Paul Allen donated billions, but Kshama Sawant’s ‘donations’ boomerang
Oct 17, 2018, 2:19 PM
(AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)
Just when I thought that I couldn’t love Kshama Sawant anymore, she goes and steals another piece of my heart.
So yesterday, less than 24 hours after we got the news of the passing of Paul Allen, who gave so much to our region in terms of money, time, and effort, Kshama Sawant posted the following on Facebook:
Paul Allen was known as a philanthropist. He spent $250 million on the biggest yacht in the world in 2003; he also owned two more yachts and a fleet of private jets, several sports teams. He paid to put the Qwest Field on the ballot so that working people picked up most of the $425M tab. He spent half a million dollars to defeat the I-1098 Tax the Rich statewide initiative in 2010.”
So in other words, she decided to just rip Paul Allen in the hours after he died.
RELATED: Morally bankrupt Kshama Sawant blasts John McCain after his death
Sawant is Sawant. Like Trump, she says crazy things all the time. I’m not shocked by it — it’s just her being her. But there is a number I want you to think about: 17,170. That’s how many horrible people we have in Seattle. That is how many votes Kshama Sawant got in her last council election in 2015. Apparently 17,170 evil people voted for her.
Before you start saying, “Yes, but I didn’t know she was this bad” — you had to at least know… Remember when she suggested the workers take over Boeing so it can stop making “destructive war machine” airplanes and create mass transit instead? As if you can just flip some magic switch and go from making airplanes to buses? That was before the 2015 election.
The thing is, I bet most of those 17,170 people were smiling and nodding when they read her Facebook post. They hate capitalists.
Speaking of philanthropy, let’s talk about Kshama Sawant’s philanthropy. Remember when she declared that she would only keep the part of her salary that equals what the average worker makes, and donate the rest to social justice charities? That means she’d have to cut her council salary in more than half and donate about $60,000.
Remember a few months ago when the SCC Insight website got Kshama Sawant’s financial disclosure forms? Let’s take a minute to compare her to Paul Allen, who has given billions to charity. Kshama Sawant donated $13,800 to Socialist Alternative. Quite a generous donation. There’s only one problem — guess where Sawant’s husband, Calvin Priest, works? Socialist Alternative. Guess how much he makes? Somewhere between $10,000 and $25,000. So she donates her money to a group that then gives her husband a job and pays him what she donated. And she still gets to take a tax deduction. So she gave the money to herself. What a shining example of philanthropy.
She also gave $11,525 to a group called 15 Now, which advocates for the $15 minimum wage. Well that’s generous, right? It turns out, 15 Now and Socialist Alternative together spent about $11,000 flying Sawant and her husband — on “destructive war machine” airplanes — around the country to speak at socialist events. So everything she donated came right back to her so that she could go around the country climbing the socialist ladder with a nationwide profile.
RELATED: Where is Kshama Sawant’s decency after Barbara Bush’s death?
So the two biggest donations Kshama Sawant made last year were to … drumroll … Kshama Sawant. Yay! She’s a good person. So I can see why she would complain about the billions Paul Allen donated. She hates capitalism.