First, we really need to work on educating people on the absolute dysfunction caused by Tim Eyman's 2/3rds majority nonsense. People, POOR people, voted for that. Why!?

Did the legislature grow a spine and approve the yacht/aircraft luxury taxes? I know there was some gesturing in that direction. Not sure if it was serious.

Speaking of that, car tabs should be progressive. A Hummer limo should get the maximum amount.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Sin tax on junk food.

Also I'd be happy to pay taxes on marijuana.

Rich people. I don't smoke anymore so I'll be an asshole and say cigarettes as well. Prices should start at $10/pack.
Sugar. Including corn syrup. but not maple syrup. Tax the shitout of candy and soda. I know we tried. Try again.

Gas, in respect to its increasing scarcity, but that's not a WA-only problem.

Car tabs are artificially low, with the benefits skewed towards wealthy car owners and public transit taking it in the shorts. Anyone remember I-695?

And what Protosaurus said x 1,000.

The income of people making more than around 200k a year, capital gains, and B&O.

Nevada
or
Texas

I almost hate to bring it up, but the whole aspect of internet sales of goods circumvents collection of sales taxes that support local infrastructure and public services. I do purchase things over the internet but I do not do what many people do, which is go to local stores and physically look at goods and then run home and order it online. Some online businesses collect sales taxes and of course if the source of the online business is located in this state you will pay it (example: Amazon).

Many would bring up the aspect of sales taxes as being a regressive means of collecting funds as all people have to shop for goods regardless of their level of income. I wonder however how much local businesses would benefit if just the aspect of having an even tax structure on sales existed (no matter what the source - local or shipped from out of state). How many billions of dollars a year of sales in this country are spent this way. I dare say that our current sales tax levels would not be as high as they are now if that revenue stream had not been avoided by shopping long distance through our computers.

It is less expensive than Wasatch Valley (Utah).

google produced this result: http://205.254.135.7/electricity/state/

I grew up in coastal Florida in a concrete block house (cypress beamed high shed slant roof design) my father had built in the mid 50's when the whole family moved from New England. All through my years growing up we had no air conditioning and the house was mostly comfortable. With nothing but empty space between us and the beach (about 800 feet) there was a sea breeze that moved right through the house by 9 am and we had ceiling fans in almost every room (high ceilings). Sheets hung out on the outside clothes line on laundry day flapped away in the moving air like horizontal flags. In winter time we had a centrally located kerosene (#2 oil) furnace that pumped hot air into the house. During the energy crisis times of the 70's there were local newspaper articles about how my mother got her energy use down to under 24 KWH/day. Later when homes were built between us and the ocean (blocking the air flow) my father had a central air system installed and gone were the days of low energy use (although they were always ones to have the thermostat set for maximum savings). In that part of the country the best comfort effect of AC was to pull the high moisture out of the air.

I seem to remember the cost per KWH was in the 10-11 cent range (depending on amount used). Electricity down there was supplied by large oil burning power plants. The costs were lower when I lived in southern Maine by a a couple of cents and always shot up in cost for a period whenever they took the Maine Yankee nuclear plant offline for maintenance.

It is interesting to me to live in another climate (here) where houses have been built (this one in the 80's) with no central air handling systems. We have gone from electric baseboard to changing out a corner fireplace for a pellet stove, to ultimately replacing that with a freestanding gas stove and using some small heaters upstairs. Each change of type of energy or appliance use has its tradeoffs in savings, comfort, cleanliness, and bother. As energy efficiency in homes, appliances and lighting improves - energy use can go down. The move over the last few decades to huge interior space homes has worked counter to that maxim, but somewhere along the line, hopefully, we will learn to strike a balance.

One of the rings to comparing costs is if the other cities are places that require ac. My summer bills in Philly were around 300 bucks for a 3 br apt ( did have a roomate who left her damn window box on all the time. My bills here for a 2 br house here are 50 in the summer. Winter in Philly 100 bucks. Winter here about 150. Heat in Philly was gas so that bill was higher but I can't remember it and we wore alot of sweaters, heat here is electric hence the jump.

just saw a chart in this blog post that reminded me of this here question
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/01/the-economics-of-snow.html

They could be smarter about it when I lived in Philly not only did they ajce a ton of plows but the garbage and recycling trucks had snowplows additions they would add so they got that city's roads cleared quick. The main plows would do the thoroughfares and the garbage got the side streets AND picked up the trash. There were also alot of non-city owned plows that could be rented for places that weren't in the city center. It was amazing that theyd get a foot of snow but it was all plowed out of the streets in a few hours ( but trying to park with a wall of three foot snow was a bitch. People would put folding chairs in their "spot" that they had dug up. ) another thing that was kind of mind blowing is the night before everyone would pull up their windshield wipers so they looked like antena sticking out of the windshield but the next morning they weren't iced to the window. Just scrape away without bumping into them and slam them back down and go. But if you've never seen it before it looks really funny and you think the city has done some sort of mass prank until you see how quickly those people get back to work and just go. It's amazing to me being back and seeing the city shut down vs cities where it's just another day in winter. I hate driving in snow here because no one on the roads knows what they're doing and it's way scarier watching out for them

I thought this was an interesting statistic:

"193 plows are on the road between Olympia and the Canadian border."

from: http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/construction/2011/today.htm

That doesn't seem like very many. The population in that area is what, 6-7mil?

Anyway, I don't have any links or resources off of the top of my head, but Wasatch Valley (where Salt Lake City is) is of comparable size to the SeaTac area (though much less hilly), and I bet you can find out how many plows they have without much trouble. Growing up there, I can say the response is night-and-day different. In SLC snow is no big deal, it just gets plowed (and shoveled) away. The only time you don't really want to drive is during the worst of the actual storm itself. We had snow days less than once a year and I'd guess at least 12-24 inches would have to fall in 24 hours (and stick) before anyone even questions shutting stuff down.

Nope.
http://www.seattle.gov/util/

I would assume not. Even the roads that normally get driven off yet aren't yet. I would assume it would be delayed the same way it is on holidays. They don't have snow plow attachments on the garbage trucks like they do on th east coast so it's not doing double duty

The idea is well outside the original intention of the postal service as defined in the Constitution (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 7) "to establish post offices and post roads". It holds a unique position in being that government agency charged with handling and delivering general physical mail in the US. It has the ability to make decisions on how other private concerns may offer competing services (hence the package delivery services, FedEX and UPS, etc.).

Although it did own and operate the first telegraph transmission lines in the east, those services were eventually privatized. In this new idea of service it would be in direct competition with other private companies and therefore would not offer a unique service and only muddle up governmental intrusion in the current commerce market for such internet services.

This Reuters blog lays out fairly simply the current state and mentions the one other use that post offices around the world participate in, financial services.

How to solve the Post Office’s problems

In this instance, I think you should follow Luckier's answer and retain (hire) a qualified attorney.

This case sounds like the State has acted negligently and maliciously, and your best recourse may be threatening (or engaging in) legal action. A qualified attorney is the person you need to speak with to figure this out.

In general, Chloe Barker is right, the State Ethics Commission is a good resource to contact when a state employee is misbehaving. The Washington State Attorney General's office is also an excellent resource when state agencies are in dereliction of duty. But in this case, I think it would be unwise to contact either of those offices as your case sounds like it's so messed up that you might need to sue the state.

Get a lawyer. What Luckier said.

Cities and States have Ethics and Elections groups for just such occassions. For Washington State, I would start here: http://www.ethics.wa.gov/RESOURCES/FAQ.htm

Hope that helps!

May be time to get a worker's compensation attorney. If you're in King County, call the King County Bar Association (www.kcba.org) for a lawyer referral, or look online.