Week in Review: Amazon, crime, and homelessness

Bill Radke discusses the week’s news with political analyst and contributing columnist Joni Balter, PubliCola’s Erica Barnett, and KUOW’s David Hyde.

The Federal Trade Commission and 17 states filed an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon, accusing it of illegally protecting a monopoly. Amazon says, no, they’re getting the consumer what they want cheap and fast, and that they’re powerful because consumers love how cheap and fast they are. So, they ask, how can we be a monopoly when we’re great for the consumer? Is this lawsuit going to break Amazon into pieces, weaken their dominance, shrink their workforce, and return Seattle to being a sleepy cheapy town?

Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell signed an executive order on a new drug use law, which calls for referring individuals to resources when possible, over making an arrest. There would only be an arrest if there is a threat to others, using drugs near businesses, public events, child care facilities, parks, or transportation stops. If there is no threat, officers will “make a reasonable attempt” to connect drug users with resources instead of arresting them. The order calls on the Seattle Police Department to develop details of this new policy. Mayor Harrell also announced a program to send civilians on some low-priority 911 calls instead of sending armed police.

On Tuesday, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell proposed spending hundreds of millions of dollars to fight homelessness, by building affordable housing. The proposal would amount to $106 million for the King County Regional Homelessness Authority. What gets cut in order to make that happen? Meanwhile, the Burien City Council this week voted to ban people from sleeping in public places. Burien does not have any shelters. Aren't they one of many cities doing the same thing?

Microsoft is looking to generate energy with nuclear fission, which is where an atom splits and releases energy as a result of that splitting. The company is looking to hire someone to lead their technical assessment for integrating small modular nuclear reactors and microreactors “to power the data centers that the Microsoft Cloud and AI reside on,” according to the job posting. This would help power their AI and cloud data centers. Can they just do that?