I agree with Washington state Sen. John Braun of the 20th Legislative District in his Nov. 9 op-ed. “Let's go to work!”
Braun has been allowed more than ample space on the opinion pages of The Chronicle to convince the voters to vote yes on all four initiatives on the ballot of the Nov. 5 general election. There is another side to the initiatives than those of Braun.
Take Initiative 2124 to start.
Who isn't going to need long-term health care? A few fortunate folks can afford it but many more can't afford private long-term health care. It seems ironic to me that Braun would prefer the current system. The majority of the folks needing care consistently are being paid for by the taxpayers.
Unfortunately, health care needs to rise to 58 cents per $100 of contributions, which seems like a wise start for a program designed to allow folks to pay into their own health care plan. The center of the broad concerns always seems to be for the saving of the constituents’ hard-earned money, and his plan is the opposite.
He talks of serving the taxpayers, saving the taxpayers money, but not implementing a long-term health care plan that will save the citizens of the state millions of dollars over time.
Regarding Initiative 2109, if passed it would have made approximately 4,000 well-to-do citizens of this state exempt from paying approximately 7% capital gains tax on sales of bonds, stock, etc., of profit over $262,000.
It excludes revenue from real estate plus retirement accounts. Up to $500 million of this tax goes to schools, early learning and child development programs. By approximately 63% to 36%, Washington voters said no to Initiative 2109.
In all of Braun’s op-eds, he never mentioned anything about a millionaire funding the four initiative bills.
The millionaire (Brian Heywood) paid for hundreds of signature gatherers to sometimes misrepresent the intent of the initiatives to voters, entering and exiting many places of business in the state. He only mentioned the well-to-do financing of the “vote no” campaigns on the initiatives.
So please, when given more than ample space to write, try doing a more well-rounded version of what's going on in this state.
Braun also was in favor of Initiative 2117, the cap and tax bill. The intended design was to curb carbon emissions over time.
If we don't think of ways and try to do some emission control soon, then what amount of money will be spent on the warming-caused tragedies all over the world?
And health care costs on top of the catastrophic events.
Again, Braun needs to tell more than one side of the story.
Brian S. Dow
Centralia
