Slog AM: Some in Seattle Felt that Earthquake, Repeal of Washington’s Millionaires Tax Is Polling Poorly, Sen. Amy Klobuchar Saves the Day

Seattle just can’t stop dying. The 2026 Global Cities Index by Oxford Economics clearly shows it has one foot in the grave. How else to explain the city being rated fourth in the whole fucking world when it comes to “economics, human capital, quality of life, environment, and governance.” What a catastrophe. Seattle is only behind Paris, London, and Mamdaniland. You got that right. The 206 beat big time players like San Francisco, Tokyo, Berlin, and Toronto. Why? Because of its exceptional concentration of “human capital,” which, in 2025, resulted in a metropolis with an impressive $632 billion GDP. Now think about this for a moment. That’s not far from Shanghai’s GDP ($816 billion). But that financial center has a population of 24 million. Our metropolitan area is just 4.1 million. Seattle, death becomes you.

Clearly, what our city needs is not more capitalism, we are filled to the gills with all of that stuff. What we really need is more socialism. We are way behind in that department. But when, say, Mayor Katie Wilson proposes expanding Seattle transit she must resort to a sales tax increase. What’s sad in all of this is the city, a super-rich city, can’t find any other way to fund something that’s so vital to its general well-being. In our town, there’s only money for making more money (M-M) and no money for making life livable for those whose “human capital” does not make the cash registers sing.

A quick note. The concept of “human capital” has an origin. It’s a 1964 book, Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis by Gary Becker, an economist who was part of the Chicago School of Economics. In short, he was a neoliberal. And the true (and even nefarious) goal of his human capital project was to convince wage earners (store attendants, mechanics, janitors, plumbers, bus drivers, you name it), that they were just like their exploiters: capitalists. A wage, in this view of things, was a return on your capital. And going to school was like a speculator investing in a new luxury tower. Even crossing the border sans-papiers was an investment on your capital. For this neoliberal nonsense, which was popularized in 2005 by the mind-numbingly dumb book Freakeconomics, Becker received a Nobel prize in economics in 1992.  

A new statewide poll shows that the initiative to repeal Washington’s Millionaires Tax is in trouble. Seattle Times reports that 57 percent of voters rejected Initiative 645 when its fiscal hit on the state’s budget (cuts in healthcare and education) was explained, as opposed to 35 percent who, nevertheless, gave it a thumbs up. The supporters of the repeal of course do not want voters to know about this impact; they are desperate to keep the consequences in the dark. But that’s not going to happen. The needed fiscal information will appear on the ballot in November.

Did you feel that? I didn’t. The earthquake that happened near Port Orchard around 2:05 p.m. yesterday. I completely missed it. Though some claim they felt the ground move a little beneath their feet. So far, no damage to life and property has been reported.

Yesterday was perfect. Low and slow-moving clouds. Rain now and then. Leaves swirling in the wind. Wheeling birds above the trees. Lovers kissing on a wet side walk. Dogs in raincoats. Highs below 60. An early dusk. A longish night. A dream about a long-dead and mostly forgotten foe. Today will not be as nice. Dark clouds will not carry the sun away. Expect a high of 64. 

Astronomers at the Roque de los Muchachos Astrophysical Observatory have identified the “largest known galaxy.” Its name: IC 1101. Its distance from us: 1.7 million light-years. Its size: “wider than 17 Milky Ways lined up in a row.” Does that make you feel so small? Insignificant like a speck of dust? As trivial as a puff of smoke? If so, it would do you well to recall this line by America’s greatest poet, Emily Dickinson: “The Brain — is wider than the Sky — For — put them side by side — The one the other will contain / With ease — and You — beside —”

There is no doubt in my mind that Sen. Eric Schmitt knew exactly what he was doing, when, during a bogus Senate Judiciary Committee hearing concerning the investigation that followed Trump’s attempted coup on January 6, 2020, he asked the former special counsel Jack Smith if he attended an Atlanta Hawks game on February 3, 2024. Of course Smith said no; and of course Schmitt unrolled with the fervor and quickness of an ejaculating demon some conspiracy theory concerning an encounter with Fani Willis, the Black district attorney of Fulton County, Georgia. (Both rightly went after Trump for breaking the law.) Schmitt claimed he had text messages from Smith’s team that proved he went to the game, accused him of perjury, went on about the Soviet Union, and finally called him a “total dirtbag.” And that was the whole point. Schmitt had nothing more to say. He wanted to move on. He put suspicion in the air. Mainstream media would take care of the rest: Smith Met Willis During a Hawks Game? And it would likely stick, despite the lack of evidence. But then came the surprise and what must be one of the most comic moments in the history of Senate hearings.

Thanks to the tenacity of Sen. Amy Klobuchar it was eventually revealed that Jack Smith had been to a basketball game on February 3, but it was in Maryland, and involved the Iowa Hawkeyes, a college women’s basketball team, not the Atlanta Hawks, a professional men’s team. The conspiracy theory died almost as soon as it was born. And what the dodo senator from the Show-Me State, Schmitt, exposed instead was yet another great waste of taxpayers’ money. This hearing, that ballroom, the helipad, Trump’s tax-funded political ad, and so on and so on. What we see day after day is the brazen blazing of public cash.

Ain’t that America. Arkansas’ governor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, made an ad that said the usual kind of right-wing crap: people don’t work because they are too lazy, and so welfare is just a waste of taxpayers’ money. But here is the thing: her example of a lazy welfare recipient was a young white male eating snacks and playing video games in a dark room. This depiction apparently upset her base because it was further evidence of the persecution of white males in our society. They have it so, so bad. And this ad only made matters worse. It would have been better, and more accurate, if Sanders showed black males with their pants sagging or black women with too many babies. A comment on X: “Our government has systematically discriminated against white males for decades now, and yet now has the audacity to dishonestly mock young white males as welfare queens.” Even if it’s true, which it’s not, you are still talking about decades? What about 400 years of slavery? In the words of Burning Spear: “Do you remember the days of slavery. How they worked us so hard.”  

In fact, let’s end AM with Burning Spear’s Slavery Days.

The post Slog AM: Some in Seattle Felt that Earthquake, Repeal of Washington’s Millionaires Tax Is Polling Poorly, Sen. Amy Klobuchar Saves the Day appeared first on The Stranger.