Politics Remember Forward Seattle?
posted by on June 13 at 14:42 PM
The developer-backed group that planned to spend more than $100,000 promoting city council candidate Venus Velazquez—until her drunk-driving arrest derailed her campaign?
Well, they’re back, and they’re gearing up for next year’s city elections.
In an email last week, PAC founder Joe Quintana invited Forward Seattle members and supporters to meet up at the downtown offices of Gogerty Stark Marriott, “to discuss how we can ensure the election of candidates who are committed to keeping Seattle competitive. The goal of this meeting is to emerge with a short-list of candidates we might support and developing a game plan to ensure success.”
Any candidate Forward Seattle decides to back will be able to draw on a strong base of developer support; already, a year and a half before the 2009 election, Forward Seattle has an impressive $78,000 in the bank, and can count on much more from the big developers and builder PACs that make up its donor base. At the moment, Forward Seattle’s top donors include the development company Touchstone Corporation ($10,000); South Lake Union developer Vulcan, Inc. ($10,000); downtown developer and landowner Clise Properties ($10,000); construction-industry PAC Builders United in Legislative Development ($10,000) public-affairs consultant Quintana ($5,500); Bellevue real estate developer Robert Wallace ($5,000); downtown developer and monorail bad guy Martin Selig ($5,000); the King and Snohomish County Master Builders Association ($5,000); and downtown developer William Justen ($5,000), mining company Glacier Northwest ($1,000); and many others.
Where can I donate to this worthy cause?
Well. Sure, you would think that we'd all want to know which candidates are in the pocket of the developers.
But does it matter? Not only the fact that even the candidate Forward Seattle doesn't endorse is not exactly going to have a spine to stand up to the developers, but the larger picture.
What does it really matter if we do or don't have someone who represents the true public interest on the city council when in the end we're all getting the same lousy reward for living lives of pointless strife and suffering? Have you forgotten that this world came into existence as nothing more than a random event? There was no more purpose behind the concentration of a few particles of matter that coalesced into our local galaxy and solar system than there was in the random and pointless string of events that led you and I to be sitting here today, each wondering what more we will have to endure before this meaningless charade comes to an end. Maybe you think it's a sick joke that some of us have deluded themselves into thinking there is a god and a heaven and an afterlife where justice will be served and we will all participate in some great purpose behind it all, or maybe you think its a funny joke. Or maybe you can't be bothered to even laugh or cry because you know that either way the outcome is the same. In no time at all we all die and nothing is left but a few aging artifacts and the faulty memories of those who thought they knew us, but none of that will last. Soon enough they will die too and every shadow of our existence will dissipate and be lost forever. In a million years there will be no one to even recognize what our lives were or guess accurately at what we were about. In ten million there will be no one who can even misinterpret us.
Being competitive is a good thing. We certainly don't want to be like some of the dying rust-belt cities.
Well, yeah. Competition in general's a good thing.
Say, whatever happened to Venus, anyway?
didn't they name a drink in her honor?
elenchos = dkb?
Venus is toast - Burgess was drinking with her that night, I suspect he called his cop friends to derail her campaign.
Each time she appeared at events, she seemed boarder line hysterical. Most likely needs to drink a bit, just not drive.
The Stranger supported Burgess, now so cozy with the Mayor to shit on the nightlife of the city - Burgess chaired the cop shop committee.
How does it feel Stranger?? The enforcers now go into the clubs and tell people off. Bar owners are terrified, but I do remember how dangerous the Asian guy was going to be if elected to another term.
Will bribes solve the C. Hill cop shop problems? Read Seattle history.
Just leaving favorable feedback for elenchos's quasi-non sequitur of a post @2. Poignant and demented. And I mean that in a good way.
Great. This will make it really easy for me to know who never, ever to vote for.
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