10 ms·

To be clear though, that was a somewhat unusual race, e.g. the incumbent progressive Democrat probably would have won if he hadn't been knocked out in the prima

• vkou 5y ago
  Seattle has always been a socially liberal, bend-over-backwards for business town. It's how it can legalize marijuana and magic mushrooms, while having 11,000 people living in tents and homeless shelters. Unsurprisingly, since nobody likes seeing tents in city parks, and by the I-5 on-ramps, the city voted for a slate of politicians that will... Maintain the status quo. There's no plan for getting ~5,500 people housed. Four years from now, we'll be exactly where we are today.
  • voz_ 5y ago
    I don't want status quo, but I also don't want them housed. I want the ones that steal, rape, squat in parks, do drugs, sell drugs, defecate in public, and litter to all be thrown in jail.
    • lalaithion 5y ago
      So you want the government to house them at taxpayer cost!
      • klyrs 5y ago
        Three squares, a roof, and jobs for all the police, judges, guards, and lawyers involved. Oh, and a criminal record to ensure that future employment will be even harder upon their eventual release. And another jail with at least 5,000 beds. Taxes gotta go somewhere, I guess...
      • jtbayly 5y ago
        Housed and punished for that vs housed and rewarded for that? I know which I’d pick.
    • SirSourdough 5y ago
      And I want people who lack compassion and consideration housed at the bottom of the ocean, but we can't all win.
      • adolph 5y ago
        https://www.slatestarcodexabridged.com/I-Can-Tolerate-Anything-Except-The-Outgroup https://www.slatestarcodexabridged.com/I-Can-Tolerate-Anythi...
      • nostromo 5y ago
        Is this a paradox? Because it sounds like you may end up there yourself.
        • SirSourdough 5y ago
          Perhaps. But I'd rather be there for lacking compassion for the inconsiderate and intolerant than for punching down at the most vulnerable people in our society. Hopefully I'll at least end up in a different house than the commenter I initially replied to...
        • BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
          “Compassion and empathy are the utmost of virtues. If you lack it, you deserve to be cast out from society. Because you lack the compassion I so freely give, you have forfeited the right to receive any from me.” /s
        • irthomasthomas 5y ago
          This must be one of them contradictory ideas which are so popular now. :D
      • animal_spirits 5y ago
        Compassion would mean to have love and hope for those who you disagree with, not the desire to throw them in the bottom of the ocean.
        • 5y ago
    • spoonjim 5y ago
      Are you signing up to pay for that personally?
    • Fauntleroy 5y ago
      The thirst for punishment over improvement ultimately keeps the problem going. Any chance you'd prefer to break the cycle rather than continue it?
    • advrs 5y ago
      Are you suggesting that jail (aka expensive housing funded by the public) is the most effective solution to these crimes/behaviors? For example, do you think the population of people who defecate in public are going to be deterred due to the threat of imprisonment?
      • beerandt 5y ago
        Either deterred or jailed, either way you end up with less shit on the street.
    • argomo 5y ago
      Is jail appropriate for litterers? Seems extreme, but I might be able to get behind it. Let's start with the folks who throw fast food wrappers out on the interstate though, not the homeless we wish to criminalize. Throwing them in jail seems like the worst of both worlds... it burns my tax dollars and does nothing to rehabilitate anyone.
      • klyrs 5y ago
        That's up to the police to decide. If they don't like a law, they don't enforce it.
        • jackorange 5y ago
          The police don't sentence people to jail.
          • deleted 5y ago
            [deleted]
          • klyrs 5y ago
            No, but they do pick who they want to pull over, and for what reason.
            • jackorange 5y ago
              That's their job?
          • namelessoracle 5y ago
            They de facto do. A police officer can arrest you for basically any reason and send you to jail. How long that jail stint lasts depends on what happens after you are arraigned, but you can easily spend a few days in a county jail before the judge shows up after the 3 day weekend to decide if what you were arrested for was legit.
        • kelnos 5y ago
          Selective enforcement is not a good outcome. Any police officer who doesn't enforce a law because they don't like it should be fired.
    • psadauskas 5y ago
      You should watch last weekend's episode of Last Week Tonight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liptMbjF3EE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liptMbjF3EE
      • voz_ 5y ago
        No thank you. He is the tucker carlson of the left. I try to stay away from talking heads that remove all nuance from the debate.
        • psadauskas 5y ago
          I mean, alright, you do you, but the common misconception you're echoing here he very specifically refuted with data and cited sources. One point in particular, it costs a city around $30k/yr per homeless person in emergency medical care and jail facilities, but only ~$10k/yr to give them the proper support and a place to live.
          • voz_ 5y ago
            And what happens when they refuse that support? Or turn it into a drug den? I've lived in SF, and in Seattle for a combined 22 years. I've seen what the ravaging horde of homeless due to the cities there. They turn away housing, and they won't go to shelters. Not because the shelters are degrading, but because they won't let them do drugs there. These people are mentally insane, and unfit for society. Would giving them housing stop them from raping? or defecating inside cars they broke into? It's time to stop pandering to the 0.1% and focus on the 99.9% of us that do participate in society.
        • consumer451 5y ago
          > He is the tucker carlson of the left That is quite an interesting claim. Do you mean because they are leading voices on their supposed political side, or they are equivalent in factual accuracy, or something else? My favorite factoid about Tucker Carson, the leading voice of news analysis in the USA: > Now comes the claim that you can't expect to literally believe the words that come out of Carlson's mouth. And that assertion is not coming from Carlson's critics. It's being made by a federal judge in the Southern District of New York and by Fox News's own lawyers in defending Carlson against accusations of slander. It worked, by the way. [0] I am up to this point unaware of anything clearly nonfactual presented by Oliver. If anything from Oliver exists along the lines of Carlson's extraordinary list of lies [1] I would genuinely be interested to learn about it. I wrote a lot there, but my main question is, how exactly do you see Carlson and Oliver as equivalent? [0] https://www.npr.org/2020/09/29/917747123/you-literally-cant-believe-the-facts-tucker-carlson-tells-you-so-say-fox-s-lawye https://www.npr.org/2020/09/29/917747123/you-literally-cant-... [1] https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/list/?speaker=tucker-carlson https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/list/?speaker=tucker-c...
    • kelnos 5y ago
      That would probably cost taxpayers more (both in the short and long term) than just housing them and getting them mental health services.
• jterrys 5y ago
  I'm not up to date on city politics, but I had a friend that used to live in Seattle for a while. She kind of hightailed it outta there once she found a remote job because of the homelessness/drug problem. Told me people protested the museum downtown for installing architecture that made setting up homeless tents hostile, and that the city's solution to the drug problem (induced by already decriminalizing hard drugs) is to decriminalize and make drugs more available.
  • soperj 5y ago
    You say that like the war on drugs is the solution? Do you think that any of these people don't use drugs because it's a crime? It's just making their life worse.
    • iammisc 5y ago
      > It's just making their life worse. That's quite literally the point. If you talk to any ex-addict, you'll notice they all say that they quit once something that made their life worse forced them to reconsider. At some point you hit rock bottom and then can get your life together.
    • twofornone 5y ago
      As I've gotten older I've realized that there's something to be said for the discouraging effect that laws have on certain behaviors. Yes, people are still going to do drugs if they're illegal; but some proportion of the population is less likely to take the risk. Is it enough to justify the drug war? Maybe not. But I don't think it's quite as cut an dry as "legalize all drugs to end drug abuse" or "ban all drugs to end drug use". Perhaps it was only an implementation problem, and the answer lies in saner but still restrictive drug laws. There's no excuse for example for the scheduling of marijuana and mushrooms which precludes research.
      • ajmurmann 5y ago
        I recently learned that drugs have become more dangerous and more damaging not due to customer demand, but because of the war on drugs. You need to transport a lot less fentanyl than cocaine for the same effect strength. Meth also had changed to work without ingredients we have banned. This has made meth much more damaging. I wonder what things would look like if we just took the Portugal route. https://www.econtalk.org/sam-quinones-on-meth-fentanyl-and-the-least-of-us/#audio-highlights https://www.econtalk.org/sam-quinones-on-meth-fentanyl-and-t...
• bpodgursky 5y ago
  Progressives lost a "safe" city council seat (and nearly another) and the mayor. It wasn't a normal election.
  • vkou 5y ago
    The mayor, Jenny Durkan was not progressive, either in platform, or in what she did (which was mostly sit around on the sidelines) over the past four years. So, not much changed with the mayor's office.
• spoonjim 5y ago
  The primary system is so corrosive. If American constitutional government is to survive the primary system needs to end. You need to be rich or a wingnut to win a primary.
  • vkou 5y ago
    Seattle city primaries look nothing like federal congressional/presidential primaries. They are best described as two-round run-off elections, which, while not perfect, are generally preferable to first-past-the-post.
  • jdavis703 5y ago
    Biden is not particularly rich. Yet he ran against two billionaires and defeated them. Nor is he far left. Bernie Sanders, Elizbeth Warren and Mike Gravel were all substantially more left leaning.