Using the Maga playbook again, airing grievances about what the voters decided. No one gives a shit if Sara Nelson wouldn't be popular in the previous council. Perhaps doing a deep dive on why the council was mostly voted out rather that trying to avenge it will work better for your cause. You might be "woke" in a philosophical sense but you are not awake in the literal sense.

"In one of Nelson’s first acts as president, she fired the head of central staff, Esther Handy, who had a progressive background, and replaced her with the director of the City’s Office of Economic and Revenue Forecasts (OERF), Ben Noble, a proponent of fiscal austerity."

As explained if you click through to the source of the linked article, "someone needs to give Ben Noble a medal for nailing the 2021 revenue forecast last November, in a crazy, unprecedented time when predicting the future was nearly impossible." This seems exactly like the sort of person who should be leading Central Staff now, when the city is dealing with an even larger forecasted deficit.

Also, Hannah's opinion that this personnel change was "probably ideologically motivated" is pure speculation. She has been "reporting" on this issue for seven months, and has not found a single source to support her theory. I don't expect much from the Stranger, but this is Gateway Pundit-level writing.

Pretty unhinged, Hanna.

TLDR new council bad, old council good, Sawant double plus good

Whatever you think about their politics it's pretty apparent that the new Council is not very competent. They've accomplished next to nothing, good, bad, ugly or otherwise. Seattle deserves better

@5 That's not apparent at all. What is apparent is this: the old council was deeply unpopular with the Seattle electorate. But instead of trying to figure out why that was the case, Hannah and people like you whine about the new council being "bought" by corporations... whatever the fuck that means.

You just can't accept that the majority of Seattle voters disagree with your political vision. Instead of blaming everyone else, maybe you and Hannah should look in the mirror.

The best thing about the new council? They aren't the old council.

@6, “deeply unpopular” is a stretch. There were some close races. Many previous Councilmembers didn’t even run. And if the previous council was so rogue, why can’t the new one undo any of their policies? Turns out people like labor standards, and funding programs for kids and poors.

I am still laughing at the insistence of “back to office,” which created the best platform to pack council chambers and lays bare the disdain for actual public engagement. The electorate is already regretting last years vote, as evidenced by the “brutal” primary night returns.

1) If we got rid of nepotism in city government, the whole thing would collapse.

2) CM Morales proposal for developers is just more of the sloppy french kisses the city council has given to developers to build housing without parking (saving them thousands of dollars per project) that they will turn around and sell for six figures per unit, which puts more strain on neighborhoods that were never designed for that level of density and does nothing for affordibility.

For all the flowers and bouquets The Strangers loves to throw to the previous council for their first in the nation policies on renters rights and working rules I still have yet to see any evidence they are having a positive impact. Sure there are some anecdotal stories of a worker making more or a renter staying in their unit a few months longer but there is much more data that suggests these rules are having a broader negative impact from losing 11k units of housing to workers hours being reduced, being laid off entirely or restaurants closing. I don't know why its so hard for TS to take an objective look at some of the policies the last council passed (reminding you that they did so based on ideology alone since they had never been tried anywhere) and offer an honest critique. They are not all good.

I write the new Council has accomplished nothing and their simps rush in, not to rebut what I wrote, but just to complain about the old council. Says it all really.

@7: “There were some close races.”

CM Morales used her name recognition, the unwavering support of the Stranger, and basically the same amount of money as Tanya Woo — and nearly lost.

“Many previous Councilmembers didn’t even run.”

CM Sawant had almost lost to literally no one, in a special election her neighbors called specifically to oust her. She’d used huge gobs of out-of-city, out-of-town money, and the unwavering support of the Stranger, to eke out a bare majority. Over the next two years after that, she held one PR stunt about rent control, then quit ahead of being fired.

CM Herbold had gotten re-elected on, among other promises, proper funding for the SPD. She quickly promised the “defund” activists everything they demanded. This terrified many District 1 voters, especially in the communities of color in southern West Seattle, who’d only recently won a new precinct house when the bridge was closed. Felling like one lived on an island which might now lose the only police station was not comforting for anyone else, either.

@10: That’s because a “do-nothing” Council is better than one which actively made matters worse. Zero is not the smallest number.

The old city council--with Sawant, Herbold, Morales, Mosqueda, Lewis--resulted in skyrocketing homelessness, drug overdoses, epic human trafficking, record hate crimes, shrinking housing affordability, and rapes.

It's going to take time to reverse their damaging policies.

@12

no shite!
and it's Spread
up and down all Over
the Left Coast, the East &
even the fucking Middle! the Middle!

it's all
on account a'
"Progressives"
like fucking FDR,
voted into Office
so many Times they
were Forced to Term
Limit all Future Prezzes!

All
Future
Prezzes!

at Least we
got Us some
Neolibs outta it.

IX. “Racist,” “Discriminatory,” “Ridiculous,” “Preposterous,” “Outrageous,” “Appalling,” “Tone-Deaf,” “Short-Sighted,” “Misguided,” and “Ugly” to Say the Least

All nouns one can apply to the author of this article. More Krieg drivel.