Comments

1

Gee, I'm SHOCKED that paid signature gatherers would be full of shit. SHOCKED I TELL YOU!!

2

Lying in politics!?!?!? You must be joking??????

3

Of course they have to lie in order to get people to sign this reprehensible initiative.

4

@4. No they don’t. Some people are just dumb. This seems like one of those cases where the canvasser fell asleep or tuned out during his training.

Nobody needs to lie about how Ridiculous CC is for thinking they somehow deserve more of our money to throw into the homeless, “This is Seattle!!!” pit.

5

@3

6

For the starry-eyed with no life experience from which to draw their incomparable knowledge, anyone who knows which way is up is fully aware that the process of gathering signatures generally involves packaging less palatable legislation with selling points reminiscent of that most bourgeoisie of characters, the Downy Bear.

For those same starry-eyed zealots, I have a question:

The last time you signed a petition, did you read it in its entirety?

How do I know the answer?

7

At least they're talking about the right subject. When they get desperate for signatures they just make up what they're about entirely.

8

Maybe time to beef up those ethics laws. Using the office copier to print 4,000 rally posters to promote the head tax legislation is apparently also not an ethics violation, per the Ethics Director.

9

Why won't it READ???

11

Anti tax zealots will say and do anything to perpetuate the most regressive tax scheme in the nation.

12

I stopped signing initiatives years ago. Regardless if i might agree with the supposed legislation or not. It's a not a good way to legislate. IMO.

14

@13 You seem to be forgetting that the reality if the initiaitve process is a never-ending parade of Tim Eyman proposals to make it harder to allocate funding to transit and/or public assistance. Little good comes out of initiatives in this state.

16

@15. They can’t tell that often times they’re promoting fascism and dictatorship in the name of their chosen ideology.

“It’s like Ray eeain! On your wedding day!”

17

I call BS to this no head tax initiative. What did they hire a bunch of idiots? More idiots just sign without even reading what they sign. Welcome to idiocracy folks. https://youtu.be/sGUNPMPrxvA

18

The people who don't want to help with homelessness are the real problem here. It's a shame that people (No Tax on Jobs folks come to mind) are turning against people experiencing homeless rather than pitching in to help.

20

The key fact about having rely on sketchy paid signature gatherers is that your rejecting rate is going to be very high. The harder they have to work to scrape together enough to make it on the ballot, the more the goofs they hire will cut corners. Which means to meet the minimum, they're going to have to turn in 30, 40, 50% more than the minimum just to cover all the rejects.

A petition that is actually popular doesn't have this problem. People honestly want to sign. Gathering their signatures is merely a logistical exercise, and that's not even so hard because you have so many earnest volunteers.

But this steaming turd? There really aren't that many people who are dying to run out and stand in the sun with a clipboard to protect 0.02% of Amazon or Vulcan's profits. for them.

How many millions are these companies going to piss straight down the drain in this doomed effort? THIS is what they do with their shareholders money? You can't trust corporate types to handle money. They waste it on stupid shit and have no shame. They'd do it again and again given the chance. It's how they are.

21

@20, totally agree. However, signature gatherers are paid $6 per sig on the No Tax on Jobs petition (from that amazing $350,000 that Amazon, Microsoft et al put together to get this on the ballot), and they are plenty excited to stand out with this crap on a clipboard.

22

The Stranger continues to build a narrative to “explain”, after the election, why the head tax got repealed. This installment says opponents of the head tax lied their way onto the ballot.

Lying in politics is a bad thing. Unless the Socialist Alternative Member of our City Council says she was elected to represent the workers of Seattle, after (a) she herself chose to represent just one district, not the entire city, and (b) actual workers told her, to her face, that they didn’t want a head tax. Then, her blatantly outright lying is not merely protected free speech, but a moral imperative.

@20: Tell is again how you knew Jenny Durkan was down ten points in the polls shortly before Election Day. It will help us adjust our expectations of your political knowledge.

25

Why are liberal progressives so afraid of democracy... just put the damn thing to a vote.

26

So, you want to present a video of a tennis shoe with an audio overlay conveniently capturing a purported "paid signature gatherer" lying about the head tax as credible evidence. Children: do you not see that this is at least as likely a complete fabrication, i.e., propaganda?

Why wasn't the exchange captured full-face, with both participants' identities shown? Why didn't the video's talented producers simply walk up to one of the "paid signature gatherers" and ask them a series of questions on camera, without this fauxsimile of an exchange? (N.B.: most of the signature gatherers are volunteers who are rightly incensed about the Machiavellian tactics used to develop and pass this tax, and are aware of the dismal cost/benefit ratio of the homeless services providers overall.) Maybe because the producers had no confidence they could reliably stumble across one of the paid, confabulating signature gatherers?

The video's producers need to appreciate one basic truth about propaganda: if you're gonna lie, at least make the lie believable.

28

"Free market" zealot @27 claims that affordable housing is a far left plot

29

Vote suppressing Republican supporter @25 now claims he is for democracy (one dollar, one vote "democracy" to be sure)

31

@30 claims he has a better way but somehow he won't be telling you what it is because it is non-existent. He is a liar who doesn't give a ff about affordable housing. He is much too busy painting public funding of housing, a policy started during the New Deal, as a far left plot.

35

Red-baiter @27 & 30, now doesn't like name-calling or bullying @32. It'd be funny if it wasn't tragic.

a solution is going to have to involve public funding through taxation if anything to provide for maintenance because market based funding schemes don't do well in recessions, which you never plan on happening of course. A head tax of very large businesses is as good a place to start as any, because, of course, you don't support an income tax.

Catastrophic handling has been by council members and business leaders who ignored the housing crisis, and didn't formulate ways to fill the gap left by more and more inadequate federal funding of public housing

36

@34 "you won't like it because it doesn't punish businesses with stupid tax schemes"

Taxes on the largest businesses are punishment? What a twisted way to think about the duty that very big business has toward the republic and its citizens

39

@35: “Catastrophic handling has been by council members and business leaders who ignored the housing crisis,”

But, a head tax written by those same Council Members will produce a different outcome? How so? Why will no supporter of the head tax explain this?

The “housing crisis” (which became a “crisis” only after middle-class white persons found themselves slightly inconvenienced by a temporary rental squeeze) has no solid connection to our exploding homeless population. Both the Poppe Report (to the City) and the United Way Report (to the County) stress that building more “affordable” housing is not required to house everyone.

http://allhomekc.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/System-Performance-Analysis-Final-Report.pdf

https://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/pathwayshome/BPA.pdf

40

@37 ideas, even good ones, aren't numbered plans that provide a credible alternative to taxing very large business to fund low income housing. Increasing density is necessary to enable sustainable public service development, but tweaking regulations to generate housing funds based on market considerations sounds like a very typical recipe for disastrous development. Some of your ideas may have merit but I don't have enough information to assess them.

Taxation is only hostile policy toward business in the mind of people who will say anything to avoid being taxed and therefore don't believe in the social contract. Perhaps we don't want such people to control how the city develops.

City Council has been controlled by "business friendly" politicians for as long as I can remember so it's rather ridiculous to hear their failure to compensate for increasingly nonexistent federal funding for low income housing be now used by business to attack those other and new council members finally attempting to address the housing situation in a sustainable way.

42

@40, just want to amplify this: "Taxation is only hostile policy toward business in the mind of people who will say anything to avoid being taxed and therefore don't believe in the social contract. Perhaps we don't want such people to control how the city develops."

43

@40, @42: How will money raised by the head tax help get persons who are currently homeless become permanently housed? How will these expenditures differ from our ten-year plan to end homelessness, which failed so abjectly it ended in declaration of a crisis?

Please show your work, and avoid calling your fellow citizens of Seattle “fascist” or “Trumpian,” as we are clearly neither.

44

I didn't call you either, #43. A large amount of the money would be used to build low-income housing. I think we need to persuade the mayor that it should all be housing for folks at 30% of median income. The Ten-Year Plan didn't put an EHT into place. This amount of money (47.5M) will make a dent in the problem. It's a start.

45

@44: Building more housing for a population which has an income will do nothing for a population without one. Furthermore, persons with serious mental illness and substance-abuse problems can’t stably pay the rent, no matter how low it is. Finally, the number of units which can be produced is very low, because Seattle is a currently a boom town for construction.

The city is following the recommendations it received from the Poppe Report, creating a system to move homeless persons into stable housing. Let’s see what result that produces before we tax jobs to further strain our overburdened local construction industry.

46

@45, I agree that building more housing for people who can afford market rate housing won't help. We have to build highly affordable units especially supportive housing for people with mental health and chemical dependency issues, housing like DESC creates. In this type of housing, the rent is 30% of income, and many people have payees, so people are much more able to maintain it. The Poppe report promotes Rapid Rehousing, where people are supposed to rapidly pay market rate housing. RR sets a LOT of people up to fail, coming back to homelessness worse off than when they left it. She also doesn't support tiny houses, which people experiencing homelessness are embracing. Waiting and seeing in this case means waiting for more people to suffer, and waiting for that is not something that a humane populace is willing ro do.

47

@46: Aaannd finally, the tell: “If you oppose the head tax, you’re not humane.” (I guess that’s the best you could do once I took “fascist” and “Trump!!1!” away from you, cruel person that I am.)

Do you know what I would do if I really wanted homeless people to suffer? More of what we’ve been doing for decades. More of what self-appointed homeless advocates have had us do. More of what the head tax money will be squandered doing. (Although we might get a few “affordable” places for the large amount we’d spend, this will mean years of waiting for a non-solution to homelessness.)

Oh, and following the recommendations of the Poppe Report is already getting people housed. Take a look:

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4465547-McKinsey-amp-Company-King-County-housing-needs.html

Money quote: “System exist to stable housing have increased ... 35% since 2016 following [Poppe] Report recommendations.”

Throwing head tax money at non-solutions will not bring further improvements. Read the report to see what will.


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