The zany subculture of Seattle requires a warm blanket and a group hug from the entire politburo of the Seattle City Council, as the despicable one upmanship game of adopting leftist public policy which is threatening to invade the realm of socialism with the ferocity of a Red Army groupthink protest.
As politics, special interests, and supposed corruption are muddled together in a toxic cocktail, producing unreasonable gun laws, proposing an unworkable corporate head tax, $34 million for two miles of bike lanes in forcing out blue collar industry, and forging an venture of homelessness to stabilize the vast pension fund for city employees, things can not get any worse? Well, only in Seattle and the wicked sister the south Portland, as a dizzying orgy of civic hedonism has brusquely replaced any reasonable function of localized government in a social experiment gone awry.
The latest stumbling and bumbling caper orchestrated by the magnificent nine and championed by the most popular international socialist voted on by a committee in Caracas, Kshama Sawant, is to slap a historical registry tag on a building downtown, and ultimately take possession of the structure without paying a dime. In other words, the dictator in training, who at one time stated publicly that the Boeing company should be poached by the public and the aerospace factory transformed into a mass transit assembly line, apparently thinks it’s okay to steal property in broad daylight, of course if it serves a purpose.
The Seattle Times reports that Sawant and the rest of the city council are attempting to extend the historic district of the iconic Pike Place Market one street to the east, in saving an aging concert hall, and potentially hindering the commercial enterprise of local businesses. What makes this scheme so diabolical and unethical is propensity of Sawant to prompt a visceral reaction among voters in rebuilding her tarnished public reputation in preparation for a reelection campaign in 2019, by appealing to nostalgic music fans. The Showbox Theater, housed in the structure, has a rich history of hosting legendary and cult status music acts from the Jazz era through Grunge, however the booming economy in the region, is responsible for a spike in costs and leases, thanks to the current fortunes of Boeing, Amazon, and Microsoft.
What makes this pending controversy even more shocking, is the energy and focus of the city council in wasting tax payer dollars to stop commercial development of a single building, when Seattle is currently enduing a self-inflicted wave of homelessness, the inability of the police department to enforce laws, a public health crises of a heroin epidemic and lack of transparency in allegedly pilfering millions to a vacuum of nothingness. Top it off with the incompetence of government to work with professional sports franchises in drafting an feasible arena deal, and the 15th largest media market in the US, cannot even coax the reestablishment of an NBA franchise.
The simple solution to this issue would be to contact the ownership group and submit a proposal to integrate a music venue featuring artifacts from the Showbox into the new development. However, in Seattle it is much more fun to whine, protest and spend the money of someone else.
Read the Seattle Times story here.