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Amazon's $1.5 million political gambit backfires in Seattle City Council election
Reuters ^ | 11 November 2019 | Gregory Scruggs

Posted on 11/11/2019 5:01:04 AM PST by Erik Latranyi

Seattle voters, in a rebuke to heavy corporate campaign spending by Amazon.com, have kept progressives firmly in control of their city council, reviving chances for a tax on big businesses that the tech giant helped fend off last year.

Amazon poured a record $1.5 million into a Super PAC run by the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce to back a slate of candidates in the Nov. 5 council elections viewed as pro-business, or at least more corporate friendly than the incumbent council majority.

(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Government; Politics/Elections; US: Washington
KEYWORDS: amazon; chamberofcommerce; seattle; socialism; washington
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I love it when socialists eat the corporations that gave them money.
1 posted on 11/11/2019 5:01:04 AM PST by Erik Latranyi
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To: Erik Latranyi

Ah, it’s fascinating to see people with no abilities whatsoever somehow attain positions where they can direct people with talent.

Long past time for your version of the Bastille, Seattle. You know where they live. Make them afraid.


2 posted on 11/11/2019 5:05:34 AM PST by Da Coyote (is)
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To: Erik Latranyi

Amazon founder is a Leftist, he reaps what he sowed.


3 posted on 11/11/2019 5:07:34 AM PST by PapaBear3625 ("Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." -- Voltaire)
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To: Erik Latranyi

The Californication of Washington State continues.


4 posted on 11/11/2019 5:10:02 AM PST by marktwain (President Trump and his supporters are the Resistance. His opponents are the Reactionaries.)
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To: Erik Latranyi

This City Council out of all past City Councils in Seattle belongs in jail.


5 posted on 11/11/2019 5:13:02 AM PST by Hostage (Article V)
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To: Erik Latranyi
Occasional Cortex succeeded in driving Amazon out of Brooklyn. IIRC they were going to build a billion dollar facility there until she started in with her usual bullbleep.

Maybe the same will happen in Seattle.

Wouldn't it be a hoot if Microsoft and Boeing were to move their entire operations to Texas!

6 posted on 11/11/2019 5:17:14 AM PST by Gay State Conservative (A joke: Brennan,Comey and Lynch walk into a Barr...)
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To: PapaBear3625

Its nice to see liberals squirm under the policies they’re responsible for. Last week Bill Gates actually said he preferred a tax rate less than Liawatha’s top end proposals. I’d love to see a dim proposal to confiscate 90% of the profits of leftist warriors’ businesses like Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Twitter for climate change lunacy.


7 posted on 11/11/2019 5:18:44 AM PST by hardspunned
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To: Erik Latranyi

Not a fan of Amazon’s lefitish polices, not am I am fan of megacorps like this getting huge tax breaks from the rest of us - but just for fun would love to see Amazon give a big “F-U” to Seattle and pack up everything and move to a more business friendly location.... sort of like they did for NYC.


8 posted on 11/11/2019 5:19:14 AM PST by qwerty1234
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To: Erik Latranyi

LOL - isnt there an old childhood story about the industrious ant and the lazy grasshopper? Nothing new here, just the parasites discovery in the past century of how to market their predatory activities as “noble’. It’s called scialism.


9 posted on 11/11/2019 5:20:54 AM PST by gspurlock (http://www.backyardfence.wordpress.com)
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To: Da Coyote
Ah, it’s fascinating to see people with no abilities whatsoever somehow attain positions where they can direct people with talent.

Votes and elections have consequences. Reminds one of the scene out of Dr. Zhivago, where the peasants were given the very large home.

10 posted on 11/11/2019 5:23:50 AM PST by frog in a pot (Arguing the Founders intended the weakest of 2 possible forms of NBC for our leader is a scam.)
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To: Da Coyote

Bastille, a historically over-rated event - only 7 people were in it and where free to go whenever they wished.


11 posted on 11/11/2019 5:26:25 AM PST by PIF (They came for me and mine ... now it is your turn ...)
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To: Gay State Conservative

Boing Boing already moved its corporate HQ to Chicago.


12 posted on 11/11/2019 5:27:50 AM PST by PIF (They came for me and mine ... now it is your turn ...)
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To: Erik Latranyi

Well, they tried.

Now they must decide. Stay and have profits stolen or leave.

One can only wonder about golf course or ski slope conversations between Amazon and Boeing emissaries on what must be done about Seattle.

Stay and be extorted or leave? That is the corporate decision


13 posted on 11/11/2019 5:29:42 AM PST by bert ( (KE. NP. N.C. +12) Progressives are existential American enemies)
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To: Erik Latranyi

2020 Democrat Candidates approve. Lizzy (& Bernie?) fit right in with a wealth tax. Mayor Pete has weighed in with his observation that no one should be a billionaire! Potential candidate Bloomberg is silent!


14 posted on 11/11/2019 5:34:07 AM PST by SES1066 (Happiness is a depressed Washington, DC housing market!)
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To: Erik Latranyi

Amazon ‘aint Boeing. They can move wherever the hell they want, and take its 200,000+ local workers with them, destroying Seattle’s economy. One would think that threat alone (or a mere fraction of it) could stop any policy they don’t want.


15 posted on 11/11/2019 5:37:16 AM PST by montag813 (Sheri Bruder)
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To: bert

These corporations leave and move to nicer areas....bringing their support for Democrats with them....until that area turns against them.

The Silicon Valley companies did this to Virginia and will now pay the consequences in higher taxes.

They are moving to Texas and turning it blue as well.

North Carolina and South Carolina are turning blue.

These are locusts who move from host to host until the host dies or tries to feed off them.


16 posted on 11/11/2019 5:41:03 AM PST by Erik Latranyi (The Democratic Party is now a hate-group)
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To: PapaBear3625

Bezos is a globalist-CIA front, not a lefty but like other globalist bankers and players, he will use whatever ideology suits his globalist agenda.

In this case, Bezos is irrelevant. The Seattle Chamber of Commerce is what has driven the City to success in the past and what has kept the agenda formed by the practical minded. Amazon employees gave heartily to the PAC for the Chamber of Commerce but the Chamber failed to craft a winning agenda. There is still time but it takes vision.

This was not a win for progressives as much as it was a loss for practical business people in Seattle. As usual, people who should have voted didn’t vote because there was no agenda to vote for other than throw out the trouble making socialists. And the City looks like it’s booming but that is all illusory. Here’s why:

The City is experiencing a building boom bubble because builders are able to get the financing. The financial brokers get a broker’s commission and look only at the underlying completion values. They are out of touch with the state of businesses downtown which are declining.

The building boom bubble is leaving a false impression that the City is thriving. It is not except for the influx of well-compensated Amazon and other corp high earners.

Once a project of the building boom is complete, the project builders having taken their draws will move on to the next project leaving the just completed project to property managers who are unable to rent/lease the spaces because of the high rents. The project buildings then fall back into the banks balance sheets which are fudged high while occupancy rates hover around 40% to 60%. But the bank’s fake balance sheet looks good so not to worry so they think.

Meanwhile, progressives are driving Amazon to move out and small to mid-size businesses are struggling severely.

The direction is one of abject failure on all fronts with socialists taking over only they won’t be able to sustain themselves.

The cycle will complete when socialists lose their base because they have destroyed the tax base. They will certainly push rent control which will create as it always does rat/crime infestations which further erode the tax base.

When they come to the end of their cycle they can only hope for a friendly administration in DC to bail them out with ‘stimulus’ which is code speak for money transfers. Those funds will be used to pay and sustain the key positions in their political base.

But with Trump in office, there will be no bailout.

One way forward is for Bezos to step down and give the reins to a level-headed America First CEO who supports the Trump agenda. Such a person can then intensify the campaign to throw out the present City Council. They can do this by solving the finance puzzle that is driving the rents to be so high. Such a person can run on a campaign to lower the costs of housing and win among business owners. There has to be a credible reason to vote for reasonable people. It can’t rely on just rhetoric.


17 posted on 11/11/2019 5:42:15 AM PST by Hostage (Article V)
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To: Gay State Conservative

>>Wouldn’t it be a hoot if Microsoft and Boeing were to move their entire operations to Texas!

Boeing already has a facility in South Carolina. It’d be easy for them to re-balance production...


18 posted on 11/11/2019 5:43:10 AM PST by vikingd00d (chown -R us ~you/base)
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To: PIF

“MOVED TO CHICAGO.”...………………………….

NOW, THAT’S REALLY SMART!!!!!


19 posted on 11/11/2019 5:46:52 AM PST by Maris Crane
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To: Erik Latranyi

I’d love amazon to say fine and completely leave the state. That’s the only ways these idiots learn.


20 posted on 11/11/2019 5:48:28 AM PST by napscoordinator (Trump/Hunter, jr for President/Vice President 2016)
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