There’s another socialist mayor in the US who just took office
Somehow, Mamdani got all the coverage, but there’s also a new socialist mayor in Seattle. That Overton Window sure has moved, especially with the younger generation:
Mayor Katie Wilson has been less specific in her proposals than Mamdani, but she also emphasizes that warm collective spirit, and talks about what Democrats see as their best topic: “affordability.”
She wants to tackle homelessness with different tactics:
During her campaign, Wilson criticized the previous administration’s “Unified Care Team,” saying it “chases them around the city at great expense to all of us.” She pointed to the JustCARE partnership, which “resolved” large encampments during the COVID emergency by providing shelter and wraparound services. Wilson pledged to restore and scale up that model.
Good luck with that. In the many years I used to spend a lot of time in Seattle (when Gerard lived there: 2006 to 20014, and then visits every few years after that), I saw the homelessness problem in that city grow enormously. Now I read that there’s been a 26 percent increase in homelessness in Seattle since 2022. And, because Seattle has been run by Democrats for over fifty years (the last Republican mayor left office in 1969), you better believe that the previous “solutions” came from the liberal side.
Now the socialists will get a chance.
NOTE: I don’t know whether you agree with me, but it seems that Seattle’s socialist Katie Wilson and New York’s socialist Cea Weaver somewhat resemble each other. Here’s Wilson and here’s Weaver.
Of course this mayor has OK’d cleaning up a notorious street filled with homeless and RV’s near Lumen Field where the Seahawks have a playoff game later today and then they will return in the next couple of weeks when the football season is over and then come this summer there are World Cup soccer matches at Lumen Field and it is a lock that these homeless around the stadium will be cleaned up again.
It is all a show. These encampments could be virtually done away permanently if they wanted to but their friends in the Homeless Industrial Complex have no interest in solving any of this when there hundreds of millions of dollars in graft available in every blue city/state.
Throw in the weird Trump grand jury woman in Georgia to the photoset with Wilson and Weaver.
Once on NPR, about ten years ago, I heard a journalist talking about how puzzling it is that Dallas and cities like it with few programs for the homeless saw reductions in homelessness and Seattle and other cities with lots of programs have more homelessness than ever.
Even when they say it out loud they can’t grasp it–when you spend money on something you get more of it.
The new Seattle mayor, like Mamdani, is a relative political outsider, doing to the Dems what Trump did to the GOP. Her opponent was a career Democrat politician who was not leftist enough for Seattle these days, they are tired of excuses for the status quo. Before being mayor she and her unemployed activist husband were literally being supported by her parents and she has little work history but leftist activism.
I’m sure their finances will start looking up.
Many years ago, the late Cathy Seipp asked a teacher of her daughter about an inane set of practices which had been adopted at school. The teacher, due to retire, offered this explanation: “That’s where we are in the cycle. I been at this so long I see the wheel just turning around…”. I think Thos. Sowell has written before about bad ideas which resurface again and again.
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What gets you about the twit now ensconced in the mayor’s chair in Seattle is that she’s 43 years old, has no children, and admits she’s into her parents for money. Her entire employment history consists of positions with minor NGOs. You have in Seattle an electorate who isn’t repelled by this.
One way of reducing the quantum of vagrancy is to (i) increase staffing on your police force, (ii) make it policy to assiduously roust people camping out in public places and pestering passers-by, (iii) establishing a tax and regulatory architecture governing real estate which does not strangle the production of rental housing and in particular allows the generation of housing for the impecunious. The leftoids in New York and on the west coast will do all the wrong things.
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Vagrancy is part of the human condition. The vagrant population is small enough that it can be cared for with private charity. What local government can supply is additional manpower to maintain order around shelters and other places where vagrants congregate. At any one time, some vagrants belong in jail or in asylums. That should be the target for public expenditure.
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The experience on the west coast is indicative of something else: the drug laws have been Chesterton’s fence. The most insistent on that point a generation ago were A.M. Rosenthal and Morton Kondracke.
Art Deco,
She has one child that is under 5 years old I believe.
Just another AWFL to bring more destruction and chaos, unexpectedly.
The new Seattle mayor, like Mamdani, is a relative political outsider, doing to the Dems what Trump did to the GOP.
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Trump was running a business with – per PrivCo – 22,000 employees. He’s taken a bath financially being in politics and seen a tremendous drop in the makings of his peace of mind. There were rough analogues to Trump among the Democratic candidates in 2020 – Michael Bloomberg, Andrew Yang, and John Delaney. You also had one who had executive experience in the public and private sector (John Hickenlooper) and another state governor with a history of appealing to red state electorates. The Democratic electorate took a glance at Bloomberg and ignored the others completely. Accomplishment is not something in which Democratic voters take an interest.
but it seems that Seattle’s socialist Katie Wilson and New York’s socialist Cea Weaver somewhat resemble each other.
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They’re both faculty brats. The faculty in our time are a social and cultural malignancy.
Washington elections are crooked as hell and fraud of every kind abounds. Comrade pinch faced commie says parents money was to help with childcare.
Every time I think it is time to leave I see something outside that I have never seen before like an eagle hovering upright like a hummingbird and actually flying backwards.
AD,
“The faculty in our time are a social and cultural malignancy.”
As a recent former faculty member, I’m not sure how to respond to this except to say you are making the mistake of painting an entire group of people with the same brush. Yes, 90% of higher ed faculty are leftists; the classic liberals retired out starting about 20 years ago. But I will probably die off soon to satisfy your need to get rid of such a cancer on society.
BTW, my two “brats” both hold finance degrees, and are quite successful; one working at Lockheed Martin. But maybe they should be ashamed that they are really faculty brats.
Your lucky if you get to watch the Cultural Marxists from afar take their cities into a train wreck.
As a recent former faculty member, I’m not sure how to respond to this except to say you are making the mistake of painting an entire group of people with the same brush.
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I hear you. Now I’m going to point out that the social dynamic among the faculty and administration generates a uniform set of institutional dispositions. There are some dissenting institutions. They’re typically small and I’m going to wager you’ll hardly find one without a faction on the faculty lobbying to make the place just like every other tertiary institution in America. OK, there are non-malevolent characters on faculties. They are, nearly always and everywhere, ineffectual. I’m pleased your children are practical.
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Art Deco,
If you’re interested in a case study, the city of St. Augustine, Florida has done an impressive job of managing their homeless population in recent years. Business leaders met with police and pointed out the existing laws on the books and how much they pay in taxes. Then the three groups got together with local churches and charities and created a system. The police enforce the vagrancy laws that were already on the books. They ask vagrants if they prefer jail, or meeting with an advocacy group to help them.? The advocacy group meets with the vagrant, helping him or her contact family if possible, and/or helping them find local charitable resources. The existing business taxes are enough to fund tickets to travel to family when possible, or drug and medical treatment programs. Many have been helped. And, of those who are not yet ready for help, they have learned that police will not allow them to camp in the streets and they will have to engage with social workers if they choose to remain.
Police, businesses and charities are working towards a common goal; keep vagrants off public streets and spaces and help those who can be helped.
Relative to the above, I grew up near a large railroad yard in Chicago. When I was a child there were “hobo jungles” adjacent to the yard where men would often camp. These were non-public, industrial areas. Had these men ventured outside of those pockets the police would have nabbed them and driven them to the city limits.
I don’t know if there were more or fewer vagrants then, but there seemed to be an unwritten agreement with them and the law that they would mainly avoid public spaces.
physicsguy, I hope that didn’t mean your cancer has returned.
Kate,
No..it hasn’t. Just didn’t like AD’s comparison to faculty being malignant. And he still had to have the last word after I acknowledged 90% of faculty are now unredemable. Sigh… Sometimes the attitudes here are hard to take.
physicsguy:
Like Kate I’m relieved your cancer hasn’t returned, and congratulations regarding your children! A job well done.
Good news, physicsguy! Don’t let one acid-tongued commenter keep you away.
‘The face you deserve’ at socialism.
They all look undernourished.
I’ll just leave it at that.
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=oXAaH6wy-Gc&si=F-QU4iukv7Q-sPav
1928 Hallelujah I’m a bum.
My mother used to sing this song, with some other verses & words.
Now I sing some of it to my grandkids.
Also the newer, better, King of the Road.
Describing, understanding, sort of normalizing, the begging bum hobo life.
“I don’t like work,
And work don’t like me…”
When you’ve got almost nothing, sharing all you’ve got is less costly. Such folk are usually more fun to visit, and happy to share any dollars you bring to their nightly live-in-the-moment party activities. Especially with some booze.
There are many teachers who seem to think bums sharing everything, equally to all around them (other bums), are better than the selfish, non-sharing folk who save, invest, get rich, but often don’t seem to enjoy life so much.
As aigents & robots produce more, there will be an increasing call to have such Morlocks take care of elite human modern Eloi, and especially take more from the super rich. Especially Musk and any who support Trump. (Soon to be anti-Vance. Will be called Vance Derangement Syndrome, but a more accurate term is Democrat Derangement Syndrome.)
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Here is a very clear and straightforward explanation of the various sections of the Insurrection Act. *
* See https://kcgop.org/washington-gun-law-can-the-president-really-invoke-the-insurrection-act/
Spanberger in VA is no prize either.
Snow on Pine, that video on the Insurrection Act was very helpful.
Thank you. Especially the part that claims the Judiciary cannot interfere once the Act has been properly invoked by the President.