Seattle has banned firearms, raised the minimum wage, and regulated sugary beverages. They banned plastic bags, raised taxes, and attempted to levy new ones in abundance. It is a sanctuary city.
Seattle is a progressive Mecca.
It does everything a New Left Hampshire Democrat wants and more. A Template for Democrat Socialists to follow. It is also overwhelmed with homelessness, crime, and addiction.
Seattle is under siege. … In its 2017 point-in-time count of the homeless, King County social-services agency All Home found 11,643 people sleeping in tents, cars, and emergency shelters. Property crime has risen to a rate two and a half times higher than Los Angeles’s and four times higher than New York City’s. Cleanup crews pick up tens of thousands of dirty needles from city streets and parks every year.
It’s Not About Spending
According to City Journal, Seattle spends $100,000.00 a year for every homeless man, woman, and child in King County, Washington. More than the average annual income of most Americans and entire families who are self-sufficient. It’s more than the average yearly income of Seattle residents, which is just over 82,000.00.
If you are looking for how socialism doesn’t work, Venezuela’s nice but save some time and look to Seattle.
Compassionate socialists have seized control of city government. And they are walking the Emerald City down a path to a cliff and off into the deep end. For what and whom? It’s socialism. They do it for the bureaucrats who manage the ruin.
With more than $1 billion spent on homelessness in Seattle every year, one should keep in mind Vladimir Lenin’s famous question: Who stands to gain? In the world of Seattle homelessness, the big “winners” are social-services providers like the Seattle Housing and Resource Effort (SHARE), the Low Income Housing Institute (LIHI), and the Downtown Emergency Service Center (DESC), which constitute what I call the city’s homeless-industrial complex. For the executive leadership of these organizations, homelessness is a lucrative business. In the most recent federal filings, the executive director of LIHI, Sharon Lee, earned $187,209 in annual compensation, putting her in the top 3 percent of income earners nationwide. In my estimation, the executive director of DESC, Daniel Malone, has received at least $2 million in total compensation during his extended career in the misery business.
How The Left Gets Things Done
If you missed it, the Liberal response to the tragedy of the opioid crisis in New Hampshire (and everywhere else) is more money. Federal dollars with strings attached enrich service providers beholden to government regulation. The refugee resettlement folks have milked that cow for billions annually for years. Illegal Immigration is also a big business. Even the Left’s embrace of the legalization of marijuana is nothing more than a vector to raise revenue to grow government.
It is not a question of liberty to them. Nothing is.
The winners are NGOs tied to regulators who flood the swamp to protect Democrat politicians from taxpayers. It is no less true in Soviet Russia, Venezuela, California, or Seattle, where it seems evident to me why Amazon wanted a headquarters 2.0. They will need someplace to go when they tire of being mistreated by the city of Seattle, which is ironic. It is a political culture to which they are complicit.
As the biggest employer and significant scape-goat, the virtue-signaling liberal behemoth brought on the aches and pains that will eventually drive them out.
They would leave Seattle to clean up the mess without the benefit of one of its greatest benefactors.
Left to wither into the Pacific coast version of Detroit.
Another great city drove to ruin by Democrats and their failed policies. Another mighty American metropolis reduced to a turd on a sidewalk next to dirty needles alongside a homeless tent city (the hill is optional).
The wonder of free-market capitalism regulated to ruin by socialist Democrats who retain mobility their policies have denied those they claim to help.
Hint: Nothing they do is “for the people.” It is for them and their people, and no one else. Seattle is learning that lesson the hard way.
Image Credit: Wikipedia
| Take a deep dive into Seattle and Homelessness at City Journal
