Sounds a lot more professional than Tim Eyman. The initiative process is very much a bug/windshield situation depending where you stand on a particular issue.

The roll out of the Washington Cares payroll tax was a major flub, and I expect it to be repealed. I never sign anything unless I’d actually like to see it go into law.

The four things mentioned are all highly unpopular things that I could see being overturned. The carbon tax is the most egregious since the governor stood in front of everyone and pretty lied about it's impacts to get it over the line and then continued to lie and shift blame elsewhere. Heck you even have a former employee now suing for retaliation over the whole mess. WA Cares was a tax that no one wanted (it was voted down when originally put to the people) and is something that doesn't really help anyone as evidenced by the continual tweeking the legislature is doing (they had a meeting today to talk about fixes), the fact that it will be insolvent down the road unless there is a massive increase in it doesn't help either. The capital gains tax is legislature chicanery at its finest. They feared doing the right thing and putting forth a constitutional amendment so they found a back door and got the WA SC to agree to it. The issue is no one trusts it to stay where it is at. Just last session it was proposed to vastly lower the limit so that everyone would be impacted by it and raise the tax amount. I can only imagine that will only happen again next session signaling to voters exactly what will happen if left in place. The income tax is not an issue any longer. Now that the SC has closed the door on letting the legislature do an end around for that one they will be forced to put forth a constitutional amendment to get a graduated tax passed I seriously doubt anyone will be voting for that anytime soon. I've seen some conservative bloggers urging people to call the "hotline" with false information. My guess is despite the best efforts of the progressives we'll all get a chance to vote on these next fall. Looking forward to it.

@2, the purpose of WA Cares was to head off tens of billions in Medicare obligations coming down the pike by funding in-home accommodations (and propping up an industry to retrofit homes). It would be a net savings to the state. Unfortunately it was billed as some kind of benefit, which is not at all competitive with the private market or very useful for many users. And it could have tapped a less regressive revenue source. But there’s no putting this cat back in the bag.

I'd imagine the petition gathers aren't working Democratic-voter hot spots.

The Omak Stampeded or Walmart parking lots in Spokane and Wenatchee is more like it.

@4 turns out they have a map of locations.

https://letsgowashington.com/locations/

They seem to be private businesses although I imagine they are canvassing supermarkets and Home Depot’s on an impromptu basis which is what the hotline is for.

Many of these initiatives are bad. No question. And they should be voted down. But this article tells us that people are going to be lying about them, and that is going to be terrible, but never once mentions what untruths are being told. Is there a disinformation campaign around any of them? What lies are being told? How are they influencing people?

And @3 - the WA Cares tax is well-intentioned but a terrible law. The limit on care is so low that anyone who actually needs long-term care will blow through it inside a year (go price a home health aide, or an assisted living facility, and report back), and then they'll be right back dealing with Medicaid. So much for heading off any substantial amount of Medicaid obligations.

Any sane person opted out when they could. There is just no way that a .58% tax can solve this problem. My premiums are more than three times that and I expect them to go up as I get older. It's just how the economics of it work - a long-term care insurer has a high probability of having to pay out many hundreds of thousands on any given policy.

Also, I have heard from several people in their 30s who tried to get private long-term care insurance recently (the kind that would pay a meaningful amount) that many insurers have stopped writing policies in this state, partly because of WA Cares. So their only choice is a grossly deficient program.

If we want to pay for long-term care at public expense, fine. But a half-assed program that won't actually help people and destroys the market for useful insurance is not the way to do it. And the reason for the Medicaid spend-down rule is that long-term care is really fucking expensive and we are going to be hard-pressed as a society to pay for it however we do it. It only makes sense to ask people to use their own resources to pay what they can. I don't agree with making people spend down every last dollar, but not making us primarily responsible for our care is not tenable. Those who believe that the premiums will sharply rise in the future are correct. And I am far from sure that the result would be a schedule of benefits that actually takes care of people. A realistic public system would be great - WA Cares is not it.

Hannah, you don't need to be wealthy to sell $250K of stocks. You just have to be smart with your money and play the stock market starting in your 20s. All of those small investors basically save up and invest $2.5K in a company, aka Tesla back in 2010. If one of them wanted to cash out $250K for the down payment of a home, they'd have to pay the state $17,500 and have less funds to use for that downpayment.

Hannah, you're literally shitting on people your age who happen to work for companies offering RSUs.

Raindrop dear, find your own catchphrase. It's Republicans who are horrible people. Like the people who are trying to push this assortment of garbage legislation at us (except for the repeal of WA cares. Dumbest Legislation ever)

But I will say, they will eat this up and ask for more anyplace in this state outside of Seattle, especially in the welfare parts of the state. Personally, I never sign anything some canvasser shoves in my face. I just always tell them I'm visiting.

God forbid the people actually get the opportunity to vote on these issues? Democracy!

People sign stuff they don't read, explained to them by a worker who has no knowledge of legislative processes, and scribble illegibly their personal information at the doorway of a grocery store.

Hannah Flowers is Ramona's sister.

@7 - “…you don't need to be wealthy to sell $250K of stocks.”

Having $250k in stocks outside of a retirement account (which is where it would need to be to be subject to cap gains in WA) is pretty much the definition of ‘wealthy.’

Plus - who the fuck needs $250k for a “down payment on a house?” Again, if the house you’re buying requires that much of a down payment - you can afford the fucking capital gains tax on the profit you made by doing nothing more than having some spare cash to invest and watching CNBC.

@13 Welcome to WA! Yes, most taxes here are regressive. Thanks to a terrible state supreme court decision back in the 1930s, it's unfortunately how we roll. But that's why we (finally) have an earned income tax credit. Look into it, you might be eligible.

So, what IS the phone number?!?

@7- Remember that Hannah & Co. write for the Stranger. Anyone who makes more than minimum wage, owns property , or has done any successful investing is a billionaire and an enemy of the people who deserves to be taxed into oblivion.

Any gas tax disproportionally impacts the poor and working classes even if it's called a carbon tax.

we're being price-gouged
by Big Oil and Inflation-
suffering thru them too

but let's blame Dems'
for Not making the
Rich pay their
Fair Share

I 'spose they're
culpable too.

The Parental Rights Bill I oppose vehemently. As a High School Teacher I have dealt with LGBTQ Youth. I know this initiative doesn’t mention that. It’s the slippery slope that worries me.

I've never really been a fan of the "don't sign initiatives" principle. It implies that we're afraid of what the voting public would support.

We ought to have learned that such fear of democracy is mostly unfounded, when anti-SSM initiatives made it to the ballot and were roundly defeated (which was a far greater victory than "decline to sign" could ever have hoped to be).

We either want the people to decide or we fear the people's decision, it's got to be one or the other.

@apres_moi get out of your yuppie bubble... hardly anybody has the luxury you describe. 250k in liquid wealth isn't wealthy? My God man, take a walk outside of SLU sometime.

@22 When it comes to ballot measures there are very good reasons to be afraid of what the voting public will support (or more precisely, what big money can convince them to support). In addition, some issues are simply inappropriate to put to a vote, such as the basic right to marry the person one loves regardless of sex. Would you sign an initiative to require African Americans to sit in the back of the bus, just so The People could have their say?

Direct democracy is not an unalloyed good thing especially in Washington, where there are no meaningful limits on ballot measure campaign expenditures. NEVER sign a petition for anything you don't personally want to see become law.

I enthusiastically signed the long term care rollback initiative and I'll be enthusiastically voting for it too.