The rest of the country is still recovering from last week’s elections, and determining what the “new normal” is going to be. However, in Seattle, the lesson learned from the elections by the city council appear to be that people want bigger government and higher taxes.
Sounds like the “old normal” still prevails in the Emerald City.
At least that’s the conclusion one can draw from the news out of the liberal blog PubliCola that far-Left rich guy Nick Hanauer had joined up with the head of the big-campaign-check-writing Service Employees International Union (SEIU) to advocate for higher taxes. The pair wrote a letter “to the Seattle City Council in support of a proposal that freshman city council member Lisa Herbold is trying to add in to the budget this morning. Herbold is proposing a tiered fee tacked to business size by employee (the bigger a company, the more it pays) to create a dedicated fund to pay for the Office of Labor Standards.”
The fact that the labor standards office is already funded by the city’s general fund – and that Mayor Ed Murray has proposed more than doubling its budget to over $5 million annually – isn’t enough for the big labor types and fellow travelers like Hanauer. Rather, they want to see a dedicated tax in place to pay for the labor office – and to support “community organizations” that will charged with harassing businesses about following regulations – so that they can use the general fund money for more government spending.
All you need to know about how wacky Councilwoman Herbold’s priorities are is to consider her rational for raising business taxes, again according to Publicola. “Herbold, identifying the logical nexus between businesses themselves and the need to regulate them, would create a new dedicated fund of about $4 million a year set to begin in 2018.”
That’s right, since the city council has decided to layer regulation upon regulation onto the city’s businesses, the city should now extract money from those businesses to pay for the privilege of being ruled by such left-wing nut jobs. And to the rookie councilwoman, that’s because of “the need to regulate” businesses, a “need” decided by a collection of nine council members only one of whom has actually ever run a business.
It is so incredibly sad that this great city of Seattle’s rulers are so dedicated to trying to destroy it. In a few years as businesses shutter and we go through another recession at some point, they will be dismayed at the gutting of the city. Will the last person to leave Seattle, please turn out the lights? Remember that back in the 70’s during the great recession and Boeing layoffs? Do they think that could never happen again? This is one good reason why Washington has the 8th highest jobless rate in the nation, and why the middle class jobs are vanishing. Maybe the middle class should just up and leave them to it. It can be the rich who will have to take care of the poor with their homelessness and tent cities taking over their landscape. Let them see what happens when a city is ruled by Liberal feel good policies. When Seattle collapses, then we can come back to rebuild the city with the great potential it has. One more thing, do they think by increasing the minimum wage that is going to help? My company has already indicated no one is getting a raise at the middle class scale for the foreseeable future, because of the mandated minimum wage requirements. And does the City Counsel not understand that raising taxes on businesses only hurts the employees by reduced hours, low or nonexistent pay raises and loss of benefits like health insurance? Business owners will not take the hit, employees do and customers do. In a few years, that minimum wage hike will have the buying power of the current minimum wage because of cost increases, so what’s the point? Oh, I forgot, to make people feel better about themselves.
dear resident of Seattle, please don’t move to Spokane. any one stupid enough to vote these idiots, the word means without mind,into office is not wanted over here your politics your policies are not wanted!!!!
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