Forgive me for answering a question with a question, but when the headline of this morning’s Seattle Times editorial asks “Does Washington state want a sales-tax rate higher than L.A.’s?“, the only reasonable response I can muster is “What the fuck?”
In Seattle, the total general rate is already 9.5 percent. That is higher than New York City’s rate of 8.875 percent and the same as San Francisco’s. If Seattle’s rate goes to 9.8 percent it will be higher than Los Angeles’ 9.75 percent or Chicago’s 9.75 percent, effective July 1.
Raising the state portion of the sales tax to 6.8 percent would likely make Seattle’s rate the highest of any major city in the United States. We think people will notice. We think this will hurt investment, commerce and job creation here.
Yeah, well, we think that people who invest in job creation will notice the entire tax and business climate… you know like the fact that on top of the sales tax, Chicagoans pay a 3% income tax while Los Angelenos pay a top personal rate of 10.3%. Of course, here in Washington, we have no state income tax.
We think people will notice that on every single ranking of business climates, from Forbes Magazine to the conservative Tax Foundation, Washington consistently ranks near the top of the list, while California is buried near the bottom. Likewise, we think that people who look at tax rates when making the decision where to locate their home or business might notice that Washington’s state and local tax “burden” consistently ranks in the bottom two quintiles nationwide, while California ranks in the top.
The point is, the Times’ editors… they can’t have it both fucking ways!
They can’t argue against adding an income tax to the revenue mix by claiming it will turn us into another California, while at the same time bitching that our sales tax — a tax on which we rely for the bulk of our state revenue — now approaches that of, well, California.
Note to Times: we have one of the highest combined sales tax rates in the nation because we have no income tax! Yet when Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown proposed slashing the sales tax by a penny — a better than 10% cut in a Seattleite’s annual sales tax bill — and replacing it with a 4.5% income tax on only the top 1% of wage earners (less than half what they would pay in California), you decried it as an “awful idea.”
Again… what the fuck?
Well, the fuck is that the Times simply opposes all taxes, under any circumstances, for any reason, and all their mock-authoritative sniping on the subject is just sophistry, pure and simple. That’s why the Times only selectively picks at the bits and pieces of our spending and revenue system, and never, ever, ever debates the tax structure as a whole. For to actually talk about taxes in any meaningful way, might just undermine their publisher’s entire political agenda.
What a bunch of lying liars.
You missed the New York City income tax:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dof/ht.....trates.pdf
WTF!!
How about B&O Taxes?
How about Property Taxes?
How about Utility Taxes?
How about the cost of Land Use and other Regulations and Permits?
How about WTF!!
I notice how Gregoire wants to kick-ass Idaho…but fails to mention any of the above.
Do you think if you don’t mention all these other taxes, prospective businesses won’t notice them??
You said fuck. Clearly you are not a serious commenter on the issues.
@3
We’re the ones looking at the total tax package, The Times is picking and choosing.
Goldy, please, get a grip. You expect the Seattle Times editorial board (the Blethen Board) to write with logic, reason, and sagacity — qualities they collectively do not possess. Give up on it. You can’t badger them into doing something they are utterly incapable of.
Oh, and Mr. Clinical, yep, we have a bunch of nuisance taxes like you cite, all in an attempt to balance tax loads and raise enough revenue to provide basic state services — and we STILL have the most regressive tax structure of any state in the union. It’s no wonder the state rates so highly with Forbes Magazine and continues to attract new businesses; nothing like No Income Tax to attract the newly wealthy, and the hope-to-be-newly wealthy.
Also unmentioned in this post is anything at all about the Times own lack of financial success despite a long-dominant position inarich market. Repetition, Goldie, repetition of this point so that casual readers looking for mentions about the Times are never allowedto overlook their lack of expertise on the subject of fiscal responsibility. This rhetorical method is certainly never overlooked by the players of the right’s own Mighty Wurlitzer.
#3 Wow, golly, I guess Forbes just FORGOT to include that when they said we were one of the top 5 states to do business in. QUICK! You should email you little list to them and remind them. Cause like listening to politicians or radio talk show hosts criticizing global warming (cause they know more than the 5,000 PhD climatologists) you must know more than Forbes. Enlighten them.
8 AP
Well, you know Forbes. What do they know about business?
Hey, and in other news, the latest AP poll has Democrats beating Republicans on the generic Congressional ballot:
Yay! Speaking of taxes.
I say we repeal all of those tax breaks we just gave newspapers. Oh and we should apply the sales tax to newspaper sales.
We should also raise the state’s estate tax, though with the way the Times has been performing lately, Blethen’s estate might come in under the exemption.
Somehow I suspect that if the state government was talking about cutting spending so we spent the least of any state per pupil on education and per resident on state services the Times would be among the first to howl about the cuts.
So the Times is like voters in California, they want a state-funded personal skittle shitting unicorn, but the want someone else to pay for it.
@7 The rank of pipes of that Wurlitzer known as the Seattle Times is rapidly becoming less and less mighty.
This has been happening with increasing rapidity, the more each of the paper’s fewer and fewer pages becomes polluted with it’s proprietor’s angst and bitterness.
If only Goldy could focus all his extreme jealousy, efforts, and energy of the Seattle Times on a real job…..God forbid he works for a living. They didn’t hire your dumb ass; get over it already.
The daily issues of the Times are now hardly thicker than a typical copy of The Stranger or Seattle Weekly. Why pay money for Blethen’s fish wrapper, when Dan Savage and Mike Seely provide perfectly good fish wrap for free–and theirs are often more interesting to read.
I have a feeling that Goldy works more than most…he’s just in new media, so the troglodytes don’t recognize it.
Now Gallup has similar (though slightly closer) generic Congressional poll results:
“sophistry” is the operative word to describe the fishwrapper’s editorial positions, to which might be added, “disingenuous,” “dishonest,” “duplicitous,” and “dumb” (alliteration intentional).
@3 “Do you think if you don’t mention all these other taxes, prospective businesses won’t notice them??”
Let ’em go someplace where there are no taxes — and no roads, no schools, no police or fire services, no sewers, no commerce, no customers, no nuthin’.
http://www.myszko.com/3D/Stills/DesertIsland.jpg
Actually, I think most businesses are way ahead of Klown’s primitive knee-jerk opposition to any and all taxes. They understand the value of things government pays for, and know their businesses couldn’t operate without them. Yeah, you may find some reactionary home-repair contractors and commercial landlords who’ll bitch about any amount of taxes — but they’re probably cheats who are dodging the taxes they bitch about, and bitch about taxes they don’t pay because they like to hear their own bitching.
@9 “Well, you know Forbes. What do they know about business?”
My stockbroker tells me, “Whatever you do, don’t pay any attention to Forbes!” And my stockbroker is not some know-nothing hack. While I’m probably a little better at stockpicking than he is, he has picked about a third of the stocks in my portfolio. For example, he steered me to Boeing, which I bought 2 months ago for 62 and is already up to 70.
I’ve never read Forbes, and by not reading Forbes, here’s how I’ve done in the stock market:
2003 – +4.5%
2004 – +36.4%
2005 – +4.5%
2006 – + +10.1%
2007 – +21.6%
2008 – -44.8%
2009 – +73.8%
@11 “I say we repeal all of those tax breaks we just gave newspapers. Oh and we should apply the sales tax to newspaper sales.”
Agreed! Plus we should impose a special “wealth tax” on Lake Washington waterfront homes that occupy double lots (how selfish can people get?) and are worth more than $2 million.
@12 “skittle shitting unicorn”
Is that available as a My Little Pony yet? My kids want one.
When I saw “WA = LA”, I thought this might be another (highly justified) attack on Sam Reed’s idiotic “top two” — aka Cajun — primary scheme.
Of course, Frank’s Fishwrapper is at least as clear a target.
@14 Goldy contributes to our community with well-reasoned criticism of Seattle’s third-rate newspaper. The only thing you contribute is greenhouse gas.
if the newspaper is 3rd rate, then why even pay any attention to it?
Daddy Love–
The polls you quote look at registered voters or whatever. The reason Rasmussen is so much more accurate the past 5+ years is that they look at LIKELY VOTERS,,,you know, folks who are likely to actually vote.
Registered Voters?? So what.
Likely Voters?? That’s what matters.
BTW–
Rasmussen was Democrat-leaning in the recent Mass Senate race. They had it a toss-up…and the Republican Brown won by 5 % points.
Imagine that.
Anyway, keep living in your fantasy.
Obam-Mao went from +32 Strong Aprroval over Strong Disapproval to -21…in a little over a year in the very same poll.
That’s a record -53 point swing.
That would only be good in Progressive Denialville.
west la fadeaway
@12,
Wait, so you’re saying the skittles shitting unicorn isn’t coming?
Whose fucking fault is that?
I’m telling everyone who still talks to me at work about this one, and I’m gonna blame it on Nancy Pelosi and the fucking socialists in Congress!
Poor Klynical – Rasmussen is a biased republican pollster with a terrible track record that only gets better near election time – so they don’t come out as total fools:
For example, they had McCain ahead in late August of 2008.
Here is a quote from an Academic paper on the 2008 election polling:
This is a statistical analysis of Rasmussen from the 2008 election.
It does not take into account the clear bias already shown in many Rasmussen questions.
Any FOOL (Klynical) who keep citing a clearly biased pollster and uses a clearly new and biased result (the manufatured index that Klynical is citing) is weither completely stupid or deliberately deceptive.
For example, bush would have been off scale negative on that biased scale….but Klynical does not mention that and considers Bush and the war-mongering fool Cheney heroes.
http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~.....ling%20(1).pdf
Here is Rasmussen failing in Oregon in 2008:
Umm, the final results in Oregon:
Obama won 57 to 40.8
Merkley won 49 to 46
So much for the “likely voters” crap….they were just off and they are biased in how they ask questions as I have previously shown.
“Any FOOL (Klynical) who keep citing a clearly biased pollster and uses a clearly new and biased result (the manufatured index that Klynical is citing) is weither completely stupid or deliberately deceptive.”
The imbecilic KLOWN is too fucking stupid to be deliberately deceptive. In fact, I propose that Goldy ban his vapid ass for being so completely fucking stupid. And I offer no other reason for banning the insipid KLOWN other than for his being so utterly stupid. However, if Goldy needs a better reason then there’s the KLOWN’s daily violation of copyright law. He’s been repeatedly warned and he still keeps doing it.
Ban the stupid fucking KLOWN!
I’m posting this again, because it absolutely destroys Rasmussen — with pictures for the fact challenged like Klynical.
It uses the composite of polls and data at Pollster.com as of a few days ago.
Rasmussen is egregious, beyond all doubt, total bullshit.
One nugget that gets pointed out is that Rasmussen is an integral part of the GOP message machine when it’s doing this in between elections polling. It’s part of creating and driving GOP memes as Klynical attempts to do here.
So yes, my take is that Klynical IS being “deliberately deceptive”. He’s a fucking liar advancing other people’s lies.
But as we all know, these pieces of shit cannot be embarrassed.
IMO, liars should be banned, leaving aside the fact that I’ve never seen anything but reeking piles of trash from Klynical — which would be enough for me if it was my store.
Anyway, this is worth perusing for the pictures, comments too — for anyone interested in the facts, that is.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/3/8/7346/81628
@31…so does that mean your also in favor of banning our very own Goebbels Rabbit – because he has been caught telling lies and spreading false information numerous times here at HA.
“IMO, liars should be banned”
Oh my, it be an almost empty cesspool if we did that. I’d rather start with banning the dumbest fucking imbecile on the planet for being the dumbest fucking imbecile on the planet. We all know who he is. He’s the imbecilic Klynical KLOWN.