Committing Citycide: From New York to Seattle, Voters Embrace Fiscal Destruction

Leeb's Market Forecast ^ | December 23, 2013 | Stella Paul

[Trafalgar123]

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, the avowed socialist soon slated to bring her special brand of excitement to Seattle’s City Council.

Sawant recently encouraged Boeing machinists to “take over the factories, and shut down Boeing’s profit-making machine.”

As New York and Seattle voters may discover in coming years, committing citycide happens in three stages. First, the government pursues big utopian dreams requiring public spending on crack. Second, taxpayers take flight as in come crime, decay and general collapse.

Finally, the city’s foreign occupier arrives. Guess who’s buying up Detroit? China. Bankrupt Motown is the now the fourth most popular American destination for Chinese real estate investors, now snatching up such iconic downtown buildings as the Downtown Free Press headquarters plus individual homes selling for half the price of a pair of leather shoes.

Well, we can always hope that the Chinese bring back some old-fashioned capitalism to America’s dying cities. Maybe they can teach Bill de Blasio the virtues of the free market.

[cuban leaf]

I tell people that in many good ways I feel like I have gone back to the US of the 1950’s. I loved seeing a pickup drive by with four teenagers in the back. No problem...

[Max in Utah]

In the Seattle area, you need a permit to save the rainwater off your roof.

Makes sense. After all, rain is such a rare event in that city. /s

[sheana]

Well this Californian is headed to Arkansas next week to look at a house in the mountains in the middle of nowhere. lol

[silverleaf]

Having Detroit become a Chinese run city should be real interesting to observe, since communist-capitalists are such diversity hugging, tolerant, social liberals and all

Think the labor unions will start learning Mandarin? and where better than Detroit to combine Chicoms, poverty pimps and labor unions - ALL part of the DNC’s “base”

happy happy happy

I, for one, welcome our new imperial overlords

[Calvin Locke]

In the Seattle area, you need a permit to save the rainwater off your roof.

I was unaware that greater Seattle had a drought problem.

[silverleaf]

what do you think Chinese investors know that we aren’t seeing here? Inland rust belt cities with bad weather- surely they have enough of those back home

[cuban leaf]

In the Seattle area, you need a permit to save the rainwater off your roof.
Makes sense. After all, rain is such a rare event in that city. /s

---

It is their thinking that is so scary. Since rainwater is what feeds into Elliot Bay, and is part of the aquifir, their reasoning is that it is the property of the government in order to manage the aquifir. Therefore they don’t want a bunch of crazy citizens saving their water, reducing the amount that shows up in the aquifir. You could save rainwater and use it to water your lawn during drought seasons where water use is limited, and find yourself getting fined for having a lawn that is too green.

It’s kinda nutty. I figured I had better move to a more sane place before I found myself in prison.

[cuban leaf]

They actually do, sometimes. One interesting thing is that in central KY, where I now live, it is not necessary to water your lawn. In seattle it is possible to see lawns go very brown if you don’t water. The rain here is much more consistent, though usually we get it in two hour downpoors rather than two week long drizzles.

[Steve_Seattle]

I don’t doubt that Seattle requires a permit to capture rainwater, even though it is a practice that they encourage by selling water barrels to the public. But I doubt it has anything to do with protecting the “aquifer.” Seattle’s drinking water comes from the mountains, not from Elliot Bay, which is saltwater. There are two watersheds - Cedar River and Tolt River - where the water supply comes from.

[free from tyranny]

Relative to the expensive, high tax, over regulated,inner city violent crime ridden cesspools the youth are emigrating from.
Little known to them is that the socialist leadership of Pittsburgh along with the ticking time bomb of an economy over reliant on bloated education and health care spending will doom the city.

[whinecountry]

I told my BIL that the wife and I feel like we entered the USA when we were in Missouri.

[Fred Hayek]

In 1998, I had an interview for an engineering position in Seattle. I decided to bail on that interview. I’m glad I did.
Eventually I wound up in a liberal hellhole called Minnestoopid for ten years. Still, Seattle is probably worse than Minnestoopid, if that is possible.

[sickoflibs]

DEms say this only works right if it is forced on the whole country at once.