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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

Dear Group, Weeks after the vote, McMorris Rodgers’ got around to posting her logic for her No vote on the renewal of the funds for the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), H.R. 1585. The vote was taken on April 4. This study in non-explanation finally appeared on her website long after the news cycle had moved on. She writes: The Violence Against Women Act has always been a broadly supported bipartisan bill. While I strongly supported an extension of VAWA, the majority inserted highly partisan sections that ensure this legislation will only collect dust in the Senate. Instead of caring for the women helped by this bill, the majority wanted to score political points. I look forward to voting for a bipartisan re-authorization of VAWA. McMorris Rodgers wishes us to believe the Democrats in the House inserted something awful that prevents her from voting for the VAWA renewal, but she refuses to tell us what the something is. Her staff told me otherwise when I called the Spokane office in mid April. When I pressed for specifics of McMorris Rodgers’ objections to  H.R.1585, the staffer told me there was a clause that would “allow biologically male transgender individuals who identify as female into women’s shelters.” McMorris Rodgers, the staffer said, wanted to “protect the women in these shelters.”  I read the bill and word searched it. I can find no such clause. Is McMorris Rodgers’ using this No vote among her partisans to advertise her fealty to Republican transgender phobia? The more widely offered explanation for Republicans voting No on H.R.1585 is that H.R.1585 closes the “boyfriend loophole.” Here’s the main point of contention: Under current federal law, only people convicted of domestic violence offenses against spouses or family members can lose their gun rights. The [new version of the] VAWA would add people convicted of abusing their dating partners, closing the so-called “boyfriend loophole.” It would also prohibit people convicted of misdemeanor stalking offenses from owning or buying firearms, as well as abusers subject to temporary protective orders. Is this the “highly partisan section” to which McMorris Rodgers objects? Is she advertising her No vote to her loyal NRA following while she refuses to communicate to her general constituency the actual substance of her objections?  McMorris Rodgers fails to explain the ideological substance of her No vote to the constituents she is pretends to represent. Worse, she takes refuge instead behind her own partisan rivalry, vaguely tarring Democrats with “partisanship” over issues she refuses to name.  Keep to the high ground, Jerry

Dear Group,

It is as if the Koch donor group-funded Washington Policy Center and its local Republicans anticipated last week’s series on the origins and details of the Washington school funding crisis. On April 21 the WPC came out with a half page ad in the Spokesman on page 10 of the Northwest Section. Their ad extolled their featured speaker this year for their Tuesday, May 14th, “Solutions Summit” at the historic Davenport Hotel, running from 7:30AM to 5:30PM. Who is this famous man? None other than “Governor” Scott Walker of Wisconsin. (WPC also placed some “sponsored content” in the online version.)

You can read the whole agenda here. For me the standout among many choices is “Government Reform: Protecting Washington’s Competitive Advantage: No Income Taxes!” I thought that was especially pertinent in a forum sponsored by Koch libertarians in Washington State, the State with the most regressive state tax system in the nation, a State where  “… the lowest 20 percent of income earners (families making less than $24,000) contribute almost 18 percent of their annual earnings to state and local tax coffers, while the top 1 percent (those making over $545,900) pay just 3 percent of their income.” This is a State where Republicans crow about having stonewalled against any sort of progressive tax to “amply” fund the State’s biggest obligation: to educate its children, opting instead to rearrange existing revenue sources, pretend they’ve done a lovely job at school funding, and blame teachers and the teachers’ union for the pain they’ve produced.

I grew up in Wisconsin in the 1960s. I am a product of what was then an amply funded public education system that prepared me well for higher education. I have many friends still living in Wisconsin who tell me the quality of public education suffered miserably under Scott Walker and his Republican-majority Legislature. The Washington Policy Center bills Scott Walker as “Governor.” They crow that he is the only governor in United States history to survive a recall election. The WPC neglects to mention the spark for the recall was his defunding of public education after they set the stage by demonizing teachers and the teachers’ union. Nor does the WPC mention Scott Walker was voted out of office in 2018, once enough citizens realized the damage he had caused. The Washington Policy Center, of course, would prefer its audience to think Mr. Walker either stepped down voluntarily or was term-limited, not that he was voted out of his incumbency by disgusted voters.

In September of 2017 the Washington Policy Center had Nigel Farage, “Mr. Brexit,” to Spokane as their featured speaker I never imagined they could top their bad taste. Never underestimate. In bringing Scott Walker to town they may have outdone themselves.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

Dear Group,

The basic math is pretty simple. One cannot increase funding for public schools and cut taxes at the same time. That’s what State Senate Republicans sold the legislature in 2017. That is the reality most Washington State school districts are now facing. Shame on us for believing their preposterous math.

The 2012 McCleary Washington State Supreme Court Decision told the State Legislature to live up to the State Constitution’s promise to provide “ample” funding for basic education. The Court agreed with the plaintiffs: it is the responsibility of the State, not local governments, to provide this funding for basic education and the State was falling short. The Court made no pronouncement prohibiting local governments from supplementing the districts for personnel and assistance beyond basic education. 

Broadly speaking, there were two solutions: 1) Find additional revenue for the State and apply that revenue to the disadvantaged districts or 2) Stick with sales and property taxes as the main sources of revenue and cobble together a system to redistribute existing property tax revenues between districts.    

The Republican reflex? Mount a campaign to unseat State Supreme Court judges who disagreed with McCleary. That failed. Since there is no recognition among Republicans that the Washington State tax system is the most regressive in the nation, revamping the tax system with a capital gains tax or a modest progressive income tax was simply not on the table (since they controlled the State Senate). Similarly, no Republican was going to stand for increasing the property tax, the sales tax, or the B&O tax to pay for increased funding for the common good of public schools. So they chose option #2, backed a “levy swap equalization” as a solution, and stonewalled it through an exhausted legislature in 2017. Behind the “levy swap equalization” is a simple truth: It offers little or no new money to education. It just subtracts money School District voters had already approved (to supplement inadequate State funding) and puts that subtracted money into State coffers to fund basic education. Once this money was removed from the districts it was touted as “new” State funding for basic education. 

Michael Baumgartner, a belligerent Republican, was then State Senator from LD6, the district that wraps part way around Spokane from the southwest. He is now Spokane County Treasurer. As State Senator, Mr. Baumgartner was very proud of his and his party’s tax stonewalling. He was equally proud to have engineered the “levy swap equalization,” now a major cause of suffering in school districts all over the state. The quote that follows is taken from a fundraising email from Michael Baumgartner I received on July 21, 2017:

We just finished the longest legislative session in state history. What took so long? Jay Inslee and his radical allies demanded that Majority Senate Republicans accept his absurd proposals for a state capital gains income tax and a carbon tax.  We told Inslee to ‘pound sand’, held firm and fought back. Despite all these months – and Inslee even talking about “water boarding” Senate Republicans while crying to the press – we didn’t budge.  Instead, we triangulated a strategy to fund the state’s K-12 McCleary case through a “levy swap equalization” that will reduce overall property taxes on nearly 75% of households (largely in areas represented by Republicans) and increase property taxes largely in the Seattle area (represented by Democrats).

This snarky quote on its own ought to disqualify Mr. Baumgartner from holding public office.  His “levy swap equalization” has nothing to do with improving public school funding. It is only a means to stick it to communities represented by Democrats. 

Are Baumgartner and his Republican colleagues now owning the widespread dismay in most public school districts? Hardly. They’re busy blaming the McCleary Decision, the teachers’ union and teacher pay raises, pretending that the state provided lots more money and the districts are wasting it.

Let’s look at that. The trick in Baumgartner’s “levy swap equalization” was having the State impose a limit on the amount a local school district is allowed to raise within its district from property tax levies, levies the district had used to supplement “basic education.” The “levy swap equalization” the Republicans held out for simply switches property tax money from the School District pocket to the State pocket. Does this help schools in underfunded districts? Hell, no. All Baumgartner’s lauded levy swap does is hobble the ability of local communities to run their own affairs. This levy cap only makes sense if your whole purpose in dealing with McCleary is to limit taxes, not to improve public school funding. 

Let’s look at District 81 as an example. Prior to 2017, according to Brian Coddington at District 81, the school district was receiving around $4.00 per 1000 assessed value of the local property tax for “maintenance and operations,” a levy level approved by voters. (See Note at the bottom.) Spokane voters appreciate education. Much of that operating money was used to support programs outside “basic education,” including librarians, nurses, counselors, mental health professionals and others who have been working with and supporting teachers in our public schools for years. 

Enter Mr. Baumgartner with his “levy swap equalization.” That’s the $1.50 limit on local school levies you read about in the Spokesman. In 2019 District 81 lost more than half of its local funding, from $3.79/1000 to $1.50/1000, money that cannot be replaced by the money offered by the State. That’s because the State money  by law can only be used for “basic education.” That’s a key concept that most of us don’t understand and the media are doing a poor job of explaining. Why did the District use the State McCleary money for raises and now it’s cutting libraries and counselors? In large part it is on account of restrictions on the use of the State money, apparently a nuance lost on the like of our County Treasurer Mr. Baumgartner. Do his four children even attend public school? Does he have a dog in this fight apart from his antipathy to a fair state tax system?

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

Note 1: It takes some digging to ascertain how that $1.50/1000 limit ties to one’s own property tax bill. Here’s the answer: On my 2019 tax bill “SCHOOL DIST 081” gets 35% of the $11.93/1000 total property tax levy. That’s $4.18, not $1.50. What’s up with that? It turns out that $4.18 is the combination of $1.50 SD081 Spokane General levy and the $2.68 SD081 Spokane B&I levy. (B&I is bonds and capital investment in schools, money approved by the voters, separate from the operating budget, and not part of the current controversy.) The B&I went up to $2.68 in 2019 from $1.87 in 2018 because we passed another bond. At the same time the General levy went down from $3.79 in 2018 to $1.50 in 2019 on account of Baumgartner’s “levy swap.” I had to speak with a nice man in the Spokane County Treasurer’s office (not Baumgartner) to learn that I could see this tax breakdown online. Just go to https://cp.spokanecounty.org/SCOUT/PropertyInformation/Default.aspx , enter your parcel number from your tax bill and scroll down on the result to the “Levy” section.

Note 2: So if the local SCHOOL DIST 081 funding dropped $2.29/1000 in the levy “swap,” what increased to make it a swap? I looked back at my property tax bills for 2015-19. Over that period the total levy per thousand assessed value dropped from $14.24 to $11.93/1000. Of that total the portion of those dollars going to the State (mostly for school funding) increased only from $2.26 to $2.52/1000, that is, only $0.26 dollars. The dollar/1000 numbers for the State portion of the levy are uniform state-wide by law, while each School District faces its own abrupt drop in local supplementary funding.

Note 3: In doing this research I did an internet search on “levy swap equalization of washington state.” The result was instructive…and worrisome. A majority of the hits offering analysis and explanation came from the Washington Policy Center, the Washington State mouthpiece for the Libertarian, staunchly anti-tax, Koch-funded web of “think tanks.” Under the guise of authoritative non-partisan research WPC pumps the internet with Libertarian bias. WPC “research” then finds its way into local newspapers when hurried reporters look for background and perspective.

Dear Group,

We elect people to represent us in Olympia. The biggest issue they wrestle with in Olympia is the state budget, and more than half of the state budget is funding for public schools.The rest of us pay little attention until either schools are disrupted or taxes rise. It is time to change that.

A budget has two sides, revenue and spending. On Monday I made the point that about 60% of the Washington State budget’s spending side (in 2017-19) went to Education. That’s roughly 26 billion dollars, 22 billion of which is devoted to K-12, 4 billion to higher education. The next biggest spending item in the budget is Human Services at 14 billion. Nothing else comes close. Take-away: When you hear about the Washington State budget think first about educating our kids…then medical care and social services. All else, all those little ways we interact with government, licensing, for example, all roll up into pocket change by comparison. So when we read about the legislature struggling over passing a budget, recognize the biggest part of that struggle is about funding K-12 education.

First a note: I’m writing here about the “General Fund,” a term you read about in the paper without explanation. The General Fund is simply the part of government money expended in the State of Washington over which the State Government has direct control. The money is raised largely from State taxes and fees. Other money comes to the State from the federal government (think federal income tax). That money mostly comes earmarked for a particular purpose and is mostly beyond state government control. That is a different topic. (for more, see P.P.S. below)

Most of the money for the State of Washington’s  “General Fund” budget, a majority of which educates our children (to participate in our society and work in our economy), is covered by revenue from state taxes. Stop for a moment and guess at the major sources of State tax revenue. Is it motor vehicle tabs? Sin taxes (alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana)? Property taxes? 

Sources of Washington State tax revenue:

Retail Sales Tax 17.6 billion

Business and Occupation (B&O) Taxes 7.2 billion

Property Tax 5 billion

Real Estate Excise Tax 1.9 billion

All Other 4.6 billion

The above figures are drawn from the 2017-19 Biennium General Fund Table at http://fiscal.wa.gov/RevenuebyFund.aspx looking at the Actual Revenue through March 2019 on a total of Actual Taxes collected of 36.3 billion dollars.

Let’s examine the three biggest taxes:

Sales Tax: What ever the sales tax in a given locale in Washington State the State gets 6.5 percentage points of the tax charged. (The rest goes county and municipal government. In Spokane we pay 8.9% total.) This is a regressive tax, that is, it is paid on every dollar spent on most goods and services (exceptions include food and prescription drugs), regardless of income or lack thereof. As of 2017 we pay the fifth highest combined state and (average) local sales tax rate in the nation. 

Property Tax: This is an interesting one. Tax on property is really a form of wealth tax that selectively affects the lower and middle class. Renters pay property tax as an unseen pass through in the cost of the rental. For american families with sufficient income home equity is a major form of savings. Many scrape and save to pay on mortgages in the hope of accumulating equity in a home they believe (less so since 2008) will be a good investment. Many buy homes they can barely afford and neglect investing elsewhere in the belief that property is the better asset. Certainly the wealthy drive up home prices by purchasing homes larger than they need, but the wealthy also have money in stocks and bonds and other investments. The value of those investment instruments is not taxed like real property. The result: Property taxes are yet another regressive tax. The State takes (in 2019) $2.52 of the total Spokane property tax levy of $11.93 per $1000 of assessed value. The rest ($9.41) funds County and Municipal government and the local part of District 81 funding (more on that on Friday). 

Business and Occupation Tax (B&O): Unless you own or manage a business in Washington State, you might be only dimly aware of the B&O tax. It is a tax paid on gross receipts of a business, a tax on the money received before any of the costs of doing business are subtracted. Certainly different businesses have wildly different cost and overhead. How can that be equitable? Ah, that’s why the State has a complex list of tens of different business types. The Business and Occupation tax is not unique to Washington State, but nearly so. Only West Virginia and Ohio have any kind of statewide B&O tax. (Check out the short Wikipedia article on B&O for perspective.) Tax rates seem small, in the neighborhood of 0.5% (1.5% on the service industry), but, remember, this is on gross receipts, not profits. It strikes me this tax is rife with potential for behind-the-scenes manipulation and odd incentives. From a governmental standpoint the B&O tax has the advantage that most voters are only dimly aware of it. 

Taxes Washington State does not have:

State Income Tax: Only five other states have no tax on any type of income, NV, WY, SD, TX, and Florida. New Hampshire and TN only tax income from dividends and interest. State income taxes are progressive (higher rates on higher marginal income) in all the states that have an income tax (except for  CO and NC, which levy a flat rate income tax).

High Value Asset Sale Tax: It’s being considered right now in the legislature. It would represent a small improvement to Washington State’s rating as the State with the most regressive tax system in the United States. “… the lowest 20 percent of income earners (families making less than $24,000) contribute almost 18 percent of their annual earnings to state and local tax coffers, while the top 1 percent (those making over $545,900) pay just 3 percent of their income.” 

It behooves us to pay attention. We all benefit from an educated citizenry. A majority of our tax dollars are spent on education, and in the State of Washington (more so than any other state) those tax dollars come disproportionately from the least affluent. Let’s not get so lost in the bickering over who is to blame for teacher layoffs that we lose sight of the underlying problem. 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. The details of the State budget are devilishly complex. I’m deriving data from the Washington State fiscal.wa.gov website. It provides a wealth of information with a dearth of simple explanation.

 

P.P.S. The numbers I’ve offered are number from the Washington State “General Fund.” Some other money comes to the State from the federal government ear-marked for certain purposes. These monies contribute significantly to the expenditures made in the State in the areas of Human Services and Higher Education, but contribute little to K-12 education. (1.5 billion out of 22 billion cited above.) 

P.P.P.S. Thomas Piketty in his 2013 book Capital in the Twenty-First Century advocated a progressive wealth tax as a means to alleviate some of the wealth and opportunity inequality straining the world today. Property taxes are wealth taxes, but, standing alone without a wealth tax on monetary instruments, property taxes are decidedly regressive, not progressive.

P.P.P.P.S. For a very interesting bar graph of how states fund themselves check this out. It is the types of taxes within each bar that is interesting, not so much the total tax revenue comparison. (After all, what use is there in comparing the total tax revenues of California with those of Alaska without a nod to population?)