Our “green” governor Jay Inslee does a lot of outreach to his campaign supporters – mainly reaching for their wallets. In return, he willing to ignore little things, like existing state law, as he tries to please his million-dollar donors.
That fact was on clear display over the holiday weekend, when Inslee’s pandering to his campaign contributors in the labor community showed a serious lack of awareness of an initiative passed in 1998, which provides for a state minimum wage increase every year that the cost of living increases.
In Jay’s campaign fundraising email, his campaign manager writes “Jay has made it crystal clear: It’s time for Washington’s minimum wage to keep pace with cost-of-living increases.”
Umm, what part of Initiative 688 doesn’t the Inslee campaign understand? The voter-passed law has been in place for almost two decades, and increased out state’s minimum wage by over 80% during that time, due on a “cost-of-living adjustment to the minimum wage each year based on the federal Consumer Price Index.”
Evidently the opportunity to make a false attack on his opponent Bill Bryant (“There’s only one candidate running for governor this year who supports a fair minimum wage”) overrode actually telling the truth in the email.
Depend on a democrat to lie to gain brownie points with the idiots that he wants to support him.
This all sounds very familiar:
As Attorney General, McKenna tried to reinterpret the law in order to deny a 12-cent cost of living adjustment in 2011. Citing McKenna’s opinion, corporate lobbying groups representing minimum-wage paying industries sued the state to try to block that year’s increase. A Kittitas County judge quickly ruled against them on summary judgment, saying the law was clear and the 12-cent increase in 2011 should proceed.
But the industries that pay low wages haven’t forgotten McKenna’s advocacy. The PACs for the Washington Farm Bureau, the Washington Restaurant Association (biggest funder: McDonald’s) and the Washington Retail Association have all given the maximum legal contribution to McKenna’s campaign. Plus, four of the six largest low-wage employers in the country have contributed thousands to McKenna — Walmart, McDonald’s, Subway, and Yum Brands (which owns Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC).
Yep, it’s all there: pay-for-play, taxpayer resources squandered on behalf of contributors, and — Attorney General McKenna’s personal specialty — a needless and self-inflicted total defeat in court. Little wonder his former campaign staff here were so quick to accuse Gov. Inslee of the same (minus the legal defeat, of course).