Dori: Kshama Sawant wants fewer cops, more addicts
Oct 24, 2018, 5:22 PM
(AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)
WARNING: This audio for this article includes clips from Kshama Sawant. If you are so wimpy that you can’t handle listening to the vocal stylistics of our favorite city councilmember, tune out now.
Kshama Sawant on Wednesday made a proposal to the Seattle City Council. She says we are not spending enough on drug addict vagrants in our city. Now, Mayor Jenny Durkan just came out with a budget proposal where we would spend $90 million of your tax dollars over the next three years on homeless shelters and services, which is all on top of what King County spends. And now they’re talking about spending $50,000 per homeless person per year — probably more than many of you live on — to erect these giant homeless tents.
As you know, we spend more per capita on homelessness than any other city in America. The more we spend, the worse it gets. The more we house, the more rapists, murderers, and addicts will come here from around the country. And we have had homeless rapes and murders, you know that that’s true. No matter how much we spend, no matter how much we spend on the tiny houses, we will import even more drug vagrants from around the country because the word is out — Seattle is the place to be if you’re a criminal.
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Kshama Sawant wants even more of your money, and mine, for this. She says that the taxpayers have not done enough. Because you, the taxpayers, are so greedy and selfish, that you don’t want to give even more of your money to heroin-addicted vagrants.
Her first demand is to “stop the sweeps” of homeless encampments “because they are inhumane.” Of course, in the encampment known as the Jungle, they were pimping out and raping underage girls. And Kshama Sawant has the audacity to say it is inhumane for our public officials, social service teams, and first responders to sweep up those encampments.
She next suggested not having brand-new computers in cop cars and slowing the hiring of new police officers. The war on the cops in Seattle is so distressing. The de-policing is the reason why we have so much crime on the streets. They are being prevented from doing anything to get a grip on the horrible drug and crime problem. Kshama Sawant is fundamentally anti-cop; she is a one-person party of crime. We need to get rid of the 1,300 new employees that Ed Murray hired when he was mayor and use that money to hire about 800 more cops. Boston, a similarly-sized city, has 2,200 cops; Seattle has 1,400. You could easily cut 30 percent of city staffers and the taxpayers wouldn’t feel it; they would, however, feel the benefits of 50 percent more cops.
Then Sawant says the most serious threat to public safety is the racial, gender, and income inequality in Seattle. This is what identity politics is all about. I’m going to tell people that they are victims. If there is income inequality here, it is on you to lift yourself up. Get a second job, work your way up the job ladder. You are you; you’re not some larger group. If you want to succeed, make it happen. But Kshama Sawant doesn’t believe in individual identities, she doesn’t believe in individual initiative, and she thinks that government should be the provider of all.
But wait — gasp! — there are some things in Sawant’s plan I actually agree with. She suggested cutting tolls on city streets and cutting the salaries of the mayor and council members to the area median income, and capping the salaries of city executives to $50,000 a year. I’m all for that — cut their salaries because they’re doing such a bad job of running the city. I’ve got a couple of things I actually agree with Sawant on. How remarkable is that? See, I’m open-minded. I’m don’t just reject everything she says.