I mostly agree with Goldy that we shouldn’t judge the Martin Luther King Elementary sale solely on the money.
Perhaps the higher bid from the exclusive Bush School, along with its promise to keep the play fields open to the public on weekends would have been the best option for the community. Perhaps the investigation will ultimately uncover something improper about the First AME deal. I don’t know. But there’s nothing scandalous in itself about taking less money for the property in the interest of best serving the needs of the surrounding neighborhood.
And that’s why the Seattle Times’ editorial that followed was so dispiriting.
In a time of teacher layoffs, postponed schoolbook purchases and curtailed library usage, the district ignored the highest bidder — using private capital — to go for the lowest bidder using a state grant — taxpayer money.
The Seattle Times finds no need to mention WHY we’re in that “time of teacher layoffs, postponed schoolbook purchases and curtailed library usage.” Subtlety implying that the sale is the reason teachers have to be laid off. No need to mention how much their preferred budgets hit schools versus this sale. No need to even see if they had another reason for the sale. I mean, to take an extreme example, if a nuclear waste dump was the highest bidder, I doubt the Seattle Times editorial would demand we go with it.
And given that, I find their attitude a bit much.
This transaction needs to be sliced and diced in bright sunshine for all to see. Much more is at risk than the lost revenue and opportunity costs of a tawdry deal.
OK, I agree (except, perhaps, for the tawdry part) that more examination of what happened is a good idea. Still going out with the assumption that it must be tawdry, it must be the wrong deal isn’t going to help.
The school district is developing a grim reputation for sloppy stewardship of tax dollars. A legacy with consequences.
The Seattle Times is developing a grim reputation for sloppy stewardship of our tax cut dollars. While the news side still does good work (including the story that prompted the editorial), it’s hard to believe that the B&O and sales tax money that the Seattle Times saved over the years wouldn’t be worth a few more teachers at schools around the state.
A few years ago when Frank Blethen lobbied for the B&O tax break, he argued that newspapers were vital to the state. They force politicians out into the light and expand the dialogue in meaningful ways, that they are in some sense a good for the public. Then when an important job at the editorial page opened up, he gave it to his son who can’t write worth a damn. It seems to me if their goal was to perform a public good, they would have hired someone else rather than that tawdry nonsense.
I think Frank Blethen’s special tax breaks could use a little more sunshine. How much sense does it make to take teachers and books away from pupils to keep an obsolete technology — Frank’s $150 million Bothell printing plant — alive?
Hey, why are you picking on poor Ryan Blethen? Fifth generation oligarchs hardly ever get a major media platform to air their unedited views. It’s an underserved audience.
The Seattle Times is Exhibit A for why we should have a higher estate tax.
Golly leftist pinheads…
Well maybe the Seattle Times doesn’t want to pin this tail on the Gregoire Donkey? Why are we all in this predicament about selling neighborhood schools and cutting teachers in 2011 when in 2008 y’all were telling us there was no projected state financial problem? Dino Rossi accurately projected a $3.2 Billion deficit which y’all libtardos claimed was not true. But now in 2011 we see it’s worse. When Dino Rossi was talking about a deficit looming in WA State, y’all claimed he was an idiot, a moron and all other nasty names. I don’t need no stinking databaze to replay your vile bile from many HA threads.
Ivan was really priceless in the thread and Roger Dumb Rabbit was almost as priceless that day.
How about the big tax relief the state gave Boeing? You are screaming over the pittance the ST received vs. the $3.2 billion public bribe to Boeing as one group put it. So let’s call a spade a spade and a liberal a liberal here. You don’t like the Seattle Times yet your misplaced dislike is for the wrong reasons.
I actually agree with what seems the bulk of the fairly thoughtful comments on Goldy’s Stranger piece – that in this case the Seattle Times article seems fairly clear, and that Goldy seems to be sugar-coating the situation WRT a sweetheat deal between First AME and the Public Schools.
What I see is that a politically connected church (bad) submitted the objectively worst bid (should fail on merits), but had at least one prominent congregant on the inside at Seattle Schools (bad, corrupt) working unfairly in their favor.
Now, several years later, they seem to have done nothing with the tremendous windfall they received (with public funds), making the deal look especially bad.
Am I missing something?
the school land deal was horribly mismanaged in a totally corrupt way. liberal scientist is correct. democrats need to stop defending the indefensible and make government work — people are simply sick and tired of this crap. for this school deal people should be fired, and prosecuted, and booted out of office. it’s waste, corruption, and neglect all in one. instead of using this as a springboard to critique the seattle times, use it as a way to critique investigate and reform and if needed prosecute the corrupt officials who are at fault here.
how you gonna get people to let government do things like health care when they can’t even do a goddamn simple, simple thing like sell a piece of fucking land without being corrupt about it?
“perhaps” there’s something wrong about the deal? wtf?????
“there’s nothing scandalous in itself about taking less money for the property in the interest of best serving the needs of the surrounding neighborhood.”
Um, that statement is barely true. after a little bit of fudge factor YES it IS scandalous when they don’t maximize the money coming in. Becuase they have no system for rating the “public benefit” of the sweetheart deals for “serving the neighborhood” the mission of the schools isn’t to “serve the neighborhood” if you let them do that as one of their goals they’ll screw it up and inevitably waste money. It’d be a far, far better system to (a) sell to highest bidder, (b) put the money back in the general school pot, then (c) use that money for the schools according to the needs of the schools. They’re cutting teachers, and you prefer instead they use money for some ill defined “neighborhood benefi? This is sloppyness masking as good heartedness and revelas complee denial fo the world of money, as in, you’d potentially triple your community benefit by selling this and handingout grants as noted above. instead of inserting community benefit inside some land sale so only community groups doing a land purchase get the benefit. like most of these deals, say tax loopholes to corporations promising jobs? the benefit never comes, is never audited, is never evaluatted if it doesn’t come the government has NO REMEDY and can’t undo the deal, etc., meaning the whole thing is simply a SCAM.
And as the Dow plummets >700 points in 5 weeks, consumer spending will slow down, governments will get increasingly less revenue, layoffs will skyrocket, and Liberals will celebrate.
For more will become dependent on a already bankrupt government.
Greece on Steroids! Thank you Obama, for what you call a little Blip…..
By the way, Obama has lost 5 points in recent weeks on Rasmussen. The Blip he is talking about is the continuation of his spendaholic plunge into a depression.
http://www.rasmussenreports.co.....cking_poll
@7 “700 points in 5 weeks”
Five weeks? Five fucking weeks? LMFAO! Geez, I don’t recall Mr. Dumbfuck Doom & Gloom LD troll coming here and hating on Republicans when the DOW was losing that much in a single fucking day under Bush’s watch.
Your “producers” got their damned tax cuts. The bastards have gotten their way for decades. Wake up and look around, you dumb motherfucker, you asswipe corporatist slave, you rock-stupid partisan slut. This is it! This fucking mess is all we have to show for it.
Oh Obama doesn’t get any blame at all, I see. Well, Obama and his bloated government hacks will be getting a hell of a lot less tax money (not to mention the states) as the market flops.
Oh and as California has found, you have to pay your bond holders first, so the employees get hit, laid off, and outsourced before they fail on their bonds.
Gee thats what’s happening in the private sector, as they outsource everything to India…
As home values continue to plunge, homeowners have less equity to borrow and spend from, and property taxes will continue to fall as prices fall. So even less state revenue.
So if it keeps up at this pace, there won’t be anyone with jobs in America by 2012.
8. And what do we have to show for Obama’s miserable agena?
10% unemployment (24% counting those who have quit looking)
Record offshore job movement
a 14.421 Trillion dollar defecit
A Tanking Stock Market (DUE TO THE Deficit and Debt)
Record foreclosures and house deflation
A Marxist in the White house who has plumeting ratings.