By Rick Stanton
I commented some time ago about the trip to New York City five years ago with my wife. We walked and took public transportation everywhere, and I mean everywhere. Never once were we panhandled or felt threatened. And we saw scant evidence of homelessness.
Why? In my opinion, it’s simply because city leadership (click for definition) has the guts to back the police, doesn’t pander to lawbreakers and protects the people and property of those who pay their salaries.
If you haven’t seen KOMO’s killer documentary titled Seattle is Dying, you need to. And if it doesn’t just piss you off to the nth degree, you need to move to Somalia, just about the only place on the planet with a more dangerous environment than the Emerald City today.
OK, I exaggerate. But not that long ago, I felt safe just about anytime, anywhere in Seattle. Now I carry pepper spray. In @#$%&!% Seattle! I worry about my wife walking to and from the ferry terminal to her job. And I find myself apologizing to tourists for the garbage, the aggressive panhandling and the smell of urine just about everywhere.
Speaking of guts, Seattle’s city government hasn’t had much, if any, since I moved back here in 1976. Back then, I remember walking to lunch with my then-partner, Dennis Burns, and commenting about the recent uprising of commuter gun violence in Los Angeles and wondering how driving on the freeway could lead to people getting shot over a lane change. Well, it’s moved north.
Seattle was a shiny penny, a big town about to become a city in one of the most beautiful places on earth. Today? It’s a shit storm and nobody wants to take the problem head-on.
We have five times more property crimes than NYC and drug addicts and lunatics get a pass, while our property taxes escalate. My left-leaning, somewhat centrist self is starting to wonder if politics around here don’t need a right-leaning redass—or several of them—to clean up the mess.
It may be too late, but, if I were you, I’d invest in companies that make pepper spray. And, for the love of God, stop electing people like Kshama Sawant. She’s the left’s version of Donald Trump and, frankly, part of the problem.
And if you didn’t check that definition of leadership earlier, click below.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=leadership+definition
It is time to stop being tolerant of intolerance. The bureaucracy of Seattle politics has created a society of utopian drug addiction and unchecked mental illness. I, like you Rick, am as left-leaning as the next person, but enough is enough. I agree, let the cops do their jobs and pass laws that will recapture the downtown as a “zero-tolerance” zone. Do away with needle exchanges, safe-injection sites (an oxymoron if there ever was one), and revolving door judicial programs. Drug addiction is NOT a disease, it’s a choice. Time to take a stand. Thank you, Rick, great article.
Loved your article, Rick!
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