Blog
Six charts that explain Washington’s budget problem
Washington’s budget problem is usually described by the majority party and other supporters of tax increases as a shortage of revenue. The evidence shows something different, as even rapid revenue growth and billions in new…
A school bell should not be a bargaining chip
On Wednesday morning, nearly 50,000 Seattle students are supposed to head back to school. Parents have arranged work schedules, child care and transportation around that promise.Whether the school bell actually rings is a…
How Bad Math Fueled a National Justice Reform Movement and Attracted Hundreds of Millions of Dollars
Since 2015, the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) model has been hailed as a transformative miracle in criminal justice reform. Promoted as a humane, evidence-based alternative to the arrest and prosecution of people…
Sound Transit proposes an expensive fix to rampant fare evasion
In the mid-1990s as the Sound Transit plan was taking shape important decisions were made that would later prove problematic. One of those decisions was to build stations without turnstiles and to rely on the honor system for…
Permanent Tax Relief Requires Limiting Government Budget Growth
"And as government spends more, taxpayers are left to pick up the tab... Permanent tax relief requires limiting the growth of government budgets." The following has been adapted from an excerpt of the Frontier…
Striking workers are now expected to seek work like others
When striking workers receive unemployment insurance benefits in Washington state, they are now expected to search for work. Imagine that! This makes perfect sense to me, and luckily it does to the feds, too. The United…
New York’s Health Premiums Stayed at the Top in 2025
New Yorkers and their employers paid the highest health premiums in the lower 48 states in 2025, and their costs moved further above the U.S. average, according to recently released federal data. The most striking trend was…
Washingtonians are voting with the moving truck
Legislators in Olympia still talk as if Washington is a magnet for business and new residents. The latest moving data says something more uncomfortable: Americans who already live here are looking for the exits, and they are…
NY’s Medicaid Fraud Watchdog Shows Declining Performance
Enforcement by the New York’s Office of Medicaid Inspector General has dropped in recent years across a range of benchmarks – a sign that the state’s anti-fraud efforts have slackened even as its Medicaid spending soared. A…
Wishing away Washington’s economic engines is policy malpractice
Danny Westneat’s recent Seattle Times column calls out Washington’s “No. 1” ranking for corporate tax breaks, fixating on Microsoft’s $18.7 billion federal income-tax reduction and Amazon’s $17.4 billion figure as evidence of…
TRENDING
