If you haven’t been paying attention to Supreme Court decisions in our state lately, you have been missing some big stuff.
In the past two years, the court has struck down the extremely popular two-thirds vote requirement to raise taxes, killed charter schools (until the Legislature saved them), and started fining the taxpayers of Washington $100,000 a day as part of their McCleary orders.
Although these three bad decisions don’t appear to have anything in common, one thing stands out – each decision directly benefits the Washington Education Association (teachers’ union) which is their largest political donor. In some way, the Washington Supreme Court is the best court union money can buy.
But if you read two of the three decisions you must confront an intellectual paradox created by the court. Simply put, the Court leaves us with the question “Who is allowed to ‘blackmail’ the state Legislature?”
When the Court struck down the citizen approved law demanding the Legislature reinstate the two-thirds rule to raise taxes or lower the sales tax by 1 cent, the Court said that the people were blackmailing the Legislature.
Chief Justice Madsen wrote for the Court:
“The state argues that section 3 of Initiative 1366 does not violate article XXIII because the Legislature would still have to go through the processes outlined in article XXIII.”
Whether true or not, this argument fails to appreciate the “do this or else” structure of the initiative. If the Legislature does not propose the amendment, it will be faced with a $1.4 billion-per-year loss in revenue.
The uber-liberal advocates at The Cascade Advocate applauded the decision crowing, “Our Supreme Court has now unambiguously declared that schemes that attempt to use the initiative power to blackmail the Legislature into invoking its power to propose constitutional amendments are themselves unconstitutional.”
But now let’s turn to the behavior of the Supreme Court itself. For the past five years the Court has been essentially blackmailing the Legislature and the citizens of Washington into adopting an income tax.
The series of McCleary orders have demanded upwards of $12 billion dollars in new tax revenue (this number fluctuates based on assumptions and the erratic nature of the Court’s rulings). The Court, and anyone else with a functional understanding of how a calculator works, knows that one of the only ways to raise that much money is to impose an income tax or a series of other draconian tax increases.
Let’s be clear. The Court has not asked for billions of dollars in new taxes. They are blackmailing the citizens of Washington and the Legislature to get it. They have imposed contempt orders and threatened to eliminate all job-creating tax incentives in the state. This month it went further.
The Court is now considering the possibility of closing down all public schools if they don’t get their income tax. Stop and consider that for a moment. The Court is telling parents “If you don’t vote for an income tax, we won’t let you send your kids to school.”
That is blackmail. Plain and simple.
So, once again we see the hypocrisy of government. What you and I are not allowed to do, they allow themselves to do.
Rep. Matt Manweller is a Republican serving Ellensburg.
