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Comment by droopybuns | Hacker News Reader

Part of the problem is that King County and the Seattle city council have all alienated a major chunk of constituents.

It’s bad enough to endure a tax increase- but the leaders end up fucking over the landowners so much that even if they know it would be for the best, nobody trusts them to spend the cash the way they promised.

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I've lived in King County for 20 years. Yes, taxes have been going up a crazy amount, so have our needs, so have our home values. But what did they do to screw us over?

https://m.seattlepi.com/seattlenews/article/King-County-Coun...

https://crosscut.com/2018/04/salmon-tribes-should-beat-washi...

And just try getting a building permit in unincorporated king county.

King county apparently exists for either Seattle, or anyone but King County citizens.

I don't live in Seattle, I feel reasonably well treated. I do hate that they are spending so much public money on the baseball stadium, but that's not making me feel that terrible. I used to live in unincorporated king county - did you know that there are tons of places that have septic tanks, even well settled neighborhoods have them, because they didn't extend the county sewer lines that far.

On your second article, I'm not sure what your point is about the tribes vs Washington state.

Blaming politicians when you only have 42% voter turnout is a pretty weak argument.

https://results.vote.wa.gov/results/current/king/

Its a democracy, vote for better ppl.

>nobody trusts them to spend the cash the way they promised.

This is local propaganda by the large corporations here and Saul Spady running around whining on 5pm TV news about having to spend more money in taxes when he's enjoyed nothing but a booming Seattle restaurant industry directly due to the laws he opposed. Everything goes on the people because the businesses here don't really pay anything and those same people who complain about their taxes going up willingly defend not taxing the corporations reaping major benefits here. The tax system is also extremely regressive. Not to mention the public shows no backlash against giving $100's of millions of dollars of public taxpayer money to dumb shit like repairing Safeco Field when the owners and Mariners could've paid for it themselves.

Seattle is a fiscally right wing city, not this 'socialist hell hole' everyone makes it out to be.

Seattle ends up spending more than 3x its per mile project cost estimates, estimates that are already much higher than what other US cities actually spent to fully build similar projects. The tunnel, the Pioneer Square streetcar failure, the bike lanes - it’s likely to turn out like Honolulu’s project. It’s a consistent record of mismanagement, and while I would love to build a subway it is not “propaganda” to not trust this council with it.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/930...

According to Seattle.gov, most of the projects are on track with spending and the ones that aren't are the projects that are now uncertain about federal funding to offset costs, higher construction costs, and due to that a few went over budget [1].

You can't blanket apply this to all projects, even the ones in Move Seattle, therefore it's nothing but propaganda from people who don't want to spend anything on public infrastructure or public transit. Jenny Durkan is also quite the liar when it comes to the missing street car link [2].

[1] http://sdotblog.seattle.gov/2018/04/23/the-latest-on-move-se...

[2] https://www.theurbanist.org/2018/07/26/mayor-durkan-claims-s...

>>This is local propaganda by ...

I promise you I am not a Russian bot. My neighbors aren't either. We sincerely don't trust these groups.

Why escalate to claiming an opinion you disagree with is propaganda?

Who claimed it was Russia? This is corporate propaganda. I legitimately don't trust that the groups opposing all of this are acting in the best interests of the city and the workers, only in the interests of already rich white NIMBY's and corporations.

During the head tax fiasco, the people collecting signatures were openly lying and pushing corporate propaganda [1], and it seems like most of Seattle's media that isn't third party are just local propaganda outlets that push serious distrust of our elected left wing officials at the expense of residents that aren't rich, unless it's something like giving public money to a sports stadium that could've been funded by private money. The hate of Sawant is unjustified and further pushed by local propaganda.

Please stop conflating propaganda with just Russia as well. Noam Chomsky clearly points out the propaganda model and how it's used by our own media & corporations, and also points out how a lot of businesses are private governments now [2].

[] https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2018/06/06/27190451/audio-a...

[2] https://taibbi.substack.com/p/preface-an-interview-with-noam...

That’s just like, your propaganda, man.

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