http://kittitascountydemocrats.org/

Kittitas County Democrats, Ellensburg, WA (2026)

06/02/2026

🗓️ Day 6: Decline to Sign IP 26-645!

The progress we made with the Millionaires’ Tax is under direct attack. 🚨 The state's wealthiest special interests are already pouring millions into a campaign to kill these middle-class tax credits and small business reliefs before they even fully take effect.

Paid signature gatherers are currently hitting local supermarket doors, post offices, and community spaces right here in Kittitas County trying to advance Initiative 26-645 (IP 26-645). Their goal? Permanently repeal the Millionaires' Tax and completely ban future high-earner tax brackets. 📉

If they succeed, the tax burden slips right back down onto the middle class, and funding for our schools, communities, and local tax credits disappears. 🛑

Your Call to Action: DECLINE TO SIGN. Organizers have a tight window until July 2nd to gather 309,000 signatures to force this onto the November ballot. If a petitioner approaches you at a local storefront or festival, politely say no. Keep your pen in your pocket and protect a balanced tax code that supports Kittitas County! 🖊️❌

06/01/2026

🌻 Connect With Your Neighbors
Come spend a morning in the heart of Ellensburg! We’re looking for volunteers to help us share information and engage with the community. Whether you're a CWU student bringing that Wildcat energy or one of our "old-school" experts who knows everyone in town, your voice matters.

The goal is simple: Chat with neighbors, share what we’re working on, and help spread the word about making a difference together.

🗓️ Get Involved:
No special training is required—just bring your enthusiasm and a friendly smile.

When: This Saturday
Location: Ellensburg Farmers Market

Sign up here: volunteersignup.org/FW7JX

🔗 Looking Ahead?
If this Saturday is already booked, we still have spots open for the rest of the month! You can find the signup links for May 16th, 23rd, and 30th in the graphic attached to this post.

Let’s keep the momentum going. See you downtown! 🥬🗳️

06/01/2026

🗓️ Day 5: Balancing the Scales for WA Families

Washington state has historically held one of the most regressive tax codes in the nation, where low- and middle-income families pay up to six times more of their income in taxes than the ultra-wealthy. ⚖️ The newly passed Millionaires’ Tax (a 9.9% tax exclusively on individual income exceeding $1,000,000 annually) is designed to directly fix that imbalance.

This isn't just about taxing the top; it’s about relief for the rest of us. By ensuring the top 0.1% pay their fair share, the legislative package delivers massive wins for local working families and small businesses:

Tax Relief for Small Businesses: It lifts the threshold for the Business & Occupation (B&O) tax, exempting thousands of independent local shops from state corporate taxes entirely. 🏪

Direct Support for Families: It expands funding and cash benefits for the Working Families Tax Credit, putting money directly back into the pockets of lower- and middle-income parents. 🛍️

Lowering Everyday Costs: It funds the rollout of sales tax exemptions on vital household necessities like diapers and hygiene products. 👶

This is a proven model: tax the very top to reduce the day-to-day burden on Main Street and working class households.

👉 Tomorrow: The threat at our doorstep. Wealthy special interests want to undo all of this progress—and they need your signature to do it. Don't let them.

05/31/2026

🗓️ Day 4: Bold Ideas and Local Equity

Big, progressive ideas are working across the country! 🏙️ In New York, newly elected Mayor Zohran Mamdani took office facing a massive budget deficit left behind by cuts to public libraries, parks, and working-class programs.

Instead of continuing to slash services, Mayor Mamdani set a lofty goal: balance the budget through tax equity. He teamed up with the state to enact a luxury second-home tax—a special annual surcharge on multi-million dollar vacation homes and investment properties owned by ultra-wealthy, non-resident elites. 🏡✨ It’s a policy backed by 93% of locals because it demands that those using local real estate as a personal piggy bank pay back into the community.

Overheard at a recent community meeting in Upper County: "Maybe we should do something like that here to bring some equity to our local tax structure." 💭 While our local scale is different, the principle remains exactly the same—those with luxury investments and the greatest ability to pay should support the community stability they benefit from.

👉 Tomorrow: Bringing it home to Washington. How our state is finally tackling our regressive tax code to help middle-class families.

05/30/2026

🗓️ Day 3: The Expanding Wealth Gap & The Big Distraction

How are the wealthy getting richer by the day? It’s not just a slow trend—it’s an accelerating spike, and corporate billionaires are using an old playbook to hide it. 📉

Whether you track the massive wealth transfer from 2020 to 2026, or look at the long arc from 1976 to today, the gap between corporate leadership and rank-and-file employees has detached from reality:

1978: The average CEO made roughly 30 times more than the typical worker. 📊

2026: The average CEO at a major corporation now makes over 350 times what their average employee earns! 📈

But here is the most frustrating part: to keep us from looking at the top, wealthy corporate interests try to convince working families that immigrants and vulnerable neighbors are the ones stealing our upward mobility and economic security. 📢 It's a classic distraction technique. Your economic anxiety isn't caused by someone working a low-wage job down the street—it's caused by a corporate structure that funnels 350 times more income to the executive suite while holding your wages flat.

When working people have money, they spend it at local independent businesses right here in Kittitas County. When billionaires accumulate wealth, it sits in global asset markets. 🤝

👉 Tomorrow: How cities are fighting back—introducing a simple local tax on luxury second homes that brought true balance.

05/29/2026

🗓️ Day 2: The .98% Reality Check

Let’s talk about Jeff Bezos. 📦 Recent financial analyses tracking true wealth growth indicate his effective federal tax rate sits at a jaw-dropping 0.98% when counting total economic income. 💸

What if we took that exact same economic footprint and used the time value of money to look at it through the lens of 1976?

The 1976 Reality: Fifty years ago, the top federal income tax bracket was 70%. Under that framework, an individual with that level of economic power would have seen an effective tax rate closer to 50-60% after standard deductions—returning billions back into the public infrastructure that delivery networks and tech grids rely on. 🏗️

The Modern Reality: Today, the ultra-wealthy use advanced accounting strategies—taking massive loans against their stock portfolios to fund their luxury lifestyles without ever triggering a taxable income event. 📉

When the rules allow a multi-billionaire to pay an effective rate lower than a teacher in Cle Elum or a grocery worker in Ellensburg, the system isn't broken—it’s doing exactly what it was rewritten to do. 🛑

👉 Tomorrow: The billionaire playbook—how the ultra-rich use corporate division and blame to distract us from the real wealth gap.

05/28/2026

Volunteer or stop by and say hello at the Kittitas County Democrats booth at the Ellensburg Farmers Market tomorrow - still slots open. Come chat with neighbors, share information, and help spread the word about how we can make a difference together. No experience needed—just bring your energy and a smile!

📩 Go the link in the image or comment below or DM us to sign up for a shift.

05/28/2026

🗓️ Day 1: The 40-Year Flip

For the last 40 years, a quiet shift has been happening in America: our tax burden has been steadily squeezed out of the upper class and dumped directly onto the middle and working classes. 📉

We’ve all heard Warren Buffett’s famous admission—that he shouldn't be paying a lower tax rate than his secretary. 💼 But looking at the structural data, the reality is even more staggering. In the mid-20th century, the wealthiest individuals and largest corporations paid a much higher share into the infrastructure, schools, and systems that made their wealth possible. Today, through decades of legal loopholes and federal rollbacks, working families carry the weight while the ultra-wealthy skate by. 🤷‍♂️

True fiscal responsibility means a system where everyone contributes according to their actual ability to pay. It’s time to stop letting the top 1% coast on the hard work of middle class families. 💪

👉 Tomorrow: We look at the math behind how modern billionaires pay an effective tax rate under 1%. See you then!

05/27/2026

🚨 TAXPAYER ALERT: Budget Games & Bad Priorities 🚨

Remember when a wrecking ball demolished the historic East Wing? We were told a massive new $1 Billion ballroom would be entirely funded by private donations.

Fast forward to today: those private donations are magically absent, and the item was pushed into a federal budget reconciliation bill. Thankfully, the Senate Parliamentarian just rejected it because it failed the basic rules of reconciliation—it isn't budget-neutral and doesn't reduce spending elsewhere.

But you can bet it will be back. And when it returns, corporate politicians will likely try to fund it by cutting the programs we actually need—like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Let’s talk about what we don't need to fund with our hard-earned tax dollars. Here are 4 things we can cut right now instead of touching our social safety nets:

1️⃣ The $1 Billion Ballroom: Taxpayers shouldn't foot the bill for an unnecessary luxury project. In fact, the historic East Wing should be restored.
2️⃣ The War in Iran: Our tax dollars belong at home, investing in our communities, not funding endless conflict abroad.
3️⃣ $1.776 Billion for Insurrectionist "Reparations": A shameful, ridiculous reward using public funds for those who actively attacked our democracy on January 6th.
4️⃣ The Arch: Another massive, unnecessary cosmetic project we simply do not need while families are struggling to make ends meet.

Kittitas County, what else belongs on this list? What are the top things you think we don't need to be funding? Let us know in the comments! 👇

Kittitas County Democrats

06/02/2026

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