Comments

1

This is a lazy take. No mention of the fact that Allen donated $2B of his wealth to science, medicine, and other philanthropic endeavors. They also conflate the development of a low-density, under-utilized region of the city with the excesses of the tech sector.

It's almost like the author doesn't even live in Seattle...

2

Vulcan tried to work with the city to partner on SLU. The
public initiative vote failed. Also, I-1098 a major income tax restructuring by initiative is a real bad idea. CM Sawant preaches extremes just like President Trump, they are both part of the problem.

3

Sawant sucks! My offense is a little more succinct than your defense.

9

The jealousy of the socialists is on fine display here.

And yet, still no comment from Spike or Pijipenniless on Sawants scam of “donating” to SA, only to have SA spend the money on Sawant and her POS husband.

Hmmmmm.....oh, and it’s only one of more than a few scams that are starting to get uncovered about sawant.

Pail Allen has done more good for people than sawant, pijipenniless, and every single socialist will ever do in over a thousand lifetimes.

Suck it.

10

@9, you know that The Stranger will defend the left to the very end right? That's why Juanita Broaddrick is never mentioned.

11

@1,

For someone casting aspersions of a "lazy take" for failing to mention the man's contributions to science and philanthropic causes, you may want to get off your ass and re-read the piece. Right in the second paragraph he writes the following...

"Allen’s wealth also funded cancer research. It led to scientific breakthroughs and the rediscovery of the treasures of the deep. His wealth funded the arts and endowed large cultural institutions in the region."

You can argue that he didn't give enough weight to said contributions, but to suggest he didn't mention them is objectively false and perhaps even... Lazy? Yeah, seems either lazy or stupid. And though not a literary expert, I'd argue that the reason he didn't give these issues more weight is because they weren't the focus of his point.

12

Give a man a fish,you feed him for a day.

Teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.

Promise a man a lifetime supply of somebody else's fish, you create a Socialist.

13

Yawn. Why does Sawant's political grandstanding need defending anyway?

15

Sawant is being true to her mission of creating a classless society by being classless creature at every opportunity. And everything is an opportunity to her.

16

12 Blowjobs have not made you any smarter.

17

7

Racists! They are everwhere!!!!

List of people hiding under German hotdogs bed(updated)
Nazis, racists, trump, hockey fans, footbal fans, more nazis, whyte peepul, rural people, and a few more nazis.

18

14

For sure, she is stacking on the pounds like crazy.

19

Squeallll like a pig! Great movie.

20

If you don't like her, don't vote for her, or step up and run against her. Oh, you don't live in her district? What a surprise.

Better call her fat, then.

21

20

She isn’t fat, she’s...........thick.

But fat is just around the corner....must be all that capitalist food she is eating.

22

@7
Whether or not we know it, our actions are always done out of self-interest. People who believe otherwise are not only misinformed but lack self-awareness.

“Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while.”
-Jeremy Bentham

24

@23, sadly the only alternatives to the current crop of idiots on the City Council are rabid right-wing libertarians. It's a choice between Hitler and Stalin for next years City Council elections. Good luck with that choice.

25

Dang, some people sure do get triggered by commie impudence, don't they? One tiny sneer at a dead billionaire and they start honking Rush Limbaugh keywords like a flock of geese.

26

@24 how are right-wing libertarians considered "Hitler"?

27

So, Sawant’s arrogant, cruel and classless outbursts have gotten so bad, The Stranger has now been forced to stop passively ignoring them, and start blatantly apologizing for them?

If you’re worried about working-class folks, you can start with the union-represented tradespeople who told her “No Head Tax!” right to her face, even as she arrogantly lectured them on how she was entitled to speak for them. Any idea why they did this, or do you just not care enough about them to ask?

Oh — SLU did not have many residents before Vulcan started developing. (That’s why a park there was proposed in the first place — it would have caused little disruption.) You also might want to give an actual example of how Vulcan made things worse for non-rich persons. Here, I’ll show you how it might look: “Vulcan has partnered with the City of Seattle to redevelop Yesler Terrace to add low-income housing.” (Since that’s a real fact, it does not support your claim, but c’est la vie.)

Have fun apologizing for Sawant’s hateful, offensive temper tantrums. She’ll ensure you have at least a year’s worth of solid work ahead of you.

28

@27, you win Slog today

29

All these people who now behave as if nobody could be criticized after they die. It's pathetic, especially when media sycophants present a completely distorted perspective in the first place.

Demagogues.

30

The Robert Moses comparison is pretty far off the mark. Read Robert A. Caro’s “The Power Broker” for a fascinating history of Robert Moses. The Vulcan projects are entirely different things.

31

I want to see a Venn Diagram of people who claim PC culture is out of control and support politicians who "tell it like it is," and people who are outraged over Sawant's comments.

32

Gebuz on a Ritz cracker, but you RW snowflakes are SO SENSITIVE! No one disputes the late Mr. Allen did some good with his unnaturally immense wealth, but that doesn't negate the fact that he also caused a huge amount of disruption in the lives of ordinary citizens both in this city and elsewhere, which was not always to their benefit. But yeah, he built some stuff some people think was cool, so I guess we can just overlook everything else, amiright?

33

The Stranger doesn’t even know it’s own history. They actively campaigned AGAINST the Seattle Commons for years.

34

I know that the GOP will keep the Senate and the Dems will get the House back next month but part of me really would love to watch the GOP hold on to both just to watch the radical left in Seattle just shit itself into a coma. Fuck, it'll be as funny as the night Trump won the White House.

35

@31,

Haha, good observation. Pretty sure it'd be one dark circle perfectly encapsulating all three groups.

36

@29: “All these people who now behave as if nobody could be criticized after they die.”

Who here has written that? It’s just a polite custom to speak no ill while the family and friends of the deceased are still mourning their loss. But that would require some tiny speck of human decency, compassion, or feeling for others, now wouldn’t it?

Sawant also recently learned the hard way about attacking a rich guy while he was still alive. The result was her crushing political defeat, which may well have been a career-ending, self-inflicted injury. Following up by attacking someone who now can’t fight back just makes her look like a wounded coward.

@32: “...he also caused a huge amount of disruption in the lives of ordinary citizens both in this city and elsewhere, which was not always to their benefit.”

Examples, please. I showed you how @27.

37

The Mercer Mess is still a Mess, for one

38

Income inequality is the ultimate American non-problem. Who was poor because Paul Allen was rich?

38

Sawant, the quintessential incompetent Socialist.

39

29

Well posting flame and hit pieces same day as someone’s death is pretty classless....but it’s become expected from kshamalamadindong.

40

37

And that’s Paul Allen’s fault? Lmfao

41

Looks like Kshama's next campaign slogan's gonna be "Leave No Gulab Jamun Behind"

42

@36 Spare me the propaganda. You just want her to shut up and score cheap points while corporate media stooges paint a picture of Allen that is quite removed from reality. I just wonder how "decent" it is to fund the GOP and oppose progressive taxation.

44

@42: "Spare me the propaganda."

The truth hurts, doesn't it? (Awww....)

"You just want..."

Oh, look: you're a failure at both mind-reading and the normal kind!

"...her to shut up..."

No, no, no, no, no, no. I want her coming through loud and clear, early and often, all of the time, until even The Stranger figures out that apologizing for her many egregious insults is truly a loser's game. Watching her continuing, self-propelled downward spiral will provide great free entertainment over the coming year. Why should I want it to end early?

"...score cheap points..."

You actually wrote that about someone other than Sawant. In this very thread. Priceless!

'I just wonder how "decent" it is to fund the GOP and oppose progressive taxation.'

Paul Allen was a rich man. I won't defend those actions of his, but I will note he acted in his own self-interest. You cannot day the same about any citizen of District 3 who both works for a living and voted for Sawant. Just ask the union-represented tradespersons who told her not to re-instate the EHT.

45

The problem with her statement was the timing, that's all. It reminds of when Reagan died. The Republicans were busy praising the man, giving him a ridiculous amount of credit, and ignoring all the harm he did. The Democrats were, generally speaking, classy. They just held their tongue, and said nothing, while all the while thinking "Iran Contra, death of the middle class, biggest deficits in history ...".

Wait a while -- wait until it actually matters, and then criticize the man. If someone wants to build a statue of the guy, or rename a building, then propose somebody else. For the most part, every good thing he did cost him nothing. Not literally, of course, but the money he spent "making things better" was really no sacrifice. He was rich. Very, very rich. That should be obvious. This was no man you lived a life of poverty, or even a life of the middle class, or even a relatively luxurious life -- living in a way none of us will live, yet still be envious of. This was a man who lived large, and spent more money on a boat than most very wealthy people will ever earn in a lifetime. Seriously -- give the average person ten million, and they can buy a house, retire, travel the world, go to shows, get laid -- all that shit, easily. Give them ten times that and they are just blowing money. Allen spent 25 times that on a fucking boat, and we are supposed to be thrilled that he spent a few on his pet causes.

There is no evidence, whatsoever, by the way, that we would be worse off if all of that was just taxed away. This myth -- this philanthropic savior myth -- is one of the many things fucked up with this country. It is easy to point to great advanced in society due to government spending (including the form of communication I'm using right now). It is very difficult to point to some magical breakthrough caused by some rich guy's dream.

Yes, he saved the Seahawks. Great. But he couldn't save the Sonics. But both situations point to a completely fucked up system, and are great examples of why the "rich savior" idea is fucked up. Professional sports are a natural monopoly. Any sort of reasonable regulation on sports would give the 15th largest market in the country teams in both leagues. Yet the NBA is more comfortable using us as an example -- one we used to save our football team, even when one of the richest guys in the world owned us. Better pony up, citizens, or you will lose that team.

The only reason that we have even heard of Allen is because he was rich. Not because he did great things after he became rich. He did average things, but the bar is set so low, we praise him. He never sacrificed for the greater good. He wasn't a complete asshole, and of course I was thrilled with many of the things he did. But we shouldn't praise a rich dude just because he isn't an asshole.

47

Why does anyone still care what Trump supporter CM Sawant says?

48

Utter Tripe

49

44

Tensor, I gotta say I agree with you spades. You and I have slugged it out in the past, but with regards to that witch Kshamala, we are in full agreement.

Unfortunate it will cost the city $$, but it is entertaining watch her burn up in flames.

50

47

Ummmm....because she represents a portion of the seattle govt?

The sooner she gets run over by a concrete truck the better.

51

44: Ok, other than a tiny number of slumlords(any landlord who'd oppose the tenant's bill of rights can only be called a slumlord), and an equally tiny number of corporate bazillionaires-most of whom felt entitled to someone else's money, namely the money from the wealth created for them by their employees-who has Sawant ever come remotely close to insulting? I seriously doubt she ever insulted you or anyone like you, tensor.

52

51

Lolz....are fucking kidding me?

It’s time to purge the marxists....

53

As to the tax code, it HAS to be changed via initiative-to do the decent thing and replace repressive consumption taxes with a state income tax, as any truly democratic state would naturally do-we need to amend the state constitutional to remove the constitutional prohibition on an income tax that some early 20th Century plutocrats forced into place. That's also the only way we can make rent control possible, as we need to do to stop the wealthy from turning Seattle into a town where only Amazon, Starbucks, and Vulcan executives can live.

54

I'd strongly suggest The Stranger investigate who might be paying all the right-wing trolls who've suddenly showed up in the last few months to heckle any dissent from Trumpian orthodoxy into silence. It would not surprise me if a lot of them turned out to be posting from Ukrainian and Russian web servers. They've got the 2016 "suck it up snowflake" line down pat.

55

52: It doesn't surprise me that you'd end up saying "purge the Marxists". After all, Stalin, the hero of your hero's hero, spent most of his time executing actual Marxists. Stalin himself was never anything but a right-wing Great Slavic Nationalist(I'd have said Russian Nationalist, but he was Georgian, not Russian).

BTW, you don't run this comments section, so you don't get to order "purges".

Thanks for letting us all know you're a Stalinist psychopath, btw. Good to see the mask slip.

56

@51: "...who has Sawant ever come remotely close to insulting?"

Reading comprehension much? Why is it so difficult for you to understand what Ross clearly wrote, @45? "The problem with her statement was the timing, that's all." The man's body was barely cold before she started mouthing off. His family and friends deserved some quiet time to mourn their sudden and shocking loss. They don't deserve less decency and respect just because she was all butthurt over his yacht.

@54: Nice to see your own repression-friendly attitude finally exposed. Yeah, investigate Slog commenters. That would be a brilliant use of money that would otherwise just get wasted on paychecks at The Stranger.

"It would not surprise me if a lot of them turned out to be posting from Ukrainian and Russian web servers."

More than a little bit paranoid, are we?

Or just looking for a way to dismiss arguments even you know you'll lose?

Good luck looking for Ukrainians under The Stranger's bed of web servers!

59

54

Hahahhahahahahhahjahahha

Shorter: anybody who disagrees with Uber leftist mantra must be a trumpist russian bot!

Jahahhahahahjahaabbahahbahbahhahhahaha

Thanks for insight on how your brain functions.

60

55

Ohhhhhh....check out the super twistomatic logic: a far leftist calling anybody who disagrees with an even further leftist!

The mind! It boggles!

61

55

And yes, I can order purges any damn time I want.

And if it were up to me, you marxists would be extinct...so lucky for you it’s not up to me.

Cheers bitch!

62

Stalin.....that great right wing leader.....holy Christ, is that what teach you kids these days?

Wow....just wow.

You and mudede should get a room.

63

The fact that some of you leftist schizos honestly believe the Eeeeeeeevil Russians are behind a concerted campaign to infiltrate the comments section of a pissant low-traffic local politics and entertainment blog is blisteringly hilarious. Do they make pussy hats out of tinfoil now?

64

You slanderous scoundrel #9 “bring nhl to Seattle”,

Kshama Sawant, like every genuine socialist elected to any public position, keeps as her salary only the average wage of her constituents, plus publicly-auditable expenses, and gives everything else to the freedom-struggle.

In Kshama’s case, she keeps ~$45,000 as her annual salary and contributes the remaining ~$80,000 to the fight-back.

And how much do you contribute?

Every fulltime-worker at Socialist Alternative gets paid the same salary, plus battle-expenses. Regardless of whether they’re Kshama Sawant’s spouse, or somebody else’s, or nobody’s.

We “live” in this vile capitalist hell.
Battle-expenses are high.
Just think travel, accommodation — for speaking, meeting, organizing.

Of course Socialist Alternative pays for our comrades’ battle-expenses.

Sure, you’re most welcome to help us with those burdensome expenses by donating to us:
https://www.socialistalternative.org/donate/

Or are you a skinflint and a sycophant, simultaneously?

65

Hi #45 “Ross”,

Kshama Sawant and Socialist Alternative are genuine socialists.

Whenever an infamous capitalist dies, sycophantic scriveners come out of the woodwork with their hilariously-hagiographic
homilies.

Of course we’ll counter their torrent of toady tripe!
:)

https://www.socialistalternative.org/

66

I'm pissed at Sawant not for whatever she said/wrote about Paul Allen after he died (which I wasn't even aware of), but because she's basically a jerk who doesn't care about anyone (certainly not her constituents, whose best interest she sacrifices to the "cause" with so much as a shrug) and is, above all that, an ineffective politician who gives alternatives to capitalism a bad name.

I was tempted to say she gives the DSA a bad name, but their entire slate of candidates seem to a murderers row of unremorseful jerks who think that the rules shouldn't apply to them.

67

@49: You lost my company at name-calling and attacking a person’s appearance.

And now, time for the questions we must always ask ourselves here, late in a Sawant-themed thread: is socialistworld a parody? How can we tell?

69

@67: "is socialistworld a parody?". I had the same thought. I cannot discern if it is satire or passion. Crazy.

70

I'm only a "far leftist" if you consider it "far left' simply to say there should be no further cuts in social benefits, that free healthcare should be a right here as it is in most of the world, and that it should never be a heavy personal expense to go to college or university. "Far left" is the Khmer Rouge...it's Mao in the cultural revolution. It's not "far left" simply to be anti-austerity, pro-worker and pro-peace.

And yes, Stalin was, in fact, a right-wing leader. He didn't support giving workers control of the means of production, he suppressed the arts into the pathetic, reactionary joke known as "Socialist Realism"(I.e., also those dreary, boring sculptures and murals of Heroic Freaking Ivan and Ludmilla Of The Tractor Far. Stalin killed the Revolution and killed more communists, socialists and anarchists than anybody else in history. He betrayed the anti-Franco cause in Spain, he betrayed the Left in Greece in 1948, and he forced every state in what became known as Eastern Europe to be an exact replica of his police state and he betrayed the workers and peasants of the USSR in the Thirties by repeatedly trading the wheat crop for guns for the Red Army.

Stalin turned every "pro-Moscow" party into, effectively, a party of the Right.

Today, no significant group on the Left anywhere in the world backs the Soviet model and there's no part of the active Left that can accused, by any legitimate standard, of wanting Stalinism back.

The ONLY people now who want his type of state back are people like Putin-a man who wants Stalin's repression without any of the socialist ideas Stalin betrayed. Those of us on the left are totally free of any connection to that...it's YOUR side that wants to abolish all dissent from the government of the day.

71

64

Hahahhahahahhahha....capitalist hell even!!!!

Fuck you and your loser comrades

72

@70: You seem to have equated “extremism” with “right-wing extremism.” The Stalinist model of totalitarian government was indeed left-wing extremism: private enterprise was banned, all decisions had to be made collectively, etc. The United States fought the Cold War to end it, just as we had fought WWII to end right-wing extremism.

That extremism tends to be counter-productive of its own stated goals doesn’t make it any less extreme. Nazi Germany aspired to be a “racially pure” haven for “Aryans”, but became a multi-ethnic slave state, with the young “Aryan” men exported to die in battle.

And, for all the detractors I’d socialism in this thread: it’s entirely possible to have a socialist government atop a capitalist economy. Sweden had socialist governments for most of the last century, and the place is hardly a totalitarian shithole, to put it mildly. :-) The modern Western European model works really well for the citizens of those countries.

73

Thanks for the great article. Seems like the neo-liberals have a lot of criticism for Trump but not their own gods. As Trump shy's away from criticizing the khashoggi murder because there are $$$BILLIONS at stake. Yet the tax payers picking up the tab for the Seahwak's stadium was never an issue. An I'm a Seahawk fan as well. A true philanthropist of the people would have picked up the tab and not put the ultimatum out there. Pay for the stadium or I don't buy the Seahwaks.

74

@70. "The Stalinist model of totalitarian government was indeed left-wing extremism"

Time to get down to the library and do some learning. The collapse of the American Communist party is laid at the feet of Stalin. My old friend, may he rest in peace, was a Communist back than. That was before Stalin took over. If there's a good cause, rest assured the scum will move in to take advantage of it and destroy it. Today's example is Trump destroying democracy with his right wing Nationalism. Can you say, Nazi Germany.

75

@74: I did not mention Communism, or the American Communist Party. My comment did not concern them.

Please learn to read, especially before presuming to lecture any one else on their need for books.

76

@75 It's demagogic to assume that, somehow, capitalism PROTECTS us from tyranny(if you've not noticed, we have a president whose economic views could be described as "Gordon Gekko on bath salts", and he is pushing is steadily towards tyranny(if he could find some way to annul or throw out all opposition gains in the midterms, he would-and he may manage to find some way to do that between 2018 and 2020, given that no Republican-appointed judge will ever rule against his administration on anything). Socialism is not synonymous with Stalinism-if it was, Stalin wouldn't have killed far more socialists and even Communists than he ever did capitalists-and socialism is also not synonymous with statism. We've had plenty of statist capitalism over the years, and it's part of the new ideology, Great Russian Orthodox Homophobic Capitalism, that Putin is inventing.

Socialism simply means that the economy is run for the social good-nobody's advocating old-style bureaucratic state management of the economy anymore-now, the basic model is cooperatives and networks of cooperatives-and cooperatives have never oppressed ANYBODY.

Sorry, tensor, but the CEO and the slumlord are NOT "the defenders of our liberties".

77

People on both the hard right and hard left tend to demonize their "opponents," rather than look for basic, human common ground. For too many of them, the "enemy" is not a person who loves, suffers, cries, hopes, and thinks, but a "greedy capitalist" or "leftist" who represents evil. And centrists are dismissed as wimps, weaklings who lack the guts for the real fight for "liberation." The extremist's declarations of either patriotic fervor or compassion for the poor cannot hide selfish motivations--especially craving fame as an iconic boat-rocker. Sawant, while intelligent and capable, seems so soaked in ideology that she's always ready with tailor-made blame. Surely, Paul Allen's life and career deserve honest scrutiny, and Sawant has every right to express her opinion of him. But within only a few hours of his death from an extremely painful form of cancer? Given how much he did and donated? Her statement seems to lack awareness or concern for balance, for common ground, for acknowledgment of complexity. Her tone suggests she simply sees Paul Allen as an enemy. And this, I think, hints at why so many are upset over Sawant's remarks. Her cold piety; hypocrisy about philanthropy (her "donating" to herself); and obsessive need for publicity, masking insecurity and jealousy.... Many are uneasy about someone who touts "compassion" and "giving" but who lacks basic empathy for "enemies." She couldn't wait a week or two before unleashing her criticism?! It must be right after Allen dies?! Not good, and I think for many people this is the last straw with Sawant. Her supporters might tout her courage, her guts, her "stick-it-to-the-man" attitude, but this episode reveals a deep scary emptiness in her, and her reputation has taken a deserved hit. People are people, not mere vessels of ideology or class consciousness. Preach compassion? Then, show some--and Sawant did not.

78

@77: Well stated. Thank you.

@76: WTF? I pointed out an example of a very successful country with socialist governments, and you think I’m a shill for unregulated capitalism? Reading comprehension much?

79

Woo hoo #67 “tensor”, #69 “Dirt Bag” and #71 “bring nhl to Seattle”,

Try to cure yourselves of your verbal diarrhea.

Then try to answer the points raised.

If you’re incapable of that, you prove you have nothing to say.

80

@78: I didn't say you supported "unregulated capitalism". My response there was simply about the implication in your post that any form of predominately socialist economy will inevitably turn into a dictatorship, with the way you used the term "socialism" as if it was synonymous with Stalinism. In practical terms, we'd never end up with an entirely socialist economy-some mix would be inevitable-but it would have to have a larger component that was NOT about profit than that was, because without that, the capitalist part of it will always be trying to get rid of the socialist parts-as we saw in the Seventies, when we were edging slightly towards a mixed economy, had had an informal "accord" since the end of World War II in which the working-class(unfortunately mostly just the white, male working class, due to Jim Crow, male chauvinism and redlining until the late Sixties or so)but, suddenly, the corporate class, with no real justification, suddenly walked away from the accord, leaving working people of all races, genders, and identities with nothing but lost economic ground since 1978 or so). What would you advocate to prevent the profit part of the mixed economy from undoing the mix and making it solely about themselves, as they have with no let up for the last four decades?

And, if nothing else, can I ask you, please, to never again equate socialism with Soviet communism. What happened there isn't inevitable and nobody on today's left has any connection with that model or that outcome. That's in the past.

81

Ooh — two braying donkeys #23 “Scottie” and #66 “Sportlandia” claiming to be mind-readers!

Kshama Sawant and Socialist Alternative are genuine socialists.

Contrary to your “Kshama Doesn’t Care For You-Oo” moronic mewlings, we care most profoundly for our class the 99 Per Cent.

Even for those of our class currently mesmerized by billionaire brigands like Paul Allen and Trump.
Or by Obama — Trump-with-a-Tan.
Or by Hillary — Donald-in-a-Dress.

Heck, we even care for both your (currently) sorry asses!
:)

https://www.socialistalternative.org/

82

Sawant's problem isn't that she's a socialist it's that she's bad at governing and poor leader.

83

@80: "...he implication in your post that any form of predominately socialist economy will inevitably turn into a dictatorship,"

Sweden is a dictatorship?!?

@79: "Then try to answer the points raised."

The point raised here is CM Sawant was entrusted with power by voters in Seattle, and has used that power mostly as a platform for boorish behavior unbecoming of an actual leader. You're free to try answering that any time you like.

"Try to cure yourselves of your verbal diarrhea."

Try taking your own advice sometime. (You're free to complain about how bitter and unwholesome it tastes.)


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