Much of the above video is SFWO (safe for wonks only), although it does feature some very excited braying—starting at 46:25—from Tim Eyman about "the ugly politics of envy, resentment, and class warfare.”

It all comes from a hearing yesterday before the House Ways and Means Committee, a meeting that was essentially a rest stop along the long death march for a number of Democratic bills that seek to fix our state's structural revenue deficit (aka our broken, regressive tax policy).

At the hearing, Rep. Laurie Jinkins (D-23) talked—starting at 37:40—about her bill to institute a capital gains tax in Washington State. She called the move "more adequate and more fair" than our present over-reliance on a regressive sales tax. The Washington State Budget and Policy Center agrees, calling Jinkins' bill "a bold way to promote job creation, long-term economic growth, and a prosperous future for all Washingtonians." And 42 other states already tax capital gains. Problem is that thanks to Tim Eyman, this bill needs a 2/3 majority of both houses to pass—so it's not going anywhere this year.

Rep. Reuven Carlyle (D-36) then spoke in favor of his bill to create expiration dates for most of the state's "567 or so" tax loopholes. “This is a very easy bill to kill, and we all know that," Carlyle admitted at the outset. "So let’s just have a real conversation. What this is really about is one philosophical idea, of consistency.” His point: If the legislature is so interested in reviewing the effectiveness of the various programs it funds, then it should be doing the same for all the tax loopholes it has implemented over the years, which now collectively cost the state over $6 billion annually. The problem: Eyman's 2/3 majority requirement, which, Carlyle ruefully noted, creates a situation in which it only takes a majority of legislators to pass a tax loophole (since creating a loophole is seen as a tax decrease) but it takes 2/3 of legislators to end a loophole (since ending a loophole is seen as a tax increase).

And finally, and probably slightly less doomed than the others: A bill to close a tax loophole that benefits Wall Street banks. This one was put forward by none other than Rep. Richard DeBolt (R-20), but at about 2:05:00 you'll hear Eyman calling the Republican-backed bill, which would save the state $1.8 million annually, "very unseemly."

Why?

"The fact that we're just throwing [Wall Street bankers] under the bus because they happen to be unpopular right now."