Thanks to the controversial “leadership” of Superintendent of Public Instruction Chris Reykdal, Washington State’s public schools were woefully unprepared to educate students utilizing distance learning, and thus students are fleeing public schools  Enrollment in our K-12 classrooms should be increasing by tens of thousands, based on last year’s population growth, yet an estimated 31,000 fewer students are enrolled in Washington’s public schools in 2020 than in 2019. Most of these students have moved to private schools or homeschooling.  Also, Washington State online schools reveal they have experienced a significant increase in enrollment as well.  Yet, because they operate as public schools, defections from “brick & mortar” schools to such online opportunities are not reflected in these enrollment figures. (Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction)

Governor Inslee sure knows how to spend money, as the per person cost of the state’s budget has increased by 51%, from $4,633 to $7,022, since he took office in 2013. Inslee’s “performance” ranks as the greatest per capita increase in state history. This comes from a chart provided by the Washington Policy Center.  Governor Inslee and Democrat legislators will hope citizens will forget these numbers by next session, when they will plead poverty and attempt to jam though tax increases. They need that new money to pay for their continuing vast expansion of state government, and the numerous pay raises and benefits they have showered on their campaign funders at the public employee unions. (Washington Policy Center)

Governor Inslee was asked, at his taxpayer-funded campaign press conference on Tuesday, about the Republicans’ call for a special session to deal with issues related to Boeing and Education. The governor left everyone laughing with the excuse that all Republicans want to do is take away everybody’s health care.  Governor Inslee’s claim doesn’t even pass a rudimentary smell test. Even if Republicans wanted to take away health care from Washington citizens (which they don’t), they would need the votes of many Democrat legislators AND the governor’s signature to accomplish this.  Thus, this is a nonsensical excuse for not calling a special session. Inslee then falsely claimed he had not seen any Republican proposals regarding Boeing (likely because the governor doesn’t read the many letters Republican legislators send him).  Yet, Republican Senator John Braun just last month suggested eliminating the B&O tax for manufacturers (which would significantly make Washington more attractive to airplane production) and add a sales tax on legal services to make it revenue neutral. (Governor Inslee’s media event and Jason Mercier Facebook post)

More bad news for Washington State’s small businesses – due to the high unemployment benefits payout rate (and Governor Inslee’s Employment Security Department allowing one of the largest thefts in world history to take place), the Unemployment Trust Fund will need to be replenished with an increase in the unemployment tax.  The Association of Washington Business is warning that this could result in a five-fold increase to the standard unemployment tax.  This could severely hurt Washington’s small businesses, which are already barely surviving during Governor Inslee’s “emergency orders.” (MyNorthwest)

The Seattle Police Officers Guild has endorsed Matt Larkin in his race against incumbent Democrat Attorney General Bob Ferguson.  As Washington State’s top law enforcement officer, Ferguson has chosen to align himself with his Democrat “Defund the Police” colleagues and refused to publicly condemn the physical attacks by rioters against Seattle police officers.  Also, while constantly commenting and filing numerous lawsuits on federal issues, Ferguson has refused to comment on the actions of his fellow Democrats on the Seattle City Council to defund the police.  Guild President Mike Solan states in a TV commercial for Larkin’s campaign, “We were shocked when our leaders gave into the activist mob and turned their backs on us. Now we are all less safe.” (YouTube/Larkin for Attorney General television ad)

King County Executive Dow Constantine’s plan to again increase the sales tax, this time by 0.1% to fund his latest doomed-to-fail homeless projects, is losing steam due to a provision in the state law that allows cities to use the money for their own housing projects.  After Constantine proposed his plan last month, several cities jumped at the opportunity to have the revenue raised in their cities go towards projects that help their citizens (instead of Constantine’s plan which will focus on the homelessness needs which Seattle’s leaders have made even worse over the last decade). Covington, Issaquah, Kent, Renton, and Snoqualmie have already voted to use the funds in their cities, and many other cities are considering following suit. (Seattle Times)

The Franklin Pierce School District is investigating a middle school teacher for allegedly deleting a post and scolded a student, before kicking the 6^th grader out of a chat discussion for posting that he admired President Trump.  The incident at Keithley Middle School in Parkland has drawn national attention. The school district is reviewing recordings of the video instructions, along with a discussion between the student’s mother and the teacher. (News Tribune)

The Chelan Douglas Health District begun community-wide COVID-19 testing on Tuesday, trying to obtain more accurate data regarding the infection rate in the Wenatchee/East Wenatchee area.  Health officials believe the data will show the infection rate is lower than currently reported, and if they are correct, the area’s school districts will move forward with some in-class instruction of their students.  Cars were lined up at Wenatchee High School when voluntary testing began, and health officials will also be randomly testing Kindergarten–second grade students and their parents, since those grades would be the first to return part-time to the classroom. (Wenatchee World)

Central Washington Republican Congressman Dan Newhouse joined Democrat Congresswoman from King County Suzan Del Bene at a virtual forum on bipartisanship hosted by Cascadia College.  Both members of Congress spoke on how most of their work in Washington, D.C. is on bipartisan efforts to assist and benefit people in this Washington. Congressman Newhouse stated, “The Washington state delegation shares several bipartisan priorities that require collaboration, and I am proud of how we have been able to put our political differences aside to address the priorities of Washingtonians.”  Newhouse has made bipartisan collaboration a priority and, in both 2018 and 2019, he held a series of events with Democrat Congressman Derek Kilmer (D-Gig Harbor) to highlight this objective. (Video of Newhouse/Del Bene Cascadia Forum and KEPR-TV)

In the latest Jay Inslee for Governor fundraising email, this one signed by Barrack Obama, the former President makes this interesting statement, “We’ve got to reject the politics that pits working Americans against one another.”  Really?  Does President Obama know that Inslee has taken the side of the liberal activists (thorough his continuing silence) who are physically assaulting the workers of the Seattle Police Department?  Does Obama know the governor sided with union bosses to give state employees another pay raise, while forbidding thousands of workers from returning to work (and will soon be demanding private-sector workers pay higher taxes to fund the pay raises)?  Does Obama know that Inslee is ignoring science and is threatening the economic livelihood of hundreds of thousands of Washington workers by tearing down the Snake River dams, just  to placate the random demands of his rich urban environmentalist donors? Does Obama know that one of Governor Inslee’s first emergency orders was to allow government construction workers to continue to collect paychecks, while private sector construction workers were forced to sit at home for weeks, all while his dysfunctional Employment Security Department was unable to deliver promised unemployment benefits?  The list of examples of Governor Inslee pitting “working Americans against one another” is endless. But since the former President’s staff has likely only interacted with Washington residents through Inslee’s own handlers, we can excuse him for not knowing Inslee’s actions always pit the desires of his campaign contributors and supporters over the needs of Washington workers. (Inslee for Governor fundraising email)

Democrat Governor Jay Inslee and his “green” friends want to cripple Washington’s hydroelectric power system.  Inslee and his wealthy urban campaign supporters in the environmental community continue their efforts to remove the Snake River dams (and their clean energy) from Washington State’s Southeast corner. They are doing this despite a recent federal government study that determined that removing the four dams would destabilize the power grid, increase overall greenhouse emissions, and more than double the risk of regional power outages. Also recent migration counts at the dams reveal that the salmon population is significantly growing.  But, since Governor Inslee didn’t get his way, his environmental allies will keep using the court system to try and delay progress at the dams. (Click to read full article at Shift and Chinook Counts at Lower Granite Dam)

BabylonBee Friday

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