Amazon is at it once more.
In 2019, Amazon tried to purchase town council election. Their wager on right-wing candidates blew up of their faces. Now they’re at it once more. They only dropped $100,000 into the February particular election, together with $35,000 from their puppets on the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber. The massive company donor PAC has already forked out greater than half a million {dollars} in order that you can be duped into voting for Proposition 1B.
Don’t be duped. Vote YES and vote 1A.
Half 1,000,000 is some huge cash for the few individuals who present up for a February election. In fact, it’s only a February election as a result of Sara Nelson’s metropolis council overtly and egregiously violated Article IV, Part 1B of the Metropolis Constitution after they purposefully delayed it so the citizens can be smaller and simpler to buy with misleading mailers.
All this follows an unpleasant few months for Amazon and its centibillionaire founder. First Bezos overtly interfered with journalistic independence on the Washington Submit, muzzling a Kamala Harris endorsement. This was adopted by a censored cartoon that depicted Bezos and his billionaire buddies groveling at Trump’s toes with their bribes. This was after all as a result of they had been forking out 1,000,000 every (two million in Amazon’s case) to curry favor with Trump. Amazon went on to brazenly drop the largest recognized bribe on Trump to this point and this time on to the Trump household. $40 million for the rights to supply a documentary about Melania.
Why Amazon is Attempting to Purchase One other Election
What corruption has Amazon cooked as much as this time? Attempting to kill extra funding for reasonably priced housing–on this case, “social housing.”
Social housing is widespread in Europe–combined earnings, completely reasonably priced, publicly owned housing. You might recall that final yr Seattle voters handed an initiative that created a public developer devoted to constructing this type of combined, center earnings housing. This implies it is going to serve everybody from these in critical monetary straits to residence care aides, quick meals staff and supply drivers to firefighters and nurses. Beneath metropolis regulation, we needed to create the company first, and now we’re doing the funding half.
Proposition 1A would offer funding via a nickel-on-the-dollar payroll tax on cash an individual earns over $1M every year, and the primary million bucks is free yearly. Since our taxes are virtually the very worst within the nation in relation to tax charges for working individuals (very excessive) in comparison with wealthy individuals (very, very low), this needs to be a no brainer.
However virtually all the Seattle Metropolis Council is against the Democratic Social gathering’s State Platform’s demand that we repair our ugly tax code. In order that they wanted to daze and confuse us with one thing that sounds vaguely pro-affordable housing, however truly doesn’t tax the wealthy, elevate income, or actually do social housing in any respect.
Enter proposition Proposition 1B, the gaslighting choice. It’s designed to make you assume Seattle’s proper wing loves reasonably priced housing and taxes! Look, see, they wish to present $10M a yr in help and ship some good postcards to inform you about it!
A better look reveals that is BS. 1B kills the combined earnings mannequin. Even worse, in basic supervillain vogue, it takes that $10 million away from different reasonably priced housing for people who find themselves desperately poor. Per ordinary, the purpose is to pit working individuals towards each other.
Even former State Democratic Social gathering Chair Tina Podlowdoski chimed in and slammed it. If a mainstream Dem who can party-build in conservative, rural components of the state thinks you might be proper wing–possibly it’s time even moderates notice Amazon and the Chamber are enjoying them for fools.
What Amazon’s Cash Has Purchased: Fairly Postcards with Numerous Lies
The postcards they’re sending out with all this cash are mendacious and deceitful. I rapidly debunked virtually all of them on this video.
If you already know somebody who’s wavering from all of the propaganda and wishes extra–I’ve additionally gone a bit deeper into debunking their claims in a chunk with the Urbanist. I needed to additionally hit a few of their newest whoopers from the latest mailers in a chunk on Rondezvous, my semi-eponymous publication.
The important thing issues to recollect when contemplating their postal propaganda.
Social housing advocates had been at all times tremendous clear that we would have liked cash for the company, and the individuals sending the postcard know that and are brazenly mendacity about it.
The 1B backers don’t help 1B as a result of they help reasonably priced housing–they help it as a result of they hate taxes on wealthy individuals. 1B prevents new funding for reasonably priced housing. And current reasonably priced housing suppliers oppose 1B and help 1A. (The truth is, The Housing Growth Consortium (an endorser) represents 200 reasonably priced housing suppliers within the Puget Sound area–just about all of them!).
The social housing developer proudly plans to offer items for working and center class Seattle households, and this can be a characteristic, not a bug. The upper rents subsidize the rents of the lower-income households. And when the Amazon mailer claims that 3% of the items are low earnings, it’s brazenly fraudulent. The present plan is for almost all of the items to fulfill the federal definition of low earnings.
Associated – the corporates feign nice humanitarian concern for the down and out of their newest mailer (1A supplies extra housing for individuals making a bit greater than the median earnings than it supplies for individuals making 30% of median earnings–OH MY HEAVENS). They fail to say that 1B prevents a bunch of funding for reasonably priced housing, together with individuals making 30% of the world median earnings. Additionally they conveniently keep away from the truth that a lot of the social housing is for households making solely 60% – 80% of the common native earnings. That’s the bus drivers and lecturers you might be screwing over there, Jeff.
The social housing developer has a number of, rigorous layers of accountability constructed into its governance. Their hysteria a couple of “lack of accountability” from Proposition 1B’s backers is nothing greater than complaints about their incapacity to defund it via their puppets on town council, as they not too long ago did with extra deeply reasonably priced housing.
If Amazon and the Chamber had been sincere, their mailer wouldn’t say that the social housing developer has by no means constructed reasonably priced housing. It could as an alternative say, “The social housing developer is a model new authorized entity. Since it’s new, it hasn’t but produced housing, as a result of we’ve not but funded it. However that’s utterly irrelevant and we’re fools for bringing it up. As a result of that new authorized entity has employed an especially skilled chief who has an extended historical past of constructing and managing half a billion {dollars} in housing at different authorized entities.”
Any remaining doubts? Take a look at the endorsements:
Each single Democratic Social gathering Legislative District group within the metropolis. The Labor Council (tons of unions) and the Constructing Trades (extra tons of unions). Unions representing lecturers, grocery staff, UW researchers, metropolis workers, lodge staff, electricians, and a bunch extra particular person unions. Environmental organizations, human service suppliers, mainstream and lefty political teams. Inexpensive housing suppliers, companies, politicians, information organizations.
Vote Sure and Vote 1A and get ten pals to affix you.
