Gregoire is aware, isn't she, that without the City of Seattle she wouldn't be the governor of doodly squat?

What Fnarf said.

Goldy, I am going to have to finally go to drinking liberaly just to buy you a beer. I agree with what you say & have been saying this for years, even when I lived in the Tri Cities and I heard anti Seattle derpaderps spouting off.

I dare someone in Olympia to present a bill that says all tax monies stay in the county that generated them.

@ 1, 2.

Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!

Joe, if that bill were presented properly, the representatives in the poorest and reddest counties would trip over themselves to sign onto it. Throwing out the baby with the bathwater is one of their favorite pastimes.

I'm sure nobody in other counties ever has need for the burn unit at Harborview, or uses Children's Hospital - or needs anything that comes through our nifty Port, right?

I'd also like to seem a law passed that prevents Bush and his cronies from every getting any treatment involving stem cells.

@6 shit, this is why we need to do it! Sometimes, you need to kick your kids out to teach them an important human lesson so that they can grow up.

Sometimes the rich need to pay a little bit more. Right?

The terribleness of this idea is surpassed only by realizing nobody's come up with anything better so far. Yuck. Thanks again for the 1999 MVET initiative, Mr. Eyman and state voters...

An alternative would be to do the numbers, and then have an adult discussion with folks from the smaller counties. Yes, a majority of them vote the "wrong" way, but they are not all Tea Partying nut cases. (How did Didier do east of the mountains...?)
A good chunk of those folks can be reasoned with, and the problem is, nobody has tried that yet.

Commonwealth.

Or we could just mine the passes and put up roadblocks.

My take on it is that going around trying to cut someone out is pretty futile (cf. The Tunnel) because there's just so many more people there to push it through.

A better strategy seems to be Grab All You Can, or put another way, Rip Off Thy Neighbor, Before Thou Getst Rippest Off Thineself.

Why not put it out there as an initiative? Out Eyeman Eyeman? No County can receive in state funds more than it puts in. As Geni points out, the voters in the eastern counties would rush to vote for it.

I'm serious, this would be a great initiative. Ultimately, I don't think it would be pass but I think it would force the kind of conversation and facing up to facts that Citizen R would like to see.

Ferry County has a ferry.

@12: commonweal
noun
1. the common welfare; the public good.
2. (Archaic) the body politic; a commonwealth.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/c…

Goldy was just gettin' fancy.

@16 not for long.

But it is a nice ferry. I used to ride across it in the summers.

An irony is that the net effect of some of the evil old Eyeman Initiatives has already been to significantly choke the flow of tax/fee $$$ from Puget Sound being redistributed to the rest of the state.

Goldy i like your posts. i just wish your name wasnt of the techno guy.

having lived on bainbridge 3 years, shit. that shit is expensive. it uses something like $10k of fuel per run. it is a bit of a money pit. sort of. we want to fund infrastructure but not at the expense of other things. not at the expense of it being frivolous (tunnel), or damaging to quality of life (freeways, most roads and ALL non-dense sprawl).

the ferries are kind of like amtrak, maybe not as bad. they are money pits. they are well used and loved. but in tough times we may need to cut back. anyone ever been on the 2am drunk ferry back to bainbridge?

i agree though the regional tab is absurd, if that is what this means.

i like alot of salt on my fries.

actually county held tax revenues may be the best way to speed up the 'civil war'

Seriously, this needs to be introduced either as an initiative or in the legislature.

And after that, take it national. What happens here in Washington State happens on the national level: those who are most anti-tax are the ones who benefit most from taxes. It is time for the urban archipelago to fight back with the one tool we really have, which is our subsidy of red Amurica.

@23: 400 gal / hr. And approximately 10 million gallons over the life of each boat due to the extra beam added for the elevators (ADA requirement).

Keeping taxes within King County would rock, we'd be able to restore tons of services and the rest of the state would have to cut even more.

Luckier @17,

Actually, I was more than just getting fancy. I was attempting to make a distinction between the notion of commonweal and the official designation of some states as commonwealths, as in my native "Commonwealth of Pennsylvania."

I think Ferry County might actually have two ferries: the Keller Ferry, north of Wilbur, and the Gifford Ferry, from Gifford to Inchelium. The second one is operated by the Colville Tribe, IIRC.

@17 + 30,

Thanks for the clarification. With all the gratuitous apostrophes, double posting, and poor proofreading on Slog, I assumed the worst. I am also covering for the fact I had no idea commonweal was a word. Snark fail.

The GOP/TP's conclusions ultimately end up with the apes in the trees (GOP/TP) dumping their shit on everyone else (the Middle Class and lower-income people), and grabbing all the food, light and water before any of it reaches the rest of the forest. Hey, GOP/TP: Fuck You and your plans.

It doesn't bother me to pay my fair share of taxes, so why should it bother you? Unless of course you're using it as a very transparent excuse to get what you want and haven't been able to finagle any other way: tens of millions of deceased middle-class and poor people.
I make about $13k/yr. My IRS taxes are about $400; that's about 3% taxation. Extrapolated to an income of a million dollars with all its loopholes and scheming deductions, that same 3% yields taxes of $30,000, which is probably more than the person will actually pay. It's a lot easier to make it on a net of $970,000 that it is on a net of $12,600.
For me, that 3% is less than subsistence for a month's worth of medical care, or heat, or housing, or food and fuel, or many of the other absolute necessities of life.
For the millionaire, that 3% is a year's worth of espresso drinks and $100 lunches, a nice vacation or two, or riding around in a disgusting, gas hog SUV.
So you see, forcing a millionaire to pay more makes very good sense. How about leaving her with only $750,000 to scrape by each year? That sounds more than fair to me.
........................ and ...............................
"I get to keep MY money!" or "I want MY money back!"
Would "your" money include dollars earned in a society that paid your way in school, built your roads, subsidized your energy and material costs, charged less than the market rate for electricity, water, and other public services, paid for your kids' education, your fire and police protection, and an entire complex infrastructure that extends over the entire country?
Is that where and how you got "YOUR" money, buddy?
Did it ever occur to you that you wouldn't have one DIME to call your "own" if you weren't fortunate enough to live in a country that is as "socialist" as the United States, supporting and enriching its citizens with 25% of the world's resources divided up among only 3% of the world's population?
This is how you got "your" money... or maybe you found it under your pillow when the Tooth Fairy left it there!

And Gregoire still can't get two thirds of the legislature to institute a tax increase on the wealthy or take away the sales tax exemption on gasoline? Has anyone asked?

I've been wanting this kind of initiative for a while... Best part is, it could be easily passed in eastern Washington just by using rhetoric like, "Make Seattle pay for it's own tunnel!", "No government handouts for Seattle!", "End Socialism in Washington: Support responsible taxation!" and and so forth. I would be perfectly happy being villianised for an election if this was the result.

Any sort of "Spend It Where You Got It" change in the law would have to be an ammendment to the state constitution. I just can't imagine that such a law would otherwise survive a court challenge. It pretty much changes the fundamental nature of the social compact in regards to the participants and stakeholders. (Which is, of course, the point people are tying to make.)

Sir Vic @37,

You're thinking too narrowly. Tim Eyman doesn't worry about minor obstacles like say, the state constitution. And look what he's accomplished.

It's time for the state of Columbia, everything east of the Cascades is a new state governed by Governor Eyman.

You'll love this, Goldy:

Somebody seems to have slipped Gov. Chris Gregoire a leadership pill, or doubled her dose of Wheaties each breakfast. She's gone from victim mode ("I hate my budget") to boldness in one quick week. Hang in there, I say.

http://crosscut.com/blog/crosscut/20029/…

gus @40,

No doubt, the ferry thing is a pretty bold proposal, but the problem with Brewster's assertion that "the proposed Puget Sound ferry district could impose a tax without worrying about Eyman's latest initiative," is that we still have to worry about the next one. Remember, I-776 was a statewide initiative aimed at defunding Sound Transit's light rail, that passed everywhere in the state... except within the Sound Transit taxing district.

So while the state could give a Puget Sound Ferry District the taxing authority to adequately fund ferry service, a vindictive, "Fuck Seattle" initiative could just as easily take it away.

So we can change the rate system to charge non-local (out of county, out of state, etc.) cars more for their passage, right?

Westlake @42,

I see no reason why we couldn't charge ferry district residents a discount in the same way that the Woodland Park Zoo used to offer a discount to Seattle residents.

Wouldn't it be easier to just form Seattle as a State, and Western Washington as another State, and cut off the funding spigot to Eastern Washington (Lincoln) that way?

Goldy @41, that's good counterpoint you make to the "fuck all you rubes outside Seattle" talk locals are finding so darn cathartic these days...

One thing people need to remember is that even the reddest counties - Lincoln, Asotin, Grant, etc. - have 30% of their residents voting for Democrats. While I wish fervently that the Puget Sound counties could keep their tax revenues in the Puget Sound region, I also hate to penalize those stalwart 30% in sagebrush counties. They have it hard enough as it is. They're hard-core.

We'd have regional light rail already if we were funding and voting for our own transportation infrastructure, without regard to the counties that don't border Puget Sound.

Well, Goldy, you're the one person I know who has experience putting an initiative together, get off your ass and get it started. You do that and I'll sign up as a volunteer.

@47 & Goldy:

No kidding. Come on Goldy, you've done it before. Put up or shut up.

johnyawl @47,

You find me the $500,000 it takes to get an initiative on the ballot, and I'll run the campaign.