TLDR: NO on everything. There. That makes it easy.
The top of the Washington State ballot is not the presidential race, but rather a collection of initiatives. The initiative process is a pretty cool thing that Washington State does, in that it provides an alternate method for passing law. We have the Legislature, but the initiative process allows citizens to propose and pass state law. It is a nice bit of direct democracy, but the system has some challenges and can be gamed.
The challenge is that you need to get a certain number of signatures to but it on the ballot - 8% of the total votes for Governor the last election. And given the population of the state, that comes to roughly 325,000 signatures this time around. Which means you need a lot of dedicated volunteers to gather those signatures, or paid signature-gatherers, or most likely both, in order to succeed. As a result, the initiative process is normally the domain of people with a lot of money and resources at hand. Initiative gadfly Tim Eyman made good book on monetizing the process with initiatives that rarely won, but almost never stood up in court. Eyman got himself in trouble skimming off the top of his fundraising, and is no longer active in the process.
So, this year we have a wealthy hedge-fund manager, Brian Heywood, who is fled California because of the taxes and wants to get rid of them here as well. He and his mob collected the requisite signatures and got initiatives on the ballot for six items. The Legislature has the option of just passing them right there, and three of them we passed without having to go to the voters. Then he added another one, so there are four measures on the ballot this time. And all of them involve saving money for the wealthy and gutting state funding, and leaving you with the bill.
Here's the quick and dirty.
Initiative Measure No. 2066 wants to repeal laws controlling natural gas regulation and/or promoting electrification. Natural Gas is a big polluter, so I see the point in encouraging more electric power through inducements. But I am personally involved here in that we use gas for cooking and hot water here at Grubb Street, which has proved to be a good thing when the power goes out (windstorms give us about two outages a year). But a blanket measure that gives a blank check to the natural gas operations, effectively putting them above the law? Yeah, no. I'd rather see this one fought out in the Legislature one piece at a time. Vote NO.
Initiative Measure No. 2109 eliminates the Capital Gain tax. This is a tax that takes a small sliver of the earnings of the wealthy, which is why Heywood wants it gone. If your assets are below $250 million, it's a moot point (unless you're planning on winning the lottery soon). Cutting it guts funding for education, which is something we are required to fund (it is in the state constitution), and have been kinda half-assed over the years about doing it as it is. Vote NO.
Initiative Measure No 2117 eliminates the carbon tax credits. Carbon tax credits are a method to (long-term) reduce pollutants. The government sells indulgences to organizations that are churning out pollutants, which range from big businesses to things like UW (steam heat). Over time, the amount of credits are reduced, encouraging folk to upgrade their systems to healthier alternatives. Killing the credits defunds transportation, clean air, renewable energy, conversation, and emission-reductions (I'm just quoting the initiative language, here). So NO on this one
Initiative Measure No. 2124 makes long-term care insurance optional. Affordable long-term care is a growing issue, such that even the national Democratic party thinks it is a good idea. Making it optional is a great invitation to making it useless, and with defund Washing's public insurance programs providing long-term care benefits and services. I've been kicking in to long-term care for a while now, and think its a pretty good thing. Vote NO.
Everything these initiatives attack are "eat your broccoli" laws, which is good for the long-term health of the people of Washington, but have a price tag on it. And the people behind these initiatives don't want to spend any of THEIR money on YOU. You aren't going to get much if these initiatives pass (No, your gas prices are NOT coming down as a result of these), and things will be just a little bit crappier around here with them in place.
More later,
