Shift tried to let the media know that Governor Jay Inslee and his Department of Ecology bureaucrats were just trying to divert their attention away from writing about the high costs of his carbon tax – and lack of any plan to lower gas prices – by promising some magic cost reduction would come from “linkage,” a complex change in the cap and trade/carbon tax law that is not going to happen anytime soon, if at all. It appears from a Washington State Standard investigation that the governor’s own advisors were not fooled by all this talk about “pressing ahead with plans to combine Washington’s carbon market with ones in California and Québec despite opposition from a statewide panel of his own appointees.”

As these self-proclaimed experts note, while “Ecology has articulated a number of strategies and tools to mitigate potential harms (from linkage), Council confidence in their efficacy and the ability of Ecology to identify and act expeditiously is low.” Even worse than having a realistic view of Ecology’s rampant incompetence in administering the carbon tax so far, the “Environmental Justice Council says the merger could hurt communities where pollution causes the most harm and weaken existing air quality improvement programs.”

While the sarcasm is clear from those who know the Inslee administration best, the plain meaning is that the “linkage” plan can’t even satisfy the governor’s most extreme green supporters, let alone appeal to other states. Read on to see why Inslee’s top bureaucrat “assured the group’s members that Washington would not merge with California and Quebec” if it means changing the law here… Shift, Washington State Standard.

Sometimes, the adults in the room are not the serious ones. That seems to be the case when it comes to the Seattle School District dealing with “declining enrollment and a $104.4 million deficit” it spent itself into. According to the Seattle Times, some parents are “demanding the board pause any decision about (cost-saving) school closures until after the legislative session this spring, with the hope that the state will increase the district’s funding.”

The parents don’t want to face the reality of a district down to under 51,000 students, “a drop of more than 5,000 students since 2019”, and one with a budget based on fantasy since  “district officials predicted that by 2020, Seattle enrollment would reach 60,000 students.” Read on to see how the loudest voice for such fiscal insanity is “an analyst for the city of Seattle who helps develop the city’s budget” here… Seattle Times.

The debate over preserving wild salmon runs and Puget Sound’s orca population is often used by Western Washington environmental activists to argue for ripping out the four Lower Snake River dams. However, now Eastern Washington (and Oregon) members of Congress are pointing out, according to the Olympian, that “Washington state has failed to meet federal requirements that help prioritize cleanup efforts in Puget Sound to help salmon and steelhead listed as threatened there, according to the Government Accountability Office.”

Governor Inslee certainly can’t be happy that the “simple fact is now indisputable with this GAO report, which exposes what we’ve known to be true all along — (that) Gov. (Jay) Inslee and the Washington Department of Ecology are responsible for killing Puget Sound salmon and must be held accountable for their negligence.” You can read on to see that “Ecology disagreed with the GAO’s focus in the report on deadlines set for every other year” because it doesn’t like to meet any deadlines here… Olympian.

The Democrats running Olympia seem to be on a never-ending quest to make the legislature more expensive to operate even more inefficiently, as Shift has covered in the past. And that’s confirmed with the news now coming from the Spokesman-Review that about “300 people employed in the Washington state Legislature may begin union bargaining discussions next year.”

This expensive outcome is because Democrats rewarded some of their special interest donors last year by jamming through a law making “Washington one of the first U.S. states to allow employees of the House, Senate, and legislative offices to form unions and collectively bargain.” You can see that the state is already stumbling into this, with a lead bureaucrat saying, “I’m just putting it out there that we should all be on notice that we are going to have to hit the ground running if anybody expects to actually have an agreement go into effect on July 1, 2025” here… Spokesman-Review.

The team at Shift thought something like this might happen when we noted the arrival of pro-Hamas thug tactics at the Spokane City Council last week. Evidently, the Democrat-led Spokane City Council has decided that it’s better to negotiate with such terrorist sympathizers than to enforce existing rules. That’s the message from the KXLY coverage that City Council President Lori “Kinnear listened to what last week’s protestors had to say” and gave in to them.

The loudest sympathizer that the council president is negotiating with can hardly contain his glee at the Democrats’ willingness to roll over for them, gloating “’(W)hen the masses of people stand up for themselves, we will win,’ (said) Zach McGuckin, community and labor organizer with the Party for Socialism and Liberation.” You can read on to learn that the Democrats will have to keep on rolling with their new friends, as the group demands the council embrace Hamas, and “I see us fighting for as long as it takes to happen when we stand, we win” here… Shift, KXLY.

Another day, another story about the state’s failing ferry system. Such was the take from public radio yesterday, when “the M/V Yakima has been taken out of service due to ‘continuing mechanical issues,’ according to Washington State Ferries.”

Of course, this latest failure in these critical components of the state highway system “forced the state’s ferry agency to cancel several runs between Lopez Island, Anacortes, and Friday Harbor in the San Juan Islands.” You can read how the outcome of a decade of Gov. Inslee’s mismanagement is that one “third of the Washington State Ferries fleet was already down prior to the Yakima going out of service” here… KUOW.

With the 2023 elections concluded, we here at Shift WA are initiating our 2024 election coverage by highlighting former Congressman Dave Reichert, the GOP candidate vying for the position of Governor in Washington State. Having previously served as King County Sheriff and seven terms as the 8th District Congressman, Reichert aims to break the Republican Party’s four-decade absence from the Governor’s Mansion. In our Newsmaker Interview, he addressed key issues such as public safety, the state’s drug overdose crisis, soaring fuel prices attributed to Democratic policies, homelessness, and Governor Inslee’s perceived misuse of emergency powers. Read more.

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