Merry Christmas & A Hopefully Better New Year!

Merry Christmas from the Democrats – and if taxes were gifts, Jay Inslee would want to give them to everyone.  Inslee and the Democrats appear tone-deaf to the economic crisis by proposing an income tax on capital gains, health insurance hikes, and other taxes and fees.  They are doing this despite a massive increase in state spending since Inslee has been in office (the state budget has nearly doubled in the past ten years). The Democrats are also pushing a Low Carbon Fuel Standard that studies have shown could increase the cost of gas by 46 to 63 cents a gallon (and will hit low-income workers the hardest).  Inslee and the Democrat just cannot help themselves in making it more expensive for us to live in Washington State. (Shift Article)

As we look forward to the new year, and the start of a COVID-focused legislative session (that should have occurred 6 months ago), Governor Inslee continues to push his false claim that Republicans have not come up with ideas on how the state should be governed differently than his one-man rule. The truth is, Republican lawmakers sent dozens of letters to the governor over the last 8 months, proposing different ideas on how to manage the crisis, but Governor Inslee almost never responded to them.  While the governor had taxpayer-funded news conferences two or three times a week (which were basically hour-long campaign commercials, as Inslee spent his time bashing the Trump Administration and praising himself and fellow Democrats), Republican legislators were restricted by campaign-year restrictions which banned them from using their official websites and  emails to promote their proposals.  Back in May, Shift heard about the letters to the governor and obtained 19 of them from Republican state senators through a public records request.  The House Republican Caucus  posted on its website (now that it can be used again) many letters which House members sent the governor (which have nearly all been ignored).  Inslee’s claim that Republicans have not come up with ideas on how to handle the pandemic crisis, or on how to fix his broken state budget, are simply more false arguments being peddled by Inslee to deflect attention from his autocratic rule of the state. (House Republican Caucus and Shift Article)

While Governor Inslee and the Washington State Democrat Party pushed conspiracy claims that conservatives were behind the threatening messages sent to elections officials (including in Washington State), the FBI has determined the messages were part of a plot emanating from Iran.  The threatening messages are part of an Iranian strategy to disrupt American elections, which also included sending hostile emails to Democrat voters which appeared to come from conservative American organizations. We should again note that while Inslee and the Democrats were quick to condemn violent threats they believe (and now proven false) to have come from the Right, they have yet to condemn the actual violence committed by liberal activists against Seattle businesses and police officers. (Washington Post)