It’s maybe not the most shockingly dishonest thing the Seattle Times editorial board has ever printed—that would be this. But in terms of sheer disrespect for the intelligence of their readers, it’s hard to sink any lower than this unapologetic libel of Mayor Ed Murray’s proposed Move Seattle levy:
The size of Move Seattle is breathtaking. The property-tax bill for a $450,000 house would nearly double, to about $275 a year. That won’t help rapidly escalating rents or middle-class homeowners dealing with rising home values.
And you know what else won’t help rapidly escalating housing costs? Lying.
To be clear, Move Seattle would not double your property-tax bill. It wouldn’t even come close. It would double the amount you’re paying on the expiring Bridging the Gap levy, but that amounts to only a $145 increase on a $450,000 home—just 3.3 percent of the total property-tax bill (and a mere .03 percent of the value of your home)—not the 100 percent increase that the editors imply. Big difference.
To understand how breathtaking this lie is, imagine if “Property-Tax” Bill was an actual living, breathing human being. The editors’ assertion is so clearly erroneous, misleading, and defamatory that Bill could easily sue the paper for libel, and win big!
No doubt the proposed levy deserves careful scrutiny; all levies do. But so does the editors’ larger implication that Seattle homeowners are overtaxed: “Seattle is the city that doesn’t say no to taxes,” the editors emphasize in a pull-quote.
And yet according to the tax records on my own median-value home, my property-tax rate has actually gone down over the past decade, from 1.06 percent of assessed value in 2004 to only 0.96 percent in 2014! Compared to a lot of other cities, that’s a bargain, especially considering that we don’t even have an income tax. Despite rising property values, in raw dollars, my property-tax bill has barely outpaced inflation.
Yes, we pass a lot of levies here in Seattle, and we tend to pass them with ease. But these levies are constantly expiring. So while it may feel like we’re always being asked to raise our own taxes, our effective property-tax rate is actually quite low, and has remained low over time. In fact, tack on this allegedly “breathtaking” Move Seattle levy, and my property-tax rate would still be less than it was back in 2004.
Not that you’d ever know this from reading the blatantly misleading op-ed pages of the Seattle Times.
If they replaced the word ‘bill’ with the word ‘levy’, would it still be a lie?
Your strongest argument, that your property tax rate is lower now than it was a decade ago, has been lost in your hyperbole. What likely was an editing failure has been described by you as a lie told by the Times editors.
Obama didn’t lie when he referred to his travels to 57 different states. He erred. Big difference.
You turned a triple into a long single. Well struck.
@1…
Geez Boob, that is sloppy solipsism even for you, the sloppiest of sloppy solipsists.
Read the fucking post again. Maybe you’ll get Goldy’s point (but I doubt it).
“The editors’ assertion is so clearly erroneous, misleading, and defamatory that Bill could easily sue the paper for libel, and win big!”
I disagree. Bill is a public figure, therefore has to prove malice, and the Seattle Times editors are demonstrably too stupid to be capable of malice. Consequently, ST’s lawyers would win dismissal on a simple motion for summary judgment.
@1 Well waddya know. As Oliver Wendell Holmes pointed out long ago, “Even a dog knows the difference between being stumbled over or kicked.” It seems Boob does, too, which makes him as smart as the dog.
Anyone who’s able and willing to fork over nearly three-quarters of a million dollars for a working-class Ballard cottage shouldn’t have too much trouble paying an extra 145 bucks a year in property taxes for affordable housing for his neighbors.
http://www.seattletimes.com/bu.....2007-peak/
According to my calculations the buyer of that $717,000 shack, assuming he paid 20% down and has a 4.5% 30-year fixed mortgage, has a mortgage payment of $2,906.35 per month. A $145-a-year levy adds $12.08 per month to that.
“What likely was an editing failure…”
An interesting point. There was a time when most of your readers would have found that laughable and an obvious reach. But that was a time when even beat reporters were supposed to have spent years honing their craft and meticulously following up on fact checking before they were even considered for a contributing credit, much less given a seat on a major daily editorial board.
Don’t look now, but I think you just proved Goldy’s point.
Remember, this represents the product of not one, but a team of the most experienced and trusted editors available to the Seattle Times Company. And in the case of these daily editorials, there is no time pressure to speak of. If you need another day or two to nail things down, that usually isn’t a problem.
So either the Seattle Times Editorial Board is demonstrating breathtaking professional incompetence. Or they are lying. Take your pick.
The Seattle Times is a dinosaur in quicksand trying to protect the last vestiges of it’s owner’s wealth. Karma is a bitch.
Housing is a real problem in many areas of the U.S., and is now getting quite a lot of media attention. It’s a complicated problem with multiple moving parts:
1. The 2007 housing crash nearly halted new construction, but the population kept growing, resulting in a housing shortage.
2. Household patterns are changing (fewer millenials getting married, more seniors getting divorced, etc.), and more singles require more housing units and different types of housing units.
3. The economy is changing, and with lifetime and permanent jobs becoming a relic of the past, workers need to be highly mobile which results in a preference for renting over owning.
4. Millennials aren’t buying homes because (a) they’re not getting married, (b) they change jobs frequently, (c) their credit is hampered by student debt, and (d) they don’t see houses as good investments — resulting in ballooning demand for rental units.
5. Fed policy created a combination of (a) low investment returns and (b) cheap credit that led to hedge funds and private equity firms buying up hundreds of thousands of houses at distressed prices with money they can borrow essentially for free and turning them into rentals, which has contributed to an acute shortage of home listings in many markets.
6. Incomes and housing costs are moving in opposite directions, with incomes falling and housing costs rising, making both owned and rented housing less affordable for millions of households.
7. Demand for rental housing also is boosted by the fact millions of people can’t buy homes because of unemployment, impaired credit, or both, in the wake of the Great Recession.
8. Fed policy and post-crash banking regulations have led to tightened lending standards that make it harder to qualify for a mortgage loan.
9. Approximately one-third of mortgaged U.S. homes are still underwater, the owners of which are reluctant or unable to sell, which reduces the number of home listings and creates a tight homebuying market in many cities.
The situation eventually will stabilize, but not overnight, and meanwhile there’s no “silver bullet” solution.
Well, yes there is, but only on an individual — not societal — level. If you buy a house, pay it off, and stay put, you don’t have a housing problem. You’ll have to cope with rising taxes, utility bills, and insurance premiums, but that’s a minor problem compared to what homebuyers or apartment shoppers are facing. I can live in my 4-bedroom, 1-3/4 bath digs for $700 a month.
@8,
well put. Yet not penetrating to most people.
Just sold my house in Seattle for five and one half times the total of interest payments over twenty years. Located another west coast community with slightly milder climate (about ten degrees warmer, about 25% less days of rain), progressive politics, outdoor amenities galore, under 90 minutes to a major international airport, good health care, and home prices about one third of Seattle’s.
What do friends advise? Buy more house! Buy bigger! Buy your “dream” home, even if it means taking on a “small mortgage”. It’s the definition of mania. We are trained from birth to be acquisitive. To be anything else is considered lacking.
@9 No one ever spent their way to financial independence. I’d rather have a big stock portfolio than a big house. Stocks produce income; a house is an expense. And stocks are much more portable than a house and its accoutrements. A rabbit with a big stock portfolio can live quite comfortably on a beach, sailboat, RV, or wilderness cabin if he chooses.
Lots of money can be made in real estate, but the time required may be substantially more than for a stock portfolio. Real estate is illiquid and quite volatile in pricing.
If one has a very long time horizon, however, real estate may be a very good fit for his or her portfolio.
Real estate, for me however, has not been a good investment over the past 40 years. I’d say I’ve just about broken even on all of my past real estate dealing.
I only meant to comment on the perverse urge in our society to always reach for more.
Cities like Seattle have significant real short term problems with housing supply (glad I could do my part to help). But I think part of the perception of the problem is colored by consumer’s emotional urges for “more”. Long term planning and investments in transportation might do a whole lot more to alleviate these problems. But at the end of the day, what drives housing demand in any given location may still depend upon consumer aspiration. Forty years ago “more” might have meant a 4500 square foot home on a 12,000 square foot lot. Today it might mean a 1700 square foot corner unit with views and attached day care. Maybe it’s a move in the right direction. But in the short term it still leaves a bunch of consumers priced out.
@11 Real estate also has high transaction costs at both the buying and selling ends, maintenance expenses, and you pay taxes on its value while you own it. For 200 years, stocks have consistently outperformed all other investment asset classes, so why invest in anything else?
“Real estate, for me however, has not been a good investment over the past 40 years. I’d say I’ve just about broken even on all of my past real estate dealing.”
Same here. This is my third burrow and I haven’t made a profit on any of them. My current burrow is worth about twice what I paid for it 25 years ago in nominal dollars before adjusting for inflation. The truth is, homes are consumption, not investment. For people who have no saving discipline, and gradually paying down the principal on a mortgage is the only saving they do, it’s better than nothing. And because that’s the only saving a majority of Americans do, home ownership is touted as an investment. If you want to become financially independent you have to move beyond that kind of thinking.
@12 Obviously someone is paying the high prices that are leaving others priced out. Seattle has a lot of high-paying jobs and those folks are outcompeting those who don’t. If you’re making only $15/hr. in Seattle, you’re either going to live with your parents or double up with someone. A $50,000 income gets you entry-level housing here if you’re lucky enough to find any.
You need $72,000 of income, equivalent to a job paying $36/hr., to afford a median-priced home in the Seattle area. A couple could get there with two full-time jobs each paying $36,000 a year, but they’d better not have a daycare expense.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....-s-cities/
“Seattle is the city that doesn’t say no to taxes,” the editors emphasize in a pull-quote.
Seattle voters said “no” to the taxes required to build the Mariners a new baseball stadium in 1995, and voted against building the Seahawks a new stadium in 2000. I don’t recall for-profit news outlets like the Times, for whom professional sports are a very profitable product to sell,. respecting Seattle’s “No” vote on either occasion.
@16 – You probably should read up on what you’re talking about. The Mariners stadium narrowly lost a 1995 vote of all of King County. It wasn’t voted on by just Seattle. Unfortunately King County’s online election archives don’t go back far enough to determine what the vote was in Seattle. Of course, the election happened before the 1995 playoff run, which completely changed the atmosphere surrounding the stadium proposal.
The Seahawks stadium was passed in a statewide referendum vote in 1997. It overwhelmingly passed in King County.
@17 Public funding for the Mariners stadium, as I recall, was approved by the legislature without a subsequent referendum and the legislature got around the “no” vote (which was a vote on a specific tax proposal) by funding it with a different type of tax (i.e., a tax on hotel rooms, rental cars, and restaurant meals).*
* Many cities have used this pernicious taxing scheme, which is designed to hit up out-of-town visitors, to pay for hyper-expensive sports facilities. If you travel to a city with a baseball or football stadium, you’re probably paying taxes for that stadium — so the locals don’t have to.
@18 – that’s fair. I just think that people often forget the vote occurred before the playoff run when the whole region went bonkers over the Mariners. Right or wrong, it completely changed the politics of the issue in a dramatic way that you wouldn’t know about unless you lived here at the time.
@19, the point though is that the politics changed. The Seattle Times did not. It is indeed a fair statement that, at the time, The Seattle Times did not respect the expressed wishes of the voters on this tax issue. At the time the voters said no. And at the time The Seattle Times said the voters were wrong.
This same technique was used to campaign against and kill a badly-needed school bond in the Highline district a few months ago.
Roger Rabbit’s Solution To The Housing Crisis
Fine the banks $100,000 for every “zombie house” on their books, and use the money to build affordable housing.
“Banks had let these homes sit” for years. “Most are in disrepair, some occupied by squatters or drug dealers,” and blighted neighborhoods. Keeping these houses off the market contributed to the housing shortage driving up prices. Now banks are moving to foreclose them, resell them, and book huge profits.
These bankers have inflicted enormous costs on society. It’s only logical they should pay for the solution.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/102752146
You probably should read up on what you’re talking about. The Mariners stadium narrowly lost a 1995 vote of all of King County. It wasn’t voted on by just Seattle.
I didn’t claim the vote was restricted to Seattle. We voters in Seattle rejected the measure, and the voters in the rest of King County were equivocal, so the stadium proposition lost. The Seattle Times refused to accept this result — ballgames sell newspapers — and actively campaigned to get the voters’ will nullified. That’s what makes their blatant lie so infuriating.
Of course, the election happened before the 1995 playoff run, which completely changed the atmosphere surrounding the stadium proposal.
Wrong. The vote was in September, right in the middle of the first-ever playoff run by the Mariners. Even with that happening, we still thought our money should be spent on more important things. The Times did not agree.
@23 – the 1995 ALDS started in October. The Mariners didn’t make the playoffs until they won a one game tiebreaker with the Angels. So when you say they were right in the middle of the playoffs in September when the vote happened, you’re wrong. And then there’s your completely incorrect statement about the Seahawks stadium vote.
Like I said, you probably should make sure to fact check things before you post. Especially when they’re easily verifiable.
@8
Nice copy and paste with out any attribution. Standard for the IDIOT Wabbit.
Housing Market in the US
HUD
CNBC
Why didn’t you discuss CNBC’s “zombie foreclosures” article until post #22!
Well the IDIOT Wabbit did condense it down!
@8
Nice copy and paste with out any attribution. Standard for the IDIOT Wabbit.
Housing Market in the US
HUD
CNBC
Why didn’t you discuss CNBC’s “zombie foreclosures” article until post #22!
Well the IDIOT Wabbit did condense it down!
Yes, we pass a lot of levies here in Seattle, and we tend to pass them with ease. But these levies are constantly expiring.
And therefore Seattle needs a new levy to replace the old levy? Why not sunset the old levy, thank the voters for their wallets and pocketbooks and move on, instead of creating a new levy with similar requirements as the old levy?
And with Mariners and Seahawks and Sounders fever at a very high pitch, which DUMMOCRETIN(S) here will claim that those stadiums were a waste of tax payer money?