“My first question [mine too!]:
what is the Milwaukee Brewers owner
doing living in California? Go destroy a Great Lake!

adios,
Lake “Superior”!
you always Did think you
were Better than Everyone else.

“Enjoy my identity,
it was nice while I had it.”

Thanks!

bought for a Song
I’m certain I’ll go
far, Further than
ever Before! &
I’ll make sure
they send
you The
Bill.

ah, Hackers. you
Gotta Love ‘em!
Happy Friday!

@1 Jail and street are a false dichotomy. Speeding isn't a known medical condition with known effective treatments that don't include being imprisoned, like addicition is. Your prescription for what fentanyl addicts need comes out of your ass. Being a victim of addiction is not "doing wrong" and punishment is, again, not the treatment actual medical professionals recommended. The revolving door references the well researched high recidivism rates of jails (as she said, most people they're arresting have records already), which means most people who go in there do not get better. Try harder, friend.

If you're surprised about signing up for binding arbitration resulting from a consumer transaction, Nat, then you haven't been reading (I mean really reading) those terms and conditions that you click on in most online transactions. Ditto for those "we're changing our terms and conditions of service" emails you occasionally get.

"a lawsuit-proof Trump card"

Why is trump capitalized here?

@2 wrong lake, Milwaukee is on Lake Michigan

@3 they aren't being arrested for addiction. They are being arrested for their actions driven by their addiction. What do you do if they don't want to accept treatment? Continue to leave them on the street to victimize others until they are "ready"? Progressives never have an answer for that. You try harder.

You're right that Disney isn't your friend in the same way any corporation isn't your friend, because corporations aren't people.
But maybe the bigger issue here is that binding arbitration clauses are the norm in nearly every transaction between an individual and a corporation, and they are explicitly designed to get individuals to waive their legal rights and coerce them into a captured legal process where the arbitrators have a vested interest in finding in favor of the corporations (because those corporations are effectively their employers.)

God controls the weather? Reichert's god controls the weather? If Reichert's god controlled the weather then it would stand to reason that his god is powerful enough to control a whole lot of other things. I mean, his statement here is so absolutely ignorant that it ONLY serves to illustrate how incompetent he is, his god (which I believe is total bullshit too) is and how incompetent his candidacy is. People who vote for this guy have gave up; They have no hope for humanity nor wish to care. Their worldview stops at the tip of their nose and their only wish is to cut that nose off to spite the world that refuses to pick it for them. Hayduke Lives!!!! Forever.

Blaming progressives for not having working solutions to social problems in a society that is not run by progressives is an baffling argument, albeit an emotionally satisfying one I'm sure.

We live in a country that not only does not guarantee health care to all, but one where addiction services aren't necessarily available to everyone who has insurance. Your city government certainly does not have the resources to cover for our national failure to make addiction treatment available to all who need it, nor the resources to stabilize people through housing and mental health care, nor the political will to do so even if they did. As a society we simply do not tolerate people getting taxpayer support for any perceived personal/moral failure, even if that means cutting off our own noses. That would be communism!

Instead we're left "treating" a life-endangering medical condition through the criminal justice system as though denying people access to their drug of choice for a few days is going to change anything. Sobriety is a lifelong process that requires huge amounts of support -- medical, financial, emotional -- and without that, it is all but certain addicts who walk out of jail will use the first opportunity they get. This is a societal problem and an embarrassing failure for the wealthiest country on earth and none of this is progressives' fault.

If one is vulnerable to death from specific food allergies, why take the chance in a busy amusement park restaurant in the first place? Even with the best of protocols, inadvertent kitchen mistakes happen. Case should be dismissed.

@9 (the first one) please. There is no society that has existed in all of time that has solved the social issues you are discussing. The health care system may be imperfect but it also isn't as bad as you insinuate either. I've been to countries with universal health care and guess what? They have issues as well. As I stated no one is being punished for their medical condition, they are being held accountable for actions they take that impact the rest of us because of their condition. Where I blame progressives (and locally we've had 10 years of progressive leadership) is the failure to consider the larger societal impact of these issues. They continually tell us we have to meet these people where they are at through housing first, safe consumption sites, restorative justice and all the while they are free to do whatever they want to the rest of us and we have to just suck it up because they have a problem. Progressives focus entirely on the individual at the expense of the rest of the community and it doesn't work. I have no illusion we are going to solve the issue in this manner but if we can make the community a better place for the rest of us to live and work than we should pursue that goal.

@8 A friend who was a political consultant asked a prospective candidate why they were running. The candidate replied, "Because God told me to." My friend returned, "Did God tell you you're going to win? Because that's the only chance you have."

Reichert is in the same spot. Divine intervention is the only way he's going to win.

@10, The united states has the worst health care system in the western world by any metric you can name. We spend more per capita and have worse outcomes across the board. This is a simple fact.

I never insinuated that any society has solved all its problems. What I am stating unequivocally is that our country's failure to guarantee health care access (among other basic necessities) has knock-on effects that you can see all around you. We all suffer when our fellow citizens suffer, and the sooner people come to terms with that, the sooner we can start working towards building a society that works better for everyone.

But when you say progressives "focus entirely on the individual at the expense of the rest of the community" I am truly at a loss for words. Individualism is the foundational tenet of conservatism. Progressivism is about collectivism, ie the entire community pitching in to support each other. That would mean higher taxes on the wealthy to support people of lesser means through universal health care, affordable housing, and other means of support. We don't have those things because we operate under a conservative economic model and many Americans believe providing for the poor and disadvantaged is destructive, even -- I wish I was exaggerating -- downright evil.

Progressives' problems are not with their ideas but a lack of resources to implement them, and the lack of political will to change that, because Americans would rather get mad at addicts and poor people for failing at life than ask anyone to sacrifice anything to help them, even if that means diminishing their own quality of life by having to coexist with their suffering.

"original tinderbox building"?

@1 and @6 are correct. This is my judgement.

@4 If I read the "terms and conditions" of every online transaction I made, I'd literally have no time for anything else, including eating and sleeping. And I surely make fewer than the average person. Many T&Cs if printed out would be hundreds of pages long. The legal framework governing these contracts has to change.

@12 "Progressives' problems are not with their ideas but a lack of resources to implement them"

and therein is the issue with progressive politics. You will never have enough money. Government is about making choices that have the best outcomes for the most people with limited resources. Everyone pretends you can tax wealth and corporations but there are consequences to that as well. Wealth can move as evidenced by Bezos as can corporations (ask San Francisco). Even looking at highly taxed countries in Europe, they still have many of the same issues we have. In the UK many people have private insurance on top of NHS because they can't even get in to see a doctor using NHS. Regardless of that the issue here isn't providing treatment, it's what you do with people who refuse to seek treatment whose actions have a detrimental impact on the community. It's two separate things. Progressives continually argue we have to "meet them where they are at" and it doesn't work.

p.s. there are zero societies where people would willingly sacrifice their own quality of life for someone who isn't on a path to improve.

Wow there's a lot of talk going on here that had nothing to do with reality. Our government has literally legally declared that corporations are people and our government does everything it possibly can do to make sure the wealthiest get everything they want at the expense of everyone else. What country do you people live in? Hundreds of BILLIONS of dollars, taxpayer dollars (paid by working Americans) are being sent to Israel to slaughter and starve and rape and torture and thoroughly destroy Palestinians. How on earth is that in the best interest of the majority of the people in this country? That money needs to be spend HERE on providing housing to those without housing, food to those without food, health care to those without health care, etc.
The fantasy land you people are living in sounds awesome. Wish I lived there.

And while there is no way I want Trump to go anywhere near the WH ever again, how exactly is a federal ban on price gouging enforced? Corporations have more power than actual human beings in this country. It sounds nice, but means nothing. Literally, nothing.

@11 True. Just a shame that our national politics are so drab that the only discussion is to say up to the challenger's down. I feel that is all the GOP is, the party of "we do whatever is the opposite of the democrat, liberal or progressive ticket", blah. They should just cut their noses off and bleed out already.

@16, You’re just talking out of your ass and tearing down straw men.

I never said progressives have the solutions to all of society’s ills and the UK is the last country on earth I would provide as an example of progressive governance because they are in an even more dire austerity death spiral than we are. You cannot blame progressives for our failures to address social problems because we haven’t tried a progressive approach since the FDR era. If you don’t like seeing homeless people on the streets, you can thank your 37% top marginal tax rates. We don’t even try to bring in enough revenue to fund federal programs we have, let alone try to provide more for the least fortunate, but for even just a few more pennies on the dollar we could achieve a lot more.

Also "a path to improve” is not an option for everyone. Some people have disabilities that make improvement impossible, and most countries don’t leave them to suffer because they can’t care for themselves. Even our own shithole country provides welfare for the disabled fully knowing they will never be productive members of society. You’re literally just making shit up.

@6 -- who said Anything
about proximity?

“Go destroy a Great Lake!”

your Superiority
Convinces you
you’re Correct

just like “the great lakes”
especially Lake
“superior.”

let the man
choose himself
he’s a Billionaire
he can Destroy ANY
thing he fucking Wants to

“… even
if that means
diminishing their own quality of
life by having to coexist with [others’] suffering.”

so they take it out
on everyone else
a nice big circle

great comments.

“@16, You’re just
talking out of
your ass”

thnx!
that’d
explain
the halitosis

@20
credits
to barth

How we deal with public drug use is not just about the drug users and what’s good for them or not. Open drug use on public transit makes people stop using transit. It may or may not create an actual danger, but it makes being on the bus or train or whatever unpleasant and generally skeevy.

And the people who no longer ride transit get back in their cars. This creates more traffic, more pollution, and more greenhouse gases. That’s bad for all of us.

As I see it, kicking the drug users off is just good transportation policy. It’s not Metro’s or Sound Transit’s job to address the problems some people have with addiction. It’s their job to provide transit services that are actually useful. And enforcing some basic rules is part of that. People shouldn’t be selling or smoking fentanyl on the bus any more than they should be pulling out their dicks and waving them in other passengers’ faces.

@xina:

Clawbacks
IF we Sweep
& fucking PROGRESSIVES
like Bernie Fucking Sanders
(a Known Jew!) have ANYthing
to Say about it & Bernie fucking WILL

and the neolibs
and cons'll bitch and
moan and Still carry on

@9 Pheobe, are you really arguing that 11% of American adults and 8% of American children should simply resign themselves to being unable to fully participate in American life? (...which couldn't be better exemplified than by trips to Disney and lawsuits.)

@19 you continually keep conflating issues to avoid the actual topic. It's not about whether we have the funds to offer them care, that's tangential to the conversation. Time and time again it has been demonstrated that many of these folks have been offered services and have refused them. The progressive solution is to leave them where they are at and make them oh so comfortable until they are ready (whenever that may be). That is not acceptable here nor is it acceptable in any society/economic system. You can have all the magical revenue you think you need and it won't change that underlying fact.

As for the rest of your post feel free to choose whatever country you want that demonstrates what you claim. It wasn't about progressive gov (no such gov exists) it was about universal care and even countries that have universal care have the same issues we do. The marginal tax rate also has no bearing on the homeless issue. When the marginal rate was 80-90% back in the 50-60s no one actually paid that. The effective tax rate has never been close to that and high marginal rates often diminish economic growth leading to lower overall tax collections. Those magic solutions always come with offsets. So you can keep beating that horse and looking for scapegoats or you can take a hard look around you and understand that governance comes with choices and sometimes those choices suck but you need to make them for the overall benefit of the community.

The velvet glove is not working. Time for the iron fist.

@23

and USE those
Clawbacks to Finance
another Brand New Deal
fund the IRS and Move America

Forward.
We're NOT
Going back.
Fuck that shite.

@22, @25: C'mon, folks, this is the Stranger. We do not ever, under any circumstances, talk about the effect of crime upon the city, society, or especially -- and this is the most absolute part of the Stranger's rule! -- the victims. The ONLY consideration here is what's good for the criminal -- and the Stranger sets that bar so dizzyingly high, anything less than completely Solving Crime means you're a cruel and hateful person, who wants nothing more than to abuse the poor with a carceral system.

@12: "What I am stating unequivocally is that our country's failure to guarantee health care access (among other basic necessities) has knock-on effects that you can see all around you."

And you have made a hugely ironic point by stating that in Seattle, where we voted for decades to keep Dr. Jim McDermott in Congress, specifically to create a national healthcare system. You're telling everyone in Seattle that they must just accept all of this crime, without even short breaks from chronic repeat offenders' constant predations, because our sincere efforts failed.

Now, for bonus irony: as we are doing here right now, commenters at the Stranger often mention how addiction and mental illness drive homelessness and street crime. Headline writers at the Stranger NEVER mention how addiction and mental illness drive homelessness and street crime. Ever. The politicians the Stranger endorses NEVER mention how addiction and mental illness drive homelessness and street crime. Ever. How are we supposed to solve a problem, when we can't even get local media and politicians to talk honestly about that problem?

Nobody serious claims that drug use and mental illness "drive" homelessness. People who study homelessness say that economic inequality and lack of social housing cause homelessness. Other factors like lack of social services preventing people from dealing with personal issues such as illness of all kind (physical, mental, addiction, etc) make these people unable to get out of being homeless. Conservatives who don't want to acknowledge the economic reality brought on to us by Reagan and his welfare slashing followers demonize the unhoused and blame individuals for their failure to adapt successfully to an economy that offers most everything to the already wealthy and little hope of getting ahead for those who have nothing.

As for crime, although all instances of crime are problematic, a largely unexplained and momentary bump in crime during the pandemic, doesn't negate that we are in the midst of a multi-decade long drop in the crime rate. Attempts to manipulate the public and its justified discomfort when facing naked poverty in the streets should be recognize for what it is: demagoguery.

THANK YOU
averqgebob* for
your Counternarrative
to tS's Neolibs' & Cons'
wicked, lofty worldview that
has neither the time nor Empathy
for those "too low on the foodchain"

to even Matter.

they can make it all
sound oh so Reasonable
as they kick fellow Human
Beings to the curb & spit on
them as they callously pass by.

fucking
Kudos.

*and so
Many others.

Bless you.

I wish The Stranger would stop linking to X fka Twitter. As you might have heard #EvilElon has turned that platform into a right-wing conspiracy outlet and allows all kind of fascists, Christian Nationalists, racists, misogynists, haters, enemies of the free world, and any kind of grifters what he calls "free speech". Don't associate yourself with a platform by linking to it, whose values you clearly don't share. Every time anyone clicks on the link X will benefit! Clearly not in the interest of an reputable news writer.

@30: ‘Nobody serious claims that drug use and mental illness "drive" homelessness.‘

Because no one has ever lost a job, and then a home, because of untreated alcoholism or undiagnosed mental illness. Ever.

It’s because of such bald-faced denial of reality Seattle still has a homelessness crisis. We can’t even agree on the facts, much less a solution. So here we are: homeless persons dying from overdoses on Seattle’s streets, whilst the Stranger and supportive commenters simply ignore these deaths.

And then claim anyone who disagrees with them lacks compassion.

ah, Yes -- speaking of
'Compassionate
Conservtives,'
@35, right
on Cue:

those
who look solely
at The Symptoms but
NEVER at their insidious Causes

are doomed
to suffer as are We
when they perpetually
Blame the Victims which
happens to be EVERY-one
Except those cunningly pinnacled

atop the increasingly
steeply-sloped
Food Chain.

see:
@35
located
on a most
Comfortable
shelf high above
the riff-raff yet not
Too high to be Undisturbed
by the Chaos beneath which
in Spite of all they hold Dear'll
be coming Insidiously for Them too.

Vote Blue,
bitches! no
matter Who &
may the coming
Tsunami wash Away our
Idolatry of the Moribundly Rich.

now
go Out there
& have a Nice Day.

@36 blah blah blah attack attack attack (homeless still die of overdoses who cares) blah blah blah attack...

'who cares'?
bugger off
worm-
my

your Projections're
unsurprising and
nauseating.

@30 Reagan was in office over 40 years ago now and since he left office Democrats have held the presidency half of the time (20 years). I think its time to let go of that canard. Any impact Reagan has on homeless issues have long faded.

@37

"The phrase 'every accusation is a confession' has been thrown around a lot since October, and for good reason. People who are deeply messed up and dysfunctional inside don’t typically have the internal resources and creativity to come up with accusations out of thin air, so they tend to just accuse people they don’t like of whatever they have going on inside themselves.

If you ever have to deal with a malignant narcissist or sociopath in your personal life, you can often understand their behavior a lot better by mentally reversing the accusations they level at people and interpreting them as confessions about themselves."

--Caitlin Johnstone

@39

"Any impact Reagan has
on homeless issues
have long faded."

Raygun destroyed
our Unions.* we
Still haven't
recovered.

*And
America's
Middle Class.

@41 -- billionaires
having manipulated
our government into
acquiescence are now
nothing more than The
Natural Order of things?

or, as Hunter Thompson
liked to say, "The
Scum* also
rises."?

*see:
eltrumpfster
et al, ad nauseam

*billions
In The Hole
most likely were
it not for Pooty & MBS 'Bonesaws';
aka thee most Bankrupt personage in America

@39 I wish it were a "canard" but free market fundamentalism (Neoliberalism) didn't go away when Reagan died. In fact, the same model (deregulation, privatization, trickle down, limited government) is still dominant. The 2008 crisis broke some of the neoliberal momentum but nothing has fundamentally changed since congress is broken and the proceeds from economic expansion still mostly go to the top. Some aspect of neoliberalism have even expanded (deregulation, money in politics) due to the take over of the courts by conservatives.

Democrats, the party of the New Deal, fully bought into the neoliberal doctrine (Clinton's "end of welfare as we know it" and "the era of big government is over") and they are paying dearly for it with workers. Carter started deregulation (trucking, airlines) and the tax cuts that mostly benefited the wealthy. Obama favored commercial healthcare (a GOP scheme from 1993) and "public-private partnerships". Etc..

I would SO love to see Dave "I caught the Green River Killer!" Third Reichert, MAGAt stooge Joe Kent, and Looney Loren Culp all get zapped by lightning like a cattle prod---right in the badoobies. I'd bring the popcorn, red wine, and dark chocolate for the film update at 11. They can roast alongside the late Doug the Thug and absentee "Ambassador of Cambodia" (or was it El Salvador?) Ericksen.