The income tax violates state law.

All passing it did was guarantee another expensive court case with Taxpayers footing the bill for both sides.

When did disparaging a woman's looks become acceptable for men to do again? GOP milf? That's a real classy way to showcase that male privilege.

How about you just stick to channeling your inner science denying hill billy ignoramus, Charles. The one that allows you to think you can disprove UW studies with rock solid proof like...your opinion?

You're as credible a source of scientific information as a Sunday school teacher telling children that Jesus killed the dinosaurs 2000 years ago. Except you don't even have a bible to thump on to accentuate your idiocy.

And to shut up any bandwagon virtue signalers, I own a business(do you? Again, then shut up) and I pay my unskilled employees well over 15 an hour...because it's the right thing to do. Because they have families and people depending on them and also because they work hard and fucking deserve it. I (anecdotally) disagree with the UW study, and won't be changing my payroll policy based on it, but that doesn't mean the findings aren't much more well thought out and planned for than anything I can just fucking think of off the top of my head.

Conservatards only know how to tear down..they are empty of any ideas or solutions.

@3. Says the guy with no ideas or solutions.

I think the "DEATH" category graphic above the headline should only be used for people who have actually died.

"virtue signalers"

Okay. Not on par with "SJWs" as the text version of having an anime girl avatar, but getting there. Keep trying.

@6. Hahaha. That tired ass argument is as weak as your intellect, sausage man. Logic=oppression! Biology=bigotry!

You come up with any economic models on the subject lately? No? Then how about you respectfully pipe the fuck down and allow people to further grown ups public discourse about the issue with things like, I don't know, empirical evidence and research. You're a child and you need to be quiet now.

haha, I like the idea that @2 has considered all the relevant science in setting his wages but has decided to go with sentimentality instead. And no virtue signalling, you guys!

In Hollywood, it's a thing for has-been losers to become reactionary Republitards.

Anything to get some attention again. With the bonus of being able to blame gay/undocumented/feminazi/people of color/Democrats for your inability to otherwise get gainfull employment.

Becuse Fox News will hire any no-talent soulless scum!

snicks, "I own a small business" is about the biggest Virtue Signal one could possibly deploy in Trump's America. you think it means anyone who doesn't should shut up - that's kind of elitist!

@10 Not virtue signaling, qualifying as someone who has a stake in paying fair wages.

And it's a partially sentimental decision to pay my employees a fair wage. Am I supposed to be ashamed of that? I work with them every day. I know their families. My kids play with their kids. Does that mean I'm an idiot for paying them more than I have to? Maybe as a business man it does. But what I've found is that if you pay someone a good wage, they work harder. They care more about the success of your business because their own success is tied to it as well. That's a calculated value that I feel I am totally getting my money's worth for.

@2, I have read a lot of semiotics. Clothes in different contexts have different codes. In the GOP context, the femininity coded by Kennedy's wardrobe markets the idea of women as women and men as men. There is no mixing or complexity in this gender picture, which has a clear political value. The GOP markets femininity not for its own sake but to push the idea that women should look like women. This is what I'm mocking.

I don't know you guys. I think snicks makes some pretty legitimate points here. Like when he suggests we allow people to further grown ups public discourse about this issue.

I mean, that's pretty difficult to argue against.

@max. I am elite. My parent beat me to a bloody pulp until I was broken and then they gave up custody to the state where I was incarcerated as a teenager and institutionalized. I spent more than half my 20's in the pen only to get out and get hooked on heroin. I fought my way back to health and sanity with help from friends and medication and turned my demons in a more productive direction about 5 years ago. Started my own business, been working like a dog ever since. So yeah, I'm elite, but not how your bitch made ass wants to paint it. I'm elite because I'm not a recidivism statistic. I'm elite because I'm not bitter. Im elite because Im accountable for my mistakes, but I don't let them define my future. Im elite because I believe through hard work, an unbroken hope for success, and intelligence I can make my life better and make the people who I surround myself with better and better off too.

Fuck you cynical armchair QBs. You're children. You're children with no real life experience and nothing more than a handful of stupid ideas that you think are original, but that are actually repurposed garbage from previously failed philosophies.

You realize Kennedy and all your f Fix News is headquartered in god damned Manhattan. The litteral capital of the elite liberal pinko world, right? I mean that sort of nullifies the sting of this insipid ignorant rant somewhat.

She's rocking that Mercer-Island-Mom-Who-Wants-To-Stay-Hip look.

Jesus. I don't even care about the god damn UW study. I just think it's dangerous to discount research with opinion. How about refuting it with other research? Like the Berkeley model. Or if you don't have have anything based in research, speak to people's decency. Or make a philosophical argument. But don't just say this research is wrong because I think it's wrong. Back it up or you come across thick headed and ignorant.

@Charles, I hear your explanation. I don't agree with making an exception to the rule that drawing attention to women's appearances and how fuckable they are isn't ok. You seem to have done the necessary mental gymnastics to get around that though.

@16. Dialogue=submission. Another post modern classic. Keep trying. Heard all your weak shit before...

@2 Wait a minute, didn't the UW study basically make up a fictional city and then compare it to Seattle to determine the effects of the minimum wage increase? I guess that is 'well thought out' if you have an agenda and you're trying to come up with some pseudo-scientific 'evidence' to support it.

"Started my own business, been working like a dog ever since"

I heard the Star Spangled Banner playing. Just needed an image of kids running through a field of grain and it'd have been perfect.

I'd appreciate it if the Stranger didn't simply dismiss the UW study. I haven't read it, I've read arguments on "either side" that it's legitimate or it isn't. But simply hand-waving "it's dumb" without I dunno citing any type of expert opinion on the very least, smacks of know-nothingness; magical thinking, etc.

Is snicks a Yorkshireman?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKHFZBUT…

Watch her live on Fox Business sometime. Her hair has this weird sparkle to it. It always creeps me out.

I never really liked Kennedy, because Alternative Nation took the place of 120 Minutes.

Such a shame. I used to have a raging hard on for that geeky girl Kennedy back in the day.
Never thought she'd end up on Fox.

I grew up in Los Angeles listening to KROQ, and Kennedy's shtick there before she became a VJ was that she was a Republican in a land of liberals post-Reagan. This was in reaction to her hippy parents... LOL, so ironic that she's named after the royal liberal family.

So it's not like she changed.

@25. My anthem is actually a run the jewels track. Lie cheat steal...its more fitting for my status as a capitalist of supreme privilege. and I'm sorry I caused you such distress with my "hard work" micro aggression.

What's funny about all you champions of the working class and the oppressed is that you yourself are the antithesis of that which you champion. College educated, stable home environment, never a day of hunger or want in your lives, never faced a moral decision on whether to steal or go hungry. But has anyone here who is making fun of my posts ever given someone a job? Have you ever exercised the power of who to hire and made a decision that bettered your country and community not to mention that persons life? It's a way to affect real change in the world that goes beyond repeating someone else's empty rhetoric.

I recently hired a gay refugee from Sierra Leone who fled his country because he was going to be killed by religious bigots. Guy is an amazingly hard working employee and sends almost all his money back to his sister and her kids back home. If I didn't work hard enough to start and own my own business I couldn't help him in a way that really matters to him. Beyond that, he is helping me as much as I help help him. You cynical assholes will think I'm just patting myself on the back here, but before you sound off, ask yourself, "What do I do to affect real change in a world that I see as needing improvement?". Protest? Comment anonymously online? Vote? Talk to your neighbors regardless of what they look like? Donate time to a charity you believe in? Stop and help someone in need? Be a positive influence in a child's life? Most of you...I doubt you do anything beyond 1&2

Is it just me, or did Charles just refer to all the cranes in Seattle as a positive :).

Instead, why not just accept the gift and crown Ms. Kennedy the spokesperson for Lesser Seattle?

@18: being elite doesn't mean you're an elitist. judging others because they're not as virtuous as you does.

Also, @charles. I thought about it and I retract my condemnation of your Kennedy diss. I know nobody cares, but if it's in the context of a joke, as you claim it is, then who am I to say what is and isn't funny or acceptable. If it's funny to you and your intention was to be funny, I overreacted with indignation in a way that was stupid and I apologize. I only did so because I missed your intent in that you are a journalist and not a comedian and I wasn't looking for a joke in your blog. I'll take your writing with a little more salt next time and keep an eye out for overintellectualized jokes in the future.

A D-list-has-been from 90's TV [whose whole character revolved around her annoying / shrill voice] with no intellectual credentials on a wingnut show pontificating that freedom has died in Seattle - couldn't be a better advertisement for progress! This aging turdlet will quickly end up in the "reactionary moron who desperately chased attention from tv cameras" pile.

@ max. You're thick as oatmeal, son. I threw your silly elitist comment back on the pile to virtue signal all over this pathetic pack of blow hards and wanna be intellectuals. What of it? I see it as just keeping up with the joneses around here. Don't hate the game just because you're not smart enough to keep up.

@ 37. You're right. I'm just frustrated with the cutting comments aimed at me and I'm letting it bring out my temper. I don't like that dialogue is dying. That differences In opinion mean dehumanizing the "other" to a one dimensional straw man.

For the record. No one besides 24 has actually said anything to rationally counter anything I've said. It's just been a snarkfest of shitposts which I've been responding to because I am argumentative and I today I felt like arguing.

@11: Always been one, she just used to talk about grunge and alt instead of politics.

All this because someone dares to (scream!) TAX THE RICH! I don't want to go back to the 50s for a variety of reasons, but Elvis Presley paid 90-cents in taxes for every dollar he made back then. Does anyone want to suggest he went without anything because of taxes? And that tax money was used to build schools and hospitals and the Interstate Highway System, etc. And we had a middle class who benefited from many of these projects.

So, yeah, yeah, yeah, Kennedy...let's hold on to every cent and keep the government out of our pocketbook. The poor deserve to be hungry because they are weak and lazy and unfortunate. Children should be educated privately because nothing comes from a decently-funded public education system (and if you can't afford the $40,000/yr. tuition, well, you know what poverty is, right?). Let's forget about our airports and bridges. I've got my own plane and runway, don't you? And if you are sick and/or disabled, it may be that your number is just up. Yeah, let's learn from Seattle, a dreary Communist nightmare where no one wants to live (and have been moving there by the fucking truckload since you were hustling videos late at night on MTV).

Glad you found a home at Fox - owned by Rupert Murdoch. Didn't he let a son drown at sea because helping him would have meant letting go of a bag of money?

Kennedy does not know who she is, and is willing to sell out either way. Dime a dozen.

Ugh, I FUCKING HATE this shit. As an owner of a vagina I feel like I have to work extra hard to even be perceived as sane, and her stupid made-up gluten allergies and liberal gestapo paranoia just ruin everything. Do I hate feeling like I have to police every female whackadoo with an opinion? Of course. Do I still feel like I should. Well yeah.

I just had to post late and say I found this commentary thread thoroughly entertaining. Snicks - congrats on all you do and have overcome. Methinks you doth protest too much. @47, you most certainly do not - but as a 50'ish straight white male in the age of Trump - I get the impulse. And 41-43?? You all made me literally LOL.

Thank you commentariat (and Charles), keep it up, and MAKE SLOG GREAT AGAIN!!

Kma77 dear, I feel the same way about middle-aged white men - especially the ones who "convert" to conservatism. Most just need to shut up.