I hope the Orca continue to fuck shit up until Totikae is sent back. Orca terrorism!

If the capital gains tax is collecting more than expected it would be interesting so know why that is. Is it that more than an expected number of people are cashing in stocks in a down market so there is more activity or is it that more people than intended have somehow been caught up in it? And for the record collecting additional taxes has nothing to do with the regressive nature of WA's tax system since the legislature has done absolutely nothing to offset the other taxes.

@7: "There is an easy way of avoiding capital gains with stocks."

Oh really? Do tell.

@8 Agreed. If @7 has a viable tax avoidance scheme, I'd love to see it.

@5
Don’t worry about what they do with the tax dollars. You can trust your elected leaders to do what is in their best interest… your best interest I mean.

@8 I think @7 is referring to the age-old tactic of losing money on them.

That video about the formerly paralyzed man is amazing! I would imagine that his lower extremity muscles are so atrophied after 12 years of inactivity that they are preventing him from walking with more certainty, so hopefully, they are doing something to help restore some of that lost strength. Very exciting in any case!

As to the Texas school only graduating 5 of 33 seniors, I would have thought that was a typical rate of graduation for all Texas high schools. It may even be higher than normal! Having lived in Texas most of my adult life, no new low bar that they drop down to in any social category surprises me.

"Justified" police killings are just code for "uppity BIPOCs".

They only count white people killed as "unjustified".

Check the stats.

You'll see it's true.

oh and @7 is correct. frequently it's due to a divorce

@10 - The liability is still there. In that sense offset can be avoidance, but not not easy for those who don't play the market and just want to sell shares at market value to buy a car or put a down payment on a house.

@13
They could do what schools in Washington and Oregon did and simply lower the standards or decide not to enforce the guidelines at all.

@16, 6: Hence, we can now vote against property tax levies with no guilt.

@7 I seriously doubt there are many day traders hitting the threshold for the cap gains tax so your assumption about being from sale of land might be closer to the truth. I'd still like to know because if it turns out they are taxing the sale of land or a business and these people are not the 1% we were told this tax is targeting than they once again lied to us about the intended impacts. Further if its a bunch of one time transactions due to people leaving the state etc than the revenue is not going to hold up either. I'm sure there will be an analysis of this by someone once the data is available and it will be interesting to see.

Let's be clear: Under the oversight of First Black President, Inc. and the Democrats, Seattle Police killed MORE black people than before oversight. A vote for the Democrats is a bullet in the gun of a racist cop. And black folks can only smugly whine about white people. I'm so fucking sick hearing black people whine about racism while eagerly voting for a party that actively arms and funds the very racist police who keep killing them.

Geez, and I was complaining about the fat guy sitting next to me in the aisle seat on yesterday’s flight!

That Texas high school isn't unusual for having so many seniors who don't meet minimum standards to graduate, it's unusual for not just graduating illiterate seniors anyway.

@16: All of the funds collected from the capital gains tax will be spent on education and educational infrastructure. Hopefully there will be many new educational programs, because we should always innovate in educating children.

Your larger point holds: no amount of “pity the hardworking but poor taxpayer!” rhetoric will ever lead to any reduction in taxes on poor persons. Reduction in regressive taxation means increasing the amount of money paid by higher-income taxpayers. While that’s a good thing overall, it means never any help for poorer taxpayers, no matter what is said to justify higher taxes generally.

Well shit, the d13 refugee & I are on record as despising anything relating to funding for education & education infrastructure, so that'll be a hard no from us!

@18: Depends on the size of the portfolio whether retirement is risked. Cars were never an investment (except collectables and classics), as they depreciate immediately. Selling shares for a down payment to at least get the loan size down enough for an easier monthly payment seems prudent.

@27: I hope auntie has her sarcasm detector working.

Indiana's attorney general filed a complaint against the doctor in question, but the fine was imposed by the state medical board, for supposedly violating confidentiality of the 10-year-old rape victim, even though the doctor was careful in discussing the case with a reporter and did not give out any identifying information about the child. This is part of the relentless campaign to intimidate doctors and take abortions back to the back alleys.

@30: Upholding the anti-choice view requires strict and universal censorship of all accurate information concerning abortion, the human reproductive system, rape culture, and pretty much any other real-world reason abortions happen.

@16 -- The money will go to education. The state is legally obligated to fund education. As of right now, we are once again underfunding education, setting ourselves up for a big lawsuit (for the third time). Thus it is in fact, lowering taxes, as that money would have to come from somewhere.

@1 Max Solomon for the WIN!! GO, orcas!!

YAAY on capital gains taxes bringing a surplus to our public schools! It's nice to get some good news.
Here's hoping this brings back the music and arts programs, and teachers and staff finally get paid what they deserve.

@2 AM: Ouch! I'm sorry to hear about your bad cruise experiences. I have heard and read nothing but horror stories about cruise liners. No "Love Boat". They sound like floating Petri dishes.

@34: Indeed, that includes your adversaries.

@33: The problem, as @6 and @16 already noted, is that some of the money was to be used to make Washington’s tax system less regressive:

“Democrats have said the money from those funds would be used to fund child care and reducing some taxes on low income earners and the middle-class.”

(https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2021/03/06/55655944/washington-senate-finally-passes-capital-gains-tax)

Playing bait and switch with taxpayers and voters is a nasty game, which could later create a serious backlash. It’s especially true here, because there’s really no upper limit on the amount of money we could reasonably invest in our children’s education. Therefore we can always justify spending 100% of the capital gains tax on education, but some of this money was promised to lower taxes in the poor.

I really don’t understand how lying to the voters, even when in the service of more education funding, can be considered a good idea.

@38 when has there ever been any consequences from voters for their actions? They over inflate car values for sound transit, they a pass terrible program as that no one asked for or wants (WA Cares), they force home health care workers to join unions against their will, they reduce public safety and education in the name of equity and voters keep returning them to office time and again. When you have one party rule as we have had for so long eventually that party feels emboldened to do whatever they want as long as then tell the public it’s for our own good. It’s sad.

Happy Birthday Henry Kissinger. 100 years old today.

@39: Heck, the first person for whom I ever voted was the liberal, Northeastern Republican who represented our district in Congress. She was pro-choice, believed in reasonable taxes for education, roads, and national defense, and that government should not care if your partner was your gender or not. She eventually lost a primary to a Bible-banging nut case. I’d vote for her again if I could, as I would have voted for Davison had I still lived in Seattle.

Other than her, modern-day Republicans are crazy fanatically anti-choice*, anti-TG if not totally anti-LGBTQ*, and spend like syphilitic sailors on unproductive programs. Seattle’s Alternative is Socialist, a secretive political cult which exists to plot worldwide revolution. So you’re stuck in a one-party state. You have my sympathy.

*Value is exclusively for public consumption. In private, Your Milage May Vary. By quite a lot.

@41 it’s true. Republicans are a non factor statewide in WA and have been for some time. Despite Dems being ripe for opposition they just shoot themsleves in the foot. The battle for WA comes down to pragmatic Dems like Mark Mullet and Hillary Franz vs urbanist/socialist/progressives like Nicole Macri and Bob Ferguson. We’ve seen some signs voters are rejecting the latter which also enables the Dems to push back without fear of being primaried. Hopefully that trend continues in Nov. We’ll see soon.

@40
Christ, what an asshole.
(you can choose whom I'm referring to here).

@43 "Sir" Toby...
My sister had her wedding on an Alaskan cruise thingy. I had to go if I was going to participate. And yeah, I wanted to be there for my sister. Not my choice, exactly, but there you go.
Glad I did it. Won't do another. My rule is I won't be a part of any siblings second weddings. Did it once, I don't need to do it again. So far, only have had to blow off one 2nd time, so good on my other sibs.

Here's Why The LGB Is Different From The TQ+
https://youtu.be/unhacmEXj58

@42 - the choices among the different Dem factions in WA are not all that unlike the Dem/Repub choice from before the GOP went into Insane Nazi Posse mode. Conservative Dems like Mullet are pretty much where the sane Republicans used to be.

@33 -We have been under-funding education in the state's poorer counties for decades. For the most part, those who live in rural areas and work as hard as they can to keep the state from raising enough money to pay for the services they want can go straight to Hell (they are kinda like our local version of Red states). But their kids shouldn't get screwed for it. The State is under a constitutional and court-ordered obligation to provide a decent education even in Loren Culp-land, and the new capital gains tax will keep some of that burden from falling on middle- and lower-class taxpayers in general. That will in fact make the system somewhat less regressive.

@46 dvs99: +1 I really love reading your comments. Thank you and bless you for being so consistently spot on.