Welcome to Gotham, Seattle

There is no Batman, Commissioner Gordon, or Harvey Dent, but Seattle is full of Jokers

Radalyn King drove her Nissan Sentra at speeds up to 80 MPH on the city streets. She closed her eyes and laughing crashed her car into the sidewalk, killing two and injuring two others. She then tried to run away from the wreck, where citizens held her until the police showed up. Laughing and drugged out of her mind, King was arrested.

Jonathan James Wilson, who had multiple arrests for violence and assault, grabbed a woman in broad daylight as she walked to work and declared, “Do you want to go over the edge?” The 270-pound Wilson tried to throw her 40 feet to her death until a passerby intervened.

Charged in 2018 for another assault, Wilson was walking a free man in March of 2019. Prosecutors didn’t file their case against Wilson for the 2018 incident until October 2019.

In February 2019, a report indicated that 100 offenders in Seattle had been in and out of the criminal justice system for thousands of cases combined. By November 2019, 90 of the 100 in the February report had reoffended. Most are still on the street as I type this.

David James, a business owner in Pioneer Square, struggling with crime and filth to keep his business running, confronted two homeless people throwing their trash into the street this November. Beaten to the point of needing hospitalization, no one intervened from the public to stop the daytime assault. When police arrived by bicycle, and the assailant ran, they told him, “He’s a drug addict on the street, and whoever decides if charges are pressed probably won’t press charges, so there’s no reason to bring him in.”

On August 2, 2019, Michael Caballero, homeless, assaulted four women in Pioneer Square as they were trying to walk to Second Avenue as part of the monthly art walk. 

Downtown grocery store Uwajimaya filed 261 complaints with the city of Seattle for criminal theft in 2018. Of those 261 cases, 11 resulted in guilty pleas or pretrial diversion. 

In September, Bartell’s announced they are closing their Third Avenue location because there have been so many assaults on their staff, and the police do – nothing.

The King County Courthouse has become so unsafe, and there have been so many assaults, officials closed the Third Street entrance. Well closed to all but the disabled, which will still have to run the gauntlet. 

Seattle made a choice

In November, the people of Seattle had a chance to make their voices heard at the polls. They said in a loud voice, “we want more of the same.”

We want more human feces and urine on the streets.

We want more random attacks and violence.

We want more used needles in our parks and playgrounds.

We want more assaults and thefts.

We want more store closures.

We want more derelict RVs illegally parked and dumping their human waste and gray water on the streets and down the storm sewers.

Merry Christmas! Shitter was full!

Never mind the mail theft, car break-ins, home burglary, porch pirates, and bike theft.  Take heart Seattle, things were worse in 1987 so don’t you dare complain about the situation today. Why, did you know that car theft was worse 15 years ago? All of this is fun with statistics as many citizens don’t even bother to file criminal reports anymore. There is no point. It will be hours before the police show up, if at all. Why should they? The city and county won’t prosecute the cases anyway.

While this happens, officials in Seattle would like to remind you:

• You can’t wash your car in the driveway; it’s terrible for the environment – dumping your gray water and crap in the street not so much
• You better not park your car in a spot for more than the allotted time you paid for, but you can park your RV where you like for basically as long as you want
• If you’re a business or property owner, you’ll be fined if you don’t clean up the feces, urine, needles, and graffiti on and around your buildings – it’s your problem

All of this is happening while ordinary citizens have watched their rent skyrocket, their property taxes spiral out of control, their car tabs increase exponentially, their wages stagnate, and Millennial tech bros take over the city. Seattle is the same city that, while ignoring the crime on our streets, was inspecting the trash of citizens looking for recyclables.

“OK, Boomer – whatever.”

I’m not a Boomer, I’m Gen X, and we’re completely out of fucks to give. We hate Millennials with the same fury that we hate Boomers. Here is an idea, quit bitching about your student loans, quit bragging about how woke you are and move out of our Goddamn basements. But I digress, back to the topic at hand.

Just like in Gotham, the frustrated citizens of Seattle lift their eyes skyward and wait for Batman to appear. Is that the Amazon logo I see upon the clouds? Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-BEZOSMAN!

No, that’s not Bezosman, or Batman, or even Phoenix Jones. That’s the Amazon cloud you see, and the ever-spreading tentacles of Amazon, which is akin to Walmart, Microsoft, Kroger, Google, Netflix, and Apple, rolled into one big happy smiling logo of domination. Forget Boeing, 50 years from now robots will assemble rocketships for Blue Origin.

Meanwhile, at Bezos manor, Amazon plays let’s pretend to deal with the problems they have contributed to (not caused, a significant difference) with feel-good headline-grabbing projects like building a homeless shelter in their headquarters. They care! That’s why they put that shelter in such a high visibility location and cranked up the public relations machine. See what we’re doing? We’re helping solve the problem. Funny, I have never seen a Ronald McDonald house at an actual McDonalds.

While Amazon security watches the sidewalks of South Lake Union, Belltown, downtown, and Pioneer Square are a hotbed of unchecked crime. Not our problem, our rent-a-cop contract security team paid a non-living wage have our offices and employees covered. Don’t feel safe walking to your Tesla after your 13 hour day at AWS in the Kumo building? We can escort you to our clean garages that don’t smell of urine. 

The reality is Bezos’s altruism is about as fragile as his South Lake Union glass testicles. He’s too busy counting thousand-dollar bills and sending e-mails with the subject line of, “What’s This,” to wrap himself in AWS super-science to save Gotham.

“Alexa, deploy the Amazon rappelling cable.”

“OK. now playing My Testimony by Rapper Able.”

“No Alexa, deploy Amazon rappelling cable.”

“OK, adding coax cable to your Amazon shopping list.”

“Alexa, you killed me………………………..”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t quite get that. Did you say Alexa, splat?”

In Gotham, Carmine Falcone doesn’t operate with impunity, but the Joker and his minions do

Still, that isn’t the real problem. The real challenge lies in the prosecutor offices of King County and Gotham. 

Over 50% of criminal cases referred to the Seattle City prosecutor’s office go untried. The police are so frustrated that they’ve all but given up. Who can blame them when they arrest a person and bring them to jail, and then the same officer arrests the same person during the same shift in the same store. Mayor Durkin is so tone-deaf that she expresses surprise. Well, when you’re the mayor of Gotham, you don’t have to deal with the criminal element like ordinary citizens. The situation is even worse at King County, where 18% of cases referred to the office go to trial. So if you’re homeless in Seattle, what incentive do you have to remotely follow the law? Scratch that. Remotely follow common decency? You can commit felonies at will and the police are powerless. Now tax-paying citizens that contribute to society, you better follow the law.

Carmen Best is not Commissioner Gordon.

Pete Holmes is not Harvey Dent.

Jeff Bezos is not Bruce Wayne.

However, Seattle is Gotham, and the Joker is running wild.

A billion dollars a year up in smoke

Don’t worry, good citizens of Gotham; your city leaders have a plan! If we add a few more taxes, we can get more money for housing and the homeless. A city that has taken hundreds of millions in tax dollars for the “homeless” for years with nothing to show for it.

According to the Puget Sound Business Journal, approximately $1 billion with a “b” is spent every year on homelessness in Seattle. That comes out to about $100,000 per homeless person, per year. Do the math. If we just build tiny homes and give the homeless a place to live, all will be solved. That idea turned into a complete disaster and has been all but abandoned. From the Licton Springs “low-barrier” tiny home village to the broken promises of three mayors to build thousands of units with the money, Gotham keeps collecting your dollars with nothing to show for it.

Maybe if we build a few more bike lanes, take away more parking spots, permit millions of more square feet of office space with no corresponding housing plan, we can make it better. Let us squeeze the local business owners more by taking away more parking spaces, increase the taxes, and hold them accountable for the crime going on outside their doors.

Why, in another few years, we can gentrify out the small mom and pop restaurants and businesses in the name of progress. What a perfect utopia Gotham will be of major chain stores and restaurants, Amazon office buildings, Amazon Go stores, Amazon book stores, and Starbucks. The Amazon employees can step over the piles of shit and dodge the needles, that contractors can clean up in the overnight hours. Well, that is until Amazon itself has had enough and leaves Seattle an empty shell.

There are more important legal matters to deal with in Gotham

Also remember, Gotham’s leaders are busy at the moment protecting Washington state from I-976. We have money, lawyers, and resources for that in King County and Seattle. Amazingly we don’t have money or resources to keep repeat criminals off the street. I feel so…safe. So well represented.

In September of 2019, KIRO reported, after filing a freedom of information act filing with King County Metro, that over 230 Metro drivers have been assaulted. In June of 2019, a homeless man threatened to blow up a Metro bus and shoot the driver. The man was arrested, charged with harassment, and released from jail. It should come as no surprise to anyone they were arrested again, for possession of a stolen firearm. Take the bus Seattle! It’s faster, it’s safe, and it’s good for the environment. Just don’t sit in the urine covered seat and don’t make eye contact with the person shooting up heroin.

As far as representing the interests of King County as a whole, I’m sure the residents of Skykomish are excited about the express bus lines and light rail coming to their community. Oh wait, they’re still waiting for Route 2 to be less of a death trap.

Now someone will get pedantic and points out Route 2 is a WADOT issue – no kidding, thanks, and I do understand that. It’s called an analogy. It doesn’t change the fact people on the edges of King County are getting ass-raped on car tabs and taxes to support transit they will never use or derive benefit. Thanks for your money, suckers.

Now someone will get upset because I used the term ass-rape, and taxes don’t equate to being ass-raped, and I shouldn’t minimize rape by using the term.

Stop being so sensitive, Seattle! 

Executive Dow Constantine has our best interests in mind focusing resources on blocking the will of the voters. Anyone complaining isn’t aware of the real problems Seattle is facing! Cars are evil. That’s the real thing we need protection from, the Tesla and Prius death machines! Derelict RVs by the thousands are, of course, OK. We have to think about the needs of everyone. Except when the will of the people goes against what ironically named King County wants. 

No, Batman is not coming to save Gotham. The Joker has taken over, and I guess I should ask myself, “Why so serious?”

I should just put on a happy face!

Tech bros will continue to spike rents and housing pricing. The city will collect more hundreds of millions for homelessness and have no accountability. Criminals will continue to attack law-abiding citizens who have no recourse. Our streets will be covered in more feces, urine, and used needles, and eventually, a Hep A epidemic will come during the summer months. Emergency services will continue to be afraid to respond to aid calls without police and support. Police will have their hands tied because prosecutors will continue to do nothing.

It is a madhouse.

The Joker approves. 

I may not live in Seattle. I may not have a voting voice in the new Gotham, but I can vote with my wallet. I can also vote for our King County officials. I’ve reached my breaking point, and be put on notice leaders of Seattle and King County, I am not the only one. I am ending my affiliation with the Democratic Party. As part of the exhausted middle, I can make that much of a stand. Be advised Dow Constantine and Dan Satterberg, the good people of King County have had enough. We may not be able to save Gotham, but at least we can try and save King county. 

Oh, and if you’re reading my statement of ending my affiliation with the Democratic Party as I’m now a Republican, you’re incredibly wrong. The party of Lincoln is a moribund, perverse, corrupt shell of itself. The leader is a wannabe dictator, a criminal, a huckster, and the GOP leadership enables him. No, I’m joining the growing ranks of Independent voters who feel abandoned by both political parties.

You’re not woke Gotham, you’re sound asleep