Chinese president’s visit highlights Seattle hypocrisy

Local residents were well aware that Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Seattle. After all, local roadways carrying thousands of commuters were brought to a screeching halt to make way for China’s top official.

It’s something that incited ire with KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson, not only because of the traffic snarl the visit caused, but mainly because of how local officials handled the situation.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever seen greater hypocrisy from local officials than what we are seeing today and what we are expecting to see tomorrow,” Dori said.

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One only needs to look back a few months to find a prime example of that hypocrisy.

“Do you remember what happened? Inslee went nuts. Ed Murray went nuts,” Dori said. “‘We’re banning state travel to Indiana. We’re not going to do anything with the State of Indiana anymore.'”

Both Governor Jay Inslee and Seattle Mayor Ed Murray made public stances protesting Indiana’s religious freedom law that was passed in March. Both leaders banned publicly-funded travel to Indiana. The mid-west state’s religious freedom law made it possible for discrimination against gays and lesbians, or others based on religious beliefs.

At the time, Murray said that “This is a city and a state that has said ‘no’ to discrimination … laws that say you can discriminate have no place in this country.”

But as Dori points out, China is a country with plenty of human rights violations.

“You won’t allow travel to Indiana, but you will shut down every road in your city for the president of China,” he said. “How about you walk the walk with China the way you so courageously did with Indiana.”

China’s human rights violations were also pointed out by a range of protesters who greeted the Chinese president upon his arrival.

“If money is involved, then China is welcome with open arms; shut down every road. With Indiana, there was no financial downside,” Dori said.

That financial aspect was a factor Dori raised with Governor Inslee in April. Inslee responded by saying that it is reasonable to fix the problems at home instead of trying to fix all the world’s problems in a day. He further said that if Dori wanted to take on the human rights violations in China, or other countries that the State of Washington does business with, the governor would back him all the way.

“We can’t just take a day off so that your mayor and other bureaucrats around here can secure contracts with China,” Dori said.

Taking a day off is exactly what one Seattle official advised people to do in response to President Xi’s visit, illustrating yet another hypocrisy, according to Dori.

Seattle Department of Transportation Director Scott Kubly recently told Seattleites that in response to the president’s visit, his department would “encourage people to telecommute, encourage people to maybe take a day off work and run local errands. Anything that we can do to minimize the amount of people that are traveling into downtown.”

“Take a day off. Take a vacation day so that we can all pay tribute to the Chinese president’s visit. Because our jobs are all so insignificant that taking a day off is no big deal,” Dori quipped.

“The reason we have so many things screwed up around here … because you have a bunch of people who have been government bureaucrats their whole life,” he said. “For the vast majority who work in government, if you stay home from work like Scott Kubly advises, nothing grinds to a halt. For those of us that work in the private sector, we don’t have that luxury of just taking a mid-week day off so we can accommodate the visit by the Chinese president. I think Scott Kubly has no idea what it’s like.”

How is a fireman supposed to telecommute, or a waitress? Dori asked.

“That illustrates how far from the real world people like Scott Kubly are,” Dori said.

“Traffic is going to be bad, then take a day off,” he said sarcastically.