The "defund the police" saga is a perfect example of how aggressively the political machine and it's media allies will defend the status quo. It never even happened but a significant portion of the electorate accept without question not only that it did but also that it is responsible for any post-2020 crime. And any proposal to reallocate public safety spending is now dead in the water. If you come at the king (municipal police spending) you best not miss.

"the defund the police movement. "

It certainly would have if the leftist progressives had had their way, but they didn't and that is what Saka is referencing in my reading of his statement.

Biden chose Harris as his running mate a woman of color to get the backing of Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina. That is a DEI/Diversity action. Isn't it disingenuous to say otherwise? But that's all good! Go Kamala!

@1: The "defund" saga should be a lesson in why elected officials should not promise to enact poorly-thought-out policies based upon momentary passions from unelected activists, and especially not in contravention of elected officials' campaign promises (e.g. Lisa Herbold promising "proper funding for the SPD" mere months before trying to enact "defund").

Seattle needs police reform. By rushing to "defund," rather than engaging in reasoned, knowledge-based dialog in service of producing a workable reform policy, the Council scared the citizens of Seattle into opposing all further police reform efforts.

And as for "defund" not happening, the dramatic rise in SPD officer departures began right after the Council's dalliance with "defund." Employees know when management does not want them. The Council got the reduction in officer numbers it wanted; it just failed to obtain any budget savings from it.

(If you have a problem with any of this, perhaps you can communicate it to a local media outlet which demanded, and continues to support, "defund"?)

If Kamala is a "DEI candidate" then so too will be her running mate, who undoubtedly will be a white male, because we obviously can't have two brown people or two women on the same ticket (even though America isn't a racist or sexist country).

When Biden tapped Harris to be VP, he should have made crystal clear that he was focused on picking a black woman from the among pool of well-qualified candidates. The specious claim that she only got the job because of Biden's self-imposed affirmative action was easy enough to predict. That some can suggest, knowing full-well the depth of her resume, that her blackness was the main box Kamala checked are the ones being disingenuous. She was eligible because of her experience; her blackness was a tie-breaker, applied at the nominee's discretion to right the wrong of 250 years without a woman or black person in the role.

Considering a cop with Nazi tattoos just shot a black woman in the face in her own home, there is no such thing as a too lengthy screening process for police. If applicants are turned off because you’re asking too many questions before they get a badge and a gun you essentially have a self-solving problem on your hands.

Biden never specified race, only gender as a selection criteria for VP. Meanwhile gender and race will both be criteria for Harris’ selection but no one will call her choice a DEI hire because DEI hire is a dogwhistle for a racial slur they reserve for their private conversations.

It’s too bad about Homegrown but as Hannah stated in her Thurs Slog post “I’m not sorry at all when I say that if a business owner cannot figure out how to run a profitable business that meets incredibly basic labor standards with 10 years extra time, then their business has run 10 years too long”

So I guess it’s much better for 158 people to lose their jobs and 10 locations to shut down than examiner is this policy is the actually helping.

DEI my foot. Giving any air to that pathetic talking point does a disservice to all of us by allowing the GOP to reframe her qualifications in terms of race when her achievement stands on its own merit regardless of any superficial variable. I suppose milquetoast Tim Kaine was a DEI pick as well for the moderate swing state voter. Get real, you flungs! Shamefully handled.

Homegrown was the only decent box lunch for meetings company. Tis a sad day.

Seattle's mean Farleftists didn't defund the police, but they sure depleted their Widdle Feewings Fund.

10: You say regardless of any superficial variable but @6 says "her blackness was a tie breaker".

Let's be honest and just admit she got chosen VP because of her experience and a superficial variable.

Republicans are now telling other Republicans ‘don’t be racist’ because it looks bad?
After 40 years of racist dog-whistles from the GOP, it’s a little too late.

In a country where race has singularly determined people’s rights for the majority of its existence, race is not a superficial variable. Racial minorities who are able to overcome the barriers imposed on them by their identity — whether it be government-mandated segregation or the casual bigotry that justified those mandates that lingers to this day — are almost certainly better qualified than a white person on otherwise equal footing, because they had more obstacles to overcome to get there.

14: Superficial? Perhaps not depending on this situation. But race and gender are variables not based on merit, hence that's why there was affirmative action. A needed step, but still a corrective action (or however you want to describe it) to achieve a more balanced society.

In interviews with outgoing SPD officers, they cited a "hostile relationship with Seattle citizens" as one of the primary reasons why they are pulling up stakes and working at other police departments (not wanting to take the COVID-19 vaccine was another). I believe that this is why, despite the Mayor and the Council showering SPD with money, they are still not meeting their recruitment goals. I only bring this up because I believe that the council will eventually start to move away from monetary incentives and propose ordinances to control citizen descent related to protesting police operations and curtail police accountability as much as they can (any more would get the attention of the DOJ). It's the only logical path to them based on past behavior.

15, You get credit for reading my comment but an F for comprehension.

@4 is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. Claims the SPD staffing shortage, which mirrored a national trend that intensified during a global pandemic and national police murder scandal, are actually due to "defund" (which again didn't happen). Of course tensorna is just an absurd troll but there are many who sincerely hold that opinion because it's been cynically pushed by both electeds and talking heads. And the reason for that is they don't want to critically examine our approach to public safety they just want to keep throwing money at cops regardless of efficacy.

@3 assuming for the sake of argument Kamala is actually a "DEI candidate," even national GOP leadership recognize that's an irrelevant and tactless attack line. Only the most soft brained voters would ever care about that and they're all already for Trump (or maybe RFK). I assume your only purpose in arguing this was to get other commenters riled in which case mission accomplished I suppose.

@14. Of course race isn't a superficial variable, but the GOP is using it as such by using coded terms to suggest that Kamala's race and/or extrinsic superficial appearance is why she is VP and she otherwise doesn't deserve it. It is a form of racism and victimization that attempts to make who Kamala is invisible.

18: It only becomes an attack line because the left tries to blur and obfuscate DEI when and where it occurs. It will cease to be an attack line once DEI is promoted proudly sans embarrassment.

The importance of “defund” was not so much that it actually did anything, but that it handed the GOP an easy way to paint Dems as idiots wholly unconcerned with public safety.

We spent TRILLIONS of dollars on police in this country. They do NOT prevent or solve crime. When they kill someone or do something else that the police have to pay for, it's taxpayer dollars spent. The Pentagon has an endless supply of money and weapons (that goes into a black hole, since they haven't been able to pass an audit in nearly a decade and probably beyond that - imagine if you, regular taxpayer joe schmoe failed an audit once, let alone for nearly a decade, and we're talking hundreds of billions if not over one trillion dollars LOST) and they give all of their "leftover" weaponry to the police. So we have a police force in this country that is armed to the teeth like they are a military force.

Defund the police could be done by 2/3 and those hundreds of billions of dollars could be used to house, feed, educate, and provide health care for the people in this country suffering immensely.

Choosing to double down and support the police, who do things like murder people in their homes or on the streets or wherever they please (whether they call 911 or not) and in the latest case, prevent their partner from doing anything to help the Black woman they just shot when they showed up after she called 911 is pure violent, white supremacist stupidity.

People really need to do a deep dive into Harris and her part in the carceral industrial complex. Is she better than Biden? In that she is younger, has a functioning brain, and is a woman and a non-white woman, hell yeah. Anyone is better than the demented old men we had as our "choices" prior to what's happening now. But it's not the greatest of options and in a country that still pretends it is a democracy, having a small group of people choose who the next presidential candidate is instead of the people is problematic. Biden could have resigned and made Harris president NOW and then there would be no "she can't be the candidate" situation the GOP is already leaning into (in addition to their claiming Harris is an unqualified "diversity hire" and not fit to serve as POTUS, with absolutely no irony given who Trump is and has always been, before he squatted in the White House, while he squatted in the White House, when he tried to overthrow the government and remain in the White House, as he has been indicted for over 90 crimes, as he has been convicted of 34 of those over 90 crimes, and as he attempts to return to squatting in the White House, AGAIN).

And while everyone is having a party thinking the worst is over (it's not), the Biden Administration and Congress are hosting an active war criminal as a guest in the United States, a war criminal who wants MORE money, after receiving hundreds of billions of American taxpayer dollars and untold numbers of weapons of war Made in America.

Good times. End times. Fuck this shit times.

@21 which only worked because people chose not to engage with the reality of defund, which involved redirecting money previously spent on police to other public safety initiatives that research indicated could be more effective. People instead just naively believed the Republicans (and Democrats) and media personalities who asserted proponents were "idiots wholly unconcerned with public safety." In actuality the demonization of "defund" was reliant on people actually being, to use your word, "idiots" unwilling or incapable of engaging with a novel proposal.

22: No earthy reason for Joe to abdicate before the end of his term, despite GOP grumblings.

@20, Careful, your raindrop is showing.

I just explained to you why race and gender are merit-based from a left perspective but you completely ignored it. It’s a slur to the right for the same reason they use affirmative action as a slur. It’s something that people on the left view as a necessary corrective for centuries of injustice and the right views as a slur because they think it means minorities have a lower bar to clear and it feeds into their preexisting beliefs that minorities are inherently less qualified in general. It has nothing to do with any left-based argument in its favor. They completely ignore it, just like you just did.

25: The only thing I'm showing is laying out the arguments and how they're viewed politically. There wouldn't be a need for a corrective step if opportunities were obtained equally throughout the population based on merit. That's not at odds from what you've been saying and I'm not ignoring your opinions.

"Our candidate didn't need Affirmative Action to succeed, because he has what really matters: Daddy's Money. Piles and piles of Daddy's Money."

@26, You said "it only becomes an attack line because the left tries to blur and obfuscate DEI when and where it occurs" but that's not true at all. The left argument is that race and gender are merit-based because they are hardships that take more effort to overcome in order to achieve parity with a white/male candidate. The right argument is that it's not a hardship because we've solved racism and sexism and DEI is nothing more than a bar-lowering for less qualified candidates to slip through, with the implication that women and minorities are inherently less qualified and wouldn't otherwise be selected for anything.

@10 C Dizzle (Garb Garblar?) and @13 pat L: +2 for the WIN!!!!

28: The minorities who have hardships to overcome and do so to obtain merit (as you define merit) nevertheless put those who do not have hardships to overcome at a disadvantage when it comes to decisions based on equity.

Unfortunately, there will never be an equilibrium of pure fairness for everyone.

Hey folks, can y'all stop piling on Phoebe? It's pretty outrageous for someone like barth here at @25 to be comparing her to raindrop. raindrop was a troll who was always scouring these threads looking to make disingenuous, bad-faith arguments. Phoebe is just a fairly reasonable person who is merely articulating her views in good faith, and whose views are just a little different from the rest of yours.

I think we can maintain a little civility and tolerate a little disagreement with other people on these threads without belittling them and berating them.

And yeah, I disagree with Phoebe's DEI characterization of Kamala Harris getting the VP nod in 2020, but just because it's apples and oranges, or square peg and round hole. It's not even like Phoebe is not supporting her.

@23- we all know that Americans don’t bother to do more than read headlines. Using the word “defund” understandably led a lot of people to believe that what advocates wanted was just to pull the funding from the police (= no cops on the street) rather than the actual reforms that they claim to support. It was an idiotic move to call the movement “defund “ if that was not actually what they meant.

Yes yes, not having hardships is the real hardship. We will never have equilibrium because we fucked over women and minorities for centuries so why even bother trying to account for it now. Terrific work, 10s across the board.

@31 there's no way Phoebe is arguing in good faith. Hers is a classic table on a college campus "change my mind" debate tactic. "Why won't you just admit they only chose her because she's Black? Do you think there's something wrong with that?" It's transparent.

@32 "the actual reforms that they claim to support."

"They claim?" It's fairly apparent that you were never going to align with "defund" advocates regardless what they called it if you can't even acknowledge that they did in fact support particular reforms. Which I've found to be true of most people who spend a lot of time worrying about the slogan. But I don't disagree that those advocates significantly overestimated the intellect and engagement of the American public.

@24 There are very good reasons for Joe not to resign. Among others, a VP replacement would need to be confirmed by both houses of Congress. There's no way in hell that Mike Johnson will let anyone through the House. That would mean (a) that Mike Johnson is next in line for the presidency should something happen to Harris and (b) a Republican could be in charge of counting the electoral votes in the Senate in January. Neither of those are good things.

@31 Way too glib. The problem here is that you are addressing the cause of historical inequity on the backs of a handful of people now. Example: College admissions with DEI. Those kids applying now had zilch to do with centuries of evil, they just get bumped. Worse yet, no one is killing off things like legacy admissions, private college counselors, tony private schools, etc...

So what DEI here really means is that strive kids from the middle class bear the brunt of resolving centuries of historical inequity, while the kids of the people whose families most directly benefitted from said inequity merrily continue to enjoy their privilege. You can repeat that story in almost every case study.

@35- I absolutely support many of those reforms (alternative responses, better funding for mental health crises, to name a couple). My issue with the “defund” promoters is that they did a lot of damage to Democratic candidates (along with making progressives look like goddamned idiots). And I do think that most of them were not actually suggesting that we get rid of the police. Some were. I absolutely think that is what Nikita Oliver meant, as one example.

@38 sorry for assuming. I tend to feel that mainstream Dems who also opposed defund did more damage by legitimizing bad faith arguments against, but it was obviously a disastrously failed movement so there's plenty blame to go around.

@23: "which only worked because people chose not to engage with the reality of defund, which involved redirecting money previously spent on police to other public safety initiatives that research indicated could be more effective."

I sincerely wonder who you believe you're fooling with this. We had this debate just four years ago, you know; it's not some long-ago event in the twilight of living memory. Here, let me refresh your memory of what happened when the Seattle City Council tried to "defund":

First, Our Very Own Divine Catalina Vel-DuRay noted they could not do it, because the City of Seattle had valid contracts with the unions who represented the police. Any attempt to "defund" -- to abrogate those contracts -- would merely have added the legal bill for a swiftly-lost lawsuit to the already considerable damage caused by "defund".

Second, our civic dialog did indeed consider the diversion of funds to police alternative responders. We noted these response programs would take years to organize and mature to effectiveness, would require tight coordination with the police when implemented (because calls could become violently dangerous to responders), and thus require far more money than "defund" could possibly save. That did not make these alternative responder programs unattractive to us; we just noted the proponents of "defund" were either lying or delusional in their claim we could have such programs for free.

Third, the Council tried to go forward anyway. Exactly as Our Very Own Divine Catalina Vel-DuRay had noted, they could not accomplish it. This led to the not-humorous and not-harmless farce of the Council cutting the Chief's budget, the only part of SPD they could really touch, causing her -- the first BIPOC woman to head SPD -- to resign. (Feel the diversity!)

Fourth, as the Council and their screaming activist enablers continued to demand "defund," it meant dialog on police reform instead became a dialog on "defund," and with the latter opposed by huge majorities of actual voters (as the stunning end of Nikita Oliver's political career would nicely demonstrate), the public urge for police reform died. "Defund" had killed it.

Finally, the conflation of the attractive police alternative programs with the offensive and wretched failure that was "defund" means the citizens of Seattle will tolerate only the smallest of pilot alternative-responder programs (one of which was operating, the last time the Stranger mentioned it, anyway). It will be a long time before police reform recovers from the total disaster that was "defund". And you can blame the screaming activist class and their fools on the Council for that, not your phantom Seattle Republicans, the media, or your fellow citizens, all of whom you seem to hate in equal measure.

31, Phoebe is a raindrop sockpuppet.

@41 - Unlikely.
twins they may be
but def Not identical

@40: speaking of
"phantom" Republicans
tough on crime wannabee
Rulers of a NOT Free World

where the Rich
hunt the poor
for Sport and
Amusement.

Nah, it’s definitely raindrop

I'm not seeing it. where's the
gratuitous condescension?*
where's the self-hatred?
when dewdrop returns
& it's remarkable that
hasn't yet occurred
he'll be EZ to spot

look for
TwoDollar
words that
never seem to
Quite add up plus
oodles of psychobabble

seldom, sadly,
self-directed.

*I know
I know that's
wormmy to a T.