Rantz: Why Bernie Sanders baselessly blames Seattle homelessness on Amazon

That old, white, cis-gendered straight bro who wants to be the Presidential candidate for the woke Democratic party is blaming Seattle homelessness on Amazon. There’s a reason for us to expect more of this nonsense: He recently hired a Seattle progressive to run his digital campaign.

Seattle Progressives exploded when they heard conservatives on radio, TV

On Twitter this week, Sen. Bernie Sanders claims we have an “oligarchy” in Seattle, which is directly to blame for our area’s homelessness problem. He Tweeted: “Amazon used its enormous wealth and power to kill a tax to build affordable housing in Seattle. One year later, thousands of people live on the streets, and the city continues to struggle with the crisis.”

Sanders also links to a Bloomberg article claiming “Amazon led the tax rebellion.” It did not.

It’s a position only a clueless outsider would hold, and it’s pushed by progressive activists driven by their demonizing of Amazon as an evil, greedy business. And though he spends no time in Seattle, Sanders should know better.

His new director of digital is Ansel Herz, former Stranger columnist and Rep. Pramila Jayapal’s deputy communications director. That makes Sanders’ Tweet especially nefarious.

The job killing head tax wasn’t killed by Amazon; it was killed by devastatingly low voter popularity. The people didn’t want it.

Despite Amazon’s opposition to the tax on employees, it passed. But then voters, who were never in favor it, started to gripe publicly, and there was a grassroots effort (yes, with some business support, including from Amazon) to bring the issue to vote. Facing a costly and inevitable defeat, the Council repealed the tax.

From the Seattle Times:

[Councilmember Lisa] Herbold said she lost hope over the weekend after seeing poll results and talking with advocates. Better to retreat now rather than see voters cancel the tax in November after a bitter, monthslong struggle, she said.

But Progressives will have you believe that the all-powerful, all-greedy Amazon wasn’t able to kill the head tax the first time around. Sure.

Herz knows this. He likely wrote the baseless tweet on behalf of Sanders. The campaign knows the majority of his capitalist-hating base doesn’t know what happened on the ground here in Seattle.

So what’s a little revisionist history to fan the flames of hate against a company that built our current economy and continues to give back to actually fight homelessness?

And the irony shouldn’t be lost on anyone: It’s the progressive policies that have led to the homelessness crisis. Policies that Sanders promotes.

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