Comments

1
You hope we'll regret it. Just like you hoped we'd regret it last time but didn't.

Keep hope alive!
2
What did 1098 do to lower the supposed high taxes on the poor? Oh that's right, nothing.
3
"Tax the rich" never works because people always vote as if they are wealthier than they actually are..Or vote with the mindset of "soon I'll be in that tax bracket, I do not want to tax my future self"..This is particularly true for those near, but not at, the 200K/400K threshold.

Also, i think it was a fair concern that the income tax could easily by extended to other income levels and/or raised to higher rates.

Third, money that nebulously goes to "education & healthcare", two of the most bloated systems in America, is something that will always raise eyebrows.

It was a poor sales job, even Leslie Stahl's biased reporting couldn't save it.
4
Don't you get it? There's plenty of money coming in. It's just being wasted on things like vacations and office furniture and vacations. There's absolutely no reason why we can't support all state programs at a 1977 funding level, except for those awful government employees and the welfare queens.

And thank God we didn't pass the income tax! It would have meant that the rich people - the blessed, blessed rich people, who are the ones who actually accomplish things - would have left en masse. After all, who would live in this hellhole if it weren't for its wonderful tax structure? Medina would be a ghost town. Bellevue Square would have a Wal-mart where Nordstrom is now. We, the little people, would have been left without leadership, and our slothful ways - which are the reason we aren't rich in the first place, after all - would have overcome us.. Cholera would have soon reared it's ugly head.

Thank God for the real people of Washington. The ones who realize that we owe the rich a debt that we can never repay.
5
Yes, thank god for the majority if voters who realized this tax would very quickly be lowered and hit the rest of us. Thank god they realized it did nothing to lower taxes on the po' by lowering the sales tax.
6
Thanks, Catalina, for reminding us of Real American values.
7
Gotta live people who call 2/3s of WA state morons and then sit round and wonder why they lose elections.
8
Actually, #7, I think it's more like 33% of Washingtonians that are morons. Another third are just apathetic and never vote.

You must try not to be so arrogant, dear.....
9
1/3? Really because both tax measures went down by 2/3 anti-new tax majorities. That means a lot of Democrats vote against 1098 and for 1053, myself included.

But PLEASE keep calling centrist swing voters morons. I beg you. Please continue, it does wonders for making the loony left irrelevant.
10
I really wish the cuts were going to things like police, fire, jails, and state workers retirements and pay. This way the people who vote for Eyman's nonsense will pay the most. But instead the cuts will be services to the helpless and poor.
11
Actually when Eyman's 695 passed years ago, the rural folks were hit the worst. Whole fire departments were disbanded. Everyone thinks all the money goes to Seattle, when it doesn't.
12
@11: the money comes FROM seattle.

if only roads weren't funded separately from the crippled state budget. then the impact would be felt more keenly by the tea party boneheads. instead they get to impose their distaste for 'entitlements' like mental health care for schizophrenics on us. but the rural routes are smooth driving, and will continue to be so while citizens in the urban engine that funds the state pick our way down rutted streets through the freezing insane and poor.

also, i am glad i can't read unregistered comments.
13
You know not all poor people are 'helpless'. Plenty of Immigrants come to this country with nothing and get ahead. Try showing poor people more respect and not lumping them in with the 'helpless'.
14
Tea party bone heads are what, 25% of voters? Who are the rest who make up 2/3 of the voters who voted against new taxes? Oh that's right, centrists.

But keep insulting us, it only helps us drive the far left into the ditch.
15
Well maybe if poor people weren't so STUPID they wouldn't be paying such high tax rates, amirite?
16
I noticed that the winning campaigns on both created and stuck like glue to telling simple stories which they repeated well and consistently. Their main messages weren't countered hard enough to shake their campaigns even a little bit.

Yes, they should be ashamed of themselves, stooping as they did to pander to an especially stressed, fearful, analysis-averse and contemptuous electorate.

But their opponents would do very well to emulate those storytelling skills next time.
17
"storytelling skills next time."

Yes and don't have the SEIU write it next time.
18
"voters defeated Bill Gates Sr.'s effort to begin fixing our state's dysfunctional and regressive tax structure through Initiative 1098"

No, 1098 would not begin to fix anything. It was a temporary patch that would create an additional revenue stream to pay for unsustainable growth without addressing the real problem of a completely backwards ass tax structure. And if you don't believe it would have been eventually extended to everyone else your are really gullible.

I can't speak for anyone else, but if they fixed this issue in the legislature, I would have no problem paying a bigger share than I do now. Thank god the people of Washington were not stupid enough to start sliding down 1098's slippery slope.
19
Agree with Eli on #1, agree with @18 on #2.
20
@4

Brilliant! Just Brilliant, Ms. Catalina [applause]. What's they chance you would do that as youtube rant in high drag? LOL : )
21
Catalina Vel-DuRay - Maybe Washington would become as attractive a place to live as say... Oklahoma. Hey perhaps that's the angle needed to get voters to change their mind: tell them that they could get the Sonics back if they drive the wealthy away.
22
Misled by income tax opponents, many voters who earn far less than $200,000 per year came to believe that this new income tax would apply to them, too.

I voted for I-1098, but you make it sound as if opponents of it convinced people making less than $200,000/year that the new income would apply to them right away and, if that had been the case, that would have been misleading.

What I saw opponents arguing was that this new income tax would apply to people earning less than $200,000/year eventually, once the legislature was legally permitted to do that. It's my understanding that there was nothing in the initiative that would have prevented the legislature from eventually extending the income tax to people earning less than $200,000/year and, if that's true, then opponents were not misleading people. They were just pointing out what I believe was almost certain to happen.
23
18/Rotten666: It was a temporary patch that would create an additional revenue stream to pay for unsustainable growth without addressing the real problem of a completely backwards ass tax structure.

I think the reason it's difficult-to-impossible to get most Washingtonians behind tax structure reform that would include a state income tax is because most people feel their overall tax burden would increase.
24
both tax measures went down by 2/3 anti-new tax majorities.
2/3 majorities of people who actually voted, which, given the 71% turnout rate, works out to less than half of actual citizens. So you can only say with any certainty that 46% of Washington citizens were willing to cut their own throats. To anyone with basic math and reading skills, that was obviously Catalina's point.

Honestly, though, I want to thank you sincerely for keeping up your brain-damaged tirade against the insidious liberal plot known as "reality." As I've said before, no one does as much to discredit the Tea Party as the teabaggers themselves.
25
Fortunately, I-1053 is patently unconstitutional. The State Constitution in Article II Section 22 provides that a bill becomes a law with a majority vote in each house of the Legislature. Either Tim Eyman never saw Schoolhouse Rock or he hates our State's constitution (or both).
26
Our state's budget has already been slashed by more than $5 billion over the last five years...


Sorry, but this is simply false. For this to be true, you would need to show an expenditure number for 2010 or thereabouts that is at least $5B lower than an expenditure number for 2006 or thereabouts. Here are the actual numbers: 2006 $26.1B, 2007 $28.5B, 2008 $30.5B, 2009 $32.8B, 2010 $35.2B. Neither inflation nor inflation plus population growth negate that increase. How are you getting that $5B number?
27
I love the argument that our spineless, taxaphobic legislature would have somehow extended the income tax down to the middle class.

It shows just how out of touch with political reality 1098's opposition was.
28
"2/3 majorities of people who actually voted, which, given the 71% turnout rate"

Of course, if the vote had gone the other way, you would have had a resounding success.

"To anyone with basic math and reading skills, that was obviously Catalina's point."

His/her/whatever's point was that anyone who didn't vote would have voted FOR 1098? How generous of him/her/whatever to claim all the votes of those too stupid or lazy to show up at the polls. 

That's not math my friend, that's pulling something out of you ass, holding it up and telling everyone it smells like a rose.
29
27/Lack thereof, I don't think our legislature would ever enact a state income tax. I do think, however, that once an income tax was in place, as it would have been under I-1098, the legislature would be far more likely to extend its reach.
30
@28: I don't care how many people vote to decrease their taxes because they've come to take for granted the benefits they receive from a functioning state. If you vote that way, you're a moron. And if lots of people vote that way, then there are lots of morons.
31
@30 Who is getting a tax decrease in WA? My property taxes will be higher in 2011. Sales tax? The same.

Since you're so smart, tell me which state taxes have been lowered?
32
Oh dear..... I go away for a few hours to make deviled eggs and the troll gets her panties in a bunch over something I said......

Darling, how about this: 1/3 of of the voters are morons and 1/5 are immature cheapskates that want everything, but don't want to pay for it. Does that push your odd little buttons?

And as long as your kind insist on nominating Ellen Craswells and Dino Rossi's, I really don't think I have to worry too much about alienating centrists, or whatever nonsense you are spouting, The GOP does a much better job than Little Me ever could.

Happy New Years, Everybody!!!!
33
Oh dear, getting your knickers in a twist are you luv? A big chunk if voters voted Dem and against new taxed. I'm one of them. We're called centrists and unlike the loony left, politicians listen to us.
34
Centrist? That's just a fancy word for a cheapskate. But if that label makes you feel good about yourself, by all means use it.

And I think it's sweet that you think politicians "listen to you". Promise me you'll never lose that childlike sense of wonder. It's really quite dear.
35
I love Washington voters. They are such sheep. "There is plenty of money coming in," huh? You've actually done the analysis, looking at revenue streams and expenditures in the state budget and decided that Washington can cut another six billion without hurting anyone? Uncle Free Lunch Timmy Eyman has repeated the same lie that Republicans have been repeating since 1980 about magical waste and fraud in government that, when eliminated by the same rich, right-thinking "fiscal conservatives," will produce ponies for everyone--and the voters of this state, lazy sheep to the end, swallow it hook, line, and sinker. The only thing funnier than their pathetic faith in the ideas parroted by a longtime "man of the people" who lives in a gated community in Mukilteo will be the "baas" of outrage from those exact same lazy sheep when they see what $10B in spending cuts in two years does to the shredded remnants of their social safety net.

Please wait...

Comments are closed.

Commenting on this item is available only to members of the site. You can sign in here or create an account here.


Add a comment
Preview

By posting this comment, you are agreeing to our Terms of Use.