Amazon responds to Seattle's proposed head tax by pausing construction projects

Item seen on Drudge linked to KOMO news reporting the tax intended will apply (only) (for now) to companies with $20 million or more annual taxable receipts. Lawmakers are leaning on 500 businesses. The idea is charge (only) (for now) 26 cents per hour per employee up to $500 maximum per employee. They want to raise $75 million per year for affordable housing.

Let's stop right here and apply all that we know about responsible legislation, before reading more about how legislatures think and speak, and how businessmen act who've used advancing technology to changed the face of marketing globally.

* drums fingers*

* ding * Time's up.

Shhhh. One of them's talking.

"From our small businesses to our start-ups, our jobs are critical to our City's economy, budget, and growth. Our workers add to the vitality of our region and support our arts, cultural, and non-profit community. I'm deeply concerned about the impact this decision will have on a large range of jobs - from our building trades, to restaurant workers, to nurses, manufacturing jobs and tech workers,"

Deeply concerned. It's the mayor. He continues.

At the same time, our City must urgently address our homelessness and affordability crisis and lift up those who have been left behind. I fundamentally believe we can do both by working together. In the upcoming days, I will be bringing together Councilmembers as well business, labor and our community leaders to work together to see how we might forge common ground in dealing with our challenges while keeping jobs.

When you need money you got to go where the money is and grab it. This is classic tax the 1%, again, to fulfill socialist impulses. It is a charming Robin Hood mentality.

But wait, it gets better. Here is another City Council member talking.

I understand Amazon doesn't like it. I'm sure they would love to go to a city that has no taxes. And maybe they will find that place," 

Logic fallacy. The undistributed middle. Rhetorical devise. She moves the slider from bizarre additional tax to no tax, to make her preciously girlishly aggressive point. Little girls do this. Amazon is already taxed multiple ways by a stack of taxes in actuality. They agreed to be taxed. They bring more opportunity for more taxes through increased business at every level, so, multiple points for multiple layers of increased taxation. Nobody said anything about "a place with no taxes." That's ridiculously inanely girlish.

I want to work with [Amazon], I would love for [Amazon] to continue to grow in Seattle, but I need [Amazon's] help solving this crisis. 

She doesn't want to work with Amazon. She wants to control Amazon. She's insanely jealous of Amazon and their mad abilities and she wants another, larger, piece of Amazon.

Amazon is perfectly capable of paying that, double, even four times that.

Six times, Ten times. Eleventy times! In an instance of acute self-unconsciousness, she also called Amazon's tactic "extortion."

Another Council member spoke.

Who loses? Low-income people lose, and we have an increase in homelessness,
Again I'm hopeful that we’re going to come out of this with not only an understanding of the problems but an understanding of the solutions. 

While Amazon didn’t single-handedly cause this problem, they have contributed to the growing income inequality, displacement and housing affordability issues facing our City. That is precisely why -- in their visits with 20 other cities -- Amazon has sought to speak with elected officials about plans to proactively address those consequences. It seems only fair that as so many struggle to make their way through a tax system that’s rigged in favor of large corporations, that we ask those same corporations to financially contribute to the public health and housing solutions designed to address those consequences. 

Greater shared responsibility equals greater shared prosperity for all, businesses and residents alike.

The argument gets really good. Great back and forth. Not all council members feel the same way. There is much more at the link if this is your cup of tea. Others put up contray perspective. Too bad. Robin Hood got no time for this:

Amazon’s growth in the heart of the city has had a significant economic benefit for small, medium and large businesses in Seattle across a number of sectors. A pause in that growth will be felt by many - from construction workers to hotels to small businesses. This news should serve as a wake-up call to those proposing a risky plan to tax jobs in Seattle.

The article includes an interesting photograph of one of the Amazon domes in Seattle with the Space Needle in the background appearing shorter than you usually see it in photographs, from a downtown angle that shows a bit more of its bottom, and in diffused light, so that the saucer on top looks like a Space Needle from another city. I was all what? That doesn't look right. Between skyscrapers, one of them residential. The photograph is beautiful and it makes Seattle look like a beautiful, serene and mature modern city run by level headed people who are brilliant. This is a serious city with serious Council people.

Amazon's view is they're bringing wealth to their city, employment, salaries, and industry, real estate, vehicles, fuel, energy, production, every bit of it taxable at every single stage of serial transactions, and now they are changing the terms of the original deal because they feel they can grab even more. And the imaginative grabbing can never stop. They carved out a new taxable spot. And they cannot stop carving. And there is always a perfect reason. A reason that's as fungible as the original determinative terms even after agreements are reached. It's just that liquid when you control everything regarding business within your space. The question then for the businessman is, do they want to deal with this group of people?

The article includes a poll. Is Amazon right or wrong in pausing construction and speaking this way, the only way Council feels anything, by painfully twisting their pickpocketing hands. All they did was pause.

After voting I was delighted to see 89% voted for Amazon, and 11% voted against them.

And then I realized I came to the link from Drudge and voted, and Drudge drives massive responses in comments when they are available, it changes the nature of the linked site,  and we are kindred spirits. Their poll is bogus as all polls are perhaps even more so because of the Drudge link. I must assume, without the Drudge link the percentages would be much more favorable to Seattle.

Now I'm changing the subject ever so slightly.

Have you ever seen your own legislature at work?

They're parliamentarians.

Colorado showed its parliamentarians at work with its own t.v. channel and observing them in action is embarrassing. They're one big happy family. They recognize each other's birthdays on the Senate floor. They bring birthday cakes. They acknowledge weddings and personal milestones and such. They spend a lot of time treating the legislature as their expanded home.

This happy family is constantly bringing to the floor their wild and reaching and creative ideas about how they can get their crooked grasping sticky filthy little mitts on other people's money. They harbor an intense jealousy toward business in particular and regard them as simple money bags at their disposal, and all activity at every level that occurs in their space as theirs to control as they wish. They are the modern day Baron who sets his castle upon a river and taxes all movement on the river, except worse, they claim all economic activity in the space of thousands of feet below ground up to the ionosphere within state borders. Visualize that column, a square shape in Colorado rising to the sky and sunk into the gound that includes mountains and plains, ranches, cities, towns, and academies, everything in the space, as theirs to contol however they wish, with every single stage of economic activity taxable, every stage of production taxable, so taxes upon taxes, upon taxes, each item and each activity taxed multiple times, though the life of each item, even through the death of each item and its recycling, everything living and everything inanimate an actual stack of taxed processes. That is what these insane control freak dipshits do all day long. Their minds are geared to getting you to pay more to them so they can enact their expanding ideas. They thrive on the production of others. They are cringeworthy blush-worthy shameful embarrassments to behold in action. There is nothing modest or careful or cautious about them. Just watching them awhile on television, and comparing that with your own real business experience, forces you to disrespect them.

This diatribe tuned out longer than intended.

There is an organization in Colorado named Principles of Liberty. One of the many things they do is keep track of Colorado legislation as it is proposed. They rate each proposal along the lines of correct government action that protects American liberty balanced with personal responsibility. Their newsletter lists all the proposals and rates them. They reject nearly everything. And when you see them all like this it makes you want to knock their g.d. heads together. The state legislature is constantly overreaching their proper authoritah. Constantly reaching out and pulling more into themselves. They are constantly, constantly, constantly completely out of control. To the point that it makes you realize the entire State Capitol is actually an insane asylum and our very real job as citizens is to keep beating them back, smashing their faces in, stabbing their arms with sedatives and pushing them back into their cubicles, slamming shut the doors, and deny them ALL their proposals for they can never cease proposing. They are human-robots programmed for producing proposals without any counter programming to constrain them.

I can take any newsletter that comes more often than once a week as illustration. They are all reliably crackpot. I'll show the last one. Maybe you'll find this interesting.

HB18-1436      Extreme Risk Protection Orders                      Oppose

It's incredibly long.

...creates the ability for a family or household member or a law enforcement officer to petition the court for a temporary extreme risk protection order (ERPO). The petitioner must establish by a preponderance of the evidence that a person poses a significant risk to self or others by having a firearm in her or her custody or control or by possessing, purchasing, or receiving a firearm.

The analysis even longer. The bill is deeply flawed.

This bill would give and dangerous and unchecked amount of power to the state over (formerly) free individuals. You want government to “do something” to protect you? This ain’t it. This endangers your rights; it doesn’t protect them.

This legislation opposes the principles of:
Individual Liberty
Property Rights
Limited Government


HB18-1432      Prohibit Housing Discrimination Source of Income                Oppose

... would add discrimination based on source of income as a type of unfair housing practice. The bill would prohibit a person from asking about a potential tenant’s source of income or refusing to show, rent, lease, or transmit an offer to rent or lease housing based on a person's source of income or discriminate in the terms or conditions of a rental agreement against another person based on source of income or based upon the person's participation in a third-party contract required as a condition of receiving public housing assistance.

HB18-1434      Safe2Tell Program New Duties & Annual Report                   Oppose

... would expand the Safe2Tell program duties to include providing training and support to all preschool, elementary, and secondary school and school districts regarding school safety.

SB18-277         Virtual Currency Exemption Money Transmitters Act                       Support

... would exempt the transmission of virtual currency from regulation under the Colorado "Money Transmitters Act". Cryptocurrency isn’t a security; it’s an alternative form of currency.

SB18-278         Increase Penalty for First Responder Assaults                       Oppose

How many times must we repeat this from our soapbox?! It is the duty of the state to apply the law equally to everyone. Some citizens are not “more” valuable than others, and it is not appropriate for the state to pick a class of citizens for special treatment under the law in the form of extra legal protections. Under current law, second degree assault on a firefighter or a peace officer is a class 4 felony. This bill increases the penalty for assault on a firefighter or peace officer, making it a class 3 felony. We all deserve equal protection under the law.