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A Brewing Rebellion in the Emerald City (Seattle is Dying)
city-journal.org ^ | Christopher F. Rufo

Posted on 04/03/2019 7:08:32 AM PDT by RoosterRedux

For the past five years, like many of its West Coast counterparts, Seattle has endured a steady expansion of homelessness, addiction, mental illness, crime, and street disorder. But the activist class—a political and cultural elite comprising leaders in government, nonprofits, philanthropy, and media—has enforced a strict taboo on declaring the obvious: something is terribly wrong in the Emerald City.

Last month, veteran Seattle reporter Eric Johnson of KOMO violated that taboo with a shocking, hour-long documentary called Seattle is Dying, which revealed how the city has allowed a small subset of the homeless population—drug-addicted and mentally-ill criminals—to wreak havoc. Johnson’s portrait is backed up by evidence from King County homelessness data, by city attorney candidate Scott Lindsay’s “prolific offender” report on 100 homeless individuals responsible for more than 3,500 criminal cases, and by my own reporting on the homelessness crisis.

In the past two weeks, Seattle Is Dying has garnered 38,000 shares on Facebook and nearly 2 million views on YouTube. The report has clearly resonated with anxious, fearful, and increasingly angry Seattle residents. Exhausted by a decade of rising disorder and property crime—now two-and-a-half times higher than Los Angeles’s and four times higher than New York City’s—Seattle voters may have reached the point of “compassion fatigue.” According to the Seattle Times, 53 percent of Seattle voters now support a “zero-tolerance policy” on homeless encampments; 62 percent believe that the problem is getting worse because the city “wastes money by being inefficient” and “is not accountable for how the money is spent,” and that “too many resources are spent on the wrong approaches to the problem.”

(Excerpt) Read more at city-journal.org ...


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KEYWORDS: seattle
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Seattle is Dying
1 posted on 04/03/2019 7:08:32 AM PDT by RoosterRedux
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To: RoosterRedux

I don’t go there anymore. It used to be fun but not with all the vagrants (I hate the term ‘homeless’) with their filth and garbage all over the streets. They’re druggies who should be in jail then to rehab like in Rhode Island as the video shows. The mayor says there’s nothing wrong. Totally clueless (D).


2 posted on 04/03/2019 7:11:39 AM PDT by SkyDancer ( ~ Just Consider Me A Random Fact Generator ~ Eat Sleep Fly Repeat ~)
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To: All
Guess what the "activist class" calls those who are trying to fix the problem?

Why, they call their concerned neighbors “bigots,” “fascists,” and “white supremacists.”

3 posted on 04/03/2019 7:13:06 AM PDT by RoosterRedux
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To: RoosterRedux
I worked in Seattle for 2-4 years back in the late 1980s. It was a great place to be. I used to ride the ferries for a long lunch break just to take in the air and scenery.

I took my Wife for a tour of the Northwest a few months back and was appalled that Seattle had become "San Francisco North". Very sad to see the utter ruin of a city by the clueless liberals who run the place and the KOMO program just tells it like it is! Seattle has become a cesspool to be avoided!

4 posted on 04/03/2019 7:15:20 AM PDT by ExSES (the "bottom-line")
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To: RoosterRedux

Oh , I thought this was about Spruce Beer


5 posted on 04/03/2019 7:15:38 AM PDT by butlerweave
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To: RoosterRedux

Almost all of urban America, firmly in the control of pathological Democrats and their ignorant, non productive constituents, is not sustainable despite whatever subsidies and taxes the Democrats can extract from the productive sector. Sadly the rot oozes into once decent suburbs. Witness Nassau and Suffolk counties in New York. The more migrants, the greater the rot.


6 posted on 04/03/2019 7:15:59 AM PDT by allendale (.)
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To: RoosterRedux
A Brewing Rebellion in the Emerald City (Seattle is Dying)


7 posted on 04/03/2019 7:16:08 AM PDT by Navy Patriot (America NEEDS Mob Rule, another European and Mid East World War and a universal Draft)
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To: RoosterRedux
Seems like only yesterday that the national MSM-Democrats were thrilled to announce that a Seattle had elected a wonderful, dynamically diverse Socialist named Kshama Sawant to its City Council.

Then they raised the minimum wage, and everything was going to be peachy, unicorns flying through the pink clouds over the Space Needle.

Then — as is so often the case after the lefties take power anywhere — silence ensued. The MSM-Democrats turn their attention elsewhere.

Now this story. "Rebellion?" Against whom?

8 posted on 04/03/2019 7:16:28 AM PDT by Steely Tom ([Seth Rich] == [the Democrat's John Dean])
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To: SkyDancer

I lived there for 46 years. I bought a 12 acre farm with new house in rural KY two weeks before the 2008 election and moved there permanently in 2011. four years ago I bought the adjacent 20 acres. It’s now a perfect bug-out site with two knobs, two hollers, two streams and a natural well.

But I did it because I had simply had it with Seattle. The politics and the traffic are what did me in. I bicycle commuted for almost 20 years, but people texting made it too dangerous, and it made my motorcycle dangerous as well. Once put in my car, I found the commute - or any other driving, just way too stressful. I-405 is a parking lot even on weekends, for crying out loud.

And my daughter lived in Ballard a couple of blocks off Market. The homeless camps just really got to them. They don’t live there any more. She and her husband moved to Louisville last summer. They love it here.

Seattle is in the predicament it is in because of the liberal politics. It’s just another example of what happens to a city when Democrats run it. It’s really sad. I was really proud of where I lived. I knew every nook and cranny of that place like the back of my hand.

I don’t miss it at all. It would be like missing your crazy ex-girlfriend. She’s not the girl you first met.


9 posted on 04/03/2019 7:17:39 AM PDT by cuban leaf
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To: RoosterRedux

My wife and I watched it last week, it looks like Los Angeles 10 years ago and pretty clean in comparison. Los Angeles is Much Much worse, mainly because it is so widespread over such a large geographical area, But I see “little Seattle’s” every couple miles in the entire Greater Los Angeles area.


10 posted on 04/03/2019 7:19:20 AM PDT by eyeamok
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To: RoosterRedux

“they fall back on branding their concerned neighbors “bigots,” “fascists,” and “white supremacists.”

These words have ceased to have any meaning at all.

L


11 posted on 04/03/2019 7:20:04 AM PDT by Lurker (Peaceful coexistence with the Left is not possible. Stop pretending it is.)
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To: RoosterRedux

I won’t go there or to San Francisco any more. Both are filthy, full of threatening panhandlers and crooks. Most of all though I am sick and tired of the city leaders telling me that the homeless and the illegals are more important for the city and the country than I am, a citizen with over 40 years work experience and paying taxes.
Give them both a couple of more years and all that will be left is the homeless, the illegals and a HUGE pile of s^^t where the city used to be.


12 posted on 04/03/2019 7:21:42 AM PDT by Agatsu77
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To: Lurker

The next thing that will happen in Seattle if it hasn’t already, 3rd world diseases will start to pop up..

Los Angeles is experiencing an outbreak of Typhus, it’s even invaded parts of the City’s office downtown....


13 posted on 04/03/2019 7:22:29 AM PDT by srmanuel
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To: butlerweave

Spruce beer? That sounds horrible! I can’t imagine how bad a beer would taste, brewed from spruce trees.

What? ..... it’s not brewed from? ..... never mind!


14 posted on 04/03/2019 7:24:30 AM PDT by jimtorr
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To: srmanuel

“Los Angeles is experiencing an outbreak of Typhus, it’s even invaded parts of the City’s office downtown....”

Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch.

L


15 posted on 04/03/2019 7:24:49 AM PDT by Lurker (Peaceful coexistence with the Left is not possible. Stop pretending it is.)
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To: RoosterRedux

How exactly is it dying? Is it suffering economically? Are people leave in statistically significant numbers? Are taxes increasing because of the burden of supporting the homeless and unemployed and cleaning up their messes?

Is the crime rate high?

Or does Seattle just have a messy-sidewalks problem that the affluent can ignore?


16 posted on 04/03/2019 7:25:00 AM PDT by cymbeline
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To: RoosterRedux

Liberals are a virus. They infect, weaken, and finally kill the host, then they move on. Seattle will be left a smoldering pile of rubble, and liberals will blame Republicans for not doing enough, while they move on to Portland, or somewhere else.

At some point, if we don’t somehow find, and elect people like Donald Trump, who aren’t owned by the establishment, and care about America, we’re through.


17 posted on 04/03/2019 7:25:15 AM PDT by brownsfan (Behold, the power of government cheese.)
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To: cuban leaf
I-405 is a parking lot even on weekends, for crying out loud.

I moved to Seattle from DC in 1986. I was amazed that I-405 and I-5 flowed smoothly. I could put on my turn signal and nearly Everyone would slow to give me a space. Then eventually came the "Californication" of Seattle and civility began to go downhill. Seattle personifies the term Urban Jungle" today! Sad..., but the voters adopted "PC Policies" and are now beginning to wonder why their city has turned into a cesspool!!!

18 posted on 04/03/2019 7:25:22 AM PDT by ExSES (the "bottom-line")
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To: RoosterRedux

“the city (of __________) “wastes money by being inefficient” and “is not accountable for how the money is spent,” and that “too many resources are spent on the wrong approaches to the problem.”

Fill in the Democratic blank.


19 posted on 04/03/2019 7:26:08 AM PDT by Rennes Templar (Heaven has a wall and gates. Hell has open borders.)
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To: brownsfan

Portland is just a smaller version of Seattle and has been for years.


20 posted on 04/03/2019 7:27:00 AM PDT by ExSES (the "bottom-line")
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