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New Dispatch from the People’s Republic of Seattle
News today about a Seattle institution abandoning its downtown Seattle location over “crime concerns.” Bartell Drug has been a local institution for over 100 years; it is closing its downtown store because it can no longer afford to stay open. It will pay rent on its location even after the store closes. Street people are wreaking havoc with the central city. The Third Avenue location is in an especially fraught area, with near continual reports of assaults and property damage. And this is kitty-corner to Benaroya Hall, the home of the Seattle Symphony and the Seattle Chamber Music Festival.
Then, another story of a burglary gone wrong just a few blocks away from the doomed Bartell’s. This would be funny if it weren’t so ugly.
And another story, of the Seattle City Council, “amending” the mayor’s proposed ordinance cracking down on the many dilapidated RVs around town, harboring various street and near-homeless people. I often wonder how the people of Seattle can keep electing these clowns. But they do.
I was born and raised in Seattle, but it is certainly no longer my city.
Published in General
Seattle was always a hippy-dippy leftist place and it always had homelessness but it was always cool. The Chinese restaurants were amazing and the music scene was great. I hung out there from time to time with my grandparents and always had fun. No I’m worried that much of the left coast won’t be cool anymore the businesses and institutions that are the lifeblood of my communities will break down and much elsewhere. It looks doubtful that I’d want to take my family there on vacation in the next few years. I want Seattle back.
It’s a shame when something you love dearly gets destroyed by liberalism, whether it’s a once-great city, an organization like the Boy Scouts, or sports. They make life even more miserable by requiring everyone to have a political position on everything.
The world would be better off if they all got together and formed their own country, but that’s not in their playbook. They have to destroy everyone else’s country, and they’re doing it here one city and one state at a time . . .
That’s the key. You can’t change things until a majority of voters have finally reached their level of tolerance and want things to change more than they want their overall preferred politicians ideologically elected. New Yorkers were already fed up with the declining quality of life that started in the mid-1960s a decade later, and elected Ed Koch, but they weren’t all-in on change at the moment.
Koch was the most moderate Democrat in the field in 1977, which included batshirt crazy progressive Bella Abzug, but while he was willing to push back against people like her, he wasn’t willing to go all the way against the other entrenched ideas and pols the party had in the city. So after about 5-6 years of stabilizing the decline, it resumed its downward spiral by the mid-1980s, and it took the election of Giuliani and both his and a majority of the voters’ willingness to blow up the status quo that changed things around.
As long as Seattle voters only want to tinker around the edges and continue to believe that simply rearranging the progressive deck chairs on the Titanic will solve the problem, they’re just going to keep electing progressive politicians who put fidelity to their ideology over real-world solutions that work. That only changes when enough voters simply can’t tolerate the low quality of life anymore, and are willing to at least temporarily abandon their own ideology to try something different.
I dunno – a hand held Pac Man video game as a burglary tool is pretty darn funny!
And then what happened? I never understand why when a conservative comes in and straightens things out, the voters eventually go back to the old ways that caused the problems in the beginning.
Man returneth to his stupidity as a dog returneth to his vomit.
Bloomberg continued the law enforcement part of the Guiliani reforms and was OK on the budget, even though he was a nanny state gun grabber. That meant by 2013 there were teens who could vote in NYC who were never alive when the official Democratic candidate was mayor of the city.
Combine that with move-in progressives and there were/are too many liberals who have no memory of what kind of crap-hole their ideology creates. The result 20 years down the line is Bill de Blasio, and the start of the regression to the bad old days.
I will start tomorrow in a new position as chaplain at the Men’s Shelter of Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission. I could look at the trends as job security. (I would appreciate prayers of all inclined to do so.)
Mr. Scrubb, it’s past time for another Seattle-area meetup. Are you a member of the Pacific Northwest Ricochetti group? If not, please join. There will be a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar in the Seattle area in April, and I’ll be organizing some sort of meetup around that. And, we are going to be hosting our famous Holiday Open House and Chili Party in December too. Best wishes for your new job.
@rushbabe49 Just joined Pacific Northwest group.
I, too grew up in Seattle. I left in early 1990 and I can barely recognize the place anymore.
loveelsy.com
Officers booked both suspects into the King County Jail and seized their burglary tools, including a crowbar, rubber gloves, a lock pick kit, binoculars – and a hand-held PacMan video game.
I always bring one on my heists.
Not only do the blue state voters fail to connect the dots between the horrible conditions around them and the far left politicians they elect, when they get so disgusted with those conditions that they move to a red state they promptly set about electing the same far left politicians in their new home. Their brains (and I use the word loosely) just do not work.
Seattle is the West Coast Balmer.
@RushBabe49 – Sure wish you could vote in our upcoming Seattle city council race. It’s a real challenge to try to rid ourselves of some of these crazies, particularly when the Dems rush downtown to register the homeless and tell them how to vote. I live in District 5 and am doing everything I can to get ride of our lousy representative. They mayor just came out with her new budget today. Wow! Look at how it compares with comparable cities around the country:
City of Seattle, WA: Population 744k, Annual Budget: $6.5B ($8.7k per person)
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City of San Jose, CA: Population 1m, Annual Budget: $3B ($3k per person)
City of Austin, TX: Population 964k, Annual Budget: $4B ($4k per person)
City of Denver, CO: Population 716k, Annual Budget: $2.4B ($3.3k per person)
City of Boston, MA: Population 694k, Annual Budget: $3.5B ($5k per person)