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October 12, 2015 at 5:41 am #828325
maplesyrupParticipantJoB, for the purposes of this discussion I don’t think why people do that really matters. It’s fine to debate their reasoning of course, but I wouldn’t discourage them from voting their conscience because it’s extra effort for the county.
What I would ask though, is at what point do the write-in votes begin to get tallied? That would be a bit scary if they weren’t ever tallied at all, wouldn’t it? Especially under the guise of it being a bureaucratic headache.
October 12, 2015 at 6:59 am #828326
JanSParticipantmaplesyrup, as has been explained…write in votes get tallied; “None of the above” votes do not get tallied, as a write in has to have a name, I believe. NOTA’s are simply ignored. They are two different things. So voting NOTA is a useless process(besides making yourself feel good)..might as well simply not vote.
October 12, 2015 at 12:52 pm #828327
redblackParticipantharold: paul schell was a democrat.
captain dave: re: JFK, how do you define “country?” i define it as a nation of people working toward common goals. that’s what his “ask not” quote means to me.
but i guess those who don’t remember might see it as a call to military service or something.
regarding all the liberals who vote to forcibly take stuff from the top 2% so that the bottom 50% can have free food and teevees:
if you’re going to argue from such an absurd and hyperbolic position, at least pretend to bring some empirical evidence that there are vast roles of people loafing off and living easy on local, state, or federal government checks.
you also might want to get out of the basement once in a while. there is a lot of industry springing up here, and calling seattle a hostile business environment is hilarious.
judging from the amount and diversity of local businesses, it appears there are plenty of small business owners who are happy to pay their B&O taxes.
but if you want a good look at what big government spending *really* looks like, look at downtown bellevue.
want to see what an unregulated free market looks like? check out aurora avenue north.
October 13, 2015 at 7:37 am #828328
captainDaveParticipantredblack: You apparently have not tried to start a business in Seattle lately. I have first hand experience doing business here for over 30 years. I have no problem paying taxes and fees when they are due–as I always have. I have a big problem with the lawless arbitrary hostility I have personally experienced in the last several years from Seattle finance and licensing officials. If Seattle is so economically diverse, why is OED spending our tax money in a vain attempt to reduce the mass exodus of traditional businesses?
Also, JFK was not a big fan of collectivism since he was fighting against communism. I think you are misunderstanding his statement. JFK was a proponent of private enterprise and capitalism. He wanted to motivate American workers and businessmen to innovate and competitively out produce the rest of the world.
October 13, 2015 at 1:00 pm #828329
redblackParticipantwhat does “doing business” mean? as a business owner?
i’ve “done business” here for 20 years – as a consumer and an employee. i’ve worked for businesses large and small, all of them local, all union shops.
i also don’t know what you mean by “traditional business.” people earn money. they spend it. businesses compete for those dollars. they pay employees/themselves. lather, rinse, repeat.
i know we’ve drifted off topic, but this sounds like one of the most collectivist phrases ever written:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
never forget that kennedy was a liberal, no matter where the soviets parked their nukes.
October 13, 2015 at 3:11 pm #828330
KenParticipantI have worked as an election observer and as a election worker in the days before all mail ballots. Unless something has changed, writing nota on all write-in lines is considered a spoiled ballot.
But go for it. The more Republicans and Libertarians that disenfranchise themselves the happier I am.
And thanks to all the reasonable people who argue with them in this forum. I have decided not to try and release any from the ignorance they obviously have worked so hard to acquire. I appreciate those of you who continue to try for the sake of those young people who have not had their critical thinking skills entirely removed by the education warehousing complex.
October 13, 2015 at 4:50 pm #828331
JoBParticipantKen.. i miss the days when you used to post more often
October 13, 2015 at 7:35 pm #828332
captainDaveParticipantredblack: Doing business as a small business owner is much more difficult in Seattle today than it ever was. Just go try to get licensed and permitted for something and you will see what I mean. Seattle bureaucrats have worked to create enormous barriers to just about everything. Small businesses are the foundation of prosperity in this country. Seattle bureaucrats no longer welcome small business with the exception of a few specific categories that directly support the big businesses that are here now (mainly Amazon, Microsoft and government). We all know how well that worked out for Detroit.
Liberty is not collectivism. Collectivism is for the good of the many (Marx). Liberty is for the good of the individual (Jefferson). Nearly ALL Seattle politicians and candidates in recent years are very light on individual liberty and very heavy on collective “group think” which produces progressive feel-good solutions for the masses that hurt individuals. NOTA at least marks a voters name as “present” in the election process so that a person cannot be criticized later for not participating if they choose to run for some position in the future.
Ken: It seems to me that it would be election fraud for ballets market NOTA to be thrown out. But since Seattle is so tightly controlled by corporatized leftists, I suppose anything is possible.
October 14, 2015 at 12:32 am #828333
redblackParticipantcaptain dave: thanks for the dialogue. this keeps the gray cells limber.
you dodged (or misread, in fairness) the question of whether or not you are, were, or will be a business owner in seattle. i’m just curious about your experiences with the bureaucracy. whatever they are, i glean that you think the financial cost is too high.
as i drove – not biked – through the junction to work this morning, i thought about this conversation, and i noted the diversity of businesses there. you can buy anything from a pizza to guitars to cocktails to furniture to electronics to world-class beer to art… and most of them are successful small businesses. there are also mechanics and small banks and construction firms and massuses and retail or service of almost any kind within a 10-block radius.
so that’s my empirical evidence that seattle, and west seattle in particular, are not hostile to business. SODO, capitol hill, columbia city, and georgetown are booming, too. so is south park.
what is unsustainable here? as long as people have jobs at those places or amazon or boeing or shipping or the fed/armed services…
the local economy is huge. and all without the “benefit” of giant, multi-national, low-wage, non-union, no-benefit-paying, welfare-generating, resource-eating employers. like wal-mart.
sure, we have big employers. but you have to admit that seattle’s zaibatsu – microsoft, amazon, boeing, sbux, UPS, tom douglas, vulcan, costco – are benificent. and local.
as all you independent-minded conservatives love to lament, this hasn’t been the work of conservative politicians.
but as we on the left love to lament, we, the people, aren’t being served by our “liberal” government. all of that business should be generating a lot of tax revenue progressively and paying for our pie-in-the-sky liberal wet dreams. like publicly-owned cheap broadband. city-wide grade-separated light rail. first-class smart grids. water taxis to everywhere.
where we agree, captain dave, is that it’s time for changes. unfortunately, we’re probably looking for them in opposite directions.
oh, last thoughts…
liberty is for everyone. even businesses. but the worst players in business have no interest in the collective. the community. the family. they’re only interested in their liberty to rip someone off with as few legal ramifications as possible.
and it disturbs me that some of my fellow
americans are more interested in those bad players’ rights than mine.
October 14, 2015 at 6:49 pm #828334
captainDaveParticipantredblack: Yes. I started business in Seattle in 1983 providing industrial design, engineering and marketing development services to a variety of local manufactures. By the mid 90’s I had eight employees most of whom were making a salary equivalent to mine with full benefits. By the late 90’s I was pursuing my own technology products in the digital imaging industry where we successfully raised 3.5 million and hired 35 employees in Seattle. Then 9/11 happened and the dynamics of the industry changed. Since then, I have been involved in apparel production, maritime services, publishing, food, heritage preservation and founding non-profits.
Perhaps you remember the FarmBoat Floating Farmer’s Market at South Lake Union? This project taught me the most about how hostile our local government has become towards small businesses. My wife and I lost two years and most of our savings fighting the City over arbitrary false charges of not garnishing wages of a person we never employed. We found out that the whole thing was done to help Amazon eliminate our weekly community venue where they believed their employees could be approached by recruiters. The charges were dropped, but since that time, I have been fighting for the right to have an unencumbered City business license due to bureaucratic stigma of being documented as an “illegal employer”. If you’re really interested, just search “FarmBoat Parking Tickets” to learn the sorted details.
So currently, I am essentially blacklisted from doing business in Seattle until I can be completely absolved of the liability for the false bureaucratic claims. Everything I have worked on for the last seven years is largely on hold for legally doing anything in Seattle. That means instead of doing things that provide opportunity for people to be employed, I am paying to store our boats and equipment in hopes that I can eventually do business here again. I know many other entrepreneurs who have encountered similar abuses from Seattle bureaucrats. Most have either left or took early retirement.
You say that you can physically see all the diversity of Seattle when you drive down California Ave. This is a small token of what economic diversity used to be in Seattle. I know because I was there in the middle of it for three decades. The biggest variable that has changed is that we have a lot more government today than ever–and it has only resulted in INCREASED economic inequality because opportunity has been largely erased for all but the deepest pockets.
There is no candidate in the City council race that does not ultimately want to take from the working poor to give to the entitled poor. Seattle politicians will continue their protectionist policies to further enhance the elite and political classes through monopolistic and tyrannical ideologies until enough people figure it out.
Regarding Liberty: You seem to have a very academic marxist view of business. Consider that a healthy free market economy has always proven to deliver the highest level of economic prosperity and freedom to the broadest range of people. “Give a man a fish and feed him for a day (socialism) or ALLOW him to fish and feed him for a lifetime (free market capitalism)”.
October 14, 2015 at 9:59 pm #828335
JoBParticipantcaptain dave..
it sounds like you have the basis for a good lawsuit… so sue the city of Seattle
October 14, 2015 at 10:03 pm #828336
JoBParticipantcaptain dave..
” Consider that a healthy free market economy has always proven to deliver the highest level of economic prosperity and freedom to the broadest range of people. “
Gosh that sounds good.. the trouble is that our markets have never been free markets… so there has never been a free market economy to deliver that highest level of economic prosperity and freedom to the broadest range of people..
in fact.. the highest level of economic prosperity and freedom in this country has been achieved through substantial tariffs and unionized labor…
but heck.. don’t let a little thing like history get in the way of a good sound bite.
October 14, 2015 at 10:52 pm #828337
dobroParticipant“Give a man a fish and feed him for a day (socialism) or ALLOW him to fish and feed him for a lifetime (free market capitalism)”.
Hmmm…the way I heard it is “give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day-teach a man to fish and he’ll sit in a boat and drink beer all day”. :)
October 15, 2015 at 1:57 am #828338
redblackParticipantcaptain dave: i did google your story and i’m really sorry that you have to endure this. i can see why you might feel like you’re the subject of a witch hunt.
but, from an outside observer’s point of view, it sounds more like a misunderstanding than a vendetta… much less a bolshevik plot.
nonetheless, i’ll concede that the government is at fault here.
however, i assure you that neither i nor any of my liberally-voting friends wish ill will on any small business owner. of any kind. ever.
i also assure you that none of us working stiffs wants to create a “socialist utopia” where no one but jeff bezos, paul allen, and howard schultz has a job – let alone that we want to wring every nickel from their asses so that we can have free food and obama phones.
it’s just not the case, and this country won’t change until you stop believing that we, the people on the left, want to tax our way to prosperity.
to conclude (because i’m beat down from a rough day at building a new SPS school) you’re kind of proving my point:
this town is run by big money and developers. not marxists.
again, thanks for the conversation. maybe this is how we begin to understand and talk to one another as americans divided by special interests.
October 15, 2015 at 7:44 am #828339
captainDaveParticipantJoB: We filed a 236 page complaint against the City in State Superior Court with fifteen counts of State and Federal statute violations. The City Attorney jobbed the suite out to a major litigation firm that didn’t bother to answer our complaint. Instead, I received threats that forced me to withdraw the suite. Lawyers told me the City was going to burry my wife and I in prolonged and disingenuous litigation to hide their lawless behavior. I learned first-hand that our City is now run by executive fiat, not laws.
I don’t understand your claim that there have never been free markets? Maybe you are referring to pure laissez faire capitalism? If so, I agree. Anti-trust laws have allowed the government to sustain free markets by preventing monopolies to evolve for most of the last century. (Until recent decades anyway). What country do you think did a better job of providing individual prosperity to the largest percentage of people over the last century?
Dobro: I like your analogy because it emphasizes what has happened in our liberal education system. :)
redblack: The legal proceedings to extract money from my wife and I went on for ten months. The explicit communications ended any possibility of a misunderstanding in the first week. I also know who the bureaucrat is that started the situation and have learned that it is common practice to lean heavily on businesses they personally deem as “undesirable”.
I understand that most liberals really do enjoy having choices in the marketplace and are eager to support small businesses. However, running a small business means that you have to keep expenses and revenues in balance. Our local government is 99.9% focused on increasing management, employment, regulatory, and taxation expenses.
Most conservative people I know are not rich and they certainly don’t want people to be enslaved by mega corporations and Wall Street banksters. Conservatives, by and large want to empower individuals to prosper by their own efforts instead of having to rely on a bloated and failing government that can’t afford to keep it’s promises. Keep in mind that anti-trust legislation was started by Republicans who fought against monopolies. Healthy competition for labor is what lifts all boats on a rising tide.
The elected and appointed “marxists” in Seattle are funded by “big money and developers” in the same way cities in Russia and China have copacetic relationships with favored monopolies. “Pay to play” is one of the most frequent terms used by our fat and happy bureaucrats.
I appreciate the dialog too. I think that most Americans have more in common than not at the end of the day. Politically, I was middle of the road up until recent years when I really started to pay attention to the big picture. The direction our government is going is unsustainable by their own admission (GAO). Over regulation and debt will likely fundamentally transform this city and country into something none of us will enjoy.
October 15, 2015 at 9:16 am #828340
JanSParticipantactually, Dave…it was a suit,not a suite…
October 15, 2015 at 2:01 pm #828341
JoBParticipantCaptain Dave
can you see the irony?
you support the idea of a free market by applauding the antithesis of free market..
a monopoly
a market doesn’t get any more closed than that
October 15, 2015 at 4:07 pm #828342
captainDaveParticipantJoB: Where do you see that I advocate for monopolies? Perhaps you misread my statements. I absolutely oppose the idea of monopolies because you can’t have sustainable free markets with autocratic private control. I have advocated for anti-trust laws many times in the forums over the last couple of years. Our politicians have brought us full circle back to the 1880’s when a small number of corporations ruled many markets. None of the City council candidates have addressed anti-trust issues. “As long as the money’s flowing, it’s all good”–until it’s not.
October 15, 2015 at 4:35 pm #828343
JoBParticipantperhaps i misunderstood…
but the fact remains..ours has never really been an open market..
not even within these United States where we give subsidies and tax breaks to the larger players in the industry while penalizing the smaller.
someone has always had an advantage..
October 16, 2015 at 1:41 am #828344
redblackParticipantjo: that’s what the boston tea party was all about. :)
October 16, 2015 at 10:21 pm #828345
JTBParticipantcaptainDave, It’s helpful to know about your terrible episode with the City bureaucrats. I appreciate how that would create the broadly negative view you have of Seattle city government.
However, it’s not clear to me how much of your general political perspective has been shaped by that experience and how much was set before then.
For example:
“Conservatives, by and large want to empower individuals to prosper by their own efforts instead of having to rely on a bloated and failing government that can’t afford to keep it’s promises.” That’s doubling down on a conservative them which assumes the only alternative or opposing view is that of somehow relying on a failed government. In truth, progressive believe the alternative guiding principle is that of shared responsibility.
then
“Healthy competition for labor is what lifts all boats on a rising tide.” We do not have healthy competition for labor so wages have stagnated while new wealth has flowed to the small number of boats riding on the rising tide of increased productivity.
I believe it would be more accurate to say that a healthy distribution of new wealth lifts all boats on a rising tide. That’s what history seems to indicate.
October 16, 2015 at 10:26 pm #828346
waynsterParticipantOctober 17, 2015 at 4:11 am #828347
JTBParticipantcutting to the chase waynster. I like it.
October 17, 2015 at 7:55 pm #828348
captainDaveParticipantJTB: While my ordeal with the City confirmed things I had learned from other people in small businesses, I have always been of the mindset that government should be “of”, “by”, and “for” the people–not the other way around. I have also always believed that “People” in the context of our state and federal constitutions are defined by the bill of rights as individuals and not a communistic collective. Perhaps my viewpoint goes against the grain of certain Seattle bureaucrats?
“In truth, progressive believe the alternative guiding principle is that of shared responsibility” Shared responsibility sounds great in theory, but it has not proven to be a sustainably productive way to run a society because it goes against human nature. People will always want to slough off responsibility to someone else if they can. Incentivized personal responsibility is far more sustainable through individual reward.
One of a billion examples: For decades, both Russia and China had shared responsibility in food production. “The people” collectively owned the land and resources, yet few were willing to work hard enough and creatively enough to produce what they needed to survive. Privately owned farms in the US (with one-tenth the labor per acre and a fraction of the land) produced enough surplus to feed not only our society, but every communist society on earth. The communists got smart and started giving personal responsibility and productivity rewards to individual farmers–and food production “magically” soared.
“We do not have healthy competition for labor…” — I totally agree with this. It is a conundrum. Do we accept the status quo of increased domination of mega corporations in Seattle or do we deregulate so that a free market can do the work of driving up wages through demand? I prefer the latter because it has automatic adjustments for inflation and causes employers to value individual employees more–and treat them nicer. I am so tired of hearing from Amazonians that hate their jobs, but see no other choices for employment.
“Wealth” is a perception of value. When people are given wealth that was earned by others, then it is not valued as earned wealth. You actually destroy the very essence of wealth when you forcibly try to redistribute it. Seattle invests more in the so-called “war on poverty” than ever and it has only resulted in increased poverty. On the other hand, our politicians (both right and left) have allowed vast wealth to be transferred upward to a handful of banksters and monopolistic corporations.
“Trickle down” only works if there is a system for it to trickle down through. Government imposed barriers against small business works like impermeable clay to hold wealth at the top. The robust hammers used to curb abuses of big corporations inadvertently burden small businesses to a point where they are legislated out of existence.
Seattle politicians have a one-size-fits-all attitude about business. Permits, fees, licenses, and penalties (which have increased exponentially) are largely the same whether you are a sidewalk vendor or Boeing. What is so progressive about that? It is actually extremely regressive as it widens the gap between those who can and those who can’t afford to go into business and compete for employees. So far, it doesn’t look like any of the morons running for City Council want to address the government barriers that cause inequity.
I will change my NOTA vote to the first person who advocates a reduction in permits, fees, licenses and penalties for start-up businesses. We urgently need to get more active “capitalists” in Seattle so that we have a healthy diversified economy.
October 18, 2015 at 6:37 pm #828349
JTBParticipantcaptainDave,
This country is a demonstration of the effectiveness of shared responsibility as a guiding spirit in that the admirable features characterizing this society were accomplished through people acting together to provide the things that benefit us all: roads and bridges, an education system, a legal system, a strong economic system, dams, sewers, and a power grid, agencies to monitor health and sanitation, water quality, weather, etc. Until recently, military service was more of a shared responsibility in more ways than simply funding; that’s changed in my opinion to our collective detriment since fewer people have less skin in the lethal game,
It’s telling that you still advance the argument for market fundamentalism when it has been soundly disproven in reality. It’s not a conundrum that wages have stagnated for decades for the middle class. It’s been a steady transfer of wealth accomplished through tax policy and deregulation of the financial services industry and made easier by the systematic undermining of organized labor.
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