Jesus, you really are a prime example of a teabagger. Dumber'n dogshit and just itchin' fur someone to beat up.
So, despite it obviously being a total waste of time, I'm going to try, once again, to shine some light into that atrophied little walnut you use for a brain. Why? Because it amuses me, it's almost 5 in the fuckin AM and I haz coffee to spare.
A little backround first before I eat you alive.
Gary Locke was a very good Governor, he knew what he was doing, and as his attorney General, Christine Gregoire was the person that won $5 Billion in lawsuits against the tobacco companies, for marketing their products to kids and hiding the addictive nature of the poisons they sell to the public. She took on the Drug manufacturers, winning ALL the anti-trust lawsuits she conducted for the State against them for manipulating costs and price fixing.
When Enron went kablooie, being a solidly Republican Company based in a solidly Republican State, She was able to recoup almost $100 million in losses to investors in Washington State. When the insurance companies got caught red-handed manipulating costs, she won every lawsuit the State filed against them. Every single one. She is a damn good attorney.
So, my first question to you is, is any of that a bad thing? Was any of that wrong somehow?
How's this for a solution, cut out all waste! Start from the top on down the line!! How is it that Locke left this state with a budget surplus and this cunt come in and spend us into a huge fucking debt? 2008 Gregoire's words " we are not in a deficit we have a rainy day fund!" guess what, the new year hit and we are fucking swimming in debt and her solution is to tax the fuck out of us citizens!!!
This State budget is funded by sales taxes. This is called
regressive taxation because it affects the lower incomes much more than it does the wealthy who can afford them, as well as being more heavily affected by swings in the economy. When the economy is doing well, and people are spending money, that means a lot of money flows into the States coffers. When the economy takes a dump, as it started to do in 2007, that reduces the money available to the State very quickly. Gary Locke had the advantage of being Governor when money was flowing out of the banks like water, and people were spending money like crazy on all sorts of things.
Taxes are way down from what they were four years ago, because the Republican president Bush unleashed the insurance, investment banking and mortgage banking industries by almost completely defunding the SEC and re-legalizing the bucket house operations in 2001. This led to a massive credit and construction boom, which led to a pretty sizable surplus in our States budget because people were allowed to use their houses as a cash machine, borrowing on them to get money to remodel their houses, buy speedboats, big televisions and new cars. That massively increased revenue from sales taxes.
The construction companies went apeshit building massive (and really shitty) condominium complexes in downtown Seattle, Bellevue, Kirkland and Spokane, building houses by the thousands all over Seattle, Issaquah, Kirkland, Juanita, Bellevue, Bothell and Lynnwood. That was more taxes paid by the construction companies, their workers and from the sales of those condos and houses.
At least one of those condominium buildings in Downtown Seattle now has to be torn down only nine years after it was built, because it used tensioning cables made from a steel alloy that corrodes when put in contact with concrete. The inspectors missed it, the construction company ignored it, and the architects washed their hands on it 15 years ago when they first proposed the design and contracted for construction and the State now must absorb the costs of the demolition, and file a lawsuit to find out who is at fault because nobody is owning up to the situation. The current State Attorney General, Rob Mckenna, is trying to avoid doing this, because all of the companies involved are high level contributors to his campaign coffers and are supporting his potential run for Governor in two years.
But I digress.
Gregoire stated flat out, that if the Legislature could not come up with a budget, she would cut ALL state departments by 20%, as required by law in that case. As the State is required by the Constitution to fully fund all public education, and had lost a court battle to shift some of those costs back to the Counties and Cities, that budget went up. People voted to reduce class sizes and increase teachers salaries, then, in the same election voted DOWN a 1 cent increase in sales taxes to fund those increases and reductions. That left the State with a big hole in its budget. When car tabs were reduced to a base level of $30 per car, that reduced the tax base to the State budget by almost 15% by itself. That $30 car tab fee, is below the cost of processing for registering a car in this state, so the State is now subsidizing the cost of registering a car. Any fees you pay above that $30 is set by the county you register your car in.
So the States available tax base has been massively cut, by the downturns in the economy and the construction bust and the credit bust and the goddamn banking collapses, and you blame the Governor for that. So, where would you cut the budget? You going to close schools? Libraries? How about CPS or the State Police? Prisons? How about we stop road construction, losing the matching funds the Federal Government is required to pay, reducing funds even further?
This latest budget, is $800 million lower than the last one. That means cuts in services like parks, police, prisons, public schools, County Sherrifs departments and rural fire departments. That means the rural counties are going to be slammed hard by those reductions in services. That means State Parks are going to be closed. That means rural roads aren't going to be repaved or improved as often, food inspections are going to be reduced, industrial disability insurance is going to be cut and a lot of State workers like building inspectors, health inspectors for restaurants, school administrators, law enforcement and teachers are going to lose their jobs. The State is required by Federal law to absorb a lot of the cost of the military sending the National Guard troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, and that costs a shitload of money. The States pension funds got chewed up by the banking scams of the last 25 years, but must remain at their current level by Federal and State law. Under Bush and Cheney and a GOP Congress, the costs of medicaid were shifted back to the States, and our State has a large number of people that need that service. Thats people with downs syndrome, people born with birth defects, people that have no health insurance and use the hospital emergency rooms as their regular medical care and cannot pay.
When Gary Locke finally stood up, and demanded that companies like Boeing and Westinghouse own up to the taxes that they had deferred over the years, money that they OWE, and agreed to pay back when their profit levels went up to a certain point, Boeing moved out of town rather than pay back the money, and Westinghouse closed some of its operations in Hanford rather than pay back the money that they had agreed to pay. When Enron filed a lawsuit against Snohomish county demanding money that they had contracted to pay for electricity, the State had to absorb that cost of the lawsuit and pay the money that the County had contracted for, even though those contracts were based in fraud and manipulation of the market and the County had obviously been horribly scammed.
You really are a stupid human being. But, you are typical of the teabaggers, all reaction, no thought as to where the money comes from or where it is actually going. No actual study of the problems. You're just a bunch of dumbass suckers who have continually refused to even attempt to even minimally educate yourself on the subject.