Shift has long kept an eye on Governor Inslee’s attempt to use a little-known bureaucratic board which he appoints – the Washington State Building Code Council – to impose his extreme environmental agenda on all future cooks in our state by banning gas stoves. The Washington State Standard is reporting on the latest step in his extreme journey and the “controversial requirements aimed at getting electric heat pumps installed in newly constructed houses, apartments and commercial buildings (which) cleared a final regulatory hurdle Tuesday.”

The under-the-radar push by the far Left includes a “suite of changes, approved by the Washington State Building Code Council” which the head of the state’s leading builders group called “a de facto ban on natural gas in new homes.” You can read on to see how the push by Gov. Inslee and the Democrats to ban gas stoves has been held up by a court decision in California involving similar overreaching mandates here… Washington State Standard.

If you care about open government, and having multi-billion-dollar and multi-decade policy decisions made in public settings, skip the rest of this story. That’s because the Tri-City Herald has a leaked story about “a draft agreement negotiated behind closed doors by the Biden administration and advocates of tearing down the lower Snake River dams (which) says the science is clear on removing the dams.”

Of course, the science on dam removal says no such thing, which must be why the Democrats have been negotiating this surrender to the extreme environmentalists behind closed doors. Read on to see “what some are calling a ‘secret plan’ developed with four tribes, Washington and Oregon, (so) the federal government would spend more than $1 billion to prepare for breaching the four hydroelectric dams” here… Tri-City Herald.

It is very clear to the Shift team that the mainstream media has drunk far too much climate crisis Koolaid to actually admit how flawed the state’s carbon tax policies are under Gov. Jay Inslee. However, at least another major paper – this time the (Vancouver) Columbian is willing to suggest that maybe we just need to “tweak” the carbon tax system, in hopes that voters will forget that “last year, Gov. Jay Inslee said the act would add ‘pennies’ to the price of gas in Washington. Instead, studies show, it has accounted for an additional 25 cents to 50 cents per gallon.”

It’s that assumption by the Democrats that voters wouldn’t mind being taken for fools that has resulted in over 400,000 signatures for an “initiative to repeal Washington’s carbon-pricing scheme (which) demonstrates the enmity that surrounds the program.” Read on to see why mere “tweaks” are unlikely to solve the problem here… Columbian.

Sometime political types just don’t want to accept that the most straight-forward answer is actually the correct one, and that sometimes it’s the candidate that matters most in an election, as opposed to some conspiracy theory, or claim of victimhood. Shift was reminded of that when reading a lengthy Tri-City Herald analysis piece under the headline bemoaning “redistricting was meant to boost Pasco Latino voices – some wonder why they lost ground.”

Much of the story is devoted to losing candidates claiming that various biases against them kept the voters from recognizing their brilliance. If you read to the bottom of the story you actually find a Latino candidate who won by engaging with his voters, and rejecting victimhood – “I put it back on Latinos. At the end of the day, Latinos aren’t voting”- while winning a council seat, unlike a few appointed candidates who could not earn enough votes to stay in office.

Read on to see if you think these grapes are a bit sour: “make no mistake, this is about who does and who does not have power in our community — not some decree about values or even a true desire to ensure the success of our children” from one of the losing candidates here… Tri-City Herald.

Evidently feces and needles on the sidewalks is not an added value for those seeking office space these days. At least that’s what Axios-Seattle seems to find from office landlords here, as “Seattle recently saw the greatest decline in demand for office space among seven large American cities, according to a commercial real estate software company.”

The drop in interest in moving a business into Seattle is severe, with “zero new demand for spaces 50,000 square feet or larger between June and September in Seattle.”  You can read on to see why with “only about one-fifth of its pre-pandemic pace in 2018–2019, Seattle’s index was the lowest among all the cities examined” here… Axios-Seattle.

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