The State of Washington has given international consulting firm McKinsey & Company three lucrative, no-bid contracts to provide information and management services because, despite the size of state government, Jay Inslee was ill-prepared to make the many decisions required  by the coronavirus pandemic and his own emergency orders.  In June, Inslee signed a $165,000 per week contract with the very expensive consultants at McKinsey, to provide access to a “Governor’s Decision Support Tool”, which apparently aided state officials in determining when to re-open portions of the state’s economy (though it didn’t help them get it right).  Earlier in May, the embattled Employment Security Department (ESD) signed a $142,000 a week contract with McKinsey, this time to help the incompetent bureaucrats at ESD respond to the historic theft of taxpayer funds which the Inslee Administration allowed to take place. The Washington Health Care Authority also gave McKinsey $1.2 million dollars to provide a system to track positive COVID-19 patients who are also on the state’s Medicaid rolls.  Obviously, there are many questions regarding these large no-bid contracts going to an outside consulting firm, and whether major donors to the Inslee campaign helped direct these contracts.  The primary question we have is this: why do we keep expanding the size and cost of government, when it apparently is unable to perform basic services during a crisis and must spend millions on an outside firm to do the job for the state employees already getting paid to do them? (Northwest News Network)

We look forward to the response from the environmental community, which is most consistent funding source for Gov. Inslee’s campaign, to the fact that 41 states have decreased their carbon emissions, while Washington State is going the other way, and has increased carbon emissions by 4%.  Washington State, under environmental policies written and implemented by the Inslee Administration, has continued to fail to meet environmental targets and has actually created more environmental damage, according to a report produced by the World Resource Institute.  Just further evidence that many environmental programs proposed by local Democrats do extraordinarily little (or nothing) to help the environment, but are really covers to implement higher taxes and make government larger and more intrusive. (Grist)

Despite ESD claims that staff has finally (after four months) cleared up the backlog of benefit applications, there are still an estimated 30,000 Washington residents who have not received their first unemployment checks.  While the poorly managed department has finally determined that these individuals qualify for payments, the extremely patient individuals have not yet been informed when they will receive a check for back payments, or when they can expect regular payments to start. (Everett Herald)

Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best has resigned following the unprecedented and hurried actions of the Seattle City Council to slash the budget of the police department.   The resignation will take place in September. Best was the first Black woman to hold the position in Seattle history, and the white members of the Seattle City Council thoroughly disrespected her by failing to consult her before announcing their decisions to suddenly reverse Seattle public safety policy and cave into the “defund the police” demands of those who used violence to promote their demands. The question now arises as to what competent law enforcement leader would be interested in a job whose funding is determined by a city council so easily swayed by unrealistic and dangerous demands of political activists or criminals, and is willing to break public promises to increase police funding? (Seattle Times)

Journalist Omari Salisbury states that many members of Seattle’s Black community are upset over the departure of the Police Chief Best, and the role the Democrat councilmembers played in the chief’s decision.  Evidently hypocrisy is in the air, as Salisbury said, “The reaction we’re getting from my neighborhood, from the Black community, from the Central District, is that a lot of people are, irregardless (sic) of how the city council might have felt about Carmen Best, a lot of people are mad that this city council didn’t talk to this Black woman.”  (MyNorthwest)

In response the Seattle City Council’s unpopular Monday vote to cut the law enforcement budget (in a city that currently is experiencing a leap in violent and property crimes), the Seattle Police Officers’ Guild has released a video titled “Curb Your Hypocrisy.”  In the short video, three current councilmembers (Lisa Herbold, Dan Strauss, and Andrew Lewis) are shown at 2019 candidate forums advocating for more police funding, more police officers, and even more precincts.  These three Democrat politicians each flipped their stance when a small group of people created violence in Seattle’s streets, and then took over six blocks of Capitol Hill (where 3 murders and many other violent acts took place). We must wonder if recall efforts will now begin against these three for brazenly breaking their promises to those who voted for them in less than a year. Remember, public safety was a major issue during last year’s elections, as the city struggled with growing homelessness, drug addiction, and theft problems. (Seattle Police Officers’ Guild YouTube video)

Once again, no word from Governor Inslee, Attorney General Bob Ferguson, U.S. Senator Patty Murray, U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell, and Washington State Democrat Party Chair Tina Podlodowski with their reactions to the radical measures of their fellow Democrats on the Seattle City Council to slash police department funding, endangering the public safety of 775,000 Seattle residents and forcing the resignation of the first Black woman to be Seattle’s Police Chief.  Unfortunately, if the members of the state’s media outlets continue to give a pass to Democrat office holders, the Democrat politicians will continue to avoid discussing an issue that is in the national headlines, but could cost them votes if they continue to seek favor from the protest crowd.

After the federal government recently determined that ripping out the clean-energy producing dams along the Lower Snake River was not appropriate, for both environmental and economic reasons, environmental groups switched tactics and have recently proposed “river temperature regulations” as a strategy for Oregon and Washington to take control of the federal dams.  It is not surprising that the environmental groups have proposed summer temperature limits at levels that the rivers (Snake and Columbia) could not maintain even without the dams in place.  This op-ed from the Northwest River Partners provides the arguments against this radical proposal from environmental groups who continue to solicit contributions by falsely blaming the Snake River dams for the depletion of Puget Sound Orcas. (Puget Sound Business Journal)

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