It's hard to govern when you're high on cocaine all the time.

“Big Business Is Pleased With The Council They Bought”

Yes, because the voters of Seattle are all stupid. Probably not the best thing for a LOCAL PAPER to say.

No one likes a sore loser, Hannah dear.

@2 Being a sore loser is all The Stranger has anymore. They can never admit the agenda they pushed on us the last few years did not deliver and voters choose to change course. Every problem starts and ends with "Big Business" and every solution is "Progressive Revenue". It's stale and trite at this point and sad to read. The only thing that keeps it entertaining is these comment threads.

And if the Council moved quickly on this “conservative” agenda, you’d be complaining less?

Hardly ever look at the comments because they seem populated by reactionary trolls saying the same stupid shit over and over. That seems unchanged. Have fun in your little troll puddle, trolls.

Yeah, the Stranger continues to be the laughing stock paper of Seattle. The criminality advocates can’t understand why actual voters voted for people to clean up the mess The Stranger advocates for.
No, you stupid stupid people, it was not money that cost the last council their jobs, it was paying too much attention to your loud minority opinions.

Big business didn't buy my vote. The Dipstickery on the far left did. Now you are trying to bully the sane and sensible with delusional logic. You may not like Trump but you sure seem to the flip side of the same coin.

Seven months in on the last council was summer of 2020. (remember that summer? a few things happening in Seattle.) There was mostly rampant idiocy (and support for violent revolutionaries) from the Council that summer, not "progressive policy" (unless the policy was "coddling violent revolutionaries is totally awesome!")

The Stranger wasted ten solid years shilling for CM Sawant, and now claims to care about the Council’s track record on enacting legislation? Hilarious!

Please, Stranger, do tell us all about the EHT, and Saving the Showbox. Those are two rare examples of her actually getting legislation through the Council. Did those meet your definition of effective legislation?

m.sam dear, the council was not “bought”. They were elected, fair and square. The insinuation that is was bought implies that the voters are stupid.

Like Our Dear Hannah, you're just upset your side didn’t win.

Stop being a baby.

@7 "criminality advocates?!" Speaking of a laughingstock...

@10 Sawant's advocacy was critical to passing both JumpStart and the $15 minimum wage

"In terms of raw numbers, the 2020 city council passed 12 more ordinances in their first six months than the 2024 city council."

In light of the fact that the first half of 2020 involved an unprecedent public health emergency, that's not a very impressive statistic.

I don't care enough to actually pull up prior legislation and check, but I would not be at all surprised if when COVID-specific legislation* is removed, the current city council has passed more legislation.

*This would include various eviction moratoria for both residential and commerical properties, caps on rent increases for the same, essential worker protections, "healthy streets" road closures, ordinances allowing expanded outdoor dining, and so on.

@11 Ha ha ha ha ha. You actually believe this drivel! If you think it is a simple fact that the current council was bought, then I’m looking forward to your sadness at (1) wasting your time trying to change campaign finance laws and (2) your losses aster whatever campaign finance laws you get enacted go into effect.

The reality is that you lost to informed voters, big time. Grow up and figure out that democracy rules, and you’re in the minority. Because your policies don’t work.

@15 username does NOT check out, as they say

@3 "The only thing that keeps it entertaining is these comment threads."

debatable. you're here posting the same bullshit almost daily. i can go away for weeks and come back and know exactly who is going to be saying what on whatever topic.

@13: Sigh. Back to actual facts:

“The passage of Proposition 1 in SeaTac in late 2013 proved to be a catalyst of enormous dimensions. Just six months later, in early June, 2014, the Seattle City Council unanimously approved a $15 minimum wage policy recommended by Mayor Ed Murray’s appointed Income Inequality Advisory Committee; the 61% minimum wage increase was scheduled to be phased in over seven years.”

(https://content.lib.washington.edu/projects/sea15/campaign-Seattle.html)

So the voters of SeaTac actually inspired Seattle to advance a $15/hour minimum wage law; CM Sawant was just one of nine votes for it on the Council, and it was supported by the Mayor. Seattle’s voters were following SeaTac’s voters, not any elected leader in Seattle.

everyone buys votes; it's only the currency that changes.

Hannah's disappointment is exceptionally delicious. The voters voted, my dear. We got the council we wanted. And all our whining will not change that at all.

The comments (whether they are from residents of Lynnwood or Bothell or possibly Seattle) just make clear that Seattle is not a progressive city, despite how many times the Stranger writers argue that it is. It's a libertarian city, where property rights outweigh human rights. You don't get multiple multi year "crises" (housing affordability and homelessness…I wonder if they are related?) otherwise. These are no longer crises…they are the status quo, normalized until they are no longer an issue.

In the Stranger's newsroom, on Capitol Hill, maybe it's hard to see but for those who live in the far-flung borough of D5 (Staten Island to Cap Hill's Manhattan), it's inescapable. Shuttered storefronts, vacant land, all valuable assets — property — that could be put to use but instead sits idle as part some speculators portfolio. Maybe we need a local version of that old New Yorker cartoon of the view from 9th avenue.

Y'all can keep beating the drum about Seattle as a progressive city but it takes more than legal weed and LGBTQ representation to claim that title. We live in an Ayn Rand theme park, and the sooner people realize it, the better.