SEATTLE NEWS ARCHIVES & FEATURES

Dori: I could run for office, fix the region’s homeless crisis

Nov 2, 2018, 3:42 PM

9th circuit court...

(AP Photo)

(AP Photo)

I had the craziest idea last night at 2 a.m. I had been doing show prep and saw a story on KOMO 4 about how the City of Seattle is looking for residents’ ideas on how to solve the homeless crisis.

To feed my competitive fire, now that I’m not coaching basketball anymore, and to continue achieving my life goals, I thought, maybe I should just run for office and finally be the one to fix this region. I know that it would be nearly impossible for someone with my ideology to get elected. But you know what? I want to show everybody and do the impossible. I could take Bob Ferguson down in the race for governor so quickly.

These problems are so fixable around here. And when the city is reaching out asking for ideas — well, I have been expressing my ideas for years now, and I know that they would work. I know I would hate a life in politics. But at some point, we’ve got to start fixing things around here because they’re busted pretty badly.

RELATED: How Dori would fix the city as mayor

The city does not want our ideas to solve the homeless crisis. The city does not want to solve the homeless crisis, and neither does the region or the state. I’ve told you a million times, they want to bring as many addicts as possible here so that they can raise our taxes and create a large base of people that is entirely dependent on government.

First of all, we’ve got to stop making it so easy for people to make being a heroin junkie their lifestyle of choice. As treatment specialists and friends who are former addicts have told me, you have to hit rock-bottom before you get help. And when we have a region that gives junkies a place to sleep and to shoot up, when the prosecutor doesn’t prosecute people for possessing drugs, when a council member wants to look into buying heroin for addicts, we make it so people can subsist not at rock-bottom, but at five- to 10-percent of the potential of life. What our region does is allow thousands of people to subsist at that level, so they don’t feel like they need to get help and turn their lives around.

What we need to do is cut the bureaucracy in the City of Seattle; we need to eliminate about 2,000 jobs. Our city is worse off than it was five years ago, before former Mayor Ed Murray added 1,300 new jobs, some of them for his friends. We could save $150 million a year by just slashing the bloated waste of city government. We could use that money to hire 800 more cops. We could give the prosecutors the jail space and additional prosecutors they need to start enforcing drug laws again. We’ve got to start re-prioritizing; we’ve got to start re-allocating.

We will start supporting our cops and allow them to start policing again. We will get rid of city leaders who call police officers murderers when they’ve been exonerated. We will stop putting emotional handcuffs on the addicts. We will stop making it so easy for them to exist without hitting rock-bottom. We have lousy people running things in our city and state who use the homeless as a handy, visible tool so they can raise our taxes. And until we start getting people in office who actually care about the people on the streets, rather than seeing them as a means to get more government money, nothing will change.

How will I pull all of this together? It will take a miracle, right? No — we’ve just got to get the word out. It’s so obvious, the truth of what I’m saying. I’d even get the far-left of Seattle behind me because they’d understand that actually changing lives instead of using desperate people for tax hikes is the right way to go.

Blue Angels...

Chris Sullivan

Want to catch the Blue Angels from a new angle? Hop on the light rail

The Blue Angels will take to the skies for Seafair, and for the first time, there will be light rail trains rolling across I-90.

8 minutes ago

President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, salute as a U.S. Army carry team move...

Associated Press

How views on Trump’s handling of Iran have shifted, according to a new AP-NORC poll

WASHINGTON (AP) — Most Americans say the war in Iran has not been worth fighting, and President Donald Trump’s approval rating on Iran has fallen slightly since last month, according to a new AP-NORC poll. The results are a stark repudiation of Trump’s approach to the conflict, which has dragged on far longer than he […]

3 hours ago

This undated photo taken and provided by Sumit Rai shows his son, Nathaniel, 10, who was the one re...

Associated Press

Father of boy rescued from pounding California surf says he is beyond grateful to teen lifeguard

The father of a 10-year-old rescued from pounding surf off the California coast in a dramatic scene captured on video says he is beyond grateful to the teenage lifeguard who saved his son. “He ran into that water despite those conditions that are deadly. You have 10 foot waves; you have riptides and currents coming […]

6 hours ago

shon barnes katie wilson seattle police chief...

Frank Sumrall

Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes fired by Mayor Katie Wilson

Shon Barnes was fired from his position as chief of the Seattle Police Department by Mayor Katie Wilson, multiple sources confirmed with KIRO Newsradio.

6 hours ago

A currency trader talks on the phone at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquar...

Associated Press

Oil prices slip and Asian shares are mostly lower as investors sell chipmaker stocks

HONG KONG (AP) — Oil prices fell Wednesday and Asian shares were mostly trading lower as South Korea’s Kospi extended its losses after falling more than 16% over the past two days. Crude prices remain volatile after the U.S. said early Thursday it had conducted a “heavy wave” of strikes against Iran, responding to an […]

7 hours ago

Associated Press

Jordanian air defenses shoot down 5 missiles launched from Iran, state-run news agency says

CAIRO (AP) — Jordan’s air defenses shot down five missiles launched from Iran Thursday morning, the spokesman for the country’s armed forces said, according to Jordan’s state-run Petra news agency. The news agency said no casualties were reported. The interceptions come after the U.S. military said it had completed “a heavy wave of strikes against […]

7 hours ago

Dori: I could run for office, fix the region’s homeless crisis