Taxes in Washington State

(In answer to someone objecting that taxes in Washington State are too high.)

Washington state gas taxes are higher than the national average, but that's 10¢ a gallon. There's 8 states higher and our climate is pretty hard on roads. (Source: http://www.gaspricewatch.com/web_gas_taxes.php.)

Here, here's a table of revenues from 2016: https://ofm.wa.gov/washington-data-research/statewide-data/washington-trends/revenue-expenditures-trends/state-local-government-revenue-sources. The biggest chunk are the sales and the B&O tax, the next largest is the property tax. That's over 50%. All the other taxes are less than 10%.

Here's a pie chart of expenditures: https://ofm.wa.gov/washington-data-research/statewide-data/washington-trends/revenue-expenditures-trends/state-local-government-expenditures-function. Highways are7%. Local roads aren't even a separate category; I think they fall in the 9.2% “other” wedge.

We know where the money goes and it isn't being wasted. This isn't New Jersey.

And look, I get that you hate paying high car tabs. You know something? So do I. When my family was broke, the sales and B+O taxes hurt a lot and car tabs were a rotten cherry on top. But we have to pay somehow or we have no roads, we have no schools, we have no … Washington is not a poor state. It's a very rich one. And yet we cannot agree to fund infrastructure and education.

Bullying and Character Assassination, Corbyn and Sanders.

I wrote this about possible Republican opposition to Bernie Sanders two years ago:

The Republicans would have dug up his 1972 alternative press essay on sexuality and gender roles and spun it as rapey. They'd have dragged out his support for the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and said he was a Communist and a traitor. They'd have dog-whistled the white supremacists, painting Sanders as a race traitor, and spun up the anti-semitism, all the while claiming he was a bad Jew and a traitor to Israel. They'd have told the African-Americans he was racist, and told the white folk he was too soft on African-American criminals. They'd have leaned on his atheism.

Consider this on Corbyn's defeat, just now written:

They said he was a Communist and a traitor. They dog-whistled the white supremacists, painting him as a race traitor, and spun up the antisemitism, all the while claiming he was a bad Jew and a traitor to Israel. They told the Muslims he was Islamophobic, and told the non-Muslims he was soft on terrorism. They leaned on his atheism.

We need to think carefully about our response to bullying and character assassination. Sanders, I think, is exceptionally vulnerable to these attacks, but none of the non-fascist US Presidential candidates are immune.

Character Assassination and Bullying: On the vote in the UK

I take two lessons away:

1. Character assassination works. Jeremy Corbyn is not a racist antisemite. Boris Johnson is. Corbyn lost votes because of well-publicized lies; Johnson did not.
2. Bullies are popular, even among the people they are bullying.

I look at this loss, and I see ghosts of the losses of Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump, John Kerry to W. Bush, and Al Gore to W. Bush. The exact same pattern: minor failings of a liberal candidate of good character are blown up, falsified, and endlessly reported, while major failings of conservative candidate of foul character are glossed over and buried. Those liberal candidates never knew what hit them.

Time to change our strategies. We need to fight bullying and character assassination, and that will be the subject of at least one more post.

And, 100 years after the failure of the Second International to unify against World War I,  nationalism still trumps class consciousness. Many people don't vote for bread and butter, even when they're starving.

Pelosi, impeachment, trade agreements

I think that making a deal on the USMCA was probably the price for impeachment.
Some of us are blaming Pelosi for the problems of her caucus. 

Just how deep does the rot run on the Democratic side?

Democratic Nomination Shambles

So Harris is out, and Steyer is still in. The faces in the next Democratic debate will all be light-skinned and male. I did not and do not love Harris. But why is she out, and why is Castro out, and why is Booker out, and Steyer still in?

The Democratic Party's Presidential nomination process is a shambles. And a shout-out to the Supreme Court Justices who made sure that the only way to become a Presidential candidate is to buy your way in.

Bemused Observations on Washington State Initiative 976

Small minority of Washington State voters in an off year: property taxes are too high, we must limit them.

City departments of transportation: we cannot afford to repair and expand our streets.

Transit agencies: we can't afford to run buses, let alone actually build the rail system we need.

State legislature: let us allow the cities and transit agencies to add taxes to car tabs.

Small minority of Washington state voters in an off-year: car tabs are too expensive. we must limit them.

Self: I think we need to change our motto to "The Evergreen Pothole State” and the state song to “The Tim Eyman Memorial Bridge.”

Bitter Environmental Croaks: Things We Cannot Say

(At least, without provoking huge fights. Also on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RavenOnthill/status/1196302838604812288?s=20.)

The environmental movement went overboard in its opposition to nuclear power. We failed to compare its risks to expanding fossil fuel usage, and the world is worse off as a result.

We have too many people partly because of patriarchy, because too much of the world treats women as brood mares.

It seems to this old bird that our ruling class, or whatever you want to call it, has decided to settle our environmental problems the good old-fashioned way – via the four horsemen of the apocalypse.