Do we really know that 15,000 signatures were collected by volunteers? Or are we just taking Maiocco's word for it? (I met him and he lied to my face about campaign contributions).

How did No Tax on Jobs Secretary Saul Spady's company, Creative Empowerment, use the $20,000 paid to themselves for "Campaign/Volunteer/Social Media Management"?

Why is James Maiocco, a pro-life right winger (check out his Twitter profile) making public policy in a supposedly progressive city? If they have the valid signatures, this should be on the November ballot.

"Do we really know that 15,000 signatures were collected by volunteers?"

There's no way to say for sure. If citizens are lining up to sign a petition, does it really matter if the person holding the clipboard is paid or a volunteer?

The thing we will know for sure is how many of the signatures turn out to be valid. Generally the invalidity rate rises with the number of paid signature gatherers employed. If even 1/3 turn out to be invalid -- a huge amount! -- the campaign collected ~1,000 valid signatures per day. Little wonder the City Council was scared into repealing the tax!

"Why is James Maiocco, a pro-life right winger (check out his Twitter profile) making public policy in a supposedly progressive city?"

Because he's a citizen of this "supposedly progressive" city, and therefore has the right to file a Referendum. Or are you suggesting only persons with the "correct" political views should have civil rights?

"If they have the valid signatures, this should be on the November ballot."

Why? The tax has been repealed. Or are you actually deluded enough to believe we'd vote No on the Referendum?

"the referendum is back."

Great. The market fundamentalists already thought they had won. The pro-tax side for responsible governance can win this.

"The pro-tax side for responsible governance can win this."

Good luck with that. The pro-Referendum campaign would build mailing lists, donor lists, a ground organization -- all of which could be maintained and then put to use against any City Council Members who ran for re-election next year. That's why they repealed the tax: they saw how popular the Referendum petitions were. They don't want to go into next year's election with a ready-made campaign organization and issue against them.

@5 They are wrong. There is nothing like going to bat over the need for progressive taxation at the local level to offset the most regressive state taxing scheme in the nation and inadequate federal funding to address social ills in an age of extreme inequality unseen in over 80 years.

@7: Please explain how the head tax was “progressive”, or how retaining it would have had anything to do with the admirable cause of advancing progressive taxation.

@3: Not deluded. Repeal could’ve definitely failed in a vote of the people in November. Perhaps you didn’t notice, but there are passions on BOTH sides of this issue. There is a strong anti-Amazon sentiment in Seattle right now, which would’ve manifested itself in the voting booth.

@7 Corporate taxes have long existed at the federal level and nobody on the left claims they aren't progressive. In fact, only Republicans and neoliberals want them to decrease. The difference between taxing gross versus taxing profit amounts to hair splitting insofar it doesn't apply to smaller businesses.

@8: Good luck getting our City Council’s Members to bet their jobs on your assertions, especially since they just refused to do exactly that.

“There is a strong anti-Amazon sentiment in Seattle right now,”

Yeah, so CM Sawant has told the other eight of them, many times. She tried to tell some union-represented construction workers that, too; how’d that work out for her?

@9: a tax upon corporations is not inherently progressive. Fail.

The now-repealed head tax would have taxed each business with the same number of employees the same amount, no matter if one had $20M, another had $200M, and a third business had $2B in gross revenues. That is by definition not progressive. Fail.

“The difference between taxing gross versus taxing profit amounts to hair splitting insofar it doesn't apply to smaller businesses.”

It could be the difference between staying in business and closing. Fail.

Still wondering why you just had your ass handed to you?

@2 keep swinging, your diaper is hanging out.

"responsible governance"

I have a $12 million dollar, one mile bike lane I'd love to sell you.

"There is a strong anti-Amazon sentiment in Seattle right now, which would’ve manifested itself in the voting booth."

But not apparently in the packages junkies and hobos keep stealing

Forty-five-fucking-thousand signatures in just a few weeks. Even Mike O'Brien, who finally found his wife and got his testicles back, wet himself when he heard that number. And that's nothing the polling which had it running 40% behind in the polls.

@14 You reveal your bigotry with your “junkies and hobos” statement. Are you calling for personal responsibility from our paid for politicians and our invested for greed by any means giant corporations? Corporations that have unlimited monies and paid underlings to talk for them.

We have people power which can win over corporate power. You can’t hide your greed and how you despise the poor - you make that clear.

"You reveal your bigotry with your “junkies and hobos” statement. "

So no doubt we'll find you sleeping in the Jungle all this weekend, curled up with your iPhone, some unread New Yorkers and a can of mace so you can do some moral primping in front of the rest of us moral degenerates.

But of course you'd be scared shitless to actually do that. Because junkies and hobos.

@16: Now, every American has the right to mock DOUG. in exactly the way he or she best believes will get the most laughs. Freedom of expression, don’cha know.

“...you despise the poor...”

Still pounding away with that winning message, I see. Keep up the good work!

@11 nobody claimed it was inherently progressive but one would have to be severely obtuse to claim corporate taxation wasn't progressive during the 21st century guilded age.

@19: “...nobody claimed it was inherently progressive...”

Then why did you mention it?

“...one would have to be severely obtuse to claim corporate taxation wasn't progressive ...”

I didn’t say corporate taxes at the federal level were never ever progressive. I said a corporate tax is not inherently progressive — just as you said @19.

The supposedly progressive nature of the head tax was your entire justification for defending it @6. Since you’ve failed to show the head tax is progressive, your argument for the head tax also fails.

Still wondering why you lost in such a humiliating manner?

@20 "humiliating manner"

There is nothing humiliating about momentarily losing a battle to 24/7 corporate media propaganda.

@21: No, but there’s something deeply humiliating about having a 9-0 vote reversed by a 7-2 margin less than a month later.

But, by all means, keep telling the tens of thousands of Seattle’s citizens who signed for a Referendum how they are all dupes of “corporate media propaganda”. That’ll win you some elections here!

(BTW, when does the “moment” end, after which you must concede defeat? I’m guessing it will turn out to last well beyond forever raised to the power of infinity to eleventy million.)

@21: No, but there is something deeply humiliating in having rubber-stamp unanimity reversed by a 7-2 vote less than a month later.

By all means, tell the tens of thousands of Seattle’s citizens who signed for a Referendum they were all duped by “corporate media propaganda”. There’s just no way such a brilliant strategy could ever possibly lead you to yet another humiliating public defeat.

(BTW, when does the moment end, after which you must concede defeat? I’m guessing that moment will actually last past forever raised to the power of eleventy million. Please feel free to demonstrate how wrong I am about that.)

Well, I just don't feel very "humiliated", so may be, you should look it up with your shrink?

@24 - at this point I'll take the head tax back just to watch tensor's crazy pompous ass explode.

Apparently it's a supporter of the minimum wage increase to $15. Who woulda guessed? So I can only assume it's either being paid for this (in which case, they're not getting their money's worth) or they're deeply invested in Amazon. Tech bro maybe? Tensor's got that "14 year old on Xbox live" feel to it.

@24: Obviously not, given how you continued using a demonstrably false claim about the head tax, even after the falsity of that very claim had been part of the reason the tax got hastily repealed. (Perhaps your lack of feeling is part of the problem here?)

@25: Hey, maybe that argument will fail less miserably than did the obviously false claim about the head tax being progressive. Give it a try!

(If you want to read about the consistency of supporting the $15/hr minimum wage and opposing the head tax, please read cressona’s recent comments. Xbox probably not included.)

I'm glad this is going to the voters. That's what should have happened in the first place, not just have it passed by the Imperial Council.

However, I think it will be voted down by a landslide, in a vote with larger turnout than usual. That does not bode well for the school levy this fall.

@27: it depends if the electorate for each vote is more anti-tax, or more just upset with ineffectual spending on homelessness. Our few local right-wingers may have jumped in front of the second parade, wrongly believing it to be the first.

I’m hoping we’re seeing a true groundswell of opposition to epic governing incompetence, an incompetence so grand it failed to solve a relatively easy problem after having chronically received vast resources dedicated to solving it. (Hey, I’m an idealist, and I freely admit it!)

(Maybe if our chattering, self-appointed political class had spent fewer hours slobbering over the likely-fictional details of Ed Murray’s distant past, and spent more time noticing the large increase in smelly persons wantonly committing property and other crimes, we might have been spared this attempt to tax our employers for their offense of providing our city with huge numbers of good-paying jobs.)

@26 Don't get ahead of yourself. Repeating over and over the same demagoguery about corporate taxes is only a demonstration of how much free time you have on your hands to spew propaganda. Nothing more (I mean,besides your apparent fondness for "humiliating" people)

Seems like the available options are clear...

Work to remove and replace the 7 feckless councilors who voted to repeal the Head Tax.

-or-

Work to remove and replace the 9 feckless councilors who voted to pass the Head Tax.

Either way, it’s a win for Seattle.

@29: See, you don’t get points for using big long fancy words when you obviously do not know what they mean. Here’s an edifying example for you:

“The Member of the Seattle City Council kept repeating over and over the same demagoguery about corporate taxes: calling the EHT a ‘progressive Tax on Amazon,’ when she new full well how many hundreds of other businesses would also pay the same amount per employee.”