The West Coast, Messed Coast™ states of Washington, Oregon, and California are suffering from a severe spendemic, and not one Democrat is calling for even one day to slow the spread or a vaccine to arrest the disease.
Welcome to the West Coast, Messed Coast™ report, where Democrats are writing checks that the body politic is getting more and more unwilling to pay. This could be the beginning of a tax rebellion.
Taxpayers can’t deny that Democrats, who are solidly in charge of the West Coast, Messed Coast™ states wasted pandemic money, spend nearly $200,000.00 for each homeless person on the streets — without helping them, are diluting legitimate taxpayer votes, can’t pass their own audits, and have p***d away whatever was left in the account of the Bank of Good Intentions. Only dust bunnies remain.
Let’s get started.
Oregon
The unfortunately named Tina Kotek has called for a special session for this three-day, end-of-summer weekend to jam through a phalanx of tax increases that the legislature refused to pass in the regular session. It’s all so that the governor doesn’t have to perform a reduction in force and can continue the bailout of the vaunted light rail and bus system in the Portland Metro area. TriMet has been running in the red since it started.
The state’s climate policies have hijacked money for the left’s other priorities: attacking personal modes of transportation, climate grant making, and making the state a safe space for illegal aliens and “homeless” drug addicts.
Related: As Long as We’re Talking About Trans Killers, a Word About Portland’s Anti-ICE Trantifa Thugs
Even though she’s been caught red-handed, the governor’s lies about Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) funding will continue until the legislature capitulates.
Cascade Policy, the free-market think tank in Oregon, reviewed the governor’s own books and found that Kotek has been lying about ODOT revenue declines being due to “improved fuel economy of cars.” “ODOT financial reports online show the opposite, as does the Legislative Revenue Office presentation from March of this year,” Cascade found. “In 2024, revenue from motor fuel taxes, vehicle registration taxes, driver’s license fees, business license fees, and investment income reached record levels. Total ODOT revenue increased by 30 percent between 2018 and 2024.”
But Kotek is suffering badly from the spendemic. “She wants to raise gas taxes by six cents per gallon, double vehicle registration fees, and increase titling fees,” Cascade reveals.
Oregon’s governor wants a special session to double the payroll tax and raise registration fees pic.twitter.com/1pG98RgShK
— Oregon DOGE (@TheOregonDOGE) August 27, 2025
But things are even worse than that. Kotek is calling for doubling the payroll tax that each employee must send to the state.
Why?
So she can spend it.
Republicans say they’ll walk out to prevent a quorum, but as of publication, that hadn’t happened yet.
‘Disaster’
Washington’s governor already signed into law all the tax increases he promised not to sign right after he was sworn in, but the biggest fiscal ripple of the moment is in Seattle’s King County. It is there that we find, after a two-year-long process, that the state’s most populous and poorly run county can’t pass an audit. But it’s worse than that. The county lost more than $1 billion and doesn’t know where it went.
Reagan Dunn, the only bright bulb on the King County Council, called for the audit two years ago, and now we have the results. This unmitigated “total disaster” reveals likely fraud in grant-making for the four juvenile programs the auditor examined. Notice the buzzwords of the moment used in naming the areas of spending: Family Intervention and Restorative services, Liberation and Healing from Systemic Racism, Restorative Community Pathways, and Stopping the School-to-Prison Pipeline.
In 2019, they gave out $22 million in community grants. The funding went up to $1.5 billion by 2023 and 2024.
Auditors found that in some cases, documents were altered to support reimbursements. They also found that unapproved subcontractors were given funds through cash withdrawals. The investigation found other questionable documentation.
I’ll bet that the 6,718.18% increase in spending didn’t liberate or restore one soul, but it sure made a lot of individuals at non-profits quite rich, thank you very much.
The councilors promise to do better next time.
Dunn isn’t convinced.
I’ve been warning about a lack of accountability for years, which is why I requested this audit in 2023.
Taxpayers cannot afford to continue to pay for higher taxes while funding millions of dollars of fraud and waste.
Check out my interview w/ KOMO News.https://t.co/2wMgLSFaNH— Reagan Dunn (@reagandunn) August 27, 2025
Taxes, audits, and investigations everywhere
The spendemic hit California so hard that the state legislature raised the income tax rate to the highest in the country, at 14.4% for the highest earners. But that was so 2024.
Now, Gavin Newsom’s expenditures for the homeless industrial complex have already failed an audit, his spending on COVID was full of fraud, FireAid is under investigation, and now Florida Senator Rick Scott has joined with California taxpayers to call for an audit of the state wildfire response starting from 2015 forward.
State Assembly members have also joined the call for an audit of state fire agencies, utility involvement, and preparedness.
Newsom says he has increased efforts to get rid of brush and dead wood in the forests, but those assurances ring hollow now that the brush around Pacific Palisades has grown back.
And remember, as I reported after the firestorm started last January in the piece called, “Stunner: California Saved a Shrub Instead of Protecting Humans From the L.A. Firestorm:”
“[E]nviros stopped the brush mitigation around Topanga Canyon [next to the Palisades] by the L.A. Department of Water and Power in the Pacific Palisades in 2019 because of “community concerns about protected plants in the construction area,” because they feared a “potential” danger to an “endangered” shrub.
Related: West Coast, Messed Coast™ — Border Czar Tom Homan Mocks Antifa in Surprise Visit to Sanctuary Cities
“DWP wanted to replace old wooden electricity poles with steel ones to lessen the fire fuel in Topanga Canyon. They also hoped to widen fire breaks on the slope leading from the Palisades to Pacific Coast Highway,” and after a court battle, the Department of Water and Power was ordered to put the brush back.
We tried to be nice
Businesses and individuals in the Tenderloin area of San Francisco have filed a lawsuit against the city, complaining that it has made this now very nasty area of town a “drug containment zone.”
The unnamed plaintiffs claim that open-air drug use and all the homeless addicts have created an unsafe space for everyone.
This is absolutely true. The Tenderloin is a hot mess.
They haven’t ruined everything—yet
Big Sur’s majesty. No casinos around here.
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