State Representative Roger Goodman has long been known for his hypocrisy about talking tough on crime while being an admitted law breaker. His fellow Democrats aren’t bothered by that behavior and made him the chair of their Public (Un)Safety Committee, where he has presided over the legalization of hard drugs over the past few years. This session, even though the State Senate was able to overcome the stubborn opposition of pro-criminal Senator Manka Dhingra to pass a weak fix to their drug law (SB 5536), which would at least make possession of hard drugs a potential gross misdemeanor, Rep. Goodman is playing games.

As Jerry Cornfield reported, “Tuesday night, a House committee passed its version of the bill. They pushed the penalty back to a misdemeanor. There are a whole bunch of other changes related to treatment, services, and how individuals are handled in the criminal justice system.” In other words, Rep. Goodman is trying to kill the bill by making changes that will ensure the bill loses support elsewhere. Among those changes, according to the News Tribune, is making it easier on criminals by eliminating “escalating sentencing for those who don’t comply with treatment options.” As Republican Senate Leader John Braun told Cornfield, “At some point, if it is just a token and does nothing, we’re not interested in putting our name on it.” This is, of course, exactly what Rep. Goodman and his fellow pro-criminal Democrats are looking for in fixing our state’s drug possession law – doing nothing. (The Herald, News Tribune)

Among the many failures associated with the state’s new cap-and-tax program is that Governor Jay Inslee’s Department of Ecology was unable to establish procedures for the new tax scheme before it took effect on January 1. That has resulted in farmers, who were promised they were exempt from the new scheme, overpaying for fuel. This allegedly unintended consequence has been festering for months, and the Capital Press reported that it bubbled over when Democrat Senators “rejected a Republican proposal to set aside $32 million to reimburse farmers paying cap-and-trade surcharges on fuel used to transport agricultural products.”

Senator Mark Schoesler, one of the few actual farmers in the legislature, put it simply for his colleagues: “This tax is being wrongfully collected every single day. We need to budget for it before it gets any worse,” before concluding his testimony with “It’s just insanity. The administration has no long-term plan on how to deal with this.” But, of course, making it worse is a Democrat specialty. (Capital Press)

One of the stranger bills moving this session has been the one pushed by Puget Sound Energy to ban natural gas hook-ups for new construction starting this June. House Republican JT Wilcox described HB 1559 as “the most poorly thought-out major bill I’ve ever seen.” As the Washington Observer describes the action, “PSE wants this bill because it faces heavy compliance costs under the state’s new cap-and-trade system for major emitters of carbon pollution. The company sees an opportunity to convert its gas customers to electricity. The bill also envisions that PSE would be allowed to recoup the cost of the existing gas network from ratepayers more quickly.” For Democrats, that’s a win-win – they keep all that cap-and-tax money to spend, and they don’t get blamed for letting PSE soak its own customers to follow the Democrats’ foolish climate demands. (Shift, Washington Observer)

Much has been made by Democrats in Olympia this week that they don’t have any new taxes (yet) in their budget proposals. We’re not even sure that’s technically true, but while Shift is keeping an eye on the Democrats’ desire for more taxpayer money via an expanded real estate excise tax (or other tax gimmicks) to fund Jay Inslee’s $4 billion dollar homeless boondoggle, keep in mind that the Democrats are just now reaping the benefit of all the taxes they raised in the last two years, like the new state income tax, the cap-and-tax scheme, the high-cost fuel standard, and, in case you forgot, the payroll tax taking effect in just 94 days according to the Washington Policy Center. That so-called long-term-care tax was put on hold last year when Democrats realized they might lose seats in the election if they pushed their bad idea through on time. But it’s still there, and you can bookmark this handy countdown clock so you know how much longer you have to keep that part of your paycheck out of the Democrats’ hands. (Washington Policy Center, Washington State House Republicans)

Seattle elected officials are left looking for whatever silver lining they can when it comes to news about deteriorating public safety in the city. That’s why the still-acting-like-he’s-new Mayor Bruce Harrell is celebrating that, as KOMO 4 reports, “Harrell’s office said the department has lost 400 officers since 2019. But a 13-page presentation showed that rate of officers leaving is slowing down.” Maybe after the majority of the anti-police faction on the city council “retires” later this year – some of them involuntarily by voters perhaps – the numbers may actually go in a positive direction. Until then, Mayor Harrell can congratulate himself for slowing down the digging of the public safety hole. (KOMO 4)

Just six months into her new job leading Sound Transit, CEO Julie Timm has proven to be a quick study in focusing on political correctness first and actually running a transit agency that moves people way down the priority list. And she’s also learned to completely make things up about Sound Transit caring about taxpayers by starting with this whooper to KIRO FM reporter Chris Sullivan: “I tend to be very fiscally conservative.”

Yeah, we’re sure here at Shift that her fiscal focus is why she also bragged to Sullivan that “I think we’ve got down the equity side” and “I think we got done with the environmental side” before admitting that “(t)he economic side is one that I lean into hard.” She must mean by “lean into” that she ignores that part while making sure all non-transportation priorities are taken care of first at Sound Transit. Some things never change at the money-wasting train company. (MyNorthwest)

Safe in “Executive Session,” refusing to hold a public hearing on their own actions, House Democrats continued watering down an already soggy SB 5352 to sort of, again, allow police to do their jobs and chase criminal suspects.  As Center Square reported, Community Safety Committee Chair Roger Goodman led his fellow Democrats in restoring criminals to their rightful lead place in the pursuit bill and failing to do the right thing by restoring the bill to its original form and allowing the pursuit of auto thieves. The mother of a victim of the Democrats’ pro-criminal policies put it simply before the committee went behind closed doors: “This is the last chance for our legislators to return the bill to its original form. The current gutted version of SB 5352 is weak and would not have saved the life of my daughter.”

But as is the preference of Olympia Democrats, they ignored the pleas of victims. Instead, one foolish Seattle representative, Darya Farivar, ironically said as she was choosing to put partisan politics ahead of innocent people, “I worry at the end of the day that we may be choosing politics over people.” Yep, that’s exactly what you did.(Center Square)

Even media members can see how other biased other media are about Inslee, Democrats

This is how a leader backs a police chief

Will the voters have to step up again to stop the Democrats’ income tax dream?

To get early insight into what might make Shift’s next Daily Briefing worth reading, tune in to 570 KVI on your AM dial weekday mornings at 8:05, to hear John Carlson talk Washington State legislative politics with Shift co-founder Randy Pepple. And you can always stay for the rest of the Commute with Carlson by tuning in here.

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