Ansel, you are a hack reporter. Your article seems to suggest that the city council members who are attending this conference are as, Sawant notes, guilty of "brazen corporate favoritism." However, simply attending an annual conference held by major Seattle employers is weak evidence to support that they favor the interests of employers over any other group of constituents. These Seattle employers, as any other group, have a legitimate interest in trying to influence city policy because they are major city stakeholders. Council members also attend meetings, conferences, and dinners held by labor groups. Should an article be written to suggest that the council is guilty of brazen labor favoritism? How could that be so -- I thought they were corporate shills, not labor thugs? The sense of outrage expressed in the article is evidence of your naivety. Also, dude, please get outside of Seattle sometime. Suncadia is not a swanky resort despite what their marketing department tells you. It's a decent regional hotel/conference center that caters to regional groups. Get over it. loser.

*Weyerhaeuser.

It is worth noting that the Chamber of Commerce paid for 40 delegates to visit prek centers in New Jersey, Boston and Washington DC. Burgess and Murray are leading this effort. Now, I'm finding it NO surprise that Alaska Airlines has contributed to the city's 1B program.



Despite the campaign rhetoric around 1B, be clear, we're looking at a public-private partnership and all the right players are in place.



It is also worth noting that Burgess used city dollars to wine and dine guests to talk prek.



The city's ed. department is a bloated burearcracy and the city proposes rewarding those that helped with enormously high administrative salaries north of $150K. See attachment E- page 24.



http://murray.seattle.gov/wp-content/upl…



We've got homeless foster kids and these goons are vacationing on the city's dime.

@5 is right.



Somehow, we don't realize that the employers are just one part of the group that make the economy run. There's also the workers. THEIR interests. THEIR needs. THEIR fair share. We've bought into the lie that only amateurs, not serious politicians, talk to the workers. REAL politicians "dialogue" with the owners and do whatever they say. 'Cause the owners know everything, right? The workers are just an undisciplined mass. Just listen to the owners. They run everything. They know what's up. Politicians who listen to the workers are "grandstanding" and are only good for "comedy gold".



And that's how we got to where we are today - the rich increasingly reaping more of the fruits of society and the ever-expanding poor only stuck with their dead-end labor.



Here's a revelation: Without the workers, the owners are nothing. Look at the sponsors of the swanky (for us; hey, it's Washington State) retreat. Who builds those planes? Types those codes? Cuts those trees? Constructs the office buildings, production buildings, and keeps them running? The executives? You're lucky if they know how to turn something on. They need us (us = you and me = the workers) just like we need them. And if we don't have the money to buy their goods and services, they're FUCKED. We're all fucked. Capitalism doesn't work if there isn't anybody to justify the expenses of the exploitation of labor.



The eight-hour day? Worker and consumer protections? The $15 minimum wage? They didn't come out of a Suncadia resort. The owners didn't suddenly have this idea to make safer places of employment, to make safer products, and to care about the welfare of their employees.



And yet politicians, community leaders, and media figures still look at the corporate executives like fifth graders look at their teachers, the adults who know everything and have all the answers. Because we, we're all so dumb, right? All we know how to do is build the planes, cook the food, clean the floors, all while juggling personal lives and trying to take care of ourselves. What the hell do we know. We don't deserve to have some "grandstanding" politician talking about listening to us and holding meetings with us. I prefer the "real" million-dollar politician who only has time to play golf with the execs of Microsoft.



I'd say I'm disappointed with Licata, but he did vote for the boondoggle tunnel along with the other million-dollar politicians. Eddie Murray, "America's Progressive Mayor," "A Real Progressive," is a fucking corporate clown. Always has been.



Constantine I am disappointed with.



I guess I'm mostly disappointed with the fact that we've rigged the system so much that even "ethical" politicians (relative term) feel that they have to prostitute themselves to keep their jobs.



Good on Mike O'Brien. Good on Jean Godden. And good on Kshama Sawant, who's not afraid to let herself be the target of the ire of the corporate-delude status quo. In this day and age, a politician who is vocally supportive of the needs and rights of workers is so strange it almost seems wrong.



It doesn't matter what the same ten corporatist critics say on the same blog. As the sandwich we the workers are forced to eat becomes increasingly more sour, the numbers of us who are falling out of the spell of our corporate masters grows even greater. Global anti-capitalist protests are not a freak anomaly.

@45, you do realize that the property tax exemption on that income tax initiative you so loved would have made the tax system more regressive, yes? If you had actually used the pro-income tax group's own numbers and website, If you made 500k a year and had a 500k property in King County, you'd be spending 40 dollars less in taxes due to the exemption.

My numbers may be a little off, but it was something ridiculous like that. Bill Gates Sr. was running a tax dodge in the name of an income tax, and you bought it hook, line, and sinker.