paper-paradigm empire he’s supposed to be captaining is going down with all hands.

  16. So he owns a Cayenne, a Porsche that’s named after an ingredient. Porsche tried to make the front look like a 911. which it doesn’t. And the back looks even worse. It has the sex appeal of a camel with gingivitis.

    He should just walk home instead. That’s what I would do.

  21. Depending on the year, model and options, a Porsche Cayenne can run from $22K up to $119K. Even the ’09 base MSRP is $45K. It’s not like he’s driving a Bentley or Ferrari.

  22. Seriously. Envy much? Too pissed off when peddling your single speed bicycles? Good for him. He should roll in a Rolls. Who cares what he drives, and ya… its not even that exclusive of a car. Referencing some one’s material possessions makes you look low class.

  24. As a state custodian .This is just a slap in the face
    I cleared 23k last year and now they want to take more from us?
    Have you ever tried to live on that ?
    WAKE UP!

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