Month: January 2019

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What Underlies Trump’s “Compromise” Offer

Dear Group,

Always remember the Republican’s biggest fear: that brown people become citizens and able to vote. Trump, one hopes, jumped the gun by activating the nativist base to get elected. He thought this base would be all he needed to push his anti-immigration crusade over the top and exclude for the long term the threat of brown people becoming citizens and voting against Republicans. His nativist base (and the greater Republican Party) is now doubly invested. They have taken ownership of the full-on, anti-immigrant brand, anti-refugee, anti-legal immigration (except Norwegians), and anti-DREAMER, the latter a group for which many have sympathy. For many seeking refuge and many who have lived among us, contributed to society, and paid taxes for years (but are not yet citizens) the Republican Party is now an adversary. The result: the Republicans are ever more dug in and ever more determined never to offer citizenship for the DREAMERs or any brown people. Lacking compassion…or decency…, the Republicans use their threats to deport the DREAMERs as a bargaining chip. “We won’t kick them out of the country, at least for a few years, if you….” or “We might offer the DREAMERs some sort of complicated ‘legal status’, if you…” This is hostage taking. 

Listen and read carefully every time you hear a Republican offer anything that might help the DREAMERs. You will never see in their proposals an offer of a functioning pathway to citizenship. The DREAMERs came to this country through no fault of their own as children and have lived here as tax-paying citizens for years. Breitbart, Ann Coulter, and the Republican base are already screaming “Amnesty!” at Trump’s Saturday offer of the best compromise he can muster: a promise not to go forward deporting the DREAMERs for three years. “Amnesty” for the screaming Trumpian base is somehow construed as an issue of “fairness,” that somehow letting the DREAMERs out of bondage is “unfair” to those who, as adults, came legally. (How very Old Testament of them. . Apparently, the “sins of the fathers [Exodus 20:5],” their parents bringing the DREAMERs to the U.S. illegally [often by overstaying a visa], are to be visited on the children,,,and the children punished…with deportation from the only country they have known.) 

Last summer McMorris Rodgers helped craft a bill within her own Party (of which she was then a supposed “leader”) to strike an immigration bargain. It failed spectacularly, 121 Yea to 301 Nay with 112 of her fellow Republicans voting “Nay.” Her bill offered a select group of DREAMERs “permanent legal status,” She seemed surprised at her mini-townhall at Greenbluff when I asked her to clearly state the bill offered no path to citizenship. She’s in a tough spot. She’d like to groom her sympathetic mom brand, but her base might turn on her if she offers any long term help to the hostages her Party so delights in threatening with deportation. [For more on CMR and her bill read CMR’s Immigration Duplicity.]

The DREAMERs deserve a path to citizenship. They will not be offered one until the Presidency and the Congress are out of the hands of Republicans. Until then Republicans will use the DREAMER’s issue to rile their nativist base. 

Trump’s Saturday “compromise” offer to get his border wall funding was dead before it was all out of his mouth. A three year lull in his and his Party’s effort to deport the DREAMERs, keeping them from one day voting against Republicans, this lull offered as a “compromise,” is an insult to our intelligence. Furthermore, for all his pandering to them he can’t even get his base to dampen their desperate xenophobia. 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. Remember Republican hand-wringing in the early years of Obama’s presidency, the Jeb Bush and other relative centrists talking about wooing the hispanic vote? One wing of the Republican Party worried out loud that demographic trends would make white men a minority and corrode their support? The other wing of the Party decided to buck those trends by demonizing and excluding immigrants. That wing won. Trump’s election, riding in on the votes of racist, anti-immigrant wing of the Republican Party, marked a takeover from Republicans who at least mouthed words suggesting unity and compromise. Trump flipped the switch to the most rabid, denigrating, partisan politics we’ve seen in our lifetimes. This has long brewed on the right. The question of our time is whether Trump and the Stephen Millers of his Party flipped the switch before enough groundwork was laid. Can they leverage their success into a durable power grab? 

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MLK Day

Dear Group,

I urge you to click on the wikipedia entry, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and read. If you imagine establishing a holiday to celebrate Martin Luther King’s birthday was a slam-dunk (as I had rather naively imagined), the article is a must read. President Reagan signed the bill to make MLK Day a federal holiday in 1983, after a petition in favor of the holiday was submitted to Congress with six million signatures. The petition was identified by the magazine The Nation as “the largest petition in favor of an issue in U.S. history.” There were several prominent naysayers, including Senators Jesse Helms (R-NC) and John Porter East (R-NC). Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) on the floor of the Senate literally stomped on the 300 page document Helms submitted, calling it “a packet of filth.”

There is a lesson here about what it takes to get legislation passed…

Get out and honor the day. (See the box above for details.)

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

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March!

Dear Group,

Today, this Friday, and this MLK weekend is time to get out and march, meet people, share community. and be seen. A schedule with links is found above. Yesterday, Thursday morning, the Spokesman Review provided a nice summary of events entitled “Three marches in four days: Indigenous, Women’s and MLK marches will advocate for unity, human rights this weekend.” Click on that, read up, and join a lot of other nice people. Come out, get to know the people you live with in this city. In the end it is all local…and this is where local starts.

Back on Monday.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. I still have an electronic Spokesman subscription ($19.50/month), so I cannot see what the paper throws up as a paywall. If you cannot see that article on account of a paywall please let me know in a “Reply” to this email. Thanks.

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Mitch

Dear Group,

Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has served as the Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate since 2015. He was first voted into the Senate in November, 1984, seated on January 3, 1985. That election was a squeaker. He would have lost if the 0.6% of the vote that went to a Socialist Workers candidate had gone to his Democratic opponent. He leapt to the Senate at 42 years of age from a position as “Judge/Executive of Jefferson County”, Kentucky. He is currently 76 years old. He is up for re-election in 2020. (Sources: Wikipedia and Ballotpedia.)

Ballotpedia reports McConnell’s net worth increased by 512% from $3,734,414 in 2004 to $22,841,026 in 2012 while the American citizen experienced a median yearly decline in net worth of -0.94% in the same period. (You can see his top 5 contributors to his political campaigns at Ballotpedia.)

For me, Mitch McConnell stands out as the most partisan and least statesmanlike of highly placed politicians in Congress. His statement in 2010 after the 2008 election of Barrack Obama, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” stands out for me, but not nearly so much has his unprecedented months-long stiff-arming of Merrick Garland, the moderate judge Obama nominated to the Supreme Court. For that latter act McConnell already deserves a special place in hell. 

Now McConnell is refusing to bring to the Senate floor bills already passed by the House since this Congress opened on January 3, bills that would re-open most of the government, appropriations bills the contents of which passed the Senate by a voice vote last December (but need to be taken up again, since we’re in a new Congress, in order to present them to Donald Trump). 

McConnell is in a delicate spot. In 2014, his last election, he won with 56% of the vote. (There still are Kentuckians who are Democrats!) McConnell’s base, we have to imagine, is increasingly Trumpian. He must fear doing anything that angers Trump. That certainly includes presenting Trump with bills he would have to veto to keep the government shut down. Worse, if Trump vetoed, the Congress might have to consider a veto override. Each and every Representative and Senator would then be on record as having voted for or against continuing the Trump shutdown. This is pure partisan politics. 

But there is more. Evidence continues to mount that Trump colluded with the Russians to swing the 2016 election. McConnell, in his steadfast pursuit of the Republican agenda, has consistently defended Trump against such accusations. Explore that by reading “Trump is doing immense damage. He has a hidden helper.” an opinion piece in the Washington Post by Greg Sargent on January 14th.

Once again here are the numbers to call and express your ire over Congressional dysfunction on the issue of the shutdown. It is their job to present legislation to the President and to override (or not) his veto if it comes to it. (

CMR:

Spokane Office       (509) 353-2374

Colville Office         (509) 684-3481

Walla Walla Office  (509) 529-9358

D.C. Office              (202) 225-2006

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA)

D.C. Office          (202) 224-2621

Spokane Office  (509) 624-9515

Yakima Office     (509) 453-7462

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA)

D.C. Office          (202) 224-3441

Spokane Office  (509) 353-2507

Richland Office  (509) 946-8106

Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID)

D.C.  202-224-6142

North ID,  208–664-5490

Sen. James Risch (R-ID)

D.C. 202-224-2752

Coeur d’Alene  208-667-6130

Rep. Russ Fulcher (new R, ID)

(202) 225-6611 

Then call Call/Email Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and ask him to bring the House-passed bills to the Senate floor for a vote. He needs to let the Senate do its job. Phone: (202) 224-2541. Reports are that McConnell’s phone lines have been jammed. They need to stay that way.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

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What makes it “Partial”?

Dear Group,

Why a “partial” shutdown? Why isn’t it a “full” shutdown? That’s a pretty basic question for which I didn’t have an answer. In a media ecosystem of soundbites I often find the basic information necessary to understand what’s going on is left out of the discussion. 

The federal fiscal year (the “year” established for accounting purposes) runs from October 1 of one year to September 30 of the next. If Congress hasn’t “appropriated” (authorized the money to be made available) to the fifteen departments of the executive branch before October 1 then the money starts to run out. In 2018 the October 1 deadline passed but funding continued on a series of “Continuing Resolutions” until December 21. (A continuing resolution says the departmental funding will continue at the same level as the previous appropriations bill until some specific date.)

The shutdown is “partial” because the 115th Congress (that just ended) passed some appropriations bills (not just continuing resolutions) during 2018 that provided money to six of the fifteen departments for fiscal year 2019 (which ends September 30, 2019). Those departments have money with which to function. In fact the appropriations bills that were passed and signed by Trump for those six departments cover roughly 75% of the discretionary budget. The departments that have money already include the Pentagon (Department of Defense—a big spender) as well as the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Labor. 

The other nine departments received no more money from the Treasury after the continuing resolutions ran out on December 21. As a result they have to cut back services and require employees deemed “essential” to work without a paycheck (but with the hope they will get their money later). You can read a fairly comprehensive fact sheet on what our current record-breaking partial shutdown affects here. There is a superb wikipedia article on the current shutdown with a lot more background and detail here.

All this brings me to two rhetorical points: 1) Six departments are already funded under appropriations bills passed in 2018 AND there are appropriations bills covering the other departments on Mitch McConnell’s desk, sent there by the House. On what ground does he refuse to bring them to the Senate floor, apart from his own petulance? 2) The current shutdown might never have happened if the Department of Defense were not already funded. Can you imagine the wailing if Trump were responsible for demanding the military to serve without pay? 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. I wonder what percentage of voters were taught about this process in high school Civics (or learned it on their own). I was certainly fuzzy on the details… One way to look at the current partial shutdown is to use it as an opportunity to learn some of the detail of how the government budget process is supposed to work.

P.P.S. Rush Limbaugh is touting the partial shutdown as a way get rid of some of what he considers the surplus, do-nothing federal workers, a classical Libertarian canard.

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Life Imitates Art

Dear Group,

I look forward each Monday to Doug Muder’s weekly emails under the title The Weekly Sift. (I encourage you to visit his website and sign up for them.) Yesterday Mr. Muder ended his email with a must-see video. Remember when westerns on television came in 1/2 hour segments and often came with a moralistic overtone? The parallels between this episode of “Trackdown” (click “full episode” below) and our current predicament with the Trump shutdown are uncanny. I found myself questioning if this were a modern production made to look like 1950s TV, but, no, the main actor really is Robert Culp, and Robert Culp died in 2010 at the age of 79.

Life imitates art:

“Trackdown” aired on CBS between 1957 and 1959 and took place in Texas following the Civil War. The series followed Texas Ranger Hoby Gilman, played by Robert Culp, on his adventures protecting the people of the Lone Star State. The 30th episode of the show, titled “The End of The World,” premiered on May 9, 1958, and saw a con man named Walter Trump, played by Lawrence Dobkin, attempt to scam the entire town.

The fictional Trump warned the Texans that apocalyptic meteors would strike the town at midnight, but he could protect everyone. … His solution was to build a wall made of magical metal that would repel the meteors and keep everyone safe.

The full episode is on YouTube.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry
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Matt Shea and His Business Donors

Dear Group,

Last October as the November election approached Matt Shea made a local and national media splash with exposure of his “Biblical Basis for War” manifesto, a document he tried to explain away as an outline for a Sunday School lesson. (Matt Shea, along with McCaslin Junior, are the two Representatives to the State House in Olympia from Legislative District 4, Spokane Valley and the territory north to Mount Spokane. For more on Shea and his activities see the P.S. below) When Shea was making national and local news with his Manifesto, articles appeared in the Spokesman on three consecutive days, October 31, November 1, and November 2 listing business donors who said they wanted a refund of the money they donated the Shea campaign. Some, in their press releases, said “Shea does not reflect our values.” Some insisted they would not donate again.

Northwest Credit Union Association was the first to publicly request a refund. The Washington Association of Realtors, AT&T, The Washington Hospitality Association, Avista Corp., and the BNSF Railway Co. followed. The Washington Hospitality Association and others acknowledged that Shea was under no legal obligation to return the money. 

Reading the Spokesman articles leaves the impression if Chad Sokol (the Spokesman reporter who wrote all three articles) had not taken the initiative to visit the Public Disclosure Commission’s website, and call Matt Shea’s donors for comment, few if any of these businesses would have made a public statement or requested a refund. 

I urge you to visit the Public Disclosure Commission’s website pdc.wa.gov. It takes a little electronic digging, but there is a wealth of useful information. Click “Browse,” enter the candidate’s name and select from the list. 

Did any of Matt Shea’s business donors get their money back? Visit Shea’s 2018 Campaign Expenditure page.  I could find no evidence of a refund. The real test comes in the lead up to Shea’s 2020 election campaign. Will these businesses “forget” over two years and write Shea another check? After all, even though businesses (at least corporations) are, for legal purposes, treated as persons, business memory is likely to be fragmented. Will the right person remember the 2018 promise? The first donation to Shea’s 2018 campaign fund arrived on March 15, 2018. Perhaps in early 2020 we should remind these and other donors of Shea’s activities.

The total business donations to Shea’s 2018 campaign were $40,250, of which only $8000 came from the donors who publicly withdrew their support. Using the Public Disclosure Commission website it should not be hard to come up with a list of the other donors from 2018 to whom to suggest in early 2020 that donating to Shea might shine an unwanted light on them. Another $40,900 came from Political Action Committees with names like WASHINGTON STATE AUTO DEALERS PAC, WASHINGTON OPTOMETRIC PAC, and the WASHINGTON STATE DENTAL PAC. Might they be educated as well?

What Shea does with all this money (a grand total of $113,145.98 after adding in individual donations) is a story for another day. It is all there on the Public Disclosure Commission website. 

Keep to the high road,

Jerry

P.S. While using the Search function at the Spokesman in preparing this email I came upon an article on Matt Shea written by Shawn Vestal that appeared December 14, 2018. I encourage you to click the link and read it. As usual Mr. Vestal nails it.

P.P.S. Public Disclosure Commission website is for in-WA-State candidates. Federal candidate campaigns are found at FEC.gov.