Seattle's Money Laundering Poorly Disguises Socialism

Seattle continues to be a sinkhole of economic illiteracy.

Some cities put fluoride in the water, while Seattle evidently sprinkles in a little socialism.

Michael Reagan has written here about the damaging effects of the politically-imposed $15 per hour minimum wage.

The last time this column visited it was another case of sudden socialism syndrome.

Entrepreneur Dan Price, already paying an average wage of $23 per hour reached for immortality in the pages of the New York Times and established a $70,000 annual minimum wage at his company Gravity Payments. (Complete details in my column here.)

Currently Price is taking in renters to cover his mortgage — $70,000 appears to be both a floor and a ceiling since “Gravity” only functions in a narrow band — but in his favor

Dan is using his own money in the pursuit of a fanciful goal.

The current city goal is even more fanciful than Price’s, but Seattle politicians wouldn’t dream of using their own money. That’s what taxpayers are for!

The announced goal is to increase voter “engagement.” The means is through a perversion of the voucher concept. Call them “slouchers.”

Slouchers aren’t like useful tuition vouchers that get children out of government school indoctrination and into private school.

Slouchers are only useful to politicians since the sloucher is a campaign contribution that comes out of tax dollars. Joe Citizen only launders the money.

Note the subtlety of this approach. The worst aspect of being an officeholder is raising money to stay in office.

Followed closely by listening to ignorant voters suffering from the delusion the politician works for them.

The simple solution for the political class would be taxpayer-financed campaigns. This is the equivalent of forcing the pig to sharpen the butcher’s knives, and the pig knows it.

To disguise this self–interested raid on the treasury, politicians and the left term it “public campaign finance.”

This only reveals their basic dishonesty.

What we have now is public finance. The public contributes and the campaigns are financed!

What the political class wants is to eliminate the indignity of making fundraising contingent on performance or voting record, while giving incumbents an advantage over challengers by limiting the total amount of money that can be spent.

Seattle’s vehicle is Initiative-122, the third attempt to force taxpayers to finance the campaigns of politicians that raise their taxes.

The disingenuous justification was getting voters involved by giving away money.

Evidently the thinking was it keeps politicians involved, so why not voters?

It works like this: Every registered voter in Seattle will receive four slouchers in January, each worth $25  each. With this $100 burning a hole in their pocket, the voter will be on fire to participate in the political process like thousands of pocket Koch brothers.

At least that’s the theory. ABC news reports, “The idea is to get those who don't normally donate more involved in politics as a way to counteract the influence of big corporate donors and wealthy individuals.”

I’m sure we all remember how the number of volunteers at farmer’s markets skyrocketed after the government began distributing free cheese.

And lobbyists are still angry about how hard it was to get a seat at FCC hearings following the first batch of Obamaphones to hit the street.

When one gets into the funding details it’s about what you’d expect from a city that thinks it’s wise to set wages by legislation.

Voters agreed to accept a $30 million property tax increase over 10 years to spare politicians the rejection of being told “no” when they asked for money..

Of that $30 million, a startling $8.4 million will be spent on administrative costs, leaving only $2.1million for each election cycle. (Evidently it’s expensive for the government to give away money.) At $100 a head that means enough for 21,600 vouchers.

This could cause real problems since there are 419,000 registered voters in the city. So after the first 21,600 slouchers are redeemed the rest are as worthless as an Obama promise.

Seattle could be the first city to have its elections bounce.

Of course there’s a loophole. After the money voters approved runs out, the council can fund slouchers from the city’s general fund, which voters haven’t approved, so the good times never end.

The only provision of the initiative that made sense was banning political contributions by any contractor that does $250,000 or more worth of business with the city.

This latest step down the road to government nirvana is a politician subsidy combined with behavior modification.

There is nothing preventing residents from making political contributions now, they just aren’t interested.

Their punishment is a tax increase that only benefits politicians, administered with a large dose of insincere sanctimony.


Michael R. Shannon is a commentator, researcher (for the League of American Voters), and an award-winning political and advertising consultant with nationwide and international experience. He is author of "Conservative Christian’s Guidebook for Living in Secular Times (Now with added humor!)." Read more of Michael Shannon's reports — Go Here Now.