In one of what will eventually prove to be many editorials against Initiative 1098’s proposed high earner’s income tax, the Seattle Times warns readers “Don’t Calitaxicate Washington,” which I suppose they thought was a really clever pun, but which merely comes off as just kinda stupid. You know, like the rest of the editorial:
BILL Gates Sr. — father of the famous one — recently dropped $400,000 into the campaign to convince Washington voters to saddle themselves with a state income tax. On Aug. 3, the Service Employees International Union in Washington, D.C., put $200,000 into the same effort to change Washington law. The total raised by Initiative 1098 approaches $2 million.
Um, I’m not sure what the return address is on the check, and there are all kinds of rules about which funds come from where, but the SEIU money going into the I-1098 campaign is coming from SEIU locals and their members right here in this Washington, predominantly SEIU 775NW, which represents health care workers. I mean the Times would like you to think that it’s being funded by evil, out-of-state special interests, but it’s not. It’s the same folks who fund a lot of progressive causes in Washington state… you know, the folks who represent working people.
The cash being poured into the pro-1098 campaign aims to convince you, if you earn less than $200,000, that you will not pay the tax. You may not, in the first years.
Um… you will not pay the tax. “May not” makes it sound like maybe you will, maybe you won’t. But you won’t. Individuals earning less than $200,000, and households earning less than $400,000, will absolutely, positively not pay this tax.
But the tax will be expanded. Taxes always are.
No they are not. And if the income tax is ever expanded to lower income households, it will only be through a vote of the people. I mean, can you think of another major tax increase that hasn’t come before the people via initiative or referendum? Even the legislature’s recently passed temporary, 2-cent per can soda pop tax is coming before voters this November. That’s just the way things work around here.
And even before this happens, you will feel it, because it will sap income, investment, jobs and pay all across the state.
Because… why? The Times doesn’t explain how a tax on the top three percent of households, who would still enjoy one of the lowest effective tax rates in the nation, would sap income, investment, jobs and pay for the rest of us. They don’t explain it, because they can’t. They just believe it because the Soviet Union collapsed or something, and thus taxing wealthy people must be bad. Or something.
Washington is one of nine states with no tax on wages and salaries.
Washington also has the most regressive tax structure in the nation, and by far. That means if you earn less than $20,000 a year you live in the highest taxed state in the union, but if you earn over $200,000 a year you live in one of the lowest. And the Times is okay with that.
This is a big advantage in recruiting people to work here, and in keeping people from leaving here. When Gov. Chris Gregoire went to the Paris Air Show in her first term to recruit aerospace companies to Washington, the first item of her sales pitch was: no state income tax.
It may be a recruiting pitch, but there’s no credible study to show that state income tax rates have a substantial impact on individuals’ decision to come or leave. I mean, Nevada has no income tax, and it has the highest unemployment rate in the nation. And I don’t particularly see the economy or population booming in South Dakota or Wyoming either. It’s a bullshit argument.
It’s a selling point. An asset. And more than that: It’s a bonus for living here.
Huh. The Blethens sure don’t think much of their home state. I thought the bonus for living here was living here. Who’d have thought the Times would make an even worse tourism board than they do an editorial board?
The new tax created by I-1098 would top out at 9 percent of adjusted gross income, with no deductions. That’s not quite the highest rate in the country: Oregon’s, at 11 percent, is at the top. But Oregon has zero sales tax.
Let’s be clear. I-1098 would impose a 5% tax on household income in excess of $400,000 ($200,000 for an individual), and 9% on household income in excess of $1 million ($500,000 per individual). That means a family earning a half a million dollars a year would pay an additional $5,000 a year in state taxes… compared to $46,500 in California, which taxes a household earning $500,000 9.3% on every dollar earned. Of course, state income taxes are fully deductible when calculating federal income tax. So really, you’re looking at an additional $3,250 dollars in taxes a year (compared to $30,225 in CA), out of a half million dollars earned. That’s an effective rate of only about 0.65%. I don’t think anybody’s picking up and moving to Texas over that.
Of course as incomes go higher, so does the effective rate; a household earning $2 million a year would pay an additional $78,000 after the federal deduction, for an effective rate of about 3.9%. But then, the higher the income the less the marginal value of the tax paid, and this would still leave a WA two-millionaire with one of the lowest effective tax rates in the nation.
We would have high rates of sales and income taxes, which would be putting up a sign saying: Don’t invest here. Don’t create jobs here.
Of course, what the Times fails to mention is that I-1098 would also slash the state portion of the property tax by 20%, while exempting 80% of businesses from the onerous B&O tax. Oops.
Meanwhile, with I-1098’s top rate still below that of other Western states like Oregon, California and Hawaii, where exactly are folks gonna go? Idaho? Sure, Idaho’s top rate is only 7.8 percent, but it hits nearly everybody, applying to income over $26,418 a year, and to every dollar earned. And… well… it’s Idaho.
California did that. Its state income tax on high earners is 10.8 percent, and its sales tax mostly ranges from 8.75 to 9.75 percent. Such high levels of tax have not brought wealth and balanced budgets to California. Skilled people are leaving.
If Bill Gates Sr. and the SEIU push I-1098 past the voters, they will succeed only in bringing California’s luck here. And that would be a sad day.
So rather than emulating California’s example of a more fair tax structure, the Times would prefer we follow California’s example of decimating its once envied K-12 and higher education systems… the foundation on which the state built its economy into the eighth largest in the world.
I mean, the whole tortured “Calitaxicate” pun is a giant, smelly, red herring. Most states have an income tax. What sets California apart is not how it raises revenue, but how it spends it.
What this state needs is investment in new ideas and new work — and a tax system that smiles upon it.
What this state really needs is investment in our children. Do we want to see the state continue to cut funding for K-12 education? Do we want tuition and fees at state universities eventually rise to the point where we price the middle class out of a college education while financial aid fails to keep up? Do we want to knock tens of thousands of children off the health care rolls? Because that’s what happens if we don’t pass I-1098, and we don’t do anything else.
And that, more than anything else, is what risks turning Washington into California.
I know you like the idea of punishing the wealthy for your failure to become one of them, but do try, for once, to think Goldy.
I know, you’re progressive so the whole thinking and logic thing gets past you, but try anyway.
First, it isn’t your money to steal. This should be most important, but morals and ethics get past you too. One more time it isn’t your damned money.
Second, it never works to tax the wealthy. How many times does this have to be said to get past the marble block someone replaced your head with? People who own businesses don’t just sigh and pay the tax. They add it in costs to whatever they sell or service. How hard can this be, even for a liberal, to understand. Sometimes I swear the progressive mind stopped maturing at about 7 with the perpetual phrase ‘it’s not fair’ on their lips.
Well it’s not fair. It’s not fair that those who produce and do the right things ought to be punished for that behavior. It’s not fair that the top few percent pay the bills for the bottom 50%. It’s not fair that people like you try to package this theft as good policy.
And believe it or not this will introduce income tax for everyone else in this state. Believe it or not the example of California economics is hardly one we ought to follow.
Bonehead.
lost @1,
You have nothing to back up your arguments but dry, desiccated ideology. Try again.
This is just more instance in which the Blethens use their editorial pulpit to try to support their own narrow self-interest. I imagine that most of the Blethens fall subject to this tax, but by a wide margin most individuals and small businesses would find their taxes CUT by the initiative.
And, of course, large businesses which dominate their industry in the state don’t want to see the B&O tax structure changed. They’ve already exerted their influence to make sure that it’s affect on them never arises to more than the nuisance level. You can see this in the different rates applied to the various classifications. Although the very small business can take advantage of a credit which avoids them paying the B&O tax, it is the low-to-medium size businesses which feel the tax bite the most. Because it hits on gross revenues, not profit, those businesses have to pay it even if they lose money in a down economy. It’s an unworkable tax which has long outlived any usefulness, and needs to be scrapped altogether and replaced with a business income tax – but that’s another subject.
And Washington is among only a small handful of states with no income tax of any sort – seven total, including Alaska, Texas, Florida, Nevada, and Wyoming, and South Dakota, and the trend is definately in favor of more states turning to an income tax. Given this trend, it’s unlikely that it will be any significant factor in a business’s relocation decision.
Note that among the exceptions, Alaska is it’s own special case, since it receives so much money in oil revenue it actually sends annual dividend checks to residents. Florida is also a special case, it’s year-round warm climate makes it a winter home for many of the nation’s wealthy, and it’s unlimited homestead exemption makes it the preferred residence of wealthy persons who try to protect their assets from creditors (O.J. Simpson, Ken Lay, etc.).
Only Texas is a competitor in manufacturing technology, but there it’s the notoriously low wages and almost non-existent workman’s compensation programs which draw some businesses. We aren’t about to “compete in a dive for the bottom” for minimum wage workers to assemble circuit boards and boxes (those jobs are mostly migrating to China and Vietnam anyway). Businesses which rely upon intelligent and educated people to design and build everything to airplanes to software to bio-tech have found Washington to be a great selling point as they recruit the people they need.
And you have nothing to back up yours but the ideology of the kindergarten.
And we wouldn’t need the tax if Gregoire hadn’t raised spending astronomically. Failed progressive ideology got us here, and it sure as hell won’t get us out.
Please stop trying.
A minor point, but it’s actually South Dakota, not North Dakota, that has no income tax.
I’ve got work to do, but just for once I’d love to hear the progressive defense for the theft that is their tax policy.
Just for once, apart from the specious economic arguments which fall to common sense in about a second, I’d like to hear why the hard working and productive are to bear the burdens of everyone else in your minds.
@4: Once again Lost shows how utterly devoid of reason and sanity he/she is.
Lost, if you are attempting to actually argue a point, try to actually USE an argument. Claiming that it is not someone’s money to steal is not only a LIE (taxes are not stealing, period) but you also fail to refute Goldy’s well-thoght out and DOCUMENTED arguments.
What do you (Lost) have against basic tax fairness? Why should the rich pay less of a percentage of their income than the poor?
Are you some kind of anti-christ that thinks the poor should shoulder more of a burden than the uber-rich who got most of their money through the luck of genetics?
Or are you just morally and intellectually bankrupt in your neaderthal ideas?
The rest of us actual working people who make less than 400K would have the B and O tax and the property taxs reduced.
There is no credible argument that you are making – it is just ideological BS that supports the uber rich not paying squat.
Umm, Gregoire did not raise spending astronomically – once again you are lying. We had a huge drop in income and there have already been draconian cuts.
Why do you lie to try and support you lousy ideas for pampering the uber-rich?
You hide behind some kind of false intellectual bravado – but your arguments are weak, redundant and poorly thought out. You have no reply to Goldy – so you repeat the same tired crap that doesn’t even apply to this situation.
Myave you abhor facts because they don’t support your small-minded, shallow thinking.
Lost @ #1: “It’s not fair that those who produce and do the right things ought to be punished for that behavior.”
Part of Calvinist theology was that God rewards those who follow him and are obedient, and punishes those who are not. This came across the pond with the Puritans who settled Massachusetts and much of New England, in the form of “pre-ordination” theology (those who are pre-ordained to inherit the Kingdom of God under the Book of Revelation can be identified by the favor God shows on their material success).
Now within these theologies there is much which is very helpful. The Puritans didn’t take their pre-ordained status for granted, as the virtues they tried to practice included hard work, sobriety, humility, thrift, etc. All these virtues go a long way in helping a person acquire material success.
But what it ignore is pretty much the entire Book of Job, where a couple of Job’s friends insist that his hardships must be caused by some “secret sin” in his life, and he must repent from it before he can prosper again. Even Job cries out to God, asking why the wicked prosper but the Godly suffer. But near the end of the Book of Job, God rebukes both Jobe and these “friends”, pointing out that only he knows the reason why hardship is permitted to fall upon some and not upon others, and it is not up to them to try to guess his design.
In practice, this Calvinist/Puritan theology translates in this country into the argument that “you are poor because of your own moral failure, the rich are rich because they are more intelligent, more thrifty, harder working, and better-looking to boot”. Any attempt to question this philosophy is dismissed by it’s defenders as jealousy.
But really, a cursory survey of the rich in this country will quickly show it to be false. Is Paris Hilton more sober, harder working, more intelligent, and more thrifty than the rest of us? Just to keep it a more reasonable example, does the current CEO of Boeing have 100,000 times the I.Q. score, and work 100,000 times as hard, as the workers who earn 1/100,000 times his salary? Of course not.
After more than 30 years of helping to provide financial counseling through my church, I’ve seen the gammut of financial circumstances. Although there are some who clearly made poor decisions in their lives, and some with bad habits, the vast majority of people in financial hardship are hard-working, initelligent people who encountered a string of bad luck – poor health, extended unemployment through no fault of their own, etc.
So income really has nothing to do with whether people produce anything or not. A married couple with income exceeding $400,000 a year usually don’t “produce” that much – they are living off the inheritence provided to them by their ancestors, which may be actually accumulating greater than they can spend it. But this doesn’t prevent them from believing that they got their entirely on their own. As George W. Bush was once described, “He was born on third base, and believed he had hit a triple”.
@1 “I know you like the idea of punishing the wealthy for your failure to become one of them, but do try, for once, to think Goldy.”
He just did, numbnuts. Goldy presented a fact-based, reasoned rebuttal to the Times’ editorial, which is nothing more than shilling for wealthy special interests. And you? You offer nothing but pap like “punishing the wealthy” (how are the wealthy being punished by a tax system that taxes them only a fifth as much of their income as the poor pay?) and “isn’t your money to steal” (sorry, bonehead, but we all contribute to public needs and making those people pay their fair share isn’t “stealing”).
Honestly, blueballs, you are so fucking lame at arguing public policy issues that I don’t think you can measure, saw, or hammer either. I wouldn’t hire you to fix up MY burrow!
@3 “This is just more instance in which the Blethens use their editorial pulpit to try to support their own narrow self-interest.”
Exactly! Once again, the Times’ editorialists demonstrate they’re mere mouthpieces for conservative ideology and have no answers for the practical needs of our state and citizens. See, e.g., the alarmist front-page lede story about a city transportation taxing district in today’s toilet-paper edition.
@8 “In practice, this Calvinist/Puritan theology translates in this country into the argument that “you are poor because of your own moral failure, the rich are rich because they are more intelligent, more thrifty, harder working, and better-looking to boot”. Any attempt to question this philosophy is dismissed by it’s defenders as jealousy.”
Since John Kerry married $700 million and owns a private jet and a multimillion-dollar yacht which he docks in Rhode Island to avoid paying $500,000 of Massachusetts boat taxes, and “lost” still has to work for rent and bread money, “lost” clearly must be a moral defective not to mention ungodly.
@6 “just for once I’d love to hear the progressive defense for the theft that is their tax policy”
We don’t have a tax policy, because the gutless wonder leading our party is afraid to touch our state’s regressive, unfair, and inadequate tax system, out of fear the rich patrons who fund political campaigns will give her prunes instead of peaches.
I’ve said this before, but it needs redundant reiteration, because some are too stupid to comprehend it: Washington residents have received HUGE tax cuts over the last three years. They are today paying BILLIONS a year less to the state. That’s why massive state budget cuts and layoffs of thousands of state workers have been necessary.
“Failed progressive ideology got us here, and it sure as hell won’t get us out.”
What an idiot. What planet have you inhabited since the Reagan trickle-on theory was instituted? The current state of the US (and world) economy is completely attributable to failed right-wing/neo-liberal (aka feudal) voodoo economics.
“And even before this happens, you will feel it, because it will sap income, investment, jobs and pay all across the state.”
This is factually incorrect. Tax rates for the weathy in the 1950’s were in the ninety percentile when the American middle class was exploding.
What this state needs is a decent newspaper with an adult supervising the editorial board.
My biggest problem with 1098 and I signed for it is that it does not address the sales tax. That’s the regressive tax…
Lost–
You are 100% right on.
The Progressives love to use Class Warfare to build their base thru Jealousy & Envy.
They try to make those who are struggling focus on those who are succcessful and fuel Envy & Jealousy.
Goldy is from a wealthy Jewish Suburb in Philly. He had advantages I never had. I had to work my way thru college and paid 100% because my parents could not. Was I jealous of the rich Jewish Kids I went to school with. At the time, you bet! However, I had one great prof that instilled a sense of “you can do anything” in us. I’ll never forget him.
He was an econ prof who showed us the pie is NOT finite. That government regs & taxes can stifle the size of the pie. That was almost 40 years ago…we are now living it.
ObaMao has misjudged Americans as sheep he could manipulate with Class Warfare.
I have worked hard & made sacrifices to create wealth for my family.
I’m sure some of you from the Left have too.
But others have not.
They waste their lives smothered in Envy Jealousy of those who succeeded.
I pity you folks.
You have one shot in this life…
Living it based on Envy & Jealousy of others is a total waste. Apply your talents to producing something Society will value…rather than focus on taking from those who succeed. Seriously. Every day will become a blessing…rather than possessing you with anger.
Get it?
Risk-taking is critical to our economic well-being. Some folks are born risk-takers. They can fail and keep plugging. Others need to be taken care of. They want security. They want Government jobs where they can just show up and be protected by the Union. Others don’t even want to do that. They are addicted to entitlements.
We need to Lower Taxes to encourage investment and rollback costly, growth impeding taxes & regulations.
Unleash free enterprise.
The ObaMaoism is unsustainable.
Tried in Greece…and failed.
Yet we insist on beating the dead Socialist horse. Why?
Power!!
Control!!
ObaMao will be Jimmy Carter II
His poll numbers show it.
Despite his hot rhetoric slamming the Tea Party and those who dare disagree or challenge, despite his henchmen repeatedly playing the race card, despite his perpetual class warfare tactics..
ObaMao sits at his all-time low Strong Approval vs. Strong Disapproval rating..-22!!!
In the very same poll he was +32 just 18 months ago.
But hey, keep putting a Progressive Smiley Face on the downfall of Progressivism.
It’s hilarious!!!
Goldy continues the lie that “only the rich will be taxed”….dumbass, what the hell is going to stop the legislature from lowering the income set point on who gets taxed?
First of all, $200k is hardly “rich”….I dont know what the hell your smoking, but if you think $200k is rich, you are in a fantasy land.
Second, and just how long do you think the $200k threshold is gonna last? It wont be long before the tax happy progressive legislature will decide they need MORE money, and guess what, 200k will become 150k, and then 100k and so on.
Why is it that the people who pay the least in taxes, like yourself, are always trying to get others to pay more.
@17: Dear MORON Klynical
We already know that you don’t have the ability to do critical thinking – but your insipid ramblings really are getting funny.
Here is a clasic sToopid from Klynical:
hahaha – yes, risk taking can be helpful – but when our banks take risks (credit-default swaps) we end up with a ruined economy. When our mines takes risks – people die. When the big oil companies put profits over risks – we end up with the largest environmental disaster that costs billions.
You are an idiot and hypocrite, Klynical. I laugh at how dumb you and your small-minded kind are.
@18: Dear Moron of steel
Umm, 200K for a single person or 400 K for a family? And you can’t afford a 0.065% tax hike?
You are either a fool or a liar.
Second, it would take a vote to lower the tax rate. so you have a “straw man” argument.
I guess you prefer to tax p[oor people and small businesses?
What an ass? Can’t you read?
Wait a minute, doesn’t Goldy want our state to be like California by having an income tax? So it’s actually Goldy who wants our state to be like California, not the Seattle Times (Winner of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news reporting).
Cynical @ 17 reverts back to the “risk-taker’s” argument.
Let’s look at that for a moment. Surely a highly-paid CEO of a high-tech company would be among those risk-takers, would he/she not? If they succeed, the are amply rewarded. If they don’t, then they suffer the consequences, right?
Like the recent head of Hewitt-Packard, who was about to be awarded a $100 million dollar three-year contract? His risked everything by cutting tens of thousands of jobs, many of them being out-sourced to India. Okay, maybe that’s a bad example, because he didn’t risk anything by outsourcing, but was instead amply rewarded by Wall Street. But because he was caught falsifying expense reports to cover up his attempted dalliance with a former R-rated starlet and current vendor of HP, he instead lost everything – well, except for the $40,000 in golden parachute money and extended stock options. Gee, maybe that’s not a good example, either.
It seems that when the rich really don’t take risks, do they? If their efforts succeed, they get rewarded. If their efforts fail, they still get rewarded – albeit at a slightly lower scale. It’s the rest of us who pay for the risks they decide to take. The rich gamble with our money, our jobs, and our lives, and call the rest of us lazy, unintelligent, or lacking ambition when we pay for their mistakes.
Dang edit function still not working on IE.
That’s $40 million dollars the HP exec gets for being fired at HP, not $40,000.
Troll @ 21: Actually, if we want to be like California, we should simply adopt any one of several Tim Eyman’s initiatives to place artificial caps on taxes which can only be overridden by the impossible-to-obtain 2/3 vote.
The whole idea that 50% plus one vote in an off-year election should be allowed to dictate tax policy to 66% minus one vote in all future elections is absurd.
If you think about it, the HP executive actually made money out of this scandal. He gets 40% of the compensation he would have gotten under a new contract, but without working for it. He’s free to take other jobs, although I assume their are some industry and time limits in the terms of their seperation package. Somebody’s going to pick him up, who isn’t concerned about a little thing such as falsifying expense reports or subjecting the company to potential sexual harrassment claims. He might actually come out ahead on the deal.
Hmmmm. Didn’t Oregon just raise taxes on the rich? Just to avoid laying off teachers, policemen, firemen?
Did Oregon slide into the Pacific?
Did the rich people move to Nevada?
It boggles the mind.. Where’s the needed money? It sure isn’t with poor and middle income people, neither of which has had income gains in real terms for well over 30 years.
If Bill Gates Sr. really cared, he could have donated that $400K directly to the coffers in Olympia…..
Actually if you look at the polls Obama will be like Reagan.
As someone who this tax will affect I see no problem with it. I bet the people moaning about it won’t even have to pay it. The right wingers on this board should go back to school to learn what socialism is cause they do not have it right.
I think cynical and lost should move to OK or some other deep red state so they can be happy why live in a blue state and be miserable.
MrC is correct.
We should be more like his beloved Montana and:
– get $1.47 back for every $1 we pay in Fed taxes,
– tax out of state (rich) homeowners by giving a rebate to folks principal residence (live there 7 months/year),
– have our highest income tax bracket kick in at $15,601.
@27
Oh, what do you call this new form of government where only people who care contribute to it while people who don’t care pay nothing and still get government services? Sounds like anarchy to me.
Steve @29:
Oklahoma has too much gummint for them. What they’re actually hoping for is Sudan.
@28 and 29 I’ve been using the screen name “Steve” here for a long time. Wingnuts get easily confused, and this might result in senseless attacks directed at you that are really intended for me. So please consider using another screen name. Thanks!
I’m still struggling with this concept that a business owner would choose not to reside in Washington just because it had an income tax on individuals earning more than $200,000 per year.
Business people select a business location depending upon a wide variety of factors. Included in them is proximity to customers and a trained work force, transportation links, state infrastructure investment which assists the business, a good environment for attracting and keeping a talented work force, etc.
But most businesses we care about either start in this state (because the business owners are already there), or are of sufficient size that the owners don’t have to live anywhere near the business site itself. A publically traded company, for example, doesn’t have to have the stockholders anywhere near the business. The CEO, executive officers, and the Board of Directors don’t have to live there (example: Boeing). It’s only when you get to the ooperations level that the company has to have someone in the general vicinity.
So it’s possible that you might get some high-paid CEOs who decide to “reside” elsewhere, along with their executive staff, and we would miss out on taxing their income. But that’s not much of a job loss to the state, as long as they leave their operations here.
Most, however, would continue to live here for reasons unrelated to taxes. Note that New York, Connecticut, and California all have income taxes, but the lion’s share of multi-millionaires in this country live within their borders.
@29
WA only barely qualifies as a blue state. We vote in the nice social policies, then vote down any tax increase to pay for it. We talk about how lovely it would be to have all these progressive policies, then vote against them the instant they threaten to pass. Our democratic party won’t commit to progressive policies, beyond token gestures, because doing so would threaten their safe seats.
@34
And don’t forget the late Tom Stewart, who threw a hissy fit and moved to Arizona where he and his top level executives had to pay an income tax. So it sounds like Stewart WANTED an income tax in Washington state, according to the righties who claim that executives vote with their pocketbooks.
There are actually only 7 states with no income tax. New Hampshire and Tennessee limit their state income taxes to only dividends and interest income.
But the ST has never let the facts get in the way of their editorial stance.
Goldy Queefs: ‘It’s the same folks who fund a lot of progressive causes in Washington state… you know, the folks who represent working people.’
One point Goldy: Since you are still chronically unemployed, you discussing who represents or anything regarding the “working people” is kind of like Rosie O’Donnell giving dieting advice, H.A. Happy Hooligan Steve talking about his sexual desires with anything other than goats, YLB arschloch talking about working to provide for his family, Roger Rodent on the dangers of long-term smoking, Lee on growing up and giving up his pot habit, or Governor Greggie discussing plastic surgery or the virtues of Botox.
Sorry, no sale. :) Good day all. Thanks for the laugh!
@32
ya, dumbass, and WA is hoping to be like North Korea.
Take your idiotic “they wanna be like Sudan” comparison and shove up your asshole…Im sure you will enjoy it.
you dumbasses want an income tax? fine – then tax EVERYONE, and get rid of ALL other bullshit taxes, like sales tax, property tax, B&O tax, etc….
Why does the Seattle Times want to turn Washington in California?
The real issue is not how California is taxed.
The future of our southern neighbor is bright.
Now that gay marriage is legal again, smart folks from all over the world will flock to California. This will once again force a boom in real estate.
Then, when California passes their legalize marijuana initiative the State will save billions of dollars now wasted on illegal immigration. Sales taxes on state certified legal hash will pull the entire State out of their deficit.
THEN, the increased personal income from MJ will be so much that Californi9a will be able to cut real estate taxes.
As always, California leads the nation!
Lee
winner of the LEGO award.
That was called the Sims plan (more or less). You know the guy you said was corrupt because other right wing dumbasses told you.
Yes on I-1098
Sims was corrupt…how does that have any impact the idea of one single tax
Nixon had lots of legit and good ideas too..
fuckin moron……go take your strawman and hump it.
@rhp
And then there is the other recent example of corporate risk-taking, Dr. Tony Hayward. He did OK for fucking up both the Gulf of Mexico and BP’s reputation.
42 – You have no idea what the Sims plan was do you? Not to mention any proof that Sims was corrupt..
DUUUUUMMMMBBB – ASSSSSS…
Riddle @ 43 said: “Nixon had lots of legit and good ideas too..”
Yea, like his “Secret Plan to End the Vietnam War” by 1969.
When asked what he was going to do in Vietnam during the 1968 elections, Nixon said he had a secret plan to end the war before the end of his first year in office. He couldn’t disclose the plan, he explained, because it was, well, secret, and if he told anyone it wouldn’t work.
It turns out he didn’t really have a secret plan, except to politely ask the Soviets to put pressure on N. Vietnam to withdraw from S. Vietnam. The Soviets just suggested we should be talking to the North Vietnamese, not them.
And Nixon was a freaking socialist (when he wasn’t out of control paranoid) compared to the right wing idiots aspiring to power these days.
@47
another strawman fail.
please type in something relevant.
RHP wastes time by cherry picking one single item out of what, 6 years in office?
dude, why do you even respond when you get lost in the context of the conversation.
the point was that nixon was a freak and a crook…yet he still some good ideas here and there on certain items.
I’ve addressed all of your irrelevant bullshit since 40.
Go back to grammar school. Like so many on the right wing, your reading comprehension is severely lacking.
I’ll go back to school when you decide to go back to a job…deal?
at least I can pay my own way.
The problem with California tax codes is the property taxes that are frozen in place — not the income tax.
Re 29
I suppose it’s the same problem the rest of Europe has with France. France is beautiful (I’ve heard en route to Italy at least 5 times) only the French live there.
Seattle is a beautiful area with much to recommend it, only the libs live here.
Re 29
At any rate, America is a center right country fundamentally. If liberals are so unhappy with this they are free to move to Europe or China with my blessings.
@54
America is not a center right country it might have been but these days it is more center left. Look at the youth in the US today a lot more liberal than older generations.
@54 R v L and LSIB
I think you need to figger out which is L and which is R.
In many issues China is to the far right of the US. Imagine … no unions, no tax on the wealthy, little or ne free school or medical care! Sounds like your kind of place!
As for Europe ..
opportunity .. Europeans are MORE upwardly mobile than Americans. Is that R or L?
Europe has a much more ambitious FREE press than we do .. isa that R or L.
Some Europeans countries still have monarchs .. is that R or L?
The current pres, of France wants to disenfranchise LEGAL immigrants if they do not conform to French culture .. reminds you of Arizona?
In France, you presumed guilty not innocent .. R or L?
England has state support for religious schools and blasphemy laws … is this R or L????
While we are stereotypig, howsabout Saudi Arabia .. are they R or L? Russia????
Methinks you have a problem with handedness!