Will 2022 be the year Republicans take control of the Washington State Legislature?  Polls are showing that voters (especially suburban women) are growing increasingly frustrated with the Democrat Party’s failed public safety, homelessness, education, and tax policies. They are further irritated at the elitist attitude displayed by Governor Inslee (now on Day 774 of his undemocratic abuse of emergency orders) and legislative Democrats who have enabled the governor’s abuse and have repeatedly sought to remove public involvement in the political process.

Here is Shift’s early overview of which legislative districts the GOP has targeted to reach voters ready to change their party preferences in the 2022 elections.  In the Senate, the Republicans will need to pick up three or four seats (depending on whether current Democrat Senator Mark Mullet decides to caucus with the GOP) to gain control.  And in the House, Republican Leader JT Wilcox and his colleagues will need to take nine seats away from the Democrats to make him Speaker for the 2023 legislative session.  (Click to read full Shift article)

Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson surprised many media members by making it a requirement for all who attend his media event today to “Show proof of full vaccination and booster” and “Complete a wellness screening.” AG Ferguson decided to severely restrict the attendance to his press conference despite no other government official in the country, that we are aware of, making similar demands of attendees.  The Everett Herald’s longtime Olympia reporter Jerry Cornfield tweeted, “Can’t recall other WA elected who has required such proof for a presser.”  Remember governor wannabe Ferguson is the same career Democrat politician who just fired an Ukrainian-born paralegal, who is working from home while sending money back to her family members, simply because she has religious objections to being vaccinated. (Attorney General’s Office media advisory and Washington Policy Center)

KIRO Radio host Dori Monson is calling on all the state’s media outlets to demand answers as to why Governor Inslee is continuing his undemocratic abuse of emergency orders.  Today marks 774 days since the governor began his unprecedented one-man rule of the state on February 29^th, 2020.  In that time the governor has provided various different and sometimes bizarre answers (including making sure Republicans don’t take away health care from cancer patients) as to why he refuses to give up his emergency powers. He now says it is protect federal funds coming into the state.  We are never told which funds these are and if all other states, which have long ago ended emergency powers, have chosen to take themselves out of being eligible for these federal funds. Possibly these other states feel they don’t deserve these mysterious federal funds since their governors can’t claim that they alone “won the Super Bowl” against COVID.  (MyNorthwest and Brandi Kruse Twitter)

The Washington State Department of Health says that overdose deaths have jumped 66% since the start of the pandemic.  It will take a long time to understand the full impact of Governor Inslee shutting down the state.  Undoubtedly there will be many studies on what worked and what failed.  At this time, one thing is very clear, that those with substance abuse addictions suffered greatly during the shutdown.  Overdose deaths and drug/alcohol related injuries and crimes all skyrocketed over the past two years. These problems were compounded by Governor Inslee refusing to allow 12-step recovery groups to meet in person for longer than any other state in the country.  The governor did this while allowing other groups to meet safely in the same locations used by 12-step groups. Because, Inslee? (WPC Elizabeth Hovde Twitter and Shift Article)

Sound Transit has become national fodder for news anchors’ jokes as its “equity” policies are causing the agency to lose more the $70 million a year due to lack of fare enforcement.   After studies conducted last year found that more Black individuals were cited for fare violations, the transit agency decided to scale back fare enforcement policies.  The result has been as many as 70% of current riders are not paying to ride the system.  And if a “fare ambassador” asks to see proof of payment, the freeloader can simply refuse to show ID and can continue to ride without payment.  Sound Transit’s highly paid (and thankfully outgoing) CEO Peter Rogoff said, “Our fare collection system relies overwhelmingly on an honor system, and our increasingly acute problem is that our riders aren’t honoring the system.” (Taxpayers have been paying Rogoff nearly $400,000 a year, plus gold-plated benefits and leadership/anger management coaches, for this type of expert analysis.)

When voters approved Sound Transit’s $54 billion proposal in 2016, they were promised that fare collections would pay for 40% of operating costs.  Fares are currently only paying 5%.  The rest is being paid by taxpayers through increased sales taxes, car tabs, and property taxes.  Liberal officials who control the Sound Transit Board and its out-of-control spending seem completely unconcerned that their irresponsible “equity” policies are causing it to be even more expensive to live and work in the region.

King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci took the side of the fare evaders and irresponsibly stated, “People are feeling more welcome on our system and less afraid to use it because there’s less of a fear of fare enforcement.” Meanwhile the one Republican on the Sound Transit Board, Pierce County Executive Bruce Dammeier, was more respectful of the taxpayers stating, “It’s gotta be safe, secure, reliable and sustainable, or it’s the biggest waste of money we’ve ever seen.” (FOX News, and The Urbanist)

The City of Seattle also made headlines in New York City yesterday, where it was reported that the Seattle Police Department is so short-staffed due to liberal policies that it no longer assigns detectives to investigate sexual assaults on adults.  More than 400 police officers have left (and more continue to leave) the department in the past 18 months due to lack of support from liberal city officials. The department only has four detectives remaining on its team that investigates sexual assaults. Currently all of these detectives are focusing their investigations on child abuse cases.  Anonymous sources within the police department report that staffing problems have been made worse by new Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell’s orders for law enforcement to dedicate its manpower on “visible crime,” such as their very public sweep of downtown Seattle’s 3^rd Avenue after two murders were committed.  (New York Post and PubliCola)

A writer for the U.S. Wheat Association details the 60-hour journey he recently completed on a tugboat that transported four barges full of wheat through the Snake, Columbia, and Willamette Rivers so it could be exported to foreign markets from grain terminals in Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington. This environmentally clean and efficient method of transportation is made possible thanks to the lower four dams on the Snake River and last four dams on the Columbia River.  On the dirty flip side, if wealthy urban environmentalists have their way, these dams would be ripped out, and wheat farmers in Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon would be forced to transport their wheat to market in tens of thousands of CO2 emitting trucks.  While environmentalists falsely claim these dams need to be torn down to protect salmon, a leading National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist said, “it is not certain that dams now cause higher mortality than would arise in a free-flowing river.”  This is due in part to improvements in the dams’ fish ladder systems, which now allow a 96% survival rate for juvenile salmon.  (Wheat Letter Blog and Tri-Cities Business News)

Democrats continue in their quest to remove the public from the political process with the filing of a lawsuit by a liberal special interest group hoping to gerrymander the legislative district boundaries in South Central Washington to create a legislative district where only a Democrat could possibly win (like what they are used to in Seattle).  It was evidently the strategy of former State Representative Brady Walkinshaw, the Senate Democrats’ appointee on the Washington State Redistricting Commission, to find a way to void the commission’s very public process and negotiations, in order to have the courts, one way or another, draw the boundaries. The Democrats on the commission also refused to defend their process in court, causing the non-voting and “non-partisan” chair of the commission to resign in disgust.  With filing for office taking place between May 16^th – 20th, the courts have a short window to determine whether the Democrats anti-public-involvement tactics are successful in throwing out the work down by the commission.  At stake are the boundaries for the 13^th, 14^th, and 15^th legislative districts, which have historically sent Republicans to the legislature. (Crosscut and Seattle Times)

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