Free Republic

A property rights fight near Seattle's waterfront will continue, despite the death of the property owner. Late last year, the Seattle City Council voted to used its powers of eminent domain to take the parking lot owned by a 103-year-old Spokane woman named Myrtle Woldson. The city asked her to sell. She refused. So the city council simply voted to condemn the property and take it.

Mayor Ed Murray’s minimum wage advisory committee is “deadlocked,” Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant said Friday, with the socialist officeholder pledging she will now work to “build a strong coalition in the streets.” Sawant and two other left-leaning City Council members sit on the panel, which is co-chaired by business leader Howard S. Wright III, CEO of Seattle Hospitality Group, and Service Employees Union leader David Rolf, the city’s most able labor leader. The statement by Sawant comes amids increasing indications that Seattle voters will have the final say on on the minimum wage issue. And, like Washington voters...

Homeless Tent Cities have proven a disaster in Seattle, Portland, Sacramento and other mainland cities where they have been tried. Homelessness Industry organizers set up their tents in an area--and the meth-addled denizens generate a crime wave targeting local businesses and residents as they seek out anything they can steal to buy drugs. Exasperated local officials pay the organizers off in order to get them to move into a different jurisdiction where the cycle of crime and shakedown begins again. In Honolulu, unofficial tent cities are now set up in strategic locations designed to pressure the tourism industry, the Chinatown...

In the largest award of its kind in the US, ousted InfoSpace chief Naveen Jain has been ordered to pay $247 million to the company that he founded as penalty for violating laws against "short swing trading". The order by a federal judge is a body blow for a man who took his Seattle-based Internet company to great heights in a space of four years before it crashed like most of its peers during the dotcom bust. The company board fired Jain last December. But Jain, who went ahead and founded Intelius after the ouster, is not giving up just...

John and Tom talk with Bill Stainton, former Executive Producer of "Almost Live!", about a legendary 1989 April Fool's prank (involving the Space Needle).

“Onto the ballot – into the streets.” That’s the headline for the next big moment for 15 Now – a conference on April 26 to kick-off a mass campaign in Seattle to collect 50,000 signatures for a robust $15 minimum wage ballot initiative. Whether or not 15 Now will file those signatures in June, triggering a popular vote on November 4, depends on whether the City Council passes a real $15 minimum wage ordinance and will be decided by a democratic 15 Now conference in June. The credible threat of a winnable ballot initiative is the best tool – under...

Even hiking the minimum wage to $15 an hour may not be enough to allow low-wage workers to afford rent in Seattle, according to a new study by the National Low Income Housing Coalition. The group says a full-time worker in the Seattle-Bellevue metro area needs to earn $21.60 an hour to afford a two-bedroom apartment. That’s the so-called housing wage that the group calculates. In Washington state, the housing wage is $18.65 per hour. The group estimated that the worker spends no more than 30 percent of his or her income on rent and utilities. For the price of...

(CNN) -- A devastating landslide in Washington state killed three people Saturday and sent rescuers desperately digging for people crying for help underneath debris, authorities in Washington state said. The landslide cut off a small town and a river and prompted an evacuation notice for fear of a potentially "catastrophic flood event," authorities said. The Snohomish County Sheriff's Office said, in addition to those dead, seven adults and a 6-month-old boy were rescued and sent to local hospitals. Harborview Medical Center in Seattle reported that five patients had been airlifted there and were in its care. Three of those --...

SEATTLE — The leading proponent of a $15 an hour minimum wage in Seattle was challenged face-to-face today. Kshama Sawant engaged with small businesses owners worried about their survival. The impromptu meeting came after a City Council briefing on the implications of raising the minimum wage 63 percent, from $9.32 an hour to $15. “Despite all the rhetoric I'd like to understand the facts of what these other cities do and how they define the various terms that they use in the minimum wage ordinances,” said Council President Tim Burgess at the briefing. “My argument here is there's just not...

Three people were killed and eight were injured in a mile-long mudslide near Seattle that completely demolished at least six houses Saturday morning and caused flooding.

Kshama Sawant has held office less than three months, but the Seattle City Council socialist wants her newly unveiled $15-an-hour minimum wage plan to be “the main agenda item” as Mayor Ed Murray’s income advisory committee meets next week. **SNIP** She would implement a $15-an-hour minimum wage for “big business” on Jan. 1, 2015, with prescribed cost of living increases after that. There would be no credit for tips paid to restaurant and hotel workers, no teenage wage and no training wage. “Small business” would be allowed a three-year phase-in, starting with an $11-an-hour minimum wage next January. Full implementation...

Very sad about the copter crash in Seattle the other day, with loss of life, but here is my input as a former Army/Vietnam aviator. As the eye-witness accounts said that the copter, which looked liked a Bell Ranger, or an OH-58 as I remember it, they said that as the copter lifted off of the helipad it dipped and started to rotate, which may be a sign of a tail rotor failure. If the tail rotor failed for some reason, there is no control of left/right lateral movement. The copter is then helpless and out of control, and it...

Irrepressible and a new father at age 86, having served time for extortion, former Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards is seeking a comeback by running for an open seat in Congress. Edwards has not lost a step. “I did not vote for Obama: Where I was there were no voting machines,” said the conservative Democrat, who was in federal prison at the time. Edwards was accompanied by his 35-year-old third wife, Tina, and infant child. “There’s a guy in Florida 101 years old running, and by the time I am his age I’ll be in my seventh term,” said Edwards, who...

KOMO TV Seattle news helo crashes feet from studios. Ywo confirmed dead. One critical Live link http://www.komonews.com/live

Seattle Monday became the first city in the country to limit drivers for Lyft, uberX and Sidecar, in what will eventually be an overhaul of all of the city’s ride-service rules. The regulations, approved unanimously by the City Council, will limit each company to 150 drivers on the road at the same time, collectively capping them at 450.

Two people were killed and one was critically injured when a news helicopter crashed and burned Tuesday morning on Broad Street only yards away from the Space Needle. Emergency personnel immediately rushed to the scene. Two cars were struck in the crash. One man could be seen running from from one of the cars with his sleeve on fire, and he was extinguished by officers at the scene.

SEATTLE — Kshama Sawant said she needs to see progress on a $15 per hour minimum wage soon, or she and her supporters will move ahead without the help of her fellow city council members and the mayor. She said if there is not significant progress soon she will start collecting signatures to put a minimum wage measure on the ballot. Sawant said signatures are due June 10. The socialist council member is holding a rally this coming Saturday where she will lay out her latest plan of action moving forward.

“Give me a bite of your burrito,” Mahamed Abdi, 24, allegedly demanded of a stranger noshing Saturday afternoon outside a Seattle restaurant. When the burrito owner declined Abdi’s request (and remarked “That is rude”), Abdi pushed him and again demanded a bite of the Mexican food favorite. As the diner then arose from his seat, Abdi allegedly punched him in the forehead and fled on foot, according to a Seattle Police Department report. Witnesses described the attacker as a black male in his 20s wearing “a gray ‘beanie’ and white fur coat.” Cops subsequently caught up to Abdi as he...

A Seattle teen shot and killed a man for his cellphone — then went to a friend’s house and complained the stolen gizmo wasn’t nice enough, police say. Byron White, 17, now faces charges as an adult for killing David Peterson last month in the Washington city’s Greenwood neighborhood. White was on the lam for a week after the shooting until cops caught up to him at the airport last weekend as the boy tried to board a flight to Atlanta, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported. “David Peterson went out for a walk around the neighborhood after dinner and never returned,...

Why don't music innovators win competitions like America's Got Talent? Or is this guy too Vegas-y? Coming from a string instrument background, I am baffled by the idea of tuning each of the strings.

If you’ve ever wondered how the United States got in to its current mess of a stagnant economy and out-of-control government, I have a suggestion. Take a good look at what a handful of voters in one of America’s finer suburbs did to themselves and the rest of their community, and realize that it is a microcosm for what’s happening all across the country. The city in question is Seatac, a small suburb in the state of Washington (it’s name is derived from the larger neighboring cities of Seattle and Tacoma). Last year a group of activists there were...

SEATTLE, Wash. — Seattle city councilmember Kshama Sawant advocates a bold idea for ending the dispute between taxi companies and rideshare businesses - she says the city should take over the taxi business. Taxi drivers feel they’ll be crushed by competiton, despite the limits on rideshare companies that city council members voted to approve last night. Because rideshare companies use high-tech service to lure customers away from taxis, councilmember Sawant says the city should step in. “The real solution to this problem is for the city to have the app, the smartphone app and the dispatch system and to employ...

Seattle, Wash. — At an organizing event and rally for a $15-per-hour minimum wage, Councilmember Kshama Sawant emphasized the movement should not accept any watered-down version of the wage increase “I’m throwing down the gauntlet,” Sawant said, declaring herself the first politician to support a true $15-per-hour rate. She and other rally speakers cautioned against politicians and businesses who say they support a minimun wage increase but want loopholes and exemptions.

Lars Larson, substituting for KVI’s John Carlson, listens to a mildly contentious exchange between the two city council members during a Monday council hearing where council President Tim Burgess ordered councilwoman Sawant to stop talking when she went ‘off-topic’. Sawant was venting about her pet issues, employer wage theft. Also, Larson discusses the now interminable delay of the Seattle downtown tunnel dig because of damage to the drilling machine known as Big Bertha.

Seattle radio station KIRO 7 says that a local woman has been accused of sending over 100 abusive and violent messages to the frontman from nine different Twitter accounts, including posts which threatened to rape his 13-year-old daughter.

The tech-bus protest isn’t just a San Francisco thing anymore. This week, the anti-gentrification act of blocking a private shuttle full of high-paid tech workers spread to Seattle, where a handful of buses carrying Microsoft employees were stopped by demonstrators. The protest was chronicled by local Tweeps and community websites.

Researchers plot course of ancient American tsunami Researchers have calculated the scale of a giant wave that devastated the north west coast of America 1,100 years ago. Japanese scientists used computer modelling to recreate the devastation from the ancient tsunami. The team from the Disaster Reduction and Human Renovation Institution in Kobe say the work will help planners minimise the impact of any future wave. The researchers took clues from silt deposits found in the Puget Sound, a Pacific inlet above earthquake fault lines in the Seattle area. Experts say the tsunami could have reached up to seven metres in...

Pick on someone your own size! Why an elderly lady with a big fighting spirit refused to sell her home to developers When Barry Martin took on the role of construction supervisor of a huge Seattle shopping complex, he never imagined that he would end up caring for Edith Macefield, a stubborn 84-year-old who had refused $1 million from the developer to move house. Here he describes their unlikely friendship.

SEATTLE (CBS Seattle) – According to a recent study, fatal car crashes involving pot use have tripled in the U.S. “Currently, one of nine drivers involved in fatal crashes would test positive for marijuana,” Dr. Guohua Li, director of the Center for Injury Epidemiology and Prevention at Columbia, and co-author of the study told HealthDay News. Researchers from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health gathered data from six states – California, Hawaii, Illinois, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and West Virginia – that perform toxicology tests on drivers involved in fatal car accidents. This data included over 23,500 drivers that...

The city expects around 300,000 people - the same attendance as Seafair Parade - along the parade route to celebrate the Seahawks Super Bowl XLVIII Champions, the first Super Bowl winners in franchise history. >snip The Seahawks victory parade is scheduled for 11 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. Wednesday. It will begin just south of Seattle Center at Denny Way and travel south down 4th Avenue past Westlake Park and finish at the north entrance of CenturyLink Field. >snip A Super Bowl celebration will be held at CenturyLink Field following the parade. The celebration is expected to start around 1 p.m....

**SNIP** The Bureau of Labor projects the majority of jobs developing to be low-wage service jobs. Is this the fault of the unemployed who are still out there looking for decent work, or is this the fault of big businesses who have greedily outsourced their production jobs for increased profit? There was an article a couple of years ago about Henry Ford. He paid his assembly line workers a $5 per day back in 1914 (that’s $118 in today’s dollars, according to MeasuringWorth.com). He did this because he wanted to increase productivity and reduce turnover — and if his employees...

After the Seattle Seahawks won their first Super Bowl in franchise history on Sunday, fans in Seattle jumped on cars, took over intersections, torched couches, and riot police had to be brought in to restore order.

According to the police, Musab Mohamed Masmari tried to torch a crowded gay bar. It was just after midnight on New Year’s Eve while nearly 700 people crammed into Neighbours for a celebration when customers noticed the staircase at the iconic gay club was on fire. Management at the iconic gay club in Capitol Hill later discovered a gasoline container near the stairs. Neighbours released surveillance video that police believe shows Masmari as he walks into the club. The video was captured around the time of the countdown to midnight on New Year’s Eve. Masmari is carrying something in his hand. -snip...

Musab Mohamed Masmari, 30, was arrested as a suspect in the arson attempt on ‘Neighbours’ Gay night club as he was on his way to the airport. But that’s not all. As part of the Obama Regime’s Department of State’s International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP), Masari, a native of Benghazi, Libya, was also a cultural ambassador on behalf of the 9/11 Media Arts Center for the Arabic speaking visitors. Capitol Hill Seattle (h/t SusanK) On January 1st, a man poured gasoline over a staircase inside Neighbours and lit it on fire as the nightclub was packed with more than 700...

**SNIP** Lesson #9: Join the Fight Last but not least, we had Kshama Sawant – an intelligent, eloquent, passionate yet tactful immigrant woman of color running against stale establishment white guys in both 2012 and 2013. Sawant is an impressive speaker and a determined fighter, no doubt. But she is also an ordinary person who happened to attend a couple public forums in 2008 and was impressed with the Socialist Alternative speakers’ political clarity. Through discussions with Socialist Alternative, she decided to dedicate her life to fighting for a socialist world. Most ordinary people gravely underestimate our own potential to...

"Administrators at Seattle Children's today said they predicted this would happen, and it's even worse than they expected," says the local news anchor. "Patients being denied specialty treatment at the hospital by insurance providers on the Washington health benefits exchange. Children's filed request on behalf of 125 of their patients. Of those, they say they got only 20 responses, eight of which were denials. Dr. Sandy Melzer says all this comes after reassurances of certain unique specialty cases would still be covered."

**SNIP** In a frank and unflinching critique not seen or heard on the broadcast or cable news shows, Sawant described Obama's renewed focus on income inequality as an indictment of his own failures and misguided economic policy. Pointing to record high poverty and the fact that "95% of the gains in productivity during the so-called recovery have gone to the top 1%," Sawant argued that Obama's rhetoric on inequality has been forced on him by popular "outrage over the widening gulf between the super-rich" and the millions of workers, many working in low-wage retail and fast food jobs, who generated...

Seattle’s only Socialist City Council member announced Monday that she will make good on a campaign pledge and accept only $40,000 a year in salary — bringing her down to the average wage of a worker in the city. The remainder of the roughly $117,000 salary will go to social justice causes such as strike funds, civil rights and women’s rights, she said in a statement. "Every Councilmember faces a choice of who they represent and which world they inhabit,” said Kshama Sawant, who took office earlier this month. “My place is with working people and their struggles. I want...

With the current success of the Seattle Seahawks, the "12th Man" has been all over ESPN and social media. We decided to look further into the "12th Man" trademark and Texas A&M's licensing agreement with Seattle. Following an initial lump sum payment of $100,000 in 2006, Texas A&M University is receiving $5,000 per year from the Seattle Seahawks for their use of the "12th Man" mark. The initial term of the agreement was five years, and the Seahawks opted to renew the agreement for five more years in 2011. It will be interesting to see what happens in 2016 after...

A 32-year-old Seattle man accused of posting threats on Facebook against Seattle’s openly gay mayor and a socialist City Council member was charged Wednesday with malicious harassment, felony harassment and two counts of cyberstalking. Mitchell Munro Taylor remained jailed on $600,000 bail, The Seattle Times reported. …

"Omaha" versus "You mad, bro?" Super Bowl XLVIII between the Denver Broncos and the Seattle Seahawks is setting up to be a classic contest in which the surgical Peyton Manning will try to perhaps cap off his career and legacy against the brash--and best (ask Richard Sherman)--Seattle secondary that has smothered the league's best wide receivers all season long. Simply put, the league's top offense (Denver) will face the league's top defense (Seattle). Something has to give.

Bertha, the world's largest tunneling machine, churning through the rock and mud beneath Seattle, has hit a mysterious roadblock—so mysterious, it is only known for now as "the object." The New York Times reports that the machine—300 feet long and 5 stories tall—has ground to a halt. Built precisely not to be stopped by, well, just about anything, Bertha has apparently met her match. But what exactly is it? "Something unknown, engineers say—and all the more intriguing to many residents for being unknown—has blocked the progress of the biggest-diameter tunnel-boring machine in use on the planet," the NYT writes. It...

After drilling four deep shafts and sending a man down to look last week, Seattle Tunnel Partners and the state Department of Transportation don’t fully know yet what’s blocking tunnel machine Bertha, some 60 feet deep next to Pioneer Square. So the DOT announced Tuesday it is “going hyperbaric,” by sending workers to the pressurized cutting face. Teams of five or six workers would take turns inspecting the huge area. Bertha is equipped with two hatches for men and one for equipment, to reach a five-foot wide chamber where excavated muck enters the conveyor system, right behind the 57-foot rotary...

Assuming the 49ers win on Sunday, fans wanting to cheer on the Niners in the January 19th NFC Championship Game in Seattle will not be able to buy tickets through the Seahawks, as the team is restricting sales to only zip codes in Washington, Oregon, Montana, Idaho, Alaska, Hawaii, and parts of Canada. Tickets go on sale Monday, and California residents can still purchase tickets through the secondary ticket market like NFL Ticket Exchange, Stub Hub and others, or with a friend who has a credit card billed to an address in the Pacific Northwest.

<p>A buried steel pipe is at least partly to blame for stopping the giant tunnel-boring machine Bertha, which has been stuck since Dec. 6 along the Seattle waterfront near South Main Street. The long pipe was a “well casing” used to measure groundwater during studies in 2002 on the Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement project, state DOT spokesman Lars Erickson said this afternoon. The well site was listed in reference materials that were provided to bidders as part of the contract specifications, he said. “I don’t want people to say WSDOT didn’t know where its own pipe was, because it did,” Erickson said. It’s unclear for now why the pipe was left in the ground by the team that did those soil investigations, or why Seattle Tunnel Partners would not have removed it prior to drilling. A modern tunnel machine can chew through dirt and concrete, but not steel. Even fiberglass rods caused a snag that delayed work several days this summer. A steel pipe can become tangled in the spokes of the rotary cutting head, and in a conveyor screw that pushes dirt from the cutter face onto a belt that moves out the rear of the machine. Downtown Seattle contains some of the most frequently poked and studied ground on earth, which makes the blockage all the more confounding. Five-foot diameter holes were drilled alongside the tunnel path to install concrete pilings that protect the old viaduct; the contractors have used ground-penetrating radar; and geotechnical experts drilled test holes, which didn’t hit this particular object. The state Department of Transportation is holding a news conference this afternoon, during which state engineers and contractors will provide more details about the next steps, and about resuming drilling. An inspection was conducted at the front of the machine Thursday night.</p>

As the Big Apple’s tax base shrinks, its municipal costs skyrocket, increasing the urgency that it get its financial house in order. So I’ll make a bold prediction: New Yorkers may someday regret electing a man who says he does not believe in the free market system. “Everything you heard about me is true…I am not a free-marketeer…I believe in the heavy hand of government,” Mayor-Elect Bill de Blasio recently told a meeting of major real estate developers. (snip) Amazingly, this erstwhile reader of Barricade magazine isn’t the most radical city politician lately to sweep into power. Meet Kshama Sawant,...

SEATTLE — People are used to liberals running things around here. But nobody reckoned with Kshama Sawant. Ms. Sawant, a 41-year-old economics teacher and immigrant from India, took a left at liberal and then kept on going — all the way to socialism. **SNIP** But Kshama Sawant (pronounced SHAH-mah sah-WANT) heartily embraces the label. Ask her about almost any problem facing America today, and her answer will probably include the “S” word as the best and most reasonable response. Socialism is the path to real democracy, she says. Socialism protects the environment. Socialism is the best hope for young people...

NFL Media Insider Ian Rapoport reported Tuesday that the Dallas Cowboys worked out David Carr, Tyler Thigpen, John Skelton and Caleb Hanie, only to send all four of the free-agent quarterbacks home without a contract. Now we know why.

A group of 49ers fans who raised money for a billboard in Seattle to brag about their team's five Super Bowl trophies got their sign - but it's nowhere near CenturyLink Field. The digital billboard is just north of Fife, about 27 miles from downtown Seattle. Niners fans raised money through the fundraising site gofundme.com. They raised more than the $7,000 needed to pay for the billboard so the rest will go to charity. A Seahawks fan wants to do the same thing in San Francisco, but to promote Seattle Children's hospital and Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson. On Sunday, a...

SEATTLE (AP) — Students at a Seattle-area Catholic school are gaining national attention for their protest over the forced departure of a gay vice principal. An online petition started by the senior class president of Eastside Catholic was the third fastest growing U.S. petition on change.org Friday, attracting around 15,000 signatures in one day. The petition was launched after Vice Principal Mark Zmuda resigned under pressure from school administrators after they learned he had married his same-sex partner. Bradley Strode said the students want to effect change within the wider Catholic Church, with an ultimate goal of altering the Catholic...