Free Republic

Last November, Seattle elected a straight-up socialist to their City Council who, among other economic/social-justice aspirations, included the already popular idea of a minimum wage hike to $15/hour in her campaign platform. Evidently, the fact that that is now very likely going to happen in a gradual phase-in over the next few years isn’t quite good enough for her, via the NYT: Mayor Ed Murray presented on Thursday what he described as an imperfect but workable plan to increase the city’s minimum wage to $15 an hour, more than twice the federal minimum wage and one of the highest anywhere...

Mayor Ed Murray delivered a major May Day victory for Seattle’s low-wage workers on Thursday, with a plan that will move big business and small business to a $15-an-hour minimum wage, over a sliding scale of three to seven years. “In seven years, the minimum-wage worker in Seattle will earn $6,200 more than a minimum-wage worker elsewhere in Washington, assuming a 30-hour week,” Murray said. He described unveiling of the plan as an “historic moment for Seattle.” A social gospel Catholic, Murray quoted Pope Francis on social justice and income inequality. He was followed shortly to the podium by ultra...

Editor’s Note: Kshama Sawant is a Seattle councilwoman. And a Socialist. She was elected last fall on a $15-an-hour minimum wage platform. That wage, which is 62 percent higher than this year’s inflation indexed state minimum wage of $9.32, already the highest in the nation, comes from what researchers at the University of Washington have calculated as the wage it takes to be self-sufficient in the area. The Seattle suburb of SeaTac, home of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, narrowly approved a $15 minimum wage ballot initiative last fall, but as we recently explored, most airport workers have yet to see a...

SEATTLE — Seattle Mayor Ed Murray has scheduled a news conference for Thursday to announce a plan to raise the city’s minimum wage to $15 an hour. **SNIP** Committee members representing business and labor could not agree on issues like crediting tips and benefits against the $15 minimum. And council member Kshama Sawant revealed another hurdle -- she said there has been little talk of automatically increasing the minimum wage with inflation. “If going forward the new minimum wage does not have a cost of living increase attached to it every year of the phase in it's not going to...

The Planned Parenthood abortion business in Seattle, Washington is taking a page out o the religious bigotry book in order to raise funds for itself. Tomorrow night, the abortion corporation will stage “Bar Nun Bingo” at and, two days later, with hold another “Bar Nun Bingo” — fundraising events that, as Bill Donohue of the Catholic League tells LifeNews in an email, are aimed squarely at Catholics: barnunbingoBoth fund-raising events will bash nuns, and will be led by the demonstrably anti-Catholic gay group, Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Pictures of previous “Bar Nun Bingo” affairs show how sick it is. Planned...

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.