Erica C. Barnett on the Slog highlights the latest smear job from Tim Eyman. His fundraising letter is about I-985, but of course there’s a shot at Proposition 1.
[Bill LaBorde has] moved on, preferring to spend his time and effort trying to get voters to approve his higher priority: the $107 billion/$60,000-per-family Proposition 1 on the Puget Sound’s fall ballot.
Sometimes you just don’t have a big enough platform to expose such an obvious lie, and this one is colossally stupid. Prop 1 would incur a 0.5% sales tax increase. Using some fourth grade math, we can see that to spend $60,000 in taxes Eyman’s average family would have to spend $12,000,000 on taxable items. I’m not sure how you come up with a set of assumptions and a time horizon that makes that remotely plausible.
The real cost is about $69 per year for the average person.
If you take $107B and divide it by the number of households I’m guessing. You’d need just under 2 million households to make the math work.
BFR,
Right, that just shows how completely bankrupt the $107B figure is in the first place.
What is up with all the lies lately? Everyone seems to be doing it…
So apparently each family has hundreds or thousands of people in it.
You don’t need to know much math to fix watches
ROFL
BFR,
Right, that just shows how completely bankrupt the $107B figure is in the first place.
Sure, but this is an obvious approach for the opponents – take the largest justifiable numerator and the smallest justifiable denominator and there you go.
Bill LaBorde has abandoned ship on his efforts to organize I-985’s opposition — he’s moved on, preferring to spend his time and effort trying to get voters to approve his higher priority: the $107 billion/$60,000-per-family Proposition 1 on the Puget Sound’s fall ballot.
Typical Eyman “copy-and-paste” job. It’s so repetitive that sometimes the computer might mistake it as spam! That message is already up there in the article. Why post it again?
the link is added to back up the paragraph above it
How odd that the calculations of $60,000 per household over 45 years was used. Why not 50 years?
By the way, divide the $60,000 by 45 years and that comes out to $1,333 per year.
Is my math correct?
Watch out! This is how the opposition killed the monorail. Once people hear a big number, no matter where it comes from, how flawed it is, or what it’s compared to, they pick it up and repeat it like a mantra and it becomes firmly fixed in people’s minds. The newspapers, television, and radio have to be dramatic to get people’s attention. Big numbers are dramatic, so the media like to use them, no matter their validity.
Tim,
Over the time horizons you specify, inflation makes even pedestrian numbers seem huge. Quoting prices in 2053 dollars is a completely senseless way to do things.
I see you’re counting the Sound Move taxes. The fact remains that the average family has to spend over $6 million to pay $60,000 in taxes — and when you put it that way, it’s clear that it’s not an onerous burden.
That’s not $6 million in income, that $6 million of spending after you take out income and payroll taxes, housing costs, purchases outside the district, and other non-taxable items.
Furthermore, by your own logic, the passage of Prop 1 only increases Sound Move collections after the Sound Move bonds are paid off, because the ST1 taxes can’t be retired until those bonds are retired.
So the ST1 tax collections over the next few decades are completely irrelevant to this ballot measure.
Why not just include the entire state sales tax? That’d be equally relevant to the ballot measure at hand, and would allow you to use some huge number that innumerate reporters won’t question.
Too bad this constant arguing will continue, now once LINK gets established, we might have to face something like this out of Chicago:
http://www.suntimes.com/news/transportation/1141622,CST-NWS-seats03.article
Now that would require that would require some mileage be added to the system. At least LINK is getting closer to completion, and wished the proponents include photos of the testing of LINK in the Ranier Valley, in their advertising. On another board, I once had an interesting question from a poster. They wondered what was that Secret Railroad(as he called it) in SODO near the old Ranier Brewery. I had to explain to him, that he had seen the LINK Light Rail Maintenance facility, and that was only tip of the iceberg that has been completed so far.
Also something added with SOUNDER-South, bring up the backhauls, the now two return trips from Seattle in the morning, and two return trips from Tacoma in the Afternoon. It will use rolling stock more effectively. I have observed SOUNDER operations over the years, especially when I have had temp jobs in SODO. The trains used to be shunted into the yard after they got into King Street Station. Now on the South Line, starting last year with the first one, the engineer just switches cabs, and the train is underway again. Before you had a one-way trip, now you get two peak-flow, and one reverse flow trip out of one train. Now that will be done with 2 trains.
8 years ago, SOUNDER only had 500 riders a day when it got started, now it is much higher. When Metro got started, public transportation ridership had declined to about 30 million riders, or around 80,000 riders a day. This year, Metro is bursting at the seems with over 400,000 riders a day, but being affected by higher fuel costs. For now, our Hydropower is cheap, and that would be used to fuel Light Rail Trains. Unfortunately, time is one thing opponents of Light Rail don’t like, or only when it suits them. Another thing missing when both SOUNDER-SOUTH and SOUNDER-NOrth opened, stations. In fact, Puyallup Station, one of the busiest, was not even finished yet when SOUNDER started. Service there got started later. Sumner was using Christmas Tree Lights for the platform lighting when it opened.
Voting for “Prop 1, the sequel” continues the previous taxes so it’s completely appropriate to calculate the total cost until the bonds are paid off. $107 billion, $60,000 per family.
And even Sound Transit admits that this massive investment will do absolutely nothing to reduce traffic congestion.
I-985’s requirement for cities and counties to synchronize their traffic lights — just that one reform — will reduce congestion 15-20% in some areas, 6-7% statewide, according to State Auditor Brian Sonntag’s performance audit report on congestion. And I-985 doesn’t require higher taxes, instead we identify taxes (vehicles sales taxes) and charges (red light camera profits) that we’re already paying and dedicate them toward this common sense reform.
$128 million per year from existing taxes that’ll bring about real reductions in traffic congestion with I-985 or $107 billion in higher taxes to not reduce congestion one bit with Son of Prop 1 — that’s the choice that voters face this November.
Actually, Tim, that’s not the choice. A frankenvoter could actually vote yes on both.
That’s completely illogical. If Prop 1 does NOT pass, residents will still be paying the Sound Move taxes until the bonds expire in 2038 or so.
So how is it that you can say that those taxes are part of the cost of Prop. 1 passing?
On another note, Mr. Eyman, what do you suggest the state cut out of its budget when money from vehicle sales taxes is diverted out of the general fund? Please name specific programs.
Tim Eyman is an immoral thief and we really need to keep a close eye on him – all these initiatives are just cash cows for him.
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20020204&slug=eyman04m0
From 2002:
“Eyman said he took $45,000 from Permanent Offense in December 2000 after running Initiative 722, the so-called “Son of 695” measure that capped property-tax increases, and Initiative 745, requiring 90 percent of all transportation spending go to road construction.
Last year, he steered more than $165,000 from his political-campaign account to a private, for-profit corporation he owns with his wife. About $7,000 of that was spent for political purposes.
Eyman said he became consumed with the heady power of running initiatives and felt the man-of-the-people angle was part of his cachet.
“It was the biggest lie of my life” that no donations had made their way into his personal bank account, Eyman told The Associated Press.
“It was addictive,” he said. “I was getting deeper and deeper and deeper into this charade. I thought I found a way to make money off our initiatives without our opponents knowing it, or knowing it for sure.
“I was too clever by half. I just got deeper and deeper into this lie.”
More, from later in 2002:
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20020406&slug=eyman06m0
Eyman admitted to investigators that he later altered a bank record relating to the transfer to cover up its timing.
Over the first weekend of February this year, as Karr e-mailed reporters about Eyman’s salary, pressure also came from his fellow initiative co-sponsors.
Eyman told Benham, according to Eyman’s sworn testimony to PDC investigators, that he had transferred the $60,000 from his personal account to the Permanent Offense, Inc. account in January 2001, which would show he had held the money only a short while after taking it at the end of 2000.
But the bank document showed the transfer in September. Eyman told investigators that rather than have Benham “questioning my credibility on the issue,” he decided to forge a phony date on the document.
He covered up the “SEP” on the bank slip and put “JAN” in its place, then photocopied the altered document and faxed it to Benham.
Tim,
I too would like to know what programs your “no new taxes” initiative will destroy.
Additionally, why are you forcing our state auditor’s recommendations down our throats? Isn’t he there to make just that: recommendations? Not to micromanage traffic planning? Don’t we have traffic planners for this kind of thing? Your definition of ‘common sense’ could very well be the enemy of progress as it will clog our traffic planning with red tape as departments all over the state will have to deal with this crap.
I will not be voting for this initiative and hope others are not mislead by its false promises.
As for rail, traffic congestion is besides the point. We’re not going to build a rail to make room for more SUVs, we are building it to RIDE IT. It’s not meant to reduce congestion tomorrow, it’s part of a future where have the choice to be free of the automobile. It’s an essential part of what will be a fast, efficient and pleasant mass transit system.
I can’t believe how badly the facts are being distorted this election cycle. From McCain and Palin all the way down to the local level.
$60,000? Sheesh, your family must make quite the haul at the weekly trip to Walmart! I wanna spend christmas at your house man!
And before you start spewing that automobiles are the beacon of American independence crap take this into account-
American oil supply has already peaked and we are becoming increasingly dependent on foreign sources such as Iraq. We are stuck in traffic, polluting the air we breath, and there is a very likely chance that our carbon emissions are a major cause of global climate change. There have even been studies that link auto-dependent lifestyles with obesity. Why are we doing this to ourselves?
If we seriously want to stand up to the dominance of the auto-centric lifestyle that is wreaking havoc on our Earth, health, and built environment, we need to make serious investments in alternative methods of transportation. We need real mass transit that gives us the choice to leave the car at home.
I am voting for a real choice this November.
Keo wrote: why are you forcing our state auditor’s recommendations down our throats?
Response: The Legislature refuses to adopt any of Auditor Sonntag’s recommendations (9 audit reports, 434 recommendations, $3.2 billion in potential tax savings — number implemented? zero). So we’re giving voters the opportunity to adopt some of those recommendations when it comes to reducing traffic congestion (clearing out accidents faster, synchronizing traffic lights, better utilizing the excess capacity in carpool lanes). It’s an opportunity to vote and doesn’t force anything — its policies will only become law if the voters approve the measure.
Unlike this year’s Prop 1 (why proponents would call their 2nd effort the same name as last year’s losing campaign is beyond me) which requires a massive $107 billion/$60,000 per family tax increase, I-985 doesn’t require citizens to pay more, instead it requires politicians to provide better use of the taxes and charges we already pay.
http://www.ReduceCongestion.org
No, taxpayers will be paying more when later on asked to patch holes in shortfalls caused by removing so much money from the general fund.
Have you asked members of the legislature why they haven’t adopted any of these recommendations? What was their response?
each report gives their reasons for ignoring the recommendations. 9 reports, 434 recommendations, and all of them are bad? that’s simply not believable. they’re not implementing because they think they’re the only game in town — voters with I-985 are about to show them that they’re not a monopoly.
Or maybe they all did just suck. Let me get this straight. You are going to pay every taxpayer 12 million dollars so that your made up numbers add up. Tim are you a moron?
for some reason the link to the $107 billion cost for Sound Transit, should Prop 1 pass, was deleted – here it is again:
http://www.bettertransport.info/pitf/taxes.htm
This number is a fabrication. See the following page to debunk this myth.
http://www.masstransitnow.org/the-myths/#costs107b