The Editor:
The current legislature is a circus of minions. It’s a spectacle, a grand illusion designed to distract and deceive.
We are snowed with hollow promises and superficial gestures. While our children are dying of overdoses, the minions are festering the largest tax increase in history according to the Washington State House Republican caucus, and leaving drug dealers on the street, failing to make hard drugs a felony, and then telling you how they are fighting for you. Please.
Meanwhile, our infrastructure crumbles, roads are filled with potholes, and bridges are on the verge of collapse, yet the minions divert funds to pet projects that serve no one but themselves (yet the unions are okay with that). They inflate the budget with unnecessary expenditures, masked under the guise of compassion. This manipulative tactic not only misleads the public but also diverts crucial funds from genuinely impactful initiatives. Small businesses are being strangled by red tape and excessive regulation, unable to thrive in a competitive market.
Closing needed facilities for the most vulnerable and crying that there isn’t any affordable housing (subsidized) wherein the minions are the greatest barrier to housing. Building permits are taking months and years to approve. There is no legislation to put felons in prison or make hard drugs a felony. But law-abiding citizens are the gun problem? When almost 70 percent of those arrested for firearm charges are re-arrested within eight years of release, according to a 2021 U.S. Sentencing Commission report.Now they cry when they need to overspend by $12 billion, or the sky will fall. There is no shortfall. The real world would say “no” you don’t have the money – what you’re doing is making up things for the taxpayers to pay for that they neither need nor want. Crying that the children and homeless will suffer is a blatant mistruth.
The tax bill is coming, you’ll not escape. Renters are in for a shock.
Raymond Pelletti
Blaine
(Ed. Note: The “Blake Fix,” SB 5536 passed in 2023 after the state Supreme Court struck down the state’s felony drug possession statute, made possession of controlled substances a gross misdemeanor; possession with intent to deliver controlled substances is considered a Class B felony punishable by up to 10 years’ imprisonment and a $25,000 fine. Numerous sources indicate that Washington state faces a projected budget shortfall of approximately $12-16 billion over the next four years. The proposed budget included both spending cuts and tax increases to address the shortfall. WSDOT has estimated that it would take $14.8 billion over the next decade to achieve “minimally acceptable condition,” which is defined as planned repairs that extend the life of an asset, twice the current rate of expenditure.)
The Editor:
Hey Mawga,
How you doin? How’s that 401(k) today? Have you checked to see if all of your relatives are safe? Cuz I know there’s an off-white hue in there somewhere. Just sayin’.
Still flyin’ that VA bumper sticker? The one right next to the NRA sticker that is next to the “my kid’s an honor student” sticker? Our courageous and strong, now tragically wounded veterans can no longer take a van, that used to be provided to them for transport to a VA hospital after they tried calling the now disconnected VA Suicide Hotline.
And, while you throw your half-eaten $20 burger in the trash, our kids will no longer have lunch vouchers to eat, quite possibly, the only meal they will get today cuz their parents don’t work for refineries.
And have you considered how you’re going to pay for care for your aging parents who can no longer rely on Medicaid? Surely not with that 401(k), right? But there is light at the end of the Gilead Tunnel. Whew. You can now get paid $5,000 to have a child. But, be careful ladies of gold, if you took your husband’s name when you got married, you’re gonna have to work out how to vote for him again in his proposed illegal third term.
Fly that flag high cuz his “balls” are rollin’ downhill faster than you can run after them screaming, “Just give him a chance.” No, but really, how you doin’ Mawga? Bet a billion bucks you checked on your 401(k) this morning.
Carolyn Childress
Blaine
