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illrepute posted:Right, I don't care much about the particulars of the bridge, I just want one that isn't going to be hitting one-hundred years old, especially after all these bridge collapses around the country. Rail would've been nice, but I would take anything to improve safety. I'm hoping that Oregon will just keep tasking inspectors on the bridge until they can threaten to shut it down unless WA ponies up funding.
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Mar 11, 2014 05:34
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Ardennes posted:The current bridge actually passed inspection not too long ago, and seismic refits are certainly possible. If anything safety isn't as much as a concern as everything else. The current bridge could last a while longer with some improvements and wouldn't readily require a new bridge. As far as rail, without rail traffic probably wouldn't improve since the new bridge doesn't fix Portland's rather minimal freeway system and most of the traffic is to downtown Portland. Rail would at least give another option to the freeway, which may actually alleviate some traffic. It passed inspection sure, but with abysmally low scores. It's considered functionally obsolete, and the two spans received sufficiency ratings of a mere 18% and 49% - an average of 33%. The I-35W Mississippi Bridge in Minneapolis that collapsed in 2007, killing 13 people and injuring 145, had a rating of 50%. Only 4% of heavily used bridges have sufficiency ratings under 50%. Federal funding for bridge repair kicks in at sufficiency rating of 80%, and full on replacement at anything under 50%. It's just a matter of time until that bridge is closed, one way or the other.
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Mar 11, 2014 06:06
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Ardennes posted:The Sellwood bridge is still absolutely hilarious and it is a modern miracle it hasn't snapped in half years ago. Hah yeah pretty much. The sufficiency rating of the Sellwood bridge is 2. Just 2%. It's a loving deathtrap. I figure one day it'll drop to 0% and it'll burst like a pinata. Fortunately it should be replaced by the end of next year. Wanamingo posted:It's worse all around. All the liquor stores closed down, so now the only place to get it, at least around me, is from the crappy selection they have at grocery stores. Might be different if you're in Seattle, but I'm not. The sticker price stayed mostly the same, but before, the taxes were rolled into the price whereas now it's the sticker prices plus the taxes. Here's an article talking about it. I'm very curious how the national corporate chains are going to try to spin their privatization scheme in Oregon after it crashed and burned in Washington. Raise prices on booze while draining money out of the state funds and killing jobs? No thanks. Kaal fucked around with this message at 06:44 on Mar 11, 2014 |
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Mar 11, 2014 06:28
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Ardennes posted:Basically they are going to have the legislature do it for them by threat, but the issue is that Salem wants to retain wholesales (it brings in the state a big chunk of the cash) while the groceries/big boxes want total control and no new taxes. Granted, the state would have to bite a big bullet since education is already mediocre at best in Oregon. If they do a last minute end-run around the initiative process I could definitely see that biting the legislature in the rear end come mid-terms. Certainly I wouldn't want to do an incumbency run while getting slammed with attack ads reading, "This representative voted against the people's will to increase alcohol prices and de-fund schools." People take threats to their booze personally.
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Mar 11, 2014 07:18
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Ardennes posted:That said, liquor prices would probably be roughly the same (maybe a bit cheaper at Costco) with private sales. Conservatives in Oregon like to bitch that California has cheaper liquor prices when in fact the entire difference in the price of liquor is pretty pure purely tax. California taxes liquor barely at all. When Washington tried it, they simply got higher prices across the board (except for Costco since they're deliberately eating the margin in the short-term), which drove down overall sales and caused liquor stores to cut jobs in order to meet the increased competition. After some initial market wars, two out-of-state companies converted the state distribution monopoly into a corporate duopoly - just like the rest of the nation. In short it hurt consumers, it hurt state funding, and it hurt small businesses. I don't know why Oregon would have a particularly different experience. http://www.tri-cityherald.com/2014/01/11/2770444/washington-liquor-prices-stay.html Kaal fucked around with this message at 08:11 on Mar 11, 2014 |
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Mar 11, 2014 08:02
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The-Mole posted:I dunno as much about Washington, but Oregon was a seriously racist place despite its geographical location. The KKK was huge here, a hundred years ago and the bigotry runs pretty deep in certain areas. Unfortunately, there is still some pretty loving deep bigotry left here. Hell, the racist language in the state constitution was only removed 5 or 10 years ago, iirc. Mmm I'd have to disagree here. Oregon has had its race issues, but they are largely overblown in popular imagination. Generally you'll find that Oregon has had a faddish approach to such things - passing short-lived laws that were never enacted or enforced. Provincial Oregon freed black slaves and banned slavery, and while it also ordered those blacks to leave the state that order was never enforced and was rescinded within a year. It later banned further black immigration, but that ban only lasted five years and it was sporadically enforced. Conservatives again tried to implement an exclusion law in the first State Constitution of 1857, but it was never enabled and was soon voided by the Civil War (although it stayed on the books until 1927 when it was repealed by popular vote). The KKK was popular in Oregon in the 1920s, but as a fraternal social organization and not as a vigilante group. When organizers began to advocate for the kind of violence and intimidation of the KKK in the South, public support evaporated and the klan fell apart. It's true that Oregon has historically been almost entirely white, but that has largely changed over the last 40 years with the advent of urbanization. Currently the white non-hispanic demographic constitutes 77% of the population - above the national average of 64% but a far cry from the lily-white NE states like Maine (94%), Vermont (94%) or New Hampshire (92%). Oregon is fairly diverse for a Northern state - states that are far away from the black and latino populations of the South - particularly one that has been largely rural for the majority of its existence. While Oregon has had a checkered racial history and it has a ways to go in terms of broadening its racial diversity, particularly outside the Willamette Valley corridor, the image of it as this silently racist state of whites is essentially a fiction. http://www.blackpast.org/perspectives/black-laws-oregon-1844-1857 http://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/entry/view/ku_klux_klan/ Kaal fucked around with this message at 07:43 on Mar 13, 2014 |
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Mar 13, 2014 01:21
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Mojo Threepwood posted:Oh man I recently learned about the Rajneeshpuram and they are endlessly fascinating. I didn't know about the silver dollars, but I did finally get what the Simpsons were referencing in the cult episode when everyone takes a break from bean picking to watch the Leader drive by. Rajneesh was famous for driving by all his followers in Rolls Royces. Also, the compound was named "Rancho Rajneesh," and I'm starting to think that's where the Simpsons got "Rancho Relaxo." Matt Groening showing off his Oregon heritage. Having never even heard of the story before, I have to say that it's kind of noteworthy that the journalist is hooraying when state lawmakers came out in droves to oppose an Indian mystic starting up a commune in rural Oregon, but doesn't blink an eye at the Protestant youth camp that replaced it. I mean I understand the conceptual difference between someone camping versus someone living there, but that Young Life camp hosts thousands of kids year-round and has most of the same amenities (airport, fire station, public schools, etc.). Where were the land-use regulators and state attorneys concerned about church-state separation when they started operating? Of course I suppose a foreign cult is an easier target than an American Christian youth ministry. Kaal fucked around with this message at 04:17 on Mar 13, 2014 |
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Mar 13, 2014 02:29
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Beowulfs_Ghost posted:Yah, this is one of those points where Oregon can be ridiculously liberal. It doesn't have a past that is really any more racist than any other part of the US. And there are states that were far more ruthless in their racism. But there is a hell of a lot of hand wringing here over what racism there has been. Meanwhile, you have places like modern day Arizona going out of there way to round up Hispanics, and New York City deliberately targeting minorities for stop-and-frisk. The fact that people around here can be critical about not being diverse enough is bona fides for being more liberal than average. I think Oregon does a pretty good job, though of course it hasn't been tested as much as other states with more immigration and endemic poverty to deal with. One thing that's kind of cool about Oregon is that while the overall racial diversity is lower than many states with significant populations of Blacks or Latinos, there is less geographical stratification. Outside of a few immigrant enclaves (like the burgeoning Russian district in East Portland) there's little in the way of White areas or Black cities or Latino neighborhoods. Michigan has a similar racial demographic profile as Oregon with 76% non-Hispanic whites, but there's no Oregon equivalent of Detroit (82% Black) and so more cultural intermingling actually occurs. Prokhor Zakharov posted:before you make equivocations like this. I don't think that word means what you think it means. And I've read quite a bit about the history, and none of it really explains how 2,000 Rajneeshees are any more urban (according to 1,000 Friends of Oregon - an otherwise excellent group) than 7,000 Protestants. And it doesn't justify the actions of Wasco Planning Director Dan Durow who asks point-blank if they're religious and then clearly flouts usual practices and picks out the Rajneeshees for strict scrutiny. And it doesn't really support how OAG Dave Frohnmeyer could win case after case declaring their town to be illegal, and then suddenly everything gets reversed after the Rajneeshees leave and it's totally legal for a new religious group to set up shop. I understand that the group's leaders did a bunch of terrible things and don't deserve any benefit of the doubt, and I don't need to bring up a dispute that's 25 years old, but the arguments against construction and incorporation posed by state commissioners and attorneys had nothing to do with Sheela being a power-hungry psychopath, and it is utterly convenient that those arguments were uniformly dropped when the good Christians at Young Life moved in and set up a commune of their own. I'm sure that everything was done in a lawful manner and that all those involved have their reasons, but to an outsider's perspective it looks a lot like a rural county kicked out a bunch of nonbelievers and installed a bunch of the faithful in their place. Kaal fucked around with this message at 08:33 on Mar 13, 2014 |
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Mar 13, 2014 07:56
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OBAMA CURES ALAWIS posted:As a white person, I just don't think institutional racism by the state gov't against blacks is that big of a deal. In fact, it's largely overblown. Catch you later, I gotta ride my 100% vegan sourced bike to the fair trade cafe to get my imported coffee from Jakarta before Portlandia comes on! As a white person, I can tell you that institutional racism by the Oregon state gov't against blacks has been mild compared to its historical treatment of Native Americans (i.e. two lovely wars in the form of the Nez Perce War and the Snake War) and of women (women's suffrage was fought for hard and early by Oregonians) or the mentally ill (forced sterilizations by the Oregon Board of Eugenics) or of Asian-Americans (toleration of all sorts of mistreatment during the gold mining/railroad building era, culminating with the Japanese internment camp in Portland and a state-wide exclusion zone), or of gays (gay marriage remains banned in Oregon despite the law's unpopularity). I could easily go on. So if you want to talk about institutional racism then we should talk about that rather than a headline-grabbing law that was never enforced and lasted one year. 
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Mar 13, 2014 16:49
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computer parts posted:Though arguably the reason those abuses are more prevalent is that they didn't scare away all of those races/groups like they did with black people. The Nez Perce War is constituted of the US Army literally forcing American Indians out of Oregon at gunpoint.
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Mar 13, 2014 16:56
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computer parts posted:Yes, and? Southerners did the same thing and then did worse to black people. I'm not sure that what's left of the Native American tribes would see it that way, but what's your point? We're not talking about the South. Kaal fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Mar 13, 2014 |
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Mar 13, 2014 17:23
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computer parts posted:My point is that you have yet to show that Oregonians are totally not racist against black people. So you're saying that Oregonians are racist because there was slavery in the South? How does that make any sense? I'm not really sure what you're trying to say. I think that fundamentally you're conflating racial diversity with how many black people there are, and that is a real disservice to the 25% of Americans who are neither white nor black.
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Mar 13, 2014 17:41
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Mojo Threepwood posted:I love the mail ballots so much! I've never had to stand in line at a polling place, I just get my ballot and have a few weeks to research and figure out my vote, and after I send it in there is a paper record of what happened. I'm sure it isn't perfect but after hearing about people standing in line for hours in Florida I'm not sure why every state doesn't adopt this system. Especially since election day is in the middle of the week and people don't get paid time off. Yeah I absolutely love the mail ballots and couldn't imagine trying to vote any other way. I mean how are you supposed to do research on minor candidates if you only hear about them when you get your ballot? No wonder undervoting is such a problem. Give me a mail ballot and the leisure to actually conduct some online research.
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Mar 13, 2014 17:53
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xrunner posted:Im curious about the current controversy between the local hip-hop scene and the police. Clearly, a hip-hop scene isn't automatically black, but a lot of stereotyping and negativity towards such a scene will be based on anti-black prejudices. I'm not into hip-hop so I don't know much beyond the basics that there has been a lot of concern that the city has been targeting shows and the like. Last weekend a club was shut down for being overcapacity which I've never heard of happening in the fiveish years I've lived here. Also, a few months ago a local artist moved to NYC and said he refused to perform in portland ever again because of police targeting. If anyone more familiar with this issue could weigh in on it, I'd be pretty appreciative. I'm not intimately familiar with Portland police, but Oregon police are pretty notorious for targeting progressive youths (being as the police forces are the last true bastion of conservative power in the state). In Eugene that means raiding co-op/metal shows and attacking protesters, in Corvallis that means constant vice patrols through student neighborhoods and targeting punk street kids, and in Portland that means intimidating hip hop/gay warehouse events with overwhelming force. And I'm sure Ashland would have its own problems if the police department there wasn't such a chaotic shitshow and mostly focused on either combating California drug traffickers or being bribed by them. I would say that age and politics probably has a lot more to do with it than race. It sounds like the City Auditors Office will be stepping in to take a look at things, and recently they've shown a willingness to tangle with the Portland Police Bureau, so perhaps something will come of that. http://www.wweek.com/portland/blog-31327-portland_cops_treatment_of_hip_hop_shows_will_be_investigated_in_wake_of_blue_monk_incident.html http://www.opb.org/radio/programs/thinkoutloud/segment/are-hip-hop-shows-targeted-by-portland-police/ Kaal fucked around with this message at 21:43 on Mar 14, 2014 |
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Mar 14, 2014 21:21
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Dusseldorf posted:Does Sheriff John Bunnell still hold a job in Oregon law enforcement? He retired in 1995. I had no idea he was an Oregonian until I looked him up though. Never liked his show much.
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Mar 15, 2014 00:04
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FRINGE posted:This is the farthest north I have ever lived and the suicidal If one would ride the tiger, they must always stay on top. 
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Mar 15, 2014 20:25
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Ardennes posted:That said, the 2012 election was really something else, especially how aggressive the Oregonian went after Jefferson Smith (not to mention WW and even the Mercury to some extent). It more or less allowed Hales to win by default, and since that point he has treated it as a "strong mayor" city executive when the city was always more or less run like a small oligarchy. Smith made problems for himself, the spin was pretty amazing. Sadly the big newspapers in Oregon have a broadly conservative bent that tends to appear in their political coverage. The Oregonian (Portland), the Gazette-Times (Corvallis) and the Register Guard (Eugene) all deliver the same kind of old-guard conservative moderatism that supports business and other local power brokers above all else. Like most conservatives in Oregon they know that they can't afford to openly support the GOP, but they're always too happy to equivocate over any political controversy, and then "thoughtfully" support the conservative position. It's irritating to the extreme, but it doesn't appear to be profiting them much since the papers have been in a constant cycle of layoffs and downsizes for the last decade. Hopefully that will reduce their influence and allow more their more liberal competition more market access.
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Mar 18, 2014 14:22
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LGD posted:I though the hilarious part was the notion that there's more liberal competition waiting in the wings to seize the lucrative local news market if only the mean ol' Oregonian wasn't constantly keeping them down. The Oregonian's milquetoast centrism has tended to annoy people who have strong ideological commitments regardless of what those commitments are, but the degradation and depreciation of what used to be one of the best sources for local news doesn't really benefit anyone. The Oregonian has been an open supporter of the GOP since its inception, and it is known for only endorsing Republican candidates for president for 142 years. It finally broke that tradition in 1992 and 1996 with Clinton, then briefly returned to the GOP fold by endorsing Bush in 2000, then endorsed Kerry in 2004 and Obama in 2008, and then recently sat on the post in 2012 by endorsing no one. And the Register-Guard and the Gazette-Times are only more conservative. It's awful that the commercial journalism industry is dying, but I'm not going to miss constant conservative brow-beating in the only newspapers of note. Farmer Crack-rear end posted:The hilarious part is that, anecdotally, it seems like a lot of conservatives are always cheerfully eager to slag off the Oregonian as a left-wing rag. They're just delusional and want a paper like the Albany Democrat-Herald, which is basically a mouthpiece for the GOP and whose opinion columns read like they were copy/pasted from the Heritage Foundation. Kaal fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Mar 18, 2014 |
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Mar 18, 2014 19:05
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gohuskies posted:I think the $15 needs to be $15 and the tip/health care credit is bullshit, but I do think phase-in is fair to help businesses adjust their payroll over 3-4 years. I completely agree with this, though you can be sure that the restaurant associations will scream at the idea of losing their bullshit exemptions to minimum wage and having to pay their employees.
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Mar 19, 2014 07:10
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Irradiation posted:Oh yes. Apparently the issue is that OSU had set up its parking permits so that it was $130/year (more for faculty and staff) to park anywhere on campus, and since Reser Stadium is further away from classes as the free/metered residential areas there really was no reason to park there. Particularly since you have to move your car all the time at Reser for games so it doesn't work for long-term parking. The students and faculty got ganked and the administrators didn't really care since they just reserved all the good spots for themselves. Recently they put in a new parking structure for improved long-term parking, and the whole city is putting together a zonal parking scheme to try to charge students more to park without charging anyone else. The city will create permit parking zones ringing the campus that are limited to residents, while the university will create permit parking zones inside the campus that will make distant parking lots a little less expensive and close parking lots quite a bit more expensive. It's kinda sleazy but hopefully it'll improve things and convince more people to use alternative modes of transportation. sullat posted:Hey Portlanders! Don't forget to pay the art tax, lest our opera-goes be seated on off-brand velvet pillows, and use inferior opera glasses in this season's shows. Well that and mostly so that K-5 students get art and music teachers. http://www.portlandoregon.gov/revenue/60079 Kaal fucked around with this message at 19:18 on Mar 19, 2014 |
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Mar 19, 2014 19:06
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sullat posted:If it's the kind of thing that should be funded (art for the kiddies) it should be done through property taxes or general revenue. It should be, but arts and music funding is chronically underfunded - particularly at the K-5 level. I agree that the tax is completely regressive and should be reformed, but it's symptomatic of the larger failures in the taxation system.
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Mar 19, 2014 22:11
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Thanatosian posted:Oregon should just build that bridge themselves, then stick a $20 toll on it to fund it. It sure as gently caress isn't a bunch of Portlanders heading up to Vancouver three times a week who are using it. And I wouldn't give a poo poo about a $20 toll the handful of times I go to Portland a year. Eh, realistically there's just no particular upside for Oregon to have the bridge rebuilt outside of safety concerns. It'd be good to have done, and Oregon is willing to pay its fair share for the benefit of the regional economy, but if Washington isn't willing to pony up the money then there's really no reason for Oregon to build a bridge. I do think that they have a responsibility to make sure that it's safe to use though - I mean that bridge is one of the worst rated bridges in the entire nation, worse than the Skagit River Bridge that collapsed up near Seattle. One way or the other, that bridge is going to have to be shut down. Dusseldorf posted:What would the federal restrictions on this be with regards to interstate commerce? It'd be doable, particularly with Washington's cooperation. Oregon was thinking about doing this kind of toll road concept for a while after the CRC got shot down by WA. mod sassinator posted:Am I a weird Seattlite that fills up gas before entering and after leaving Oregon so I don't have to deal with the full service silliness down there? I know you're not supposed to tip but it just feels so weird. Yeah that's weird and goony. Do you also only use automated checkouts at the grocery store?
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Apr 15, 2014 22:43
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Thanatosian posted:Oregon has a big upside, in that lots of people from Washington go down there to do their shopping. It's an economic boon for them. Sure Clark County conservatives come down and spend money, but they also siphon out jobs and businesses and undermine the Portland housing market. There's 60,000 commuting into Portland every day, and that represents a gaping hole in property taxes and community development that Oregonians have to fill - while also creating chronic unemployment issues in Portland. It's difficult to see that as a boon, and certainly not the basis for paying for a bridge just so Washington residents have an easier commute. http://www.pewstates.org/projects/stateline/headlines/how-two-state-tax-systems-have-and-havent-shaped-metro-portland-85899381614 Kaal fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Apr 15, 2014 |
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Apr 15, 2014 23:18
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Thanatosian posted:Fair point. That brings us back to the tolling option. Right, but that's never going to fly because it's a terrible idea for Oregonians to just build a bridge for Washington because it's "the right thing to do". I understand that the problem here is a bunch of Clark County assholes that are taking advantage of Washington's sales tax, and coming between two otherwise progressive states, but the only way that bridge is getting built is going to be a cooperative venture. Kaal fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Apr 15, 2014 |
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Apr 15, 2014 23:36
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etalian posted:It's almost like both states would be better off adopting a mix of sales and progressive income tax. I really can't imagine why Oregon would want to adopt the regressive sales tax that's causing the issues in the first place. Oregon isn't the one that's having the tax revenue problem - they're having a sketchy neighbors problem. By all standards, progressive taxation is the way to go - it makes people happier, provides steady funding, encourages stable business growth, and reduces income inequality. Whenever Oregon has revenue issues it's because Sizemore conservatives intentionally throw wrenches into the tax system. All of the complaints about our current system can be tied directly to out-of-state shitbags like Norquist who push through restrictions on the Oregon tax system, like how they prevented Oregon from creating reserve accounts during boom years and now blast progressive taxation for having deficits during the lean years. size1one posted:Considering that both Democrat and Republican gubernatorial candidates have indicated they support a sales tax in Oregon, probably not too far fetched that it will happen sooner or later. I sure hope not. Fortunately Oregonians have a long history of rejecting the idea - nine times altogether. The last time Oregon conservatives tried to push through sales tax "reform" in 1993, 75% of Oregonians voted it down. If Kitzhaber wants to tie his new business-friendly politics to that particular mast, I won't feel bad about seeing him squirm in the primaries. Kaal fucked around with this message at 02:21 on Apr 16, 2014 |
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Apr 16, 2014 01:52
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size1one posted:It isn't a very popular idea and I find it hard to believe anyone floating that idea could get elected. Jon Justesen is also promising to raise the minimum wage too so who knows. Also I was mistaken, The Democrats with tax plans are state senators. ... This was a few months ago though and I haven't been watching it close enough to know where this has gone. Tax reform is a priority for Kitzhaber though. It's certainly shaping up to be an interesting primary. Usually Oregonians keep our incumbents on for the long-haul, so they can get as puissant as possible, but Kitzhaber seems intent on sabotaging his support from the left. I haven't liked him much this term, and I definitely don't like seeing the Oregonian print glowing editorials about how Kitzhaber plans to focus his next term on enacting sales taxes and pushing through anti-union laws. I don't know if working at OHSU changed his political stance, or if he just got gun-shy after tangling with the national Republicans during his first tenure, but Kitzhaber isn't the same man that he was during his first go-around as governor. edit: And it looks like Jon Justesen pulled out of the race a couple months ago. Not too surprising since he was a Republican who was running far to the left of the party - advocating things like a living wage, gay/women's rights, and progressive taxation. He could have easily gone onto the Democratic ticket as a reformed moderate and seen better luck. quote:Justesen, previously a political unknown, raised eyebrows by campaigning as a staunch supporter of a sales tax and critic of income inequality. He called for raising the minimum wage and for support of abortion rights. Kaal fucked around with this message at 02:53 on Apr 16, 2014 |
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Apr 16, 2014 02:28
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effectual posted:That's every police dept around the world. Very true, and it's an enduring problem. The public has to have a way to defend itself from these right-wing cop unions that are actively sabotaging any attempts at reform and burying anyone that gets in their way: http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/reform-in-reverse/Content?oid=19281433
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Apr 16, 2014 23:48
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Party in the UAE posted:the only good union is my union More like the only good union is one that isn't completely corrupt and taking the law into its own hands while committing massive cover-ups.
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Apr 17, 2014 00:10
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Thanatosian posted:TL;DR: Following a year with record profits for Boeing, the legislature gave them a $9 billion (that's $9,000,000,000) kickback to add 750 jobs to the region. Boeing is proceeding to take the money, then lay off 1000 different people and move their jobs to the South. The legislature could respond to this punitively, but won't, because the paltry handful of millions they spend on lobbying is the single best investment they make, in terms of ROI. Unsurprisingly, this move has caused morale at the company among everyone except the executives to drop precipitously. The inability of the United States to establish consistent tax policy, combined with legalized political corruption, is quickly proving to be one of the biggest national challenges in our modern era. So many of our social and fiscal problems stem from this systemic failure. Kaal fucked around with this message at 18:30 on Apr 18, 2014 |
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Apr 18, 2014 18:27
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effectual posted:I've heard you can drop a ballot in the mail and they'll mail it anyway without a stamp. That's what I've been doing the last year. You need a stamp, or else that ballot is going to be returned or dumped. If you don't want to pay for postage, there's dropboxes all over the place. Kaal fucked around with this message at 18:26 on Apr 23, 2014 |
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Apr 23, 2014 18:23
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oxbrain posted:I hear a lot of people complaining about how the rest of the state shouldn't have to pay for Seattle. Yeah it's those drat urbanites spending all our hard-earned tax dolla.... wait Seattle taxpayers pick up 62 cents for every dollar in tax they pay, with all that money being sent to prop up the rest of the state. The Stranger posted:Indeed, if Washington is a welfare state, it is residents in these mostly rural, mostly Eastern, mostly Republican counties who are the biggest beneficiaries, while taxpayers here in the blue parts of the state are left footing the bill. And while your typical liberal Seattleite might be neither surprised nor disturbed at this revelation, the degree of the gap between who benefits from state government and who pays for it may come as a bit of a shock. edit: If I were an urban legislator, I might start tagging a Tax Shield rider onto every prospective anti-tax bill that would ensure that people's tax dollars weren't constantly floating over over to their "spendthrift" county neighbors. That kind of rank disparity in tax spending is outrageous - there ought to be a limit on how unbalanced spending can get. Taxpayers deserve to know that their money is being spent responsibly within their own community, not propping up far-off country homeowners that aren't willing to pay their own way. Kaal fucked around with this message at 17:06 on Apr 24, 2014 |
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Apr 24, 2014 16:44
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computer parts posted:99% of those costs are probably roads though which aren't exactly luxury items. Roads and schools and police stations and healthcare ... you know all the things that a community pays taxes for. It's not like bus service in Seattle servicing hundreds of thousands of people is any more of a luxury than a highway to Nowhere, WA that services a dozen houses. If country conservatives want to slash community services, they can certainly be asked to pay their own way. No wonder they're willing to cut funding when their town is getting back more than $3 for every buck they pay in taxes. Kaal fucked around with this message at 17:32 on Apr 24, 2014 |
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Apr 24, 2014 17:26
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computer parts posted:And that's not the point I was making. The point I was making is pulling the old "Urban counties give more in taxes than they get therefore eat the rural population" is nonsensical because this vote is entirely within a single (relatively) urban county and a large number of the No votes are coming from non-rural locations. Why are you "making points" when you don't know who is voting on the proposition and you don't know the demography of the area? And how is asking for semi-equitable tax distribution "eating the rural population"? Is paying your own bills some kind of huge affront to democracy? Certainly it seems like tying such a rider onto the various Eyman initiatives would be a pretty fair thing to do. It seems like you're kinda grasping at straws here. Kaal fucked around with this message at 19:01 on Apr 24, 2014 |
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Apr 24, 2014 18:56
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computer parts posted:It's not related at all to the topic of discussion. What, "Who is paying/receiving taxes" isn't related to the discussion of a transportation tax/funding initiative? That's absurd. I think that maybe Seattle wouldn't have to be constantly battling for funding if they weren't subsidizing the rest of the state; and I think that some of these anti-tax proposals would be a harder sell if their supporters knew it would jeopardize their handouts.
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Apr 24, 2014 19:08
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computer parts posted:If you want to blame someone, blame people from the suburbs of Seattle who voted against it. Try reading this map that was posted directly to you earlier: https://a.tiles.mapbox.com/v3/oranv.i2d1b9dd/page.html#10/47.1687/-121.7450 The "suburban Democrat Seattleites" you're talking about live up to 100 miles away. Kaal fucked around with this message at 19:21 on Apr 24, 2014 |
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Apr 24, 2014 19:18
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computer parts posted:I guess the real issue lies in why a Seattle bus service is being voted on by the entire state. computer parts posted:If your thick skull is unable to comprehend that I'm talking about the Seatac/Mercer/Bellevue/Redmond/Shoreline areas instead of the rest of the map, I don't know what else to say. I think that my thick skull is unable to comprehend what the hell you're trying to say because you're completely incomprehensible. Your goalposts are shifting wildly with every new post. And that wouldn't be a problem, except you interject this arrogantly dismissive attitude that shuts down any attempt at discussion. Kaal fucked around with this message at 19:31 on Apr 24, 2014 |
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Apr 24, 2014 19:28
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Thanatosian posted:I honestly don't give a poo poo about Eastern Washington's tax revenue generation; cutting state spending in counties until the revenue is equalized is just a more easily saleable way to punish them for voting for poo poo like I-695, every Tim Eyman initiative that shows up on the ballot, and fuckstains that won't let Western Washington localities establish their own taxes in order to provide services. The idea isn't "hey, you guys aren't bringing enough money in, you need to tighten your belts!" The idea is "you can either be 'bootstrapping, independent fiscal conservatives who don't need no durn gubment' or live off of our charity, not both." Completely agreed. There's no good reason that urbanites need to be on the defensive all the time - constantly fending off tax raids from country conservatives and simply holding the line on essential services. What we need is a willingness to expose the reality of the situation - these so-called "independents" are living off the public dole. And this is an issue that certainly extends beyond Western Washington. All over the country, progressive urban centers fund the inefficient conservative backwaters that declaim public spending while being first in line at the pork barrel. It's well past time that liberals went on the offensive about this sort of issue. If country conservatives want to experience small government independence, their hypocrisy should be the first thing to dry up.
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Apr 25, 2014 19:45
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Thanatosian posted:Call it the "tax equalization initiative of 2014." Proclaim that it's the solution to all of your tax money constantly going to those welfare queens in Seattle. At the very least it will put some Republican legislators in a very uncomfortable position. The fact is that tax money pouring across county lines to go fund folks who refuse to tax themselves has terrible optics for the GOP. It calls into question their entire charade about being independent. People don't like the idea of their tax dollars going to hypocrites that simply refuse to pay for their own services. And I think the best way to use it would be as a rider for any Eyman funding slash/tax cut that gets attempted - it'd leave conservatives in the impossible position of arguing that their extra funding needs to be protected while they attack funding that goes to the people supporting them. edit: Fundamentally, "Why should my tax money go to people who simply refuse to tax themselves" is a powerful question, and it taps into the same kind of self-interested egotism that the GOP motivates their base with. I don't think that the GOP is going to have a lot of luck bringing out urban moderates to defend that kind of special relationship. And like I said, this is a problem that extends beyond the county level; Washington as a whole picks up only $.88 on the dollar in federal funding/federal taxation - despite massive deficit spending on the part of the fed. Oregon and California are in the same boat. The entire West Coast is being squeezed for funding by the states that have the lowest tax rates in the country. Kaal fucked around with this message at 20:21 on Apr 25, 2014 |
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Apr 25, 2014 19:53
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oxbrain posted:You can't attach riders to other people's initiatives. You can write an initiative that is contingent upon another initiative passing.
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Apr 25, 2014 19:56
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Solkanar512 posted:Hell, paying for a bunch of billboards in these welfare counties showing how much they take would be rather amusing. It'd be interesting to see that sort of information publicly disseminated, that's for sure. According to The Stranger, King County schools effectively lost $1 billion in funding in 2008 because that money was being diverted to prop up rural conservatives. And Washington State as a whole lost out on $3.4 billion in federal taxes in 2005 - that money given to red states that refuse to pay for their own services. That's a lot of bake sales. http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/welfare-state/Content?oid=6686284 http://taxfoundation.org/article/federal-taxes-paid-vs-federal-spending-received-state-1981-2005 Kaal fucked around with this message at 20:50 on Apr 25, 2014 |
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Apr 25, 2014 20:44
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