Month: August 2022

She knows the Buzzwords

It stands out in bold in McMorris Rodgers’ response: “We must be good stewards of our public lands, resources, and wildlife.” Stewardship. A great concept. McMorris Rodgers must really “get it”. You might be lulled into believing she will carefully consider, offer constructive amendments to, and vote for legislation that might positively benefit “public lands, resources, and wildlife.” But that is never, ever what she actually does. Inevitably she pivots away with a statement like the one she offers in the email copied below my sign-off: “I agree we should reduce our plastic waste and encourage the use of recyclable paper products, but I don’t believe heavy-handed government mandates are the best way to achieve that goal.” For emphasis this quoted sentence was printed in red in the email. 

Let’s unpack that. “We should” reduce plastic waste. Yup. Think of all the persistent plastic materials blowing around on the landscape and, worse, polluting the oceans on a grand scale with ecologically harmful microplastics. We “should” do something about that. We the People “should” preach to each other and voluntarily agree to move away from plastics to more environmentally friendly materials, but government should never, ever regulate corporations use of plastics or create incentives to ramp up the use of other materials nor should corporations be forced to take responsibility for the pollution they produce. 

McMorris Rodgers registers 100% agreement with this statement in her WeBelieveWeVote.com Candidate Survey:

11.     The Environment

God’s creation should be properly protected and stewarded. The environment is provided for our use to produce food and provide resources for abundant life. We have a duty to protect the environment for its beauty, provisions, and sustainability.

Genesis 2:15; Ezekiel 34:18

Issue Application: Prior to 2020, the USA had achieved energy independence. However, over the past two years with the shutdown of pipelines and fracking, America has, once again, become dependent on foreign energy sources, causing gas prices to double. A bill signed into law by Gov. Jay Inslee in April 2022 requires all new cars in WA State to be 100% electric by 2030. Ironically, pioneers in green industry technology favor increased oil and gas production because: a) green energy development requires fossil fuels; and, b) the transition to clean energy will take longer than predicted.

Response: Many current “green” initiatives are based on faulty models. They need to be reevaluated, restructured, and in some cases, eliminated. American needs to become energy independent again.

Right out of the box the “Issue Application” section is, to put it gently, intentional misinformation meant to fire up the deluded. First off, according to Forbes, a right of center magazine that still deals with facts, “Surprise! The U.S. Is Still Energy Independent.” “America” has NOT “become dependent” on foreign energy sources. The price of gasoline is determined on a worldwide free market—the supposed Republican ideal—not by minor regulations on the petrochemical industry. For McMorris Rodgers to blindly indicate her agreement with these statements is either a display of her woeful economic ignorance or an intentional pandering to the ignorance of those of her followers who rely on WBWV. You chose. Either alternative is a damning condemnation of the woman who pretends to represent eastern Washington in Congress. 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

McMorris Rodgers’ email response to a request that she support a bill submitted to Congress to nudge us away from plastics: 

Thank you for contacting me about the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act of 2021 (H.R. 2238). It’s good to hear from you. 

We must be good stewards of our public lands, resources, and wildlife. We can strike a balance between effectively managing waste and promoting economic growth to ensure our local communities continue to thrive. 

The Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act of 2021 was introduced by Rep. Alan Lowenthal on March 26, 2021. This legislation would aggressively reduce the use of plastic in everyday products and significantly increase producer responsibility for plastic waste. I agree we should reduce our plastic waste and encourage the use of recyclable paper products, but I don’t believe heavy-handed government mandates are the best way to achieve that goal. 

H.R. 2238 has been referred to the House Committees on Energy and Commerce, Ways and Means, Transportation and Infrastructure, and Foreign Affairs. At the Republican Leader of the Energy and Commerce Committee, I will remember your support should this legislation come before me for a vote. 

As your advocate in Congress, my top priority is to listen to you and lead on solutions you can count on. Please stay in touch. I send out a regular update that gives you an inside look at my week ahead. You can subscribe by clicking here. 

Sincerely,

Cathy McMorris Rodgers
Member of Congress

Compose your own, but here are a few ideas

NEWS FLASH: McMorris Rodgers, under pressure, has rescheduled her “Conversation with Cathy” for next week. Put it on your calendar.

WHEN: Aug 31, 2022 / 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM PT

WHERE: Spokane Convention Center, Centennial Ballroom, 202 West Spokane Falls Boulevard

I hope that someone will record and post this highly unusual event—McMorris Rodgers appearing in Spokane in the early evening (rather than midday in an outlying town) to attempt answers to a few written questions carefully screened by her staff. Perhaps she will surprise us, but I doubt she will risk another performance like her attempt, captured on video, to avoid saying that she believed or denied Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election.

Besides the obvious Big Lie question here are a few other potential lines of inquiry, questions one might pose on Wednesday. :

1. You have made the point many times that you believe that human life begins at conception and that abortion should be illegal. Now that the Supreme Court has finally overturned Roe v. Wade, will you reaffirm your commitment to voting for a federal law and/or a Constitutional amendment to ban abortion? Can we count on you to continue to work tirelessly to pass laws that elevate the right to life of a single cell over the right of a woman to control her own medical decisions?
2. If you or your daughter were impregnated by a rapist should it be your or your daughter’s legal obligation to carry the resulting fetus to term in recognition of its right to life? If so, can we count on you to vote for a law that would force other women to give birth to a rapist’s baby?
3. You consistently co-sponsor federal legislation that would make it legal for a mass murderer to obtain a silencer to muffle the sound of gunshots. (“Hearing Protection Act”). How many more innocent lives are you willing to risk to appease the NRA and relieve shooters of the need to wear ear protection?
4. When asked what you believed was the age of the earth, 6000 or 4.5 billion years, you responded, “The account that I believe is the one in the Bible that God created the world in seven days.” A sentence or two later you said, “And I do believe that we need to…ah…know what the science is, respect the science…” The science of paleontology clearly demonstrates that massive dinosaurs once existed. Since in your view all the species were created in the first seven days, does that mean that humans and dinosaurs once walked the earth together instead of existing millions of years before humans appeared? Or:
5. Perhaps a better question is Bob Gilles’ original: “Do you believe the earth is more like 6000 years old or four and a half billion years old?” It might be followed by “It is an either/or question, Cathy.” (Note that Bob Gilles posed his question as a man who once taught at Gonzaga Prep and worked with the Salvation Army and in a Dominican Orphanage, a man who lived his life in a manner consistent with Christian teaching—just not the Fundamentalist variety that dominates the mind of McMorris Rodgers.) 
6. Which creation story in the Book of Genesis do you believe, the Chapter 1 version in which God created both man and woman on the sixth day and declared them good or the Chapter 2 version in which on the first day Adam was created by God from dust, Eve from one of Adam’s ribs, and after Eve ate of the Forbidden Fruit, God declared them cursed rather than good?

I was taught never to discuss religion in polite company, but when I’m deciding for whom to vote to represent me I think it is important to screen out those with rigid Fundamentalist religious views that preclude comprehending and acting upon the science upon which our continued existence depends. McMorris Rodgers says she (and we) need to “know what the science is, respect the science”, but, thanks to her Fundamentalist education and continued adherence to all its limiting principles, she is ill-equipped to either “know” or “understand” even the basics of how science works.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. For additional ideas for questions visit BigLieCathy.com and scroll to the bottom of the first webpage.

Twisting the truth or just a plain lie?

NEWS FLASH: McMorris Rodgers, under pressure, has rescheduled her “Conversation with Cathy” for next week. Put it on your calendar.

WHEN: Aug 31, 2022 / 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM PT

WHERE: Spokane Convention Center, Centennial Ballroom, 202 West Spokane Falls Boulevard

Today’s Post: Republican economics boils down to two principles:

1. Any tax that affects the wealthy or corporations is a tax on the middle class and the poor.
2. Any reduction in taxes on the wealthy or corporations is really “money in your pocket(s)”, the pockets of the middle class and the poor.

This is the rhetorical version of what Republicans like to call “supply side economics”. Others, more accurately, refer to it as “trickle down” economics, “voodoo” economics, or “horse and sparrow” economics, the idea that the sparrow will benefit from picking out any oats that have passed through the horse intact. 

This self-serving economic construct foisted on the body politic by Republicans for at least the last forty years has resulted in massive redistribution of money from the working classes to corporations and the wealthy. 

Cathy McMorris Rodgers, “our” U.S. Representative to Congress from eastern Washington (CD-5), displays her devotion to the two Republican economic principles at every opportunity. When the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 passed (as the singular legislative achievement of the Trump presidency) she was tirelessly on message with “money in your pocket”, even while most of the money went to the wealthy and corporations, money mostly spent on stock buybacks rather than capital investment that might have produced some jobs. Of course, she completely ignored the obvious: cutting taxes is, in budget terms, exactly the same as spending. A dollar not collected is the same as a dollar spent. Each contributes the same to overall debt.

Now, conveniently, McMorris Rodgers has shifted her rhetoric. Because the Inflation Reduction Act was passed by Democrats the Republican economic lens must be flipped in order to “properly” understand the consequences:

Last week, President Biden signed legislation to raise taxes on nearly every single American. 

In contrast, the bill summary states:

There are no new taxes on families making $400,000 or less and no new taxes on small businesses – we are closing tax loopholes and enforcing the tax code.

Someone is lying. Is it McMorris Rodgers or the Democrats who drafted the bill? The answer is found in McMorris Rodgers’ source link: Analysis: Inflation Reduction Act would increase taxes on nearly all Americans published in “Center Square”. The truth is buried in a barrage of numbers and speculation, apparently meant to impress the reader with its economic erudition. I particularly liked this one:

Overall average tax rates would increase from 20.3% to 20.6% in 2023 alone, according to the analysis.

Hold on to your wallet!! The average tax rate might rise a whole 0.3%!! Oh my god! Could it be that the increase in the marginal tax rate on large corporations and on annual earnings of more than $400,000 could raise the average rate for everyone by a whole 0.3% without touching the tax rate for those in lower brackets? You bet it could. 

There are points in the Center Square article that McMorris Rodgers conveniently avoids articulating:

But The Wall Street Journal editorial board argues that’s exactly what it will do. The bill is “a tax increase on nearly every American,” they write. “Raise the corporate tax rate, and you’re cutting wages and salaries for workers.”

Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee argue the same. They warn it’s full of “hundreds of billions of dollars in wasteful inflationary spending [and] won’t reduce the deficit.”

This is trickle-down, horse and sparrow economics, another presentation of the very tired Republican economic gospel. Tax rates for those earning under $400,000 will NOT rise—that is a McMorris Rodgers perpetuated lie foisted on her followers for the purpose of ginning up anger, fear, and loathing. Shame.

The “wasteful inflationary spending”? To the Republican heirarchy, including McMorris Rodgers, any spending in an effort to combat climate change is “wasteful” and for her giving Medicare the ability to negotiate drug prices with the pharmaceutical industry is inflationary anathema—but she doesn’t want to talk about those features of the Inflation Reduction Act. After all she wouldn’t want to point out features of the Act that her constituents would actually find appealing and worthwhile.

Vote this woman and her voodoo economics out of office in November.

Keep to the high ground,
Jerry

P.S. “Center Square”, the web-based “news” source of the article McMorris Rodgers quotes is a misnomer. It is not Center at all, despite its name. It exists to push Republican anti-tax rhetoric on its readers. Center Square is a project of the Franklin News Foundation, part of the Koch-funded right wing media echo chamber. Center Square was founded in 2009, during the astroturf Tea Party era. It is an affiliate of the State Policy Network, the Republican consortium of libertarian think tanks of which the Washington Policy Center is our local manifestation. Read Center Square with a healthy dose of skepticism. Do not be surprised when it is quoted by local Republicans as an authoritative source on local issues, e.g. homelessness. Center Square is a national organization with locally targeted stories.

And why we should re-elect Vicky Dalton as Spokane County Auditor

Trump and his minions, including the local Spokane GOP, are still pushing his Big Lie of election fraud, an attempt to undermine confidence in electoral systems. In this setting it is particularly important that we as citizens understand the checks and balances, the meticulousness, with which elections in the State of Washington are conducted. 

Election procedures are specified in Washington State Law and overseen by the Secretary of State in conjunction with the thirty-nine County Auditors. Our County Auditor, Vicky Dalton, has served us 23 years. With that longevity and attention to detail as the Auditor of the fourth most populous county in Washington State, she has become a leader among election officials in the State. 

An earlier post, Ballot Processing, offers details, through the eyes of a Spokane County election observer, of the process of signature verification and separation of ballots from their envelopes. That separation makes the individual ballots anonymous. Ballots must still be identifiable by precinct or (rarely) by sub-precinct (they are so identified by a barcode) because the actual ballot layout (i.e. which contests are offered in that precinct) may vary depending on overlapping voting districts. Ballots are batched into precinct groups in preparation for feeding them into the tabulator (the ballot scanning, reading, and vote tabulating machine).

The tabulator is programmed to read the precinct number and then tally the votes cast in each race in each precinct. Before each election checks are run on the tabulator’s programmed accuracy prior to feeding it official ballots. The tabulator is not connected to the internet and lives in a separate locked room. In this process every ballot is scanned and stamped with a number (for later retrieval). The paper ballots are carefully preserved for possible later reference in the event of a recount or an audit. The ballots can be retrieved and matched with the scanned image if necessary.

By State law a hand recount is triggered under certain conditions you can read about here at the Secretary of State’s website. Between 2001 and 2021 there were 17 hand recounts (see the tally). The agreement between the machine count and the hand recount is striking—and serves as a check on the integrity of the machine counting system. (The Gregoire/Rossi race for governor in 2004 is a spectacular example. Within Spokane County nearly two hundred thousand votes were cast in this race. The result of the mandatory recount narrowed the margin between Gregoire and Rossi by only 20 votes, a change of one thousandth of one percent. Note: This accuracy was achieved when there were still multiple polling sites, many poll workers physically separated from the central office, and separate scanners.  The whole state went to all-mail-in voting in 2011. In the current system the ballots are processed centrally.)

The recount history offers great assurance of the accuracy of the machine counting procedure, but in 2018, even before Trump was blathering his Big Lie, the Washington State legislature passed a law (2018 c 218 § 1) that added an additional check of the counting procedures: a Risk Limiting Audit (RLA). (For an explanation of the principles of RLAs click here.) An RLA is a random sample of election results based on statistical math that is used as an additional check that everything worked properly. Spokane County under Vicky Dalton had the honor of overseeing the first ever official RLA in the State during this year’s (2022’s) primary election. (Other counties are still doing test runs.) The specific race to be audited in a county is chosen by a procedure done at the office of the Secretary of State. (For a detailed explanation of that process see the quote at the bottom of this post.) 

What follows is the account of this Spokane County RLA written by a Democratic Election Observer, Dan Simonson:

Spokane County’s (and Washington’s!) First Risk-Limiting Ballot Audit

On the morning of August 9th, I was asked by the Democratic party to attend a “Risk Limiting Audit” (RLA) at the Spokane County Election Center.  As I found out, this was the very first [official] use of a Risk-limiting audit in Washington.  This approach to auditing ballots was first developed over a 10-year period in Colorado, and the software program was developed from their extensive research and testing.  A representative from the Secretary of State’s office was there to offer assistance and support, but made it clear that the County is responsible for the audit.

First task: generating a random number to seed the RLA program. I had previously been certified as an election observer, a requirement for this event as well.  I arrived at 9 am, got my badge, but instead of going directly back to the ballot-processing area, we (3 – 4 Repubs, 2 Dems – myself and Carmela Conroy, a Democratic Party official) were escorted into a conference room and helped the election officers create a 20-digit random number to “seed” the audit program.  This was done by rolling twenty 10-sided dice and recording the numbers (the dice were thrown one at a time into a lucite contraption that “rolls” them through a baffle).

Each observer and some of the staff got to toss their dice by dropping it into the clear lucite device, and it rolled out the bottom to be read and added to the number. Then, with that number in hand, the officers escorted us into our usual area.  There were some tables set up and two computers were running.  There was a screen facing us observers, so we could see what was being done on the computer.  

They started up the specialized RLA program on the computer, and to conduct the audit, the first thing they had to do was initialize the program’s random number generator by entering the truly random 20 digit number we just created to act as a seed.  As you may be aware, computers generate random numbers all the time for various programmatic requirements – but since they are generated by algorithm rather than by a physical process, those numbers are not truly random – they are called “pseudorandom”.  Initializing the program with the seed made sure we had absolute rather than “pseudo” randomness.

A single county-wide race was audited
We were auditing one specific race: State Representative position 2 for Leg District 3 – Candidates were Poulson, Spurlock, and Ormsby.  And even more specifically, we were focused only on any irregularities in votes between the 2nd and third place candidates.  Why? As I was told, since the top-two vote getters are chosen, the differences between one and two aren’t decisive – but between 2 and 3 are.  

Using statistical calculations based upon the size of the races and the amount of difference between candidates, the software told them how many ballots they would need to count.  And the sample was not only of ballots in that legislative district, but across all races – which meant that some of the chosen ballots didn’t even have the studied race on them!  The reason for choosing ballots randomly across the whole county was that we could also check to make sure that ineligible voters (for example, from a different legislative district) were not able to vote in the examined race.

As I recall, they only needed 67 ballots to do the survey, and the computer spit out a list of all of the particulars (Carton#, batch#, serial number in the batch, etc.).  The boxes were brought into the room, and under our close supervision, the staff found the ballots, took them out of the boxes (leaving a paper trail on each) and replaced the others as before.

The stack of 67 chosen ballots were then brought over to the computer, and two staff members processed them – one reading the ballot, the other tapping the appropriate button on the screen (see photo).  Their choices were: named candidate, write-in, blank vote, or “not on ballot”.  In an additional nod to security, the two staff members entering and observing were replaced halfway through the ballots – I thought that was very clever!

Success!
Finally, all the ballots were entered, the RLA program analyzed the responses, and lo and behold, we had 100% agreement!  Election security and transparency in Spokane County has been affirmed.

I have to wonder if November election challenger, former LD4 State legislator Bob McCaslin, is aware of any of these details. He is, however, (along with Rob Chase, McCaslin’s compatriot representing LD4) schooled by the Mike Lindell funded and produced “cyber symposium” espousing Lindell’s conspiracy theory of nationally widespread election fraud. McCaslin refused an interview with Al Merkel (in which Ms. Dalton displayed her expertise) after he saw the questions to be asked. One might presume McCaslin deemed it poor strategy to display his ignorance of actual election procedures.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

A detailed explanation of how a race is randomly chosen for a Risk Limiting Audit by the Secretary of State’s Office, graciously provided to me via email by Hannah Taylor, Results Audit Specialist with the SOS’s office:

The target contest for the risk-limiting audit was selected by lot draw. The Office of the Secretary of State created a list of eligible contests for Spokane County. For a primary election, these contests needed to have three or more candidates. If a contest had only two candidates, both would proceed to the General Election, so it makes the most sense to look at contests where three or more candidates are on the ballot to make sure that the correct two finishers proceed to the General Election in November. We also include local measures when they involve a large enough percentage of a county’s voters. Based on these criteria we created the following list:

Legislative District 3 State Representative Pos. 2

Legislative District 4 State Representative Pos. 1

Commissioner District 2

Commissioner District 4

Commissioner District 5

Prosecuting Attorney

Sheriff

Spokane Valley Fire Department Proposition No. 1

Each of these contests was printed on a slip of paper and put into a capsule, then put into a bingo cage and mixed up. Then we pulled out a capsule and read the contest name—that’s it! This is actually the very same process our office uses to determine the ballot order for candidates.

The contest selected could have been a countywide contest. Whether it is or not, we always sample ballots from the entire universe of accepted and tabulated ballots. I often get the question, “Why don’t you just look at the ballots that have the contest on them?” The trouble with that is that we’d be relying on the voting system to tell us which ballots to look at, and if a problem existed we likely wouldn’t find it.

Spokane County has the distinction of conducting the first official risk-limiting audit in the state of Washington. The state law passed in 2018 requires all counties to conduct post-election audits, and RLAs are one option available. The RCW for audit of election results is 29A.60.185.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any additional questions! I love discussing audits.

Sincerely,

Hannah Taylor

She/Her/Hers Pronouns

Results Audit Specialist

Office of the Secretary of State

(360) 725-5795 (office) | (360) 764-3834 (cell)

Why No Town Hall? Will She Reschedule?

The following is a press release concerning a demonstration to be held at Cathy McMorris Rodgers this evening, August 22nd, at 6PM. It came from Mike Suryan of the Spokane County Young Democrats. Please attend. Media coverage is expected.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

DEMONSTRATION EXPECTED AT CATHY MCMORRIS RODGERS’ OFFICE

Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Congressional representative for the 5th District of Washington, reasonably postponed her scheduled August 10th, 2022 town hall to attend the funeral of her colleague. 
There are only 16 days left in the US House of Representative recess, but she has yet to reschedule that town hall meeting. Not just in Spokane, but anywhere in the 5th district. 
It is customary and expected that our local legislators and representatives will hold town halls during their recess time in order to be held accountable by their constituents. 
The days are slipping by quickly, and we are being abandoned by our Representative.
On Monday, August 22nd, 2022, concerned citizens will visit the Post Street office of Representative McMorris Rodgers in order to petition her to immediately reschedule the town hall meeting and fulfill this important civic responsibility.
At 6:00 pm, Mike Suryan will address a group of citizens on the sidewalk in front of her offices to offer a report on McMorris Rodgers’ office’s plans to reschedule the town hall meeting.

It is not those she claims to warn

McMorris Rodgers and the entire Republican blare machine is dishing out breathless bullshit about the Inflation Reduction Act, like her bald-faced lie that “Democrats Just Voted to Raise Your Taxes” that I wrote about on Wednesday. In the same email McMorris Rodgers goes on [the bold is hers, not mine]:

This bill will spend an estimated $740 billion by raising taxes on the American people in an attempt to implement price controls on prescription drugs, allow the IRS to hire 87,000 new agents, and spend billions on Green New Deal initiatives.

Her audience has been plied for decades with bogus claims that any increase in taxes anywhere in the economy will come directly out of their personal pockets, that any sort of price regulation of industry is bad, that the IRS is evil and selectively targets households of middle and low income taxpayers like them, and that climate change isn’t real and therefore doesn’t need to be addressed—and most certainly not by an initiative put forward by an extremely bright person of color from New York. It is all hot air. For sane analyses of the Inflation Reduction Act’s effects I recommend: Forbes’ (not exactly a “liberal” outlet) “The Inflation Reduction Act Won’t Affect Most Americans’ Tax Bill” and this evenhanded interview on PBS “How the Inflation Reduction Act could affect your taxes”.

Whom is McMorris Rodgers and the entire Republican Party trying to protect with their barrage of lies about a piece of legislation that imposes a minimum tax on very large corporations and endeavors to re-fund the IRS efforts to conduct a reasonable audit sample of taxpaying entities (consider the legal barriers and the cost the IRS faces in auditing businesses like those of former President Trump)?

Spend six minutes watching a video that I cannot get out of my head, a video that obliquely offers the answer. I linked it once before months ago, but only a few readers followed the link. This time I want to make it the centerpiece. Here’s the link:

https://youtu.be/QPKKQnijnsM

The video dates from late 2012. The disparity it illustrates has only widened in the last ten years. With more than 24 million views this video has captured quite a lot of well-deserved attention. 

McMorris Rodgers and her entire Republican Party are using misinformation to perpetuate and expand the sort of wealth (and income) gap illustrated. It’s time to send them packing with their blatant lies about any legislation that might level the playing field even slightly.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

CMR’s Magical Economics and the Inflation Reduction Act

McMorris Rodgers sends out a “Weekly Newsletter”. The one I’ve pasted below arrived in selected constituents’ email folders on August 12. Clearly, McMorris Rodgers’ targeting of her “Newsletter” is imperfect: this was forwarded to me by one of my readers who received it and was understandably outraged.

The same day, Friday, August 12, Orion Donovan-Smith covered the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act through the U.S. House in a front page article that appeared in the Spokesman the next morning (the Saturday Spokesman is online only). In it, Donovan-Smith writes:

The bill’s 15% minimum tax applies only to corporations with at least $1 billion in annual revenue, which limits the requirement to about 200 of the country’s biggest companies. It also adds a 1% excise tax on corporate stock buybacks and gives $80 billion to the Internal Revenue Service, which has seen its budget and staffing fall by about 20% over the past decade, to help crack down on tax evasion by big companies and wealthy Americans.

Donovan-Smith quoted Republican U.S. House Representatives in the article. Their claim is tortured, twisted, doublespeak: walking back a part of the blatant corporate tax cuts of the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” of the Trump administration would raise “your” taxes. Just how is this supposed to happen when the plain language of the bill says otherwise?

Donovan-Smith goes on to explain (the bold is mine):

Sticking to a Biden campaign promise, the bill doesn’t raise taxes on anyone who earns less than $400,000 a year. But Republicans, who universally opposed the bill, argued it would effectively raise taxes on all Americans because corporations will pass on higher taxes to consumers in the form of price hikes.

First, the assertion made by McMorris Rodgers that the Inflation Reduction Act will raise your taxes is a bald-faced lie (unless your AGI [adjusted gross income] is more than four hundred grand a year). To whom does she think she’s writing? Second, the assertion that establishing a minimum corporate tax of 15% will necessarily raise prices for the common man is one of those Republican magical economic tropes born of “trickle down” economic theory. The “trickle down” theory (See P.S.) has been convenient Republican orthodoxy since Reagan. The proposition is whatever further enriches the wealthy will “trickle down” to the commoners, and, conversely, any tax of the wealthy is really a tax paid by people of modest means. In this theory the generationally wealthy and corporations are seen as “job creators”, benevolently keeping the economy humming purely FBO their economic lessers. Anything that cuts into the profits of wealthy is twistedly seen as inflationary.

McMorris Rodgers, apparently confident that her selected email audience is sufficiently deluded by the “trickle down” cult, simply lies with a straight face, “Democrats Just Voted to Raise Your Taxes,” then descends to every Democrat-demonizing, Republican-tested trigger phrase she can find. She must assume, perhaps correctly, that her readers will accept her analysis as gospel, that they won’t ever peek out of their news silo to see what The Inflation Reduction Act (or even what its called) actually does or to understand that the Act pays for itself. 

The worst part: McMorris Rodgers is so bought in to this economic cult that she probably believes her own lie. 

It is time to vote this woman out of office this November. We should be tired of her divisive lies, her climate denial, and her pandering to militant right supporters.

Keep to the high ground,
Jerry

P.S. “Trickle Down” economics was once known as “Horse and Sparrow” economics, referring to the Sparrows eating the oat seeds that had passed through the digestive tract of the horses. That was back when people understood what “trickle down” economics really was as a theory: horse manure.

Here is CMR’s August 12 Newsletter (BELOW) The pictures of a smiling CMR sitting around tables with people in small towns have been removed to reduce the KB of this Substack missive. Click here to access her lying, divisive, vacuous speech as Ranking Member (leader of the Republican contingent) on the Energy and Commerce Committee. 

Democrats Just Voted to Raise Your Taxes

President Biden’s economic recession, record-high inflation, surging energy costs, looming blackouts, higher health care costs, and empty store shelves are making it harder to get by in America. Families all across Eastern Washington are stretching their budgets just to buy groceries and keep the lights on, and it’s still too expensive to fill up gas tanks.  

Yet despite this frightening reality, earlier today, House Democrats voted to pass the Inflation Reduction Act. This bill will spend an estimated $740 billion by raising taxes on the American people in an attempt to implement price controls on prescription drugs, allow the IRS to hire 87,000 new agents, and spend billions on Green New Deal initiatives. 

Let me be clear: This legislation will do nothing to reduce inflation. As the Democrats continue to double down on making life harder for people in Eastern Washington, I will be working hard to produce tangible solutions that will eliminate the record-high inflation that is threatening to destroy our way of life. 

Read More

I had another exciting week traveling across Eastern Washington to sit down with so many different inspiring groups in our communities. I always enjoy meeting all the incredible individuals who work hard to make Eastern Washington the best it can possibly be and learning more about the issues that matter most to you! Here’s what I’ve been up to this week: 

Disability Inclusivity at WSU

I kicked off my week meeting with representatives of WSU’s ROAR(Responsibility Opportunity Advocacy and Respect) program. I learned so much more about the incredible work they’re doing to ensure students with disabilities are getting the most out of their time on campus. The work this program does for the disability community continues to inspire me every day. Go Cougs!

A Great Discussion with Pullman’s Local Leaders

My next stop was to the Pullman Regional Hospital where I met with an incredible group of local leaders, including hospital CEO Scott Adams, Mayor Glenn Johnson, Cat Amortegui with WSU, Whitman County Commissioner Tom Handy, and more! We had a great discussion about the progress being made to improve the Pullman-Moscow Airport, and we shared ideas about how we can work together to continue expanding access to health care in rural communities. 

Meeting with Colfax Community Leaders

Later, I traveled to Colfax for a roundtable discussion with Port of Whitman Commissioner Tom Kammerzell, Whitman County Sheriff Brett Myers, Mayor Jim Retzer, and other community leaders. We talked a lot about our shared passion to save the Lower Snake River dams, some of the most pressing issues facing our country today, and how we can continue our work to ensure Whitman County remains one of the most productive agricultural countiesin the world.

In case you missed it, I announced this week that the City of Spokane Valley will receive nearly $21.7 million in RAISE grant program fundingto support the Pines Road/BNSF Grade Separation Project. This is a project I’ve supported for a long time, and I’m thrilled to have been a part of making it happen.

In addition to the award to the City of Spokane Valley, the City of Pullman and Spokane County will also receive funding for critical infrastructure projects that will improve our communities. You can learn more about these projects and the funding announced this week here:

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