SEATTLE NEWS ARCHIVES & FEATURES
Dori: Seattle council text messages show they only care about holding power
Sep 19, 2018, 5:50 AM
The Seattle City Council repealed the controversial head tax on business just weeks after passing it. (AP)
(AP)
The Seattle Times has obtained copies of text messages between Seattle council members ahead of the head tax repeal. What these texts reveal is how we have a bunch of politicians with no compass whatsoever.
They wanted the head tax against Amazon and 600 other major employers because they thought it would get them a bunch of money to control. And if they have money to control, they have power, and if they have power, they can feel like a big deal.
In the texts, the Seattle City Council members do some internal polling and find out that the public is overwhelmingly against the head tax. Then they’re sending these panicked texts to each other saying, “The people don’t want this, so we’ve got to pull our support, or it might hurt us in the November 2019 elections.”
If you’re a decent human being in politics, you do something because you evaluate it and decide it’s the right decision, and you do it regardless of political consequence. Most everybody on the Seattle City Council has no compass; they are nothing but pure political animals. They supported the head tax until they realized it was going to hurt them politically.
The possible exception to all this is Councilmember Kshama Sawant. She is wrong on just about everything, but she doesn’t do things to be popular. She does things because in her skewed world view, she thinks they’re the right way to go about politics. And she doesn’t flip-flop because a poll goes the wrong way.
The documents that the Times obtained also show there were five council members who were going to draft a statement to support keeping Ed Murray as mayor, even when there was mounting evidence alleging he was a child rapist. It shows you how soullessly, exclusively political this city council is. They do not care about right from wrong; they only care about their political futures.
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