If you’ve just signed up for the MWF 5AM Indivisible email written by Jerry LeClaire, you’ve arrived at the right place.
This website is a work in progress. It serves as an archive of my writing. I send an email between 4:45 and 5:15AM each MWF. Depend on it. If you’re signed up to receive it and it doesn’t appear in your inbox check your Spam folder and your Promotions folder. If you still cannot find it please let me know at jerry@jxindivisible.com. I’ve learned that email is not the sure thing I once thought it was.
And a bit of plausible futuristic fiction to make a point
FIRST: Vote!
Washington voters, if you’ve already voted, check with vote.wa.gov to confirm that your ballot has been received and accepted. Then encourage every like-minded person you know (or even just brush past) to vote, too. This is the last weekend before the election deadline on Tuesday, November 5. Turnout (or ballot turn-in in our state) is the key to this election. If you still have contact with anyone in the swing states of like mind call and encourage them, too! (I recommend the progressivevotersguide.org and/or the Search function at my jxindivisible.org archives of these posts.)
Like Robert Reich, I am “nauseously hopeful” about the results of next week’s election, but record voter attention and turnout will be the determining factor in both national and local races. If you know anyone tempted not to bother to turn in their ballot because, on account of the Electoral College, “my vote won’t matter,” consider reminding them that the people we send to the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate could eventually make a huge difference to women’s reproductive freedom. The far right leveraged its voting power through Trump, Mitch McConnell, and their right wing U.S. Supreme Court majority to rob women of their bodily autonomy. This autonomy was supposed guaranteed by precedent under a U.S. Constitutional right to privacy. The Dobbs decision overturned that nationally recognized right made explicit in Roe v. Wade. Dobbs, in contrast, gave each state to regulate women’s bodily autonomy in any way that mostly non-medically educated, mostly white male state legislators saw fit to legislate.
The zealots of the far right are not done trying to enforce their narrow worldview on everyone nationwide. Any Republican, especially a self-described “pro-life Catholic” like Michael Baumgartner, once elected to the U.S. Congress, will vote to restrict a woman’s right to bodily autonomy—when and if such a bill is eventually presented. For a Republican U.S. Congressperson to vote against such a nationally restrictive law would be electoral suicide after a half century of the Republican Party promising to enact such restrictions. The long term goal of this segment of essential Republican voters is to establish the benign sounding concept of “fetal personhood,” a concept that could, in one fell swoop, outlaw all medical care that involves abortion, all contraceptives that are imagined to block implantation of a fertilized egg, and the use of IVF (In Vitro Fertilization), the method by which increasing numbers of children are conceived.
I thank another Substack writer, Robert Hubbell, for recommending an Oscar-nominated short movie (23 minute) that brings home the reality of one state’s (Arkansas’s) draconian law. I highly recommend that you click and watch Red, White, and Blue (free on YouTube). Then share it with friends who might not quite understand the stated goals of the Republican Party. (I checked. The film accurately depicts the effects of the current law in the State of Arkansas.)
In contrast, a vote cast for Carmela Conroy to represent eastern Washington (CD5) in the U.S. House is a vote in favor of re-instating a national right to reproductive freedom. I don’t mean to suggest immediate results in either direction, but we in eastern Washington tend, once we elect them, to keep our federal legislators in office for decades. Nothing substantive will happen until one party or the other controls all three branches of the federal government. This has been—and will continue to be—a “long game,” but a game the setup for which is now.
Finally, for anyone of my readers who still has the bandwidth, Thom Hartmann wrote an amazing piece yesterday morning set in early 2026 as a letter from Leavenworth prison written by him to his wife after the first year of a second Trump presidency. It is a chilling read—and, sadly, entirely plausible. Here’s the link to the post.
VOTE!! And encourage others.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. I torture myself by signing up for a newsfeed on my phone from Fox “News”. Last Sunday afternoon, true to form, a Fox banner read something like, “Star-studded cast gathered for Trump Rally in MSG [Madison Square Garden]”. I couldn’t resist. I clicked to see who these “stars” might be. The closest thing to a recognizable “star” in the line-up was Hulk Hogan—a sad testimony to what Fox News considers a “star.” Check out the speaker list here.
Washington voters, if you’ve already voted, check with vote.wa.gov to confirm that your ballot has been received and accepted. Then encourage every like-minded person you know (or even just brush past) to also vote. Turnout (or ballot turn-in in our state) is the key to this election. If you still have contact with anyone in the swing states of like mind call and encourage them, too!
A Local Poll
Especially since the general election of 2016, if you haven’t learned to be skeptical of the results of political polling—as well as statements about the attitudes of a population about any topic based on polling—then you probably haven’t paid enough attention.
Last Sunday the front page, above-the-fold article in the Spokesman was titled “How Local Leaders Plan to Address Stinging Poll Results” and sub-titled “Citizen’s reveal distrust in government’s ability to respond to issues.” The article offered four pie charts, two of which I’ve copied below:
To be fair, the online version of this article by Emry Dinman and Nick Gibson carried a different and considerably less inflammatory title, “Faced with the same data on Spokane’s quality of life, elected leaders read into the poor findings differently.” (Titles in the paper paper are up to the editor of that portion of the publication, not the author[s].) Without offering much more detail about how the poll was conducted, the article droned on for 2300 words of quotes from local elected officials buttonholed to explain the survey results.
As a physician and scientist used to judging the value and veracity of medical studies I wanted to know much more about the specifics of the data used to assail those folks whose responses appeared in the article.
Polls
In the media much has been breathlessly spoken and written about polling results. Of course, there is a broad span in the purpose and quality of polling. On one extreme are the obvious “push polls.” Arguably, these aren’t polls at all, but rather a form of political marketing. Such polls appear in your email inbox with questions like “How much do you hate Kamala Harris on a scale of 1 to 10?” followed by a request for a donation to a Republican political action committee. Of course, anyone who imagines that the goal of such polling is actual data gathering and analysis should be an easy mark for all kinds of scams.
On the other extreme among political polls are those that actually attempt to predict the result of an election or the attitudes of a particular population on some other issue or issues. Such legitimate polling efforts offer up front a myriad of details concerning the methods used to select and contact participants, the number actually contacted, the percent of those contacted who actually participated, as well as data like the ages, gender, and political registrations of the folks in the two groups. Finally, there ought to be an analysis to show that the participants are demographically as similar as possible to the folks in the population whose voting or attitudes one is trying to assess. Also valuable might be the political leaning of the organization commissioning and paying for the poll as well as the same information about the group actually doing the polling.
The Greater Spokane Inc. Poll, “The Pulse” Quoted in the Spokesman
Greater Spokane Inc. (GSI) “is the Spokane region’s business development organization and nonprofit 501(C)6 with a 501(C)3 Foundation.” Its offices are at 800 W. Riverside, Suite 200, in the heart of downtown. It maintains an extensive and somewhat convoluted website. The poll numbers so confidently cited in the Spokesman come from an extensive survey entitled “The Pulse, fueled by GSI.” The forty-six page Pulse document, confusingly dated “October 2025,” can be viewed here (or better downloaded in order to read it). Here’s the website’s introduction to The Pulse poll:
Poll Reveals Critical Issues to Guide Community-Supported Solutions
At Greater Spokane Inc. (GSI), we’re committed to helping our region grow and thrive by making sure our community’s voice is heard loud and clear. That’s why we’re excited to announce the release of The Pulse, a groundbreaking series of comprehensive, scientific polls that dive into the critical issues affecting Spokane residents and businesses.
This is the first poll of its kind in the region, offering Spokane decision-makers a reliable snapshot of voter sentiment on key policy issues such as public safety, homelessness, housing, economic growth, and workforce development.
Note the emphasis on the words “scientific” and “comprehensive.” The Pulse document itself is forty-six pages of tables laying out ratings and short answers given by 600 registered voters to at least 55 questions. Of the 600 respondents 47% indicated that currently they do not live in the city of Spokane (page 27). Nowhere does the website or the document explain how the respondents were selected, how they were contacted, how many agreed to the very considerable effort to fill out a 55 question survey (and how many refused). There is no attempt to offer data on how this is (or is not) a valid, representative, “scientific” sample of the people of the voting population The Pulse purports to survey.
Leaving aside potential selection bias in choosing those to try contacting, does anyone think that willingness to complete a 55 question survey might self-select a certain sort of respondent?
Perhaps most tellingly, on the GSI website the way one eventually gets to The Pulse is through a “Dig into the Data” button link on the webpage 2024 Spokane Regional Elections Center.
We can laud the effort that went into gathering and tabulating all this data, but until a lot more detail on how the data was collected is publicly available any thinking person ought to view The Pulse poll—and the pointed questions of elective officials that it generated—with great skepticism. One might be tempted to conclude that the purpose of the poll is to plant seeds of criticism of the current city administration in preparation for next year’s municipal elections. The poll likely represents the views of these 316 City of Spokane voters who took the time to participate, but the chance that these 316 are a representative sample of the City of Spokane voting public seems remote.
Michael Baumgartner, the Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from eastern Washington (Congressional District 5) wants it both ways. He wants the enthusiastic voter turnout of the “Christian” right. Simultaneously, he wants to reassure Washingtonians concerned about access to reproductive healthcare that as a U.S. Congressman he won’t be asked to decide. “It’s a ’States’ Rights’ issue.” By conviction, he wants you to know that he’s a “pro-life Catholic,” but, don’t worry, the issue would be out of his hands.
You’ve heard this before—and recently. The leader of the Republican Party, Donald Trump wants full credit for installing the U.S. Supreme Court’s right wing majority that “got rid of Roe v. Wade.” But, like Baumgartner, Trump doesn’t want to discuss access to life-saving reproductive healthcare because it is really a matter “for the states to decide.”
Every Republican candidate is dependent on the voting support of the minority of Americans who, based on their particular narrow religious beliefs, want to legislate away every women’s right to make decisions about their own bodies. The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision that overturned federal protections for women’s rights opened the floodgates to all manner of Draconian state laws that render woman as second-class citizens.
Were such legislation to come before him in Congress, Baumgartner—or any Republican U.S. congressperson—would risk the wrath of the far religious right if he failed to vote for legislation to restrict access to reproductive healthcare, contraception, or In Vitro Fertilization (IVF). “States’ rights” be damned.
Business-minded and anti-regulation Republicans sold out the Republican Party decades ago to the Christian version of the Muslim Taliban [the bold is mine].
In 2015, the [Republican] party had been controlled for years by a small group of leaders who wanted to carve the U.S. government back to its size and activity of the years before the 1930s, slashing regulations on business and cutting the social safety net so they could cut taxes. But their numbers were small, so to stay in power, they relied on the votes of the racist and sexist reactionaries who didn’t like civil rights.
Once he took office in 2017, Trump put the base of the party in the driver’s seat. Using the same techniques that had boosted Hungarian prime minister Victor Orbán, he attacked immigrants, Black Americans, and people of color, and promised to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wadedecision protecting abortion rights. After his defense of the participants in the August 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, he began to turn his followers into a movement by encouraging them to engage in violence.
In the following years, Trump’s hold on his voting base enabled him to take over the Republican Party, pushing the older Republican establishment aside. In March 2024 he took over the Republican National Committee itself, installing a loyalist and his own daughter-in-law Lara Trump at its head and adjusting its finances so that they primarily benefited him.
But while older leaders were happy to use Trump’s base to keep the party in power, the two factions were never in sync. Established Republican leaders’ goal was to preside over a largely unregulated market-driven economy. But MAGA Republicans want a weak government only with regard to foreign enemies—another place where they part company with established Republicans. Instead, they want a strong government to impose religious rules. Rather than leaving companies alone to react to markets, they want them to shape their businesses around MAGA ideology, denying LGBTQ+ rights, for example.
Vote wisely. “States’ rights” is a dodge. After Dobbs a vote for any Republican at any level is a vote to surrender your bodily autonomy to a party totally dependent on the far religious right to attain—and to stay in—office. Vote for Carmela Conroy, Baumgartner’s highly qualified opponent, who will defend women’s rights and doesn’t need to twist herself into knots to court the votes of the reactionary right.
Spokane County Commissioner Al French has taken to the media to make a litany of accusations and legal threats hoping to convince voters right before the election that his is being maligned over the PFAS issue. Mr. French, fond of accusing others of “playing politics,” is using a willing media to do exactly that, a game at which he is masterful.
“Spokane County Commissioner Al French accuses opposition of violating campaign finance law in flurry of complaint filings” was filed electronically on Wednesday, October 23, but appeared on page C2 of the Northwest Section of the Spokesman yesterday, October 24, just twelve days before ballots are due in on November 5th. It is a grandstand of accusations, which he certainly knows won’t be worked out before the ballot turn-in deadline. His complaints range from a ludicrous claim that his opponent, Molly Marshall is representing herself as the incumbent (she isn’t) to claiming that third party TV attack-ads are lies (they’re not). Click and read the article for the full flavor. (Requires a subscription, unless you have leftover free articles this month.)
The background on PFAS contamination of West Plains wells, the Spokane International Airport (SIA) as a source, and French’s behind-the-scenes efforts to keep SIA’s involvement quiet and block a monetary grant to sample wells for PFAS has been reported in detail by investigative journalist Tim Connor. Here’s a link to the entire series of Conner’s articles on the topic:
The installment responding to some of French’s recent bluster is copied below. It is worth your effort to read. If you live in Spokane County Commissioner District 5 (click for map) vote accordingly. If you know people who live in District 5 pass along this information. Tim Connor’s entire PFAS story is available without a paid subscription (including the article below). However, if you can, a paid subscription to Mr. Connor’s Substack, Rhubarb Skies, is well worth the investment.
Unraveling a Spokane politician’s search for himself
The most dramatic scene in the Al French “forever chemicals” saga took place at a packed auditorium in Airway Heights in early June of this year. To the commissioner’s credit, he’d accepted an invitation from the West Plains Water Coalition—a citizen group whose core membership consists of private well owners who share zip codes with two large airports—Fairchild Air Force Base and Spokane International Airport (SIA). The airports are situated in the “V” between Interstate-90 and U.S. Highway 2, west of Spokane. Both are sources for PFAS—toxic, synthetic chemicals used in aviation fire-fighting foams—that have contaminated much of the West Plains groundwater. Both airports are in the county commission district French has represented for well over a decade. The commissioner is a longstanding member of the board of directors for SIA. Until this year, he had also been a board member for the Spokane Regional Health District.
That Fairchild was/is a major source of PFAS contaminating West Plains groundwater has been known since 2017. But it wasn’t until last spring that SIA documents obtained via a public records request confirmed what many had suspected—that the commercial airport was also a source of PFAS groundwater contamination. This was unwelcome news and when the state’s Department of Ecology notified the airport that it intended to enforce a cleanup under the state’s Model Toxics Control Act, SIA’s first response was defiance.
By this spring, however, French (who is up for election in a couple weeks) took a more proactive approach, and began shaping and promoting ideas for how to solve the contaminated water problem. But when he did so, he found himself running smack into another problem—namely his failure to disclose the SIA PFAS contamination in 2017, and allegations he obstructed a key technical study to determine the breadth and extent of PFAS contamination at and near SIA. A year ago French and other SIA officials were questioned about their silence by reporters from the Seattle Times. The Timesreported that French declined to answer “because of litigation” though “he did not specify what the litigation was related to.” Likewise, the four-term county commissioner deflected my request for a formal interview last December, and chose not to respond to a subsequent list of written questions.
Al French fielding hostile questions at an Airway Heights gathering in early June
As the controversy over his role escalated it would have been hard for French to ignore Craig Volosing. Volosing is the president of the Friends of Palisades, a conservation group whose membership is rooted in the Palisades neighborhood near the Spokane airport, in an area where more than 200 private wells have tested positive for PFAS at levels exceeding federal drinking water standards. When French wrapped up his talk before the coalition audience last June, Volosing (and others in the audience) seized the opportunity to confront him about his role in keeping the Spokane airport’s PFAS contamination “under wraps for so long.”
In response, a rather strange thing happened. Instead of arguing with Volosing, the usually brash commissioner punted.
The airport’s PFAS problem, he said, “has been an evolving topic“ and he wasn’t ready to answer “that question.” He continued: “I now have staff that’s going back through the last seven years of my activity at the county and involvement with the airport as well as others. And so we are going to be coming forward with a record, with documents to back it up, so that we can answer that question. Because quite honestly, I don’t remember everything that happened seven years ago.”
Volosing rose to his feet a second time and flatly accused French of putting commercial interests ahead of public health. French calmly predicted that the facts his self-investigation would bring to light would prove Volosing wrong. But there were obstacles, notably “legal reasons” for why he couldn’t share all of what he knew, so he was “working to try and get the freedom to be able to talk about those.”
As he stepped away from the podium a woman’s voice called out, asking when he would report back with the answers he promised. Three weeks, French said.
Two months passed. French’s response came not in a public meeting, but via a lengthy article in the Spokesman-Review newspaper, under the headline: County Commissioner Al French fights back with newly released documents muddling the waters in PFAS saga.
To be sure, one of the “muddling” revelations is that a 11/22/17 memo Todd Woodard (SIA’s public affairs director) composed about the discovery of PFAS in the airport’s monitoring wells was sent to a KREM-2 reporter. For reasons yet unanswered, KREM didn’t report on the email’s verification of the PFAS contamination. This is now offered as evidence that SIA (and French, by extension) weren’t trying to hide anything. But it also means French and others privy to the contents of Woodard’s email would have been the only ones to notice that the station didn’t report on it. As the Seattle Times reported last October, the public—and entities like the Department of Ecology and public health officials—were still left in the dark.
Absent from the S-R article (and the two and a half page “timeline” that French delivered to the newspaper) is any direct response to the allegations and questions that Volosing and others had put to French about his role. Moreover, the timeline French delivered to the newspaper is rife with errors and omissions.
For example, the very first paragraph in French’s timeline reads: “Prior to 2017 there was no general knowledge about the present (sic) or health complications derived from PFAS substances.”
That’s plainly untrue. The federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued its initial drinking water health advisory for PFAS in May of 2016. But, more to the point, French clearly understood the significance of PFAS groundwater contamination by the spring of 2017 when the City of Airway Heights—in his district—was forced to hastily shutdown its domestic water wells because of PFAS contamination.
Another example is French’s assertion that it was not him but the Department of Ecology that delayed the start of the “PFAS transport and fate” investigation, the purpose of which is to get a better understanding of the spread of PFAS contamination in groundwater. In his “timeline” French alleges “Ecology was offering the county a grant to do Ecology’s work” because Ecology is a regulatory agency and the county is not. It is a baseless charge: the grant is plainly scoped as a technical investigation of the sort the county has traditionally been involved in, often with state funding.
As I reported last December, there is compelling evidence from documents and highly credible named sources that it was French who delayed and nearly derailed the study. Yet, in his interview with the S-R, French had the temerity to blame Ecology.
“They were the ones that actually delayed the study for three years trying to get somebody else to do their work,” French told the S-R. “Why did they? Why didn’t they just step to the line and do the studies from the very beginning, back in 2020? That’s their job. They have the authority, they have the resources.”
There is zero evidence that Ecology delayed the study, and plenty of evidence to the contrary: that the agency held its door open, so to speak, as the project’s principals went to great lengths to try to overcome French’s obstruction. Moreover, when Ecology finally learned (in 2023) of the PFAS contamination at SIA—and then moved to use its authority to compel a cleanup—the airport lambasted and fought the agency tooth and nail for months before finally agreeing to a remediation plan.
There are other glaring errors in French’s account, and some came into light, however briefly, just a few weeks ago. The occasion was a September 26th hearing on a recall petition brought against French by West Plains resident Mary Benham, together with a newly formed local citizen group, and Fuse Washington, a statewide progressive activist group. Shortly after the hearing began, Knoll Lowney, the attorney representing the petitioners, asked presiding Judge Gary Libey, to allow him to schedule a deposition of French for the following week.
Lowney contended that a “last minute” declaration from French appeared to contain “untruths” and “raises more questions than it answers.” By example, Lowney noted that he’d learned “just a few minutes ago” (apparently from French’s attorneys) of an error in French’s timeline—namely that a County Commission meeting that French stated took place on July 26, 2022, had actually taken place a week earlier, on July 19th. (In advance of the recall petition hearing French produced and signed a short declaration that incorporated, under oath, the “timeline” he’d presented to the S-R reporters in August.)
The error in date of the meeting is another indication of how haphazardly French’s self-investigation was conducted. But what matters more is what actually happened on July 19, 2022—because what actually happened on that day bears no resemblance to what French asserted in his timeline.
Ironically, one of the people French met with on July 19, 2022 is none other than Craig Volosing. Volosing arrived at the commissioner’s office with three other residents of the Palisades area, one of whom brought a container of PFAS-contaminated well water and challenged the commissioner to have a drink from it. French reportedly declined.
According to Volosing and the others in his small group, their July 19, 2022 meeting with the commissioner was driven by their concern about PFAS being detected in private well tests (funded by homeowners) and their frustration at the lack of progress toward securing the state grant funds for the area-wide groundwater investigation. Volosing and the others also say French affected surprise and expressed disappointment at the reported delays in the grant request, and pledged his full support for the project.
What the Palisades group didn’t know at the time is that French had already sandbagged the grant request—not once, but twice.
The County Commissioners held two recorded meetings on July 19, 2022—their regular Tuesday “consent agenda” meeting in the Public Works building auditorium, beginning at 2 p.m., which was followed, after a short recess, by a “continuation session” at their cramped meeting room in the county courthouse. Both sessions are preserved on videotape. There is no mention of the Ecology grant in the 2 p.m. “consent agenda” session, which lasted less than 15 minutes and took place after the Palisades group met with French. It is in the “continuation session” following the “consent agenda” session that the subject of the Ecology “Transport and Fate” grant was taken came up. Thus, the order of the sessions was (1) French’s meeting with the Palisades group, (2) the short “consent agenda” meeting in the Public Works auditorium, and (3) the “continuation session” in the commissioners conference room in the county courthouse.
The difference between how French describes the meeting in his sworn declaration/timeline, and what actually took place is a difference between night and day. In his timeline French offers this account, contemporaneous to the July 19th meeting(s).
“After consultation with SIA leadership and legal counsel I indicated to County staff that the County was not the right agency to accept the grant or do the study. Commissioner Kuney came to the same conclusion without any interaction with me and suggested that the grant opportunity be presented to the Spokane Regional Health District (SRHD) for their consideration…On July 19, 2022, I met with representatives of the Palisades Neighborhood and agreed to take Ecology’s grant offer to the full Board of County Commissioners which I did on July 26th (sic). After considering a variety of potential issues the Board of County Commissioners unanimously declined the grant. The Board of County Commissioners did recommend again that the grant opportunity be taken to the SRHD for their consideration. At the time, Commissioner Kuney was part of the leadership of the Health Board and carried the grant to the Health District. The Health District ultimately decided again that they were not able to fulfill the requirements of the grant and passed on the opportunity.”
How these events could have happened the way French described in his timeline is a mystery, at least to me. Although French’s “timeline” includes a half dozen exhibits, he offered no documentary support for how and when the county commissioners and the health district would have made the decisions he attributes to them.
Because there were no county commission meeting on July 26th, it does beg the question of what happened, the week before, on July 19th. We know that the commission didn’t discuss the PFAS issue in its morning session. What we know is what happened during the “continuation session” that afternoon. We know this because it is on video, at 26 minutes into the recording (below).
Remarkably, French introduces the topic of the study as if he can barely remember the initiative.
“Evidently” he says, “there was an opportunity to get a grant from Ecology in the amount of about 450,000 that would do well testing out in the West Plains for PFAS and PFOS.” French also professes not to know much about the commissioner’s discussions on the grant request proposal and, at one points, turns to the two other commissioners to ask: “do either one of you remember this conversation or not?”
But then, in fits and starts, French begins to describe the idea of the county supporting the the health district’s application for the grant. What’s strange about this is that it was French’s obstruction that prevented the commissioners from being briefed on the Ecology grant request two years earlier. It was this obstruction, in early 2020, that led Mike Hermanson, an acclaimed county water specialist, to approach the health district to see if it would be willing to administer the grant. The health district stepped in and submitted the application, thus keeping the grant request alive.
But fresh off the intense meeting with Volosing and the Palisades group on July 19, 2022, French was clearly suggesting that the county commissioners consider supporting the project if Ecology awarded the grant funds to the health district. You see that, clearly, near the end of the meeting where French actually pulls out a map that Volosing’s group had given him earlier that day, showing the location of hundreds of potentially affected private wells on the West Plains.
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“So that’s it,” he says, speaking in the direction of Scott Simmons, the county’s chief executive officer. “But if it sounds like something we can lean into, then I can go ahead and, well, you can ahead and coordinate that.”
Simmons nods his head, replies “yep” and then adds that he’ll circle back with Rob Lindsay the manager in the county’s water resources department who had originally tried to place the grant request on the commissioner’s agenda in early 2020. French replies: “Thank you. That’s all I have.”
Again, according to French’s timeline, submitted to the court in his recall proceeding, the result of the July 19th meeting was basically the opposite—to quote French: “After considering a variety of potential issues the Board of County Commissioners unanimously declined the grant.”
How the commissioners would have done this is unclear. It couldn’t have happened on the 26th (as French erroneously states in his timeline) because the board didn’t meet that day. It couldn’t have happened on the 19th unless there was an unannounced executive session, later in the day, in clear violation of the state’s Open Public Meetings Act.
Because French implicated commissioner and board chair Mary Kuney in the alleged 2022 decisions opposing the grant request, I submitted a half dozen questions to her in writing last week. She has not yet responded.
The visiting Superior Count judge, Gary Libey, denied Lowney’s request to depose the commissioner, and dismissed the recall petition the same day. Lowney told reporters the petitioners would appeal the dismissal to the state supreme court.
—tjc
Editor’s note: This article was updated October 23rd to reflect the correct order of the meetings that occurred prior to the “Continuation session” meeting recorded in the embedded video, where the open discussion of the Ecology “Transport and Fate” grant was discussed.
WBWV’s narrow Christian Fundamentalist orientation
My favorite negative voting guide, WeBelieveWeVote.org (WBWV), purports to rate political candidates “based on how well a candidate aligns with a Biblical worldview & Biblical principles.” The inherent supposition is that everyone who self-identifies as Christian (and perhaps even non-religious people who respect some idea of Christian values) all subscribe to the same “Biblical worldview” and ought to vote accordingly.
The trouble is that Christianity does not now and never has consisted of a single unified “worldview.” Specific doctrinal differences among nominal Christians, many of which distinctions we would now consider arcane, have been the basis for Christians killing other Christians for two millennia.
The Holy Bible is the supernatural, full, and inspired Word of God; it is inerrant, supreme, and final. – II Timothy 3:16-17
Never mind, of course, that the cited Bible verse from 2nd Timothy was written before there was any general agreement as to what writings would later constitute the Bible. In addition, that passage from 2nd Timothy fails to specify which of the at least twenty-five different English versions of the Bible should be considered definitively inerrant. The Fundamentalist believer is asked to suspend all disbelief to the notion that whatever they are told by their pastor (or come to conclude on their own) is the literal Biblical truth to which they have been guided by God.
It should be no wonder then that some of these same people can be led to believe all manner of fantastical ideas, including, for example, that Donald Trump is actually part of God’s plan to bring about their salvation or that Democrats control the weather.
The conviction that “the Bible” (version-unspecified) is the inerrant word of God is the central tenet of Christian Fundamentalism. Wikipedia defines Christian Fundamentalism as:
Most Protestant denominations have among their parishioners those who adhere to a strain of Christian Fundamentalism that stretches back to the tent revivals of the 1800s. Certainly there were Fundamentalists among the congregation of Methodists in which I was raised, people who taught Bible stories in Sunday School as the not-to-be-contested literal truth.
Even as a ten year old I recognized there were people among these folk who insisted that some sort of fossilized version of Noah’s Ark had been found on the side of Mt. Ararat in modern-day Turkey; people who insisted that humans had cavorted with dinosaurs and that the dinosaurs had only perished in The Flood—concepts that ran ever more contrary to the physical evidence of geology, biology, and archeology that I read in books from an early age and, later, saw in the laboratory and in the field.
It should be no surprise, then, that another of the WBWV Fundamentalist criteria of alignment for candidates is a commitment to the Republican talking point of “school choice,” the idea that public funds should support private schools and homeschooling where the Fundamentalist worldview can be taught—rather than “woke” public schooling that teaches modern science. Of course, WBWV couches that 19th century Christian Fundamentalist for religious schooling more subtly:
It is the fundamental right and responsibility of parents to direct the education of their children. – Prov 22:6; Eph 6:1-4[those underlined references link to the Biblical passages WBWV rather bizarrely uses to justify the statement]
The Christian Fundamentalism of WBWV’s “Biblical worldview” is further on display in their “Position” on “The Environment” [the bold is mine]:
God’s creation should be properly protected and stewarded. The environment is provided for our use to produce food and provide resources for an abundant life. We have a duty to protect the environment for its beauty, provisions, and sustainability. – Genesis 2:15; Ezekiel 34:18[links]
Note the orientation. The environment exists solely for the benefit of humanity. Humans are central. All of creation revolves around human needs “to produce food and provide resources.” It follows that God put coal, oil, and gas in the ground as a resource for the benefit of us humans, no geological processes or associated modification of the atmosphere or climate need be contemplated. Humans have no agency in the atmosphere or the climate. As one Fundamentalist Facebook commenter put it, “God is in charge of the climate,” i.e. we humans can and should ignore climate warnings and just “drill, baby, drill.”
The Christianity in which I was brought up in the Methodist church understood that the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, represented the world as seen through the prism of one culture, that of the ancient Hebrews; that the creation story in Genesis was to be interpreted allegorically rather than as literal truth; and that God granted humans the intelligence to understand the world through observation and experiment and to act in the world toward our fellow humans according to the precepts taught by Jesus of Nazareth. All of my upbringing stands in contrast to the Christian Fundamentalism of WBWV’s largely Old Testament-based “Biblical worldview & Biblical principles.”
Visit the “Core Values and Positions” webpage of WBWV and see for yourself what they are selling as a Biblical worldview. I pose WBWV’s worldview as a rejection of reason and of science, a rejection that threatens the continuation of the human species on this planet.
Take note that in each and every contest the candidate more highly “rated” by WBWV is the “Prefers Republican” candidate on your ballot, although WBWV avoids saying so. This should come as no surprise. The Republican Party has been systematically courting the doctrinaire Christian Fundamentalist vote for decades while hinting (and sometimes declaring) that harboring anything less than what is a Fundamentalist belief system is God-less and perverse—essentially “other”.
Brought up in the New Testament Christianity of the Methodist church of the 1960s I recognize far more in the way of Christian values among Democrats than among modern-day Republicans—and certainly more respect for reason, rationality, and science.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. Somewhere in my early teens one of my teachers put up a geologic timeline. It ran around the upper part of all four walls of the classroom. The time during which we modern humans have existed on planet earth scaled to a minuscule sliver at the end of the timeline. For me it was a vivid and memorable illustration of what I’d been absorbing for years already.
Imagine being a WBWV Christian Fundamentalist parent faced with a child who had been introduced to such a timeline in what they might characterize negatively as a “woke” classroom. Horrors. How would you shield your child from these ideas that contradict the received “truth” that the earth was created in seven literal days around six thousand years ago? Seen in this light public education is an agent of brainwashing one’s children and a mortal threat to one’s faith. It is no accident that WBWV “alignment” verges on a call for “school choice,” a euphemism for public funding for religious schools or religion-based home schooling.
For most of my life I believed that judges did their work above the political fray, discharging their judgements based on dispassionate interpretation of the law. Of course, counter to that and like many in my age group, I was exposed to the John Birch Society’s billboard campaign to “Impeach Earl Warren,” accusing Warren, Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1953 to 1969, of “legislating from the bench.” The call for impeachment began with his writing of the majority opinion in 1954 Brown v. Board of Education declaring segregation of public schools unconstitutional. Even so, judicial appointments never seemed to be partisan issues. A “well qualified” rating by the American Bar Association (ABA) seemed to be a sufficient proof of integrity of a judicial nominee to merit bipartisan support for federal judicial appointments.
In contrast, the last two Republican federal administrations (George W. Bush and Donald Trump), made it clear that for federal judicial nominations they would rely on the imprimatur of the Federalist Society. Founded in 1982, the Federalist Society is a group of conservative and libertarian lawyers and legal scholars founded in 1982 and funded by a who’s who of wealthy members of the Koch donor group. The Federalist Society is dedicated to enhancing the supply and support of lawyers and judges who favor limiting the role of the federal government in regulation of business as well as the judiciary’s role in guaranteeing certain civil rights. Of course, all of this is glossed over in terms like textualism, originalism, and judicial restraint. Currently six of the nine members of the U.S. Supreme Court, a robust majority thanks to the dishonest political machinations of Mitch McConnell, are justices put forward by the Federalist Society. We see the results in the overturning Roe v. Wade’s half century of reproductive freedom and the less noted undercutting of the power of federal agencies to regulate (Chevron Deference).
I no longer believe that judges come to conclusions based solely on dispassionate interpretation of the law. Their worldview and
Washington State Judge Elections 2024
In the judicial system of Washington State, unlike the federal judiciary, judges are elected by the people. This fall three of the nine Washington State Supreme Court justice positions are on the ballot, but only one of them, Position 2, is contested. Position 2 is for a seat to be vacated by Justice Susan Owens, who, at age 75, faces mandatory retirement at the end of 2024. The ProgressiveVotersGuide recommends voting for Sal Mungia, and has this to say about his opponent:
Federal Way Municipal Court Judge Dave Larson is also in this race. Before joining the Municipal Court, Larson worked as a trial attorney. Larson is the endorsed candidate by Washington state’s MAGA Republican Party, known for its far-right positions and aggressive opposition to abortion access. Progressives are backing Mungia in this race.
For me the right wing endorsement of Dave Larson was sealed by a fundraising letter for Mr. Larson I received with the signature of Spokane Prosecutor Larry Haskell. From my perspective that is a strong negative endorsement.
In Spokane County we have two contested Superior Court Judgeships. Both feature challengers to incumbent judges, Marla Polin and Timothy Fennessy. The ProgressiveVotersGuide recommends retaining both incumbents. From what I can gather from talking with friends who understand the county court system and from briefly meeting both of the incumbents I agree that the incumbents should be retained.
Spokane County Elections (part of the Spokane County Auditor’s Office) mailed out ballots for the November 5th General Election late last week, a week earlier than the deadline. If you live in Spokane County and you haven’t received your ballot, first check your ballot’s status at vote.wa.gov. For voters in Spokane County there is more good information here. If you’ve already filled out and returned your ballot, check at vote.wa.gov to confirm that it has been received and accepted.
Still, you’re not done. Encourage like-minded people to cast their ballots, too. Offer help. Encourage voter registration (still doable online at vote.wa.govuntil October 28th—a week from Monday). Recommend the progressivevotersguide.org. It’s a great, rational resource for candidate information including links.
To access past posts from this blog, check the searchable archive at jxindivisible.org.
My Favorite Negative Voter’s Guide
WeBelieveWeVote.org finally posted its voting recommendations this last Monday, October 14th. In the past, WeBelieveWeVote relied on candidates to return a questionnaire asking for their level of agreement with a series of rigid statements like “The duty of civil government is the protection of innocent human life from conception until natural death.” Candidates’ “alignment” was rated accordingly. If you took time to tour the website back then it was possible to see each candidate’s questionnaire. Perhaps for that reason increasing numbers of candidates were nor willing to participate.
This election cycle, the folks behind WeBelieveWeVote rate candidates based on “how well a candidate aligns with a Biblical worldview & Biblical principles,” that is to say, a particular Christian Fundamentalist, Christian nationalist, very current-day Republican worldview and principles you can read here. Since when, you might ask, is every Christian required to subscribe to this:
The Tenth Amendment of the Constitution reserves “to the states…or to the people” all powers not expressly delegated to the federal government. Therefore, state and local governments comprise the vast majority of governmental functions?
Really? States’ Rights is a Biblical precept with which every Christian worth their salt must agrees? I invite skeptical readers to look up the Old Testament references WBWV offers as proof: Ex 18:14-25; Deut 1:13-17. As a Christian, review WBWV’s “principles.” Know the basis of their rating system.
You are asked to blindly accept the judgement by the WeBelieveWeVote team of candidates’ “alignment” with the team’s bizarre list of “Biblical principles.” Then, rather opaquely, the team bases its rating on “a variety of sources, including candidates’ websites, social media posts, endorsements, voting records (if applicable), news articles, interviews, etc.”
Equally telling is the link WeBelieveWeVote provides to guide your vote on the four Republican Greed Initiatives that appear on your ballot: the link leads straight to multi-millionaire Brian Heywood’s “Let’s Go Washington” website—as if voting for the repeal of, for example, the Washington State capital gains excise tax were based on “Biblical principles”. That is preposterous on its face—and demeans the words of the Bible I grew up reading.
Furthermore, consider that your tax dollars help fund WeBelieveWeVote. These folks, none of whom even pretend to the clergy, began claiming tax exempt status after 2021. “We are a 508(c)(1)(a) ministry, contributions made to We Believe We Vote are tax deductible.” For more on the history of this WBWV tax dodge, check out the “Notes” at the bottom of this post from JULY 21, 2023. For some coverage of races outside Spokane County WBWV links to “iVoterGuide.com.” It is interesting to note that iVoterguide IS registered as a Political Action Committee [501(c)(4)] with the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission and states (accurately) that donations are NOT tax deductible.
Bottom line: Visit WeBelieveWeVote.org for a reliable NEGATIVE voting guide. You can be assured that candidates with high WBWV “alignment” rates will NOT defend a woman’s right to make her own reproductive medical care decisions, will NOT support efforts to combat global heating, and WILL work to dominate government based this group’s particular twisted idea of Christian law and doctrine.
DO YOUR HOMEWORK, FILL OUT YOUR BALLOT, TURN IT IN. DON’T DELAY. Your freedom to manage your own life according to your religious values depends on your diligence.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. The counter to anyone advocating, as WBWV does, for electing only for those who optimally share WBWV’s narrow idea of Christianity and, meanwhile, essentially claim the U.S. Constitution as an article of faith ought, instead of twisting Bible verses to suit their fixed beliefs, to actually read the Constitution. The third (and last) paragraph of the U.S. Constitution, Article VI[the bold is mine] reads:
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.
Granted that this passage prohibits a law or regulation that would require a test of faith in a particular religious belief system, the sort of law that at the time of the founders had been responsible to religion-based warfare that had riven Europe for centuries. WBWV wishes the voter to select candidates willing to adhere to WBWV’s particular religious dogma and legislate to impose that dogma on the rest of us by law.
