Subduction Zone Blog

Oregon’s Proposed Mileage Tax

As some of you may remember Oregon is planning to evaluate a proposal to replace their gasoline sales tax with a per mile assessment. For residents they contemplate equipping each vehicle with a GPS system and have special readers at gas stations that will add your mileage assesment to your refill bill. Out of staters would continue to pay a gas tax at the pump as they do today. The privacy issues and the cost to implement and administer should stop this dead in its tracks. But governments are driven to maximize their revenue so unless plenty of folks step...

516 Bills?

Washington’s current governor is pretty excited: I just finished signing 516 bills passed by the Legislature, a new record. 516 bills?? A record?? This is something to be proud of? Did she veto anything besides the tobacco reallocation? Did any of these bills remove old, obsolete or inappropriate laws from the books? Sorry, I’m just having a little trouble visualizing how 516 new laws is a good thing. I could be wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time. So, from time to time over the next couple years I’ll pull one up and we can evaluate it together. Via Josef...

Who Is the Seattle City Council Protecting?

The Binary Circumstance suggests that there may be more than “protecting the community” to Seattle’s strip club moratorium: Locally it has been suggested that the real purpose of the moratorium has been to insure that existing strip clubs don’t lose their monopoly on the market Well Kauf von Bactrim online , sure, monopolies are the natural result of any government imposed restriction on entry whether it is stip clubs, hospitals, lawyers, pharaceuticals, or….well, the list is near endless.

Port Commission Wants to Harm Local Business

Over at Columbia Watch Stilwell notes: I suppose the local GOP will rise up in outrage at this socialized-business approach. Shouldn’t the free market provide all the port development we need? Oh, right. Republicans only oppose taxes when they can make political hay out of it, not when their buddies are proposing them. He’s right. It is quite wrong to conflate republicans with free market economics. With regard to the Port Commission’s desire to raise $60.1 via taxes: well Buy Clomid Without Prescription , just say no. The local businesses should be up in arms about this as it is...

No Seattle School Closures

For now: Seattle Public Schools Superintendent Raj Manhas apparently has changed his mind about closing 10 schools under a school-restructuring plan to save money. Sure there was a lot of backlash against his proposals. However, given shifts in demographics and a clear need to move beyond the long failed factory school system it is hard to visualize a scenario that does not include the closures that are becoming increasingly common across the US: The number of California public schools closing more than quadrupled in 2003 from the prior year, with most in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area...

Pike Place Market

The Agitator has a nice photo essay about the Pike Place Market . 2pharmaceuticals.com