Comments

1

The entire Trump / Pence Evil Empire for Prison 2019, preferably in Siberia.

2

Cybill Shepherd says Moonves cancelled her show after she refused to sleep with him.

3

@1 - At least exiled in some oligarch's drafty mansion.

4

@2 - The gay waiter from Cybill was perhaps the best supporting character ever written for TV.

5

"Politics aside, can we talk about Stephen Miller's spray-on hair?"

Yes we can. Were he only Bold enough to pick up a can of "granite" grey (gray?) spray paint (it should wash right out)(it won't but it should) and make his head look like a talking boulder. That'd be nice.

6

"CBS’s Leslie Moonves ... will not receive $120 million on his way out the CBS door."

Good. Excellent! Then he / they might as well Donate it to those he fucked / fucked with. What does a (cancelled, for not sleeping with The Boss) season of 'Cybill' cost? That should cover some pain, suffering, and lost wages, hopefully.

7

What's Good for CBS is sometimes Good for America, Less.

You can fuck off now.

8

Tacoma public schools spend over half a million dollars per teacher?

$19,000,000 Ă· 37 = $513,513

That doesn't add up, even with generous benefits.

9

@8 -- My, a half-mil per teacher, that's a whole lotta Overhead.

Does everyone have tutors?
Catered lunches?
Chauffeurs?

10

@4

I didn't actually watch that show. But it ran three seasons and Shepherd says she thinks it could have gone six. So crew would have been employed for another three years, and with six seasons that show would have gone into syndication and a lot of actors would have earned a lot of residuals.

11

@3: Nah--let Mein Trumpfy's exile be in Siberia. And before its life prison sentencing have its repulsive orange rug fully shaved off and sent To Putin With Love--bought and paid for by the Russians and Koch Brothers.
@8: Have you been listening too much to Betsy DeVos lately?

12

So, I'm not in Seattle, although I'm from there. I miss home. I wanna move back.

The problem is, Seattle got expensive since I left. Housing prices are reaching San Francisco levels, and homelessness is up, an indicator that the city has no real plans to make housing affordable or in any way stem the rising rents. We can blame Bezos all we want, but Bezos and His Bastards aren't elected - the people who are elected have the power to force them to fuck off. They just don't have the spinal column to do the dirty deed.

There's a recession coming. I was in Seattle during he 2011 recession, and it was a bad time to be there. I did Occupy because it was the only logical response. I did it in Olympia, too, hoping the state would lift the ban on rent control. They didn't. In fact, they basically just ignored us and nothing changed.

Now I read in the papers that a bus commuter's first glimpse of the capital city is one of a homeless encampment across the street from the transit center. Washington has a weird brand of progressivism. We're deeply concerned that someone might say a nasty word or make you feel uncomfortable, but we don't care if you starve or die of exposure from sleeping outside.

Seattle- and Washington State in general- has an oozing chancre that everyone can see and we all ignore. It looks like it should hurt, but it doesn't. We can all see it, and we hope it'll just go away if we ignore it. If we don't deal with the problem, we're all gonna lose our minds, and this will be the thing that kills us. The spirochete is called poverty, and the sore are the tents of those who can't afford a roof.

14

@12, interesting perspective, although I gotta ask, where are you living now? And how do things compare there?

15

Sen. Kevin Ranker's party affiliation goes unmentioned by Slog, so he must be a Democrat.

And is traveling no longer a violation in girls' basketball?...

16

@12,

Interesting handle. To answer your question, yes. The policy has to be implemented by an administration who intends to see it succeed rather than one hell bent on undermining it. Adding scores of exemptions, refusing to enforce the policy and limiting it's scope are all measures taken by those who would like to see it fail, and historically, that has been the effect when administrations hostile to rent control assume power. In other words, if your governing philosophy is that all government must fail to govern well, then of course you will find ways to make that philosophy come true. If however you intend to show that government can succeed at its aims, you will find ways to promote it's success.

@14,
Baltimore. Things compare rather badly here, and a lot of the has to do with a long tradition of corruption and mismanagement. This city was, during he colonial era, known as the murder capital of the 13 colonies. The fact that this designation has not changed in almost 300 years, despite the political party in power- be they Federalist, Whig, Democrat or Republican- and regardless;ess of who controls power in Annapolis, is evidence that problems here are deeply rooted and perhaps even incurable. Corruption is the political equivalent of cancer, and unlike Washington's state's syphilis, it takes a lot more than a shot of penicillin to solve something that has metastasized this far. The local institutions present here have vested interests in maintaining the status quo. That is why the only solutions considered by the city or state government are the same set of solutions produced by every administration, the ones that have never worked no matter how many times they have been implemented in the past. No ideas beyond this set are given serious consideration.

For example, the City Council approved in January of 2017 a $15 minimum wage. The Mayor vetoed the measure, stating that she ran as a side business a consignment shop and didn't want to pay her employees more than she had to. She openly stated that she was vetoing the measure to ensure she could personally make more money- using her public office for personal gain- and nobody batted an eyelash. This was the very definition of corruption, and yet here it's considered to be so ho-hum that it didn't even merit public comment. Upon assuming office, the first thing she did was to raise the wages of her cabinet members, although the city is in a budget crisis so serve that kids at public schools have to wear parkas to class during he colder months. There's no money to heat their classrooms, but there's plenty to pay her advisors. Oh, and we have recently appointed the fourth police chief to run the department this year. The first was fired for incompetence, the second is in prison for tax evasion, this third just shrugged his shoulders when asked about his plans to solve the murder problem, and now the fourth assumed power after a heavily redacted dossier was presented to the city council by the Mayor to approve him for the post. The Mayor doesn't think the Council should know too much about the person they're approving for the job.

If that doesn't make you feel a little queasy, look up the death of Sean Suiter.

So yeah, I miss home.

17

Andamania @16, thanks for the detailed answer to my question. Kinda puts things in perspective. Guess I'd rather be dealing with Seattle problems than Baltimore problems.

And even then, Seattle is that much more dynamic and adaptive that we do actually deal with our problems, or some of them, to some reasonable extent. Anyone who bemoans the state of our transportation system should go back in time to the 2000s and compare.

18

@8 This article gives slightly different numbers, and many of the eliminations were of empty positions. Either way, I'm guessing that's calculated savings over a period of time, like 5–10 years.

https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/education/article221955920.html

19

@17,

History is a curse. The oldest cities tend to be the most unwilling to adopt new policies. The newest ones are less shackled to the past. Over time, institutions take root, institutions which have a vested interest in narrowing the field of options to include only the ones they find most profitable. There is some of that in Washington State. Look at the Catholic hospital systems, which by policy refuse to offer some varieties of healthcare. In some parts of the state, such as Whatcom County, that's the only kind of hospital there is.

There used to be a lot of public hospitals. In Tacoma, there was Puget Sound Hospital, for example. In Seattle, there's still Harborview, and in Port Townsend, Jefferson Healthcare still operates. However, much of the state lacks what was once commonplace- a hospital system based in the public interest rather than either shareholder profit or religious doctrine.

As for the transportation system, it isn't the 2000's I look to, it's the early 1900's, when streetcar lines ran the whole length of the Puget Sound. Those were torn up by institutions who found them to be antithetical to their profit margins, such as the automobile industry and the oil and gas industry.

Socialist approaches to solving the housing crisis are not a new theme in Washington, either. Kshama Sawant is not the first socialist city council member in our city's history, and her party is not the first socialist party to have a major presence in Washington State, either. A hundred years before she was born, another socialist party established intentional communities throughout the Puget Sound, where housing was free.

In Baltimore, the socialists were not as predominant as philanthropists such as Johns Hopkins or George Peabody, or the ever dominant Catholic Church. Here, the goal was never to abolish poverty. These institutions need the poor to exist, because without someone to save, they cannot play the role of savior. Whatever crimes they commit are forgotten by their public display of philanthropy.

For example, JHU wants to create a private police force in Baltimore. On the one hand, the BPD is ineffective, corrupt and morally bankrupt. The head of the proposed JHU police force is.. the former police chief of the BPD. Further, they want to operate this police force as an unelected body with no accountability to the public. if you criticize the undemocratic nature of this idea, they point to the work Johns Hopkins Hospital performs to save the lives of East Baltimore residents. How can you criticize such as charitable organization? Its for profit, it resists unionization, it lobbies against measures to raise the material conditions of city residents such as rent control and a higher minimum wage, but it's the sainted Johns Hopkins Hospital. If you criticize it, you're shitting on a saint, you evil sinner, you.

In Washington, the early and the modern socialists both tried and are trying to abolish poverty itself. Rather than make a class of people entirely dependent on the philanthropy of the rich, why not make it so they don't need charity to begin with and are not dependent on anyone?

Those are friendlier waters for this red fish to swim in. Even if there are still many battles to fight, from the ever present housing crisis to hospital access, there are and have always been forces present in Washington that propel it toward progressive change. Baltimore, on the other hand, is shackled to hundreds of years old institutions that promote the master-slave relationship, where one is forever dependent on the holier and mightier than thou.

20

We have a city council which is the highest paid in the country that had a secret meeting which caved to amazon’s threats to not adhere to a modest tax to help the housing issue. The city government is big on corporate welfare and to blame for the increase in destitute conditions which include the lack of decent shelter. They are two-faced and have no problem lying to advocates when asked about solutions to what the options are for people that are swept from their tents. One answer was that they are do not want to misspeak. Whatever the hell that means. (Covering their asses?). We have a city budget that is in effect an overblown police department which looks to keep protestors, people of color, the disenfranchised in line.
Of course to maintain the status quo. Seattle - a playground for the rich -.

21

"In Washington, the early and the modern socialists both tried and are trying to abolish poverty itself. Rather than make a class of people entirely dependent on the philanthropy of the rich, why not make it so they don't need charity to begin with and are not dependent on anyone?" -- Andamania, @19

BRAVO!

22

@19: I second kristofarian (@21). WOW--so well said! Andamania for the WIN! Any chance you can return to Seattle despite the astronomically high cost of living (I'm Seattle born, too, but haven't lived in the Emerald City in over 21 years)?

23

Nathalie, are you confusing Senator Kevin Ranker, D-Orcas Island, District 40 (YAAY!) with corrupt-as-fuck Doug Ericksen-R, Ferndale, District 42 (BOO!) concerning allegations of sexual harassment and hostile work environments?


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