Your initiative sucks.
The progressives of Washington State have gathered their signatures and submitted their petition.
If they’ve submitted enough signatures, this upcoming November residents of Washington will be asked if they would like to take on a progressive income tax on their ballots. Targeting “the Rich”, of course.
However, seventy some-odd years ago, our state Supreme Court said no to the idea and their decision said that this could only be done via an amendment to the state constitution.
The left is all wee-wee’d up in the hopes that they’ll be able to sucker enough voters to say “Yes”. They don’t care about what the previous decision said and think that if they can get this to pass and then fight it out in the courts for a couple years, that they’ll win.
Local leftist honco, Goldy at HorsesAss.Org, read about what our Secretary of State, Sam Reed, had to say about their idea.
But there could be complications with its legality. “You cannot have a graduated state income tax without amending the state constitution. The court has been clear on that,” says Dave Ammons, spokesman for the Secretary of State.
To which I have two main responses. First, the Washington State Supreme Court last explicitly ruled on this issue way back in 1933; our current slate of Supreme Court justices have never addressed this issue, and as the precedent flouting majority on the U.S. Supreme Court recently demonstrated, the opinions of the current justices are the only ones that matter. Second — and I mean this with all due respect to Dave Ammons, Secretary of State Sam Reed and the rest his office — it’s none of their fucking business.
To elaborate on my second point first, up until the moment the petitions are filed, the Secretary of State’s role in the initiative process is purely administrative, and even then the grounds for rejecting petitions are quite limited, so I can’t help but wonder why Ammons would comment on the measure’s constitutionality at all?
I know why he commented on it.
Because he was asked.
That is the polite thing to do.
Though I can easily understand why Goldy didn’t see that answer. He knows nothing about being polite.
In Washington state the “vote until you get it right” and then “throw lawyers at it” strategies might work, given the demographics there. It may take a few years, and millions in legal fees, but for libs the ends always justify the means. In ten years we’ll all be chuckling as the residents look around themselves wondering why Seattle looks like Detroit and everyone’s unemployed.
Yes and it has already started—can anyone remember that little airplane company that used to be headquartered here? What was its name…B-something, I think…..
Of course the libs boing, boing, boinged it right out of the Northwest!