A new report from the Washington Policy Center reveals the ineffectiveness and waste of many liberal climate change efforts, which are more often about siphoning off public money to fund the Left’s political agenda then about bringing positive changes to our environment.  Using the taxpayer-financed Portland Clean Energy Fund as an example, the report describes “how government programs sold on addressing climate change are being raided for other social and political priorities, doing little to address environmental problems.”

The City of Portland’s effort spends 75 times the amount of money to reduce CO2 levels as is normally spent. This is due to a vast majority of the funds being spent on “planning” instead of on actual projects which might deliver results.  This is similar to environmental projects run by the City of Seattle, King County, and Washington State, where “effectiveness-based metrics are routinely being undermined by vague social motivations.”

Such waste and ineffectiveness could hurt environmental progress in the future because, “Skepticism among the public about the seriousness of climate change, and the sincerity of politicians, will continue to grow as long as programs that purport to help the environment are revealed to be excuses to fund other political priorities.” (Washington Policy Center)

A new study by the University of Georgia reveals that prohibitions against plastic grocery bags have unintended consequences, which negate any benefits obtained from the bans.  Researchers found that plastic grocery bags have “second lives” as trash can liners or other essential needs. Thus when plastic grocery bags are banned, consumers are forced to purchase more plastic bags to meet their needs.  The UGA team found that California communities where grocery bags have been banned “saw 4-gallon bag sales increase 55% to 75% and 8-gallon trash bag sales increased 87% to 110%.”  (News7H)

As part of the Democrats’ $17 billion transportation budget, the state mandated that all local transit agencies provide free service to those who are 18 years old and under.  Leave it to the exclusionary Democrats to create a new public transit giveaway that none of the transit agencies know how they can actually implement.  There is difficulty in verifying the age of the riders and also in determining acceptable forms of identification.  The problem is even more complicated for the Washington State Ferries. Do the new laws allow 18-year-old drivers to bring their car onto a ferry for free?  And if so, would all the riders in the car be free as well?

Like the Democrats’ “police reform” bills, Long-Term Care payroll tax, and unconstitutional state income tax on capital gains, the current majority party continues to pass poorly developed legislation which cause confusion instead of solving problems.  Mostly this can be blamed on the Democrats stubbornly refusing to include anyone from outside their liberal echo chamber in the development of said poorly developed legislation. (MyNorthwest)

At today’s meeting of the Washington State Economic and Revenue Forecast Council (ERFC), Democrat officials either demonstrated a “head-in-the-sand” mentality or knowledge of some secret deal worked out with the Washington State Supreme Court justices.  Republican State Representative Ed Orcutt (Kalama) put forth a motion requiring the ERFC to not include in future projections revenue from the state income tax on capital gains, which a Douglas County Superior Court judge recently ruled was unconstitutional.  Democrat Senator Christine Rolfes (Bainbridge Island) objected and wanted to keep the unconstitutional tax’s expected revenue in the state’s economic planning documents, and so the Democrats shot down Representative Orcutt’s motion.  Either the Democrats refuse to accept that their income tax measure is unconstitutional, or they know the nine liberal judges on the Washington State Supreme Court will overlook decades of court decisions ruling that an income tax is unconstitutional in Washington State and 10 consecutive rejections of an income tax by voters. (Olympia Watch Twitter and KING5 News)

A City of Bothell Police Department blog post describes a couple of recent incidents where suspected criminals were allowed to flee from police due to restrictions placed on law enforcement by the Democrats in the Washington State Legislature.  In one incident, a women witnessed a catalytic converter theft and flagged down police officers.  She described to the officers the suspect and his vehicle (an older model black BMW). Police soon encountered the vehicle and attempted to pull over the driver. Yet the driver ignored the police, sped up, and raced onto I-405, where police were forced to stop their pursuit by restrictions in the Democrats’ disastrous “police reform” law.

The majority Democrats knew going into the 2022 legislative session that the pursuit restrictions (HB 1054) which were part of their 2021 “police reform” package were recklessly allowing suspected criminals to flee.  Democrats made promises to fix this problem. Unfortunately these promises were broken as the radical members of the Democrats’ caucus (allegedly led by soft-on-crime State Senator Manka Dhingra) killed the bi-partisan bill (SB 5919) designed to fix the problems which HB 1054 created. (City of Bothell Blog and Washington Legislature Bill Summary)

Nearly two years after Seattle’s first Black woman Police Chief announced her retirement, the City of Seattle has finally begun its search for her replacement.  Chief Carmen Best announced her retirement on August 10, 2020, after the members of the Seattle City Council caved into the demands of liberal rioters and “defunded” the Seattle Police Department and slashed Chief Best’s pay. These moves were described by Reverend Al Sharpton as “latte liberals” seeking to become the Black community’s “new slave master.”   Since that time, former Deputy Police Chief Adrian Diaz has served as the “interim” police chief.

Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell announced the city will hire an outside firm next month to conduct a nationwide search for possible candidates. It is hard to imagine that top law enforcement candidates will seek the Seattle position due to the strong anti-police sentiment of city council members.  Even after Seattle voters in last year’s election showed their displeasure in the council’s actions by voting out a soft-on-crime City Attorney and replacing him with a candidate who ran on a platform of actually punishing criminals, councilmembers have continued to push their irresponsibly radical public safety beliefs.

The Seattle city charter states that the mayor is required to pick three finalists, and the city council will make the final selection. We should note that the City of Bellevue recently took less than six months to find a new police chief to lead its department.  (Seattle Times, KIRO News, Reddit/Twitter/MSNBC, and Q13 Fox News)

After the City of Seattle finally removed a couple of high-profile homeless encampments in downtown Seattle, there is fear that the criminals have simply moved into residential neighborhoods.  The Ballard neighborhood has experienced a major increase in gun crimes, with three shootings in the past week and a record number of violent crimes reported (42) in just the first two months of the year.  Shop owners are experiencing a sharp increase in break-ins, and some have begun to spend the night in their businesses to prevent further thefts.  Some Ballard residents say they no longer feel safe walking in their community, which for years had been considered a very safe place to live and work.  (MyNorthwest)

The Conservative Ladies of Washington (CLW) will hold a reception at the Spokane Ruby River Hotel on the evening of April 27^th, featuring a recap of the 2022 legislative session with Senator Mike Padden and Representative Jenny Graham.  The group will provide opportunities for people to become active in the 2022 elections to bring about necessary changes before the 2023 legislative session.  Last week Shift interviewed CLW founder Julie Barrett, who described her inspiration for starting the group and how they are already organizing women to get involved in races this year.  Tickets for the event are $35 and all (both women and men) are invited to attend. (CLW event information and Shift Newsmaker Interview with Julie Barrett)

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