Dori: Teresa Mosqueda wants you beholden to government
Jan 7, 2019, 5:43 PM
Amazon's headquarters in Seattle (AP)
(AP)
Even though Amazon has been such a creator of jobs and provider of tax revenue to this region, the socialist Seattle City Council despises the company because it is the epitome of capitalism. Some labor unions in New York City brought out Seattle City Councilmembers Teresa Mosqueda and Lisa Herbold to bash Amazon ahead of opening its HQ2 in New York.
The two councilmembers described the impact of Amazon in Seattle and America. First, Mosqueda called this the “most inequitable time since the Gilded Age.” Really? We’re as bad as the 1800s here in Seattle?
But then Teresa Mosqueda said something really disturbing. And the reason why people like Mosqueda are so dangerous is that there are a bunch of people who actually believe her.
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People really started to question whether or not you should be putting the [head tax] money toward government. Government is the only entity that will invest where the market won’t. And the market is not taking care of our lowest-income.
Oh my goodness. “Government is the only solution.” I’ll grant you, there are some areas where that is true — if you want to get a freeway constructed, or a (public) school built, or a park established. But she is talking about taking care of people’s lives. And I know, from personal experience, that if you rely on government for your subsistence, you become a prisoner with very limited upsides.
That was my life for my first 15 years. That’s what I was brought up to believe, as we sank deeper and deeper into poverty — that government is the provider of all. And then I figured out that it wasn’t government that was going to get me out. It was me. Government wants to help you get by just barely. Because once you start to succeed to the extent that you do not need government, you will break free from those shackles.
Our lowest-income have to take care of our lowest-income. They have to find the skills. They have to outwork their competition. They might have to work a second job. They have to lift themselves free from government, not be beholden to government. I am talking about this from real-life experience.
Then we also found out from Teresa Mosqueda why we have so many homeless here in the first place.
They are living outside because we in Seattle don’t have the resources. We are a state that has zero income tax, a state that has zero capital gains, a state that has zero corporate income tax, and we want to make sure that in Seattle, we’re stepping up and we’re asking those who’ve done the best in our city to provide just a little bit more.
Unbelievable. We spend more per homeless person than any city in the country, and likely more than any city in the world. The reason we have so many homeless is because we have so many drug addicts. The reason we have so many drug addicts is because, in both King and Snohomish Counties, we have prosecutors who have decriminalized small amounts of heroin and meth. The people of this city have voted, time and again, for low-income housing levies, for education levies, all of which, we are told, will lift people out of poverty.
Explain to me, Mosqueda, if all of these ballot measures that you’ve pushed for were supposed to help people, then why is this region getting worse? And you go to New York to trash us, to call us selfish? We are paying far more in taxes in Seattle, in King County, in Snohomish County, in Pierce County, in the entire state, than we have ever paid in our history, adjusted for inflation per capita. And you go to New York City because some labor unions are giving you this boondoggle trip, and you trash the taxpayers.
We spend more than $100,000 per year per homeless person. How much more, Teresa? You talk about how selfish we are, how we haven’t stepped up. We have spent over a billion dollars in the last decade — $100 million a year. And we’re not stepping up? No, the truth is, politicians and legal experts are bringing heroin addicts from all over the country to this region because they won’t enforce the laws.
That is despicable propaganda right there from Teresa Mosqueda in New York City, trashing the overtaxed people of this region because we haven’t “stepped up” enough.
