National pundits just can’t get enough about the intramural fight between the Left and far-Left over Initiative 732, the carbon tax on the ballot next month. The latest to weigh in is Vox, which published a major piece last week, suggesting this year’s fight is actually a precursor to a much larger war among liberals about tax policy.
As Vox wrote, “Initiative 732, isn’t just any carbon tax, either. It’s a big one. It would be the first carbon tax in the US, the biggest in North America, and one of the most ambitious in the world. That turns out to be a complex and ill-fated story, revealing divisions among climate hawks — over who pays, who benefits, and who decides — that will not long stay confined to the West Coast. The future of climate politics is playing out in Washington state, and it is not pretty.”
Evidently Washington State gets a front row seat for this fight, and Vox walks through many of the tawdry details which Shift has been covering for months – from the far-Left’s attempt to bully (and buy) I-732 off the ballot last December, to budget analysts blowing the cover off the so-called ‘revenue neutrality’ of I-732.
Now, as the campaign enters its final month, the heat is getting turned up. Vox reminds readers that the chief architect of I-732 actually sees through the far-Left’s demands for even higher taxes on carbon as a smoke screen for buying votes, as it rehashes his NY Times quote that “the challenges on the left (are) an unyielding desire to tie everything to bigger government, and a willingness to use race and class as political weapons in order to pursue that desire.”
So that’s the fight folks – how high can we raise taxes, and how much can we grow government – all while claiming that we’re doing it for the environment. Just read on for how ugly it can get.
