Dori: Are Sawant voters alright with encampment rapes, deaths?

I have to give my sincere congratulations to Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant, who staged a dramatic comeback in the past week. She was down eight points on Election Night, but when the latest vote tallies started coming in on Friday, she stormed from behind to win.

You might wonder, why is Dori Monson congratulating Kshama Sawant, a self-declared member of the Socialist Party? It’s because she has produced some of the stupidest soundbites in local political history. In a way, I’ve enjoyed having her in office. Her reelection means I will get a few more years of the most entertaining quotes ever to use on my show. From a radio talk show host’s perspective, it’s all some consolation for the damage being done to the city.

I recognize that that is selfish and is purely about the radio show. As somebody who grew up in and loves Seattle, my heart breaks for the city. This last election has produced the most radically socialist city council we have ever had. It has moved way further left from where it was, which was already significantly far left. What that will mean is more criminals and drugs on the streets, more property crimes, and more businesses like Amazon being driven out of the city.

Jenny Durkan doesn’t do much as a mayor, so she won’t serve as much of a barrier to the radical council. Plus, the socialists on the council will have a veto-proof voting bloc now, so they’ll be able to run radical measures through. If it drives Amazon out of town, then you’ll see commercial real estate collapse, and you’ll see small businesses — especially those blue-collar businesses that provide services for Amazon, like cleaning and food services — go away.

Dori: Kshama Sawant wants fewer cops, more addicts

Sawant gave her victory speech over the weekend, in which she talked about something that has proven to be disastrous around the country — rent control. Her supporters chanted phrases like, “Rent control, rent control, make Seattle affordable.” It doesn’t even rhyme.

You know what you could do instead of mindlessly chant at a Sawant rally? You could go to your second job, your weekend job. There are plenty of them out there. Without using government to take someone else’s money to give to you, you could actually go and earn the money you need. But as I’ve explained many times, socialism appeals to losers. Instead of taking control of your life, you believe in this fantasy that government transferring other people’s stuff to you is a winning life strategy.

Disclaimer — I’m not talking about the people who can’t work, the people with physical or mental handicaps. Of course we need to provide a safety net for them. I’m talking about the people who are too lazy to work.

During her speech, Sawant was standing in front of a big red sign that said, “Tax Amazon.” She said that this election was close because of a group of people “who have been misled by right-wing ideas, who are correctly angry about homelessness and the massive crisis in our city, but are blaming the wrong people for it.” Actually, I’m one of the few who has the guts to blame exactly who deserves the blame, Councilmember Sawant. That is a prosecutor who has legalized drugs and refuses to prosecute property crimes and even some violent crimes.

Here is the greatest shame of all of these people. In the next four years, Sawant and this council will refuse to allow homeless encampment sweeps, because they believe the people in homeless encampments should be free to live that life.

Do you know what life is like for the vast majority of people in encampments?

You commit a crime at night, whether a car prowl or home break-in or armed robbery. Then you spend time selling what you stole for whatever you can get, so that you can then buy heroin and inject it. There are little girls as young as 13 who have been lured there by sex traffickers, evil pimps who recognized that these girls were already vulnerable because of a bad home life or other past traumas. These hideous monsters turn these girls into prostitutes and trap them there, all so the monsters can feed their heroin habits. So little girls are systemically raped in these homeless encampments.

How can any human being say that this should be tolerated — that we should allow little girls to be raped and homeless people to commit property crimes and to slowly kill themselves by repeatedly injecting drugs? How can you advocate for that? But Sawant’s supporters apparently do just that.

I heard lots of reports that Sawant’s supporters were doing same-day registration at homeless camps and instructing the campers to vote for her. That’s why the late votes came in the way they did. Sawant just looks at the people in these camps as a constituency.

I don’t care what kinds of soundbites she produces for the next four years. I’d gladly trade them to have someone more reasonable in office. Her reelection is distressing and sorrowful for the region.

Listen to the Dori Monson Show weekday afternoons from 12-3 p.m. on KIRO Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

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