I think the bagel guy was just trying to get a viral video. He has several on his youtube according to the NY Post

https://nypost.com/2019/07/11/long-island-bagel-shop-customer-filmed-other-public-tirades/

"The whole West Coast is going to shake off the continent one of these days."

And then what will the Moocher states -- 'scuse me -- the Flyover states do for Income? Can the East Coast support the red states, on their own? Will the Heartland hafta get of Welfare?

Tell Hairy to knock it off. We don't need
no more stinkin' Disasters.

@2 -- Get them red states OFF the Welfare. Sorry.

"Speed is a factor and we have a tow truck in its way."
Gonna block the speed (meth?) with a tow truck?
Troopers must be getting desparate out there.
Be careful, folks!

@2: Moochers? Where do you keep your wheat fields and orchards?

"King County employees weren't trained about new ICE policy"

That is not a sufficient excuse. The policy changed. No articles have said employees were not informed of the change, just that they weren't trained. You don't need training to stop doing something. Just stop doing it! Jeesh.

While it is true that many "red" states and counties take in more government money than they send out, much of that is due to farm subsidies (The Farm Bill), which may be the most successful progressive/wealth redistribution program in human history, and makes American food prices the envy of the world.

This is kind of the only way it makes sense: farmland produces actual food and similar raw materials, but urban areas create financial wealth due to a worldwide economy built on fiat currency and debt. No one is going to make similar profits selling soybeans when compared to selling futures internationally on the NYSE.

Take away those subsidies, or "welfare" if you want to call it that, and poor people can no longer afford food in America, and those who can are now spending 50% of their wages on food rather than 5%.

Just a bit of perspective.

@2, 4,

I'd like to propose we invoke the dignified parlance of our president and refer to them as shithole states.

@7: Just within WA state, no fed $ counted, the three counties of King, Pierce, and Snohomish combined contribute over 60 cents to each dollar Olympia receives. Every other county contributes an average of less than 1.5 cents. One third of each dollar sent to Olympia by a King County taxpayer is spent in another one of WA’s counties.

Rural counties simply don’t have the tax bases needed to pave all their roads and staff all their schools. We subsidize them for good reasons, including one you gave (we city dwellers eat a lot more food than we produce).

It’s just amusing to compare the real flow of dollars to the self-sufficient rhetoric some right-wingers in those counties produce, consume, and actually seem to believe.

@8) Done!

@7 processed food is cheap because it uses a lot of subsidized crops but US prices for real food do not make the envy of the world. In fact, there are many places, including western Europe, where real food is significantly cheaper. Farm bill likley stopped being progressive when agri-business became the main beneficiary.

Warfarin has been the primary chemical used to kill the Norway Rats in Alberta.
Warfarin (same stuff) is prescribed as a human medicine to treat blood clots.

BTW - Seattle has a massive Norway Rat problem. Do you think our policy should be live-and-let-live, or should they be systematically eradicated?

@11: A weak Euro and simpler supply chains will do that, and the EU is also using a similar subsidy to cut down on food costs for their populations as well, mimicking the American system.

Cheaper in raw currency perhaps, but not in regards to percentage of income, when looking at an entire population or an entire region of the world.

Further complicating the US is the variety of different retailers and qualities of food that we have access to. I can go to a Wal-Mart and get chicken breasts for $3.50 a pound, or I can go a mile down the road to a Whole Foods and find chicken breasts for $7.50 per pound. Europe tends to have more "standardized" prices/qualities due to the smaller amount of suppliers and retail chains.

Here is some data in regards to food costs in relation to income worldwide:

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/12/this-map-shows-how-much-each-country-spends-on-food/

America #1!

@5 - I'm aware of that. It's logical that a smaller tax base in a rural location would consume more services relative to more populous regions for a particular state. Love to see an example of it where it is otherwise.

@12: Simply put, the market.

While it would be better if we ATE more broccoli and less corn, people do not want to do that. They want to buy corn. It would do us no good to grow a bunch of healthy crops that rot on store shelves.

Although, I would be all for ending subsidies for corn growing. HFCS/added sugars are literally poisons that are making our population fat, diseased, lazy, and poor.

@8: Putting your economic and political dispositions aside, you never like to go camping?

@9
You Leftists are always squealing to Tax The Rich to help the poor disadvantaged but when it happens you get sullen and surly.
Karma is a bitch.

Either 404 guy really, really isn’t a morning person, or the guy on the early shift simply isn’t to my liking.

It’s understandable to some point, though, that when thinking of services resultant of taxation roads and plows used far less per capital don’t come to the fore.

I was kayaking near a hydroelectric installation a few weeks ago, as well.

Broke my fishing pole ;[

Reservoirs for drinking water / irrigation also skew the numbers, I’d think.

Yeah, moose meat is an outlier, I have no idea where to buy moose meat.

" there are many places, including western Europe, where real food is significantly cheaper. "

@11 As a former "western european", thanks for the laugh.

Yep, Natalie, you're boyfriend is delusional (or else he's in real estate).

Anyone who thinks Seattle can't have a natural disaster is in denial of the fact that all Washington's volcanoes (Baker, Glacier Peak, Rainier, St. Helens, Adams) are still technically active, not extinct, and are just in a quiet phase. We've had several shakes since the Nisqually Quake and there's a fault off of Vancouver Island that's been pretty active in recent years.

You might want to trade that guy in for someone who's more in touch with reality. Just sayin . . .

6
"King County employees weren't trained about new ICE policy'

That is not a sufficient excuse. The policy changed. No articles have said employees were not informed of the change, just that they weren't trained. You don't need training to stop doing something. Just stop doing it! Jeesh."

In all fairness to those government workers involved who cooperated with ICE in violation of the law due to a lack of training, if you and I went before a judge and explained that we broke the law because were not never trained to follow it"......

Oh, wait a minute!

It's good to be the King (County).

"A Cape Breton University requested a student give him lobster, moose meat, and sex in exchange for better grades."

What a pervert. Imagine, requesting lobster. Where do these sicko's come from?

Ballard Seafood Fest is good, but the Milk Carton Derby is free to watch at Lake Union, and the Wallingford Kiddie's Parade is always fun if you have kids.

@24 Maine lobster have been migrating to Canada due to climate change. So they're Canadians now.

@24- Maybe this is the meaning of "extra lobster" that Dan Savage was looking for a while back.

@12, @16, etc

Only 5% of US-produced corn is used for HFCS and other sweeteners.

The biggest use of corn, at 33% of the harvest, is as feed for livestock. And US consumers aren't the only ones who prefer meat to grains-- developing nations all increase their meat consumption as real incomes rise.

The second largest use of US corn, at 32%, is entirely outside the food industry, and a longstanding reason for corn subsidies-- ethanol. Some ethanol byproduct (DDGs) is also used for feed.

Numbers taken from a website with a great name, www.worldofcorn.com:

http://www.worldofcorn.com/charts/corn-usage-by-segment_19.svg

@18: I wrote “amusing,” not “surly.” I’m laughing at the large and obvious gap between right-wing rhetoric and hard cash reality.

Or is your comprehension of my amusement the very reason you’re so bitter and mean on this topic?

@28

Oh come on, tensor. You'll never endorse a tax that doesn't benefit you directly. One could quite easily be amused by subsidies to poorer regions while ALSO being surly about them-- and you've got the smell all over you.

@7 and that perspective is wrong.

The US IMPORTS 53% of all the fruit it consumes. It’s IMPORTS from countries with no environmental or labor standards that keeps cheap - that and cheap non-union undocumented labor.

For fuck sake have you ever been anywhere? Produce (other than meat) is about 20% cheaper in most of the EU than here.

“Produce” refers specifically to fruits and vegetables in the States.

@30, (and I guess #31 too?): I am talking about food costs as a ratio to incomes, not prices of certain food items. If you paid attention, you may not have to be so angry all the time.

@21 I realize you're a notorious moron and liar but as someone who was also born in western Europe AND spends about 1/5 of his life traveling there and JUST came back fro three weeks in western Europe I can confirm that yes, produce is indeed cheaper in most of France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Italy than it is here in the US. This is a fact. A fact I just experienced.

@14 Do they spend more of their incomes on food? Well. That depends. Some foods in the EU are subject to VATs and beef in generally expensive. But since they don't eat cheap processed garbage, yes, many western EU cultures spend more on food. And that food cost includes wine, etc. That doesn't mean the food isn't cheaper. It means they buy better, higher quality food because it's a higher priority.

I was just in Madrid. Madrid is major city of 7 million people. You can eat a fantastic four course Tapas meal for less than €15. Including wine. You can hardly find a sandwich with beer in Seattle or Manhattan for that.

Take Paris. One of the most expensive cities on earth. Basic staples in Paris are cheaper than any major US city.

https://www.psbedu.paris/en/paris-student-life/cost-living-paris

Milk (1 liter ≃ 1/4 gallon) €0.80 - €1.5
Loaf of fresh white bread (500g ≃ 1lb ) €0.91 - €1.81
Rice (500g ≃ 1 lb ) €0.50 - €1.13
Eggs (doz) €2.00 - €4.00

The idea the US subsidies for food is to feed out poor people is simply laughable since of all the 15 wealthiest OEDC nations the US has the highest level of food insecurity. So. C'mon the fuck on.

My family are also farmers, ranchers and timbermen. I know what the subsidies are and how they used and why. They are political. That's all.

@32 then your point is irrelevant. Because subsidies have fuck all to do with "food costs as a ratio to incomes." Since subsidies are not used to improves wages and the major crops subsidized are subsidized most ly for use as a FUEL subsidy.

@29: Glad to read your olfactory senses are so keen, they function perfectly via the Internet! (Or maybe, just maybe, that retch-inducing stench of advanced putrefaction, so violently strong even you can’t ignore it, comes from a place much, much closer to your nose...)

You really, really need to understand the difference between opposing a tax where the money will, with blatant obviousness beforehand, be well and truly wasted (e.g. the EHT), and generally opposing all taxes.

(If I oppose all taxes which do not befefit me, why do I continue to reside in the one county of Washington state which exports more tax money than any other? I’m simply not walking your talk, now am I?)

@32

As your own link shows, differences in income across nations are much greater than differences in food costs. The comparison of food cost relative to income, therefore, is essentially a comparison of national income levels. Have another look:

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/12/this-map-shows-how-much-each-country-spends-on-food/

Wherefore art thou Herzog?

Too many adjectives, tensor. It's a tell, you do it whenever you've lost your temper.

You sure do sound surly about your tax burden, even if you can't quite bring yourself to give up the city and move to the sticks.

I saw Rainier cherries "fresh! flown direct from WA, USA" in a farmers market in Paris for less than HALF what they cost here.

@37: Aw, is someone a wee bit cranky that his all-too-very “clever” metaphor got thrown back in his face, only to stick to him like — wait for it! — a bad smell?

If my happily playing with words makes me sound “surly” to you, maybe it’s because you got beaten so badly, when you played with them yourself?

But hey, keep on telling yourself how a longtime resident of Seattle must really just hate taxes. Anything that makes you feel better is probably at a premium to you right now.

@40

Wait, not only did you resort to "I know you are but what am I" there, but you then went and declared yourself Victorious In Internet Argument via that master stroke? That's fantastic.

This is why we love you so much, tensor. Never change!

@41: And yet, your description of a person who “will never endorse a tax that doesn't benefit (him) directly” sits rather oddly with a happily longtime taxpayer of King County, don’t you agree?

Or are you simply ignorant of how Washington State’s government is financed?

Do tell.

Oh tensor, you do dearly love your narratives, don't you?

There's a world of difference between endorsing a tax and begrudgingly paying it, and it's fun to watch you petulantly insist we all pretend we can't see that difference.

But let's do cases, eh? Tell us how you plan to fund that Hobo Incarceration Army you're always banging on about. What do you propose we tax, and by how much, to raise revenue for the thousands of employees and acres of facilities the City would need to carry that out?

@43: It’s fun to see someone whose entire claim of “knowledge” consists of nothing more than his own self-described magical (if metaphorical) nose just keep on complimenting himself on his own godlike perspicacity.

“Tell us how you plan to fund that Hobo Incarceration Army you're always banging on about.”

Beat that straw man! Beat him real hard!! That’ll show him!!