Shift’s Newsmaker Interview is with 30^th Legislative District Senate candidate Linda Kochmar, the former state representative running to unseat failed first-term Democrat Senator Claire Wilson.  This contest is one of just a half-dozen races in swing suburban districts which will determine which party controls the Washington State Senate during the 2023 legislative session.  Kochmar is currently the Federal Way City Council President after having served two terms in the Washington State House of Representatives.

South King County has been severely impacted by the reckless 2021 “police reform” laws passed by the Democrats (and strongly supported by Senator Wilson).  Kochmar has made restoring crime fighting tools to police departments one of her campaign’s central themes.  In her interview, Kochmar describes how Senator Wilson voted against allowing police to pursue suspected criminals even though it has been well-established that criminals know they can simply speed away from police officers under the rules the Democrats have put in place.  Besides crime issues, Kochmar also describes how the Democrats refused to provide tax relief to low- and middle-income households and how Senator Wilson’s support for legalizing drugs is simply adding more homeless individuals to our streets. (Click to read full Newsmaker Interview)

Republican Senate budget leader Lynda Wilson provides a critical response to the massively bloated $64.1 billion supplemental budget passed by the Democrat-controlled legislature and proudly signed by Governor Jay Inslee yesterday.  The Vancouver-area senator said the budget was symbolic of the Democrats’ priorities not in line with the “realities facing most families across our state.”  Senator Wilson stated that if Republican lawmakers had written the state’s budget taxes would have been cut for struggling lower- and middle- income households, and that re-storing public safety laws would have actually happened, and that a transportation package would not be dependent on increasing taxes and fees.

Senator Wilson said her constituents are upset that the Democrats decided to use the record-breaking surplus revenue to continue their rapid expansion of Washington State government (doubling in size during Governor Inslee’s nine years in office) and failed to provide tax relief to Washington residents – even refusing to eliminate taxes on diapers. “I sure wouldn’t want to be in the position of defending this budget to the people back home, as my Democratic colleagues now are,” said Senator Wilson. “That’s because there is no defense for how they spent all those extra billions without helping the average family with the affordability crisis in our state.” (Senate Republican Caucus media release)

Hidden among the increased taxes and fees of the Democrats’ $17 billion transportation package is the wealthy urban environmentalists’ latest reckless and wasteful policy, which prohibits Washington residents from purchasing a new gas-powered car in after 2030. That is correct, in less than eight years, Washington State will be joining Iceland and Slovenia in forbidding residents to purchase a new gas-powered car – even a hybrid one.  Anyone paying attention knows that this latest far-Left policy will undoubtedly need to be “fixed” by more responsible legislators in the future, along with the Democrats’ poorly constructed Long-Term Care payroll tax, disastrous “police-reform” laws, and Jay Inslee’s unconstitutional state income tax on capital gains

One of the major reasons why this radical policy is flawed is because, once again, Democrats refused to consider more rational alternatives to what was being pushed by their rich radical donors.  In a normal democracy, a major change in transportation methods and family budgets would be allowed a hearty public debate.  Yet, like nearly all policies recently passed by the Democrats in Olympia, the liberals who lead the state legislature knew this prohibition could not stand up to public scrutiny. So instead of making this significant policy change a stand-alone bill, the Democrats snuck it into their massive transportation package.  The Democrat leadership did this to encourage their wealthy urban environmental friends (the only ones who prefer and can afford electric cars which are still $20,000 – $30,000 more expensive than regular cars) to make large contributions to their troubled and very nervous candidates. (Seattle Times)

A liberal front group called “Invest in Washington Now” is pushing pure nonsense on social media attempting to deflect attention from Democrats who chose to ignore the problems their policies have created for low- and middle- income households.  The group falsely claims the Republicans were seeking a tax break for the “Super rich”, even though the reality is that during the latest session Republicans were leading the charge to reduce taxes on all Washingtonians.  Evidently Democrats are counting on people being so ill-informed that they would believe a sales tax cut, a cut of the gas tax, and even removing the tax on diapers would only benefit the ultra-wealthy.  This is the desperate argument the Democrats are using to defend their greedy actions to spend all of the state’s budget surplus on enlarging the size and cost of government and not giving even low-income workers a small tax cut. (Invest in Washington Now Facebook post)

The Seattle Times points out that Democrat State Representative Frank Chopp’s recent power-play of robbing $2 million intended for the King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA) and giving it to a non-profit he co-created, threatens “to undermine the fledgling authority’s success and raise questions about his allegiance to the Low Income Housing Institute (LIHI), which he co-founded.”

Representative Chopp, who after 20 years was the longest-serving Speaker of the House in Washington history when he stepped aside to avoid being replaced in 2019, is being heavily criticized by many across the political spectrum for his use of a little-known legislative maneuver to take the money the legislature had designated to KCRHA (which had already publicly promised the funds to two other non-profits) and handing it instead to his good friend and controversial executive director of LIHI Sharon Lee.  Representative Chopp conducted this theft of public money because he was unhappy with the competitive bidding processes conducted by both KCRHA and the City of Seattle, which decided against sending money to LIHI.

The Times’ editorial argues that the KCRHA was developed to bring accountability to the region’s expensive homelessness crisis and Representative Chopp’s action undermines those efforts. (Seattle Times, Low Income Housing Institute webpage, and KOMO News)

A group of Kirkland parents have filed a lawsuit to prevent King County Executive Dow Constantine from converting a large hotel into a homeless shelter next to four existing preschools.  “Keep Kids Safe” filed the lawsuit against the county and the City of Kirkland, asserting they failed to follow state and county laws when they purchased the La Quinta Inn and that they never held required public hearings over the use of the property.  The Kirkland property is one of nine former hotels which Executive Constantine has purchased as he tries to push Seattle’s never-ending homeless crisis (caused by failed liberal policies in the city) across the entire county to help expand the permanent size and cost of county government. (MyNorthwest)

One of the first opportunities for volunteers/activists to get involved in the 2022 election process will be Saturday, April 8^th,  to support two strong Republican contenders to win back seats in the swing suburban 47^th Legislative District.   U.S. Army veteran and current Auburn City Council President Bill Boyce is running for the state senate (which current Senator Mona Das is already leaving after one-term to avoid defending her liberal actions before South King County voters).  Community leader and volunteer Carmen Goers is the Republican candidate running for the open House seat that was vacated by House Democrat Leader Pat Sullivan, who also chose to retire instead of defending his far-Left actions.

The event will be held from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM at Kent’s Lake Meridian Park. The notice states the event is to meet the candidates, help raise funds for their campaigns, and begin doorbelling neighbors. (April 9^th 47^th LD event notice, Bill Boyce campaign website, and Carmen Goers campaign website)

Eastern Washington legislators are outraged over Governor Inslee’s line item veto which eliminated money to study the impact of large energy farms on the state’s agriculture industry.  Governor Inslee’s actions on HB 1812 is just his latest attack on the state farmers by a governor who used to actually be elected to represent people in Eastern Washington.  The financing of the study was instrumental in receiving necessary support from Republican legislators to pass the bill, but upholding that promise was not important to the governor, as he cares little about his word.  Instead, he would rather serve his large extreme environmental activist friends, as he seeks to eliminate Eastern Washington concern’s from stopping those wealthy solar energy contributors from installing large solar farms across Eastern Washington to supply energy to urban Puget Sound.

Representative Mary Dye (R – Pomeroy) said, “The governor has his majorities (in the House and Senate) and he wants to use them to implement his personal vision. We just wanted a voice in this one little thing.”

Representative Mark Klicker (R – Walla Walla), who proposed the study said he was misled by the Democrats. He said, “It was wrong, what happened.” Of course, that could be said about a great many Democrat actions during this session. (Capitol Press and Washington Legislature Bill Summary)

Babylon Bee Friday

Conservative Satire to start the weekend

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