Amazon is at it again.
In 2019, Amazon tried to buy the city council election. Their bet on right-wing candidates blew up in their faces. Now they are at it again. They just dropped $100,000 into the February special election, along with $35,000 from their puppets at the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber. The big corporate donor PAC has already forked out more than half a million dollars so that you will be duped into voting for Proposition 1B.
Don’t be duped. Vote YES and vote 1A.
Half a million is a lot of money for the few people who show up for a February election. Of course, it is only a February election because Sara Nelson’s city council brazenly and egregiously violated Article IV, Section 1B of the City Charter when they purposefully delayed it so the electorate would be smaller and easier to purchase with deceptive mailers.
All this follows an ugly few months for Amazon and its centibillionaire founder. First Bezos brazenly interfered with journalistic independence at the Washington Post, muzzling a Kamala Harris endorsement. This was followed by a censored cartoon that depicted Bezos and his billionaire buddies groveling at Trump’s feet with their bribes. This was of course because they were forking out a million each (two million in Amazon’s case) to curry favor with Trump. Amazon went on to openly drop the biggest known bribe on Trump so far and this time directly to the Trump family. $40 million for the rights to produce a documentary about Melania.
Why Amazon is Trying to Buy Another Election
What corruption has Amazon cooked up to this time? Trying to kill more funding for affordable housing–in this case, “social housing.”
Social housing is common in Europe–mixed income, permanently affordable, publicly owned housing. You may recall that last year Seattle voters passed an initiative that created a public developer dedicated to building this kind of mixed, middle income housing. This means it will serve everyone from those in serious financial straits to home care aides, fast food workers and delivery drivers to firefighters and nurses. Under city law, we had to create the agency first, and now we’re doing the funding part.
Proposition 1A would provide funding through a nickel-on-the-dollar payroll tax on money a person earns over $1M each year, and the first million bucks is free every year. Since our taxes are almost the very worst in the country when it comes to tax rates for working people (very high) compared to rich people (very, very low), this should be a no-brainer.
But almost the entire Seattle City Council is opposed to the Democratic Party’s State Platform’s demand that we fix our ugly tax code. So they needed to daze and confuse us with something that sounds vaguely pro-affordable housing, but actually doesn’t tax the rich, raise revenue, or really do social housing at all.
Enter proposition Proposition 1B, the gaslighting option. It is designed to make you think Seattle’s right wing loves affordable housing and taxes! Look, see, they want to provide $10M a year in support and send some nice postcards to tell you about it!
A closer look shows this is BS. 1B kills the mixed income model. Even worse, in classic supervillain fashion, it takes that $10 million away from other affordable housing for people who are desperately poor. Per usual, the aim is to pit working people against one another.
Even former State Democratic Party Chair Tina Podlowdoski chimed in and slammed it. If a mainstream Dem who can party-build in conservative, rural parts of the state thinks you are right wing–maybe it is time even moderates realize Amazon and the Chamber are playing them for fools.
What Amazon’s Money Has Bought: Pretty Postcards with Lots of Lies
The postcards they are sending out with all this money are mendacious and deceitful. I quickly debunked almost all of them in this video.
If you know someone who is wavering from all the propaganda and needs more–I’ve also gone a bit deeper into debunking their claims in a piece with the Urbanist. I had to also hit some of their latest whoopers from the newest mailers in a piece on Rondezvous, my semi-eponymous newsletter.
The key things to remember when considering their postal propaganda.
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Social housing advocates were always super clear that we needed money for the agency, and the people sending the postcard know that and are openly lying about it.
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The 1B backers don’t support 1B because they support affordable housing–they support it because they hate taxes on rich people. 1B prevents new funding for affordable housing. And existing affordable housing providers oppose 1B and support 1A. (In fact, The Housing Development Consortium (an endorser) represents 200 affordable housing providers in the Puget Sound region–pretty much all of them!).
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The social housing developer proudly plans to provide units for working and middle class Seattle families, and this is a feature, not a bug. The higher rents subsidize the rents of the lower-income families. And when the Amazon mailer claims that 3% of the units are low income, it is openly fraudulent. The current plan is for the majority of the units to meet the federal definition of low income.
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Related – the corporates feign great humanitarian concern for the down and out in their latest mailer (1A provides more housing for people making a bit more than the median income than it provides for people making 30% of median income–OH MY HEAVENS). They fail to mention that 1B prevents a bunch of funding for affordable housing, including people making 30% of the area median income. They also conveniently avoid the fact that most of the social housing is for families making only 60% – 80% of the average local income. That’s the bus drivers and teachers you are screwing over there, Jeff.
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The social housing developer has multiple, rigorous layers of accountability built into its governance. Their hysteria about a “lack of accountability” from Proposition 1B’s backers is nothing more than complaints about their inability to defund it through their puppets on the city council, as they recently did with more deeply affordable housing.
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If Amazon and the Chamber were honest, their mailer would not say that the social housing developer has never built affordable housing. It would instead say, “The social housing developer is a brand new legal entity. Since it is new, it hasn’t yet produced housing, because we have not yet funded it. But that is completely irrelevant and we are fools for bringing it up. Because that new legal entity has hired an extremely experienced leader who has a long history of building and managing half a billion dollars in housing at other legal entities.”
Any remaining doubts? Check out the endorsements:
Every single Democratic Party Legislative District group in the city. The Labor Council (tons of unions) and the Building Trades (more tons of unions). Unions representing teachers, grocery workers, UW researchers, city employees, hotel workers, electricians, and a bunch more individual unions. Environmental organizations, human service providers, mainstream and lefty political groups. Affordable housing providers, businesses, politicians, news organizations.
Vote Yes and Vote 1A and get ten friends to join you.
Why is Bezos not called an oligarch, a term reserved by the U.S. press for the Russian fascists? Why is right-wing or conservative used when the accurate term is Neo-fascist? All for-profit corporations in this country behave as sociopaths and are predatory. Some have business models that pretend to be socially responsible because it is a marketing ploy that makes them look so much nicer than the more overt predators. The only restraint on their constant attempts to externalize costs is the potential for legal action years or decades later. The list of crimes committed against the public is endless; pesticides, fire retardants, tobacco, asbestos, weapons, sugar and toxic additives in food…. The reason they exist is to make profits for the people who control and own them with no regard for the consequences beyond their own narcissistic self interests.
Ron Davis: “Proposition 1A would provide funding through a nickel-on-the-dollar payroll tax on money a person earns over $1M each year, and the first million bucks is free every year.”
Listen, I don’t make a million-dollar salary, and I loathe Amazon’s monopolistic predatory behavior just as much as the next person, but I do care about the welfare of Seattle, and all I see this Prop 1A doing is driving yet more tech jobs to Bellevue. While downtown Seattle remains stuck in the doldrums, Bellevue continues to attract well-known tech companies. This initiative is just going to add momentum to that trend. Heck, if I were Kemper Freeman, I would be backing Prop 1A.
I’ve been too busy to really follow these new initiatives. But based just on what I’m reading here from Mr. Davis, I know I’ll be a no vote on Prop 1A. I guess I’ll now have to decide on 1B. (Funny thing is, I’m actually on some mailing list of this guy’s for whatever reason.)
Re. @1: “Why is Bezos not called an oligarch, a term reserved by the U.S. press for the Russian fascists?”
You have apparently been maintaining a self-imposed media blackout for the past few years. All Jeff Bezos and his billionaire tech buds get called anymore is oligarch or, to use the more fitting term, “broligarch.”
@1: “All for-profit corporations in this country behave as sociopaths and are predatory.”
Railing against the very existence of for-profit corporations in America? Yeah, that’s a really productive line of inquiry. (And yes, I acknowledge I just used the word “predatory” myself.)
How come every tax vote in Seattle comes down to demonizing the people you are trying to tax rather than touting the benefits of the program? Ron calls this a “small tax” but the expected revenue is $50M a year. Is it really that surprising that a company would donate against a campaigns that is centered on making them the bad guy because they don’t want to fork over $50M a year to yet another unelected board with no accountability? That is $50M a year that is removed from the business community for jobs, investments in new products etc. Jeff Bezos doesn’t give a shit about this as it won’t impact his wealth one bit but the people who lose their jobs or will never get hired will care. The progressives in Seattle continually look at these companies as cash cows. They already pay the majority of BO taxes, the drive revenue in the way of sales taxes, they are paying a jobs tax in the form of jumpstart. How many taxes do they need to pay?
“Because
Spreading Lies Is
Cheaper Than Paying Taxes”
who Knew!
@2
sociopaths make the
most Efficient*
ceos
& it’s a $hareholders
vs Stakeholders
winner-take-
ALL usofa,
LLC. lol!
L O L!!!
check your Soul
at the Door.
*Top-down Bureaucracies
NEVER Vote on it you
just Go with the
Sociopath. or
you Go
home.
*Top-down Bureaucracies
NEVER Vote on it you
just Go with the
Sociopath. or
You Just Go
home~now
a Traitor to
america inc
wheresoever will
you find Employment?
just don’t Piss
mr Bezoz
Off
or it’s
Personal
Ron Davis, so desperate to be relevant. It’s kind of sad.
This tax should be called the “Bellevue Full Employment Act” Ron, there is this place called Bellevue. Amazon has offices there and will simply move those individuals subject to this tax to Bellevue.
Ron, please move to Portland. There are still lots of socialist whack jobs there that will like your feeble-minded Sawant inspired crap
If you liked the fantasy promises and fiscal management of The Monorail, you’ll love “Social Housing.” Ignore the obvious flaws, it’s social!
It only took Ron 3 sentences to deploy “right wing” in a laughable context. Oh, Ron…
Couldn’t the Stranger find anyone better to back 1A than the usual parade of mansplainers? I’m holding my nose and voting for it although @2 does make a sneaky pro-1A point, which is that it may drive some jobs/high-earners over to Bellevue, bringing down demand for housing in Seattle. Win-win!
@3 AMZN won’t be paying it, their employees (how many of them earn $1M/year?) will. So it’s a small group of people who are trying to control the narrative. As we know there are 10s of 1000s more how agree that large stores of wealth, earned (wages) or unearned (property), should not be taxed.
As for the jobs moving to Bellevue, it’s mystery why AMZN didn’t stay there, other than the “prestige” of Seattle as a recruiting tactic. No one is going to move to Bellevue from CA in 1998 or even 2018. But today, with the Link, about to connect the two downtowns? Why not? Seattle doesn’t really benefit from AMZN as much as people think. Much of their business is everywhere else…warehouses, data centers, none of which is here. They could move lock, stock and barrel to Bellevue or Spokane and keep an office in Seattle for whatever benefit it offers. The wages it pays have skewed the local economy and their business model has gutted local brick and mortar retail in so many places. But go off about your Prime shipping, I guess.
Totoman @9, you’re welcome to favor the anti-urbanist, anti-transit dream of the suburbs being the magnet for business and economic development and the main city being the rotting laggard. Goodness knows it fulfills the automobile-centric, anti-communal GOP vision of how things are supposed to be.
Just keep in mind that, to the extent that these sorts of tax regimes drive away economic activity, they also drive away the tax base that they need. It’s a bit of strangling the goose that lays the golden eggs. Or to use a more current comparison, it’s like Comcast charging a dwindling base of cable customers more and more to make up for the dwindling base, which creates a vicious cycle.
I would much rather see a regional approach to these issues like housing and homelessness where different cities and municipalities are not creating distorted incentives that drive activity to one place over the other. It’s the sort of cooperation which has made Sound Transit’s work possible, as much as the anti-progress crowd has bitterly fought its governance structure precisely because of this cooperation and how well it works.
Not to mention, I’d much rather take a planned, coordinated approach to creating affordable housing over promoting economic decline and seeing what happens will the tide rolls out.
@11, a regional approach is not on the ballot and may never be. Do you really think there’s any extra money to fine tune to your liking an initiative that big business hates? LOL.
I get tired of the language that “the left” uses when trying to argue their side of issues. Saying that Amazon is trying to “buy” the election implies that Seattleites are morons who are distracted by ads no one watches and mailings that no one reads.
Also, it behooves the left to remember that these big evil corporations are also the biggest employers in town, and their business supports numerous small businesses.
That’s not to say we shouldn’t call them out, and vigorously, for their misdeeds. But remember that Amazon, Boeing, Microsoft et al are staffed by our friends and neighbors, who are NOT Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates, or even “tech bros”.
As for “all the tech jobs fleeing to Bellevue”, if we had a normal taxation scheme in this state, it wouldn’t matter much (not that it matters much now, except for the loss of B&O tax revenue). A healthy Seattle benefits the suburbs, healthy suburbs benefit Seattle.
The left needs to be salespeople. Focus on the benefits the proposals or candidates will bring, instead of whining about how everyone is out to get them, and how stupid everyone is to not see things their way.
Totoman @12, you may very well be right that we’ll be waiting forever for a regional affordable housing authority. I don’t keep track of these things closely enough, but if I recall correctly, isn’t there a regional homelessness authority now? However effective that may or may not be, and yes, that’s not the same thing as an affordable housing authority.
While confessing my ignorance here, even if there is no regional alternative in the offing, I consider the cure of 1A worse than the disease, and I’ll be a no. I just have to check out the other options on the ballot.
Catalina @13: “The left needs to be salespeople. Focus on the benefits the proposals or candidates will bring, instead of whining about how everyone is out to get them, and how stupid everyone is to not see things their way.”
Well said, although I deeply resent now that there is this thing called “the left” out there that is by no means representative of liberal voters and whose absolutist, anti-liberal views are always getting thrown in our faces. It’s one of the reasons we have Trump, but hey, maybe that’s not a bug of the activist “left”; maybe that’s actually a feature.
The concept that very low corporate taxes are good for economic development has long been debunked. Skilled and educated workers don’t want to live in underdeveloped regions with insufficient infrastructure, which typically translate into loss of productivity and overall loss of employment. Low corporate taxes are good for the bank account of the1% though.
@13 It’s well known that businesses and political campaigns buy expensive advertising because it doesn’t work
@14 Economic growth and corporate taxes were both higher than now during the LIBERAL era (1930-60’s)
illiberal? Well, making up claims that your opposition is disloyal (i.e. Russian assets) is the opposite of “liberal”. In fact it’s downright authoritarian. I thought I’d let you know so that you know which way is up
My biggest issue is that any body that gets taxpayer revenue needs direct accountability to the voters (be that school boards, utility boards, etc.). Lack of accountability will doom this to Monorail 2.0 proportions. As for anyone who doesn’t think the world changed with remote work, reclassifying the folks subject to 1a is beyond trivial. If you like this idea, vote 1b (it’s not perfect but should be a more stable / consistent funding source).
averagebob @18: “illiberal? Well, making up claims that your opposition is disloyal (i.e. Russian assets) is the opposite of ‘liberal1.”
Actually, averagebob, I’m not accusing you of being a Russian asset. I’m accusing you of being a paid right-wing shill. Go ahead and provide The Stranger any evidence whatsoever that you are an actual, sincere Seattle area activist who is not on the take. You won’t; you would rather bully anyone who doesn’t buy into the whole “averagebob” persona.
But I guess the rest of us are just supposed to lie back while social media gets inundated with suspicious anonymous trolling, and if we try to call it out, we are the ones who are accused of being authoritarian. That takes some chutzpah, but such is the world we live in today.
“averagebob”, I know you have all day to go back and forth on this blog. But unlike you, I’m just a concerned citizen who is posting here out of a genuine concern for Seattle, and I don’t want to waste my Sunday going down the rabbit hole with you, so let me give you the last word for the day.
@20 “Go ahead and provide The Stranger any evidence whatsoever that you are an actual, sincere Seattle area activist who is not on the take”
I’ll do it immediately after you provide evidence you aren’t a crackpot
This guy is oblivious to the irony of him accusing the 1B crowd of lying.
Social housing was advertised as largely “self financing”, i.e. they’d sell bonds to raise cash and use the higher rents from the mixed income units to pay off the bonds. The fact that it would barely cost the city anything was a large part of its appeal. Nobody even remotely connected to reality can deny this.
From The Stranger’s endorsement of I-135:
“This developer would scoop up old hotels or else build new, green housing, all financed with bonds against expected revenue from rents.”
From the supporting statement in the voter guide:
“These homes would be financed through municipal bonding and wouldn’t take resources away from existing affordable housing.”
From a supportive comment in The Stranger’s endorsement:
“@8 the funding needed from the City is startup staff, something like $800k (not a huge chunk of a $7B budget, and money well spent to address the housing crisis). Otherwise this will be funded by bonds secured by future rents, just like a developer takes out a loan based on rent revenue, or publicly bonded sports stadiums leveraged by ticket sales. It’s mindboggling how foreign this concept is to even the relatively educated strata of this publications readership.”
From the El Centro de la Raza endorsement:
“The Social Housing Developer proposed by I-135 would be able to chip away at that deficit without taking resources from existing affordable housing programs because it would be funded primarily through municipal bonds that would be repaid in part through rental income. “
From House our Neighbors:
“However, the new PDA would receive bonding authority, creating leverage to finance new housing without large infusions of funding.”
Everybody with a functioning brain knew a bait-and-switch was coming. Once the initiative passed, the “self financing” concept would be replaced by a huge tax hike, and that is exactly what is happening. Of course you also get the self righteous gaslighters like Davis coming in and pretending it isn’t so. I’ll be voting NO and 1B on this absurd boondoggle. If you want the city to own some apartment buildings, bring in some experienced professionals and do it right, don’t turn it over to a bunch of unqualified activists.
“It’s well known that businesses and political campaigns buy expensive advertising because it doesn’t work”
AverageBob dear, it’s refreshing to see such unfettered youthfulness. Promise me the bloom will never come off your rose.
@17 then why not campaign on that and the benefits of the project? Instead we get this tired bullshit of a campaign from Davis that demonizes the city’s largest employer and gaslights people that this is a small ask. It’s not a small ask and if it’s such a great project lean into it and tout its merits. The constant assertion that everything wrong in this city is because they don’t tax enough is trite and tiresome and really has become more of a sign that something can’t stand on its own.
Expanding on @17 and @24, this was sold fraudulently from the start, which is why the sales job now pivots to demonizing critics. I-135 intentionally created a new housing bureaucracy, without providing a funding mechanism for providing any actual housing. So now we have a proposed new tax, to pay for the empty promises made by supporters of I-135.
This is all straight from the Stranger’s decade-plus-old playbook, going back at least as far as support of McGinn: ignore rapidly increasing piles of evidence the policy has failed, demonize critics as tools of big business or Republicans or whomever, and demand more good support or money be thrown after bad.
McGinn, homeless policy, Sawant, defund, housing; the problems may differ, but the Stranger’s plays are always the same, and the results are always the same: time and effort squandered on predictable failure, whilst the underlying problems fester unsolved. Then the Stranger blames or ignores the critics, for their crime of having been entirely correct all along.
@25 The problem is TS still carries an influencial voice in this city and many progressives voters seemingly rubber stamps their ballots based on their endorsements. I wouldn’t be bit surprised to see this pass tomorrow along with option 1 because “F Amazon”. Of course when this turns into Monorail or Regional Homeless Authority 2.0 there will not be any accountability or retrospective of what went wrong just more blaming that we didn’t go extreme enough.
“”Proposition 1A would provide funding through a nickel-on-the-dollar payroll tax on money a person earns over $1M each year, and the first million bucks is free every year.””
Don’t let this morons find out Bezos’s salary as CEO of Amazon was $81,840 per year, for 20 years before he stepped down.
Thank you for that laugh Simon Says What, dear.
What you cite is probably true. What you omit is that he was given lush amounts of stocks during those years. Sort of like working on commission.
Best of many howlers in the headline post:
“If Amazon and the Chamber were honest, their mailer would not say that the social housing developer has never built affordable housing.”
Their mailer is dishonest! And by “dishonest,” we mean, “contains demonstrably true, correct, and relevant information, which, as always, immediately makes our side look really, really bad.”
But wait, there’s more! Next line is Ron’s proposed truthier version:
“The social housing developer is a brand new legal entity. Since it is new, it hasn’t yet produced housing, because we have not yet funded it.”
Which takes us back to @22, with the blatantly false promise made to pass I-135, of social housing never needing funding.
As @22 implied, the chronic and blatant dishonesty of the social housing campaigners does itself call the entire project into question.
(Note: In my comment @25, I mistakenly referenced @17, when I meant rudeboy’s excellent recap of dishonesty @22. I apologize to rudeboy, and admire his great work @22.)
You say ‘anti-urbanist & anti-communal’ as though these are bad things bad things.
I’ll never understand the push to squeeze people into apartments with paper thin walls.
You’d never get a moment of peace.
If that your thing though then fine.
Just don’t tax me to pay for that hellscape.
” What you omit is that he was given lush amounts of stocks during those years. “
Actually he didn’t, dear. Bezos is famous among us old time AMZN investors (circa 2001) because he never took more equity as compensation. He also never paid investors dividends.
So, you stand corrected. Again.
https://www.instagram.com/wealthytools/reel/DDMpnizy7WP/?hl=fr
Simon dear, your little Instagram link says, “Despite his relatively low salary, Bezos’s wealth primarily came from his significant ownership stake in Amazon.”
Maybe you had your tongue a little too far up a part of Mr. Bezo’s anatomy to be able to read that part?
“Maybe you had your tongue a little too far up a part of Mr. Bezo’s anatomy to be able to read that part?”
The part that says he owns part of the company he founded in his garage, built and still owns part of it? Pretty sure if you start a business, you also own it. Shocking I know the gub’ment can’t just take it from you.
No wonder you work for a government agency, you’re too dumb to survive in the private sector sugartits.