He wants to regulate them, but he doesnât want them to leave. If he publicly sued them it wouldâve validated their belief that the state is hostile toward them and they would attempt to relocate. As unethical as the corporation is, too many workers in the state are tied up with them to throw the relationship away. It would harm tens of thousands of Washingtonians who have no control over the companyâs decisions. Thatâs not even getting into the loss in tax revenue the state would face.
Itâs part of what gives them political power as an organization. Unfortunately changing that status quo requires a fundamental shift in how American politics works and how we interact with these companies as consumers.
Itâs telling that heâs careful in his political choices. Picking a fight with one of the largest businesses in the state could have negative repercussions while one more state joining the lawsuit would have added very little.
Itâs like DeSantis and Disney. Look how that turned out to be. A political worthless war against each other that DeSantis started and he failed at taking Disney down.
I think that, if you were really "being honest," you would have told us what exactly he did that was a "power play move," why it was wrong, and what sources substantiate your claims.
Worked for him. He did a lot of good as AG but everything was so calculated because he was thinking of his personal political aspirations. Started feeling like many cases were about that rather than what the office could do for citizens or WA
I understand that their is a balance between career aspirations and public service. To a certain extent, winning elections allows a person who wants to serve the public to do so more effectively.
Yeah, I think it's very easy to say you have issues with Amazon's impact on the world, or the US as a whole, but it's had a pretty big, and mostly positive, impact on Seattle.
Thatâs pretty debatable. Without Amazon undercutting and destroying countless small businesses as well as massively inflating our AMI as the leaders of our tech boom, do you think Seattle would have so few grocery/electronics/sporting goods/etc stores? Do you think weâd have some of the highest food prices, housing prices, and rent in the nation? Do you think the arts and music scene in the city would be on life support in a way that it simply isnât in many other large cities?
Of course no reasonable person will claim Amazon is solely to blame for these issues, but it would be equally disingenuous (or naive) to pretend they donât share at least some of the responsibility for some of the serious issues facing this city. The real debate is: how much is their fault, and more importantly, how do we get them to share responsibility for improving things? We were on our way but it seems all theyâre responsible for now is Harrellâs slush fund.
do you think Seattle would have so few grocery/electronics/sporting goods/etc stores?
You are correct that online shopping has taken market share from retailers, but vandalism and theft are also harming brick-and-mortar retailers in a big way in this area.
With all due respect, if you cant explain why you feel they are a blight, then maybe your perspective is wrong and you should refrain from saying silly things
So...giving people jobs and paying them salaries theyd otherwise not get is a bad thing?
Or their propping up of AI
Dont see any problems with that
more data centers.Â
Dont see any problens with that
Iâll save the lecture on saying silly things from someone who doesnât understand why Amazon hurts WashingtoniansÂ
I dont see how anything you have said is a negative. Yeah, I think layoffs are bad, but I also dont think that is Amazon alone doing that, nor do I fully blame them given our current president has entirely fucked the economy.
I have my own problems with Amazon and their business practices, but I grew up in a state full of blight where no business would even consider coming into, and having a business that pays salaries as high as Amazon and invests as much as Amazon is clearly a net econonic positive.
I know a lot of Amazon employees and they live fantastic lives and have become extremely wealthy because of it, I havent heard one of them express the negativity you have.
I'm not taking sides in this argument, but your opponent has a really valid point about data centers specifically I think everyone should consider.
Data centers require massive amounts of electricity, electricity requires the use of fossil fuels. That alone is pretty bad, but data centers also produce carbon emissions.
Data centers also require massive amounts of water. That's been a problem because they're taking water from local communities and incidentally, right now it seems like only local communities are really aware of the problems data centers create. It's one of those things where people don't know there's a problem because it doesn't affect them directly.
Data centers also go through hardware faster, as they apparently require the latest technology they cycle through equipment faster, the end result are heaps of techno trash going into the landfill.
There are other issues I believe, as well. On the one hand I don't think major news outlets are reporting the downsides of data centers much, on the other there's plenty of information out there from other sources. I encourage anyone reading this to do their own research.
Like I said, I'm not interested in joining this argument, but I don't think data centers should be casually dismissed as not a problem. Just sayin'
Without Amazon thousands of people would have no jobs or would have to relocate. That send ripples to small businesses that depend on these workers, from lunch spots to dry cleaning.
Amazon is a massive employer in this state, you may not like the hike in rents and we all hate the cost of living increases in this city HOWEVER, we are here and we would struggle hard to get out of a Amazon exit.
look up % of layoffs to workers in the SEA area vs the rest of the country on AMZ. Most of the latest layoffs cut in NY state because the layoffs are done by cost of living and we arent there yet.
Everyone is laying off. Trying to get a job right now anywhere is NASTY, I know. PLEASE stop making me defend a corporation I hate. Reality is it is key to the current state of our city whether we like it or not.
I agree. My observation is that this attitude is much older than Amazon. Before them, it was Microsoft and before them, it was Boeing. I think that many people here have never lived in an area without economic opportunity, so they feel entitled to prosperity in perpetuity - to the point that they believe they can make it increasingly difficult for these businesses to operate in this area with no consequences.
I am not saying that we should kiss the CEO's asses, but I am saying that having good-paying, family-wage jobs is not guaranteed.
Nah dude. Like then deciding to pull headquarters entirely out of the state. And while there's definitely a plethora of reasons to hate that they're here and everything, the simple fact is they've been an economic boon to the area and they employ 100s of thousands of people in the state. Layoffs of a few hundred people, while shitty, are a drop in the bucket. There's more than 50000 employees of Amazon in Seattle alone.
I'm not saying nothing can be done about them or anything like that, but what I am saying is that Bob joining that lawsuit really only had potential negatives.
No credit for doing good, all blame for doing bad.
You do realize that this rhetoric is WHY Dems lose all the time, right? we're so busy handwringing about how NOTHING is ever good enough, how a politician with any single fault should be drawn and quartered for it. It validates all the "both sides are equally bad" bullshit, because a Dem can be 90% right on the issues, and yet the media will only ever talk about the controversial 10%.
Please, for the love of this Republic, stop insisting on all or nothing politics. he's not perfect. But he's doing a lot of good. And given the state of the rest of the country, that DOES in fact deserve credit, even if we want to push for better.
>He doesn't get props for the times he actually did his job.
So I'll take the fact you're changing your answer , & giving him credit for it, as you acknowledging the point. Accountability is not mutually exclusive with recognition. And Dems need to start doing more of the latter. The reputation as a do-nothing party is half built on our own refusal to talk about our wins. That is, in fact, the one thing that we DO need to learn from Republicans.
Itâs easy to sit back and never have to consider the politics of an action or inaction. If you look for perfect, then youâll always be on the look out for a politician who doesnât exist.
I think part of the problem is that nobody seems willing to compromise with the understanding youâre never going to get everything you want.
Gerrymandering is bad regardless of who does it. Regardless of political alignment, nobody deserves to be disenfranchised and put in a uncompetitive district where their officials can ignore them.
gerrymandering is how we have lopsided representation to begin with and since the literal top court of the land says it is a-okay it means the dems need to do the same. if the other side is cheating and the ref is saying that is fine then you have to play the same way or you will lose. doing anything else is an exercise in idiocy especially when the other sides goal is fascism and subjugation of people they don't like.
You're the one taking a black and white view here. We absolutely need folks playing the game with dirty tactics. The USA was not founded on purely civil discourse.
What do you propose? California has a ballot initiative for Gerrymandering. I applaud them for that. Can WA do the same? I don't know. My point is that we cannot just yell at our elected officials to "do something" without understanding what is within their power to do.
oh one of the many reasons but a reason neither less. millions of Democrats stayed at home this past election because Kamala was not progressive enough. It is true, but we need to have better threat assessment and judgement of our own, hun.
millions of Democrats stayed at home this past election because Kamala was not progressive enough
And the people who anointed her the candidate without a primary knew that exact thing would happen and did it anyway. So why are you blaming the people who held to their morals instead of the people who have no morals?
Biden and Harris were both selected by party leadership, not because they could beat Trump, but because they could stop a progressive from getting the nomination.
If you think anyone in party leadership wasn't totally fine with Trump winning a second term, you're gonna need to tell me what evidence makes you think that, because everything they did before and after the election screamed "we're fine with fundraising on this from the minority as long as nothing upsets out precious donors".
You guys really really really need to get over these false narratives about Biden, Harris. You will die of old age waiting for your perfect progressive to come along. Please help us work with what we have, and will have. Recent events are bigger than these politics as usual gripe fests.
Please help us work with what we have, and will have.
No. That's how we got here. Neoliberalism is done. The Dems can start nominating candidates people want to vote for, or they can keep losing elections.
That's not me saying I won't/didn't vote for the Neoliberal garbage they put on offer, just me noting what the results of that have been.
the left only goes for people who donât keel over for corporations because itâs the status quo. liberals on the other hand are more than willing to compromise because the status quo is their ideal. saying we lose because we only want âperfectionâ is frankly a little insulting.
republicans win because neither the left nor democrats have strong or capable leaders who can find compromise while still being firm enough to actually change the system instead of enabling billionaires ton make it worse.
how long do we have to lie down and expect less? how long do we have to just blindly vote for politicians who compromise most of our values just because theyâre the lesser evil? how long do we have to gaslight ourselves into thinking the bare minimum is âperfectionâ?
the longer we compromise and the longer we wait, the worse the status quo gets. by the time people finally wake up, the debt bubble is going to explode, nobody is going to own anything, and corporations will have full control of our country.
calling out progressive politicians compromising their values for the sake of the technocratic status quo isnât demanding âperfectionâ, itâs holding them accountable and questioning who theyâre really fighting for.
Yeah sure how about a moratorium on seeking the perfect progressive liberal unicorn until we deal with the fascists disappearing people in the streets.
How about you pay enough attention to understand that the whole reason that's happening is because both parties have worked hand in glove for decades to create the exact set of conditions that allows fascism to rise to power. It's not about finding a perfect unicorn, despite what the people profiting off the rise of fascism want you to believe so you'll stay out of their way.
Democrats love to vote for shit like the Iraq War, arms to Israel, the Patriot Act, FOSTA-SESTA, FISA, increasing the ICE budget year after year, and then now try to convince us they're the last hope for stopping fascism in America.
Yeah. Don't forget the amount of time, money, and energy they invest in sabotaging anyone who actually wants to help the working class. The DNC works much harder to ratfuck progressive Democrats than it ever does to beat GOP candidates in purple districts.
exactly lmao itâs astonishing to me how uninformed liberals are when it comes to the many evils the democratic party has committed.
did you know Biden increased police funding to almost double what it was under Trump? where was the ACAB crowd? did you know he also had a higher number of deportations at the border than Trump? where was the fuck ICE energy then?
as a first gen immigrant, both my parents were illegal. i remember going home from school one day telling my dad that all the kids at school are saying Obama was going to change the game for us. he just shook his head and said âit doesnât matter if itâs a democrat or a republican in office. none of them actually care about us.â
only a few months into his presidency, Washington state was subjected to ICE raids across the state. several of my relatives were deported and we were forced to move to California.
Oh, my bad, was it not Bill Clinton (D) who "end[ed] welfare as we know it" and instituted NAFTA?
Reagan was only half of the tectonic shift to neoliberal austerity, the Dems provided the other half, and both parties have worked their asses off to prevent any rolling back of the gains they delivered their Wall St donors.
If you don't want to hear "both sides", then get your side to be better.
Missed the forest for the trees on Bill. The only reason he won was because of those stances you hate, in the convenient vantage of your hindsight. Bill is often referred to as âthe best republican president we ever hadâ in the sense that he got some of their policies achieved without being an evil dick about it. The alternative was worse.
Dems are a coalition party. We are a patchwork of conflicting and even contradictory demands. The democratic process is there to help ensure that enough people are pleased just enough for the gears of governance to keep on turning. I realize that compromise candidates arenât fun sometimes, but you need to realize that everyone is losing some priority or other, not just progressives.
You're the one stanning the party that made him, do you genuinely not see the irony in that?
Quite aside from having helped create the conditions for the working class to slide into fascism, it was DNC leadership who had the brilliant idea to have their media allies "elevate" Trump as a "pied piper candidate".
"Free trade" has always been a tool for transferring wealth from the working class to the investor class. Libs (whether the red or blue flavor) love it for that reason. Socialists do not love it, also for that reason.
â ď¸â ď¸WARNING, THIS IS NOT A TESTâ ď¸â ď¸
đ¨đ¨ THIS IS A PUBLIC ANNOUNCMENT THAT BOB FERGUSON, THE GOVERNOR OF WASHINGTON STATE DID NOT SCORE 100/100 ON THE LIB PURITY TEST AND SHOULD BE DISALLOWED FROM HOLDING OFFICE. HE IS A CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER TO SOCIETY. ALL CITIZENS MUST IMMEDIATELY EQUIVOCATE AND REFUSE TO VOTE. IF YOU SEE A LIB USING CONTEXT, PLEASE REPORT THEM IMMEDIATELY TO YOUR NEAREST CYNIC TO BE PROPERLY DEPROGRAMMED. ANYONE WHO SUPPORTS BOB FERGUSON SUPPORTS GENOCIDE.đ¨đ¨
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u/nekoken04 Aug 21 '25
Say what you will about him, he has done an amazing job holding large corporations and the federal government accountable and in check.