Comments

1

And Alex Pedersen. CASE has spent over $12,500 on Pedersen's behalf so far.

3

That's a smile logo? I always thought it was a boner.

4

@2 Supply and demand, friend. You need to lower your prices.

I tried to sell my vote for years, and all of my hustle and advertising got me nowhere. Then I dropped my rate to $1.47 and a single-serving package of breakfast cereal, and business has been brisk ever since.

6

Translation: it's not working, but they don't want to admit it's not working.

7

@3 -- Perhaps Smitty refers to the Propaganda Campaign the Corporateers're gonna unleash with all their hard-fought Free $peech monie$$$$$$$$. Didjqa know, Amazon's Daddy's one of thee Richest Peeps on the Planet? This Planet?

How much $$$ to be spent on fb? Shhh... don't ask.
They (fb) don't like to Divulge that sorta Info to WE, the People.
(It's just not Profitable, don't you see)?

And, since fb's too fucking BIG to query,
In this soon-to-be Republican Utopia, c'est la vie.
Thee Best Democracy Money Can Buy.
Right here, in America!
Baby!

8

A journalist would write the headline:

Amazon donates more than 1 million to Seattle City Council candidates

But instead we get:

Amazon Drops More Than $1 Million In Effort to Buy Seattle City Council

9

Frankly, I feel like I get a lot more value for my money from Amazon than I do from the City of Seattle. I'd be happy to hand the Shitty Council over to Bezos for direct management.

10

Amazon delivers to my home with reasonable prices and meets their delivery times nearly all the time. The City Council ...... well, how many dirty needles in your local park is too many?

12

@7 -- Oops @2, not 3.

13

Thanks Stranger. You just made Ann Davison Sattler's day. She's now less conservative than Debbie Juarez.

It's Sattler Time in D5. Go Sonics!

16

@10 is an example of why simple minded conservatives say they love private business but hate government.

Both the businessman and the government will fuck you over, but the businessman will smile and shake your hand and tell you how your bold tie and strong chin must make you a hit with the ladies. Government doesn't sugarcoat it, they tell you your shit stinks just as bad as everyone else's.

Simple minded conservatives happily let the businessman fuck them in the ass, so long as the fake compliments keep coming. If only government told them how handsome and virulent they looked, the simple minded conservatives would like government fucking them in the ass too.

17

@15 The unions, combined, have spent less than 20% of that single Amazon donation, and Amazon had already put in another half a million previously.

Unions today wield political power through organizing and endorsements, not through cash. They can't afford it anymore, after all these decades of bustin'.

18

@16 Plus, businesses really listen to us.

Literally! Amazon has millions of listening devices installed in American homes, far more than the government can be bothered with. Clearly Amazon cares much more about what we have to say than Uncle Sam ever did.

19

For the billionth time, Amazon was NOT getting 3 billion in actual dollars - that was an amount that they WOULD have received, IF they had generated 27 BILLION. If they generated nothing, they would have received nothing.

I grew up in what is now AOC's district, and still have a lot of family and friends there, and believe me, a LOT of people hate AOC for this (and other) idiotic lies; in fact, there's a good chance that if she survives the primary, she may in fact lose to her republican challenger (a woman from Jamaica).

I've never voted anything but democratic for my entire life, and almost certainly never will, but this is the kind of thing that makes me absolutely detest what the democratic party has become - ESPECIALLY in Seattle.

21

“...a Sawant spokesperson has called on New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for help.”

Is that the same AOC who (along with two other women) received this treatment from CM Sawant?

“... we do not agree with your decisions to run as Democrats.”

(https://www.socialistalternative.org/2018/11/09/democratic-socialists-elected-letter-kshama-sawant-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-rashida-tlaib-julia-salazar/)

Now Sawant comes begging for help from one of those despised Democrats.

This oughta be good!

22

Inflation. Colacurcio bought it for $35,000 in 2003.

23

@15 It's rather dishonest to compare building blocks of democracy like unions to Bezos but not too surprising coming from a market zealot.

24

I hope Amazon gets its money's worth, because the City Council has been a total ripoff so far.

25

[The most "pragmatic" solution to those problems is taxing big companies like Amazon—companies who routinely dodge federal taxes—to pay for transportation upgrades, public housing, and Seattle's Green New Deal.]

Except we can't. It isn't pragmatic if it isn't possible. A graduated income tax -- levied on individuals or corporations -- would be thrown out by the courts. We can have other taxes, but they are more regressive.

A head tax isn't taxing the company, it is taxing the employee. It is one of the most regressive taxes there is -- it is more regressive than a sales tax. It would effect only certain employees, and tax them the same, regardless of income. It is basically a regressive income tax, as opposed to a flat income tax, or a progressive income tax. Make $100,000 a year, and you get taxed the same amount as someone making a dollar over minimum wage. Making matters worse, it is largely arbitrary. It only effects "big" companies. That means that if you are say, a small law firm, where employees make over a hundred grand a piece (and the owners make more) you pay nothing. But employees at a large company (like a grocery store) would pay, even if most of their employees are middle class.

It is worse than a property tax, or a sales tax, or a flat income tax. The last one is likely legal, because it is flat, like the other two. According to our state constitution, "all taxes shall be uniform upon the same class of property", which is why a graduated income tax always failed (it isn't uniform). But a flat income tax would probably pass constitutional muster. Tax income and capital gains at one tenth of a percent. Make 50 grand a year, that is 50 dollars. Make a 100 million a year (by selling your stock) and that is $100,000. It isn't ideal, but it sure as hell is better than a head tax.

27

@25 "A head tax isn't taxing the company, it is taxing the employee. It is one of the most regressive taxes there is -- it is more regressive than a sales tax. "

Complete bullshit. The money isn't coming out of employee paychecks, it comes out of the employer bottom line.

28

@27: Yes, the employer's bottom line. Which ultimately results in fewer jobs.

29

"a LOT of people hate AOC for this (and other) idiotic lies; in fact, there's a good chance that if she survives the primary, she may in fact lose to her republican challenger"

@19 HAHAHAHA. Riiiiiight. Sure. Are your friends and family in the 14th district prone to meth addiction or hallucinations?

Ocasio-Cortez won in 2018 against a TEN TERM DEMOCRATIC INCUMBENT with over 78% of the vote. The republican didn't even get 14% of the vote.

And as for Scherie Murray? Who lost the 2015 New York special assembly election to a democrat by... 99%. That's your big threat? HAHAHAHA.

And there are currently 5 republican challengers in the 14th. Not one. So you don't even know who the challenger is. Let alone what the gender/ethnicity will be. Hey. One is even of Arab descent!

But thanks for the fine distillation of total bullshit republican concern troll disinformation.

30

@28 According to your stupid logic we should not tax them at all or even give them free use of tax funded infrastructure. Wait, you have no problem with that of course.

31

I hate Amazon as much as the next millenial-lefty, but I find your actions at the Stranger pretty confusing - in print and on the web you have steadfastly advocated against Egan Orion, but the cover of your latest issue is adorned with a large advertisement for the man..... Pretty hard to take anything you say at face value when you're profiting from a candidate you have not endorsed.

32

@30: Call it what you want, but that is what will occur.

35

I made a donation to CASE, every little bit helps. The city council has to stop using other people's money to enable homelessness. It's responsible for the surge of homelessness their countless drug and crime related deaths and the loss of our local businesses from both crime and excessive taxes.

36

@32 False. Trickle down economics has been show repeatedly to be hogwash. I shouldn't have to tell you this but employers already hire no more employees than they need, and pay them at market rates. They didn't wait for the Amazon tax to decide to pay as few employees they needed as little as they had to. I am not sure what kind of fantasy you live in.

37

A big LOL at 33, I'm not sure what I did to offend you so much but you don't need to condescend so heavily. Since you felt the need to belittle and infantilize a stranger on the internet, I'm going to do an error-by-error markdown of your grammatical mistakes - I'm a public school educator after-all, and YOUR tax dollars (you know, that money stuff!) are paying MY salary!

Your first error occurs in line one: "There's the stuff" should read "There's this stuff"
"At this job you perform task" should read "At this job, you perform a task"
"Being" in your third paragraph, sentence three should be capitalized
The last sentence in paragraph three is a doozy: "It needs money to pay hire" - you couldn't decide to use pay or hire, choose one, or add an 'and' between the two. After that you couldn't decide if "it's" or "its" should be used - no apostrophe in the possessive version of it!
The next paragraph (where you finally begin to get to the point of your consternation!!), "and they price these advertisement" should read "and they price these advertisements"
Same paragraph, "ads for politicians are particularly" not "particular" (unless you think these ads are discerning?) and right after that I believe you meant to place a comma, not a period.
Your penultimate paragraph features strange punctuation at the end.
In your last paragraph, you decided not to capitalize The Stranger. But hey, at least you figured out that possessive later in the paragraph!

I hope this has been a helpful exercise. Writing with better grammar might help you write a more professional CV or cover letter next time you're looking for one of those job thingies, which could actually get you more of that magical money stuff you've so graciously taught be about!

38

Let us simply say, Amazon does not plow this kind of money into a city council race in a last-ditch effort to bail out their preferred candidate(s). They do this because they have seen the recent CASE polling on these races — particularly D3 — and have decided to run up the score a bit, to underline the potency of what their influence has already made inevitable. This is a message to a soon-to-be former councilmember who might be inclined to use her newfound free time on a vanity challenge of Durkan in 2021: don’t bother.

39

The choices in the upcoming Seattle Council elections couldn't be starker. If you want to:

-Abolish Police, with no alternative offered;

-Abolish youth jail even for most serious offenders, again no alternative offered;

-Decriminalize almost all crime except most serious (murder and aggracated assault) which Will be charged as misdemeanor without meaningful prison time;

-Enjoy sex offenders, drug dealers and criminals from all over the US to descend on our city and roam free;

-Enjoy RVs, tents, encampments, garbage, human waste, used needles etc on every sidewalk, park, stream, public property or right of way;

-Give up all property rights, whether it's investment property, home, car or personal belongings that are there for the taking -- at the whom of any politician or anyone who needs or wants it;

-Enjoy property taxes that double every few years, same with transportation levies, gas taxes, sugar taxes, vehicle licensing, use taxes, special levies;

-Top off the taxes with new and improved income taxes, job taxes, restaurant taxes, and other new taxes that can be imagined by any union or interest group -- the possibilities are limitless;

-Despite exploding revenues from the avalanche of taxes, enjoy a city sliding into public health crises and third world conditions with rainbow sidewalks, road diets and intentional gridlock in place of new infrastructure or maintenance of existing;

Then look no further than The Stranger endorsements for your list of candidates. Enjoy the anarchy and mayhem, bruhs!!

41

The effect of Amazon's donations will be relatively minor. The amount in question isn't all that much, and most voters know already whether or not they like Sawant and Herbold. Amazon couldn't buy this election, even if it wanted to--and Sawant and Herbold cannot buy or scare voters, either. Vote your conscience, and may the best candidate win. Period.

43

To be fair to Amazon, they don't actually want to buy the city council, they just want to rent them for a few years.

45

Labor Unions have dropped well over a million on the Seattle City Council Election. That does not count the in-kind contributions of sending their members out to knock on doors, make phone calls and show up at events. Way more then a million dollars in labor costs that NEVER get counted. This is total hypocrisy.


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