In case you missed the broadcast, SHIFT presents four examples of Jay Inslee “greenness” [nation’s greenest governor] about how small-d democratic government works during KCTS 9’s Ask the Governor segment Wednesday night.
1. While attempting justify his use of executive action—as opposed to legislative action—to implement his extreme environmental agenda, Inslee removed all doubt of his utter disdain for the legislature … and the word “bi-partisan.”
“…When are you Legislators going to help on this climate action issue so that Washington State can reduce carbon pollution? The difficulty has not been my style or anyone else’s style, we just haven’t had legislators who, you know, say we are going to follow the science… we need more legislators who will say ‘we look, love Washington, we hate pollution’ so let’s get together on a bi-partisan basis and really buckle down to solve this problem. Unfortunately, we do not have enough legislators who, from an ideological stand-point, are willing to help us on that.”
Let’s be clear. Inslee believes Washington State does not have enough legislators (those pesky people who are elected by the people and represent their constituents concerns) willing to make it their highest priority to help Jay implement his extreme environmental agenda, instead of say, creating jobs. So, he’s going to take it upon himself to implement rules to impose his job-killing policies (like his $1.17 gas tax scheme) despite the objections of the representatives of the people.
2. When answering what pressure he can place on Victoria, B.C. to stop dumping raw sewage in the Puget Sound, Inslee demonstrated that he thinks that’s OK as long as Canadian officials go along with his extreme environmental agenda elsewhere.
“So we are trying to shine the light of sunshine on this problem to try to get them to move forward… but that is a government that is moving forward on other environmental challenge we have, which is carbon pollution… they have done some good things reducing carbon pollution… we are working together in a three state—California, Washington, Oregon and British Columbia—consortium to reduce carbon pollution.”
Enough said. As long as British Columbia is a part of a “three state” team with Jay – not sure when it became a state, or when having four governments working together equals “three” – what’s a little raw sewage floating in our regional bathtub known as Puget Sound?
3. When asked to provide examples of how clean energy innovation might bring jobs and economic development to different parts of Washington State, Inslee pointed out that only things done before he arrived in Olympia are helping, not anything he is doing to encourage economic growth and innovation.
“We invented the world’s first commercial jet airliner successful, we invented the world’s best software… we are very inventive… may I can mention the machinists and the engineers who are making the most advanced, the most fuel efficient aircraft ever made, the Boeing 777X and the Boeing 787… you drive across Eastern Washington and you see those wind turbines, people are working on those wind turbines, 30 people in Dayton, WA are working on those wind turbines. So this is happening all across our state.”
A potential follow-up question might have been: So if all those things are already happening, why would you propose adding more state regulations (like you gas tax scheme) and bigger state government (like the state income tax proposed in your party’s political platform) to try and choke off the very innovation that has led to these accomplishments?
4. While addressing Republicans’ concerns over executive action imposing an extreme environmental agenda that would lead to a gas tax of as much at $1 per gallon, Inslee… well… lied.
“We are not going to be jacking up anyone’s gas prices by a dollar a gallon… I really hope the time comes when we have two parties who will help us fashion a way to reduce carbon pollution. I would like this to be a bi-partisan effort. All our kids are going to suffer in the State of Washington—Republicans and Democrats—if we don’t solve this problem… Our state really is being severely threatened and damaged because of carbon pollution and I really want to look for ways to work for all legislators, of either party, to fashion a Washington State response…. we are looking at right now, in a very reasonable fashion… taking our time, ways to have caps on carbon… ways to stop buying coal-by-wire… so these are very reasonable things… Europe is doing this with success.”
To Jay, apparently “bi-partisan” means anyone who will go along with the far-left agenda led by outside environmental organizations not accountable to the public. He certainly does not seek bi-partisan input into his extreme agenda. In fact, Inslee ignored the suggestions of an environmental policy task force created by the Legislature in 2013—it’s called the Climate Legislative and Executive Workgroup (CLEW) – and it was bipartisan by design. Instead, Inslee has been secretly (until Shift published the emails showing his plans) working for over a year to implement an environmental agenda—that includes a scheme that his own consultant pointed out will cause a “jacking up” of gas prices—that is favored by his favorite billionaire benefactor, California billionaire Tom Steyer.
Cialis