Blogs Dec 16, 2010 at 9:17 am

Comments

1
What about the impact legalization will have on the underground market? how are high school kids who work at jack in the box supposed to supplement their income? What about the 'grow-pot-and-get-rich-quick' dreams that sustain so many of us through our shitty work-a-day worlds? Are sick kids and abuse victums worth all that?....

I think I just realized why people tell me im an asshole...
2
We need to bring her a bill to sign.

We keep on not doing that.
3
What about getting a state legislature with the moral fortitude to raise taxes. Why do we keep leaving this up to the general public in initiative after initiative? Ask the people if they want their taxes raise and they will say no every time. Have our elected officials (who are supposed to be governing) do it because it is the hard thing to do and it is their job.

But they never will. And the cuts will keep coming.
4
I'm with PTrig on this.
"We have no money" only works AFTER you've raised taxes. Hell, Obama is giving everyone in the US a nice fat extension of the Bush Era rates. Why not just pass a 3% income tax hike on folks making more than $250k that phases out when federal tax rates go back up?
Call it the "Reclaiming State Incomes Act of 2010". Then start paying the state's bills again.
5
We can has tunnel cancellation nao?
6
Actually @3, when it comes to some things: schools, libraries and the like, people HAVE expressed a willingness to tax themselves in the form of levies. Unfortunately, it's simply impossible to turn the entire State Government into a ginormous discretionary taxation program; if nothing else, we'd be spending most of our waking hours pouring over reams and reams of budget line items, trying to do the math in terms of divvying up our tax dollars to decide - on an individual basis - how much goes where.

Which of course, is why we have a (nominally in our case due to the Initiative Process) representative democracy, so that individual citizens don't have to burden themselves with making these sorts of decisions on a day-to-day basis.

@4:

As was the case in WA this last cycle with I-1098, even people who would never in their lifetimes be affected by such a tax apparently will oppose it on the grounds that (at least so far as I can surmise) they have been deluded into believing they MAY be affected someday, either because, you know, they're suddenly going to win a multi-million dollar Lotto jackpot, or else because they bought into the upper-class's canard that "taxing the rich is only the first step toward taxing everyone!"
7
I agree on the income tax thing. I've lived in states with income tax (NJ, Massachusetts) and states without (Alaska, Washington), and while I wouldn't say that an income tax would fix everything, it would definitely keep us from having such massive revenue shifts that we have to make these diastrous cuts. The patchwork system of taxes we have in this state (property, sales, levies, etc.) don't seem able to sustain us as a state, and in some ways, come off as pretty arbitrary. Yes, an income tax might mean I pay a little bit of money, but I'd consider it an investment in sustaining the health of my community. When we don't fund social services for folks who basically can't afford them, we eventually ending up paying in some other way (ie. cutting certain services usually just ends up in a situation needing to addressed down the line).
9
They can't even get candy taxed.
10
#5 and #8

The tunnel and the 520 projects are coming out of a different budget than the one being cut. As much as it sucks state government simply doesn't work that way. You would need a state constitutional amendment, I believe, to be able to transfer the money (which isn't going to happen with the current legislature).

Any new taxes (income tax or a theoretic tax on pot even) have to pass a vote from the public or a 2/3 majority in the state legislature. Both seem unlikely given the current .
11
Isn't marijuana still federally illegal? Are there maybe some revenue opportunities out there that don't involve contravening national laws? If not, then let's all bawl away.
12
There's a new wrench in that works...the medical marijuana lobby.

The cost of a 3 month supply can exceed $3000 ! That's $12,000 per annum per user.

So in some sense, the State is becoming the Dealer...and you don't take the State's cornahs...that's our cornahs, Avon!
13
Gee, you know, if Washingtonians are too retarded to fund state government, what are the odds of them doing something sensible like this?
14
A highway tunnel of crocodile tears.
15
@9: Untrue. The Legislature did, in fact, tax candy. And they used to tax cars. It was the citizens of this state that undid those taxes, through initiatives and referenda. Even when the Legislature most recently raised the gasoline tax, it was subjected to a referendum (that failed).
16
And what @11 said. Federally illegal. Supremacy Clause, Commerce Clause and all that. But aside from the United States Constitution, Brendan, GREAT IDEA! Have you thought of challenging Suzanne del Bene for her new post heading up the Department of Revenue?
17
If only short-sighted, poorly informed, selfish people would stop voting!
18
1)Thanks to Tim Eyman, the state government can't just pass an income tax.
2)The government can't move money around from one thing to another. When levies are passed, that money raised can ONLY be spent on THAT project. They can't cancel the tunnel and move that money to anything else.
3)This is an awful budget and it's life threateningly dangerous to the poor. Yet, to everyone I saw bitching about this budget on tv last night and blaming Gregoire, I have to ask, "Hey, Poor Person! Did you VOTE last month? Did you vote YES for the Income Tax?" There are far more "poor" people in this state than rich people. Based on that alone, the Income Tax SHOULD have passed. The lower class fucked up and didn't pass this measure and the Income Tax Initiative people fucked up by NOT marketing the measure to the poor instead of those dumb, but well meaning ads featuring Bill Gates Senior that targeted the rich. Epic Fail.
19
This is what she should do:

Get the Leg to pass a suite of taxes on the rich to pay for the current shortfall. Challenge Eyman's dumbass law directly on state Constitutional grounds.

Worst case, the courts side with Eyman and the Democrats lose control next election. But if they don't do something, they're going to lose anyway. And if the courts do rule in favor of this, the budget problems are easy to fix. Just pass a damn income tax. If voters scream, then so be it.
20
Aren't the rich supposed to fix this? Come on guys, get it together, iPad me something to eat.

Please wait...

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