By Sandeep Kaushik
(Note from Erica: Ordinarily, I write about what’s happening on the podcast myself, but I couldn’t beat Sandeep’s blurb this week. I recorded this podcast from the back seat of a rental car parked on a dead-end road outside New Orleans during a torrential thunderstorm, so forgive any audible raindrops.)
On this week’s Seattle Nice podcast: With David away for a second consecutive week, Erica and Sandeep seek out the inimitable Josh Feit, news editor of the Stranger back in the olden (golden) days, to buffer their conversation with convoluted references to 50-year-old Joni Mitchell records.
We start with the increasingly off-putting saga of King County Assessor John Arthur Wilson, who remains defiant in the face of a unanimous vote by the King County Council (minus the absent Reagan Dunn) urging him to resign over allegations he stalked his ex-partner during their breakup from hell. We ask: Why did the resignation calls take so long, and are we headed for a messy recall? (Hours after we taped this episode on the morning of Friday, June 13, a judge denied Wilson’s legal motion seeking the dismissal of his ex-partner’s protection order against him.)
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Next up, Josh keys off the announced resignation of Councilmember Cathy Moore to argue that what Moore and her supporters and backers decry as incivility in Council chambers is really just sour grapes about the rising voice of an emerging urbanist majority. But are the urbanists so ascendant, give the status quo nature of the comprehensive plan they’re currently debating to death?
Finally, we dig into the implications of Erica’s reporting that the mayor is seeking to expand the city’s powers to shutter “nuisance properties.” Is a crackdown on clubs warranted by recent incidents of gun violence that have occurred outside nightclubs and hookah lounges? Or is this just the latest iteration of a long, pinch-faced tradition in Seattle municipal politics of finger-wagging at—and passing laws to curtail—the city’s nightlife?
Better listen in before a Big Yellow Taxi comes to take Josh and Sandeep away!
I have become skeptical of the use of the word “crisis” to describe the homelessness and affordability issues…a crisis can’t last 10+ years and still *be* a crisis. It becomes the status quo which is actually worse. Fighting a fire is a crisis, with a clear problem and solution. These two situations are more akin to sea level rise…unstoppable and not even being mitigated in any comprehensive way. We set ourselves on the path to sea level rise just as we decided to reward land speculation (the Gordian knot that binds homelessness and affordability).
Button pushing generalities ignoring the ongoing abuse of govt with self dealing conflicts of interest with COMPREHENSIVE PLAN HOMELESS CRISIS PUBLIC SAFETY CRISIS AND ONE SEATTLE PLAN DUE TO MULTIPLE LANDLORDS ON COUNCIL SABITAGING RESTRICTING AND DOING THE BARE.MINIMUM TO CONTINUE OPPRESSING WOTH LOW QUALITY HOUSING CHOICES TO NOT OFFSET THE SUPPLY DEMAND OF THIER FAMILY RENTALS