Dumpster Values in Olympia Produce Dumpster Results

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(Note: Sometime after this article was posted, the author discovered there was actually a business in Olympia called “Dumpster Values.” By all accounts it is a lovely store, and their website can be found here. In no way is this article a commentary on their store or their business. – posted 2/7/2019)

The City of Olympia prides itself on being both the home to Washington State’s capital, but also a sanctuary city for large numbers of addict/homeless encampments.  Some of these encampments are “approved” and officially endorsed by Olympia’s politicians.  Some are not formally approved, but all are welcome to squat and occupy the city as long as they desire.  Locating the state’s capital in Olympia was originally a political decision.  These growing addict/homeless encampments in Olympia are also a result of political decisions.

Impressive Third world style addict/homeless encampments are not unique to Olympia.  However, this is a much smaller city than Portland, or San Francisco.  A smaller size creates more challenges for the city as they attempt to disguise the size of their problem.  Nobody can truthfully accuse the City of Olympia of ignoring the addict/homeless population.  Instead, they are ignoring the problems caused by the addict/homeless population.  The politicians and bureaucrats have been working overtime for many years to recruit, cultivate, grow, and expand the addict/homeless population.  This has taken Herculean effort and substantial taxpayer funded grants dispersed to a plethora of organizations who make up the ever-growing local Homeless Industrial Complex.

Olympia is a political mono-culture.  The handful of Republicans in the City meet at secret, undisclosed locations.  Even independent thinking Democrats are ostracized from the local political wine and cheese crowd.  Stifling all independent thought is the highest priority for the political class in Olympia.  Stifling any heresy that dares to question the dominant political orthodoxy is also a favorite pastime for political insiders.

The political hive-mind of Olympia has successfully promoted this expansion of addict/homeless camps.  It has taken many years, millions of dollars, a collective of Evergreen College students, and a focused effort to build these monuments to local political success.  These widespread addict/homeless camps have become the most impressive monuments to the dominant political class in the city.  The senior bureaucrats, the Olympia City Council, and the local Democratic Party should be proud of their accomplishment.  The policies of handing out free food, free needles, free tents, free places to live, millions of dollars in grant funding to the Homeless Industrial Complex, legalized pot, free garbage service, and a no-questions asked sanctuary city policy finally paid off.  Suppressing local law enforcement also has helped.  In Olympia today, this is what political success looks like.

Not Everyone is happy – they will be properly re-educated in time

Not surprisingly, some local people have been resistant to this brave new vision for the City of Olympia.  Not everyone has become part of the political Borg in Olympia.  A few even had the temerity to question whether creating a homeless camp utopia is the best idea for the community.  However, their voices are weak, and they have been predictably threatened and intimidated into silence.  It is no mystery to local businesses why people don’t want to come downtown for any reason now, but their concerns are easily dismissed by the local politicians.

The City of Olympia has twice used the addict/homeless “problem” as an excuse to convince local voters to support additional tax increases for public safety (this author wrote the “con” statement in the voters guide both times – here in 2017, and here in 2012).  Both taxes passed, out of desperation, in part on the promise of police walking patrols or at least more police presence downtown.  In both cases, the City misled the public, the tax dollars were diverted, and the walking patrol either went away or is very limited.  The tax increase remains forever, of course.  The beauty of these tax scams is that each batch of politicians is long gone by the time the next one is proposed, so they can claim “this time will be different.”  It never is.  Rinse, wash, repeat.

This lack of public safety downtown inspired local businesses to hire their own security company to patrol at night and convince the drug addicts and homeless folk to not sleep in their front doors or defecate on the sidewalk or dump their used needles in the alley behind the businesses.  It is the little things that make a big difference.  Of course, this was too much for the Homeless Industrial Complex who sent their activists out to threaten the security company employees with physical violence.

The Olympia police predictably couldn’t guarantee their safety, and the company no longer was able to provide this service.  As usual, the businesses and business owners who hired the company were also threatened which is a reflexive response by Olympian addict/homeless activists.  Out of desperation some business owners filed a “John Doe” restraining effort against the City of Olympia in an effort to restrict the size of the expanding addict homeless camps.  This last ditch effort to mitigate the harm these policies are inflicting on downtown Olympia will at best provide a delay.  The temporary restraining order was granted, and this drama continues to play out in court.

There are also reports from some neighborhoods of addict/homeless activists slashing tires and sabotaging gas tanks in general retaliation against people who dare to testify at city council meetings in opposition to the endless addict/homeless recruitment projects by the City of Olympia.  Most local residents are now terrified to testify about the increasing property crime, violence, and related feature benefits of hosting so many undocumented addict/homeless grifters.   Here are just a few of the community benefits Olympia has added to the local scene:

• Since multiple camps have been located right next to the bus station, those brave enough to ride public transit get the joy of exotic experiences and surprises on every trip. Bus drivers have much more interesting stories to share at the family Christmas Party.
• The downtown Farmer’s Market is located right next to some of these homeless tent cities, and fresh local produce might still entice local residents to visit, although the future of this farmer’s market is at risk since the City may need to take over those spaces for expanding homeless camps in the near future.
• Les Schwab and other automotive repair businesses have been able to sell a lot of replacement tires for those whose tires are slashed by homeless activists. This ensures more people have newer tires on their cars.  This is a bright economic spot for local business.

  

• The City of Olympia has funded the “Clean Team” to spend their days cleaning up the sidewalk mess from the permanent homeless folk (sometimes called the “Poop Patrol”). The City already provides dumpsters and porta johns, but those free amenities are not enough incentive to prevent used needles, garbage and public defecation in more convenient locations downtown and in local parks.
• Residents who own homes have learned to install locks, alarms, motion activated lighting, and other security features on their homes. No longer do they need to tell their kids to not leave their bikes on the lawn – if they do – they are stolen very quickly and parted out for enough cash to buy a hit of meth or two.  Anything not chained down securely  will disappear and often reappear in local homeless camps to be hawked for enough cash to buy their next high or to help improve the local tent city.  This has cleaned up neighborhoods where you rarely see kids even temporarily abandon toys or bikes.  Improved tidiness and enforced security.

  

• Local parks are becoming repositories of tons of garbage, used needles, and stolen stuff that wasn’t worth a meth hit. This adds to the local flavor and ensures trips to local parks are always adventures, even in the middle of the day.  Olympia claims to be a Green community which cares about environmental challenges, but these quaint concepts take a back seat to the political priority of importing and supporting legions of more addict/homeless encampments.  The hundreds (or thousands) who already squat in the parks and open spaces get to dump their garbage where they live (The City also raised taxes for the third time with a voter approved tax increase to increase local park land – this author also wrote the con statement to that one).  The bonus for the addicts/homeless occupiers is that they don’t need to take any responsibility.  They can just layer the garbage in the green spaces and force someone else to eventually clean it up.

  

In Olympia, this is considered great political progress.  Rather than problems for the political insiders in Olympia, these should be considered features which help justify more taxes, more bureaucrats, and more faux “solutions.”  If anything, the addict/homeless population needs to be increased rapidly to bring a more Progressive Nirvana to Olympia.

Who benefits from these absurd policies?

“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity” – Hanlon’s Razor

It is tempting to attribute malice and conspiracy to what may just be the result of repetitive, typical bureaucratic and political incompetence and stupidity in the City of Olympia.  There is a long history of political and policy incompetence here, and there are rarely consequences which can’t be paid for by another local tax increase.  The politicians, bureaucrats, and grifters never have to take responsibility, and usually they are rewarded with more tax dollars and more political power the worse the problems get.  Why fix anything when the outcome benefits the political insiders?

Olympia’s political incompetence and stupidity is probably an adequate explanation for much of the addict/homeless camp fiascos we are witnessing today.  However, there may very well be some malicious actions which are making the problem worse than just another day in the land of Olympia’s Progressives.  Malignant motivations may be able to camouflage themselves a bit in the chaos of political incompetence.  Let’s explore some of the more popular local theories:

1. Illegal Drug Cartel Paradise – As has been demonstrated by previous studies of

   

   addict/homeless populations in nearby Seattle and Portland, drug abuse is rampant and widespread in these addict/homeless camps. At this time, the City of Olympia has not yet proposed giving away free heroin and meth.  However, free needles are available, and former City Councilman (and former Thurston County Democratic Party Treasurer) Joe Hyer –  was arrested for dealing drugs in a school zone (see article here).  Mr Hyer is still very much involved in the local political/financial scene committing stock fraud (see here) and collecting grant cash from the city council.  It is logical that the drug addicts who make up a sizeable portion of this population will need to pay for all the meth, heroin, and fentanyl they want.  Drug dealers can more easily sell their products if their customers can be concentrated in camps like this.  This is just the economics of marketing and distribution.  The organized crime that tends to take over these types of operations can easily add other activities like prostitution, human trafficing, fencing of stolen property, etc to further profits.  Olympia’s “low-barrier”, no questions asked, refusal to see anything negative policies helps grow this illegal drug paradise.  This theory is also supported by the frequent threats of violence and intimidation which radiates from the addict/homeless advocates and enforcers.

   

2. Getting the votes – “Vote harvesting” isn’t just a California phenomenon. In the City of Olympia, ensuring the thousands of homeless become registered to vote is a very high priority.  City Councilmember Jim Cooper’s wife works for the Thurston County Auditor’s office, and she was seen signing up homeless people to vote over the past year in these camps.   If these ballots can be controlled and directed towards the politically correct purposes, then political power can be retained by those most likely to keep promoting the expansion of the addict/homeless scene in the city.  Local auditor Mary Hall isn’t exactly looking at this very closely, since the general assumption that these managed votes  go her way is a pretty safe one.

   

3. Funding the Homeless Industrial Complex – Many organizations and vendors collect taxpayer cash for these camps. Not just the direct recipients of the grant dollars, but also the vendors who install the fences, dumpsters, etc.  A lot of taxpayer cash gets tossed at this problem (another recently approved “homeless” tax increase was approved by Olympia voters in February of this year – this author also opposed that one).   Millions of tax dollars will be used to grow the problem.  Since these groups are only rewarded if the problem gets worse, there is zero incentive to fix anything.  After all, it is only taxpayer dollars, and in a government town, who could be against higher taxes?
4. Real Estate Play – Crash and Buy – Some local residents have speculated that particularly sinister forces are at work in Olympia. Since the absurdity of the addict/homeless camps are subsidized at great taxpayer expense, and the social harm inflicted on the community and local businesses are so obvious, then there must be a more nefarious end game.  These camps have been located around some of the highest priced commercial property in the city.  Destroying the ability of local businesses to exist on these properties and the logical reduction of property values could create a great opportunity for someone to buy up property at fire sale Detroit-level prices and wait out the self-inflicted addict/homeless/crime crisis.  This would be a pretty solid way to make millions of dollars for some shrewd real estate plays.

It is easy to blame the politicians, and they certainly deserve all the blame directed at them, but most local politicians use the City of Olympia as a political resume builder.  Many people rotate through the council for one or two terms and move on.  Only the permanent bureaucracy remains.  Local activists are in favor of growing the homeless camps, and they have worked hard to intimidate or threaten all who dare question their actions.  Local politicians rarely want the grief of opposing the hive mind, so it is just easier to slouch along and blame global warming.

At least city councilmember Lisa Parshley has figured out that living in the city itself is foolish, and she lives miles away from the city limits in a nice suburban house far away from the homeless camps she helps grow.  She pretends that her legal “voting” address is the commercially zoned office space she rents (see above).  When this was exposed last election, she was challenged, but county auditor Mary Hall let her get away with the vote/election scam by influencing the canvassing board to suspend disbelief and ignore evidence.  Not surprisingly, Mary Hall then ran her own re-election campaign this year out of that same commercial space.  In Olympia, this is what political payback looks like, and there are rarely any political consequences.

Olympia has provided many dumpsters for the addicts and homeless to dump their garbage.  These dumpsters are mostly ignored.  The politicians seem surprised that druggies and homeless will just dump their garbage in the  camps or in the woods to be cleaned out at the city’s expense in the future.  Olympia prides itself on being a politically “Progressive” place  with “Progressive” values where only “Progressive” people will be hired by the city or elected to the council.  These Progressive dumpster values may politically define Olympia, but few would classify these results as true progress.

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OUR CONSTITUTION BEGINS WITH THE PHRASE “WE THE PEOPLE.”  IT WAS THE FOUNDER’S INTENT THAT GOVERNMENT BE CREATED BY THE PEOPLE, TO SERVE THE PEOPLE.  IT WASN’T THEIR INTENTION FOR THE PEOPLE TO SERVE THE GOVERNMENT.  IT WAS ALWAYS INTENDED THAT GOVERNMENT WHICH FAILED TO SERVE THE PEOPLE SHOULD BE “ALTERED OR ABOLISHED.”  UNTIL WE RETURN TO THE FOUNDER’S INTENT, WE REMAIN WE THE GOVERNED…

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