The Coming Legal and Financial Blitz in Seattle

By Chuck de Caro • June 18, 2020

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan’s truly outstanding Neville Chamberlain imitation is so good that she needs only to grow a mustache, wave a paper over her head, and claim “Peace in our time!”

And much like there was for the milksop British politician who hastily signed over Czechoslovakia to the Nazis, and whose style of ineptitude Durkan is precisely mimicking, there will be hell to pay once again.

No, not with Stukas and Heinkels. But “the Blitzkrieg” is coming and from a direction that the hapless Durkan is not expecting: the lightning war will come from all those grownups who accept the responsibilities of their jobs and who will take issue with the ceding of a chunk of Sudetenland . . . err, Seattle to uninvited agitators. 

Those grownups are the ones who work setting up insurance rates and exceptions, as well as paying out claims; the bankers who use property values to set loan rates; the municipal bond companies who determine credit ratings; and of course, lawyers and more lawyers.

Evidently, it never occurred to the ultra-liberal Durkan that ceding her power to govern, including that of her police department to enforce the law, to unelected Communist Antifa thugs might have some unpleasant side effects. Did she ever consider that her ill-considered policies might send insurance companies into panic mode and cause them to raise rates ad astra?

Did Durkan ever consider that the fire trucks and ambulances slowed at the whim of unelected, nongovernment Antifa parasites, might cause fire insurance rates to go up, up, up?

 What happens when Seattle police can not go instantly into the so-called Capitol Hill Organized Protest (formerly known as CHAZ)? (Shucks! Durkan’s cops can’t even go to their own precinct headquarters!) Did the mayor consider that property insurance rates might race skyward? 

Who pays for this? Everybody in Seattle, and maybe the rest of Washington State, in the form of high insurance rates. I’m sure all those folks who have nothing to do with Durkan’s milquetoast response to the Communist Antifa “summer of love” simply will be overjoyed with that.

And then there are those good ol’ boys at Moody’s and Fitch. You know, the ones with the green eyeshades who crunch numbers and love it. The fellas who determine the credit rating of municipal bonds based on the following five-point criteria (along with qualms one might surmise that they might have about contemporary Seattle): 

• Economy: OK, so long as Amazon doesn’t hiccup. 
• Debt Structure: Very blue, anyone care to guess? 
• Financial Condition: The actual city or the Communist People’s Republic of CHOP?
• Demographic Factors: Communist Antifa thugs, the Black Lives Matter motley, assorted anarchists, and all the huge balance of the population made up of the unseen, undefined adults who actually live, pay taxes and buy bonds in Seattle. 
• Managing Practices of the Governing Body and Administration: Again, the city of Seattle or Communist Antifa CHOP? So far, Durkan’s administration is hesitant, unwilling to enforce the law, devoid of control of a chunk of her city, but has demonstrated superlative handwringing and meaningless word-salad lip service.

Moody’s last year assigned the city an “Aaa” rating. We’ll soon see if that holds up. 

And sooner still, Durkan will face the equivalent of the Biblical plague of locusts: The tsunami of lawyers!

Just picture Durkan the Dolt, her eyes bulging, jaws agape as she watches the sky above the Space Needle darkened by vast jetloads (hordes!) of briefcase-toting barristers descending from everywhere to unleash gigantic waves of lawsuits from loss of business, injured innocents, destroyed property against her, her administration, and any person or institution with pockets deep enough to take a hit.