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WA Cares is a regressive tax, hurting low-income workers
"For all the talk about Washington state’s unfair regressive sales tax, this also is a regressive tax," writes the editorial board at the Tri-City Herald. "Think about it. Every worker is supposed to pay into the program, but people living paycheck to paycheck can least afford to take the deductions. And it may very well be that their contributions help buoy a system that provides benefits to others but not to them."
Bingo. Pay attention to this opinion. The editorial board gets it. The regressivity within this state-imposed program is one of the easiest reasons to be against the 2019 long-term-care law containing a tax that begins in July. The payroll tax will take 58 cents of every $100 a W-2 worker in Washington state makes.
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Part of WOTUS struck down in victory for private property owners
In a victory for private property owners throughout the United States, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the “significant nexus” test in its Sackett v EPA ruling.
The ruling changes how “waters of the United States” (WOTUS) can be applied by leaving wetlands that are not directly flowing into “rivers, lakes, and other bodies of water that flow across or form a part of State boundaries” out of consideration as WOTUS.
The “significant nexus” test was established in Rapanos v United States. The “significant nexus” test defined “waters of the United States” in broader terms: “… waters that, either alone or in combination with similarly situated waters in the region, significantly affect the chemical, physical, or biological integrity of traditional navigable waters, the territorial seas, or interstate waters …”
Read the entire blogDepartment of Ecology faces another "regrettable" decision on fire-retardant compounds
Once again, Washington state is considering a ban on flame-retardant compounds used in computer casings and other electronics. These fire-safety components would now be restricted by the Washington State Department of Ecology. And once again, the compounds that might be banned are the replacements for other chemical compounds that lawmakers had banned earlier. And the proposed replacements for the current compounds have their own environmental concerns and are in fact themselves banned in other states.
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