Re: 1631
I have no love lost for those on the anti-side of things but tell me what an average person pay in a year? I'm a big boy, I will gladly pay my share to help the environment. Like, how much extra will I pay for gas in 2020 when it goes into effect? Just give me a rough estimate and don't hide behind numbers so nebulous that they have no impact on a regular Washingtonian.
It's one of those things liberals ignore while complaining about other regressive taxes. Like the soda tax. Sure, it's good for people to drink less soda - but not everyone understands that - some folks are living in situations of pure shit where they have no idea these ballots exist, but they do know that coke and everything else is getting more expensive, and that Big Mac meal got more expensive and so on. It directly impacts people who don't even know about it, based on well-intentioned voting by people like us.
Where we need to get to is a situation where soda doesn't need to be taxed, because a single mom with no time to raise her kids properly, is able to send them to a great public school where her kids end up knowing better than she does. That's how societies grow and become more sophisticated and healthier and smarter. That's how things worked in Scotland when I was a kid. I went to public schools that taught us classics and music and art and civics and the government paid for my college AND my rent while I was learning. And I paid less tax as an adult there than here AND had free NHS healthcare. But here in Seattle, and WA generally we barely paid for education at ALL in the last few years, let alone improving it where it needs to be improved.
Meanwhile, Eastside public schools are among the best in the country and their coffers and stadia are improved and embellished and gilded by donations from generous and
liberal and well-off Microsoft and Amazon and Google and Boeing parents who don't really have to worry about private schools, because the government funded ones
there, are so stable and well-funded. That's not always true in Seattle, and as soon as you go north, south or east of Issaquah, shit's all over the place, and poor people as usual get shat on by circumstance and local politics.
It's all fucked. And city politics are a wasteland. Homelessness is now being used as a political tool by the LEFT. You'd think it would be non stop GOP clowns complaining about it, but we're creating a massive addiction crisis matrix, encouraging addicts and their enablers to set up shop here, because there is an underground community where their addictions and poverty and horrible circumstances, can be a hair better than Portland, or Twisp, or Everett and sure, from here - but the moral crowbar is used to make people feel guilty about complaining that maybe, just maybe, the cops should prioritize heroin dealing, instead of being the de facto rescue unit for overdoses. They can't like it. Our PD has plenty of issues on its own, but being told to use kid gloves is finally having an effect and it's visible at every freeway on-ramp. And I don't mean a panhandler, like you'd occasionally see in 2005. I mean tent cities.
They need to triage soon. I've had my car prowled so many times I just leave it unlocked. I've found people on my property, I've heard folks checking my front fucking door at 2am. I'm tired of pussyfooting around the issue of dealers and addicts because it might be offensive to a single mom who can't afford rent. The irony is that the way to help her as a phenomenon, is to start working on the ugly shit we've let fester through guilt, inaction and well-meaning but destructive help and encouragement.
Folks often cite a survey that "proved" most of these folks were from King County already, but the data and methodology were laughable. We need to get data and start getting rid of the dealer safety net that's under most of the crime - and then we can get to the real estate aspect.
BTW I am a hand-wringing peacenik liberal empath, recycler, gun safety campaigning, trans-advocating, GOP detesting hippy. But this thing in Seattle is not sustainable.
And meanwhile, my doc still occasionally tries to prescribe opiates for my chronic but manageable pain. They haven't even fixed that shit. Pharma absolutely WRECKED a generation or two, with no serious repercussions even to this day.
Anyway, rant over. I know there's a hugely complex series of homeless problems - but I am complaining about this one.
