This was bound to happen sometime…  Due to travel complications and Wi-Fi problems in airports, we will not be sending along our normal Daily Briefing today.  We promise to be back tomorrow providing our perspective on the day’s headlines.  You will not want to miss it for we will have an incredibly special Newsmaker Interview tomorrow with someone who has been tremendously important to the careers of a few of us on the Shift staff.  We know you will enjoy it.

The Briefing today will include a few of our articles from the past week or so.  We look forward to tomorrow and providing our loyal readers with a quality update.

Governor Jay Inslee has a way of making even the mundane just another exercise in his favored style of lazy partisan politics. The latest example of the accidental governor’s “leadership” was signing two bills at the same time – to ensure that the state would waste money trying to overcome his dereliction of duty. And, it’s not the first time that Inslee has deployed his money-wasting ways to the state’s treasury  (Click to read full Shift Article)

Taxpayers have already been forced to give over $2,000,000 to a variety of unqualified and/or wacky far-Left Seattle political candidates, most of whom are seeking to become the city’s next mayor (where the eventual winner will likely become the 6^th straight elected mayor to be leave city hall in disgrace due to the multitude of problems created by the region’s dysfunctional liberal establishment in the state’s largest city).  If you follow the money, you’ll find most of the tax money that funds Seattle’s “Democracy Voucher Program” will end up in the bank accounts of ultra-liberal political consultants, who get paid to spin the lies that their candidates will solve the city’s increasing problems by giving away even more free stuff and taxing the wealthy (i.e., the same promises which have created and exacerbated the city’s never-ending and ever-growing social problems for the past three decades). (Click to read full Shift Article)

This week’s Newsmaker Interview is with Brian Minnich, the Executive Vice President of the Freedom Foundation.  Over the past decade, the Freedom Foundation has become one of the nation’s leading organizations combatting the ever-increasing power which government employee unions have over government decisions. While democratic governments were designed to serve the needs of the people, unions have used their large bankrolls to build their political influence and have now essentially made government a tool to serve their own selfish needs.  Unions leverage their control over the Democrat Party to exploit government’s taxing powers to fund larger governments with more government employees with higher salaries and expensive benefits.  Minnich discusses the Freedom Foundation’s successful efforts to promote workers’ rights by stopping the state’s automatic deduction of union dues from their paychecks, and the foundation’s lawsuit to strike down the unconstitutional state income tax on capital gains passed earlier this year by the Democrat-controlled legislature (which is strongly desired by the government employee unions to fund their larger state government strategy). (Click to read full Newsmaker Interview)

Did recent radical police reforms go too far, to the point where someone in a mental health crisis will not receive desperately needed treatment?  In a guest column, Caitlin Bassett of the Discovery Institute describes a recent terrifying episode in Sedro Wooley, where the police were called multiple times due to the violent behavior of a man either suffering a severe mental episode or under the influence of drugs.  Recent Democrat reforms, which were hastily rammed through the Washington State Legislature to placate the often-violent liberal activists who are key drivers of the Democrat base, have constrained what law enforcement can do.  Police officers were forced to leave the scene while the man was still a threat to himself and his neighbors. Prior to the recent legislative actions, the man would have been taken into custody, where he would have received the medical attention he desperately needed. (Click to read full Shift Article)

Governor Jay Inslee continues to repeat the false narrative that Washington State has yet to reach the 70% vaccination rate, despite President Biden’s White House publicly congratulating the state for reaching that important threshold last Monday.  When given the choice on whether to use 1) the more complete federal data (which includes vaccinations given to those in the military and through other federal immunization programs), or 2) using the incomplete data collected by the Washington State Department of Health (which also uses out- of-date census information), Governor Inslee has selfishly chosen the state figures.  His “thinking” – by constantly repeating the incomplete state figures, the governor continues his one-man rule of the state, which still has no legislative oversight (thanks to legislative Democrats) or any input from local elected or health officials. (Click here to read full Shift Article)

Shift’s Newsmaker Interview is with King County Councilmember Kathy Lambert, who represents Issaquah, Sammamish, Redmond, a large portion of Woodinville, and all the rural Eastern areas of the county North of I-90.  Prior to becoming a councilmember, Lambert was a schoolteacher and a state legislator, where she built the reputation for thoroughly understanding the issues and working with other elected officials to pass needed legislation.  In her interview, Councilmember Lambert is critical of Seattle enabling homeless individuals which only perpetuates the problem. Lambert expresses concern for the partisan process of selecting a new sheriff, which she claims is already three months behind schedule. Lambert also pointed out that since most members of the council have either no or very few constituents who live in unincorporated areas, they do not have constituents complaining about the many expensive liberal measures which pass the council.  Lambert says her challenge is to provide a greater “outside-Seattle” voice on the Seattle-dominated council. (Click to read full Newsmaker Interview)

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