June 29, 2020

Governor Jay Inslee continues to be more focused on earning a position in a (possible) future Biden Administration than on doing his job that Washingtonians are paying him for.  Inslee, while appearing Sunday on “Face the Nation,” threw out a few well-rehearsed petty one-liners aimed at President Donald Trump, and avoided talking about the numerous failures of his administration (especially the cruel failure of his Employment Security Department) during the coronavirus outbreak.  When Inslee was asked about his administration’s failure in stopping the spread of COVID-19 in Central Washington’s agricultural community, here was his response (printed verbatim). “We’ve got to have an agricultural industry because we need to eat across the United States. We have asked people to step in and continue to work in these industries, and they have done that.  And they have learned we have had more successful protocols reduced during the transmission.  You can understand why they’re higher levels of transmission, where people are working closely together, but we put into place some really good protocols. Although we need to continue to increase testing in these facilities, and that’s why from day one, when the president said that this was just going to go away Monday, and we had adequate testing, that also disabled some of our efforts.  But right now it is not just the agricultural industry, and I think that is important to say.  We have very widespread community transmission in some of our counties.  And this points to the fact that all of us need to pull on this rope and we could use some national leadership in that regard.”  Washington State is embarrassed enough by CHAZ making Seattle a national laughingstock – why does Jay need to make it worse by talking on national TV? (Face the Nation and News Tribune)

The cruel failures of Governor Inslee’s Employment Security Department (ESD) continue to linger, while another promised timeline is given to clear the backlog of applications.  After last week’s news that ESD employees were going to spend even less time responding to new applicants’ phone calls, in order to work on the more complicated problems, ESD Commissioner Suzi “I can raise money for Democrat candidates” LeVine now says she hopes to have the more than 80,000 backlogged applications processed by the end of July.  The backlog crisis is so severe the National Guard has been brought in to help.  Even if the department can meet its latest revised promise (and history has shown they likely will not), this still means nearly 100,000 Washington residents will spend another month dodging creditors’ phone calls and letters, standing in food bank lines, and spending hours trying to get through to a live ESD employee to get answers on their promised benefits. (KING5 News, KIRO7 News, and The Columbian)

By Governor Inslee giving state employees a raise, and then telling them to take a few furlough days, some state agencies will be closed for one day week.  Inslee’s bonehead scheme (concocted in a backroom deal with his union boss contributors), will give state employees more money, yet will provide less services to Washington residents. It is yet another clear example that Inslee has chosen to give state money away to campaign contributors at the expense of Washington taxpayers. (News Tribune and Shift)