Governor Jay Inslee is continuing his annual budget tour, when he tells Democrat legislators how he wants to spend tax dollars to help his campaign donors. The green governor started this week begging the state to, as the Seattle Times reports, “tap into stronger-than-expected revenue from the state’s carbon-pricing program” by rewarding his friends with nearly $1 billion in new government spending, thanks to all those “pennies” adding up from his carbon tax.

The media was evidently unable to get the governor to address the whistleblower scandal swirling around his administration (which Shift has covered), as Gov. Inslee literally stood behind school children to avoid answering questions about his carbon tax. You can read on to see how this type of bold leadership wants to waste billions more of your tax dollars on bad ideas here… Seattle Times, Shift, TVW.

Washington state voters got used to fiscal competence in the Secretary of State’s office, electing nothing but GOP contenders for 56 years from 1964 to 2020. Unfortunately, as the Seattle Times highlights, that’s no longer the case under accidental Secretary Steve Hobbs, given his “no-bid contract for nearly $273,000 in late May with the British artificial intelligence company Logically” to monitor Twitter for people writing bad things about him.

Evidently Secretary Hobbs, who was first appointed to the office because Gov. Inslee wanted him out of the State Senate (as Shift noted), could not find college interns who could read social media posts for his office. Instead, a foreign firm with good Democrat political contacts secured $15,000 a month for the hard work of “searching social media platforms, including X, Facebook, Telegram, Truth Social and Rumble, for public posts that include ‘narratives and threats related to elections officials or the elections process’.” Read on to see what you can say to get yourself put on one of Secretary Hobbs’ “alerts” here… Seattle Times, Shift.

Sometimes federal bureaucrats decide to let local officials down easy, without telling them there is no hope for the lofty dreams they want someone else to pay for. Such is the case coming out of the Washington State Standard after the “Federal Railroad Administration largely passed over the Pacific Northwest while doling out more than $8 billion on Friday to improve passenger rail service across the nation.”

Thankfully the feds rejected the state’s request for “a nearly $200 million grant award” to waste just on planning for a high-speed-train boondoggle that would never get built (especially with its early estimated “cost anywhere between $36 billion and $150 billion dollars”). Instead, “Washington and Oregon were among 44 states that got $500,000 Corridor Identification and Development grants” as a sort of an everybody-gets-one door prize. See how the ability to keep wasting even relatively small money excites Democrats, as “(T)hey didn’t ignore us, which is a good thing” here… Washington State Standard.

The backroom deal being pursued by Washington state with the Biden administration and a collection of extreme environmental groups to remove the four Lower Snake River dams is resurfacing again, as “government and plaintiffs are expected to present their proposed package in court Dec. 15.” This concerns one expert attorney, the Capital Press highlights, who notes the deal “doesn’t look like any other settlement that I’ve ever been in with the federal government.”

What seems to make this secret deal unique is that the federal government is giving into the environmentalists’ demands, instead of defending the interests of farmers and other stakeholders who depend on the dams. Read on to see how “(N)ormally, in a settlement agreement, you’re not trying to lead anybody to a conclusion”, but that’s the Democrat path here… Capital Press.

The University of Washington unfortunately led the news last week for its president allowing her office to be occupied for hours by terrorist sympathizers screaming messages which should violate campus harassment policies. Yet, the public is seemingly not being given the whole hateful story, according to noted campus observer Cliff Mass, who writes on his personal blog that “I have described the disturbing situation on the University of Washington campus, with loud demonstrations calling for the eradication of Israel, the killing of Jews through Intifada, and support for the October 7 Hamas barbaric acts of rape, beheadings, and murder. But it has gotten worse, much worse.”

Read on for more disturbing inside observations about the direction the university is taking under the “leadership” of President Ana Mari Cauce here… Cliff Mass Weather Blog.

Former U.S. Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler, currently running for Washington State Commissioner of  Public Lands, discussed her candidacy in last week’s Newsmaker Interview. Having served 12 years in the U.S. House of Representatives, Herrera Beutler aims to enhance the management of public lands to mitigate wildfires, emphasizing the need for proactive measures like clearing brush and removing downed trees. In her interview, Herrera Beutler criticized Democrat leadership for increasing the damage of the state’s recent devastating wildfires and suggested a more science-based approach to resource management. In addition to her political insights, she shared her favorite book—a classic biography of one of the nation’s founding fathers. Read more.

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