A few liberals are finally starting to admit that the City of Seattle’s “defund the police” policy has been a complete failure.  It is difficult for even the most ardent liberal to argue that their “police reforms” have been anything besides an utter disaster after seeing the news that the Seattle Police Department’s depleted staff level has forced the city to stop investigating new adult sexual assault cases, finding out that the city failed to perform necessary administrative tasks to allow parking enforcement officers to issue tickets when that responsibility was taken from the police department (costing the city’s taxpayers $5 million, so far), and watching crime rates continue to soar. But what should we expect from city councilmembers who chose to ignore reasonable voices and instead allowed violent liberal rioters (including Antifa) to determine the city’s public safety policies? (Click to read full Shift Article)

Last week, the Washington State Republican Party endorsed a package of 11 initiatives aimed at changing the negative course being navigated by Washington State Democrats. The initiatives were proposed by the group Let’s Go Washington and are divided into three categories. Under “Public Safety” there are initiatives to restore the ability of police to pursue criminals, make hard drugs illegal again, and keep guns out of the hands of criminals. Among the “Cost of Living initiatives are ones to reduce the state’s sales tax, cut the state’s gas tax in half, provide a $250,000 exemption on the state’s portion of personal property taxes, and eliminate the state income tax on capital gains. The “Good Governance” measures to amend the state’s easy to abuse (as proven by Governor Jay Inslee) emergency powers laws, a requirement to force schools to make their curriculum available online to the public, and a reform of how the state allocates its electoral college votes (by congressional districts). Please visit the group’s website for more information and to receive updates as they become available. (Let’s Go Washington website)

Four of the Republican Party’s top candidates to defeat Democrat State House incumbents were interviewed on KVI yesterday.  Kirby Wilbur, who has come briefly out of retirement in Texas to fill in for vacationing host John Carlson, interviewed candidates Susanna Keilman (28^th Legislative District in SW Pierce County), Ashli Tagoai (30^th LD in S. King), Tawsha Dykstra Thompson (42^nd LD in Whatcom), and Carmen Goers (47^th LD in S. King) to give listeners a brief introduction to each of the Republican hopefuls.  Shift has already interviewed three of the candidates (click on their names learn more) and hopefully we will soon be interviewing Ms. Tagoai.

In listening to the interviews it is easy to understand why Republicans are well positioned to take control of the legislature this November.  It certainly won’t be easy for the GOP as liberal special interest groups are already pouring a lot of money into protecting legislators who support their Left-wing agenda.  But hopefully these strong grassroots candidates can overcome the massive money advantage the special interest groups give to the Democrats. To listen to each of the candidates, go to the Carlson Show’s June 6^th podcast and the interviews start at the 1 hour and 6 minute mark. (KVI Podcast, Shift Newsmaker Interviews, and Shift article)

The refusal of a Seattle elementary school principal and two teachers to cooperate with police while an intruder was on school grounds has meant prosecutors could not charge the man with a felony despite him illegally entering school property and stealing students’ possessions.  Last Thursday, police were notified (not by the school) of a lockdown at Sand Point Elementary School in NE Seattle.  When an officer arrived the principal and two teachers refused to cooperate, thus there was not enough evidence to arrest the man who had stolen a backpack from a student.  The 20-year-old intruder fled the scene and he was later arrested for attempting to steal a delivery van.  He was then charged with five misdemeanors, yet because the principal withheld information about the incidents at the school, felony charges from the incident at the school could not be filed.

The Seattle Public Schools (SPS) administration is under attack from parents concerned about the irresponsible actions of the principal and two teachers.  It is troublesome for many that a liberal anti-police viewpoint trumped the safety of students for these “educators”. Thus far SPS has only released a brief statement saying, “We have scheduled a debrief with SPD about this event and to determine how we can improve communications and coordination when SPD responds to calls at our school.”  Maybe a good place to start is by imposing a policy that says 1) if the school is on lockdown, school administrators must contact local police to inform them of the reason; and 2) when police arrive, it is the responsibility of the school administration to adequately inform the police what is occurring.  (KIRO-TV News)

The first public draft of U.S. Senator Patty Murray and Governor Jay Inslee’s state and federal “assessment” on the future of the four lower Snake River dams is expected to be released later this week. This useless document is being created because wealthy urban environmentalist were not pleased that the exhaustive federal government study released in 2020 demonstrated that the Chinook salmon population could be sustained (as the subsequent fish runs have shown) without tearing down the dams, eliminating the inexpensive carbon-free energy the dams produce, and threatening the survival of the Eastern Washington communities which are dependent on the energy and transportation network the dams provide.

It is no coincidence that this latest salvo in the Democrats’ attack on the state’s farming community is being released at this time, as Senator Murray is desperate to obtain campaign funds from wealthy environmental groups as the 30-year incumbent faces a tough challenge from Republican candidate Tiffany Smiley.  The few Eastern Washington residents who have been provided with a “sneak peek” of the plan have stated they have “significant number of concerns” about the information used to develop the report and the outcomes which they provide.  We all will be interested to see this very partisan document and which “science” the two liberal politicians will conveniently choose to leave out.  (Capitol Press and Todd Myers Twitter)

Washington State Senator Mark Schoesler (R – Ritzville) writes in a Spokesman-Review op-ed about the Democrats’ continuing attack on Eastern Washington by pushing liberal policies which will force residents to pay higher prices for less-reliable energy.  Senator Schoesler said this is reflected in the upcoming release of the Inslee/Murray “assessment” on the Snake River dams and on the Inslee-appointed State Building Code Council priority to eliminate natural gas from new construction.  Senator Schoesler points out that the Inslee/Murray report will likely choose to ignore the recent federal study on the dams, which concluded that “removing these four dams would destabilize the Northwest’s power grid, increase overall greenhouse-gas emissions, and more than double the risk of power outages in the region. “(Spokesman-Review)

On June 22 the Washington State Economic and Revenue Forecast Council will convene, and it is expected to reveal that the state’s projected incoming tax revenues will again be higher than previously estimated.  The surplus is expected to be greater than a billion dollars.  Republican lawmakers assert it would cost the state only $800 million to provide necessary financial relief to lower- and moderate- income workers by temporarily removing the state’s 49.4 cent a gallon gas tax for the remainder of 2022. Thus the new revenue surplus could easily fund the difference in the state’s budget.

Thus far Governor Inslee and Democrat legislators have made two flimsy arguments for why they oppose helping lower income families by providing a nearly 50-cent reduction in the cost of gas (which would not only reduce the cost of gas, but also reduce the transportation costs of delivering goods to stores). First they claim it would disrupt the financing of necessary road construction projects. This was not a legitimate argument before, but additional state revenue certainly shores up the GOP contention that there will be no interruption of projects. Secondly, Governor Inslee has falsely stated that oil companies would immediately raise their pump prices 50 cents. If this were true, why haven’t the oil companies raised the price of fuel in other states (with lower gas taxes) to Washington State’s absurdly high level?

The real reason Governor Inslee and the Democrats refuse to provide tax relief now is the same reason why they refused to provide tax relief during the 2022 legislative session – they want all tax dollars to keep flowing into the state coffers to fund their selfish goal to expand the permanent size and cost of state government. Doubling state’s government’s size in just nine years under Governor Inslee is just not enough for them.

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