Washington is the fifth most regressive tax system in the country.

No. The Seattle Times article focused exclusively on sales tax. The state's other sources of revenue, property, excise taxes, use fees, licenses, and tolls, are regressive as well. Washington has the most regressive state and local tax system in the entire country:

Washington State’s tax system is the most regressive, according to [the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy]. The bottom 20 percent of taxpayers pay 16.8 percent of their income in taxes, while the top 1 percent pay just 2.4 percent. After Washington, the most regressive state and local tax systems are in Florida, Texas, South Dakota, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Ari­zona, Kansas, and Indiana.

---- Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, "State and Local Tax Systems Hit Lower-Income Families the Hardest," CBPP.org, 15 January 2015

Ask any Democratic member of the Washington legislature about a state income tax and -- after trying to size you up to see where you stand -- they'll concede that Washington's tax system is unfair and that we do need an income tax but that the problem is getting a majority. And this is true regardless of whether the Democrats have absolute control over state government or not. They're all for it in off-the-record, one-on-one conversations with the fiscal cannon-fodder who vote for them, but only individually, never as a group. It's always some unidentified others who are the impediment. You can almost see the little thought bubbles over their heads, with the state's billionaires telling them, "If it's money you want, we have it, but you're not getting it. You see, we have a very particular set of skills ... skills we have acquired over a very long career ... skills that make us a nightmare for people like you. If you keep Washington's tax system as regressive as possible, that will be the end of it. We will not look for you, we will not pursue you. Marriage equality? Reproductive parity? Pot stores? Knock yourselves out. But if you pass an income tax, we will look for you ... we will find you ... and we will kill you. Politically and professionally, of course ... although accidents do happen."

Of course, it doesn't help that our local commercial media are as scared of the billionaires as our legislature is. Remember I-1098? The initiative to put a state income tax on the very highest earners and reduce property tax for everyone and B&O tax for small business? After a wildly misleading, negative advertising blitz funded by Paul Allen, Steve Balmer, Jeff Bezos, (and his parents!), George Bartell (and Bartell Drugs!), and some billionaire from east of the Cascades, some 63% of the electorate supposedly -- if the vote count wasn't rigged -- voted against lowering their own taxes while raising $2 billion a year more in revenue for health and education ... at the height of a recession-induced state budget crisis! (And at the same time, our noble Democratic legislators, like Ed Murray, Jamie Petersen, and Frank Chopp, voted to give amnesty to Microsoft for evading over a billion dollars in state taxes and penalties, which Microsoft had done by shifting paper ownership of software licensing rights to a domestic tax haven, Nevada.) Did any of you see the advertising blitz countered on local TV or in the Seattle Times? I didn't. Or if there was any countering, it was pretty muted and ineffectual. Did you see any local news coverage of the Microsoft tax amnesty? Well, you didn't, because there wasn't any. (Instead, they covered Microsoft spokespeople clamoring for a toll-funded replacement for the SR520 floating bridge. Maybe there just wasn't any time or space left for that embarrassing tax amnesty stuff.)

Well, maybe the Seattle Times is starting to reform. They endorsed Bernie Sanders over the War-Mongering Witch of Wall Street. (I'm still trying to wrap my head around that one; it's so out of character for the Times.) They carried the article cited here. It's a very small start. But remember: Washington's citizens are the product of badly underfunded public schools; Washington's local media still sucks; and Washington's billionaires have a very particular set of skills...

Re: Higher than acceptable levels of lead in school water.

Why not just install filtration for the potable sinks and faucets? Even a whole reverse-osmosis system is only a couple hundred buck per—better in the long run by most metrics (cost, environment, maintenance, etc) than bottled water.

@2 - The Witch of Wall Street was Hetty Green and is a totally insane and fascinating character from American history. As much as I love alliteration and whatever you think of HRC, that's not her nickname.