You can’t turn to any web/radio/tv news provider without hearing how the Washington Legislature adjourned yesterday, after running through what can only be called an impressive array of attacks on Washington citizens who don’t ascribe to the “progressive” cult that is all the rage with Democrats. Ranging from spending the $1 billion-plus from the state’s new income tax and cap-and-tax scheme, to handing out another billion dollars in pay raises to union employees, to preventing police from pursuing car thieves, the Democrats were on a quite a roll during the 105-day session. As MyNorthwest reports, “Majority Democrats had motored through 104 days, making the most of the first full in-person session since 2020 by completing pretty much every major piece of policy on their to-do list. Until the last hours of Day 105 when the Blake bill diagramming a state strategy for dealing with illegal drug possession went kaput.”

Turns out the Democrats in the legislature have a drug problem – a majority of them want to legalize all drugs and thus are way out of step with the public. And the Democrats who might be willing to make some drugs sort-of illegal again – think heroin, fentanyl – would rather the hard drugs remain legal than to vote with Republicans and make their fellow Democrats mad. That’s even though they know the liberal approach has failed, as Democrat State Representative Monica Stonier noted their failure means “defecation on the streets, needles in our parks, all of the things that we have heard about that we fear, will be worse.” More about the Democrat implosion here. (MyNorthwest)

The time has run out, with the adjournment of the legislative session, for the state to make hard drugs illegal again, so it’s now left to local governments to decide what will be legal within their borders.  That’s why County Councilman Nate Nehring is stepping quickly into the breach, as Center Square reports, to deal with the scourge of illegal drugs in Snohomish County, announcing he “will introduce an ordinance outlawing drug possession in the county as a result of the failed Senate Bill 5536.” Republican legislators, reporters and other observers are predicting an avalanche of such drug criminalization proposals in cities across the state in the wake of the Democrats’ failure in Olympia. (Center Square)

Leave it to reporter-turned-political-money-investigator Paul Query to be the only media type to focus his end-of-session coverage on the Democrats’ top priority – paying off the labor unions that provide them millions in campaign contributions every election. After running through the billions in new union raises passed out in the new budget, he notes, “(W)hile it’s certainly fair to say that lawmakers would have paid for education, home health care, child care, and general state employees regardless of all that politics, it’s safe to say they wouldn’t have been as generous. Even if you chalk up just 10 percent of this money to a favorable environment created by political largesse, it’s still a fantastic return on investment.” Mr. Query’s Washington Observer is a subscription-only publication (and well worth it), but you can get a free glance at his sad math about union ownership of Olympia Democrats by visiting here. (Washington Observer)

The folks at Axios-Seattle had to really struggle to give Democrats credit for some bold action during this legislative session, after you get past the usual pay raises for public employees and record-breaking state spending. It provided a laugh to see that of the “5 big things Washington’s Legislature passed in 2023”, only one of them (“Said yes to duplexes”) is actually new. Two other items were largely symbolic – the end of the death penalty which Governor Jay Inslee stopped using a decade ago and “support” for abortion which voters actually put in place in 1971. The Democrats did enshrine in state law the ability for criminals to drive away from police unimpeded in stolen cars, and in yet another law heading straight to court, the liberals banned certain guns they don’t like the look of. The full list is here. (Axios-Seattle)

It’s one of those stories that politicians try to bury over a weekend, and that’s certainly how Attorney General Bob Ferguson hopes this one plays out, given how bad it makes his partisan publicity-seeking ways look (as it costs taxpayers money). The (Tacoma) News Tribune picked up the trail of AG Ferguson losing a $200,000 judgment, with a judge slapping him about with legalspeak: “The Court finds that production of almost 11,000 pages of documents over a year past when they were due substantially prejudiced the plaintiff in preparing for trial. The discovery violations in this case are egregious, serious, without excuse and the result of willful disregard of discovery obligations by both DSHS and the AGO.” However, since this case did not involve AG Ferguson suing Donald Trump, he probably paid less attention to it than he does, evidently, to office administration. You can read how the judge “admonished the office for attempting to lay the blame on the paralegal” here. (News Tribune)

Just in case you missed it, the Democrats did manage to tuck several million dollars into several different spending bills to continue sending money to their favorite scientists/consultants to study again how to convince people it’s a good idea to rip out some of the world’s cheapest and cleanest energy-producing dams. That forced two Eastern Washington State Senators to take to the editorial page of the Tri-City Herald, to ask folks (and point out) “How many studies are enough? The Democrats keep pushing for more because they never get the desired results. Instead of continuing to try to force science to conform to a politically pre-determined outcome, they should be following science and innovation wherever it leads.” The whole argument is here. (Tri-City Herald)

The folks at The Olympian really wanted to cheer up their Democrat legislative friends on the last day of their long session, and thus provided this editorial perspective yesterday: “Barring an unforeseen and unlikely last-minute meltdown, this will mark a year of welcome comity and bipartisanship.” Whoops, instead by the post-session press conferences, Democrats from Governor Inslee on down had engaged in that which the paper said was missing this year ”mud-slinging, retreat into warring camps, and attempts to demonize the opposition.” Read more here. (The Olympian)

THE DRUG LEGALIZATION TIMELINE INSLEE DOESN’T WANT YOU TO SEE

INSLEE JUST NEEDS MORE ATTENTION, FOR HIMSELF, AFTER HE ALLOWS DRUG LEGALIZATION

SEATTLE SIERRA CLUB HEAD LAYS OUT UPDATED DEMOCRAT AGENDA BEFORE DAMAGE OF 2023 SESSION IS EVEN COLD

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