Superintendent of Public Instruction (SPI) Chris Reykdal continues to use Twitter to spout his divisive and ultra-partisan views, this time to attack parents who believe the state’s public school system is failing to provide an adequate education for their children. SPI Reykdal’s latest hate-filled tweet regarding concerns, what he calls “rage”, about our public schools stated, “Read the data! The rage was being pumped hard in 2020 to justify segregation vouchers for religious schools and for-profit providers. GOP households who do NOT have kids in school (think older Fox News viewers) make up almost 100% of the drop in satisfaction of public schools.”

So, if you believe SPI Reykdal, it is only cranky old conservatives with no kids who are upset with the state’s failed education policies.  The obvious problem with this belief (which SPI Reykdal’s tweet admitted) is that the children of “older Fox News viewers” have already graduated from K-12 schools and thus are not responsible for the serious drop in enrollment in state’s school system.  In fact, it is mostly younger parents in liberal urban areas who are pulling their younger children out of public schools.  For example, the Seattle Public Schools is projecting a 16% drop in enrollment.  The percentage of “older Fox News viewers” in Seattle is very small, and those with young kids in Seattle schools is almost 0%.

Thus, it is highly unlikely these Reykdal targets are the ones demonstrating dissatisfaction in schools – instead, it is young liberals (“think younger CNBC News viewers,” to paraphrase Mr. Reykdal) who are so dissatisfied with public schools they are willing to pay thousands in private-school tuition to get their children out of the state’s public school system, which SPI Reykdal and his radical liberal friends are slowly destroying.

Unfortunately this is not the first time SPI Reykdal shared his narrowminded and ultra-partisan views on Twitter.  Among his many divisive tweets was the one on election night in 2019 (which he deleted but not before we grabbed a screenshot) when he encouraged Democrat legislators to punish counties where citizens voted to reduce car tabs fees (by supporting I-976) by denying them any state transportation funding.

Maybe SPI Reykdal should spend less time being divisive and spend more time understanding why parents are removing their children from the schools under his “leadership”.  This might require the superintendent to broaden his evidently narrow perspective and listen to viewpoints he does not understand.  (Reykdal Twitter, Seattle Times, Secretary of State election returns)

Republican lawmakers have introduced legislation to repeal the state’s expensive (and already broke) Long Term Care tax, which Democrats want to keep in place for it sends more taxpayer money to the Service Employee International Union bosses, who then send large checks to Democrat campaigns.  As you will recall,  Democrats delayed the start date of this poorly developed plan back from the start of 2022 to after the 2022 midterm elections, when they first realized what a disaster it had become.

Most Washington State workers (except for the lucky few who were able to enroll in private plans in late 2021) will begin to have 0.58% taken out of their paychecks starting on July 1^st. The tax rate will need to be increased dramatically in the coming years to fund the plan.

Representative Peter Abbarno (R – Centralia) has introduced HB 1011 in the House and Senator Mark Schoesler (R – Ritzville) has introduced SB 5479 in the Senate to repeal the tax.  The Senate bill also allows the voters of Washington State to vote on whether or not they want the new tax. (The Democrats are very fearful of a public vote on their Long Term Care tax because they know voters will reject this mandatory payroll tax on workers.)   We should note that Democrat Senator Mark Mullet (Issaquah) has co-sponsored the senate bill, because after all government employee unions (including the SEIU) spent millions in 2020 attempting to install a more radical liberal in Senator Mullet’s seat who would support higher taxes and more state control of our lives. (Washington Legislature Bill Summary, Seattle Times, Shift, and  Washington Policy Center)

The City of Seattle and King County have finally read the science regarding COVID vaccines and have lifted their vaccine mandate for employees.  Last year the Centers for Disease Control announced that it was safe for unvaccinated workers to work with vaccinated workers.  Governor Inslee continues to ignore scientific evidence and has kept in place the vaccine mandate for state employees he wants control over, despite how his mandate disrupts state services, such as clearing snow on the state’s mountain passes or providing ferry service on Puget Sound.  But the governor’s mandate has always had very little to do with science and more to do with Governor Inslee wanting to remove state government workers who don’t blindly follow his orders. (MyNorthwest and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report)

The Seattle Police Department released its year-end report and annual crime rates remain at an all-time high. Crime rates increased 4% in 2022 over the previous year, which clearly demonstrated that the city council’s radical “defund the police” policies caused more people to become crime victims – especially in lower-income neighborhoods.  Murder rates remain high with 52 homicides in Seattle. There were 739 gun incidents during the year, breaking a record set in 2020.  Vehicle thefts continue to skyrocket, with the 2022 total the highest in 15 years. (KIRO7 News)

Representative Joe Schmick (R – Colfax) says the state should reimburse those working in agriculture for forcing them to pay higher gas prices due to Governor Inslee’s Cap and Trade tax, despite the law exempting farmers from paying the Inslee-added fee.  Yesterday Shift reported that Governor Inslee’s Department of Ecology failed to follow the law to provide an exemption from the higher fuel prices for those in agriculture, since the Cap and Trade law went into effect on January 1^st.  Washington State fuel prices have already risen 25 cents a gallon compared to other Western states due to the legislation.

Representative Schmick stated that the Inslee Administration’s inability to follow the law “adds another unnecessary financial burden to our farmers and agriculture community, many of whom are struggling to stay in business. This will devastate them.”  Representative Schmick also asserted that this failure by the Inslee Administration will also hurt all consumers in Washington State. “In addition, this extra cost will continue to make food more expensive at a time when folks are really feeling the financial pinch of inflation.”  (Republican House Caucus media release, Capital Press, and Washington Policy Center)

Senator Manka Dhingra (D – Redmond) has received criticism, both in the media and even from a few of her fellow Democrat legislators, for her stubborn refusal to even allow a hearing for a bill to repeal the Democrats’ disastrous 2021 restrictions on police pursuits, which most local law enforcement agencies blame for the state’s high crime rate. Senator Dhingra attempted to use a poorly documented “study” to justify her reckless anti-repeal beliefs, only to have it strongly criticized by leading academic experts.  The senator, who always portrays herself as a moderate when she is seeking for votes from her suburban Eastside constituents, demonstrated how radically liberal she really is by stating she won’t even allow a public hearing for a bi-partisan repeal bill before the Senate Law and Justice Committee she chairs.

If Senator Dhingra is successful in preventing repeal legislation from being voted on in front of the full Senate (where a few Democrats could join all the Republican members to pass the bill) then Washington State residents can really blame the Democrat Senate leadership.  The caucus put her in charge of the committee, and they certainly remove her, if she continues to help criminals by refusing to repeal one of the worst laws ever passed by the Washington State Legislature. (Click to read full Newsmaker Interview)

Shift’s Newsmaker Interview was with second-term Representative Peter Abbarno (R – Centralia), who was promoted to House Republican Assistant Floor Leader prior to the start of the 2023 legislative session.  Representative Abbarno is an attorney and former Centralia City Councilmember. He is married to public school teacher and is the father of two children.

Representative Abbarno shared his thoughts on a wide variety of issues that are being discussed by current legislators. He is the co-sponsor of a much-needed bill to reform the emergency powers of the governor. He highlighted Republican proposals to help lower- and middle- class families with permanent tax breaks. He opposed a Democrat voting measure that prioritizes criminals’ voting rights and another bill that eliminates the public’s voice on tax measures by eliminating Advisory Votes (which was originally enacted by citizen initiative in 2009). Representative Abbarno also provided his views on the state’s housing crisis, school choice legislation, and how some Democrats refuse to repeal their disastrous police pursuit restrictions which have made our state a more comfortable place to be a criminal. (Click to read full Newsmaker Interview)

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