Too bad regular folks don’t have any lobbyists.
Programs approved by the Legislature but not yet implemented, including a paid family leave benefit and a working-class tax credit, should be among the first to go, Zarelli said. Cutting programs now would reduce the amount lawmakers will have to slash from the 2009-11 budget, he said.
Yeah, that blasted little tax credit that hasn’t even been funded sure is causing problems. The working poor don’t deserve tax cuts or government bailouts, only corporations and executives do. This leaves aside the pressing question of who the heck is actually going to buy stuff from these corporations, but as long as Republicans get to punish someone I guess it’s okay.
And that, in a nutshell, is why Republicanism is at such low ebb. Even in the midst of the worst economic meltdown in 70 years, they still want to punish those they see as undeserving. Sad, really.
MORE–If you want to see what I mean, peruse these sections of RCW 82.08 concerning sales tax exemptions. I’m sure all of them are well intentioned. But I don’t think the public understands how many of these there are, or how they got there. And yes, many of them were likely sponsored and passed by Democrats. I don’t care who passed them. If there’s a budget problem, all of this needs to be on the table, with apologies to bee-keepers, purchasers of milk cows for use on the farm and makers of anodes and cathodes used for making aluminum for sale, etc. Stop bagging on the regular people for once.
Jon–
How much charity would you personally handout if you were broke?
Zarelli is talking about cutting back on CHARITY..WELFARE….HANDOUTS.
Not that you will ever get the common sense side of your brain to work. Seems hopeless.
Gregoire should have never increased spending in the face of the recession. Never. This is why the Deficit is so brutal now. Zarelli is right. Why wait on cuts?? If you wait, it only makes the other cuts more deep.
Gregoire has done a couple feel-good, low impact cuts to date. She has managed to convince you KLOWNS she is fiscally conservative. BS.
Even Gary Locke and Locke’s former Budget Director publicly stated Gregoire’s cuts to date were “insignificant”.
Wake up, wise up and grow up Jon.
2 wrongs don’t make a right…except in your MicroDot mind.
I’m all for fair n’ flat taxes + also cuts now not later.
I say we shut down the boozy Trustees Association of Community & Technical Colleges (TACTC) and also all the other gov’t agencies’ activiites involving booze.
The Democratic Party: Most . Corrupt . Party . EVER!
Welcome to Tammany Hall 2009!
It’s the regular people who bag on themselves, Jon. The voters approve new property tax and sales tax measures that’re put before them. Maybe something about government services being helpful?
What gets lost in this is how the sales tax is good for the economy. It acts like good brakes, so the local economy doesn’t overheat in good times.
@1 In the world of Wingnut Whack-O-Nomics, corporate bailouts are “stimulus” but helping the working stiffs, unemployed, and poor is “welfare.”
But there are more working stiffs than CEOs, and maybe that’s why you idiots aren’t in power any more.
Fool @ 3
It’s “Democrat Party”. Why can’t you get your right wing lies straight? You guys are in sorry shape.
I’m lovin’ it.
@4 A nearly-10% sales tax acts as a brake on the local economy, alright. Trade goes to Oregon or the internet instead of local retailers.
Amazing list.
Here is some I could being eliminated. I cannot see the vital reason for them.
Exemption — Sales, rental, or lease of used park model trailers.
Exemptions — Sales of semen for artificial insemination of livestock.
Exemptions — Conifer seed.
Exemptions — Chicken bedding materials.
Exemptions — Farming equipment — Hay sheds.
Exemptions — Motorcycles for training programs.
Exemptions — Animal pharmaceuticals.
Exemptions — Livestock nutrient management equipment and facilities.
Exemptions — Anaerobic digesters.
Exemptions — Propane or natural gas to heat chicken structures.
That should get raise the revenue by .000001%
Do we have a strong chicken lobby or something?
Let’s examine the tax code for a moment. If you’re a Corporate Welfare King you get to deduct your chauffered limo as a “business expense” PLUS you get investment tax credits for purchases of equipment (e.g., private jet) PLUS the taxpayers take over your pension obligatons PLUS you get the capital gains rate on your income.
If you’re a working stiff you pay for your parking, work clothes, tools, AND all the stuff the CEO gets from you PLUS you pay retail tax rates on your wages AND they call you a “welfare bum.”
Boy, let me tell ya, being a CEO sure beats working! That’s why I’m CEO of Roger Rabbit Doesn’t Work. I do no work, produce nothing, and get preferred tax rates for living off other people’s labor! All I have to do is put up my capital instead of my labor. Our crazy system sure loves capital — and hates labor. That’s why it’s better to be a capitalist than a worker!
Why ANYONE would work under this nutty system is a mystery.
@4 and 7
then lets get rid of the sales tax completely and put in an income tax like Oregon.
@8 “Do we have a strong chicken lobby or something?”
How much chickenshit do you smell in Olympia?
@10 That’s what I’m thinkin’.
Now let’s examine how the Capitalist Bankruptcy Court operates. If a Capitalist gets in over his head because of an unexpected calamity like competition, he “restructures” by tearing up his union contracts, dumping his pension debts on taxpayers, and paying the banks 50 cents on the dollar for what he owes, after which he still owns the company which is still in business. But if you’re a Worker and get in over your head because it costs you more to work than you make, or because of some unexpected calamity like a hospital charging you $5000 a day for a bed and $50 each for aspirins, Katy bar the door because you’re “irresponsible” and giving you debt relief would create a “moral hazard” i.e. encourage other people to involuntarily incur debts they can’t pay by getting ripped off by Capitalists.
Flat tax, you bet. Tax net worth, and not wages…. Problem solved.
See how easy that was!
Speaking of fifty-buck aspirins, many years ago I pulled up to the self-serve pump at a gas station where I knew the owner, who was a Capitalist and a Republican, and popped open the hood and checked my car’s dipstick myself. It was a quart low. Back then, I was a poor college student who aspired to be a Capitalist and trusted Republicans. (This is not an aside; it’s material to this story, as you’ll soon see.) Now, I knew I could buy a quart of oil at Kmart cheaper than at this guy’s gas station, but figuring he was a friend of mine, I decided to give him the business and purchased the oil from the station attendant. It cost something like 50 cents. (This was back when gas cost something like 35 cents.) The attendant offered to pour it into the car for me, and I figured he was just being friendly, so I said, “Sure,” and it took him all of 30 seconds to do it. Then he tried to charge me $5.00 for “installing” the oil!!! Of course I went “whaaaaaat!!!!!” and said, “this is a joke, right? you’re trying to be funny?” but he had a deadpan expression and insisted I pay the $5.00. I insisted on talking to the owner, so the attendant eventually called the owner at home and put me on the phone, and I identified myself and explained the problem, and after I had taken up about $2.50 worth of the owner’s time, he decided to cut his losses and let me pay only $2.50 for “installing” the quart of oil so I wouldn’t take up another $2.50 of his time. This was back when poor college students like me worked in part-time jobs for minimum wage, which was $1.25 an hour, because it was the only work we could get in college towns. Can you believe this fucking Republican Capitalist wanted to charge me 4 hours of my labor for 30 seconds of his employee’s time for what most people would assume was a goodwill gesture or free service?! Apparently the margin on 35-cent gas was so skinny he had to pay the rent by ripping off his customers for driving onto the lot. Well, he got the $2.50 out of me, but he never sold me another gallon of gas (or anything else) and I eventually heard he got out of the gas station business and went into landscaping. I met the owner of a landscaping business here at Green Lake Park not long ago. He drove up in a Hummer with an “XYZ Landscaping” sign on it (one of those embossed plastic things you glue to the door) and got out to walk his matched pair of purebred boxer dogs. He’s a Republican Capitalist, too, and I would guess he’s charging his customers $50 apiece for rocks you can pick up free at any road cut and charging his customers another $500 each to “install” them. Capitalism is a racket, let me tell ya! In fact, it should be illegal. Even the Mafia doesn’t have profit margins like that. Maybe that’s why mobsters use profits from their drug running and extortion rackets to buy so-called “legitimate” businesses.
So, if a Capitalist can’t pay his workers their pensions, he gets to go bankrupt and “reorganize” his business; but if a Worker can’t pay a hospital $5 for an aspiring and another $50 for “installing” the aspirin, they get to take his blood and charge him for taking it. Well, I hope you can see why I’d rather be a Capitalist than a Worker.
So, I don’t work anymore, and I’m now a Capitalist who behaves like a Republican but votes for Democrats because I think this system is nuts. At the same time, I buy shares of hospital stock, because from the fiscal point of view it’s much better to own a hospital than be in one.
Well, rog, if you feel so badly about how the little guy is gettin’ screwed, why don’t you give up your capital for the little guys and return to work and make some more capital? I’m sure somebody out there can use a failed, loudmouth attorney. Probably help ’em get some government handout or some such shit as that.
Blue John@8:
Steve would have to pay taxes?
Puddy–
Brilliant!
Although Steve inseminates goats manually…not artificially.
So Steve may have found a goathole…errrr, I mean loophole.
Steve likes loadin’ up them goats directly….no dang artificial stuff.
Hey Steve, do ya spit on yer hands and rub ’em together and lube yerself up good first?
@20 There are times when your projection reveals quite a bit more about you than I care to know.
I saw Zarelli on KING 5 the other day. Looks like the ADT salesman has finally decided to forgo the creepy smoke tinted sunglasses he wore day and night.
Steve@21: You’ve been projecting for months so now you can appreciate the “feeling”.
Hear, hear.
@23 Really, Pudz, it’s long been common knowledge that it’s wing-nut goatfuckers such as yourself who have the projection problem. We’ve been aware of this for a number of years. And you simply can’t control it! You reveal so much and sometimes, as in the case of the lubed-up Cynical this morning, too damned much. We also know that you’re losing it when you start projecting the projection.
Political Subdivision??? What the heck is that?
@1
Please name one successful 1st world nation that follows the tenets of your political ideology.
Since Cyn claims to be some sort of farmer/rancher and hates welfare I say we do away with all the farm related tax exemptions.
82.08.0204 Exemptions — Honey bees.
82.08.02567Exemptions — Sales related to machinery and equipment used in generating electricity. (a lot of farmers on the Columbia Plateau are micro-hydro power producers*)
82.08.0257 Exemptions — Auction sales of tangible personal property used in farming.
82.08.0259 Exemptions — Sales of livestock.
82.08.0262Exemptions — Sales of airplanes, locomotives, railroad cars, or watercraft for use in interstate or foreign commerce or outside the territorial waters of the state or airplanes sold to United States government — Components thereof and of motor vehicles or trailers used for constructing, repairing, cleaning, etc. — Labor and services for constructing, repairing, cleaning, etc.
82.08.0263 Exemptions — Sales of motor vehicles and trailers for use in transporting persons or property in interstate or foreign commerce.
82.08.0267 Exemptions — Sales of poultry for producing poultry and poultry products for sale.
82.08.0268 Exemptions — Sales of machinery and implements, and related parts and labor, for farming to nonresidents for use outside the state.
82.08.0272 Exemptions — Sales of semen for artificial insemination of livestock.
82.08.02745 Exemptions — Charges for labor and services or sales of tangible personal property related to agricultural employee housing — Exemption certificate — Rules.
82.08.0277 Exemptions — Sales of pollen.
http://tinyurl.com/8p9hps They buy pollens that cause allergies form local farmers and are currently located in Spokane.
82.08.0279 Exemptions — Renting or leasing of motor vehicles and trailers to a nonresident for use in the transportation of persons or property across state boundaries.
82.08.0288 Exemptions — Lease of certain irrigation equipment.
82.08.0294 Exemptions — Sales of feed for cultivating or raising fish for sale. Fish farming is still farming after all.
82.08.0296 Exemptions — Sales of feed consumed by livestock at a public livestock market.
82.08.0311 Exemptions — Sales of materials and supplies used in packing horticultural products.
82.08.040 Consignee, factor, bailee, auctioneer deemed seller.
82.08.820 Exemptions — Remittance — Warehouse and grain elevators and distribution centers — Material-handling and racking equipment — Construction of warehouse or elevator — Information sheet — Rules — Records — Exceptions.
82.08.841 Exemptions — Farming equipment — Hay sheds.
82.08.850 Exemptions — Conifer seed.
###############
I’m not at the end of the list yet, but you get the idea.