It is hardly news to write about the amount of money wasted by government bureaucrats (and the elected officials who empower them), but the Washington Policy Center’s Todd Myers uses that reality to provide a perspective worthy of more attention, namely that “(W)hen government officials don’t pay the price for their mistakes, there is little incentive to get it right in the first place, or change direction when projections are wrong and programs fail to deliver the promised benefits.” And that lack of accountability costs all of us.

The current examples motivating Myers’ column of staffers getting it wrong without consequences were provided by the Washington State Department of Ecology and Sound Transit, with him pointing out that “(E)xperts are supposed to be the ones who can sort out the complexities, accurately assess risks, and make good decisions. Instead, government ‘experts’ end up explaining why they failed to anticipate the very uncertainty they claim makes them expert.” You can find out more about how “Ecology staff continue to claim their previous projections were ‘created to counter misinformation,’ refusing to admit their own claims were the misinformation” here… Washington Policy Center.

Sean O’Brien, the new Eastern Washington Director for the Washington Policy Center (WPC), joined us for this week’s Newsmaker Interview. O’Brien returned to Washington state after spending eight years in Washington, D.C. as the Deputy Chief of Staff for Congressman Dan Newhouse (R – Sunnyside) and as the Executive Director for the Congressional Western Caucus. Among other topics, O’Brien reflected on how Governor Jay Inslee misled the public about the dramatic increase in the price of gas caused by his cap-and-trade policies and how his administration failed to follow the law to exempt Washington State farmers from the significant (more 45 cents a gallon so far) rate increase. Read more.

International attention has been thrust on downtown Seattle due to the increase in senseless street violence which cost Eian Kwon and her unborn child their lives this week. That attention has further focused outrage on local elected officials and their soft-on-crime agenda. You can learn more about how to join others Saturday at 10:45 a.m., for a memorial service and march here…March To Take Back The City.

Democrats from Governor Jay Inslee on down have been consistent, as Shift has highlighted, in claiming their expensive cap-and-tax program would not actually do what it was intended to do – drive gas prices much higher to get people to stop using gas in their cars. Gov. Inslee infamously claimed that his law would only add “pennies” to the cost of a gallon of gas – which is true if you consider 46 pennies per gallon out of your wallet to be an “only” kind of thing.

What is ironic about this cap-and-tax cost debate finally taking place is that it should have been obvious to any reporter interested in the truth that the Democrats knew their policy would be expensive. Why did no reporter ask, when Democrats back in 2021 were trying to round up votes for the new tax, why the Democrats needed to exempt certain groups from the new tax if it was only going to cost “pennies”? Yet, as the Washington State Standard reports, “Farmers in Washington are supposed to be exempt from the new cap-and-trade program but, six months in, some say they are still getting hit with added fuel costs.” You can read about how panicked Democrats have “launched a new work group to dig into cap-and-trade exemptions issues” in hopes of creating political cover for themselves here… Shift, Washington State Standard.

Shift continues to get a laugh out of Attorney General Bob Ferguson’s on-going “Exploratory Campaign” for governor, which seems primarily to be an exercise in evading the state’s campaign finance limits and hiding his donor names. You can see how his daily emails are also a demonstration of just how little AG Ferguson thinks about the intellect of his potential donors, when he claims that he “is the only candidate” doing certain things in a campaign that he is not yet a part of, when in reality he is the “only” candidate not following campaign finance laws, here… Shift, Bob Ferguson campaign email.

The nation’s largest collection of labor leaders has decided to ignore the wishes of a majority of Democrat voters – who current polls show don’t want President Joe Biden to run again – because they evidently are getting everything they want out of the current administration. At least that seems to be the story behind the press release that the “General Board of the AFL-CIO—representing 60 unions and more than 12.5 million workers—voted today to endorse President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for re-election in 2024. The endorsement vote marks the earliest the AFL-CIO has ever voted to endorse in a presidential election”. You can read more about how the union bosses are telling the president he must keep Vice President Kamala Harris on the ticket and that they are so far out of touch that they actually believe “our country is in far better shape today because of their leadership” here… The Stand.

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