Seattle

In Seattle, people are losing patience with city leadership over the homelessness crisis, but the frustration is running in both directions: the city’s political, cultural, and academic elites are conducting their own revolt — against the people.

Since the release of Eric Johnson’s documentary Seattle Is Dying, which depicts an epidemic of street homelessness, addiction, crime, and disorder, city elites have launched a coordinated information campaign targeted at voters frustrated with the city’s response to homelessness. Earlier this month, leaked documents revealed that a group of prominent nonprofits — the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Campion Advocacy Fund, the Raikes Foundation, and the Ballmer Group — hired a PR firm, Pyramid Communications, to conduct polling, create messaging, and disseminate the resulting content through a network of silent partners in academia, the press, government, and the nonprofit sector. The campaign, #SeattleForAll, is a case study in what writer James Lindsay calls “idea laundering” — creating misinformation and legitimizing it as objective truth through repetition in sympathetic media.

There seem to be cycles in city politics. Fifty years ago a small band of Young Republicans and Young Democrats came together in an unusual alliance to overturn the existing Seattle City Council. They called themselves CHECC: Choose an Effective City Council. It took a couple of elections, but they prevailed and it was then — in the 1970s — that formerly …

Local residents are getting their first taste of property-tax hikes courtesy of Olympia this month and, in many cases, it’s shocking. According to The Seattle Times, a spokesman for the county assessor noted the 2018 boost is “the largest property-tax increase in King County in modern history.” In at least one community — Carnation — homeowners of a median-assessed-value property might see an astonishing 30 percent increase.

While middle-class Washingtonians are paying more taxes than ever, some politicians are laying the blame on the state’s “regressive” tax system. But, as is often the case, proponents of higher taxes cloak a more complete picture of state taxes and spending prioritization with emotional arguments about “inequality and fairness.” Recently, King County Executive Dow Constantine and King County Assessor John Wilson joined the debate, pressing the case in a Seattle Times Op-Ed for tax reform, even calling a proposal for a new capital-gains tax as one of “several innovative ideas.”

Donald Nielsen, Senior Fellow of Discovery Institute’s newly-launched American Center for Transforming Education, thinks it’s time Washington state puts the needs of the parents—and, by extension, the children and taxpayers—first.

Donald Nielsen, Senior Fellow of Discovery Institute’s newly-launched American Center for Transforming Education, thinks it’s time Washington state puts the needs of the parents—and, by extension, the children and taxpayers—first. Read More ›