Democrats are running out of ways to avoid the blame for soaring gas prices since their cap-and-tax law took effect at the start of the year. That’s why hyper-partisan State Senator Joe Nguyen is taking to social media to demand attention for his new idea, according to Center Square, of copying a law from California that will do absolutely nothing to drive down gas prices but it will allow Democrats to punish businesses they don’t like by demanding “proprietary information that won’t necessarily be shared publicly, but it’s going to be reviewed by some sort of tribunal or organization or entity that can then sift to see if there’s nefarious behavior.”

That’s all that Sen. Nguyen can come up with, more than two years after passing a carbon tax and after watching nine months of gas price hikes since the Democrat’s law took effect. He doesn’t want to lower prices or even make cap-and-tax more efficient. All he wants is “some sort of tribunal or organization or entity” that can investigate his political opponents. It’s this type of political grandstanding that helped the Senator secure 44% of the King County vote when he ran for executive in 2021, and you can read on for how he’s getting ready for his next race here… Center Square.

It is hard to ignore the tragic debacle that is homelessness in King County, but that’s exactly what County Executive Dow Constantine does with his bold plan to do what Democrats in Washington state do every day – raise taxes. That’s the news from the Seattle Times, writing that Executive Constantine is ignoring every other problem in the county he has run for 14 years with a proposal to “enact a 0.1% sales tax increase to benefit local arts, culture, heritage and science organizations.”

Of course, Dow has been around long enough to remember that his voters turned down a similar proposal back in 2017, but he says, “This proposal is different.” You can read how “sales taxes are regressive, which means that low-income taxpayers carry a disproportionate share of the tax burden” that Constantine is proposing here… Seattle Times.

Shift has been keeping you informed for a while about Democrat attempts to draw a Latina out of the state legislative district that elected her simply because she is a Republican. Now the local press is doing a deep dive into the Democrats’ extreme hypocrisy in claiming racism as the reason for their attack on a Hispanic woman legislator, with the Yakima Herald quoting one local leader pointing out that having “a judge who lives on the west side making this decision is not appropriate.”

Read on to see why, now that they have found a judge who agrees with them, legislative Democrat leaders want a new legislative district written far from public view, “arguing that the fastest and fairest way forward is through the courts” here… Shift, Yakima Herald.

A consensus, according to the Capital Press, is emerging that the current environmental lawsuit to rip out four Snake River Dams could drift away without achieving its main goal after the White House “last week called on federal agencies to review their efforts to save wild salmon and propose new programs” without actually proposing anything new. That has led “stakeholders (to) predict federal mediation in a lawsuit over the four lower Snake River dams isn’t likely to lead to a call for breaching them.”

Of course, nothing is certain in the fight over the dams, with one expert noting the Biden Administration was “being asked to essentially endorse the dam-breaching plan. This memo is really important because it does recognize the importance of salmon, but it also essentially recognizes the importance of hydropower.” You can read a few more obvious facts that environmentalists like to overlook here… Capital Press.

Sometimes, it’s the words left out of an editorial that tell you all you need to know. And that’s certainly the case when one of the state’s leading environmental extremists, in a Seattle Times op-ed, launches a weird attack on Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz as “not stewarding our state-owned public lands in the best interest of all of us” without once mentioning the governor’s race that caused her to write the hit piece.

Now the head of what used to be the Washington Environmental Council is lamenting that the “current administration at DNR has allowed timber revenue to be a political wedge that worsens outcomes for Washingtonians” because Attorney General Bob Ferguson has evidently promised to reduce that timber revenue (which goes to public schools) if elected. You can see the game plan for AG Ferguson to pander for more extremist votes here… Seattle Times.

You might think that if the parent of a detained juvenile delinquent warns you that said delinquent is planning to escape, the state tasked with not letting that happen might pay attention. You can read how a KING 5 investigation found that not to be the case since “administrators at Echo Glen Children’s Center were warned of a possible escape in the days before seven teenagers with violent criminal backgrounds escaped earlier this year,” here… KING 5.

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