The nine liberal justices of the Washington State Supreme Court heard oral arguments this morning on the lawsuit seeking to overturn one of the Democrats’ latest tax schemes – a state income tax on capital gains. The court proceeding this morning (held in the court’s temporary facilities at the Thurston County Courthouse) was to hear arguments in Democrat Attorney General Bob Ferguson’s appeal of a Douglas County Superior Courts ruling last March that the state income tax violated the Washington State constitution.

Observers in the court room informed Shift that they were pleasantly surprised by the justices questions for the attorneys presenting their arguments. Jason Mercier of the Washington Policy Center, one of the top advocates for repealing the state income tax on capital gains, informed us that he now feels “better than I did before the arguments.”

Yet, you never know with judges.  There are many examples of lawyers feeling good after an argument, based on the judges’ questions, and then being surprised by the court’s final ruling.  There has been no schedule released for when the court will make its ruling. Sometimes the judges take weeks and other times they take more than a year to decide a case.  The tax collectors at the State Department of Revenue say they are ready and excited to start collecting the tax in April.

It is interesting to see an outside perspective, from the Wall Street Journal, editorializing on the controversial case. “Washington state has been one of only nine states without a personal income tax, and progressives finally think they’ve found a way to leap over voters and impose one. Their gambit heads to the state Supreme Court on Thursday, and it should die there unless the judges misread the state constitution.”  (TVW/Washington State Supreme Court hearing video,  MyNorthwest, and Wall Street Journal editorial)

Nick Hanauer is one of the major financiers of the state’s liberal establishment and he regularly posts his hate-filled rants on Twitter. It does seem ironic that so many of those on the Left who whined and moaned about Elan Musk purchasing Twitter still continue to use the social media platform to spew their hate.  And while we don’t usually like to waste space discussing Hanauer’s Leftist beliefs, we will use one of his latest tweets to illustrate a growing strategy among those on the far-Left in our state (including the governor).

As liberal policies have resulted in more homelessness, more crime (especially in lower income and minority neighborhoods), a big increase in drug overdoses, a major housing shortage (which causes higher home prices and skyrocketing rental rates), higher energy prices, more taxes, reduced test scores for our students, and no improvement in carbon emissions, the more the liberals seek to distract attention away from their many failures by endlessly spewing hate-filled messages like this one from Hanauer.

We saw another clear example of this divisive behavior from Governor Inslee last week during a press conference. The governor was asked about the fact that his Cap and Trade program had already increased the price of gas in Washington by 10 cents a gallon over what was being paid in other states without such liberal policies. (This figure is now 25 cents a gallon.) Of course, the governor blamed the price increase on “greedy oil companies.”

Yet as the Washington Policy Center’s Todd Myers points out in a KIRO-FM radio interview with Brandi Kruse, this is a price increase comparison with gas costs in other states. The governor could only be correct if the only place where oil companies are being “greedy” is within the borders of Washington State.  The Inslee quote was yet another example of a liberal being confronted with the failures of his policies, resorting to the tactic of spewing hate and blaming other people, and then counting on the mainstream media to not point out the charade. (Twitter,  Governor Inslee Press Conference/TVW, Washington Policy Center, and KIRO-FM Radio podcast at 17:30 mark)

Speaking of the governor’s many failures, Spokesman-Review columnist Sue Lani Madsen uses the governor’s New Year’s tweet, where he claimed the state “made important strides forward on several difficult issues” to point out that the state was actually “making big strides backwards.”  Madsen used data and facts (as opposed to the governor’s political hyperbole) to point out that many of the issues the governor claimed were going in the right direction are actually becoming worse.

Madsen writes that while government bureaucrats have exploded the size and cost of homelessness spending in our state since Inslee became governor, there was a 7.8% increase in the number of homeless individuals in 2022, making our state one of the worst in the country.  While the governor claims progress on mental illness, the facts are that under Jay Inslee our Western State Hospital was decertified by the federal government due to poor management by the Inslee Administration and recently the federal government expressed similar concerns about Eastern State Hospital.  And while taxpayers have funded many expensive climate policies push by Inslee, the facts show that the state’s actions have been such a failure that the Inslee Administration took down a website which was set up to show the state’s progress.  (Spokesman-Review)

Currently Washington State ranks near the bottom of the list (43^rd) for the best states to retire in, according to a new survey conducted by the website WalletHub.  The report found that housing affordability, taxes, and crime were the primary reasons why people should not look to spend their golden years in the Evergreen state. (News Tribune)

Despite billions and billions of dollars being spent by all level of government, numerous corporations and hundreds of non-profits, the homeless crisis continues to get worse – and yet the King County Regional Homeless Authority (KCRHA) says it is needs far more money. The KCRHA asserts in a new report that it will take $8 billion dollars in capital costs and $3.5 billion more in annual expenditures to solve the county’s homeless problem.

The last count from KCRHA shows there are 40,000 people experiencing homelessness in King County (which some experts claim is an exaggerated figure, but we will go with it for the following calculations). Thus KCRHA is demanding that taxpayers spend $287,500 per homeless individual in the first year.  And if you were to add in that KCRHA wants to spend a minimum of $3.5 billion every year for five years (a grand total of $17.5 billion), plus the initial $8 billion in capital costs, we have a grand total of $25.5 billion, or a whopping $637,500 per homeless person in the county.

While most of this money will go towards growing the size and cost of the government’s homeless bureaucracy, a significant amount of this money will end up going out the door as taxpayer-funded free benefits to those who claim to be homeless.  And as we have seen in many liberal West Coast cities over the past decade, communities which have the most lenient laws regarding homelessness, drugs, and crime, and provide the most free benefits, attract those from the around the country who want to live in such an environment. Thus the taxpayers will be forced to pay even more to support these individuals.

Another disturbing fact comes from the Seattle Times article on the KCRHA latest demand. The article states, “Local officials say that these numbers, released this week in the authority’s proposed five-year plan, are likely not far off.” Thus liberal politicians are not concerned that KCRHA wants to spend $637,500 per homeless person.  They have obviously not noticed that despite the billions taxpayers have already spent on the issue, the problem has become worse in King County. This is yet another liberal plan which will not solve the homeless problem, but it will serve the greed of liberal politicians by increasing the size and cost of government. (Seattle Times and KCRHA 2022 Point-In-Time Homeless Count)

A sharp decline in the number of students enrolled in Bellevue public schools is forcing the school district to close schools.  In 2019, there were 20,295 students enrolled in Bellevue schools.  Today that figure is down about 10%, to 18,409 students.  Some projections show this figure will drop to as low as 16,000 in the next few years.  This is due to parents seeking alternatives to public schools after the school district caved to teacher union pressure during the pandemic and kept their children in distance-learning classes where students received inadequate education. (KOMO News)

Representative Keith Goehner (R – Dryden) and Senator Curtis King (R – Yakima) introduced legislation that would allow agriculture employers to select 12 weeks a year where workers would need to exceed 50 hours of work in a week before being eligible for overtime pay.  This much-needed legislation (HB 1523 and SB 5476) could mean whether many family farms are able to continue operating.  This is in response to urban liberal Democrats, most with no experience in farming, imposing new overtime laws which next year will require farmers to pay overtime after 40 hours of work in a week, even during harvest.

During the disastrous 2021 legislative session (when Democrats passed their anti-police package, their expensive cap and trade bill, and their unconstitutional state income tax on capital gains bill, among many other bad policies), the urban Democrats passed a law which required farmers to pay overtime for those who work more than 55 hours a week in 2022, 48 hours a week in 2023, and 40 hours a week in 2024. This past year during harvest, many laborers worked less hours and thus received smaller paychecks due to the Democrats’ restrictions.  Many farmers simply hired more people to avoid paying overtime. Workers counting on their usual large paydays during harvest saw their paychecks dwindle in size.  These paychecks will continue to shrink this year and next as the number of minimum hours continue to decrease. (KPQ Radio and Washington Legislature Bill Summary)

Shift’s Newsmaker Interview was with new Republican Senator Nikki Torres who made history last November when she became the first person of Hispanic heritage to be elected to the Washington State Senate from Eastern Washington. Senator Torres represents the 15^th Legislative District including the Yakima Valley, Pasco in the Tri-Cities, and Othello in Adams County.  The former Pasco City Councilmember is a manager for Western Governors University and is the mother of two daughters and has three grandchildren.

In her interview, Senator Torres outlined her agenda for the 2023 legislative session stating that her top priority is to improve public safety by reversing many of the Democrats’ disastrous anti-police measures. The senator asserted these liberal mistakes have “put the public at greater risk, making the streets safer for criminals, hostile to law enforcement, and dangerous for our families.” She outlined her belief that the legislature should focus more on providing tax relief to help families instead of using extra tax revenues to expand state government even further.

Senator Torres also provided her views on policies urban Democrats continue to impose of Eastern Washington farmers threatening their existence. She explained her legislation designed to help our farmers by improving their access to water. (Click to read full Newsmaker Interview)

Follow-up on a story Shift reported on in yesterday’s Daily Briefing

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