Populist Reform of the Democratic Party
In reply to the discussion: “Tax and spend liberals” [View all]mntleo2
(2,535 posts)I have been railing about this for years as an activist for the low income in WA State. But it is the same all over the country, WA just has the shame of forcing the poor to pay higher taxes than any other state. The poor here pay 17-19% of their meager incomes in taxes, where 2 of the richest men in the world who live here pay less than 3% of their $Billions in taxes. You can check out what each class pays here: http://itepnet.org/whopays/. Boeing has paid nothing, nada, ziltch, zero in decades while they strong arm communities into giving up their farms and large areas for plants they eventually abandon (cough cough here while saying Kent), laying off thousands to turn to our social service system ~ which the legislature continually cuts and cuts.
Believe me I have been talking about this with my state and US legs over and over ~ and they are the "liberals" in our legislature. They tell me that they are not heard and that they tried ~ even when they were a majority.
Here is a story for you that happened in the mid 1990s when the torches and pitchforks were out for the low income in this state...
I had gone to the capitol with nuns, priests, ministers, teachers and social workers against the backlash of Welfare DEFormed. We were wanting a better tax system and for industries like Boeing to step up to the plate and pay their fair share because even then, almost 20 years ago, it was damaging to those in poverty and going to get worse if we did not do something about it. Before we went we had made appointments with out legs to speak with them. We all arrived at the agreed upon time at our our district leg's office (from Wallingford and Green Lake), about 20 of us. When we got there we were told that regrettably the leg (Greg Nichols at the time) was suddenly tied up in an important meeting and could not meet with us at this appointed time. However we could wait another 2 hours if we still wanted to speak with him. Well we had made the trip all the way to Oly and so we all decided to wait. While we sat there one of the nuns went up to look at the schedule for this legislator and found out that he had bumped us because Boeing had gotten all veclept about some legislation coming up on the floor.
In other words we had come all the way to Oly to tell him what we did not like about the tax system that was hurting the most vulnerable in this state, citing Boeing as a prime example ~ and what we had to say was overshadowed by these Boeing bozos who kept threatening to leave the state if we did not toe the line with them (which they eventually did anyway and are still doing today).
This tax crap has been going on for years. At the time in the 1990s when we were trying to tell citizens and the legs what we saw, we were laughed off the stage and told we were being "too idealistic" and that everything was going to be peachy-keen doncha know. Only until the middle class was affected are we now suddenly alarmed.
Let me tell you something: they use the poor as "canaries in the mine" to see if they can make laws and policies that they know will hurt people. Of course, since nobody cares about the poor, nothing is said or done. Then when those laws and policies actually begin to come to fruition and the middle class begins to suffer as the poor has been suffering for years, well then they get the picture. My advice is to watch what laws and policies they put in for the lower classes, and then you will see what is coming next for the middle class.
My 2 cents, Cat in Seattle