Shaun Scott was banging the drum on this pretty hard during his 2019 city council run

Same goes for Prop 1A. The "pragmatists" ran a competing initiative that'd do essentially nothing and cannibalize existing funds. Prop 1A was the undiluted, "scary" version that generates new revenue and it won by 45 friggin points! I'll take democracy over backroom big biz deal-cutting every time

The only reason 15Now passed is because we threatened to make it a ballot initiative, and so the establishment shoved it thru with carve outs and a ridiculous phase-in timeline we JUST reached the end of.

The entire past decade of the Seattle left has been watching our "pragmatic" incrementalist leaders make "grand bargains" that fall far short of the need and of what the electorate wants

JumpStart is a tiny (0.8%) payroll tax & they screamed bloody murder abt it. The 2017 head tax they repealed prior was just as modest, & it was a reboot of a $25/year per employee tax that was on the books from 2007-09 which the big biz-backed council repealed. Trust me no one is "going big" 🙄

Who cares? They lie. They also said a $15 minimum wage would "destroy the local economy." It didn't. Neither did JunpStart, which is now the only way we can balance our city budget.

this is incredibly naive, big biz is never going to be onboard, they're going to actively oppose. in 2019 AMZ spent an avg of $28 PER VOTE on their city council candidates. every year they break PAC spending records. they opposed 15Now, Jumpstart, Prop 1A, everything progressives want every time.

ah yes the past 15 years, the period marked by an historic housing and homelessness crisis where practically every cool artist I know was priced out of the city. thanks be unto you oh benevolent overlords how can our elected officials better serve you
www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...

I talked to someone who worked on his very first campaign for city council and they said that people in D2 were already complaining about his unresponsiveness and sloth ONE YEAR INTO HIS FIRST TERM haha

or this fuckery (they succeeded in repealing that head tax but another one was passed the next year which is the only way Harrell, who opposed it, was able to balance his budget)
komonews.com/news/local/a...

you can never trust someone with that style of "negotiation" and imo they don't deserve a seat at the table

Wilson is pretty pragmatic (much more than me). Example: She has the president of the Downtown Seattle Association in there and they're pretty aligned with corporate multinational interests--AMZ can always whine to him

yes w/out their direct representation where will we get such incredible insights as "don't do a progressive tax" or "give the cops more money" or "'revitalize' downtown again again." btw how many renters (a majority of the city) were represented in the Harrell/Durkan/Murray admins?

Aw shit those are my dudes

Maybe we should start calling them the Bezos Bubbles