Blogs Aug 8, 2011 at 9:27 am

Comments

1
At least a thank-you would be nice.
2
don't be petty, Goldy, you bitch
4
Why would you complain about Big Government, Goldy. You never have to deal with Big Government.

Why is it that only the people in the soup kitchen line complain about the wait?

How come the people at the methadone clinic are the only ones complaining about the sizes of the doses?
5
Yeah but the moment you suggest Western Washington shouldnt have to subsidizing Eastern Washington, you contradict yourself on most federal programs that require the everyone to pay into things that some would probably never use.

This subject last came up after Gregroire narrowly beat Rossi, Eastern Washington was pissed and threatened to break up the state. Those arguments were short lived once they realized most of the tax revenue came from King County. So Republicans can argue this all they wont, it will never go anywhere and if it does, it will benefit Western Washington.
6
Since you enjoy that tasty organic produce from the other side of the Cascades, then you surely wouldn’t mind doing away with the estate tax so that green-minded farm can stay in the family when “Joe” croaks (poor dear – up at 4:30 every day, almost 90 but going strong) – his son Jeb and his wife want to take it over but won’t be able afford the tax. Some big corporate farm like Cargill will probably end up buying it.
8
Yeah, but those sweet, cheap peaches benefit everyone. Baby mamas, bums, illegals and dopers getting free room and board only causes them to breed more entitled assholes. If they sent us thank you cards or cheap peaches, maybe I'd give a shit.

I'll pay for the peaches.
9
Phoebe on NE 79th @ 6...

Please read up on the estate tax before you post bullshit like that.
10
@Phoebe- You need to study up on family farming and how it works.
11
@9, @10 - I appreciate your commentary and will continue studying.
12
Thank you for pulling the dreadful, vulgar post @7. But I would really like to know how he got to subsidies for Eastern Washington leading to lower electricity for Seattlites. We own our dams, and what we don't get from them, we buy from Bonneville or BC.

Granted, as good neighbors, we have provided amenities to the Skagit and Boundary areas - mostly in the form of improvements to schools - and of course, there are the jobs these facilities provide. But other than that, electric rates have nothing to do with subsidies.
13
as long as the conservatives desire to burn the very notion of american society to the ground, i support states rights/them paying their own way. they wanna come back to reality & work together & i'd be happy to share w/ them again. for now, they should be given what they've demanded... nothing.
14
The only people who are hit by the estate tax are people who have assets in excess of about 1.2 million (which these days in Washington is a large percentage of anyone who owns a house, let alone a farm) who have not done proper estate planning with a lawyer.

Incidentally, farms in many cases can and should be structured as multiple member LLCs (C or S corporations), thereby passing without tax repurcussions from generation to generation as children become shareholders and eventually managers in the family company. If structured properly, such corporations also generally pay lower taxes than they would as mere sole proprietorships or family farms. The LLC structure can also protect the family home if the farm itself goes bankrupt.

Like the Lotto, the estate tax is essentially a "tax on the stupid."
15
@13

You're mistaken. (or is that youre mistaken in your language?)

Conservatives want to dismantle the poorly conceived remodels liberals made to our elegant house of state starting with FDR. You guys basically grafted a 1967 single-wide onto the beautifully designed 18th century mansion of our constitution. Then you called it modern and progressive and all sorts of exciting and meaningless words. They want to get rid of that ruinous monstrosity so that the structure may stand another couple of centuries, rather than fall the decay made inevitable by liberal policies.

You're welcome.
16
@15 conservatives are against healthcare. conservatives are against public education. conservatives are against retirement. conservatives are against infrastructure spending of any kind. conservatives are against science & evidence. conservatives are against the rule of law. conservatives are against technological development (clean energy anyone?). conservatives are literally pro-pollution at this point. hell, conservatives are against voting (if you are poor and/or a minority).

seattleblues, you can make up whatever bs narrative you want. the facts remain. the conservatives in this country are systematically tearing down the very notion of not just american society, but society itself. in fact, they no longer deserve to be called conservatives (that label should apply to the democrats). they have become nihilists.
17
@16 conservatives do like self-employed or business-owning white people, though. Also, they like the cool bits of how the English nobility lived with smallfolk underneath them. I wanna be a lord too with knights and land!! Yay conservatism, any man can be a big deal if he puts his balls to the wall!
18
Just make Seattle into our own State and Eastern Washington into the State of Lincoln.

Then no subsidies at all.

Win win.
19
@5 "Yeah but the moment you suggest Western Washington shouldnt have to subsidizing Eastern Washington,"

Did he suggest that? No. He agreed with the sentiment "I don't mind that on a per capita basis many rural areas extract money from the rest of us."
20
@15-"...onto the beautifully designed 18th century mansion of our constitution."

Ah yes, slavery, no franchise for women or men who don't own properties, it's really too bad anything got changed.
21
@20

"Conservatives want to dismantle the poorly conceived remodels liberals made to our elegant house of state starting with FDR."

I just learned something new historically speaking.

Apparently in 1932, just prior to FDR, slavery was legal! Also, women couldn't vote, nor could men who didn't own property! (I'll grant that women were enfranchised only in 1920, but still a decade before FDR, for the record.)

Just so that this is clear though. Part of the elegant simplicity of our founding document is the means included for peaceful alteration as need or basic justice require.

Unlike your president, I don't think the Constitution fundamentally flawed precisely for this reason. However, altering it outside of the process designed for amendment is a damaging to the entirety of the Constitution itself. This is one of my gripes with liberals. It isn't that they wish the document changed, which is their right. It's that they do so outside of the law as with FDR and to a lesser degree Johnson.
22
(The Commonwealth of) Virginia is the same. There's actually a term for it: NoVa vs. ROVA. That would be Northern Virginia vs. the Rest Of Virginia.

The amusing thing is the occasional sob story in the Washington Post, talking about how the people who live about 2 hours west or south of the city are having a harder time to find jobs...in NoVa. As in, they bitch about us, travel to the better paying jobs there (no bargain that, granted), but then we're elite or snobby scum who try to deny them taxes.

Except the biggest NoVa county - Fairfax - generally gets back about 12-14¢ of every $1 sent to Richmond. I'm not sure how many more taxes can be sent out, or how many more times they'll block NoVa from trying to generate their own transportation funds.
23
@14,

There's also a greater exemption for family farms; I can't remember if it's $2 million or $4 million, but, needless to say, most family farms don't meet the $2 million mark, let alone the $1.2 million.
24
@1

When you're right, you're right.

So on behalf of the friends, family and acquintances I have from growing up in central Washington, our deepest gratitude.

Where would be without tech execs and middle management types buying cottages next to our orchards and farms, then complaining about tractor noise or animal smells?

How would we manage the communities that have been stably run for a century or more without the condescension and arrogance of King County telling us how to build roads or sewers, manage our labor, or build houses to withstand Seattle rain in Omak or Moses Lake?

Without hordes of Seattle tourists going to our wineries to complain about the hotels or restaurants available to them, how COULD we survive?

Without Seattle environmentalists telling us how to manage land our grandfathers or great grandfathders settled and developed while your descendants were typing in East Coast offices, how could we possibly handle that herculean task?

So, I offer both apologies and gratitude. Seattle offers the sane side of the state wonderful comic relief, when their holier than thou arrogance isn't irritating the hell out of us.
25
"Just make Seattle into our own State "

What will you do for food, eat your lube supply?
26
Seattleblah, if it weren't for Hoover and FDR (mostly FDR) eastern Washington would still be in the dark ages. Grand Coulee isn't just about electricity, you know - although rural electrification did revolutionize that area - it's part of a huge irrigation project that made farming in Central Washington much more reliable.

And perhaps if you people could manage to elect some representatives who are not suffering from mental illness, you might get more respect from those of us who subsidize your "traditional lifestyle"

And lest you accuse me of being "anti-rural", or some such nonsense, don't forget - I'm from the country too. I spent my summers on a real farm - not some acreage with a quaintsy house that some angry, frightened white guy bought so he could more easily micromanage his poor family.
27
@21- You're a vile, intellectually dishonest, morally bankrupt cunt.

Obama is OUR president, just as this is OUR country.

You altered your OWN quote in order to sound like less of a prick, which I guess makes your own words like the constitution, perfect because they can be changed... Sigh.

It sucks to be you, Seattleblues.
28
@24- "How would we manage the communities that have been stably run for a century or more ..."

Stop making up history.
29
Umm, I copied and pasted it from my post. Didn't alter it.

How a president who swore an oath to uphold and defend a Constitution he dislikes and thinks fundamentally flawed. So yes, if you share that view he's your president, but he sure as hell isn't mine.

Wrong in many ways, a womanizer, a liar and perjurer, suborner of witnesses in civil cases in which he was a defendant all while being the president of the United States- I still never doubted that Bill Clinton loved his country. I never doubted that the hapless and hopeless Jiminy Carter did as well. But then, neither man sat in churches whose pastor thundered denuniciations of the country from the pulpit, a pastor referred to as friend and mentor right up to the point he wasn't politically convenient. Neither gave an hour long speech about the fundamental flaws of the Constitution. Both actually performed the work of the office or job they held prior to becoming president.

So yeah, he's your guy. You voted for him, I didn't and he's all on you buddy.
30
Seattleblah, you're really over in the deep end of the pool, aren't you? Where did you learn your history? One of those Newt Gingrich children's videos? University of Phoenix?

Carter wasn't a bad President. He was doing the best he could with the mess he was left by the Vietnam Nam war. That's why inflation was so high - we had a huge war debt. Sound familiar?

He would have been reelected if the Republicans hadn't been in bed with the Iranian revolutionaries. But they were, so we got that addle-brained old fool for eight long years. thus began the decline of America.

And the Reverend Wright? Seriously? I had given you more credit than to be pulled into that particular FOX News induced national psychotic episode. How do you happen to get up in the morning and get dressed? Who handles ypur finances? Are you on a trust fund?

I really pity Mrs Seattleblah, if indeed there is one.
31
I hope any fool sucking on the government teat that votes teabagger or republican promptly loses their "welfare".
32
@30

The addle brained fool unfortunately wasn't. He was a traitor and oathbreaker. Also, this happened in 1932, not 1980 and he served 12 years as president, not 8.

Jeremiah Wright is on tape shouting 'God Damn America' to cheers from his congregation, among whom were the Obamas. Obama did call Wright his mentor and almost family, and he did drop both him and the church like a hot rock once the political liability was clear to him.

We had much more massive debt after WW2, yet our economy recovered. War debt, particularly for poorly chosen ones like Iraq, aren't great. But they aren't nearly as damaging as the liberal notion that borrowing money we can't pay back for idiotic social programs is a good idea. S&P and likely Moodys have made that clear.

Geez, and you tell ME my history is off!
33
Carter wasn't a bad President.

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34
Although,
we must admit,
he is no longer the WORSE President we ever had......
35
Seattleblah, I'll agree with you on one thing: Obama was a fink to dump Wright. He could have brazened that "scandal" out, but he was too timid.

I think the real story was that they ran from him because, like most intelligent, ambitious people, they didn't go to church that much, so they weren't sure what other weird stuff might be out there. If they'd just said that, most people would understand. Pompous blowhards, on the other hand, not so much. but that's what AM radio is for.

Other than that, like I said, you're really out there. Our "Social Programs" - other than Medicare Part D, which is a social program only a Republican could design, as it chiefly benefits big Pharma - have very little to do with our debt. You can preach that song all you want, but it just. Ain't. True. And even if it were, the answer is simple: Remove the earnings cap. We're set.

But here's the beauty of Roosevelt and Johnson's legacies: They are self-defending. As every generation gets up towards retirement age, they start paying attention to Social Security and Medicare, and start looking forward to it. And they vote based on that. Since very few people, and even fewer young people, actually take the time to vote, that means politicians will always look after it. You're tilting at windmills, and actually advocating against your best interest. Thankfully, we've had intelligent people through they years - like FDR - who protect people like you from your own feeble-minded talking points.

You're welcome, Seattleblah.
36
Oh, and btw, we mostly paid off WWII (a debt we owed largely to ourselves from sales of War Bonds) by taxing the he'll out of the rich, and building the interstate highway systems, as well as a huge amount of schools, hospitals, and other public buildings. Employing all those people lead to big tax coffers, and helped build the middle class, while providing much needed infrastructure,

Eisenhower was probably the last non-criminal Republican President. They don't make 'em like that anymore.
37
@13, 15, 16: Yeah, let's just assume all conservatives think exactly the same.

I'm not one of them. I'm just sayin'.
38
Goldy,

That bit from Atrios started out as a editorial at the Righty/Moonie LA Times and that the editorial contains numerous errors.

Shit, who needs Republicans when you've got Democrats!

If you want to talk anti-tax, rightwing, moochers there's no need to look any further than the nearest suburb.

http://www.dailyyonder.com/monday-roundu…
39
Without getting off on one of my rants about the evils of tribalism I should point out that Washington's diversity works to all our advantages. Those cheap nectarines and cherries that we enjoy this time of year sort of balance against the open spaces and warmth we love especially during a late Spring. Rural V. Urban is a constant theme in American politics and serves demagogues well from time to time. I've spent the last forty years split between both sides of the state and can't honestly say which I prefer. West side definitely for schools, lush forests, ocean and prosperity; East side for our wonderful agriculture produce, warmth, rural expanses and power production. The two sides work well if we can ignore the politicos who stir up resentment for their own ends. Both sides of the state have our problems, but so what? Arguing over who gets a bigger cut of the tax pot is unproductive, but perhaps we could make our counties more independent of State legislation. I would gladly free the counties in Eastern Washington from the burden of some of the more onerous parts of the land use statutes and the wet side could relieve itself from the chains of the State Lege's control over our transportation solutions. Screw this wet/dry fight.

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