The Seattle City Council voted yesterday to overturn its previous vote that would have permitted a strip club to expand an existing parking lot.
10,000 foot recap -- the council members voted to approve the parking lot after receiving an unusually large amount of campaign contributions from the strip club owner and his friends. Council members insist that the campaign contributions did not influence their votes. Council members capitulate to pressure from the local media anyway, return the campaign contributions and rescind their original vote, which they had earlier defended as the right thing to do.
I'd say that the rescindment doesn't dispel but only confirms the suspicion that the original votes were cast solely as a quid pro quo for the campaign contributions.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at August 12, 2003 10:48 AMDefinitely. If they wanted to try to make the point that they weren't bought off, they should have returned the money and left the vote as it was.
This is unbelievably stupid.
Posted by: Spoons on August 12, 2003 11:16 AM