j_b

of course getting rich mostly sucks, but we are talking about not being in poverty, and I am afraid that the rich people who ship jobs overseas, destroy the environment, etc should bother you.

You need to look at numbers like what fraction of people actually make it out of poverty, and stop focusing on Oprah or other exceptional stories.

unfortunately for your fairy tale, the economic inequality data is unequivocal: the rich have never been richer and the poor never poorer and likely to remain so.

check out the thugs, trying to demonize my person.

well, I can't say this clip is generating much meaningful discussion

another strawman from you? and still no factual comments about what I wrote despite your empty put down?

another "joke" from jackass. And Jim would claim you haven't earned the epithet of neanderthal after all these years of stupid abuse you've flung at others. WTF?

all this conflict is making you sick? I am so sorry to make you sad and ruin your good day.

deep or not, at least I think critically. do you have any factual comments about what I wrote? I didn't think so.

right on cue what, jackass? You don't want me to respond to your fairy tales that aren't supported by the evidence?

what drivel. False too. What's the fraction of black youth that makes it out of near poverty over the long term? Anybody ever told you that Horatio Algier was not only a fake but also that the social elevator had been broken for a while.

There's plenty of people that'd be more than happy to drive them at a pay-scale that would allow them to preserve current service levels. That's really all that matters if the reason we're spending public money on a bus system is to provide transport as efficiently as possible. If the primary objective it to provide a class of public sector workers with a secure, comfortable living, and transporting the public is a secondary consideration - then the sky's the limit. Why not cut services another ~30% and pay them $90K on average? Seriously. why not pay them $5/hour if we can? let's put a few more millions people out of work and I bet we can pay them $4/hour to do the same job ..

Oh yes, bus drivers making 70k are clearly the problem ...

" Most importantly, it will offer relief to taxpayers who feel the drip, drip, drip of the least fair tax code in America. The poorest 20 percent of Washington families currently pay 17.3 percent of their income in state taxes. The highest-earning one percent of families in the state have a "burden" of just 2.6 percent. Our middle class families pay four times as much as the very wealthy. Hence, I-1098 is our best chance for tax reform in four decades. It is imperfect, but a massive stride forward from the status quo. The measure eliminates Business and Occupation taxes for more than 80 percent of the state's businesses, giving its greatest rewards to those hurt most by the Great Recession. A total of 118,000 small businesses would find themselves exempt from the hated B & O tax while 39,000 would pay less, by estimate of the OFM's recent analysis. I-1098 would also cut by 20 percent the state portion of Washington's property tax. We wish the measure did more. It does not reduce the state sales tax, our least fair means of collecting revenue, and one that yields fewer dollars as downturns put more stress on state services. Recovery from the "Great Recession" will come when Washington's small businesses start hiring again, and with growth in technology and bio-tech. The state is hindered by the burdensome B & O tax. It socks small enterprises struggling to their feet or trying to stay standing in hard times. Amazingly, in recent times, Washington has fallen to 46th out of the 50 states in the amount of our economy we invest in education, according to I-1098 proponent Bill Gates Sr. We are 44th in dollars invested per student. Seventy percent of revenue generated by I-1098 would go to education. An analysis by the state's Office of Financial Management estimates that I-1098 will generate about $1.5 billion in 2012 for a trust fund dedicated to education and health care. Recession has caused painful cuts. The Legislature was forced to put aside voter-passed initiatives on class size and teacher pay: 40,000 people have been cut from the state's Basic Health Plan even as its waiting list expands. Our state needs brains to rebuild, minds honed by a first-rate public school system. And those minds need to be retrained: In this Global Economy, people will change jobs -- and even professions -- seven or more times in their working lives. Now is the time to invest in -- not to neglect -- education. " http://www.seattlepi.com/opinion/426062_I-1098.html

shouldn't you plan for a divorce if sobo talks to your wife?

that's rich coming from someone who claims that budget shortfall is due to public workers compensations.

If you could supply a coherent argument, And don't rewrite history, you first refused to answer my argument, until you finally conceded that the King COunty deals has essentially no impact on the budget shortfall and then you made up some weird stuff about fiscal responsibility.

you don't have to listen. See if I care.

what do you think DLC Democrats have been doing since Carter, if not ride the anti-tax/anti big government bandwagon. Little good did it do us, they implemented neo-liberal policies from A to Z.

wait that was last week. Now you are all nice like angels, right?

the intolerants of warmongering assholes, torture apologists and science deniers.

I am not so sure that having sobo talk to anybody's wife is such a good idea.

apparently won't be easy with so-called libruls around spouting anti-tax demagoguery.

Emilio Kukuzka?

I wouldn't call being for legislation that starts reversing 30+ years of tax cuts for the wealthy "having faith in the system". In fact, that's what I would say of refusing to tax the rich in the name of calling for fiscal responsibility during the greatest economic downturn since the great depression.