I was born in Yakima in 1948. At that time, Yakima was a small town, much like Centralia is today. We lived at the end of a dirt road.
Our next-door neighbors were an orchard on one side and my best friend’s family on the other. We roamed all around without concern. Life was good, and that’s where we lived until I was 11. We moved to Edmonds, and I lived there until I joined the Army, but Washington was always home, even for the 22 years I spent in the military.
During much of that time, Washington was a conservative state. Politically, it shifted back and forth but always remained more or less in the middle. The state was mainly an agricultural state plus the military and Boeing.
I remember in 1966 when Boeing lost the SST program, there was a sign in south Seattle that said, “Would the last person leaving Seattle please turn out the lights.” Things were grim. Then Boeing picked up and computers arrived with technology and software, and Seattle exploded. At the same time, California started slowing down some and people moved here from there with lots of cash, putting pressure on house prices and the housing boom exploded.
People from California tended to be very liberal, and slowly the political scene began to become more and more liberal.
In the 80s, the Democrats took over, and they haven’t looked back since.
Unfortunately, they’ve been tax-and-spend Democrats and have become more and more liberal in their policies and taxing schemes. In order to curb that somewhat, an initiative passed that limited property tax increases to 1% per year.
But then a law passed requiring assessors to assess property at “fair market value” — a nebulous term like “assault weapon” — and that basically eliminated the 1% law. My property taxes have more than doubled in the seven years I’ve lived here — approximately 10%-20% every year.
Many years, we have a forecasted budget surplus in this state because our economy has been robust. Our lawmakers have a choice with a surplus since our state is required to have a balanced budget.
They can either return that surplus to the citizens that created it with their tax dollars, or spend it on bigger programs, new programs, pet projects, pork projects and whatever their hearts desire.
But what happens when that surplus doesn’t materialize like the current budget deficit? The Democrats come up with more and bigger taxes, including property tax increases, tolls on roads, higher gas taxes, higher capital gains taxes, etc., to balance the bloated budget.
The Republicans came up with a budget that doesn’t require new taxes and doesn’t cut programs. Anybody heard of that proposal? Nope. The cherry on top are the new and recent attacks on the Second Amendment — in reality, political theater.
Criminals don’t care about laws.
Given all of this, we’ve decided to move to a red state, sadly leaving friends and family.
Bruce Peterson
Centralia
