Shift tipped you yesterday, as part of our long history of watching Governor Jay Inslee serve his campaign donors in the environmental community, to a leak of court documents regarding the Biden Administration’s secret negotiations with Washington state and some of Gov. Inslee’s favorite extreme environmental groups to demolish the Lower Snake River Dams. More in-depth details in a Seattle Times online story are disturbing to anyone concerned about Eastern Washington’s economy, including “a proposal under which services from the dams could be replaced, including creation of a Pacific Northwest Tribal Energy Program … to develop and deploy ‘clean, renewable socially-just energy resources’ in the region.”

What was seemingly left out of the backroom negotiations was any focus on “reliability” and “affordability”, as Gov. Inslee and his fellow Democrats will gladly sacrifice taxpayer dollars and higher consumer prices in their chase for their precious “socially-just energy”.  Read on and guess whether any of Gov. Inslee’s campaign donors are among those producing what the Democrats define as “socially-just  energy” here… Shift, Seattle Times.

Shift has long been waiting for an intrepid reporter or old-fashioned political watchdog to tally the many investigations and audits which have focused on the incompetence of members of Jay Inslee’s administration – though we recognize that is a tall task.  Adding to that tawdry tally of scandal is a new investigation featured in Crosscut, as “Gov. Jay Inslee’s office has commissioned an independent investigation into workplace issues at the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission amid allegations of high employee turnover, low morale, sexism and divisions over gender and racial equity.”

Evidently not everybody in Gov. Inslee’s sandbox can play well together, with employees alleging that commission leaders “created an unbearably hostile environment” and “damaged the agency’s ability to meet its mission”, while the conspiracy-minded managers (who have since quit) claim “employees have been waging a nearly two-year, targeted smear campaign against several women in leadership positions.”  You can read on to see how this will end, with expensive lawsuits that are funded by the taxpayers on both sides, here… Crosscut.

Shift has been covering for months the trend across the state of liberal school boards and superintendents mismanaging the millions the COVID crisis provided, seemingly making no plans for addressing the revenue downturn that would happen when fewer students returned to public schools after the pandemic. The chickens have come home to roost harder in Marysville than in most places, with the Everett Herald reporting cuts being considered include “No more sports. Class sizes of 35 to 40. All librarians cut.”

Those are just the latest drastic measures being contemplated by the overmatched administrators in the district north of Everett, who are “staring down a $15.8 million budget shortfall by the end of the school year.” Parents in the district do not seem pleased, with one capturing the mood: “I have no faith in their ability to take care of our kids, to teach our kids, to keep them safe or to provide any kind of decent education.” Read on to see how the superintendent’s scapegoating begins by suggesting “the true scope of the district’s dire financial situation only became clear after the previous finance director left his position in February” here… (Everett) Herald.

At Shift, we think it should go without saying that justice should be colorblind. Unfortunately, some liberal public defense types in Washington think race should be the determining factor for lower sentences, and we’ll find out if they are successful in that argument thanks to an op-ed in the (Tacoma) News Tribune highlighting the question of whether tomorrow a Tacoma judge will accept from “a series of court filings that Black suspects should get special consideration, no matter how heinous the crime.”

You can read all the disturbing details of the case, including the first trial judge’s perspective that the defendant “didn’t do anything that deserves less than the high end. … It is still probably far less than what is deserved in this case” here… (Tacoma) News Tribune.

The saying is that records are made to be broken, and yet this is one that the city of Seattle should have left undisturbed. Instead, thanks to years of bad policy decisions and animus towards police by sorry public officials, KING 5 is reporting, “Seattle has officially broken its previous homicide record in recent history.”

Unfortunately, it’s not just Seattle reaping the bounty of liberal policymaking as the “trend mirrors impacts seen across the state of Washington. According to the annual report compiled by the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs, there were 394 murders reported in Washington state in 2022, setting a new all-time record.” You can see more sad crime stats here… KING 5.

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