I'm kind of puzzled. In a front page article, in the Sunday Seattle Times, 01-30-2000, there are differing opinions about property tax relief.

According to Rep. Dunshee, he's puzzled, at all the fuss over property taxes. Recent polls don't indicate homeowners begging for a break, (I wonder who they polled).

Anyway, according to most of the liberals who participate in these discussions, they tell us that we are wrong using the initiative process to do what our elected officals refuse to do as we are now doing the job they are suppose to do, so why have elected officals in the first place? Fair enough.

But if we give the politicans the opportunity to lower taxes without the threat of an initiative, they tell us no one is making a "fuss" and they seem to continue business as usual. It just seems to me we are damned if we do and damned if we don't.

Now we can always follow our liberal friends suggestion of communicating with our local representatives, which I do, but we never seem to get much of a response when the issue comes to US keeping OUR money out of THERE hands. Now I must admit, the Republicans are almost as bad as the Democrats when it comes to saving the taxpayers some money in the form of tax relief.

In my view, the Republicans know the Democrats will never go along with tax cuts, so they, (the Republicans) can purpose all kinds of wild tax relief, knowing it won't go anywhere and feel safe that they will still have the money to waste and then they blame the Democrats.

Does this appear apparent to anyone else?

-- Wayne A. (wga1943@yahoo.com), January 30, 2000

Answers

Yes Wayne, though that is more of a local problem than a national problem. Washington State Republican's are really just kind of Democrat-lite. Rather than take the initiative to reverse some of the problems that have been caused by creeping Liberalism/Socialism, they tend to say, "Vote for me, and we'll continue to lose the battle to big government, but we'll lose SLOWER than if you vote for the other guy." That's why you get suck pro big government Republicans as Slade Gordon (saviour of the national endowment for the arts) and Doug Sutherland (maestro of the LINK-T amusement ride).

And I really do believe the only thing that will change this is more challenges from the Libertarians or other candidates to the right of the Republican. Short term, the Republicans will LOSE races they shouldn't due to the conservative vote being split. Long term, you'd hope they'd get the message. But even if they don't if given working majorities in both houses and the governorship, the Democrats will quickly move so far and fast to the Left that there will be another voter backlash to cause more initiatives. Maybe this is the only realistic way of controlling big government, until we get a true choice in this state. Currently the two parties in Washington state are Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dumber, with little to recommend one over the other, IMHO.

-- Craig Carson (craigcar@crosswinds.net), January 30, 2000.

to Wayne: It seems the Democrats really painted themselves into a corner, because during the debate for I-695, they said we couldn't afford to drop the cost of license tabs. So, how can we now afford to help out homeowners?

Likewise, the Republicans want to help out their road construction buddies and the oil companies (the oil companies were some of the big contributors against I-695), and the last thing they want to do is give you back YOUR money, because it's really THEIR money. Just trust them.

The beauty of the initiative process is we'll know where are fellow Washingtonians stand. Even if the courts throw out the results of the election, the voters will have blazed a path for others to follow.

-- Matthew M. Warren (mattinsky@msn.com), January 31, 2000.