Good morning: In my last two Slog AMs I told people that it would rain, but then it was sunny, so just know that fact when planning for the weather today. The National Weather Service says today’s mostly sunny with a high of 62 degrees, and its also windy, with gusts up to 21 mph. So, I don’t know, expect a downpour?
City Attorney Ann Davison is heavily invested in City Hall protester cases: In an email to a legal assistant, a supervisor in the City Attorney’s Office pushed to quickly file the cases against six City Hall protesters because “20th floor wants them filed asap” due to press interest. The 20th floor refers to Davison’s office. Love to see the City using the criminal legal system, with all its collateral consequences, as a place of political theater. Yesterday, the Seattle Police Department released body camera footage of the arrests:
New video from SPD shows cops arresting public commenters at City Hall February. SPD arrested five people in council chambers. A sixth protest left, cops grabbed him and tried to pull him back, but they arrested him later outside. https://t.co/ebjypaXp8U
— Hannah Krieg (@hannahkrieg) April 2, 2024
Saunatina Sanchez launches City Council race: Community organizer and housing-advocate-transit-nerd Saunatina Sanchez has announced her run for City Council Position 8, joining Tanya Woo and Alexis Mercedes Rinck. In a conversation with Hannah, Sanchez called out Mayor Bruce Harrell for his lack of compassion toward the unhoused, promised to shift responsibilities away from cops, and talked about reclaiming the land wasted on car infrastructure. But she resisted the idea of raising taxes, except on driving and on car tabs. I don’t love relying on car tabs because I see them as a regressive tax that progressives try to justify as an environmental policy. Driving isn’t a vice, for many people it’s a necessity, especially lower-income people. Still, points for wearing an old Stranger shirt.
SPD detective pulls over a King County Metro bus: Did you all see that video on TikTok of that cop arguing with a King County Metro bus driver? Watch the Slog because I’ve got details about what happened there, including who the cop is and how he’s behaved in the past.
Land Day March: More than 2,000 people marched from South Lake Union toward Denny and back on Saturday to show support for Palestine. Land Day marks the anniversary of when in 1976 Israeli forces killed six and injured more than 100 Palestinians during protests over the confiscation of Palestinian land.
In case you missd it: Scenes from yesterday’s Land Day protesthttps://t.co/cnHkOSBy8T
— Guy Oron (@GuyOron) March 31, 2024
America’s Test Kitchen hits Seattle Teriyaki spots: I’ve been thinking a lot about what Seattle’s signature dish is, and then I watched J. Kenji López-Alt bopping around on his Seattle Teriyaki tour and sitting down with America’s Test Kitchen, and I was like oh, right, this is Seattle’s dish. My dad argued with me, saying people can get Teriyaki in a lot of places, but that argument seems meh because you can get “New York” pizza everywhere as well. City food culture is just about confidently declaring your city to have the best whatever and then shouting down anyone who argues with you. So in Seattle we need to be louder and more annoying about Teriyaki (as we have here at The Stranger for years) if we want to make it our thing, which we do, because right now when people think about us and our signature foods and drinks they picture either a union-busting coffee conglomerate or the image of uncooked salmon flying toward their faces.
Right-wing group shows up to protest Seattle Public School teacher: A right-wing group showed up outside a Seattle high school yesterday to protest a teacher who has posted pro-Palestinian messages online. The group, “Accuracy in Media,” dragged a stupid digital billboard to the school in a display of their low-rent tastes and limited capacity for complex thought. After all, this group once declared in a subhead that “Waterboarding is Not Torture.” Anyway, the teacher has encouraged people to write letters of support for him, instead of the letters of hate the Accuracy in Media folks plan to drum up. Don’t use the link from AIM, but just maybe use this comment form on SPS’s site.
From the targeted teacher: People could support by revising AIM’s suggested email against him to letters of support and publish said letter if you feel called to do so (Here’s what AIM’s action was: https://t.co/mLJIBBEbrb)
— Kelsey Hamlin (@ItsKelseyHamlin) April 1, 2024
The DOJ may reopen an old criminal case against Boeing: In 2018 and 2019, two fatal Boeing 737 MAX crashes killed 346 people. The DOJ put a criminal case against Boeing on hold back then as the company promised “to improve regulatory compliance, oversight and transparency,” according to the Seattle Times. That agreement recently expired, and the DOJ must consider whether Boeing fulfilled its promise enough for the government to ask the judge to dismiss the case against the company, especially given the recent problems with the Boeing 737 MAX 9. The DOJ plans to meet with the families of the victims from the 2018 and 2019 crashes ahead of making a decision.
Genuinely chuckled: Erica Barnett wrote a pretty good rebuttal to the Seattle Times Editorial Board doing a classic impression of a man waving a fist at a cloud. Last week, the Board complained about the Cascade Bicycle Club’s annual fundraising event, saying they were upset that the event would close part of the West Seattle Bridge for a couple hours in May. The Board was really dramatic about it. Their opening line is, “What’s not to like about a refreshing bike ride on a Sunday morning? Turns out, it’s not so simple.” The writers then twist themselves into knots trying to make the issue more complicated to justify that terrible lede.
Portland recriminalizes drugs: The New York Times reports that after three years of not really trying a decriminalized approach to drug addiction, Portland has reversed course, returning to the previous strategy of criminalizing drug offenses—you know, the old War on Drugs strategy that has failed over and over again and has filled our jails and prisons with people addicted to drugs. But, you know, when you half-ass decriminalization by not actually making massive investments in behavioral health and standing up those systems, then, yeah, it makes sense that you’d be forced to return to the established policing infrastructure.
Israeli airstrike kills seven aid workers: An Israeli airstrike killed seven people working for celebrity chef Jose Andres’s World Central Kitchen charity, according to Reuters. Israel confirmed the strike Tuesday. The strike killed Palestinians and people from Australia, Britain, Poland, and a dual citizen of the United States and Canada. The airstrike hit two of the charity’s armored cars, which were clearly marked with the organization’s logo, according to World Central Kitchen. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the deaths “tragic” and “unintended.”
The big ideas are buried here: I saw some dumb internet critiques of Beyoncé and her new album Cowboy Carter, mostly people complaining about her choice to deck herself out in red, white, and blue for the cover art. But, goddamn, this album has some serious heft to it. As my friend and unpaid-slog-music-critic Kevin put it, “I love that her interrogation of ‘who is allowed to be country?’ is essentially ‘who is allowed to be American.'” Pitchfork has more on the album for those of you aren’t so lucky as to be in a group chat with Kevin.
Give me a break on your theory of car tabs. The Stranger’s voters guide has never met a regressive tax that they didn’t love.
No worries that schools are ground zero for the culture wars or any mention of where this right wing demonstration happened or how this might impact, you know, education, but a link to “own the right” or whatever the rallying cry is today. My own kids can’t graduate SPS fast enough.
Yeah. The war on drugs was a failure. Are we to believe though that decriminalization has been a success?
@3: a success at making drugged up zombies a normal feature of everyday life on every urban street. junkies hanging out on your stoop petting your cat.
is Drug Decriminalization
a Failure or was it too
Much too soon?
from NPR’s
Fresh Aire:
Why
Oregon’s
groundbreaking
drug decriminalization
experiment is coming to an end
–by Dave Davies
https://www.npr.org/2024/03/27/1240892448/why-oregons-groundbreaking-drug-decriminalization-experiment-is-coming-to-an-end
we Choose
not to Fund
mental health
amongst other
Vital Services (for
ANY Industrialized
country Except This
One) and wonder why
we cannot conquer Diseases
of Despair. we could also take
Care of the fucking Citizenry but
ong we gotta LOTTA fucking Billionaires.
Coincidence?
sure!
Oregon’s movement was destined to fail. Maybe intentionally. If you’re going to do all the decriminalization, you have to have the consequent support infrastructure in place. Oregon did not. Well done you fucking idiots, push us backwards. and give the right-wing nutters more talking points
@7 “Progressives talk about alternatives; however, they don’t have alternatives that have been tested, measured, and shown to work”
How is anyone supposed to have the correct amount of time to test and measure and prove viability? Because the pearl-clutching is relentless and leads to these things being stopped long before any sort of success could possibly be shown, as seen here.
this country is devoid of long-term thinkers
Steady rain forecast after 10 p.m. But full marks for relying on the NWSFO forecast page, instead of a TV station’s potted version, or someone’s Tweet.
@7:
It’s pretty difficult to “test and measure” alternatives to arrest and incarceration when the mechanisms for doing so aren’t given sufficient time to amass enough data to actually, you know, measure. It’s like with gun violence: For decades the NRA effectively blocked ANY studies or collection of information that would have provided empirical data, while simultaneously stating that no such data existed.
I’m wearing my first shorts of 2024 today, and I blame Ashley for it.
@5 It’s still a secondary offense so if you get pulled over for speeding and your tabs are expired you will also get a citation for expired tabs and be required to renew them along with a fine to go with it.
@8 It was destined to fail because there is no stick to the carrot. The oft cited Portuguese example of decriminalization works because there are consequences if you don’t follow through and people are still arrested for having and using drugs. The progressive model has been to leave people on the street and provide them with harm reduction efforts (e.g. drug supplies) until the addicted person readily accepts help. Then often times if they don’t follow through with treatment there are no consequences. That in itself is a recipe for failure no matter how many treatment facilities and service you stand up. Until progressives are willing to accept that many of these people are incapable or unwilling to make rational decisions while under the throes of addiction nothing in going to change. In the meantime for the sake of the rest of society they should be removed from public if they demonstrate they are unable to manage their addiction without negatively impacting others. It’s not a solution by any means but its the best we have at the moment.
There are two parts to the car tab tax. There is the tax on each car, and the tax on the valuation of the car. The latter is definitely not regressive. It is flat at worst. The more valuable your car, the higher the tax. The tax on each car can be considered regressive (own three junkers and you pay more than one BMW) but the two taxes may balance out.
In any event we are better off with a regressive tax than no tax at all. Think Social Security. It is clearly a regressive tax. But it has reduced poverty in the elderly dramatically. Or consider Scandinavia. The various countries have high taxes and the taxes aren’t particularly progressive. But by raising that much money (and spending it wisely) Scandinavians live better than just about everyone else on earth (by various measures). This includes the large immigrant population.
Given the choice I would much rather have a progressive tax. But if you live in area where that is difficult to impossible (like Seattle) then a flat — or even regressive tax — is better than nothing.
Biden keeps saying he’ll care when an American gets killed. Well, Americans have ALREADY been killed (and not just in this scorched earth Israeli genocide, remember Rachel Corrie?), but another one (WCK volunteer) was murdered by Israel. Will he care? He doesn’t care about violating United States or International laws. He doesn’t care about the slaughter and starvation of babies and children (or the slaughter and starvation of men and women). Seriously, Biden needs to GO. He and Trump can have adjoining prison cells for being traitors and international criminals.
I love how everyone in the world believes all Palestinians are terrorists (even newborn babies) when the real enemy of the world, everywhere in the world, are old white men with power and their white supremacist terrorist cult followers like the domestic terrorists of 1/6/21.
Israel believes the only way it can be safe is to murder 2.2 million people.
Israel will never be safe and they are making everyone else unsafe.
And the United States will never be considered anything but a violent bully and if we get bombed by crazy ass motherfucking Putin because of Biden’s Zionism? Well, we won’t be able to blame Trump for that, no will we.
Fuck Biden.
Fuck Israel.
“No more innocent lives lost”: José Andrés mourns World Central Kitchen team killed in Gaza strike
“They are not faceless…they are not nameless,” the Spanish-American chef wrote in a statement Monday.
“The Israeli government needs to stop this indiscriminate killing,” his post continued. “It needs to stop restricting humanitarian aid, stop killing civilians and aid workers, and stop using food as a weapon. No more innocent lives lost. Peace starts with our shared humanity. It needs to start now.”
https://www.salon.com/2024/04/02/no-more-innocent-lives-lost-jos-andrs-mourns-world-central-kitchen-team-in-gaza-strike/?in_brief=true
@17: If I understand you correctly, you’re saying Biden has said MULTIPLE TIMES that he will START caring about Gaza only when an American is killed there? Forgive me if I’m skeptical that’s happened once, let alone multiple times.
@14 if you want to compare this to Portugal then you also need to compare it to portugals prison system. I can guarantee you that unlike ours, it’s not made up of thinly veiled slave colonies designed to do anything but actually rehabilitate
@20 I have no idea what that statement is supposed to mean. A quick search turned up this article which seemed to indicate Portugals prison are pretty awful
https://www.msuilr.org/new-blog/2022/11/3/prison-conditions-and-misconduct-in-portugal
nyt
Fears
Grow That
Syria Strikes Could
Spur Retaliatory Attacks on Israel and U.S.*
Current and former American officials
say the airstrikes on an Iranian
embassy compound in
Damascus were a
serious blow to
Tehran.
Current and former U.S. officials expressed fears on Tuesday that Israel’s airstrikes on an Iranian embassy compound in Syria could escalate hostilities in the region, and prompt retaliatory strikes against Israel and its American ally.
The officials said the attack on Monday, which killed three generals in Iran’s Quds Force and four other officers, had dealt a serious blow to the force, the external military and intelligence service of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
Ralph Goff, a former senior C.I.A. official who served in the Middle East, called Israel’s strike “incredibly reckless.”
“It will only result in escalation by Iran and its proxies, which is very dangerous” to American troops in the region who could be targeted in retaliatory strikes by Tehran’s proxies, Mr. Goff said.
–by Eric Schmitt; April
more, recklessly:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/02/world/middleeast/syria-strikes-iran-israel-us.html
all This
Genocide
Just to keep
Bibi outta Jail
mind
Fawking
blown
we get a terrorist attack
Here how does that help
Biden electorally? oh
that’s right they’re
Awesome at Ex-
ploiting Disas-
ter when it
Strikes.
@15 Agree. Given a choice, I’d support going ahead with the flat 1% income tax that the Washington constitution explicitly allows. If the revenue from it is mainly used to benefit people in the lower income brackets, they’d still come out ahead. But of course that’s an even heavier political lift than a progressive tax.
@17 I don’t recall Biden saying that, and it seems like something I’d have noticed. Do you have the actual quote?
Regardless, it does appear that the attack on World Central Kitchen was intentional, at least on the part of the forces that carried it out. And it doesn’t surprise me one bit. Recall that Israel didn’t want to allow any external aid at all into Gaza, relenting only grudgingly when Biden made it clear he wouldn’t defend a total siege. I’m sure the Israeli leadership is quietly furious with WCK (and other NGOs brave enough to go in there). This strike may well have been intended as a warning to all of them. And I have no more confidence in a Netanyahu “investigation” than I do in the Supreme Court’s “investigation” into who leaked the Dobbs ruling.
@19 silly me, he was threatening Iran and other Middle Eastern countries. He doesn’t give a shit who Israel kills.
@25: your hyperbole and exaggerations do you a disservice. Hamas handed Biden a pile of shit on 10/7 – for a conscientious Center-Leftist POTUS, there’s no good way to thread this needle.
perhaps you’re referencing statements on Iranian-backed Houthi attacks on global shipping in the Red Sea? that’s the only recent event I can think of that would constitute threats to Iran and other ME countries.
Evidence shows Israel killed many of its own citizens on Oct. 7, then blamed Hamas
https://www.liberationnews.org/evidence-shows-israel-killed-many-of-its-own-citizens-on-oct-7-then-blamed-hamas/
Biden is the President of the United States. People in this country are suffering immensely. Our government is a shit show -every nook and cranny of it. No money and no weapons from us and there is no scorched earth war on Palestinians by Israel. No money and no weapons from us and there is NO ISRAEL.
Biden was elected to lead this country, not Israel. Biden wants to lead Israel, he can go get elected there. Oh wait, they don’t want anything to do with him if he isn’t in a position of power to give them whatever the fuck they want with no strings attached.
Biden is a war criminal, violating United States law and International law by arming and funding Israel. Biden is also a war criminal for attacking Houthis, who have every right to control the passage of cargo through that area of the sea. The United States has no jurisdiction there.
Yemen,. already starving to death, is the one country that TOOK CONCRETE ACTION to stop the genocide. South Africa and the ICJ took action, figurative, meaningless action that didn’t change anything (other than providing Israel with a list of everything they needed to do to commit genocide when they were told what not to do because that would be considered genocide).
Israel has chosen to go after Iran because they believe the United States will stand behind them and protect them. So we’re supposed to enable genocide and bomb the fuck out of the entire Middle East because Zionists think they’re some special chosen people? Please.
@25 Since when did you volunteer with the Trump campaign? I would have thought from your previous posts that Trump was an evil you recognized.
@28 Trump is evil. Biden is evil. There is no either/or and there is lesser of two. There is only evil. And being against Biden and his arming and funding of genocide is not working for Trump, no matter how many times Democrats say that it is. Fuck Biden. Fuck the Democrats. They have done this to themselves. To many of us they have finally been thoroughly unmasked. This country is just fucked no matter what, no matter who, always will be and there is literally nothing to do.
I will not vote for either evil and as a result I will be able to live with myself.
Everything that Xina has written about Israel and the United States of Israel is factual.
How many children, women, human beings, nurses, doctors, aid workers, journalists murdered by Israel does it take for people like raindrop to wake up to the genocide that is happening right now before our very eyes? All you have to do is look.
Many Americans have been murdered by Israeli forces. We can site the servicemen on the USS Liberty, Rachel Corrie, American journalists, nurses, doctors, aid workers etc.
Where the fuck you been democrats, republicans and all those that ignore this hell and fund this mass murder, this land grab, this genocide? You ok with starving people to death? Bombing them to death? Smothering them to death as they die under the rubble?
They are in your way such a nuisance really.
After WW2 there was a ruling that following orders is not an excuse for mass murder.
So what can you say when asked why you defended Israel and put them before everyone else in the world including the American people that you were supposedly dedicated to?
The zionists are just like the nazis. Plain and simple.
Fuck Israel and all the despicable excuses for human beings that defend that terrorist state and continue to fund it. Shame on you may you burn in hell if there is such a place.
26 Hamas did not hand Biden a pile of shit on October 7/23. Biden handed the world a pile of shit.
Palestine was handed a pile of shit in 1947 when israeli land grabbers and their backers
brutally and illegally attacked Palestinians and proceeded to steal their land by force.
From then on Palestinians were imprisoned, tortured, raped, killed and enslaved by zionist israel.
So stop with the October 7 bs and zionist lies. Its all being exposed for the world to see now.
@34 If Biden loses in November, I will remember folks like you and Xina, and laugh my ass off when Trump tells Netanyahu that he’s free to do whatever he wants.
I don’t give a fuck about what Palestinian activists want, I care about the women and children of Palestine. Right now, Joe Biden is their best hope to survive in the short term, and thrive in the long term. He is the very first US President to openly disagree with an Israeli prime minister. He’s also the first to put any limits on US aid. I get that you and Xina are idealists who have checked-out of reality, and expect perfection from our leaders. The adults in the room are the one’s encouraging Biden to let his new-found spine do the talking.
I’m curious, why haven’t either of you denounced Bernie as a Zionist for not condemning Biden on this?
@23: Yes! More sympathy for Iranian generals! I knew you could do it!
So, to recap: the fundamental religious regime in Iran, violently misogynistic at home, has long funded Hamas. On 10/7, these funds brought terror, rape, and murder to Israeli women. Israel responded to Iran’s terrorism not by targeting civilians in Iran, but by targeting high-ranking Iranian military officers in a foreign land. You complain only about the last. Please do keep up the good work; even as high a number as the 84% of Americans who approve of our support for Israel could go higher, and you’re helping push it there. Thank you!
(Oh, and which is more “reckless”: allowing a brutally misogynistic regime to fund rape with impunity, or teaching a terror-funding regime they could lose top military assets as a result of such funding?)