Bellevue real estate mogul Kemper Freeman Jr., as usual, attempting to fuck light rail
Seattle Transit Blog’s Ben Schiendelman dares to suggest that Kemper Freeman Jr. opposes light rail through downtown Bellevue because he doesn’t want lower-income rail-riders driving away the “high-class clientele” at Bellevue Square and his other ritzy properties… an assertion that has Freeman’s nursemaid’s undies in a knot:
But Bruce Nurse, vice president of Kemper Development, says, “It’s very presumptuous of Mr. Schiendelman to speculate on Kemper Freeman’s market philosophy. Kemper Freeman has always welcomed the region’s residents and visitors to downtown Bellevue… regardless of age or income.”
Really? Huh. Speculating that Kemper Freeman fucks goats, now that would be presumptuous (although I have my suspicions), but categorizing Freeman’s market philosophy as somewhere to the right of Rich Uncle Pennybags, well, that’s about as speculative as predicting a Seattle Times editorial endorsement. (November, 2012: “Rob McKenna for Governor; a different kind of Republican.” You mark my words.)
I mean, honestly, a downtown Bellevue light rail alignment would bring thousands of additional customers a day to Freeman’s high-rent properties, so as a businessman, why the hell wouldn’t he want a stop as nearby as possible? Unless, of course, light rail would bring the wrong kind of people. You know, poor people. And by that, I mean people of color.
Oh, I’m sorry, am I being presumptuous?
Maybe, but it’s not like Kemper Freeman’s own personal fortune wasn’t built upon the vicious racism and ruthless, um, market philosophy of his grandfather, Miller Freeman.
That same year, Freeman began to take an interest in Japanese- American relations; i.e., Americans should understand that Japanese “yellow” clashed with red, white, and blue. Until his death in 1955, Miller Freeman avidly pursued his anti-Japanese obsession, and his Eastside real estate business grew as a direct result.
Freeman owned several newspapers, including the Bellevue American and Town Crier, and used them as vehicles for his racist blather. “Japanese population and power in the western Unites States is increasing at a sure, accumulative rate,” he once said, “which will inevitably give the white man his choice between subjugation and retreat.” As the president of the Anti-Japanese League of Washington, and as a Washington state legislator, he led a campaign that culminated in the passage of the Alien Land Law of 1921, which forbade people of Japanese descent from owning land– or even leasing it. Shortly thereafter, Freeman began buying up cheap land on the Eastside, formerly home to thousands of successful Japanese farmers. In 1925 he bought land in Medina; three years later he moved his family into a new mansion there.
After Pearl Harbor, Miller Freeman saw another opportunity to screw over Japanese Americans, and make a profit, too. He went to Washington, D.C, to urge the Tolan Committee to lock up people of Japanese descent. And he kept up his racist rantings in his newspapers, calling the Japanese an “insoluble race” bent on “infiltration.”
With Japanese Americans tucked away in internment camps, Freeman was able to reap the full benefits of the new Mercer Island Floating Bridge (which he had lobbied to have built, and which opened in 1940). The Eastside, cleansed of its Asian-American population, was now safe for white businessmen, largely due to the efforts of Miller Freeman. His son, the first Kemper Freeman, built the original Bellevue Square, after convincing his father to buy a piece of land along 104th Avenue Northeast.
Yeah, I know, sins of the father and all that, so I wouldn’t want to be so presumptuous as to suggest that Kemper Freeman Jr. holds any of the same anti-Japanese sentiments as his beloved grandfather. But even if Freeman’s staunch opposition to a downtown Bellevue light rail alignment has absolutely nothing at all to do with race, to suggest, as Freeman’s Nurse does, that he welcomes all of the region’s residents to downtown Bellevue, “regardless of age or income,” just doesn’t hold up to Freeman’s own public statements:
“When you walk through the (Southcenter) mall, the way the customer dresses just to shop there — the light blue and pink hair curlers, the shoes that flop, flop, flop along — it’s a completely different customer,” said Freeman. “Yet we are 12 miles apart.”
Yup, about the only thing that separates Freeman and his upscale Bellevue Square from the curlers and flip-flops of déclassé Southcenter is 12 short miles. That, and about a half century of progress in Americans’ attitudes toward race.
The truth is, everybody knows that Freeman is a bit of an OCD, neo-Bircher nutcase with a Christ-like devotion to the automobile and a penchant for equating mass transit with communism (really), so isn’t it time that serious people started taking him and his anti-rail conspiracies at face value? Isn’t it time to call a spade a spade (so to speak)? I don’t mean to diminish Freeman’s standing as Bellevue’s (presumably) racist/classist, rich, crazy uncle, but is that really enough of a reason to give him a greater voice in our region’s transportation debate than folks like, say, Schiendelman, who, you know, actually know what the fuck they’re talking about?
And honestly, given Freeman’s shameful family history, is it really all that presumptuous to speculate that his dogged opposition to a downtown Bellevue light rail alignment might stem from something a little more than an informed position on transportation planning, or even mere economic self-interest? Am I really taking his words and deeds out of context by attempting to place Freeman in it?
As a native Philadelphian — a city where thousands of ordinary people lay themselves down to bed each night in houses that predate George Washington — I’ve always been struck by how folks out here in his namesake so easily forget our region’s own short history. I mean, it’s not like there’s all that much of it. Hell… I’ve tasted wine older than Bellevue.
No doubt Freeman isn’t our region’s only civic meddler whose family fortune was founded on land stolen from the Japanese-American families who broke their backs clearing it of old-growth stumps, but while it would be wrong to attempt to define Freeman solely by his family history, it would be equally wrong to ignore it when attempting to discern his political motives.
I suppose we could speculate that Freeman inherited nothing more from his grandfather than his dirty, tear-stained money, but… well… that would strike me as awfully damn presumptuous.
I don’t think it was presumptuous at all to understand that as Kemper says, he has a “completely different customer” at Bellevue Square than the people who shop at Southcenter.
It’s also not presumptuous to point out that the average Bellevue Square shopper would be lower income with light rail, as Kemper has said that on his own.
I guess it’s presumptuous to suggest that lower income shoppers aren’t in Kemper’s business plan?
How the hell does Kemper think all the low wage WORKERS are going to get to his mall in the future? 70-some% of cars are bought on credit and the credit markets are shot. Once their current jalopies are shot, those low end workers aren’t going to be able to replace them.
Michael, the workers will still take the bus.
@2 Perhaps he expects that their old cars will conveniently break down somewhere in the Northrup Way/Bel-Red corridor, and that subsequently they’ll live in them and walk to work.
Sounds to me like the Legislature should take up a reparations bill requiring Miller Freeman’s descendants to either compensate the descendants of those J-A families for their land, or restore their land to them.
@1 Don’t worry, it’ll work out in the end. Everyone will be low income after the cheap labor conservatives ship all our jobs to Chindia. Then Bellevue Square will be just another strip mall.
I’d rework that to say:
Everyone will be low income after the cheap labor conservatives ship all our jobs to Chindia. Then Bellevue Square will be another empty and abandoned mall.
Is it presumptuous to assume all poor people are not white?
Goldy, are you the secret writer for “The Uptight Seattleite”?
@8 Are we supposed to endorse the guy’s opposition to public transportation? Are we supposed to endorse his family’s sordid, racist, acquisitive history?
So Miller Freeman was a small government, free-market Tea-bagger, eh? Get elected to gubment, pass a bill legalizing theft to steal land from an “insoluble” (his final solution) race, and then having a bridge to nowhere built to enhance his fortune. God bless Amurka!
Goldy,
Usually what you have to say is completely wrong and phrased in a manner remniscent of a 7th grade gym locker. But usually it’s thought out and semi intelligent.
This is simple class warfare with a minor in character assasination.
I know, it’s purely amazing that (gasp) some people 2 generations ago were rascist. Stellar investigative journalism there, Goldy!! But to state guilt by association is simply stupid.
Maybe, just maybe, Freeman opposes light rail because it’s a bad idea. It’s expensive out of all proportion to the benefits gained, ridership will be low and it will be a flop.
So you know, if anything the immigrant/second generation person of Asian extraction is Freemans’ target market. They work and plan like Americans used to, and have succeeded in numbers disproportionate to their percentage of population accordingly.
Here’s a thought, Goldstein. Try working for your own money instead of being so hatefully jealous of someone elses.
Re 10
Nice call on comparing Miller Freeman to Hitler. Dumbass.
@11:
You’re quite right – Freeman’s engaging in class warfare, by trying to prevent mobility in the lower class.
Seems simple to me.
Re 13
Sorry, did car lots stop sellling used cars and I didn’t notice? Huh.
Anyone can afford a car, if they want one. Rail is an expensive boondoggle whether here or in Europe. They’re just used to being ripped off in Europe.
RE: 11
Maybe, just maybe, Freeman opposes light rail because it’s a bad idea. It’s expensive out of all proportion to the benefits gained, ridership will be low and it will be a flop.
This was said about the sounder train when it first started running. You are welcome to join me on my morning commute and count the empty seats. There are a few, but not many.
If the light rail starts running it will get used and there will be calls for it to expand.
This piece prompts me to wonder about Goldy’s family traits. From whom did Goldy inherit his Christophobic, communistic, and alleged, goat-fucking tendencies?
Great example! For every rider we taxpayers pay close to $40, as of the last computation. Therefore we the taxpayers are subsidizing your commute.
Your welcome.
@14
Since when is the cost of a vehicle the main cost of using it?
@11
It wasn’t as if Miller Freeman was simply a reflection of a more racist time. He didn’t just make occasional off-color remarks. He used his political power to persecute issei and nisei people, in order to benefit himself politically and economically. He actively used his power to hatemonger against Japanese farmers to get them driven off their land, so that he could buy it up (pre-cleared!) at bargain prices.
Maybe you ought to learn a little bit about local history before you make an ass of yourself defending racists like Miler Freeman.
I suggest reading some BOOKs. Here’s a good one:
http://www.amazon.com/Strawber.....038;sr=8-1
Re 18
Since when is your train fare the main cost of using it?
Every time I sell a car I compute how much that car cost me per mile to drive it. I have yet to exceed 45 cents a mile. Even if you factor in costs of road construction and maintanance I can’t imagine the cost would exceed one dollar per mile.
Your train ride costs, at Metros’ own assesment, a minimum of $2 per mile, assuming you commute 30 miles one way or less. In all likelihood it’s much less, and therefore more expensive.
Re 19
See, you assume I care about what happened with someone long dead acting within the law, albeit bad law.
My point was that Miller Freeman and Kemper Freeman aren’t the same person. To hold the latter responsible for the detestable thinking of the formere is wrong.
And don’t bother with the accusations of defending anyone. I didn’t. I merely pointed out the rabid class warfare liberals use to get objectionable thinking or legislation past the American people.
lyndon Johnson got his first Senate seat from corruption. He stole an election. Yet I don’t hear anyone on the left asking that the disastrous policies he pushed be rolled back on account of his criminal behavior. Try to be consistent.
@17
Since the folks taking transit are also taxpayers, what’s your point?
Let’s talk about the taxes I have to pay for “your” roads.
Then there are the Implicit (Opportunity) Costs.
Kemper Freeman Jr. and the Republican Senate minority are living proof that feudalism, with all its noxious pomp and privilege, has survived intact into the 21st century.
How many more revolutions and world wars will it take to finally rid this world of the Middle Ages?
By the analysis of your own cite ‘my’ roads are still a huge net savings.
Thanks, by the way, for putting a concrete number to my cost per mile calculation. At the high range of 70 cents a gallon the highest cost per mile would be around a nickle a mile. Therefore my high of 45 cents would now be 50 cents. This was for a high maintanance vehicle I sold to buy a reliable American one, which penciled out to more like 23 cents a mile.
And the low income people you’re talking about aren’t taxpayers. They get a net financial benefit for being citizens who make poor choices while I get a net financial burden to support them.
@11 “But to state guilt by association is simply stupid.”
Is this an admission on your part that the entire Republican Party is simply stupid? Sure sounds like it.
Rabbit,
Feudalism? Big word for a little bunny.
And of course completely untrue. We don’t have serfs. We have people who choose to accept the low minimum in life and want someone else to take the responsibility for the consequences of those choices.
Let’s see if I can remember how that went.
Bill Ayers was a terrorist. Obama met Ayers at a block party. Therefore Obama pals around with terrorists.
Yep, the GOP’s central campaign theme was simply stupid. All the wingers who mouthed this nonsense on cue from the Rightwing Noise Machine were simply stupid, too. No wonder you guys lost the White House and both houses of Congress, and would’ve lost the Supreme Court, too, if justices were elected.
@12 Well … Miller Freeman didn’t set up extermination camps. But probably not because he didn’t want to. The main difference between him and Hitler is that Hitler had a microphone and an army, whereas Freeman only had a microphone.
It could’ve been worse. At least Bellevue Square isn’t decorated with yellow lampshades made from human skin. He only took their land.
@15 “Maybe, just maybe, Freeman opposes light rail because it’s a bad idea.”
And maybe, just maybe, Pickett’s charge will break the Union center. But highly fucking unlikely. It’s mathematical after all.
(If you saw the movie “Gettysburg” you’ll understand this comment.)
Pickett’s charge was a bad idea. The issue with light rail is less clear.
@16 Your mother?
@17 So? Don’t the voters have a right to pay $40 per ride? This was direct democracy in action. I thought you guys like direct democracy (read: Eyman initiatives). Or do you only like the democracy you agree with, and when a majority of voters don’t want what you want, you prefer the tyranny of the minority (read: health reform)?
Or to put it another way-
Obama, not his great grandson, hung out with criminal leftists who belong in prison, not in Universities. Obama not his great grandson gave a speech in which he called the Constitution fundamentally flawed. (Yes, the same Constitution he swore to defend and uphold.) Obama, not his great grandson, broke every campaign promise made to folks like you.
@26
That’s the money you don’t pay. Yes you pay a portion through other taxes, but the so do the folks who don’t drive as much as you.
So according to your warped world view – folks who take mass transit are poor?
@18 I would argue the cost of owning a vehicle is the largest cost in using it. Let’s say, for example, a new car costing $25,000 and getting 20 mpg lasts for 100,000 miles. Over its life, it’ll use 5,000 gallons of gas; now multiply that by $3 and you get $15,000. If the car costs $1,200 a year to insure, and lasts for 10 years, that’s $12,000. If maintenance and repair averages $400 a year, that’s another $4,000. So, while the total operational costs will exceed the cost of the car, buying the car usually will be your largest expense, unless it’s an older used car (in which case, you may have high maintenance and repair costs). For most people, the monthly car payment will be, by far, their largest vehicle expense.
Re 35
Sure, where the voters are given the facts. But facts are the enemy of leftist thought. No, you say stuff like, ‘train rides into Seattle from Kent cost only $4,’ or whatever the fare is. You don’t talk about real costs. You say things like ‘we saved or created 1 million jobs’ without bothering to mention that these are short term jobs at a cost of half a million apiece.
Democracy is fine, with educated voter rolls. It’s when the left gets the vote that we get into trouble.
@19 Miller Freeman’s story very closely tracks the opening chapters of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “House of the Seven Gables,” which begins with an acquisitive Pilgrim engineering the hanging of an innocent man as a “witch” because he coveted the man’s water well (and land the well was on). He then builds a mansion (the house of seven gables) on this bloodstained parcel of real estate; but the well goes sour, and an evil spirit strikes the Pilgrim dead in the house.
@20 Light rail’s cost per mile will depend on ridership, because the cost of right-of-way, construction, and operation is about the same regardless of how many people ride it. Calculated on a carrying capacity per hour basis, one track can carry 20 times as many commuters as one freeway lane, at full capacity. Thus, you would have to build 40 freeway lanes to move as many people as two light rail tracks (one in each direction) can move. If you figure out how much gas taxes you’d have to pay to condemn and acquire the land, lay the pavement, and install ramps, signage, and guardrails for 40 freeway lanes, your cost of car operation will be a damn sight more than $2 a mile.
Re 37
Sorry, I wasn’t clear. According to your numbers the taxpayer subsidizes my drive to the tune of one nickle per mile. They subsidize mass transit at much higher rates.
No, you’re side says only poor people use mass transit, and we need to provide it for them. The few times I’ve ridden the train it seemed more heavily weighted to businesspeople, so far as I could tell.
Re 38
I’ve had one car on payments in my life. This, by the way, was not the most expensive per mile operating cost vehicle. I buy 2 or 3 year old cars for cash and avoid the markdown. My cars go to more like 200,000 miles, as I buy American, so that helps as well. I keep the car for, on average, 8 years, so replacement costs are lowered.
So you see, if you don’t worry more about what other people think about your vehicle than the vehicle itself, cars are fairly affodable.
@21 Just admit that Kemper Freeman’s money is blood money, and we’ll call it square.
@21 I think the main point here, my friend, is that Kemper Freeman Jr. is in no position to be arbitrating the social desirability of others given his own ancestry.
The Implicit (Opportunity) Costs of roads:
Land – If not used as roads, the land would likely serve some other productive use. Lost property tax revenue on the land.
Capital: Road construction is typically financed through tax-exempt bond issuance. This puts a burden on the borrowing ability of governments for non-road spending, and diverts capital from non-exempt private investments in competitive capital markets.
Taxes: Instead of being a source of corporate tax revenue, roads themselves drain government resources.
Then there is the dirty water runoff problem from all that pavement. Instead of soaking into the ground, the water has to go somewhere (it rains here). When was the last time you heard of a water treatment plant being paid for by gas tax revenue?
@22 What’s done is done, and all we can do is spit on their graves.
@22 That reminds of the great scene in the movie “The Shipping News” where a character pours her father’s ashes into a four-holer and then sits down and takes a dump on them.
@26 “a reliable American one”
What more proof does anyone need that you’re delusional?
Re 47
Never saw the movie, but the book was very well written.
GMC = Got Mechanic Coming
Ford = Fuckers Only Run Downhill
@49 You ought to see the movie.
@28 “We don’t have serfs. We have people who choose to accept the low minimum in life and want someone else to take the responsibility for the consequences of those choices.”
Oh, I see. If we have 16% unemployment and you’re forced to take a $5.15-an-hour job in a “right to work” state, the lousy economy and your greedy boss are your fault.
So what “bad choices” did the involuntarily unemployed make? What “bad choices” did those who couldn’t afford college make? What “bad choices” did those who weren’t born into wealthy families make? Your whole philosophy of life sucks. I don’t understand why anyone would vote for people who think like you do.
The bright side of all this is there’s virtually no chance I’ll have to share Heaven with that asshole.
@36 Well, at least he agreed to uphold it. Every Republican president after Eisenhower, without exception, violated that oath.
@39 You won’t have any trouble selling me the idea of an educated electorate. If we had nothing but educated voters, the GOP would disappear.
@42 Explain how someone earning minimum wage can afford a car after paying rent and buying food.
@50
LOL…
My Ford is reliable, it’s a Mazda with a Ford emblem stuck on both ends.
@21, you actually did defend Miller Freeman by implying he wasn’t doing anything anyone else at the time wasn’t doing. You can go ahead and backpedal, but there is no denying the historical facts, they are well documented. You make it clear you aren’t interested in books or the facts, so go ahead an make yourself look uninformed.
As for Kemper Jr., I think his actions and words speak volumes as to his feelings. Racism is more subtle these days, isn’t it?
Wow, as someone who’s married into a family that spent some time in the internment camps during the war AND as someone who loves light rail…I think I just became a fan of legislating reparations be paid WITH INTEREST by fucksticks like Freeman who are still living large off the legalized theft of Japanese property. Hell, I don’t even care if I personally see the money…as long as this sheister has to pay and pay.
@3
Kemper and Co. haven’t been overly friendly to transit, land use regs. or affordable housing either.
“Nice call on comparing Miller Freeman to Hitler”.
Uh, yeah. I’ll compare anti-semitism and racism. They’re two links in a poison chain.
Lost in a sea of urine.
Re 62
Uh yeah, you did equate Miller Freeman with Hitler here- ” pass a bill legalizing theft to steal land from an “insoluble” (his final solution) race.” Trying to pretend that the phrase final solution in this context meant anything else is disengenuous.
Re Rabbit in general
Ford makes great vehicles I’ve enjoyed for 25 years with low maintanance and operating costs that run to 250,000 miles.
Unemployment isn’t always a choice. Preparing for it is.
In the last year I was laid off. Conditions of my employment meant that I got no unemployment compensation. Instead of whining or begging the government for help I started a business that looks to be doing pretty well.
This isn’t because my parents are rich. They aren’t. They raised 6 kids on next to no money without taking a single dime of Welfare. They taught us to work hard and that we have no right to anything we didn’t earn.
I never finished my Bachelors. I got bored and went into construction. By hard work and a willingness to learn eventually I worked in management at a fairly large company, running one division of the company.
The point of all this isn’t that I’m special. Just the opposite. I’m very average and anyone could do this if they wanted. They could do it without a rich family, or an Ivy League degree or all the lucky breaks. And they can plan for the bad stuff that will inevitably happen. Or not, but if not they have no-one but themselves to blame.
Re 59
If you read into what I wrote something not there I can’t help you. It’s simply factual that Freeman was far from alone in taking advantage of the terrible injustice done American citizens of Japanese descent during WW2. And his great grandson bears no guilt for those actions or sentiments unless he can be shown to share them.
Re 60
The world envisioned by the Reparations crowd would sure be a chaotic one.
So how far back do you want to go? What’s the baseline you want to use? Should we redress all wrongs done since, say, 1850? 1650? Farther back? You know, those Romans took over a lot of innocent peoples’ land. Should the Italians have to pay Reparations to the Nubians? The Gauls? The Celts?
lost @63,
This was Kemper Jr.’s family… his grandfather. You’re suggesting that grandpa’s vile worldview had absolutely no influence on shaping the man who became Kemper Jr., and thus it would be inappropriate to attempt to understand Kemper Jr. within the context of the family in which he was raised? Really?
I was influenced by my grandparents, both directly, and through my parents who they raised. Weren’t you influenced by yours?
Re 64
Certainly I was influenced by my parents, who were in turn influenced by my grandparents. Not all of my worldview, because one thing they did teach me was to try on improve on what they had done as parents and as people. But I’d be fooling no-one by trying to claim that much of my worldview is shaped by them.
However it’s a long step from Kemper Freeman wanting an upscale mall with upscale customers (really the only Kemper quote you cite) who can afford to purchase things there to his being a rascist.
“… because he doesn’t want lower-income rail-riders …”
What statistics show that East Link rail riders would be lower income than Sound Transit route 550 Express bus riders, which currently travels next to Bellevue Square, and which Kemper Freeman doesn’t oppose?
Kemper Freeman doesn’t oppose public transit. He just doesn’t think light rail is a smart use of our money. He doesn’t feel it gives the traveling public much bang for their buck.
To demonize him because he simply thinks light rail in this region is a waste of money is unethical.
@65
Kemper’s father, grandfather, and great-grand-father all engaged in and benefitted from race baiting. Kemper has benefitted from their actions w/o ever saying or doing anything that would lead you to believe that he disapproved of those actions.
Kemper himself has engaged in a much more subtle and nuanced form of racism. Maybe classism would be a better ism to attach to Kempers actions. Kemper has acted, in other words, like a Freeman and has never done a damn thing to portray himself in a different light than the Freeman’s that came before him.
Goldy’s post requires some prior knowledge in order to understand it. You might want to take a look at local history and the roles the Freeman’s played in it.
Horatio Alger @63
Yep, you’re average and thousands of people do act exactly like you do. They work hard, save cash & pay into an unemployment system, a L&I system and a social security system with every paycheck. When they get laid off you diss on them for trying to collect what they’re do. When they’re injured on the job you diss on them for trying to collect on what they’re do. When they get sick and need the handful of table scraps made available to them by SSI you diss on them for trying to collect on what they’re do.
My ex-co-worker with Lupus, she needs that SSI she gets. She could have never saved enough cash to live out the last 30 years of her life with Lupus. The vast majority of L&I claims that I’ve seen in the last 15 years were both legitimate and low-cost. Same with unemployment. People pay into it, its their do. There are abuses, but those are the exception, not the rule.
goldy, you really are a jerk. i don’t care to hang w Kemper, and he’s not my guy…but gimme a break. By crying wolf about race at every juncture, gee, what are you, Jerry Large?
i’ve never noticed a whiter element at bellevue square; but then so what. when did you last complain that Rainier avenue had too few caucasions.
bellevue square is about money, not about race. attack it for being elitist, but throw away the red herring of race. yawn. (or ask all the chinese and indians not to shop there)
@67
I believe Goldy couldn’t win a transportation debate against Kemper Freeman, and he knows it, and that’s why he’s going straight to the family history.
He’s trying to demonize Mr. Freeman, but you can see for yourself, he’s actually a very pleasant and practical man. Here’s a Kemper vs Dow video on the Eastside light rail topic:
http://www.pnwlocalnews.com/ea.....51552.html
I love how the right attacks anything that might even slightly look like social welfare and then turns around and attacks the left when the left tries to crack down on corporate welfare.
Could the right please make up its mind whether its for or against welfare?
PS, Goldy? You’re living in a country that was stolen from Native Americans, and founded by people who owned slaves.
Plan on moving out of the country on principle? Didn’t think so.
So shut your yap about people’s histories. Your hands are just as dirty as anyone else’s.
Karl Marx @ 68
Either you intentionally missed the point or you did so through blind partisanship.
I don’t recall mentioning L&I or SSI at all. I have an awful lot of friends who, together with their employers, paid into the Unemployment Compensation system and are collecting on it with no kick from me. Conditions of my employment made this impossible for me, or I would have done as well.
Yes, I object to healthy adults who won’t work and want government assistance to avoid it. I object to those who choose to have multiple children they can’t afford, and ask me to pay for it. I don’t remember mentioning people simply unable to work at all. I’m sorry for your friend but see no connection with the present topic.
Yes I object to people who look at successful people with envy and hatred rather than admiration. You could point to the disciplined hard working men and women who worked thier way to their own success. Or you could point to the odd abusive or corrupt. No, you’re a leftist, so wealth is automatically evil without any consideration of circumstances. Never mind.
Really? Huh. Speculating that Kemper Freeman fucks goats,
goldstein, you are a vulgar human being.
@73
I was speaking of your postings more broadly, which read as I described them. From what you’ve written on here you sound like you think 99% of the folks on L&I SSI and unemployment are “avoiding work.”
This is a creation of yours, not ours.
Nice comeback with the Karl Marx crack (not even close to what I believe, btw.).
61 Hey dillhole, ever see what the liberal beauracracy adds to the cost of a house in this area? The U.W. did a study. 200K. Per house.
68 Small correction on your spew. Employees dont pay into Employment Security, the employers pay 100 percent. The good news for the local economy is they only raised the cost of unemployment 54% earlier this month. That will help the jobless! Liberals are fucking retarded.
@76
The UW did a very inaccurate study that was debunked within a couple of days of its release. 200K, my ass.
@77
Good catch. But, we wouldn’t get that Employment Security if we weren’t employed, which was my meaning. We work for it.
@77
Yeah, that’s why we’re so far behind the rest of the country income wise…
That’s why the liberal political and economic leaders in this state have us so far behind the rest of the nation.
I’d like to read the “debunked” story! Being as it was produced by a liberal college, it’s probably more than 200k. Why don’t you step up to the plate and show us how to build some houses people can afford! (Without taxpayers)You can do it with all that extra money your making because you’re so smart!
@83
http://daily.sightline.org/dai.....-reasoning
For starters. But, I’m curious as to how many times I’ve already directed you to this information. It seems like I have to remind someone on the right that the study was a bunch of non-sense every 3 or 4 months.
LOL… I doubt that you’d want to live in a house built by a left handed dyslexic…
typical liberal plan of of attack: when you cant win a debate or wish to asassinate someone’s character, just play the race card.
funny thing is, the most racist people on this site are hard core, batshit crazy liberals…and yes, I am talking about Goebbles/Himmler Rabbit, Racist YLB, and Rujax.
So a bloggers opinion is the end all? Now your comments are even more humorous. Thanks for showing me. Again?
Michael–
The KLOWN you credit for supposedly
“debunking” the left-leaning University of Washington Study on the cost of regulation & delays on home prices in Seattle is part of a far-left organization called Sightline.
Here is the link to their website–
http://www.sightline.org/about
Look at their Board of Governors..Progressive cesspool.
And they fail to disclose their funding on the website…not even who their major contributors are.
Probably 1000 Friends or whatever they have morphed into.
And BTW…there is not debunking of figures. Just a bunch of rhetoric.
Bad Try Michael==No Sale!
87 Thanks Cynical, there are some people who don’t quite seem to see reality. My father thinks maybe it’s genetic.
@88 mark 01/29/2010 at 8:11 pm,
No doubt the humor of this escapes you.
Thanks for the chuckle.
89 I have to admit, that is funny!
My house in Seattle cost less than 150k only 10 years ago. I guess the liberal beauracracy didn’t exist back then.
I think this is an excellent piece, we should get the whole truth and then make a decision.
the sins of the father….yup, joseph p kennedy was a bootlegger, consorted with the mafia and was an antisemite.