Legislation passed in Olympia clearly reveals Democrats’ safety priorities for 2021. Release felons early from prison, restore felons’ voting rights before they complete their sentences, and make it more difficult for law enforcement to catch them if they commit another offense.  These are the Democrat “public safety” priorities number 1, 2, and 3 jammed through this legislative session. And Democrat lawmakers did this as violent crime is on the rise, and residents are more concerned than ever about public safety. The Democrats have eagerly sacrificed our public safety to increase the number of voters who support their soft-on-crime policies. Even more discouraging – they are not done yet.  The Democrats in Olympia are now pushing legislation to make it legal to possess meth, heroin, and other life-destroying substances. For felons, elections have consequences – and when Democrats win, so do the felons.  (Click link to read full Shift article)

As Governor Jay Inslee randomly selects criteria to evaluate what “phase” counties can operate, today he announced in an email that three counties (Cowlitz, Pierce, and Whitman) would will move back to Phase Two starting next Friday.  Last week, hours after the governor claimed on Thursday that metrics for determining phases could not be changed, he changed the metrics.  Before last Friday, larger counties needed to stay below a daily average of 200 new cases AND have less than 5% of hospital beds filled with COVID patients to remain in Phase 3.  On Friday, his office announced it had switched the metrics to say that if EITHER the new cases average OR the hospital bed occupancy rates were below the limit, counties could stay in Phase 3.

Earlier today, Pierce County Executive Bruce Dammeier stated he was concerned that the governor might push his county back to Phase 2.  Dammeier argued that they should not be moved back for two reasons.  First, despite repeated complaints to the governor’s office, the state was shortchanging his county in the number of vaccines (especially in comparison to King County) going to Pierce County. Secondly, Dammeier stated that there might be problems with the hospitalization data the state was using.  The county executive claimed that he had spoken with hospital leaders, and they were all confident that their facilities were comfortably handling the current levels of patients. (Inslee media release and Q13 News/Facebook)

Besides the Low Carbon Fuel Standard (which government estimates project could raise gas prices as high as 62 cents a gallon) and a “cap and trade” bill (which will raise gas prices an additional 18 cents a gallon), Democrat lawmakers in Olympia are moving forward with 33 more taxes and fees related to transportation.  Republicans are correct in calling this “Taxapalooza,” as the Democrats push forward inefficient climate policies that are full of government graft and make it nearly impossible for many low-income workers to travel to and from work.

Included in the Democrats’ fees are an additional 10 cents per gallon gas tax (to give Washington State the highest gas tax in the country, because Democrats in Washington love to be number one in taxes), higher driver’s license fees, food delivery fees, taxes on auto parts, and even fees on new home construction (despite 75% of state residents already unable to qualify for a new home mortgage). Adding insult to injury, Democrats in the legislature want to increase car tabs even higher to make state government larger and more powerful. This action comes as Washingtonians are still recovering from Governor Jay Inslee’s shutdowns and just 18 months after voters passed and initiative demanding a serious reduction in car tab fees (which liberal politicians sued so their liberal friends on the Washington State Supreme Court could overturn the voters, again). Thus proving that not only are Democrats not listening to the state voters, but they are doing the exact opposite of what voters have said they wanted, over and over again. (Seattle Times, LCFS costs by Puget Sound Clean Air Agency, Cap and Trade Cost by Washington Research Council, Washington Policy Center, and Washington Secretary of State elections returns)

Documentarian and author Christopher Rufo writes that since the mentally ill have been “deinstitutionalized,” they are now being shuttled between jails, the streets, and emergency rooms.  In his lengthy report, Rufo reports on his investigation of mental illness within Olympia’s homeless population.  He writes, “In the absence of the old asylums, Olympia’s mentally ill are now crowded into a city-sanctioned tent encampment, then shuffled through the institutions of the modern social-scientific state: the jail cell, the short-term psychiatric bed, the case-management appointment, the feeding line, and the needle dispensary. In the name of compassion, we have built a system that may be even crueler than what came before.” We rarely provide a strong recommendation to our readers on articles, but we do so with this article.  It is one of the most detailed reports on the failure of liberal homeless policies (City Journal)

As Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan counts down the number of days of her lame-duck administration, she passes the buck on who is responsible for the city’s failure to remove homeless encampments from playfields and schoolyards.  In an interview with Brandi Kruse on Q13’s “The Divide,” the mayor first attempted to use the Centers for Disease Control guidelines as the reasons why the city has failed to clean up homeless encampments from Ballard little league fields.  When Kruse pointed out these are simply “guidelines, not laws,” the liberal mayor shifted her blame to the liberal city council by stating, “There has been significant amount of political disagreement on whether you can or should leave encampments in place.” Regarding the encampments currently on two separate school grounds, the mayor said the city needs to go through a process to have them removed from school district property, since Seattle’s far-Left school board has made it clear they do not want them removed.  The mayor did not state why the city has not moved forward with this process, since it has been known for several weeks that schools would be reopening in early April.  It is interesting to hear the mayor blame the encampments on the pandemic as if they hadn’t littered the city before March of last year. We provide a link to KOMO News’ “Seattle is Dying” to remind her the homelessness disaster has been in place throughout her administration. (Q13’s The Divide/Facebook,  Q13 News, MyNorthwest, and KOMO News/YouTube)

New President and CEO of the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce stated that the organization has “put down our dukes” in fighting for business interests with the City of Seattle.  This is discouraging news for Seattle employers, who are constantly under attack from the liberal Seattle City Council members, who always blame businesses for their own failed policies (and then tax them more to make the situation even worse).  Rachel Smith, the new leader of the Chamber and former assistant to King County Executive Dow Constantine, made these “raising the white flag of surrender” comments in a Seattle Times interview.  One has to wonder if a prospective business operator read these comments, would that encourage them to open a new business in Seattle, knowing that the city’s primary organization for businesses has given up in advocating for pro-business policies?  (Seattle Times)

Union officials made a frivolous claim that QFC closed two of its Seattle stores to retaliate against labor’s support for the city, imposing a $4 an hour “hazard pay” increase for grocery workers.  Even though union members state in the story that the company made many improvements to keep one of the struggling stores (Wedgewood) open, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union claims the company closed the location (and the store on Capitol Hill) as a “scare tactic” against the unions.  Yet, not mentioned in the story is that one of the beautiful aspects of the free market is that if these two locations are truly profitable, as the union claims, then another company will see this as an opportunity to make money and open a store of their own at those locations. (Crosscut)

The Walla Walla Union-Bulletin has said recent actions by Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson and Governor Inslee’s Department of Ecology (DOE) were “reprehensible.”  The paper referred to a letter that Ferguson and the DOE recently sent to the new U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm that suggests the federal government should once again reclassify the nuclear waste at the Hanford Reservation. Congressman Dan Newhouse argued (and the newspaper agreed) that reclassifying the waste once again would be unnecessarily costly and delay the treatment of the nuclear material. (Walla Walla Union-Bulletin)

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