Fairweather

Please don't bother Matt, TTK, and the Meme Brothers with logic like this. They're busy building another straw man right now.

Pretty much. Well said, Matt.

Washington State has a war budget? Try to stay on task, little j.

Phil Talmadge is certainly no teabagger. Seattle libtard, even. But I giss yer smartur.

What do/will the bottom 50% of wage-earners pay?

BTW, what's your position on equal protection these days. For the wealthy, I mean. Gluttonous libtard.

No shit. Really? This initiative is back door legislation for Dems who don't have the nads to go the distance with their true beliefs. Dumbshit.

I like the way they're trying to sweeten the deal by claiming a "20 percent decrease in state property taxes" all the while forgetting to mention that the state portion of the property tax is only about twenty percent of the average property tax bill to begin with. A net savings of 4%--that is, until they turn around and raise it again. Class warfare at its finest, compliments of the Democrats in Olympia.

In any event, it's probably unconstitutional. (Not that libtards like you care.) http://blog.thenewstribune.com/politics/2010/08/26/former-justice-talmadge-says-i-1098-would-likely-be-found-unconstitutional/

Reading comprehension, OW.

If it passes, I predict we'll all be defined as "rich" in short order.

Oh, oh, oh! Jay, you forgot to mention the obvious solution of FUCKING those evil rich people. You know, the ones making over $200,000 each year--well, this year anyhow...

I'll take primary data over agenda-inspired sophistry any day of the week. A public university produces a paper which says, basically, that high public wages (read: their own) are justified by the educational credentials only public employees possess--and then goes on to concoct a select-data scheme whereby it becomes quantifiable. Garbage in, garbage out--not to mention more than a bit erudite. For once, I appreciate Jim's position. If only you would show some glimmer of balance. Even once.

There's no comparison of pension benifits vs. what they would have earned at the same salary for social security. Having worked for a state, the feds, and private industury, here's what I've found: Private employees are generally paid at a higher wage than public employees - but there is a higher expectation of workload and no comp time. Public employees have more generous benefits such as sick time, health benefits, holidays, and matches to 401ks. Public employees stick to a 40 hr work week or less (but certainly not teachers!). I tried to recruit an ecologist from the UW and could not match his salary request because we couldn't bill out his hourly rate at his level of experience. He was requesting this higher salary to make up for our lesser benefits and the 100% 401k match he gets at the UW. Couldn't do it. Deadwood - much less of it in the private sector. In the public sector I found there was always some percentage (15%?) of folks not pulling their weight and just hiding. They got a reputation of incompetence so folks would not give them much work, so they were not so busy. If you were competent then more work came your way. We called it the 80/20 rule - 80% of the work got done by 20% of the staff. I'm all for reasonable work expectations but found this living off the dole appalling. Exceptions - I find these groups to generally have extremely tough jobs and they are underpaid for the shite they put up with and the hours they put in: teachers and cops. Nicely put together and well balanced. Hell, even my right-wing GS-15 brother-in-law won't cede as much ground as you just did. Well done. I'm not sure I agree with you about the cops though...

So everyone deserves health care but not everyone deserves a tax break? Right through the heart.

FWIW, I masturbated while I watched that video.

You just don't understand, Nitrox. Democrats are for the people:

Let's not forget those Democrats still languishing at the bottom of the not-yet-drained swamp. Another kooky-Dem district has spoken:

Don't worry, the Dems are about to lose their first procedural move in the courts, and after November we'll be back to the gridlock we need.

j_b's kind of people I can't remember which of the Meme brothers it was who, even while denying their communist beliefs, put forth Republican Spain as their quixotic utopia. Brilliant.

http://www.seattleaic.org/leaflets/statement_on_world_cant_wait "It is no secret, however, that RCP [Revolutionary Communist Party] activists make up a large portion of WCW. Three out of the four initiators of the WCW call are well-known RCP supporters. The RCP’s paper, Revolution, has given prominent coverage to WCW events and the RCP has thus far given WCW its uncritical backing. In short, “helped initiate” is a misleading understatement. Since WCW’s founding in the summer of 2005, its circles have expanded somewhat beyond the small RCP (no doubt a result of much hard work on the part of rank and file RCP supporters). "

jobs jobs jobs

No, I don't recall the part about your nephew at all. But I do recall Jim gushing here his participation in the "World Can't Wait" march a while back--an event sponsored and organized by American communists. He's free to do this of course, and I even salute his idealism; but it's somewhat disingenuous for him to later re-veil his true beliefs for the sake of argument or semantics. If you accept that physical participation in public protest or mass-demonstration is, for lack of a better word, a consummating act, then it seems safe to call someone who marches with fascists a fascist--and someone who marches with communists a communist. Seriously.

...says Jim, who marched arm-in-arm with communists on the streets of Seattle only a few short years ago.

what's really rich is that "pay to play" (user fees) has become generalized in direct response to tax cuts advocated and won by the so-called "small government" (cough, cough) crowd that has been in charge for the last 30+ years. Do try to be consistent. While giving props to the program at Denali the fact remains that, at its core, it is an unnecessary governmental endeavor. Calling for smaller government while decrying the cost/benefit ratio of a pay-to-play scheme that isn't needed to begin with is not inconsistent at all. Do we really need an expensive government enclave at 14,000 feet?