The team at ShiftWA hopes you had a joyous holiday season and start to the new year. Welcome to 2024!

We are back at the keyboard after surviving the Sugar Bowl, to bring you a few political items you might have missed as the year wrapped up and to keep an eye on what’s coming up with the start of the legislative session next week.

We hope you enjoy our Daily Briefing, and we look forward to providing you in 2024 the same quality insight and political coverage that we’ve been striving for over the last decade.

Someone at the Seattle Times must have decided before the year’s end that the mainstream media was just being too tough on Governor Jay Inslee, so the paper turned over several of its pages to a relatively unedited press release from the governor’s office on his legacy-building focus in 2024. Clearly any investigative work on the many (and massive) failures of the Inslee administration will have to wait for a different reporter… Seattle Times.

The refusal of Washington legislative Democrats to admit that their carbon tax is producing massive windfall profits for the state on the backs (and wallets) of Washington drivers, from Gov. Inslee (see the 22:30 mark of the interview) on down to the lowest backbencher, has caused a variety of proposals to reduce the pain on taxpayers – or at least make them aware of the size of the costs. Now the Capital Press is reporting that a pair of Republican legislators have proposed that the Department of Agriculture update the information it puts on gas pumps by producing “stickers (which) would shed light on an ‘add-on fee that’s affecting low-income people who have to drive’.”

Beyond listing the costs of the Democrats’ cap-and-tax program on gas pumps, “House Bill 2050 calls for the stickers to also list the per-gallon 18.4 cents federal gas tax and 49.4 cents state fuel tax.” Of course, it’s unlikely that Democrats will allow the public to easily see just how much pain their carbon tax and other extreme green policies are inflicting on drivers here… TVW, Capital Press.

The state’s lawmakers will convene in Olympia on Monday to start this year’s 60-day session. There are many ways to keep an eye on what those legislators are up to, with the Washington State Standard providing a handy overview for those who have extra time on their hands here… Washington State Standard.

Just before our year-end hiatus, Shift took a look at the failure of the state to secure nearly $200 million from the federal government to waste on more studies on a never-to-be-built bullet-train. Now that we’re into 2024, the Seattle Times is providing op-ed space to a different kind of rail advocate who shares our dismissive view of the high-speed rail dreams of some in the region, and prods the state’s liberal leaders to abandon those wasteful ideas and embrace the “opportunity to adjust course and save from hundreds of millions to many billions of dollars” by improving the Amtrak rail“service” we already have here… Shift, Seattle Times.

All of us at Shift have been longtime supporters of the Roanoke Conference (see our recent interview with one of the upcoming featured speakers), and are happy to provide the latest news about this year’s gathering in Ocean Shores. You can read the just-released session agenda for the conference starting Friday, Jan. 26 here… Shift, Roanoke Conference website.

In Shift’s annual interview with a legislative leader before the start of the session, we interviewed Senate Republican Leader John Braun from Centralia, who serves the 20th Legislative District in Southwest Washington. The U.S. Navy veteran began serving in the Washington State Senate in 2013 and became leader of the GOP Caucus before the 2021 legislative session. The senator manages his family business (which builds emergency vehicles). He and his wife are parents to four children.

In his interview, Senator Braun outlined the three policy areas his caucus will focus on during the upcoming session (which commences on January 9). He discussed the initiatives to the legislature that Let’s Go Washington delivered. Senator Braun shared his thoughts on the learning loss suffered by public education students during Governor Inslee’s unilateral decision to unnecessarily force kids to stay in unproductive distance learning. The GOP Senate Leader explained his views on the state budget, parental rights, and what more the legislature can do to repair the state’s criminal justice system after previously passed Democratic laws led to skyrocketing crime rates and more crime victims. Read more.

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