“Governments are established to protect and maintain the individual rights of the people… No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law... No private property shall be taken or damaged without just compensation.”
Article 1, Section 1 and Section 16 Washington State Constitution

The above clause in our state constitution is similar to the “Takings Clause” in 5^th Amendment to the US Constitution. The US Supreme Court has held that when government takes away all economic use of your property, it violates the Takings Clause.

In this section, we will review the laws that have been used to authorize the government shutdown in Washington state. We show how the shutdown violates the Washington state and US Constitutions. We therefore conclude that at least three Washington state elected officials, Governor Jay Inslee, Superintendent Chris Reykdal and Attorney General Bob Ferguson have failed to uphold their constitutional duties required by their oath of office.

Why it is not legal to shutdown schools indefinitely
It is very sad that during Washington State School Recognition week, April 27 to May 1 2020, all of the schools in Washington state are closed. They have been closed since the middle of March and will remain closed for the rest of the school year. Here we will explain why closing schools for this length of time is a violation of the Washington State Constitution. In Washington state, the State Constitution places the management of the public schools in the hands of the Superintendent of Public Instruction.

However, this does not give the Superintendent the right to violate the Washington State Constitution. Article 9 Section One of the Washington State Constitution states:

This is the most powerful “right to an education” law of any constitution in the US. The phrase “paramount duty” means it is the highest duty of the state to provide an education for all children. The word All means all children have an affirmative right to a real education – not just some children.

The phrase all children creates a major problem because many children have a learning style that is not suitable for online programs. My research indicates that only half of the children can be served by online education. Even then, many children from low income families do not have Internet access and cannot even go online.

But the group of children most harmed by shutting down our public schools is children who have Individualized Education Plans (IEP). About 14 percent of children in Washington state have such plans. There is no question that online programs will not work with the vast majority of IEP students.

Some school districts in Washington state have responded to this problem by opening up the schools to IEP students while forcing students with fewer challenges to try to access online programs – usually written by teachers with no training in online programs. The problem with this option is that Article 9, Section 2 of the Washington State Constitution requires a uniform system of public schools:

It is not OK to allow some kids to attend school but not other kids. The legislature has defined school as 1080 hours of instruction per school year. This is also called the 180 day school requirement of 6 hours per day, not including lunch or the bus ride to and from school.

Currently, the Superintendent has discussed some sort of “waiver” from this 180 day, 1080 hour requirement. Given past Washington state Supreme Court rulings that the state cannot cancel educational provisions that the state deems “necessary” due to some fiscal or other emergency. I do not think it is possible to waive the 180 day requirement. Usually, when a school district loses a few days due to a winter snow storm, those days are simply added to the end of the school year.

But since school was canceled in mid-March, for the first time in state history, students are missing about 60 days or one third of the school year. There is no way to make up 60 days even if the schools were to re-open all summer.

To be clear, I understand that schools have attempted to offer online education in April and May. I know many teachers who have put in a huge number of hours desperately trying to build an online curriculum for their students. But teachers were given an impossible task. There is simply no way to build an effective online curriculum that works for all students. Here is what Jay Inslee himself said about this subject:

“We know that distance learning can never replace learning and the other benefits that students derive from their classroom presence at school.” Jay Inslee April 5, 2020

I therefore believe that the rights of students to an education have been severely harmed by the extended school closure. In my opinion, parents of students who have been harmed should file a lawsuit against Jay Inslee and Chris Reykdal for failing to comply with the State Constitutional mandate to provide an education to all students.

 

On May 4, 2020, a group of parents sued Governor Inslee for keeping schools closed despite the fact that children pose no risk to adults or themselves from the corona virus.

Here is a link to this lawsuit: https://permanentoffense.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Complaint.pdf

Here is a quote from the lawsuit: “As a result of Proclamations 20-08, issued on March 12, 2020 and supplemented by Proclamations 20-09 and 20-09.1, all public and private schools in the State of Washington have been closed through June 19, 2020 (a period of three months or one third of the school year). Leaving children alone to engage in self-directed online learning is grossly inadequate to meet the educational needs of Washington children. And it clearly violates the State’s constitutional duty to provide a basic education for all children residing in Washington. If COVID-19, as a matter of fact, poses little to no threat to children and young adults, while those same people also pose little to no threat to themselves or others, there cannot be a state of emergency justifying impositions on their civil liberties.”

If Inslee and Reykdal want to violate the right of every student in Washington state to an education, then the burden of proof should be on them to provide evidence that there is an actual threat to students or from students in leaving the schools open. To date, neither has provided any scientifically credible evidence to support their decisions. Computer models from paid hacks like Ferguson or IDM do not constitute credible scientific evidence.

There were and still are many other more reasonable options. For example, the decision to close schools should have been left to the local school board. Alternately, the decision to close schools should have been based on some objective standard, such as some percentage of children being confirmed to have the corona virus – or perhaps some teacher having the corona virus. Instead, schools were shut down for months when there was not a single corona virus case in the school or even in the entire school district. How can a threat to public health be claimed in such cases?

Why it is not legal to shutdown businesses and ban gatherings of people indefinitely
There is a different Washington state law giving the Governor the right to declare an Emergency and temporarily suspend some activities. But this Emergency Law does not include the ability to prohibit social gatherings and church services - because these activities are both protected by the First Amendment to the US Constitution – which has priority over any state law.

Here is a link to the Washington State Emergency Powers law: https://apps.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=43.06.220

“The governor... may… issue an order prohibiting:
(a) Any person being on the public streets, or in the public parks, or at any other public place during the hours declared by the governor;
(b) Any number of persons, as designated by the governor, from assembling or gathering on the public streets, parks, or other open areas of this state, either public or private…Such other activities as he or she reasonably believes should be prohibited to help preserve and maintain life, health, property or the public peace… Unless (iii) the waiver or suspension would conflict with the rights, under the First Amendment, of freedom of speech or of the people to peaceably assemble....”

Note that there are several limitations in this law. The governor can prohibit public gatherings. But only public gatherings that occur on public streets and public parks or other open areas, public or private. But this does not mean that he can prohibit gatherings in private closed areas or that he can shut down all places of businesses.

The emergency powers law specifically excludes “suspension that would conflict with the rights, under the First Amendment, of freedom of speech or of the people to peaceably assemble.”

Washington State Constitutional Protection of Private Property
The Washington State Constitution begins with several requirements that prohibit the State from taking or even harming private property. Keep in mind that all small businesses are private property and pay property taxes on that property/ Here is Article 1, Section 1.

Article 1, Section 1 states that Governments are established to protect and maintain the individual rights of the people.

What are these rights that governments are supposed to protect and maintain? Article 1 states that “No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

Since businesses are private property, how can the government close down any business without due process of law?

Article 1, Section 4 of the Washington state constitution states:
“The right of the people peaceably to assemble
for the common good shall never be abridged.”

There is an emergency clause in our constitution. But it specifically notes that even in an emergency, the people still retain the right to assemble. So the ban on public meetings is a clear violation of our state constitution.

Here is Article 1, Section 16: “No private property shall be taken or damaged without just compensation.” Clearly closing businesses for months on end severely damages private property of business owners.

My advice to business owners is the same as it is to parents whose children have been damaged by the closure of our public schools: file a class action lawsuit against Governor Inslee for the financial damage to their businesses of his illegal closure.

I believe there are about 600,000 small businesses in Washington state – which employ 1.4 million workers. If half of those businesses (300,000) suffered an average loss of one million dollars due to being forced out of business, the total economic devastation would be about $300 billion.

Washington State elected officials are protected from personal liability suits – but only if they act in their legislative capacity and inside the law. They are not protected when they act outside of the law or when their actions violate the constitutional rights of citizens. Such willful and wanton misconduct can hold them open to damages. In this case, Inslee, has exceeded his 30 day mandate. And he has trampled on the rights of small business owners to keep their businesses open so they can pay their bills. Even in the alternative that Inslee can not be held personally responsible for his reckless and illegal actions, damages small business owners should sue the state for damages as the state is not allowed to destroy their businesses without just compensation.

The Duty of the Washington State Attorney General
Article 3, Section 21 of the Washington State Constitution states: “The attorney general shall be the legal adviser of the state officers.”

This means that the Attorney General is legally required to warn other State Officers if they are about to break the law. The Attorney General is not allowed to sit on the sideline what the constitutional rights of hundreds of thousands of citizens are being violated by an out of control governor and out of control superintendent of public instruction. I therefore believe that the Attorney General should also be named as a Defendant in any lawsuit brought against the governor, the superintendent or the state.

Elections are Not Enough to Protect the Rights of Minorities from the Tyranny of the Majority

Some may say that the only way to hold elected officials responsible for their harmful actions is to vote against them and elect someone else. Such a view fails to understand that elections only work in protecting the rights of the majority. They do not work to protect the rights of the minority from the tyranny of the majority. The whole point of the US Constitution and the Washington State Constitution is to protect the rights of the minority.

Thomas Jefferson was opposed to unregulated rule of the majority, which he called mob rule. Instead, he advocated for protecting the rights of the minority from the tyranny of the majority. Therefore, it is irrelevant whether the governor, superintendent or attorney generals actions meet with the approval of the majority of voters. The only relevant factor is whether they have trampled on the rights of individual students and business owners in shutting down public schools and private businesses for an extended period of time.

April 21, 2020: Snohomish County is just north of Seattle. On April 21, 2020, the Snohomish County Sheriff. Adam Fortney, announced on his Facebook page that he will not enforce Governor Inslee’s Stay Home order because he believes the order does not comply with the 1^st Amendment of the US Constitution.

Here is a quote from his post: “As this order has continued on for well over a month now and a majority of our residents cannot return to work to provide for their families, I have received a lot of outreach from concerned members of our community asking if Governor Inslee’s order is a violation of our constitutional rights. As your Snohomish County Sheriff, yes I believe that preventing business owners to operate their businesses and provide for their families intrudes on our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I am greatly concerned for our small business owners and single-income families who have lost their primary source of income needed for survival.

“As your elected Sheriff I will always put your constitutional rights above politics or popular opinion. We have the right to peaceably assemble. We have the right to keep and bear arms. We have the right to attend church service of any denomination. The impacts of COVID 19 no longer warrant the suspension of our constitutional rights. Along with other elected Sheriffs around our state, the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office will not be enforcing an order preventing religious freedoms or constitutional rights. I strongly encourage each of you to reach out and contact your council members, local leaders and state representatives to demand we allow businesses to begin reopening and allow our residents, all of them, to return to work if they choose to do so.”

Speaking of contacting your legislators, apparently many citizens did contact their legislators asking about the legality of shutting down most of the businesses in Washington state.

On April 24, 2020 Senator Mark Schoesler Senate Republican Leader published an article claiming that Governor Inslee’s actions in shutting down small businesses in Washington state were legal. His argument was that since Inslee’s proclamation was covered by section 1 of the Washington State Emergency Powers Act, RCW 43.06.220, it was not subject to review by the Washington State legislature. Here is a link to his article. https://stateofreform.com/news/washington/2020/04/op-ed-to-be-clear-heres-what-legislature-can-and-cant-do-with-governors-covid-19-proclamations/

I disagree. I think there is plenty that any member of the legislature can do to hold the Governor accountable. Our system of government is based on “checks and balances.” This means that whenever one branch of government goes beyond its legal authority and violates the rights of citizens, it is not only possible for other branches of government to hold the offending branch accountable, it is the DUTY of other branches of government to take action to protect the rights of citizens.

Inslee’s shutdown of businesses is a clear violation of the First Amendment to the US Constitution and a clear violation of Article 1 of the Washington State Constitution. Therefore, the legislature can demand a written opinion from the Washington state Attorney General on whether shutting down businesses for more than 30 days complies with Article 1 of our State Constitution. They can also file a lawsuit with our Supreme Court asking the court to declare the governor’s actions to be unconstitutional.

On April 21, 2020, a candidate for Governor in Washington state, Joshua Freed, filed a lawsuit in federal court claiming Inslee’s Stay Home order violated his First Amendment right to freedom of speech and religion. His complaint alleges that Inslee’s order is arbitrary in that it carves out broad exemptions for 162 types of commercial and recreational activities, including cannabis retailers, but expressly prohibits religious gatherings of two or more people.

On April 28, 2020, Judge Micheal McHaney, in Illinois issued an injunction against the governor’s Stay Home order. The judge ruled in favor of State Representative Darren Bailey who filed a lawsuit against the governor claiming he would be irreparably harmed if he was forced to comply with the order and that the order violated his civil rights. The judge told the attorney for the governor:

“Are you seriously trying to argue that this executive order has not caused serious injury? The Illinois Constitution is being violated and the Bill of Rights is being shredded. That’s irreparable harm. Individual rights do not disappear during a public health crisis.” Judge Micheal McHaney

If a legislator in Illinois can go to court to get a temporary restraining order, then so can legislators here in Washington state.

Update: On Friday May 1, 2020, the US Supreme Court demanded a response from the Governor of Pennsylvania to a complaint by people in Pennsylvania that claimed their civil rights were being violated by the Governor’s shutdown order.

Their complain states:

"[T]he Order violated the Petitioners rights not to be deprived of their property without due process of law guaranteed by the [Fifth and 14th Amendments], the right not to have their property taken without just compensation guaranteed by the [Fifth Amendment], their right to judicial review guaranteed by the [5th and Fourteenth Amendments], their right to equal protection of the law guaranteed by the [14th Amendment], and their right to free speech and assembly guaranteed by the [First Amendment].”

Supreme Court Justice Alito gave the governor of Pennsylvania until Monday, May 4, 2020 to file a response.

Also on May 1, 2020, another group of citizens in Washington State filed a similar lawsuit against the Governor. Many more lawsuits are likely to be filed in the days ahead as the damage to private property rights as a result of these illegal shutdowns are in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Similar lawsuits have now been filed in several other states including California, Illinois, Michigan, Kansas, Mississippi and Kentucky.

Here is a statement from a Michigan lawsuit:

"Never in the modern history of the United States — even in wartime — has such an invasive action stripping citizens of fundamental rights been taken by a government order."

What’s Next?
In the next section, we will look at who paid the discredited UK hack Neil Ferguson to write his ridiculous report.

What will happen to school funding after billions of dollars are slashed from state revenue due to the business shutdown?

As we noted earlier, in 2019, Washington state total tax revenue was about $23 billion. 70% of this revenue was from the sales tax and Business and Occupation tax. Thus, $16 billion in annual state revenue comes from sales and business taxes. A 25% drop in retail sales will blow a $4 billion hole in the annual state budget. It is nearly certain that retail sales will plunge by much more than 20% -resulting in a loss of between 40,000 to 80,000 jobs in the coming months.

Because school funding is about half of the state budget, up to half of those job losses could be public school teachers and other public school employees – resulting in huge increases in class sizes – at a time when Washington state students are already subjected to among the highest class sizes in the nation.

In this section, we will look at how shutting down our state economy will harm our schools financially – and thereby inflict further harm on our students. This huge financial blow comes at a time when hundreds of school districts in our state were already facing massive budget deficits for the coming school years.

For those who may not have been paying attention, our current Superintendent of Public Instruction Chris Reykdal was directly responsible for creating these massive budget deficits. First, in 2017, Reykdal helped pass a fake school funding bill that robbed school districts in King and Snohomish counties of billions of Levy dollars and transferred these funds to the State general fund were they were used for other purposes. I wrote about this scam right after the bill passed in an article called Broken Promises, Shell Games and Poison Pills.

Here is a link to that article.

https://coalitiontoprotectourpublicschools.org/restore-school-funding/broken-promises-shell-games-and-poison-pills

One of the many problems of the Reykdal School Levy Swipe was that it changed the basis of school funding from the actual cost to a percentage of property values. This scheme works OK as long as property values are rising as school funding will also rise. However, I warned back in 2017, that this method of funding schools would be a disaster if property values ever fell – because school funding would also fall. I am now predicting that home values will fall and very soon. This will lead to the drop in school funding – even in addition to the billions of dollars lost due to the drop in retail sales.

As bad as the Reykdal fake school funding bill was, in the coming two years, he managed to do something even worse. His bill contained a “double taxation year” in 2018 where the new state school property tax was imposed in addition to the old local levy tax. This double taxation year artificially and temporarily increases school district funding for that one year.

Reykdal then falsely told teachers that there was “plenty of money” in school district budgets – causing teachers in school districts across the state to demand and get pay raises (which were really just cost of living adjustments) of about 10%.

Of course, because there was no real actual increase in school funding, all of these school districts now face budget shortfalls that will require firing teachers in coming years to offset the pay raise – leading to even more class size increases. So thanks to Reykdal, the entire school funding situation in Washington state was already a disaster even before he and Jay Inslee shut down all of the schools and businesses in our state.

Here is what this budget shortfall looked like for the Everett School District:

 

Here is what it looked like for the Tacoma School District

Note that 2020 revenue will be 16 million less than 2017 revenue. Now the question is what will happen to school funding after billions of dollars are slashed from state revenue thanks to the 2020 business shutdown? Because collections of state sales and business taxes are delayed by 30 to 60 days, we will not see the March shortfall until May and the April Shortfall until June. It is likely that Governor Inslee will have to call a special session of the legislature in June to address the billions in cuts that will be needed.

Business Shutdown Harm to Community Colleges and Universities

In addition to slashing billions of dollars from public school funding, the legislature will also have to slash support for our community colleges and universities. The current budget includes about one billion dollars per year in partial support for our community colleges and universities. The state budget could get so bad that all state support for colleges and universities will have to be ended. The only way colleges and universities could make up this shortfall is by raising, even doubling student tuition and well as firing college faculty and increasing college class sizes.

Will 2020 be the Gap Year for all College Students?
 In a survey of college officials, more than half of 210 respondents said they are talking about the possibility of putting the fall semester entirely online, according to the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.

Many high school seniors are likely to not even sign up for classes if they think that all they will get is online courses taught by a robot. Here is what one college instructor is telling students:

“I would tell kids: Number one, the likelihood of having face-to-face classes in September is pretty darn small,” said Scott White, a retired guidance director for more than 20 years at Montclair High School in New Jersey. Referring to Covid-19’s risk to older people, he said: “You’re not going to get 65-year-old college professors going in.”

Another consultant said “empty dorms is what kills colleges” — precisely the state of things at institutions across the nation at least through summer. https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/hit-huge-colleges-brace-fatal-blow-next-fall-face-face-instruction-uncertain

Here is what another college professor said: “This is a message to all high school seniors (and their parents). If you were planning to enroll in college next fall — don’t. If there’s anything worse than resigning yourself to a freshman year spent online, it would be moving across country or across town, into a dorm room or an apartment — only to have to move out weeks or months later, with no guarantee of any refund, with further disruption and dislocation.”

“Minimum class sizes will go up. Many classes that “migrated” online as an emergency measure in March 2020 may never come back. Faculty members forced to teach this way may find themselves required to go on doing so — regardless of whether they were ever trained to teach effectively online.”

https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/a-twenty-year-professor-on-starting-college-this-fall-dont-df3ea4024f70

These Budget Cuts are Not the Fault of a Virus – they are the fault of Government Officials Needlessly Shutting Down State Businesses!
What I want you to remember is that these cuts will NOT be due to the corona virus. They will be due to the needless shutdown of our state economy created by Jay Inslee and Chris Reykdal believing a ridiculously bad report written by a discredited hack in the UK.

What’s Next?
In the next section, we will explain why orders to shut down schools and businesses violates our Constitutional rights.

 

Adding in the young children not yet in school brings the total number of homeless children in Washington state to about 85,000 children. 

One million lost jobs will mean one million families will no longer be able to pay their rent or mortgage – leading to a huge explosion in homelessness. According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, the number of homeowners failing to make their payments grew by a factor of 10 in the month of March. https://www.mba.org/2020-press-releases/april/mba-survey-shows-spike-in-loans-in-forbearance-servicer-call-volume

Federally backed mortgage loan payment failures grew even more – to 4.25 percent in March. 4% of $600 billion in federally insured home loans means that $24 billion in homes might default in the next few months if extreme social distancing policies are continued. Unfortunately, this is just the beginning. According to Moody’s Analytics, as many as 30% of homeowners - about 15 million households - could stop paying their mortgages if the US economy remains closed through the summer or beyond.

 

The situation is even worse for renters. According to the National Multifamily Housing Council, over 30% of US Renters didn't pay April Apartment rent!
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/over-30-us-renters-didnt-pay-april-apartment-rent

More than half of renters say they lost jobs due to corona virus: ‘They could face housing situations that spiral out of control’. More than half (53.5%) of renters reported that they lost their job due to the measures introduced in their town or city due to the COVID-19 pandemic, concluded a survey of 5,000 renters and 5,000 landlords by Avail, an online resource for landlords.

Almost half (46%) of renters say they have less than $500 in emergency funds, according to a separate poll of 1,000 renters from Clever, a service connecting house hunters with real-estate agents.

“Low-income renters — many of whom work in service industries hit hard by the pandemic shutdown — are at high risk for eviction and homelessness during shelter-in-place measures,” according to a report by Mary Cunningham, a fellow at the Urban Institute. The recent $2 trillion CARES Act, “didn’t do enough to address increases in housing insecurity for the nearly 11 million low-income renter households paying more than half their income toward rent before the pandemic,” Cunningham added.

The Child Homelessness Crisis in Washington State is about to get much worse
Child homelessness was already at record levels here in Washington state even before the shutdown of our economy. How can a child be expected to complete their homework when they do not even have a home?  As a person with a Master's Degree in Education, I know all too well that it is not possible to provide an education to a child if they are moving from place to place or living in the back of a car. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs demonstrates that food and shelter are basic human needs while education only happens after these basic needs are met. I therefore am certain that providing homes to all children is an essential component of making ample provision for the education of all children.

The largest increase in students experiencing homelessness occurred with those who are unsheltered, which includes students living in parks, abandoned buildings, cars, or on the streets.

Homeless children go hungry at twice the rate of other children, get sick four times more often, and are three times more likely to suffer from emotional and behavioral problems compared to children who live in stable housing. The consequences of homelessness can be devastating and long-lasting for young children. By age 8, one in three homeless children has a mental health problem.
Many students living in shelters or doubled-up housing stay there for more than one year. About two-thirds of students living in a shelter in 2013-14 had been in that same situation for at least one of the previous three school years.

All kids need a stable home if they are to succeed in school and succeed in life. While 80% of Washington students with homes graduate, only 50% of homeless students graduate from high school. Yet the number of homeless students in Washington state has been rising dramatically in the past 20 years.

The McKinney-Vento Act, requires all school districts to report annually the number of homeless students enrolled in schools. The Washington Superintendent of Public Instruction then uses these school district reports to compile a state report each year. The latest OSPI report stated that the number of homeless students for the 2014-2015 school year was 35,511. Since this number is rising by about 3,000 students per year in our state, the number of reported homeless students for the current school year is about 41,500. https://www.k12.wa.us/sites/default/files/public/legisgov/2019documents/2019-01-update-homeless-students-data.pdf

However, this report greatly underestimates the true number of homeless children in our state for several reasons. First, it does not include young children who are not yet in school. Since these are about one quarter of all children, the total number of homeless students is greater than 60,000. Second, many families do not want to admit that they are homeless. Third, the definition of homeless is very vague. Should it include a family living in someone's basement?
Or a family that moves from apartment to apartment because they cannot afford the rent?
A more accurate estimate of child homelessness was determined by a 2013 study from the National Poverty Center. Using family income and a category called "Extreme Family Poverty," which they define as making less than $2 per day per person. These are households with children who are living with virtually no income. They also used a term called Deep Poverty which is half of the normal poverty rate. These are the poorest of the poor families living in the US. Here is a quote from their study: "We estimate that in mid-2011, 1.65 million households with 3.55 million children were living in extreme poverty in a given month, based on cash income. This constituted 4.3 percent of all households with children... The prevalence of extreme poverty rose sharply between 1996 and 2011, with the highest growth found among groups most affected by the 1996 welfare reform act."
http://npc.umich.edu/publications/u/2013-06-npc-working-paper.pdf

Using 4.3 percent as an estimate of the percent of homeless students in Washington State in 2011, this would indicate that there were about 44,000 homeless students among Washington's one million students in 2011. This is 60% greater than the OSPI estimate of 27,390 students for 2011. Adding 60% to the current school year number of 41,000 makes the actual number of homeless students about 65,600 students. Adding in the young children not yet in school brings the total number of homeless children in Washington state to about 85,000 children. This is more than double the estimate from OSPI.

What about the bill passed by the legislature to "help" homeless children?
Washington state receives about $950,000 per year from the federal government to help homeless students. With more than 85,000 homeless children, this comes to about $12 per child per year. In other words, this is a fake program which offers no help at all to homeless children. Sadly, so is the State bill that just past the legislature. Legislators claim that the 2016 supplemental budget included $15 million for aiding youth homelessness. But House Bill 1682 is a fake bill and and insult to the serious problems facing homeless children. We have more than 85,000 homeless youth in Washington state. So $15 million for youth homelessness boils down to $200 per homeless child or less than one dollar a day per homeless child. This is not enough to buy the child a cheese burger - much less a permanent and stable home. But the reality is that all this Homeless Kids Bill really does is pay for more administrators to count the homeless kids. And the real amount of money in the supplemental budget - just $2 million per biennium or $1 million per year. While this does "double the amount" given by the federal government, all it really does is pay for more administrators. The additional $12 per homeless child per year does not ever get to the homeless child. The homeless kids will not even get a piece of gum.

Who voted for this fake Homeless Kids bill?
Because it does not really do anything but sounds really good, the bill got a lot of support including Reykdal both sponsoring and voting for the fake bill. With one million additional people losing their jobs, the number of homeless children will rise above 100,000 – one in every 10 kids in our public schools.

“We are experiencing an economic contraction that is faster and deeper than anything we have seen in the past century – or possibly several centuries.” Jan Vlieghe Bank of England

In this section, we will examine the harm that extreme social isolation policies, including shutting down nearly all local businesses, will have on the small businesses, workers and families in Washington state.

Let’s start with some national unemployment numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The previous all time record weekly unemployment claims total was much less than one million. The last two weeks of March saw claims set new all time records of 3.3 million and then 6.9 million. The first week in April was 6.5 million, the second week was 5.2 million, the third week was 4.4 million and the fourth and fifth weeks were 3.5 million for a shocking total of 34 million jobs lost in only 7 weeks. Here is a Federal Reserve chart comparing this to job claims going back 50 years to 1967:

But the real scale of the problem is much worse than the above graph indicates for at least four reasons.

First, in the early 1990’s, the BLS redefined unemployment to artificially hide the number of unemployed workers. The real unemployment rate is at least three times what is reported by the BLS. https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-unemployment-exceed-40-end-april/5708594

Second, at least half of all workers are temporary workers on contracts thanks to the new “gig” economy. These temp workers often can not even apply for unemployment benefits. They are also more likely to be let go in a downturn.

According to a poll by the Economic Policy Institute, millions of Americans who have been thrown out of work due to the economic shutdown have been unable to register for unemployment benefits. The poll found that for every 10 people who have successfully filed unemployment claims, three or four people have been unable to register and another two people have not tried to apply at a time of acute economic crisis. https://www.epi.org/blog/unemployment-filing-failures-new-survey-confirms-that-millions-of-jobless-were-unable-to-file-an-unemployment-insurance-claim/

Thus, the true number of lost jobs is nearly double the number reported by the BLS – which brings real job losses up to to least 50 million – and counting.

Third, many workers are still on payrolls of businesses that will be shutting down in the coming weeks. Expect unemployment claims to continue to climb. This is why on March 31, 2020, the St. Louis Federal Reserve estimated that a total of 47 million jobs could be lost in the next 3 months:

https://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/news/2020/03/31/st-louis-fed-economist-47-million-could-lose-their.html

There is a mistake in the above headline. It is not the corona virus that will cause 47 million jobs to be lost. It is the needless extreme social isolation policies that will lead to these job losses.

My own rough estimate is that it is going to be 50 million jobs lost. But the only reason I use this number is because it is easy to divide by 50 and it means that 1 million of our 4 million jobs here in Washington state will be lost in the next month.

Update: On Thursday April 23, the Washington State Employment Security Department admitted that while the official unemployment was 605,514, actual claims could be as high as one million by April 26 – three times higher than the peak of the Great Recession. https://esd.wa.gov/unemployment/help

The reason for this was that up to this point, people in the gig economy were not able to file a claim. But due to a change in the law, some (not all) of these people will be able to file a claim starting on Sunday. Because this still does not include about 20% of people who lost their jobs due to the shutdown, I am raising my estimate to 1..2 million in Washington state. Because Washington is an average size state, you can convert any state numbers into national numbers by multiplying by 50. You can also convert any national numbers into Washington state numbers by dividing the national numbers by 50. Therefore, I now predict that 60 million people will be unemployed due to the shutdown.

“The best economic outcome that anyone can hope for is a recession deeper than that following the 2008 financial crisis. But given the flailing policy response so far, the chances of a far worse outcome are increasing by the day.”
Economist Nouriel Roubini

Job losses will be made much worse by the fact that our Senior citizens lost about 30% of their retirement savings when the stock market collapsed a couple of weeks ago. This means that they will be spending 30% less money in the future than they would have spent had their retirement savings not been wiped out.

“We’re in the Great Depression and that in a sense, the news can’t get much worse.” Mellon Bank chief strategist Alicia Levine

A healthy economy promotes a healthy immune system. A sick economy leads to a weak immune system. A sick economy is more dangerous to our long term health and well being than any virus. This is especially true once you understand why social isolation does not stop the corona virus. Therefore, as we discussed earlier, it is likely that shutting down the economy cost lives instead of saving lives.

However, if we accept the government’s claim that the corona virus has or will kill about 100,000 people, then we can do a simple comparison of those killed by the virus to the 60 million who have or will lose their jobs as a result of the economic shutdown.
60 million divided by 100,000 = 600.

In other words, for every person the government claims was killed by the corona virus, 600 people have lost their jobs because of the shutdown.

Since we know most of the people the government claims were killed by the corona virus were actually killed by the seasonal flu or some terminal pre-existing condition, the actual number killed by the virus was about 50,000. Using this for the denominator puts the ratio of lost jobs to corona deaths at 1200 to 1. All it takes is one on 1200 people killing themselves through suicide or drug abuse for economic shutdown fatalities to exceed corona fatalities. But in fact, as we discussed earlier, the number of people who will die from the economic shutdown is likely to be about 10 times greater than the number of people who will die from the corona virus. Some day, people will wake up and realize that shutting down the economy over this virus was the worst blunder in human history.

Stimulus Program Problems
The stimulus program passed by the government gave us all checks for $1200.

The stimulus program passed by the government gave us all checks for $1200.But this was just a distraction as the big money went to Wall Street banks, drug companies, oil companies and airlines. Many people did not get a stimulus check at all. For example, if you were a student going to college and living at home, and therefore listed as a dependent, you did not get a check – and parents get not a check for you because only dependents under the age of 16 counted.

If you had a small business, things were even worse. The SBA which runs the loan program had a glitch in the application process which exposed the personal information of thousands of small business owners to hackers. The SBA was given funds to provide 100,000 $10,000 loans. But they got 3 million applicants – meaning 2.9 million did not get the loan. A survey of 2,200 small business owners found that less that half even bothered to apply for the $10,000 loan. Of those who applied, less than 3% received the loan. Finally, less than half of small business owners applied for the Paycheck Protection Program. Of those who applied, only 13% were approved – meaning only 6% of all small businesses got any help from the federal government. Nearly half of all small businesses were on the edge of closing down – after only being closed for a few weeks.

Why the 2020 Crash will be Worse than any other Economic Crisis in US History
It is commonly thought that the Great Depression in the 1930s was the worst economic disaster in US history. But there were many redeeming factors in the 1930s that are no longer present today.

First, the population is much greater than it was in the 1930s.
For an example, we will use King County, Washington. It now has a population of 2.4 million. There are about 1000 people in every square mile of King County. The median age is 37 years. The population of King County has grown by 500 percent since 1930. This makes the 1930 population of King County 2.4 divided by 5 equals 0.48 million or a King County population of 480,000 in 1930. It will be much harder to help 2.5 million people than to help a half million people.

Second, the majority of Americans now live in large cities rather than on small self sustaining farms.
In the 1930s over half of all Americans still lived on self sustaining farms. Many of these farmers sent food to relatives living in the cities. Many left the cities and went to work on farms in trade for the food they needed to stay alive. Today, in much of the country, less than 10% of people live on farms. In densely populated counties such as King County, Washington, less than 5 percent of the people live in farms.

Put another way, there were 240,000 people living on farms in 1930 versus 120,000 people living on farms in King County today. In particular, nearly all of East King County used to be farms. There was literally several major farms where the City of Bellevue now stands today.

At the same time the farm population of King County was cut in half (along with the farm acreage in King County being cut in half), the urban population has exploded by 1000 percent from 240,000 people in 1930 to about 2,300,000 people today.

Why the Ratio of Urban to Farm Population Matters
During the Economic Crash in the 1930’s, it was common for each farm family to take in one city family and or send boxes of food to one or more city families as all farms had an excess of food but no one to sell the food to while people living in cities had no income to pay for food. Therefore, there were only a few thousand people who starved to death in King County in the 1930s.

However, if we assume the same ratio today with each farm person being able to take in and or support one city person during the next major economic crisis, the current 120,000 farmers in King County would only be able to help 120,000 city people. This would mean that about 2 million people in King County or 90% of the population would face mass starvation.

This problem will be made much worse by the change in transportation of food supply chains and concentration of food supply chains in the past 90 years. While food used to be broadly distributed from farmers to the urban population using a variety of methods in the 1930s, today the food distribution network is concentrated in the hands of a few major corporations who use a “just in time” trucking system to maximize short term profits. This just in time trucking system only distributes a few days supply of food at a time to major chains of national super markets.

The next economic crash will shut down the banking system which will shut down the trucking businesses and their fuel supply which will shut down the national food distribution corporations which will shut down the national super market corporations. Food will be left to rot in massive warehouses even as people in Seattle are starving. Therefore the estimate of 2 million people starving in King County may actually be low.

But won’t the Government Step in to Save the People?
If we had a government that was not corrupt and not controlled by a few billionaires, the government might be able and willing to help distribute food. However, it appears as if the current corrupt government in the US is preparing to do exactly the opposite of helping the people. They are creating a Police State whose job appears to be to control the people in the event of a crisis rather than helping the people.

I therefore think the government might pretend to want to help the people while at the same time be fully occupied trying to control rioters and looters as the population quickly starves to death.

Here are a few more reasons the 2020 Economic Crash will be Worse than any previous crash

#1 The concentration of wealth and power is more unequal than at any time in history – including the Great Depression.

#2 Families have never had as much debt as they have today.

#3 For the first time in US history, real earnings of middle class and poor working families have not risen in the past 30 years.

#4 Corporations have also never been so for in debt.

#5 Elections have never been so rigged in favor of corrupt incumbents.

#6 Tax breaks for wealthy corporations have never been so large thanks to what amounts to a bribery and kick back scheme where corporations pay millions of dollars to elect corrupt incumbents – who then grant the corporations billions of dollars in tax breaks.

#7 Monopolies have never been so prevalent with Microsoft owning the computer market, Google owning the search engine and video sharing market, Facebook owning the Social Networking market, Amazon owning the online retailing market and a small number of corporations owning the entire news media in the US.

#8 Never before has so much of the wealth in the US been devoted to the national security police state with a host of agencies from Homeland Security to the NSA using high tech tools to spy on everything you do. What to organize a protest? Count on at least a dozen federal Fusion agents attending your rally and writing a report about it.

There is no question we are at the beginning of the worst economic crash in history. But thanks to the monopoly of the corporate media, it will be a while before the American people ever find out about it.

Problems that will make Economic Devastation Much Worse in Washington State
Washington state has suffers from several problems that will make the impact of extreme social isolation policies much worse in our state than in almost any other state. Here are just a few of them:

#1 Washington State is More Dependent on Foreign Trade than almost any other state

#2 Washington State is More Dependent on the Airline Travel industry than almost any other state

#3 Washington State Taxes are More Dependent on the Sales Tax (purchases made by the poor and middle class) than any other state

#4 Washington State Business and Occupation tax punishes successful small businesses by charging them more than any other state.

#5 Washington State gives away more tax revenue to Billionaires and Multi-National Corporations than any other state

Let’s take a brief look at each of these before looking at the effect these factors will have on skyrocketing unemployment in our state.

#1 Washington State is More Dependent on Foreign Trade than almost any other state
Washington state not only exports airplanes and computer programs, it also exports a huge amount of agricultural products from apples to wheat to berries. The total shutdown of trade all over the world is going to bring all of these exports to a nearly complete halt. So job losses will not only be in King county. They will be all over the state. This is one of many reasons we the Unemployment claims in Washington State have been among the highest in the nation with more than 20% of workers applying for benefits by May 1:

#2 Washington State is More Dependent on the Airline Travel industry than almost any other state
Boeing was already in serious trouble after producing perhaps the most deadly plane ever made – the 737 Max – an extremely unstable design that can not be fixed with any software program. But the halting of the entire travel industry is likely to be the death blow – which could cost the loss of nearly 100,000 jobs in Washington state when you add in all of the downstream suppliers for Boeing.

Because of these factors, it is likely that Washington state will be hit with among the highest unemployment claims in the nation. Sadly, Washington state has among the lowest Unemployment Trust Fund balances in the nation:

When states exhaust their trust funds, they must borrow billions of dollars from the federal government, which must ultimately be paid back with interest. These payments are not made by the tax payers of the state but rather by the business owners in the state – who are charged a fee for every employee they have on their payroll. The above chart shows that, as of April 4, 2020, Washington had enough money in their trust fund to cover 15 weeks of payments. California only had enough to cover 4 weeks of unemployment checks. However, unemployment claims have skyrocketed since April 4. California has already been forced to borrow $10 billion from the federal government. This money will have to be paid back by California employers.

In the last week of April, 2020, the Washington Employment Security Department (ESD) announced that they had paid out over one billion dollars in unemployment benefits in a single week. This was more than the the one billion dollars that the ESD paid out in the entire year of fiscal 2019. In other words, payouts were 50 times per week what they were in 2019.

Here is a chart of unemployment claims in Washington state in 2020:

Unemployment claims skyrocketed right after Inslee shut down most of our state small businesses in Mid-March. https://public.tableau.com/profile/jeff.robinson#!/vizhome/InitialClaimsapplicationsforUnempIoymentInsurance-WA_ETA539-/Story1

137,605 New claims joined 190,948 Pandemic claims and 168,165 Emergency claims and 959,190 existing claims from the previous few weeks for a grand total of 1.5 million unemployment claims:

This is much more than 20 percent of the Washington State Workforce and converts into a national estimate of 70 million unemployed. Because of these huge numbers, ESD paid out 1 billion between April 19 to 25 and another billion in April 26 to May 2.

At the beginning of 2020, the Trust Fund had a balance of nearly $5 billion. It is likely that the trust fund is now below 3 billion and will be gone in the next three weeks (by May 23). Washington will likely have to borrow more than 5 billion of dollars from the federal government to keep the unemployment checks paid through the month of June. The entire 5 billion dollars will need to be paid back by Washington state employers – plus 5 billion more to re-establish the Trust Fund balance. This $10 billion is on top of the fact that health insurance rates for employees are expected to skyrocket in the next few months. The net result is that many employers will be forced to fire employees just because they will not be able to afford the huge increases in unemployment taxes and insurance costs – even if these employers are somehow able to survive the government shutting down their businesses for months on end.

#3 Washington State Taxes are More Dependent on Sales Tax (purchases by the poor and middle class) than any other state
Numerous studies have shown that Washington state has the most regressive tax structure in the nation. https://itep.org/wp-content/uploads/whopays-ITEP-2018.pdf

The Washington State sales tax of nearly 10% combined with numerous other hidden taxes and fees results in the poorest people in our state paying an effective tax rate of nearly 18% of their income – while the richest billionaires in our state pay state taxes at a rate of less than one percent of their income. This regressive tax system means that more money will be pulled out of our state economy than any other state. The reason is that small businesses typically generate sales from purchases by the poor and middle class. When the poor and middle class no longer have any money, small businesses no longer have any sales. A regressive tax structure does not just harm poor and middle class working families. It also harms small businesses which rely on purchases from families to stay afloat.

There is a second serious problem of relying heavily on sales taxes for state revenue. When there is a plunge in retail sales, due to a shutdown of nearly all retail businesses, the state no longer has the money to pay for public services. This leads to a loss of public sector jobs. Here is a graph showing Washington is one of only 2 states in the nation that gets more than 30% of revenue from sales tax:

#4 Washington State Business and Occupation tax punishes successful small businesses by charging them more than any other state.
Washington state is also unique in the nation in charging small businesses a “business and occupation” tax on the gross receipts of all sales. This means every time a business sells a product, it must pay the state a percentage of that sale. Think of it as a hidden additional sales tax. The problem with this process is that it punishes efficient small businesses that carry a small inventory and turn their inventory over several times a year. For example, a business that turns over their inventory six times a year pays six times the Business and Occupation tax as a business that only turns their inventory over once a year. So think of the Washington Business and Occupation tax as a “double whammy” that will harm small businesses in our state in addition to the harm of their business being needlessly shut down by government officials for months on end.

In 2019, Washington state total tax revenue was about $23 billion. 70% of this revenue was from the sales tax and Business and Occupation tax. Thus, $16 billion in annual state revenue comes from sales and business taxes. Even a modest 20% drop in retail sales will blow a $4 billion hole in the annual state budget. It is nearly certain that retail sales will plunge by much more than 20%. But for each billion in lost state revenue, public service job losses will be between 10,000 to 20,000 for a total loss of 40,000 to 80,000 jobs in the coming months.

#5 Washington State gives away more tax revenue to Billionaires and Multi-National Corporations than any other state
Washington state is home to some of the richest billionaires and wealthiest corporations in the history of the planet. These billionaires and huge multinational corporations are not in any danger of being homeless or out of a job. But the problem with giving tax breaks to the rich is that the rich do not spend their money. The problem with giving corporate welfare to wealthy multinational corporations is that they do not do any new hiring. While small businesses account for half of all jobs, for the past 20 years, they have accounted for nearly all new jobs. So killing off local small businesses by favoring large corporations is going to have a devastating effect on our local economy. Sadly, billionaires and large corporations practically own the Washington state legislature – to the point where for every dollar spent on public schools, the Washington state legislature gives away three dollars in tax breaks to wealthy international corporations like Microsoft and Boeing.

The net effect of all five of these problems is that working families and small local businesses are likely to be more impacted by the shutdown of local businesses than perhaps any other state in the nation.

How bad is it going to get?
Here is a quote from Business Insider: “As factories and stores are shuttered, there will likely be huge declines in manufacturing and consumer spending in the near future. Because the US consumer is a cornerstone of economic activity - spending makes up roughly 70% of US GDP - any dip could have a big impact. Goldman Sachs predicts a 24% decline in GDP.”

Let’s look at the current sales figures and then use that to estimate the eventual number of lost jobs. According to Bloomberg, 47,000 US stores closed in less than two weeks:

While retail sales figures for March for the US are not in yet, we know that retail sales in China fell 20% after they imposed social isolation policies. https://www.businessinsider.com/retail-sales-china-coronavirus-crisis-2020-3

Car sales for March were down 37% from one year ago. https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/03/27/2007650/0/en/TrueCar-s-ALG-Forecasts-New-Car-Auto-Sales-for-March-2020-and-the-First-Quarter.html

Personal car travel declined 44% in March from a year ago. https://taxfoundation.org/gas-tax-revenue-decline-as-traffic-drops/

We will therefore estimate that 1.2 million jobs will be lost in Washington state and that retail sales will decline at least 25% and therefore that Washington state revenue will decline 25%.

$23 billion in total state revenue minus 25% is a decline of almost $6 billion per year. This is about 100,000 lost public sector jobs. This is nothing compared to private sector jobs which may be as high as 1.2 million lost jobs.

As of April 25, 2020, 723 people have been killed by the corona virus in Washington state. This is a rate of 100 fatalities per million population. Assuming that total deaths due to the corona virus do not exceed 1200 in Washington state, we will see more than one thousand people lose their jobs for every person killed by the corona virus. The only good news is that this is an election year.

April 27, 2020 Update: Some many people lost their jobs in San Diego, CA that last month over 40% of residents turned to food banks in order to feed their families. The following image shows thousands of cars in San Diego lined up to get food at a food bank. The image was taken April 9, 2020.

What’s Next?
When people lose their jobs, there families lose their homes. This means many more kids living in the backs of cars. We will look at this issue next.