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Amazon, Starbucks, Vulcan and several other companies are pledging over $350,000 to repeal Seattle’s insane tax law, which penalizes “large employers” grossing over an arbitrary number in revenues each year with an additional tax for every employee they have. The massive projected revenues from this law is supposed to help the city paper over and coddle the “homeless problem” that they have left festering on the back burner for years.

Just days after the Seattle City Council approved the levy, the No Tax On Jobs campaign, a coalition of businesses, announced it would gather signatures to put a referendum on the November ballot to repeal it. Amazon, Starbucks, Vulcan, Kroger and Albertsons each promised $25,000 to the effort last week, according to a report filed by the campaign. The Washington Food Industry Association pledged $30,000. Referendum backers will have to gather 17,632 signatures of registered Seattle voters by June 14 to get the measure on the ballot. The so-called head tax will charge businesses making at least $20 million in gross revenues about $275 per full-time worker each year. The tax would begin in 2019 and raise about $48 million a year to build affordable housing and provide emergency homeless services. Opponents say the Seattle measure is a tax on jobs and questioned whether city officials are spending current resources effectively.

Given the issues the city has had where they have squandered millions and millions of dollars of taxpayer dollars already, opponents of the measure are rightly “skeptical” of the ability of this local government’s ability to keep its own fraud under control.

Of course, we can’t forget that every time there is a leftist policy that needs pushing, there is a leftist church group at the forefront. As with illegal immigration, church groups are found (miraculously by the press when they need their gravitas) giving the left aid and comfort, and continue to be strong supporters of more socialism.

Worker and church groups and others praised the tax as a step toward building badly needed affordable housing in an affluent city where the income gap continues to widen and lower-income workers are being priced out.

Amazon, and likely other businesses, are highly skeptical that they will continue to do business in such an unfriendly environment within the city:

Amazon has resumed planning the downtown building, but the company remains “apprehensive about the future created by the council’s hostile approach and rhetoric toward larger businesses, which forces us to question our growth here,” said Drew Herdener, Amazon’s vice president for global corporate and operations communications.

As if to add insult to injury, Seattle’s city council has now decided that they would like to levy even more taxes, this time with several property tax hikes to pay for even more education funding and “beautification” efforts. Now the council will ask for the voters to approve a removal of the limit on property taxes. The city is situated within King County, which has already raised property taxes 17% from 2016’s rates.

The county council members seem to believe that the voters will not remember or care once November’s elections finally come into view, “It’s May; this is proposed to be on the ballot in November and a lot can change between now and November,” Rob Johnson —one of the measure’s cosponsors— said to local reporter for news station Q13Fox, Hana Kim.

Kim tried to clarify Johnson’s remarks, “What do you mean a lot can change?”

“The angst and anger you guys are talking about today, May 21st, may not necessarily be the same as it is today in November,” Johnson said, reiterating his earlier statement that the stupid voters just will not remember what happens in May when November hits.