Shift has been following the various iterations of the Jay Inslee carbon tax dream (Cap and Tax, LCFS, etc.) since our beginning a decade ago. The latest anger about the cost of his far-Left policies comes over the reality dawning on the farming community that the governor and his fellow Democrats don’t always keep their promises. In this case, leaders at the Washington State Farm Bureau are letting the media know they didn’t get all of the story when reporters covered an agriculture industry complaint (which Shift also highlighted) about how cap and tax is being poorly implemented by the state.

As the Farm Bureau (WFB) points out, the problem is Inslee’s Department of Ecology (DOE) and this is not a new issue as over “the past five months of working to find a path forward, DOE has consistently resisted every solution that was presented by agriculture, stakeholders, and the legislature, to fix this problem. Despite this resistance, WFB will continue to work with policymakers and stakeholders to defend agriculture and call on DOE to stop dragging their feet and fulfill their legal obligations.“ You can read more about Democrat foot dragging when it comes to returning money promised to you here… Shift, Washington Farm Bureau.

It is sad enough that the public learned over the Memorial Day weekend about yet another violent breakout from the Echo Glen juvenile detention center, as KING 5 reported that the “latest escape is the third at the facility in the last year and a half.” Now comes perspective from the union overseeing the facility’s staff that the “sad part about this is, it takes these extreme events to get attention but the danger was there last week before these kids escaped.”

And the danger was real, as the incident report “details how the teens waited in a bathroom for four hours for a member of the graveyard shift who they had previously targeted to arrive. The teens attacked the staff member, locked her in a cell and stole her car keys.” You can read more about how the state is not doing its job but says “an outside facility management team is conducting a review of the incident” here… KING5.

People who live, work, and play on the Eastside often seem to value the convenience (and advantages) they find in Bellevue over downtown Seattle, such as public safety, open stores, and available parking. And while Seattle activists can only do so much to reduce public safety and screw up the Eastside economy, they can always advocate for more of the same failed policies which Seattle has pursued for a generation. Such is the case with the news from the aptly named blog The Urbanist cheering city staff that favors “the potential broad expansion of curbside street space that shifts away from being focused primarily on single-occupancy vehicle movement and storage.”

In case that language sounds foreign to you, that is radical environmental-speak for reducing “driving and parking” on the things you know as “roads”. You can read more about why, if you drive, you should care about something called the city’s “new Curb Management Plan” aiming to bring Seattle-style traffic dysfunction to Bellevue here, because one far-Left activist claims “This work really does seem to be with the goal of making Bellevue an actual city” like Seattle here… The Urbanist

Homelessness has been plaguing Seattle and King County for most of the current century, and Shift has been covering it as an official emergency since 2015, when “liberal politicians gathered in front the TV cameras and committed millions in resources from all levels of government to solve the growing homeless problem in the city and in King County.  They took turns standing behind the microphones to pat themselves on the back for tackling this problem.”

Of course, it’s hard to tackle anything if you are on the wrong playing field, which the Discovery Institute’s Bruce Chapman captures in this Federalist piece pointing out that “Nor is homelessness mainly about housing; rather, it’s largely about untreated mental illness and drug addiction.” You can read extensively about how local liberals keep focusing on solutions they like instead of dealing with the problem that is, here … Shift, The Federalist.

Several hundred misguided Amazon employees are courageously planning to take off their lunch hour today to evidently protest that they were not among the thousands of Amazonians who were fired in January, and that they are actually now expected to show up occasionally at work whether they have given their corporate overlords permission to require that or not. According to reports, the employee walkout is a mixed bag of complaints according to “internal messages shared by employees over Slack and email, which listed Amazon’s return-to-office mandate, climate commitments, and recent layoffs among the reasons for the walkout.” You can read more about people confused about capitalism and who have never had it so good here… KIRO 7.

Local media will likely be filled next week with news of rising gas prices thanks to Governor Jay Inslee’s expensive and faltering cap-and-tradetax laws, when the results from today’s carbon tax auction are released by the state.  As the Washington Observer points out, the “Department of Ecology is set to auction off another tranche of allowances today for companies that pump carbon pollution into the atmosphere. Under the cap-and-trade system imposed by the Climate Commitment Act in 2021, major emitters need to buy the allowances in order to operate.”

Of course, those increased fuel costs are being paid by Washington consumers, and this is “less great for Gov. Jay Inslee and others who argued that the new system would have a negligible effect on fuel prices.” You can read more about the Democrats’ desire to make you pay more at the pump and the state’s broken promises here… Washington Observer.

IS THIS SOMETHING ELSE BOB FERGUSON IS HIDING?

LOOKING LIKE ANOTHER STELLAR JAY INSLEE HIRING DECISION

SEATAC TRYING TO KEEP PARKING RATES UP WITH INSLEE’S INCREASING GAS PRICES

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