My goodness $1,250 has gone missing! Alert Sherlock Holmes! There's no possible way that there was a glitch or a mistake in accounting!

Saul Spady bought Burning Man tickets with the money.

I've got five bucks on embezzlement.

You people still can't get over the fact that the tax was hugely unpopular and would have gone down in flames on the ballot. I saw folks standing 10 deep in line to sign the measure. It gathered 3 times the number of signatures needed in just two weeks.

@8 When you have a narrative to prove then go into conspiracy mode.

It sure looks like the entire universe of political ads on social media has been dark, dank, and unethical..

I think we should be concerned about this not because we hated or loved the tax and not because it is or isn't much money, after all. Rather, we should be concerned because of how these social media giants take money from questionable organizations and run their political ads without question. The lack of accountability here (what used to be known as a "paper trail") is troubling..

@4 /5 Over $350,000 was raised for the head tax repeal. 1250/350000 is 0.3% of funds were miscalculated or it could be fraud! I dont know very many people/businesses that would risk their credibility for $1,250.

@11:

You'd be amazed at the petty things people or businesses will do simply because they think they can get away with it.

@11: Check out the SEEC disclosures. Saul Spady, the Secretary of No Tax of Jobs, has paid himself tens of thousands of dollars in "management" fees. He's our very own Tim Eyman!

@5: “There is no credible chance this was a glitch or mistake.”

Who died and left you Supreme Ruler of the Accounting Universe? Arthur Andersen? As pointed out elsewhere in this thread, it’s a tiny amount of the money spent. Go on, try to justify your ludicrously grandiose claim. I’m betting you’ll just fart yet another one of your jejune attempts at insult, instead.

Citizens lined up in droves to sign the Referendum. This proved shocking to a City Council which had legislated the EHT whilst locked in an echo chamber so tight, neither the eruption of anger at CM O’Brien in Ballard, nor at CM Sawant in Belltown, could penetrate. The Council then repealed the EHT to prevent the Referendum from appearing on the ballot, as they’d just seen far more than enough actual democracy for their tastes.

If you seriously think $1,250 spent on Twitter had any significant effect on any of that, then you’re more gullible than even you try to make yourself seem.

“There is no credible chance this was a glitch or mistake.”

Cripes, what a maroon.

trolls don't like transparency, what a surprise

There are always sketchy businessman. But they don't draw attention to themselves over $1,250 that they know will be audited. Perfect example is Martin Shkreli, he drew attention to himself as the pharma bro and 5000% increases on drug prices so the SEC looked into his the price increases and couldn't find anything illegal. So they looked into his background further and convicted him on an unrelated crime. Also see Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen.

@16 Haha I love how you think anyone that disagrees with you is a troll. Transparency is good, but framing a missing $1,250 as fraud or conspiracy is only newsworthy on Infowars.

The sad part is, Eli Sanders and The Stranger have been doing real, solid, heavy-lifting journalism on how social media simply haven’t been following our very clear laws on transparency and disclosure for political advertising. As noted above, this is a real problem, no matter what the campaign or how much money. On this topic, radio and TV stations obey our laws correctly all the time, so why can’t “tech” firms get it right?

Having all that journalistic effort pressed into the service of feeble “gotcha!” attempts against successful campaigns The Stranger just so happened to have vehemently opposed (first Durkan for Mayor, now the EHT repeal) just cheapens the great work done so far.

So, Eli previously discovered that Twitter couldn’t account for political ad buys. But this time around we assume Twitter knows what it’s doing? Why?

I suspect that 90% of the people in favor of the head tax also have a Prime membership, and also can’t wait to shop at AmazonGo so they won’t have to speak to a real human being. Put your money where your mouth is, Sawant sycophants, if it doesn’t inconvenience you too much.

@14 - “Jejune”? Look at the troll trying to talk pretty! How adorable, but you sound funny with my diction in your mouth.

To be witty and clever, it’s not enough just to use words of French origin. Sorry, Slog, I’ve helped breed a more pretentious brand of monster.

@23: For someone who described me as “uninteresting,” you sure seem to spend a lot of time here making off-topic comments about me.

(Also, you can’t actually take out copyrights on commonly-used words. You know that, right?)

@24 - So you admit you’re copying my words. Great. Glad we got that settled. I agree I can’t copyright them. Look - we found common ground! There is hope for this solipsistic hellscape after all.

You and your views are uninteresting. You as a phenomenon are fascinating. Self-deluded. Unpersuasive. Universally unliked here, yet you keep posting. I wonder if there’s a scientific explanation for it. Perhaps Cliff Mass, scientist, will weigh in and say your blowing hot air is all perfectly normal. He owes you a solid, sport!

@24 - bee tee dubs, still waiting for the avalanche of quotes that prove how compassionate you are and how objective you are when dealing with non-white, non-male, non-wealthy points of view. I mean, you come off as a standard-issue grumpy old-ish white guy who just doesn’t want to be bothered, but you tell me I’m a liar, and you’re always right, so like I said...just waiting to be inevitably proven wrong about you, by you. Waiting... Waiting...

3 Saul would crash Burning Man. BTW, anybody else think Josh Gad should play him in the movie?

@28: I agree that the Mayor coordinated the repeal, and counted the votes, prior to the repeal. (This may explain all of the flabbergasted “b-b-but the Council has to have deliberated!!1!” assumptions here; an inability to understand the Mayor was coordinating the Council’s action.) I agree that she clearly didn’t want the EHT passed. She did get it watered down prior to passage, but could not stop it by herself.

I’ll disagree with you on the main driver, though. Collecting that many repeal signatures in that short a time was a brutal shock to the Council, who had, on multiple occasions, simply ignored public protest against the EHT. (I do not know of any successful signature-gathering effort in Seattle has ever voluntarily stopped before the deadline; this may further have surprised the Council Members.)

Once 47,000 signatures had been dropped on their heads, the prospect of a horrific PR disaster loomed. They all knew CM Sawant would be the loud, persistent, and grating public voice of the anti-repeal effort, which could easily both doom the EHT and undeniably tie the Council’s 9-0 action to Sawant — all heading into an election year for most of their seats. There was only one sure way for them to de-rail that oncoming trainwreck, and they took it the minute Mayor Durkan shook them out of their stunned stupor by suggesting it.

I agree that her own agenda may have prompted her action, but by that point, neither she nor they wanted a repeal of the EHT on the ballot.