Article: The Battle for Good Government: Why I canceled my Seattle Times subscription

But Washington State voters have repeatedly rejected an income tax, and the legislature, despite a large Democratic majority and a Democratic governor, has been reluctant to antagonize voters by raising revenue. Even people who stand to benefit from progressive income tax buy into conservative anti-tax propaganda.

From "Fairer Taxes for Washington"

Since the 1930s, efforts to reform Washington's tax structure to include an income tax have had to contend with a State Supreme Court ruling designating income as property. Washington's constitution requires that property taxes be uniform on a particular class of property, regular levy rates not exceed 1%, and exemptions for personal property not exceed $15,000 per head of household. A state income tax that does not meet these restrictions requires either a constitutional amendment or a
reversal of the court decision.

Several proposals to amend the constitution and adopt a general personal income tax have been approved by the necessary two-thirds majorities of both chambers of the legislature, only to be defeated by votes of the people. [Don: so our first task is to "educate" the public about why a progressive income tax would be to their benefit, both by making making taxes fairer and by explaining how government serves them.] The most recent attempt was in 1973. Some legal scholars believe that if an income tax measure passed today without a constitutional amendment and was challenged in court, there is a good chance that the Supreme Court would reverse its earlier ruling and allow the tax to stand. Others point to rulings as recent as 1999 that suggest the Court would hold to
its earlier position.

Even without the constitutional issue, passing an income tax of any kind would likely require a super-majority vote in the state legislature and a ratifying vote of the people. Initiative 601, passed in 1993, requires a two-thirds vote of both chambers in the state legislature to raise taxes and establishes a spending limit for the state. While the initiative has been amended a number of times and the super-majority provision
was temporarily suspended in 2002 and 2005, 601's restrictions remain largely in effect.18 Initiative 960, passed in November 2007, further limits the legislature's ability to raise funds without a vote of the people. The constitutionality of I-960 has not yet been determined [presumably since its super-majority requirement contradicts the "by majority" provision of the state constitution].

Unless progressives can get the word out about who benefits and who loses when government is destroyed, we'll soon be living in a libertarian "utopia": a Somalia-like state of destitution, lawlessness, and anarchy.