Dori: Deconstructing the word salad of Durkan’s State of the City quotes

I have never felt better about Seattle. When I was growing up, it was a real dump. But over the last few years, they have turned this into the glittering city on the hill. And listening to Mayor Jenny Durkan explain how they’ve done it in her 2020 State of the City address, it sounds so easy. I don’t know why other cities don’t run things the way she does.

The more she tries to convey sincerity, the phonier it sounds. It reminds me of Elizabeth Warren on a national scale. She utterly failed to convey sincerity, and now she is losing in the polls.

Let’s take a closer look at some of Durkan’s quotes about her accomplishments from the last year.

“We eliminated fines in our libraries so that income would never be an obstacle to knowledge.”

If you were too irresponsible to return a book that you had promised to return, you’re now covered. Our property taxes were raised so that we can pay the library fines of the irresponsible among us. It’s like Durkan uses a word salad in her State of the City. It’s as if she has these words on dice — equity, justice — and whatever word she rolls is what she spews out.

Dori: Jenny Durkan’s 2019 State of the City promises more Freeattle

“While others talk about providing new opportunities for young people and preventing crushing student debt, we acted. We gave two free years of college to every public Seattle high school student.”

There is no such thing as free college. Free college is just people paying for other people’s kids to go to college. There is nothing free about it, but they get away with this. If you control language, you control thought. Very few in the media push back against this, so we have to keep reminding everyone that nothing is free.

“In a region as prosperous as ours, everyone should have access to safe and affordable housing. That’s why we have focused so much energy and action on our homeless and housing crisis.”

Housing is not a right. Our rights are enumerated in the Bill of Rights. If you are a heroin addict and you have been offered help, but refuse it — if you have chosen to make your lifestyle a cycle of stealing, selling what you steal, and using it to buy drugs — you have a right to housing, according to Jenny Durkan and her bizarre worldview. That is just not so. I believe we should provide help to everyone who wants help, but if you have made breaking the law your lifestyle of choice, you should not have other people pay for your housing. Unfortunately, this is a growing mentality around here.

If Durkan truly believes everything should be divided up equally, she should sell her multi-million-dollar Lake Washington mansion and give the money to heroin addicts. But she doesn’t want to do that. She wants us to do that for her so that she can feel noble for imposing that on us.

“In Seattle, we know talk is cheap. Being progressive actually means making progress — and we have done it. And this year, we have a duty to keep doing just that.” 

What does that even mean? Talk about a word salad.

“At a time that the federal government has walked away from its responsibilities, cities need more support for public safety, behavioral health, and homelessness. Fortunately, legislators in Olympia have been working on a bold idea — a progressive business tax.” 

That is revolutionary. I’ve never heard a Democrat suggest a tax before.

We have one of the best economies in decades. Family incomes are growing. We are seeing wage growth. We are seeing the resurgence of blue-collar jobs. We’ve seen that reducing legislation on business has had this miraculous effect.

We are already spending $100 million a year on homelessness. I’ve run the numbers, and there is zero correlation between spending money and solving homelessness. We can spend $10 billion, and as long as we don’t prosecute heroin use, we are going to attract more and more drug addicts and crime to the area. There is no amount of money that can overcome the idiocy of leftist politics around here.

“You cannot have true public safety without justice and equity.” 

Again, this is a State of the City word salad. We see no manifestation of justice and equity when we look out our front doors and office windows. There is nothing to suggest that we are closer to justice and equity because their policies are impossible to reconcile in a real world.

This is not just a Seattle issue. This is regional. This is something that has been so pervasive throughout Dow Constantine’s King County and Jay Inslee’s Washington state. Everything she says is about Seattle, but it also applies to your government wherever you live. It is a regional attitude that we are talking about right now.

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