Introducing…The Hellhole

Fox News’ Kennedy called Seattle a “socialist hellhole” in a July 12 broadcast. We’ll take that as a compliment.

We know not all our fellow comrades are the kinds of local media and politics-obsessives some of us are.

Your Seattle DSA Communications Committee intends to put together a weekly compendium of local stories and events, served up with brief socialist commentary, keeping you abreast of the latest in connecting the dots in our city’s class war.

Inspired by former MTV VJ and Fox News personality Kennedy, who recently lamented the city’s passage of an income tax, calling Seattle “a socialist hellhole,” we bring you the inaugural installment of The Hellhole.

.@KennedyNation: "Seattle used to be one of the most beautiful & livable cities in the world, but it has devolved into a Socialist hellhole" pic.twitter.com/B9nbwNKvfp

— FOX Business (@FoxBusiness) July 12, 2017

• Congratulations are in order for Amazon; they recognized that their workers may, at some point, have children, and making parental leave available to all workers just makes sense.They likely also realized that Washington state law would require them to offer all workers parental leave in 2020 anyway (including those in its notoriously low-paying, physically-taxing, draconian warehouse jobs). They probably also realized that a quick positive PR hit now would help even out the negative PR hit they’d be at risk for after workers in other states complain they don’t get parental leave, despite doing the exact same job. They were also likely aware that with a combined shamefully low tax rate of 13%, having a CEO worth billions on top of a company worth several billion more, and a massive displacing ownership of Seattle real estate, they could absolutely afford the small concession of paid parental leave for all. What it makes us wonder is, what ELSE could they afford to provide their workers with?
• One Vancouver, Wash. man has decided to offer his cybersecurity start-up’s services to neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer – for free! While David Lim is no Aryan himself and is no “fan of the site’s deeply anti-Semitic and racist content,” he thought helping to promulgate genocidal ideology would be good for getting his business’ name out there. The profit motive works in mysterious ways…
• At Jacobin, Ari Paul looks at AFL-CIO head Richard Trumka’s sad, brief alliance with the corporate Trump administration, which echos with us at home in the King County Labor Council’s endorsement of the same mayoral candidate the Chamber of Commerce endorsed – Jenny Durkan.
• The Seattle Times asks we take a moment to express awe at the munificence of some local captains of industry who would allow workers to experience a celestial event.
• Speaking of local industry titans, Boeing has won a $349 million federal contract to upgrade nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles. The conflagration of this contract and Washington state’s $8.7 billion tax-cut folly with Boeing means our federal and state public wealth is subsidizing a perpetual threat of nuclear annihilation.
• Attempts by Councilmember Lisa Herbold to investigate foreign investment’s role in Seattle’s housing crisis and Cary Moon’s platform plank of taxing this speculation has been met with suggestions from King County officials that either practice could be construed as racist. Jenny Durkan cynically referred to Moon’s plan as “Trumpian.”
  
  Both the King County assessor and a real estate lobbyist from similarly crisis-stricken Vancouver both claimed their respective housing crises are caused simply by supply and demand; a tacit admission that commodified housing produces suffering. Meanwhile, Seattleites continue to be economically displaced by real estate markets.
• Venture capitalist Matt McIllwain is leading the legal charge against the Seattle DSA-endorsed, Transit Riders Union-led Seattle income tax. Now, he’s complaining to media that the city is spending funds hiring outside assistance to defend the measure. It seems that the city has its plate full, fending off challenges like a suit seeking to overturn a decision that would let Uber drivers unionize. Ultimately, this is a story about a rich man angry that the city would defend a popular law passed by democratically-elected representatives. Let’s call a spade a spade: this is anti-democratic activism and class war.
• Money: It dictates even MORE aspects of your life than you may have realized!
  As if dating wasn’t complicated — or painful — enough, a new study reveals that having a good credit score was ranked ahead of having a good sense of humor, attractiveness, ambition and other qualities in terms of appealingness to potential partners. Respondents linked a good credit score with being responsible, trustworthy, and smart. Match.com’s biological anthropologist even went so far as to call it a “Darwinian mechanism for measuring your reproductive ability.” In blunt terms, your credit score basically plays a large role in the likelihood you’ll find love and companionship as a human being — how fun! Is financial security an attractive quality in a person? Sure. But what is the reason so many people are financially unstable? We’ll let you fill in the blank, but we’re pretty sure you already know.