Alex ITMFA

A graphic emulating a baseball card with a headshot of Arthur Buerk on a green background with floating dollar bills, showing he donated $10,000.

The back of the baseball card graphic with bulleted points that reads: founder of Montlake Capital which has made over 100 million in corporate investments, board director of Washington policy Center, a right-wing think tank funded by the Koch brothers which lobbies to preserve a regressive tax system and keep the minimum wage low. also donated $5,000 to Sarah Nelson. what's he buying low taxes for himself in the companies he invests in.

For our fifth installment of “Harrell's Big Business Backers,” we present Arthur Buerk. Buerk is a board director at the Koch Brothers-funded Washington Policy Center, a right-wing think tank that seeks a low minimum wage. He donated $10K to Harrell and $5K to Sara Nelson’s PAC.

For me personally, the more conversations I have with people in person about politics, the more hopeful I am.

Can't remember if I've noted this before, but the Seattle Police Department plans to use the JumpStart tax, originally dedicated by law to four progressive goals, to pay for surveillance cameras in the Stadium District along with policing at the World Cup games next year.

disgusting. literally never enough money for cops, they always gotta come take our lunch money, too.

Remember this when you vote. The conservative Seattle City Council & neoliberal Mayor essentially robbed poor people of housing & generational wealth-building projects for historically marginalized people to pay for cop overtime & spy equipment.

This is also how I feel looking at his arts and culture comments. Saying that AI is the reason for Seattle’s incredible arts and culture scene (and wanting to give Arts and Culture money to tech startups instead of artists and cultural orgs), using arts money to do graffiti abatement. Heinous.

I’ve been told I didn’t explain this well. Let me try again.

Bruce Harrell wants to spend $100k of OUR collective tax dollars to PAY wealthy homeowners to not cut down their trees on their property. He wants ME AND YOU to give OUR MONEY to rich ppl to preserve THEIR trees IN THEIR BACKYARD. 🤬😡🤬😡💢💢

But no, guess he's proud of it. Guess it plays well to his wealthy homeowner & land owner supporters. Of all the things I've read in SDCI's proposed budget, this was the most unhinged. The second most unhinged was wanting to spend $750k on AI to supposedly replace employees who help with permits.

Wilson wants more east-west bus service and night service, also possibly giving everyone in affordable housing a free transit pass.

Wilson says we need housing affordability and density. "A lot of the reason for the transportation emissions is bc they can't afford to live close to where they work, play, hang out" etc. We also need to make it more comfortable to walk, roll, and bike, make transit competitive with driving.

Wilson supports legislation for employers to provide transit passes for employees. Also wants to potentially set up an e bike rebate program in the city of Seattle.

1st question - what is role of Seattle mayor in terms of climate? Wilson wants to take bold action to mode shift for transportation and better track our progress on that front. Harrell uses pretty much the full response time to talk about tree ordinance and tree canopy - dogwhistle for tree nimbys🙃

Harrell: We came up with a new idea - A "conservation easement program on your private land...in order to protect tree canopy on private residences." (Note: I read about this in the mayor's new proposed budget - it's $100k from the general fund to pay private property owners to conserve their trees)

Get ready for the oversized coat meetups

More on Harrell's vague $80 million reparations proposal: Per city staff, it could come from double, triple, or quadruple-counting existing funds.

Some ‘affordable’ apartments in Seattle are allowed to be more expensive Officials say this will help spur construction of housing overall, a worry as costs increase. However, it might cause higher vacancy rates in subsidized housing.

Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell just raised the rent on "affordable" housing. For real.
"Harrell...whose campaign has received at least $150,000 from real estate groups, backed the change on the premise that what’s good for developers will be good for renters too."
www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...

ruthless, as he should be.

If this is how Harrell treats the law during a highly scrutinized and competitive public election, what does that say about how he behaves behind closed doors?

This feels like *and is* a huge betrayal of public trust. The city and region deserve better leadership.

Mamdani links noise to congestion, basically affirming my “Cities aren’t loud, cars are loud” line.

tfw you just miss the light rail and the next train isn’t for 12 minutes 😭

Especially when you forgot to pack your headphones womp womp

I explained why this looks like a violation of campaign finance law:

“They are getting information from and about the campaign that is not available to the general public—that's inside information that they're then using to electioneer on Bruce’s behalf,” Fincher says.

We have to talk about how much of our lives is inundated by scams, paving the way for this to flourish. A feature of poorly regulated capitalism has been to legitimize scams into every area of life and transfer the burden of discerning legitimacy - "doing your own research" - to individuals alone.

Earlier today I was listening to one of the hosts from Here and Now repeatedly ask a resident from Southeast Chicago whether throwing rocks at ICE was justified. And finally she just said, "They invaded our community. They have machine guns."

Very important reporting from Publicola. Please join me in supporting if you haven’t already!

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Extra special virtue signaling without action bonus chaser:

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Chaser:

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Shot:

Clap once if you’re surprised. Clap twice if this fully falls into your expectations based on Bruce Harrell’s governance style for the last 17 or so years lol

This something that the WA legislature would have to take up (again) right? Not something counties or municipalities could do on their own?