Month: May 2019

Dear Group,

On Saturday, May 4, around 5:30 PM a troubled young man lost his life in Spokane Valley. He was shot multiple times by a Spokane County Sheriff’s Deputy near the homeless camp in the woods where the 25 year old had been living. The woods are near the Mirabeau Apartments east of N. Pines Rd. Ethan Murray was pursued into the woods to a rock outcrop near his encampment by the Sheriff’s Deputy who shot him based on a report of his acting “very high” near some children in the adjacent apartment complex. What exactly happened in those moments before Ethan died will never be known. Ethan can no longer speak for himself. Spokane County Sheriffs Deputies do not wear body cameras. Ethan was unarmed. Ethan was mentally ill. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 2015. He had no history of violence, but the Deputy chasing him surely knew none of these things. 

Had Ethan committed a crime for which he should die? Presumably, the proximate cause of Ethan’s  being killed was his unwillingness or inability to understand and comply with the Deputy’s shouted commands, a Deputy chasing him in the woods toward his camp, his temporary home, a Deputy probably with pistol drawn, a Deputy certainly hyper-alert and infused with his own adrenaline. Was the chase and the adrenaline warranted? What was the crime? Acting high? It is tempting for some to imagine the Sheriff’s Deputy as simply trigger-happy, anxious to kill. To imagine that is to imagine a monster in a uniform. This man is no monster. That is too easy. This officer found himself standing there with a smoking gun because sheriff’s office procedure put him in a position to heatedly chase a young man who was merely acting strangely. Once in the chase, as part of our society bristling with guns, the officer likely feared for his life. It is likely that in the Deputy’s mind the shots that took Ethan’s life were fired in self defense. 

I have sympathy for both people acting in this scene. The problem is a broken system, a system that utterly fails to support the mentally-ill, the drug addicted, the homeless, the folks on the margins of society, people many of us dismiss as “them”, those expendable people, those failures, failures on account of their imagined moral weakness. The problem is a system that ignores these people until a neighbor’s report of “acting high” causes a sheriff’s deputy to chase a young man into the woods and shoot him when, in the heat of moment, he fails to comply with a barked order.

I never met Ethan, but Ethan’s mother, Justine Murray, is a friend of Emily’s. Emily had Ethan in class in middle school. Emily’s daughter and Ethan’s sister are close friends. By all accounts Ethan was a courteous young man who loved the outdoors, He was diagnosed with schizophrenia four years ago, at the age when the disease commonly shows up. He was never violent, but, as mental illness and self medication intruded on his life, he wandered. For his family it was a challenge to keep track of him, to know he was safe. Justine worked tirelessly trying to help Ethan get the support he needed. She poured and pours herself into advocating for the mentally ill.

Last Sunday, Mothers’ Day, May 12, a week and a day after Ethan died in Spokane Valley, Emily and I attended a Celebration of Ethan’s Life. All in attendance were aware of Ethan’s struggles, his diagnosis of schizophrenia, his encounters with meth and the law, his lapses into unreality, his intermittent homelessness.  People spoke of the heart-warming interaction a woman in one of the Mirabeau apartments had with Ethan a couple our hours before he died. (Read the Spokesman article.) How many others, the mentally ill, the down-and-out, the homeless, people of color, how many die under similar adrenaline soaked circumstances at the hand of law enforcement, die in circumstances that never should occur?

In a humane world there would have been resources available to respond to the neighbors’ calls about the homeless camp long before the sheriff’s office was called to respond to a young man behaving oddly. In a humane world Ethan would have had available consistent help in dealing with his schizophrenia and drug encounters. In a humane world law enforcement would not have to imagine that every person in every encounter is carrying a gun. In a humane world law enforcement would de-escalate the tension in encounters like this one. In a humane world Ethan would still be alive.

Long, long after Ethan’s death has dropped out of the news cycle and most readers and TV news watchers have moved on and forgotten, we will still be dealing with the consequences of not having funded and constructed that humane world, that world where fewer law enforcement officers find themselves unnecessarily chasing, threatening, and shooting people whose crime is mental illness, drug use, confusion, and incomprehension.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

Dear Group,

I was aghast to find there are still people in the Spokane community who do not know of the Washington Policy Center, its funding, its political agenda, and its deep connections with Greater Spokane and the local (and national) Republican Party. That said, I was unaware of WPC until I came upon their table at the Ag Trade Show in Spokane in the fall of 2016. I learned that WPC functions arm-in-arm with McMorris Rodgers’ local machine when, as a physician, I was one of the subjects of what I called a “constituent biopsy” you can read about here.

Today “Spokane Solutions” is held at the Davenport Hotel. To mark that event I want to share with you a community letter I have signed along with around eighty organizations and a few other individuals. It appeared as a full page ad in the Sunday, May 12, Spokesman Review on page 10 of the main section:

The Washington Policy Center doesn’t represent Spokane.

 

Dear Friends,
 
As Spokane-area voters, workers, business people, civic leaders and faith leaders, we reject the divisive political agenda the Washington Policy Center is promoting in our community. 
 
The Washington Policy Center has flown in controversial ex-Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker for a paid political event in Spokane. Walker is notorious for his attacks on public schools, the environment and workers’ rights – attacks that are out of sync with the values of Spokane-area residents.
 
The Washington Policy Center is attempting to spread that same divisive national agenda here in Spokane. We oppose their attempts to influence our community.   The Washington Policy Center is not the independent “think tank” it claims to be, but a political operation that promotes the interests of the ultra-wealthy at the expense of the rest of us. The Washington Policy Center is not fully open and transparent about its funding, but it is clear that it is bankrolled by out-of-state corporate interests, foundations and billionaires to promote a national political agenda that is harmful to Spokane families and our economy.
 
The Washington Policy Center’s outsider agenda includes:
•Privatizing public education by diverting local public school funding to private organizations
•Weakening environmental protections, sacrificing clean air and water
•Restricting workers’ right to advocate for fair pay and working conditions, making it harder to support our families
 
Simply put, the Washington Policy Center doesn’t represent Spokane.
 
As Spokane residents, we do not need or want out-of-state politicians, billionaires and groups like the Washington Policy Center telling us what’s best for our community or deciding which public policies we enact.
 
Unlike the groups funding the Washington Policy Center, we live here and we actually care about what happens here. Our vision for Spokane is a positive one – one in which all of us work together as a community to decide our future and that lifts up all of us.
 
We, the undersigned Spokane-area individuals and groups, are committed to working together to create a stronger, healthier, economically successful community for all of the residents of greater Spokane.  We call on Greater Spokane, Inc., to join with us and not to co-sponsor divisive events such as the Washington Policy Center’s Solutions Summit.

Share widely.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. I’ve reproduced the signatures below.

Dear Group, For weeks readers of the Spokesman have been intermittently subjected to this ad by the Washington Policy Center for “Gov.” Scott Walker’s appearance at tomorrow’s (May 14) all-day “Solutions Summit” at the Davenport Hotel. (Notice the verbal connection to Nadine Woodward’s motto “Spokane Solutions” in her supposedly non-partisan race for Spokane mayor this fall. This is surely no accident.) On the Washington Policy Center website, you’ll note the “Solutions Summit” is co-presented by Greater Spokane, Inc.  From that o3zWPC website blurb on Mr. Walker: “On June 5, 2012, Scott Walker became the first Governor in American history to survive a recall election. He received both more votes and a higher percentage of the vote than in his 2010 election, proving again that Wisconsinites want leaders in office who keep their promises. His book, Unintimidated: A Governor’s Story and a Nation’s Challenge, chronicles his experiences, impact, and lessons learned as Governor.”  Let’s look a little deeper. Born in 1967, son of a Baptist minister, Scott Walker’s life is the story of man who has checked all the boxes for a modern day career as a Republican/Libertarian politician. In 1985, as a high school student, Walker attended Badger Boys State at Ripon College in Ripon, Wisconsin. That, and later meeting Ronald Reagan at Boys Nation, Walker cites as kindling his interest in politics. (I attended Badger Boys State in 1968 and came away with the opposite lesson.)  Walker was deeply involved in student politics from day one at Marquette University in Milwaukee, but dropped out in his senior year. His dropping out later made him the first governor of Wisconsin in 64 years without a college degree. Walker ran for the Wisconsin State Assembly for the first time at age 22. At age 26 he moved to Wauwatosa, in a more conservative Wisconsin legislative district, where his chances of political advancement were greater. In a special election in 1993 he claimed a seat in the Wisconsin Assembly. In 2002 he left the legislature when he became the Milwaukee County Executive in another special election. From County Executive he made a bid for governor in 2006, but withdrew for lack of funds and party support, “the only statewide race he ever lost,” (that is, before 2018–see below). Four years later in 2010 Walker rode into the Wisconsin governorship on the Tea Party wave. From 2011 until his defeat in 2018 Walker’s governorship was tumultuous, not unlike what we are suffering through as a nation with the current occupant of the White House.  Here’s a quote from the Milwaukee Sentinel from an article entitled “In a divided Wisconsin, Scott Walker’s lightning-rod approach to politics worked for him — until it didn’t“:  But another reason that voters were so polarized over Walker was Walker’s own approach to politics. His personality wasn’t divisive, like President Donald Trump’s. But his leadership was polarizing in several ways. One was simply his successful pursuit of aggressively conservative policies, which excited his supporters and angered his opponents. A second was the “shock and awe” factor. His defining early accomplishment — all but ending collective bargaining for public-sector unions — was not a policy he campaigned on in 2010. It was a post-election bombshell. That inflamed the conflict that followed. It embittered the left, which responded in ways that embittered the right, and set the tone for the Walker years. Walker’s years as governor of Wisconsin was right out of the Koch fueled national Republican/Libertarian playbook. Read the well-referenced entry on Scott Walker in Wikipedia for the details. Walker’s signature piece of legislation, the “Budget Repair Bill” gutted the collective bargaining leverage of public sector unions…on the excuse it was necessary to balance the state budget, but with the subtext that public employees are overpaid and underworked. Meanwhile, of course, Walker generated tax cuts of nearly 2 billion dollars (tax “relief”–notice the framing). His trashing of public sector unions resulted in the first recall election of a governor in Wisconsin history (and only the third in the nation). Walker was the first of those three to survive a recall, thanks to a $37 million dollar war chest, 2/3 of which donations came from out of state. The list of large donors includes the Bradley Foundation, David and Charles Koch, Americans for Prosperity, and something called the “Wisconsin Policy Research Institute” (WPPI is a member of the State Policy Network, as is the Washington Policy Center.) The list of big money donors that came to Walker’s defense reads like a summary of Jane Meyer’s book “Dark Money.” (see “Deep Background” in the References below).  While crowing about tax “relief” Walker’s budgets slashed money for public education. His 2015 budget proposal slashed 13% from the state funding for the Wisconsin university system. He proposed  putting the University of Wisconsin under a “private authority” (all his appointees). He even proposed a re-write of the university system commitment from “search for truth” to a goal of “workforce readiness.” Walker’s narrow, career politician background reminds me of McMorris Rodgers. His combative, change-everything style reminds me of the current occupant of the White House.  Walker’s Downfall: So who toppled this college dropout, career Republican politician, this belligerent ideologue? To read the Washington Policy Center and Greater Spokane’s advertisement for Walker’s keynote address tomorrow you wouldn’t even know Walker had lost an election, much less to whom. The man who toppled Scott Walker in November 2018 is Tony Evers, a career educator with a Ph.D. in Educational Administration. Governor Tony Evers has worked as a classroom teacher, school principle, district administrator, and, most recently, as Superintendent of Public Instruction for the State of Wisconsin. Savor the contrast. Evers margin of victory was small, but he was running against an incumbent with a huge war chest and lavish campaign spending (Walker’s 21.7 million to Evers 7.7 million) Wisconsin voters finally pushed back and elected a man with actual expertise in education, a repudiation of Walker’s agenda of defunding. Now our local Republicans (under cover of the “Washington Policy Center”) have brought Walker to Spokane to preach Republican/Libertarian ideology to an audience WPC would happily keep ignorant of Walker’s electoral loss and the credentials of the man who beat him. .Keep to the high ground, Jerry P.S. Scott Walker’s 2011-13 budget proposal as referenced in wikipedia contained this nugget: He proposed a 5.5% decrease in the maximum amount of funding school districts can receive from state aid and property taxes, which would limit how much property taxes could be increased to compensate for the reduction in state aid. The budget lowered state capital gains taxes for investments in Wisconsin businesses. This sounds disturbingly similar in intent to the Washington State “levy swap equalization,” the $1.50/1000 assessed value cap the Republicans extracted as a “compromise” in the Washington State budget negotiations that Michael Baumgartner crowed about as a Washington legislator. Are these two tactics to undermine funding for public schools part of Republican orthodoxy?

The story for this post comes from This American Life, 673 Left Behind. If you have 20 I recommend you click and listen from 16:30 minutes to 36:40. You can read the full transcript here, but the podcast has a greater impact, an illustration of the power of storytelling. Dear Group, People thrive on Us versus Them narratives. Propaganda, often characterized by repetition of a few words or a simple idea, can be used to shape the narrative. Thus it is that anti-immigrant rhetoric “rapists, murderers, MS-13” fires up passion among those disposed to listen. But what happens when the “Them” gets personal? On the morning of April 5, 2018 agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Tennessee Highway Patrol troopers raided a slaughterhouse 15 miles outside of Morristown, Tennessee, a town of about 30,000 in the Appalachian Mountains. (The nearest big city is Knoxville, population 186,000, about an hour away.) Morristown is a bastion of Republicanism and an area containing about 100 churches. News articles of that day focus on the alleged malfeasance of the owners of the slaughterhouse in hiring undocumented immigrants, not on the effects of the raid on the social fabric of the surrounding towns. The podcast I featured today fills in some of the those details. Nearly a hundred people were held for questioning on the day of the raid. Fifty-four of them were sent to a detention center around six hours away in Alabama. They were allowed little or no contact with their families before departure. We don’t often think of it this way, but such an event touches many hundreds of lives. It tore at the social fabric of the town…and it provides cause for people to wonder if the point of deportation might be more than “rapists and murderers and drug dealers.” Below is a copy of part of the transcript from the podcast. [The bold in the quote is mine.]: Lilly Sullivan [moderator] She [Krista Etter] saw the ICE trailer, officers cordoning off the entrance to the plant. Krista’s a Trump supporter. She’s not a fan of illegal immigration. Most of the area is that way. The county went 77% to Trump. She didn’t know anyone who’d been directly affected. Over the weekend, she went to a vigil for the parents who’d been taken away, not because she wanted to. She didn’t. She’s the general manager for a local paper. And they asked her to take pictures. She says that when she showed up, she was actually a little angry that all these people were there at all, like what do they expect? These people broke the law. They should have seen it coming. Krista Etter I thought this possibly was a good thing, that ICE was cracking down on immigration. They’re here illegally. They need to go home. Lilly Sullivan [moderator] And then she started listening to the kids at the mic. Teenager [SPEAKING SPANISH] Krista Etter There was a young man. He was a teenager, 14, 15 years old, that said, he just wanted his mom to come home. Teenager [SPEAKING SPANISH] Krista Etter He didn’t have anybody else. He just wanted his mom to come home. Teenager [SPEAKING SPANISH] Krista Etter It just really, just shook my soul. It was– it was almost overwhelming, because there were so many children speaking. And– and, I actually kind of had to get out of there. Because I was like, it’s getting hot. And I have health issues. And I was like, I need to– I have to remove myself, you know, walk out to my car, get a breath. And God’s kind of going, see, I wanted you here, because you’re not correct in your thinking. You’re not correct in thinking that this is so black and white. Because when I heard crack down on illegal immigration, I interpreted it as a crackdown on illegal immigrants that were criminals. If there was a drug situation, you know, violent criminals, pedophile, any kind of situation of that nature. That’s what I expected. And I really believe I’m not the only one who did that. I don’t think anybody ever really stopped to think that they were going to go after the family man working at the meatpacking plant. That’s not what I had in mind. I’m still a President Trump supporter. I guess, I have to hold out hope that maybe he didn’t understand he was going after the guy in the meatpacking plant. I mean, I guess he probably does. Lilly Sullivan [moderator] I talked to a lot of people in town, who, after the raid, said they felt stunned. People kept reminding me, this is the Bible Belt. This town’s God fearing. There’s over 100 churches in the area. Love thy neighbor, people take that seriously. You’d have to listen to the podcast to hear just how seriously the conservative residents of Morristown reacted. The trouble is it will take a lot more writing and storytelling and preaching than this podcast to change the propaganda narrative of “rapists,  murderers, and drug dealers” for many of the Republican voters of area. Think of this story the next time you read of the City of Spokane City Council discussing alleged violations of citizens rights by government agents at the Intermodal Center (the old railroad station downtown).  Keep to the high ground, Jerry P.S. Researching this story was a lesson for me in the fragmentary nature of our understanding of almost everything. The news articles I was able to google were very dry. They presented little beyond some raw facts, numbers and a few quotes, mostly from government officials. It is something else entirely to listen to the podcast, explore the area on googlemaps, and listen to the voices of the people who were there and the reaction of the community. This is a lesson the talking heads on Fox News and Donald Trump understand all too well: keep beating the drum about “rapists, murderers, and drug dealers” and your listeners will form a mindframe that allows them to condone the most awful things…so long as they don’t have to confront the reality of how those actions affect their neighbors, real people.

Dear Group,

Last Monday I wrote of the adage “You are judged by the company you keep.” Then I was referring to the Republicans who refuse to find fault with Matt Shea (State Rep, LD4), but never far from my mind was the welcome offered to James Allsup by then Spokane Republican Party Chairwoman Cecily Wright at her and her husband’s NWGrassroots gathering. James Allsup, once the Chairman of WSU’s College Republicans, spoke at the Charlottesville, Virginia, Unite the Right rally. Video showed young men with tiki torches, their faces contorted as they chanted “Jews will not replace us.”

This is the same rally about which the occupant of the White House declared there were “very fine people on both sides.” The stated purpose of the rally was to oppose the removal of a statue of General Robert E. Lee from Lee Park in Charlottesville, Virginia.  

Let’s look at statues of Confederate Generals. From the end of the Civil War to 1877, the Reconstruction Era, there were three competing visions of Civil War memory: “the reconciliationist vision, which was rooted in coping with the death and devastation the war had brought; the white supremacist vision, which included segregation and the preservation of the traditional cultural standards of the South; and the emancipationist vision, which sought full freedom, citizenship, and Constitutional equality for African Americans.”^[2]  

The outcome of the 1876 presidential election, one of the four elections in our history ultimately won with a minority of popular votes (thanks to the Electoral College…as in 2000 and 2016), was disputed. Part of the compromise that put Rutherford B. Hayes (a minority President) in office was that the government would withdraw from the South federal troops supporting Reconstruction efforts. Their continued presence in the parts of the South had been a major deterrent and irritant to those supporting the white supremacist post war vision.

With the end of Reconstruction the white supremacist vision largely won out, but it acquired new clothing: “The Lost Cause of the Confederacy”, or simply the Lost Cause, is an American historical negationist ideology that holds that, despite losing the American Civil War, the cause of the Confederacy was a just and heroic one. The ideology endorses the supposed virtues of the antebellum South, viewing the war as a struggle primarily for the Southern way of life^[1] or “states’ rights” in the face of overwhelming “Northern aggression”. At the same time, the Lost Cause minimizes or denies outright the central role of slavery in the outbreak of the war.”

The statuary featuring Nathan Bedford Forrest (an early member and promoter of the KKK), Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis was all put up in the late 1800s and early 1900s by promoters of the Lost Cause, while the North essentially looked the other way and got on with business.

The historian Carl Becker wrote that history is what the present chooses to remember about the past. So it was with the choice of Generals to be remembered in statuary scattered throughout the South. Who was not chosen to be remembered in heroic statuary is instructive. General James Longstreet was one of the foremost Confederate generals in the Civil War. Robert E. Lee referred to Longstreet as his “Old War Horse.” Longstreet figured prominently at Gettysburg, Chickamauga, the Wilderness, and a series of other battles. As a confederate general, he certainly deserved recognition in statuary, but the first and only statue of Longstreet was dedicated in 1998 at Gettysburg. Why?

Two reasons: Longstreet disagreed with Lee’s order for Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg, an action many consider the turning point in the war against the South. (Note that like any good soldier he carried out the order he was given in spite of his critique, an order that sent more than a thousand men to their death marching uphill into a hail of lead.) Worse, from the standpoint of those wishing slavery were still legal, in 1874, still during Reconstruction, Longstreet led troops in New Orleans against the “White League,” a white paramilitary terrorist organization. The white supremacist southerners never forgave him…

Remember Longstreet and Reconstruction when you consider the intended message of Confederate statuary. As the victorious North looked away the losers wrote the history. We’re re-visiting that history even now among the company kept by local Republicans.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. Since my second decade I’ve been interested the Civil War. I’ve visited a number of Civil War battlefields, most notably Gettysburg. In my youth I took part in Civil War re-enactments as part of the Civil War Centennial, I have been aware of General James Longstreet for decades, but, memory being what it is, I’ve sometimes found it hard to recall the side on which he fought. The articles and opinion pieces I read in preparing this post explain for me my haziness of memory.around this man. Indeed, history is what the present choses to remember about the past. Although I grew up in Wisconsin, I was taught Civil War history through the lens of the “Lost Cause.” 

Action Item: The Washington House Minority Leader J.T. Wilcox (R-LD2, west of Mt. Rainier) (360-786-7912) is dragging his feet on censuring and removing Matt Shea from the WA State House Republican Caucus. He needs encouragement to stand up for decency. Remind him he is judged by the company he keeps. For more information read below and click here.

Dear Group,

Matt Shea has been the State Legislative Representative from Legislative District 4–roughly, Spokane valley to Mount Spokane–since 2009. In that time he has gained press notoriety for a road rage incident in which he pulled a gun (on an expired permit) in 2012, He made national news in the fall of 2018 for his manifesto, “The Biblical Basis for War.” In the words of Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich Shea’s manifesto is “…a ‘how to’ manual consistent with the ideology and operating philosophy of the Christian Identity/Aryan Nations movement and the Redoubt movement of the 1990s.” In this last week the Guardian (and later the Spokesman Review) published an online chat in which Shea (as “Verum Bellator”) offered help with “background checks” to three male racist nut cases discussing violence against a specific female Spokane resident nominated for surveillance.  Among the enthusiastic suggestions: “Fist full of hair, and face slam, to a Jersey barrier. Treat em like communist revolutionaries. Then shave her bald with a K-Bar USMC field knife,” (The quote is from Jack Robertson, aka “John Jacob Schmidt” of North Idaho’s Radio Free Redoubt.) Shea didn’t deny his engagement in the chat (that would have been pointless, given the evidence), but, instead, claimed he only came in at the end, a defense contradicted by the evidence.

So does Matt Shea’s extremism and moral depravity concern the Republican Party or his donors? No, with the exception of Ozzie Knezovich, State and local Republicans remain “strategically silent,” not wanting to risk the votes of the extremists who keep their party in office. If Matt Shea endorses you, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, why would you refuse his backing? Really, why would you? Sometimes what you refuse to say speaks loudest.

And donors? Matt Shea gathered $114,216.94 for his 2018 campaign, mostly from corporate donors. You can explore the list here. The message: as long as you vote corporate interests, we, the corporations, will conveniently look the other way in the face of any moral outrage. We, the corporations, don’t care about morality or decency, we care only about maximizing our profits. To be sure, there were calls from some of these donors for Shea to return their money after the “Biblical Basis for War” made national news last fall. Of course, this was posturing. Not a penny was returned as far as I can see in the records of the Public Disclosure Commission. Instead, Shea spent the money with ACN (the American Christian Network), $41,754 to Matt Shea’s “surplus account,” social media, “REIMB AIRFARE – ALASKA AIRLINE TO ANTI-TERRORIMS TRAINING” (sic), and mileage reimbursement for Shea’s extremist activities in Whitefish, M, and Marble, WA, places not even in his legislative district. How, one might ask, do these latter expenses fall under campaign expenses? Explore Shea’s campaign expenditures here.

These corporate donors are funding extremism in exchange for Shea’s supportive vote. Shame on them. So far Shea’s 2020 campaign has raised only $4000 in “miscellaneous receipts.” Shea’s donors need be put on notice that a spotlight will shine on any donations to the 2020 campaign of this twisted man.

Call J.T. Wilcox today (360-786-7912) and tell him Matt Shea is a stain on the reputation of the Republican Party he and his Party cannot afford to defend. 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

Dear Group, Once again I am posting a Doug Muder piece I find incisive. I’ve been running into articles in the Spokesman and posts in Nextdoor.com from people pushing the narrative that teachers and teachers’ unions are to blame for the fiscal difficulties and teacher layoffs around the McCleary Decision, school funding, and the legislature. The gist is always, “I  (Us) work hard and pay too much in property taxes and they (Them) get paid more than I do (i.e. too much) for a cushy job. And they get a summer vacation!” The folks telling themselves and others this story usually pair it with how their property assessment went up last year and pretty soon they won’t be able to afford to live in their home. These story-tellers never step back and look at the broader picture, instead, it’s Us v. the evil teachers’ union. It’s a familiar narrative. “Those lazy ‘welfare people,’ Why, I saw a woman just the other day buying cracker jacks with food stamps and then get into a great big SUV and drive away.” Us good, righteous people v. Them, those lazy folk.” With the Us v. Them narrative ringing in my head I came upon Doug Muder’s April 29th column I’ve copied below. With Wisconsin “Gov.” Scott Walker coming to amplify this Us v. Them narrative to the local Republican faithful at the Washington Policy Center all day conference here at the Davenport on May 14, we would all do well to recognize what the Republicans are selling.    Charity Liberalism and Justice Liberalism by weeklysift   Should the point of liberal programs be to help the poor? Or to change the economy so that people don’t become poor? In Thursday’s Washington Post, Catherine Rampell pointed out a subtle but important distinction that liberals should never lose sight of: Elizabeth Warren’s free-college and student-debt-relief plans, Rampell claimed, are “liberal but not progressive”, because “they give bigger benefits to higher-income families than to lower-income ones that actually need the help.” Rampell would rather see money targeted more directly at college-eligible low-income students. This is a longstanding argument in liberal circles. On the one hand we have universal programs like Social Security, and on the other hand are targeted programs like food stamps. In an economic sense, targeted programs are more efficient at helping the poor — doing more with less. But that efficiency comes with some non-economic costs: increased red tape (you have to prove you qualify) and greater stigma for the recipients. A universal entitlement is conceptually simpler: If you go to college, we’ll help you pay for it. But it costs more, because (as Rampell points out), we’ll be helping Bill Gates’ kids too. And since everything has to be paid for somehow, the universal program is more invasive to the pre-program economy. You have to tax more so that you can spend more. A related (but not quite identical) distinction applies to our motives for having a program to begin with: Targeted programs have an air of charity about them. They don’t argue with the underlying structure of the economy, they just try to change the results. Do some people not make enough money to eat properly? Very well, then, we’ll give them food. We’ll leave alone whatever it is about the economy that creates unemployment or produces jobs that pay below-subsistence wages. We’ll just fix the food part. Universal programs tend to be motivated more by notions of social justice: It isn’t just the outcome that’s wrong, it’s the fundamental structure of things. Yes, a targeted program would be a lighter-handed tweak of the underlying economy. But if the underlying economy is fundamentally unjust, why is a lighter hand good? Rights. The reason it’s important to understand this distinction is that it’s easy for charitable and targeted-program attitudes to sneak their assumptions into a discussion. “Efficiency” always sounds good. But as soon as you start arguing about efficiency, you’ve bought the assumption that smaller changes are better. And often you’ve also bought an additional assumption about the program’s proper goal. A universal program establishes a basic right, and re-defines the economy to fulfill it. Re-defining the economy is, in large part, the purpose of the program. The point of making public colleges free isn’t just to help the poor pay for education. The point is that public colleges ought to be free. A society in which public colleges are free is a more just society. The same ideas apply across the board. One failing of our healthcare system is that too many people get priced out it, with corresponding effects on their ability to survive and thrive. ObamaCare targets people in danger of being priced out and subsidizes their health insurance, so it helps resolve that particular failing (or would if it were properly funded and overseen by an administration that believes in its purpose). But ObamaCare does not establish health care as a basic right. The point of Medicare for All or some other universal-healthcare plan isn’t just to help the people who are being priced out of healthcare. The point is to make healthcare a basic right. That requires more government spending and taxing than even a fully funded ObamaCare. In that sense, it’s a “less efficient” use of the government’s fiscal powers, a heavy-handed reorganization rather than a light-handed tweak. If you believe that the current economy — where many people who work fulltime still can’t afford to take care of themselves or their children — is fundamentally just, then this heavy-handedness must seem outrageous. But if you believe that the current economy is unjust, then changing it is a virtue, not a vice. There are efficiency/inefficiency arguments to be made at a number of levels, but the more important point is this: A society in which healthcare is a basic right is a more just society than the one we have now. The problem isn’t just that the current economy produces some downtrodden people who need charitable help from the rest of us, which we choose to channel through government. It’s that everyone should have a basic right to healthcare, and right now they don’t. Vulnerability. Whether a plan gets framed as a basic right or as charity channeled through the government makes a huge difference in the politics. Most voters see charity-justified, means-tested programs as something the government does for “them”, not for “us”. Such generosity is fine as long as “we” are feeling prosperous and “they” seem deserving. But either of those factors can change, or can be changed through political rhetoric. Means-tested programs are always open to forms of attack that universal programs are immune to: denigration and demonization of the beneficiaries. “Those people” don’t deserve our help because they are lazy or immoral or have made bad life choices. And usually, there’s no obvious place to draw the line: Are the best-off recipients truly in need, or are they just scamming us? Wherever the cut-off is, why shouldn’t it be lower? If you think about it — and we seldom do — plenty of Social Security recipients fit the same profile as the demonized beneficiaries of means-tested programs: They’re healthy and could get jobs, but don’t want to. The reason conservative politicians don’t rail about their laziness and sense of entitlement is that Social Security is an “us”, not a “them”. They’d be demonizing their own voters, not some isolated scapegoat class. But if Social Security ever became means-tested — as conservatives and a few efficiency-minded liberals often propose; I mean, what’s the point of sending government checks to Warren Buffett? — we’d soon see the same kinds of rhetoric and tactics: outrage at people who spend their benefits on luxuries, tightening requirements so that fewer and fewer people qualify (“I want to help the truly needy, but …”), and making the experience degrading and dis-spiriting with drug tests, long lines to file your annual re-applications, paternalistic restrictions on how you spend the money, and so on. The rhetoric just writes itself: Picture all those lazy, able-bodied 60-somethings living on the beach in Florida, spending your tax dollars instead of working. They didn’t save when they were younger, and now they expect the government to make up the difference! Doesn’t that boil your blood? Local services. You can see the same logic play out locally. In some cities everybody uses public transit. (I’ve taken the BART during rush hour in San Francisco. There were a lot of three-piece suits in the car.) Correspondingly, the service is good in those cities, because transit-riders are an “us”, not a “them”. But in cities (or even neighborhoods within cities) where only the poor use public transit, bus-riders are a “them” and you can forget about rail. In those places, buses are crowded and dirty; schedules are sparse and inconvenient. Ditto for public schools. In towns where kids of all economic classes go to the same schools, standards are high and it’s not hard to pass a funding increase. But in towns where the public schools are for the poor, and the wealthy all send their kids to private schools, public education is a charity. What do “those people” expect the rest of “us” to provide for them? Expect worse outcomes yet if Betsy DeVos ever gets her way and public schools are phased out entirely, in favor of private schools that accept government vouchers. The system will quickly devolve into two tiers: Schools that you can pay for solely with a voucher, and schools where the voucher only covers part of the cost. The voucher-only schools will be for the poor, and the vouchers will gradually shrink down to charity levels: Do “those kids” really need music or foreign languages? Are they capable of appreciating literature or higher mathematics? Why should we pay for more than just keeping them under control all day? Of course, we’d never ask those questions about “our” kids. But “their” kids? Back to Warren’s proposal. What Senator Warren proposed last week was a program to end tuition-and-fee costs for undergraduates at all public colleges and universities, and to cancel up to $50,000 of student debt. (There are a few means-tested pieces in her program, the biggest being that you’re only eligible for the full $50K if your annual family income is $100K or less, with the benefit phasing out by the time you hit $250K.) It’s expensive. It costs $1.25 trillion over ten years. She plans to pay for it with an idea that will make plutocrats rage: a wealth tax on households with $50 million or more in assets. So, no doubt about it, it’s a heavy-handed intervention in the economy. Rampell’s efficiency argument is correct: We could spend and tax a lot less if we carefully targeted the benefits on students who won’t be able to go to college otherwise, and calibrated the size of the benefit to correspond to their precise needs. That would achieve the effect of helping poor kids and working-class kids go to college with minimal changes to the rest of the economy. If you think the rest of the economy is just, that makes perfect sense. But Warren’s plan does something that no efficiently targeted and calibrated plan can ever do: The option to go to college becomes a basic right. Whose kids are the beneficiaries? Everybody’s. It’s something that we are joining together to do for ourselves, not for some downtrodden “them”. The affected students are not recipients of our charity who constantly have to prove that they come from the deserving poor rather than the undeserving poor. Socialism? South American Archbishop Dom Helder Camara once said: “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.” Since the fall of the Soviet Union, hardly anybody is really a communist any more, if they ever were. Our era’s scare-word is socialism, but it means roughly what the archbishop was talking about: building a society where a certain level of dignity and opportunity is a basic right, and does not require that you meet the standards of some paternal benefactor, who can withdraw patronage if you begin to appear undeserving. I don’t just want to maintain the well-behaved poor at some subsistence level, while the productive power of the Earth and of our complex society accumulates in a few hands. I want our collective inheritance — the planet and the productive legacy of past generations — to work for all of us. If that earns me the title of socialist, well then, so be it. [If you want to hear more about this point of view, check out a sermon I’ve done at several churches “Who Owns the World?“] Keep to the high ground, Jerry