Go Ahead WA Dems, Keep Pretending Capital Flight is Make Believe: I know, Pie Crust Pedersen and his friends tell you no one really leaves because of taxes while arguing in favor of the income tax. (And of course use the exact opposite argument in rolling back the estate tax.) So, I've been collecting some real time data. Above and beyond the emails and texts of people telling me and others about the latest person who packed up and left, here's some other evidence. Last Thursday, I had dinner with Gov. Brad Little of Idaho. We own an outlet and a good piece of property there we'd like to develop. Upon introducing myself and my home of WA, he laughed and stated, "You know, I used to offer tax incentives to get WA businesses to move to ID. We quit doing that the last few years. Honestly, I wish you guys would quit doing so many dumb things. We're running out of room!" He was very happy to hear we're looking develop our property and going to expand our location. This morning, I had a call with Gov Gianforte of MT. When I mentioned how much we love visiting MT, he offered to put his head of econ development in touch to look at informing me on all they're working on there. He mentioned a larger, unnamed WA based company with significant employee base they think will be moving there soon. "Steve, there's a lot of people and businesses from WA coming here." For the last 40 years our family has spent time down in Arizona as a getaway during the long winters in WA. We know a significant home developer here and were visiting with one of his associates that sells higher end homes. He volunteered that they have been flooded with calls from WA residents of late, and of their last 10 large deals, 8 were WA refugees moving to AZ for good. Also connected with a family that owned and operated a biz in the south sound for over 100 years. Most of them moved out of state soon after selling the biz a few years ago. They are actively in the process of pulling any of the family resources (which are substantial) to any state but WA. Instead of building and investing in their long time home, they are reluctantly leaving to put those resources to work elsewhere for the next 100 years. You'd have to be drunk to not realize what's going on. Yes, other states have income taxes, corporate income taxes, etc. But they're all LOWERING taxes, not raising or adding massive new categories on top of the current tax regime. And in the last week, I've had more conversations with Governors of states where I don't live, than the sum total of conversations I've ever had with every WA governor. To them, I've been a checkbook and "villain" not paying my fair share. I'd be fine being left alone, but your malice for the economic builders of our state is ultimately going to destroy it. I'm going to keep fighting, but given all the failure, you have to ask what the hell we're paying for anyway.