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https://thecisforcrank.com/2017/09/01/mo…
Or the alleged hostile work environment he created for POC at the Tenant's Union?
https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2017/07…
What happened to trusting women, victims, and listening to people of color? Why do we want another creepy dude who has questionable behavior in elected office?
Wrong, wrong - and for the SECB - fucking wrong. Look to NYC, Chicago, etc. where they DO have a mayor in charge. Better outcomes? Nope. Biggest parent complaint? No one listens at all now. Sorry, you don't dump a mayor over schools (see Rahm Emanuel) so voters would not have any real say in their schools. Moon doesn't want that but Durkan does. Do your homework.
When Grant--the cis white male landlord--invokes social revolutionary slogans and value statements instead of plausible policy positions, and trashes the accomplished Latina renter who also maxed out her grassroots Democracy Vouchers, that's hypocrisy. I'll give the SECB the benefit of the doubt and assume in this case it's naiveté. You guys (S, H, S) form a terrific newsroom but this was a bad call. Please ease up a bit on the DSA Kool Aid.
Oh but she has that one photo of herself with Obama!
...
Pretty clear who is more qualified to be mayor.
Point: Durkan didn't prosecute a single WaMu profiteer. Response? Attack Charles Mudede. Attack the Stranger. Make ignorant claims about Edward R Murrow or the Fairness Doctrine.
Point: Moon was on the right side of history and against car-centric mega-projects. Shift the debate to whether Moon "failed". Rather than Durkan's error in judgement in supporting that $2 billion car tunnel.
This is the foundation of modern right-wing alt-right tactics. They don't care about truth or facts. They know they don't have sound arguments. But they know they can win support by looking strong and uncompromising, and by keeping attention on themselves. When they shift the conversation away from what's wrong with Durkan, and bait you into debating red herrings, and then they have won. If you get drawn into a debate over whether Moon failed to stop the tunnel, then you've accepted the premise that if the tunnel got built, then Durkan, a tunnel supporter, "succeeded." Winner vs loser. You've conceded that this isn't about who has the judgement to support good policy over bad policy if you take that bait.
Rather than retrograde reactionary policy vs facing reality. Durkan was a "success". The merits of her goals are not the subject any more.
Instead of prosecuting any Seattle police for violating the United States Constitution, Durkan cuts a deal with them where they agree on a years-long "process" which ends somewhere down the line with them not violating constitutional rights any more. Just like WaMu, established power elites don't get held accountable. But Durkan has shifted the debate away from the merits of her policy decision to her "success" in making a thing happen. They have taken control of the conversation, away from Durkan's reactionary, conservative reality, to the fantasy world of winners and losers, strong and weak.
Do we sign consent decrees with gangs to phase out criminality? No, we catch them and prosecute them for as many law violations as we can. It deters others from doing the same and gets the criminals off the street. Durkan was a prosecutor. Did she prosecute law violations? No. She cut a deal with law breakers as a means to let them off. We should talk about that, but instead Durkan reframes it as a "success" in her work to create this great product, this decree.
Every time you want to talk about Durkan's record, they change the subject and attack The Stranger or Nikkita Oliver or whatever. Or the change the subject to some phantom "success" rather than the poor policy choices behind that. Control the conversation.
Here. Watch this. It's called "The Alt-Right Playbook: Control the Conversation" by Ian Danskin, aka Innuendo Studios. Watch it, and then go back and look at how Durkan has shifted the frame of the conversation in precisely the way Trump's twitter army and 4chan flying monkeys do.
Why is Jenny Durkan doing that? What does it represent? It represents that Durkan will use against Cary Moon her own rationality, her desire to be guided by facts and her willingness to seek truth rather than victory. Rationality and reasonableness is reframed as a weakness to be exploited. It's how a lawyer wins against an engineer. Durkan has become a creature of the new Trump age of anti-intellectualism and troglodyte anti-thought.
Wait, what?
You state the School Board is a revolving shitshow, As compared to ... the City Council?
Wait, what?
I do concur with your School Board endorsements. So there's that.
So the tunnel is basically complete now, and will be open in a couple years. Those are now the "facts on the ground". That does *not* change the fact that a Cut-and-Cover tunnel could have been done for a fraction of the cost. That does not change the argument that a Surface Street Solution *could* have worked, while better funding mass transit. Yes, those arguments are now moot, but it does not prove that the Deep Bore Tunnel was the best solution, or in any way progressive.
I still think the Deep Bore Tunnel was a boondoggle. And Cary Moon earns points on my score card for opposing it for as long as it was still an open question. That she lost that fight is less important than that she was on the right side. She was looking out for the actual interests of Seattle back then, and she will represent the values of Seattle better now. Want a better more progressive Seattle? Invest in mass transit systems... Not in multli billion dollar alters to Single Occupant automobiles.
Replacing the viaduct with a tunnel was never about moving cars. It was about providing a route for trucks to service Harbor Island to/from north of downtown. (That's why the tunnel will be a true bypass, having no entrances or exits downtown.) Any "surface+transit" option would have given those trucks the option of either (a) clogging downtown streets, (b) taking mass transit, or (c) I-5, or (d) not making the trip at all. Options (a) and (c) would have made downtown Seattle miserable, option (b) sounds just a little bit like it probably would not have worked, and option (d) would have caused great economic damage to our region.
Cary Moon wasn't just any other citizen; she identifies herself as an urban planner, and this was the most important piece of urban planning in downtown Seattle for fifty-plus years on either side. She got it completely wrong, and that fact should be considered by voters before giving her great influence over many other possible plans for Seattle. (Note that Mayor McGinn completely opposed the Deep Bore tunnel, and it went through anyway. His epic incompetence helped to save us there.)
Just once, I'd like to see the Stranger argue for responsible accounting as opposed to humping every tax increase tied to a social cause. We can help the less fortunate through smart government accountability, not empower careless management (over 50% of tax funded homeless shelters underperforming with no oversight) through gullible tax-raising measures.
@20 -- The Stranger is a loud mouthpiece for regressive tax measures because it gets paid to convince its readers to support them -- especially the shit sandwiches Metro and Sound Transit put on ballots.
I fancy myself as Napoleon, so go ahead and endorse me for Secretary of Defense ...
Also I'm still mystified that we are cool with the security highrise, husband's super-elite firm with 2017 partner demographic looking like Mad Men 1963, etc. Moon flexes her faces and blows out air in tones that make people feel righteous, and literally has done nothing more, so she ought to be mayor? Do you people get banged by the slickest dude with herpes in the bar every Friday night too?
I keep hearing how Cary is this great leader, but where is the evidence? I know she claims every single person who's ever worked for her told her she was the BEST BOSS EVER!" - but the one major initiative she headed was a complete failure AND her ideas were completely wrong.
Moon seems to have a lot of ideas, and seems be planning to take up the entire four years talking about them. 🙄
Whatever happens in the mayoral race, fight real estate speculation. It will probably run wild in the next few years.
While most of these at least mention the policies/records of the candidates that don't receive Stranger endorsements, your support of your candidate for City Council position 9 appears predicated solely on your feelings about her in/action regarding the mayor's scandal; while how she handled herself during the unfolding of that issue is certainly worthy of strong feelings, it seems antithetical for the SECB to suggest we base our decisions on that issue alone rather than helping us to understand why Gonzalez would do a better job than Murakami.
However the readers might feel about Stranger politics, at best that seems to represent editorial inconsistency, and at worst, abject knee-jerk favoritism and ammunition for your detractors.
You think you are solving problems, when you create them. Homelessness. Not a crisis 5 years ago. Throw all the money in the world at homelessness and watch the problem grow. You're LITERALLY FEEDING the problem. Look at the underlying problem, which is ADDICTION + MENTAL ILLNESS. You have a mental illness if you think levying more taxes will solve this problem, unless it's SOLVING ADDICTION + MENTAL ILLNESS. I wish you luck.
STOP INCREASING TAXES
Seriously, just stop raising fucking taxes you dipshits. I don't make a ton of money, am a homeowner, but everyone just assumes I can handle more taxes. I CAN'T HANDLE MORE FUCKING TAXES. Stop increasing them. Why are there so many city workers out there making 6 figures ie $100k+? WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO CIVIL SERVICE? It ded. Killed by well paying jobs for friends. STOP. It's wrong to take money from the public to create bullshit high paying jobs for your friends and it's making Seattle shitty. Tax the uber rich if you want, but know that they create prosperity for everyone, so do it wisely. But do tax them, dipshits.
STOP MAKING SEATTLE COMMUNIST!! ASSHOLES.
Seattle, in fact, resides in the United States of America. OUR COUNTRY WAS FOUNDED ON FREEDOM, well, lower taxes, actually. There's a reason for that. Equality is important, but that's really just another way of saying Freedom. Everyone deserves freedom. Freedom from hate, freedom from misery. But you can't go around and just increase taxes in the name of a cause. Because, where have these tax increases gotten us? HERE. And I think we can all agree that HERE is NOT WHERE WE WANT TO BE.
If you do raise taxes, you BETTER FUCKING EARN THAT MONEY. Otherwise, IT'S JUST STEALING. If you want to give to a cause to help it, THEN FUCKING GIVE YOUR MONEY TO THE CAUSE AND STOP TAKING EVERYONE ELSE'S. Stop raising taxes on normal non-Amazon employees.
And this election is, in fact, bullshit. Our last mayor was a fucking piece of human trash. I voted for him because I was sick of McGinn's bike lanes that fucked with traffic. Wow, was I wrong.
Anyways, BALANCE is KEY. We have no balance, politically, here in Seattle, so shit is not going to get better. Go to the Eastside and look at the quality of those cities. I love Seattle for what it is, but when you drive down the street and have to SWERVE to avoid potholes to keep from fucking up your vehicle, YET TAXES ARE AT ALL TIME HIGHS, you know there's a problem... it's called CORRUPTION.
WAKE THE FUCK UP BRO