by Brett Hamil
Brett Hamil discusses the local small business owners who are working to help mega-corporations like Amazon save money on taxes, and correspondent Reagan Jackson shares her reaction to the new parking meters in Columbia City.
7 thoughts on “Video Commentary: Amazon Reaches Out To Mom and Pop”
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Well done. Brett did forget to mention that “mom and pop” would PAY NOTHING under the proposal. wtf
If Seattle.gov’s homeless efforts were a business, it would be bankrupt… hemorrhaging money and labor expenses with little to no improvement to show for it. IMO, there’s no reason to collect more tax money from Seattle residents (or businesses) until we have a model of rehabilitation that actually works as proved with data, not rhetoric and sarcasm. As someone who cares about pulling people up out of homelessness, it’s frustrating to see videos like this labeled as a “brilliant takedown” by Seattle politicians. This does nothing but rally the left-wing base while alienating us non-partisan folk.
You can feel free to speak for yourself. I’m left of center and this is a brilliant takedown. If you’re “alienated” by someone’s opinion because it’s different from yours, that might be a strong indicator that you may need to grow a thicker skin. “How dare one person attempt to sprinkle humor on a dry topic so disengaged people’s interest might actually be peaked.” So you’re saying that we should instead sit on our hands and do nothing? I’m sure people who are unhoused just think that’s a swell idea.
Jazmine, if you’ll kindly re-read my post I think you’ll see that I didn’t say we should do nothing, I said we should first find a model for solving homelessness that actually works before asking for more money from Seattle-ites. Isn’t that a sensible way to build programs that produce good results?
Well, I certainly didn’t see you provide any concrete suggestions for what we should do for our current unhoused (other than to wait for the development of some data-based model, which isn’t going to appear overnight). How does that help the person currently unhoused as of 3/27/18? Again, I also take offense with you apparently speaking for all those who aren’t “far-left.” Why not simply state that you’re speaking for yourself as opposed to making an assertion about others?
I take your point and should not have phrased my comment to speak for anyone else but myself. Regarding the solutions, I regularly volunteer in homeless assistance programs and have seen first hand that data driven solutions do already exist but don’t get the attention/resources of Seattle’s politicians because they don’t fit a political narrative that helps win re-elections. What’s really frustrating is to go to Seattle.gov’s homelessness website and count all the announcements about “we’re setting up a new program” and “we’re adding new features to another program” and then you try counting reports about “here are the results that program achieved and where we could do better” and there are few, if any, of those. Where is the accountability and transparency? What are the results of all these new programs? For a good example of what it should look like, go look at NYC’s HomeBase program where they’ve conducted randomized controlled trials to actually measure and report on their results. That’s the kind of approach that deserves taxpayer support.
While I do believe that there’s room for entertaining/satirical political commentary such as what’s become Hamil’s bread and butter (and to be honest I myself am usually 50/50 on his takes), I do respect your opinion. I simply think that whatever shade we fall under (Dem, Centrist, Leftist, Conservative, etc) we should be careful about speaking for an entire group as to not marginalize differences of opinion even amongst each other. Thank you for interacting in a respectful way.