Month: September 2022

Erratum, Update, and To-Do

Last Friday’s (September 9) post, “Flynn’s Reawaken America Tour Comes to the Inland Northwest” must have rung a chord: it was among the most widely shared and most read of any recent post—as well it should be considering Flynn and company’s disturbing Christian Nationalist message and the money-sucking ticket swindle this two-day-long piece of pseudo-Christian misinformation represents. 

ERRATUM: I started the September 9 post with “Tomorrow and Sunday, September 16th and 17th, from 10AM to 6PM, you’re invited by Matt Shea and company to “The Great Re-Awakening,” aka the “ReAwaken America Tour” held just over the border at Stateline Speedway in Post Falls.” I was oblivious to the logical contradictions in that sentence: September 16th and 17th are THIS COMING Friday and Saturday and NOT last weekend. I find it a little worrisome that just one observant reader Reply-emailed me to gently point out my temporal disorientation. I thank that reader.

Expropriation of the Christian Message: Since we’ve been granted the extra time by my error, once more I want to encourage you to sign on to the petition protesting this event in our region. It was recommended to me by the Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane, an organization I respect and support. You can access the petition here.

St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, 2404 N Howard St, Spokane, is holding a vigil from 11AM to noon on Saturday, September 17, in protest of the Post Falls Christian nationalist tour. Click here for the background, reasoning, and details.

The Rt. Rev. Gretchen M. Rehberg, the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Spokane, has an excellent article published in the Spokesman that addresses the Flynn event head-on from a Christian perspective that I highly respect. Read it here.

Politics and Fleecing the Populace: Aside from its Christian cloaking, Flynn’s event, the ReAwaken America Tour, reeks of a carnival sideshow dedicated to extracting money from the deluded while propagating lies and mistrust. The whole thing is run by a failed Republican candidate and serial entrepreneur, Clay Clark, who has already re-branded his show from a “Health and Freedom Tour” dedicated to spreading Covid-19 misinformation to the new “ReAwaken America Tour” dedicated to 2020 election conspiracy theories. His web ad page for the current Tour breathlessly declares that every previous tour stop has “Sold Out”. The ad for the Speedway Event this Friday and Saturday proclaims “Just 4000 tickets will be sold”. In the original post I wrote of my experience texting for tickets. At that time (last Friday, September 9) the fellow who called me back from the boiler room excitedly told me there were “only 129 tickets left”—and yet the website two days later still offered tickets for sale. Does that trajectory seem unlikely for an event destined to sell out 4000 tickets?

I encourage my readers to text to 918.851.0102 to inquire if there are any tickets left for the show this Friday and Saturday, September 16 and 17, in Post Falls. Ask how much tickets cost. Send me an email to jxindivisible@gmail.com with the day and time they contacted you, the number of tickets they said were left, and the offered range of prices. (I certainly would NOT give them a credit card number, no matter how much they hype the urgency.) Perhaps we can expose Clay Clark’s and Michael Flynn’s boiler room project for the grift I suspect it is—or we’ll find that their marketing techniques have attracted thousands…

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. One of my readers responded to the poster for the “ReAwaken America Tour” in my original email with, “That “Great Awakening” poster is a “Where’s Waldo” of neofascist authoritarian cult followers.” I might add “leaders” of the authoritarian cult. For fun, see how many you can pick out. 

P.P.S. Another reader queried, “Did you notice that these same people who are trying to ‘ReAwaken’ are the ones who dis people for being ‘Woke’? What’s up with that?”

P.P.P.S. For any of you unfamiliar with the history of “Awakenings” in the history of the last 400 years of the protestant Christian churches I recommend this wikipedia article. Clearly, Flynn’s and Clay Clark’s clever branding of the tour as a “ReAwakening” is meant to pretend to an Evangelical underpinning of its political message.

Whose election narrative are they peddling?

The local (and the Washington State) Republican Parties are trying to perform a delicate, desperate straddle between sane Republicans and the Trump MAGA wing of fevered election deniers. 

The Spokane County Republican Party (aka SpokaneGOP) is promoting distrust in Spokane County’s election systems administered under Spokane County Auditor Vicky Dalton—while simultaneously pretending that the Party believes there really isn’t a problem. 

This double-talk comes from some of the highest ranking local Republican Party officials. Matt Hawkins, the SpokaneGOP’s state committeeman and the 3rd or 4th highest ranking officer in the Spokane County Republican County, made some very intentional news back in June of this year. As the leader of the Spokane GOP’s “election integrity subcommittee”, Mr. Hawkins presented a petition to the Spokane County Commissioners (three Republicans: French, Kerns, and Kuney) calling for a “comprehensive election system audit” to “restore confidence in our elections.” Mr. Hawkins’ seems to want it both ways:

“We’re not trying to say any one person has done anything wrong,” Hawkins said. “We’re not trying to say that any fraud has been committed. We are trying to say we want to restore confidence to the election system.”

Hawkins’ essential public claim is, “We in the Republican Party aren’t election deniers, we just have to reassure all those deluded folks in our Party who believe the 2020 election was fraudulent”.

The trouble with Hawkins is that his public statement, like that of so many Republicans, is a lie about what he really believes and why he believes it. Hawkins, functioning in his capacity as the SpokaneGOP’s representative to the State Republican Party, sent a highly revealing email earlier this year to 4th legislative district Republican Precinct Committee Officers. (I’ve copied the email in full at the bottom of this post.) In that email I invite you to click on any of his treasured references, but let’s look at the very first one he offers, the one entitled “Video Title 1” featuring “Captain” Seth Keshel. It is found on Rumble, the cloud service that also hosts Trump’s “Truth Social”. The video is posted by Northwest Grassroots, the same extremist Spokane Valley-based group that warmly hosted James Allsup in 2018. (Allsup is the proudly white supremacist Charlottesville marcher and former Republican PCO from the Pullman area. Cecily Wright, co-instigator of NWGrassroots and disgraced chairwoman of the SpokaneGOP, is now LD4 State Rep Rob Chase’s legislative assistant. You can’t make this stuff up.)

“Video Title 1” in Hawkins’ “Sites of interest” is Mr. Keshel’s “2020 Election Analysis ‘The Truth’ ” presentation at the Post Falls Greyhound Park and Event Center in October of 2021, nine months following the January 6 insurrection. Mr. Keshel’s presentation is a statistical joke: he takes historical election data, notes that 2020 is an outlier, and concludes that fraud must be involved. This is not evidence of fraud. It is a demonstration that the future is difficult to predict—and that the Trump presidency stirred people of all stripes to come out and vote. (That was the conclusion I reached based on the data presented before I read this Associated Press article, which I recommend.) 

It should come as no surprise that Keshel’s Greyhound Park presentation is introduced by LD4 Washington State Rep. Rob Chase, who, with Bob McCaslin, has been widely disseminating the election fraud narrative. (McCaslin is the wholly unqualified Republican candidate running to replace Vicky Dalton as Spokane County Auditor.) The Greyhound Park video presentation is a local extension of Mike Lindell’s (the “MyPillow Guy”’s) widely panned 72 hour “cyber symposium” in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Keshel was not only a participant in South Dakota but also took part in the election-conspiracy theory discussions at the estate of Lin Wood with Michael Flynn, Sidney Powell, Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, and Doug Logan, the CEO of cybersecurity firm Cyber Ninjas, the folks who worked diligently to overturn the 2020 election. Apparently, Keshel’s “election statistics” presentation was either accepted as convincing by the assembled conspiracy theorists or was seen as useful in much wider efforts to overturn the 2020 election, efforts that culminated most visibly in the January 6 insurrection.

This Greyhound Park presentation by Keshel is the sort of conspiracy theory garbage that represents the true conviction of the local Republicans who, in their public utterances, claim they just want to “restore confidence”. 

The June Spokesman article notes that Rob Chase and Bob McCaslin both supported the petition to the Spokane County Commissioners for a third party audit of the 2020 election. In view of Chase’s introductory remarks in the Greyhound Park video, McCaslin’s bid to replace Auditor Vicky Dalton, and the SpokaneGOP’s fealty to Trump’s election fraud narrative in the person of Matt Hawkins, we shouldn’t be surprised. 

Matt Hawkins, functioning as spokesperson for the SpokaneGOP, Rob Chase, and Bob McCaslin are infusing local Republicans with a crackpot election fraud narrative that doesn’t stand up to the most basic scrutiny. They must know this narrative is not a winning argument in the broader court of public opinion. For that reason they and the entire state and local Republican Party is calling for a third party audit to “restore confidence” in election systems in the State of Washington, election systems they barely understand. As a result there isn’t a single Republican candidate in Washington State who will actually state unequivocally that Joe Biden is the fairly, legitimately elected President. 

Vote them out in November, vote them all out.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

From: Matthew Hawkins <matt@hna-cap.com> 
Sent: Monday, January 03, 2022 4:47 PM
To: PCO’s 4th <PCOs4th@NETORGFT2352099.onmicrosoft.com>
Subject: SCM Report for SCGOP

Attached is the report for the Board meeting tomorrow night. Thanks for all that you do.

Respectfully,

Matthew C. Hawkins, SCM-Spokane

C: 509.990.3509

matt@HnA-cap.com

Sites Of Interest:

Video Title 1: Captain Seth Keshel – Idaho and Washington – County by County

https://rumble.com/vo7v7a-captain-seth-keshel-idaho-and-washington-county-by-county.html?mref=6zof&mrefc=4

Video Title 2: Dr. Douglas Frank – Nationwide Overview of Results

https://rumble.com/vo7wa6-dr.-douglas-frank-nationwide-overview-of-results.html?mref=6zof&mrefc=4

Video Title 3: Professor David Clements – Our Legal Positions

https://rumble.com/vo7u8a-professor-david-clements-our-legal-positions.html?mref=6zof&mrefc=4

Frank – The Voice of Free Speech Social Media

Kim Wyman Interview:  https://komonews.com/news/podcast/politicast/podcast-seattle-unlikely-to-change-direction-with-new-leadership

Americans United & Determined to Improve Transparency A.U.D.I.T. – Telegram  

Elections Fraud Report Released – Exposes All in 7 States – Conservative Patriots (conspatriots.com)

Updated 11 Min Video “A Citizen Primer” Video Here  

Technology Expert Determines if Ballots are Legitimate or Fake (22 Mins)

https://www.regent.edu/misc/analyzing-american-election-integrity/

Also 

https://lindelltv.com/

For Washington State:  

https://weicu.org/

If you want to see something that raises concerns about Washington State, at minimum look at minutes  8-15. 

[If you click on the video link that Hawkins offered, a message from YouTube appears: “Video Unavailable, This video is no longer available because the YouTube account associated with this video has been terminated.” The account belonged to Gail Golec, a fringe candidate for the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors who lost in the August 2 primary. She was reprimanded for telling her followers to steal pens from polling places for reasons only a conspiracy theorist deeply down an election rabbit hole would understand. 

You can’t make this stuff up, either. ] 

Now back to “evidence” cited in Matt Hawkins’ email:

Judge rules, Trump was right:  Turns Out Trump Was Right: Court Judge Rules That Michigan Sec. Of State Over Stepped And Broke Law Regarding Absentee Ballot Order – Analyzing America

Appended to Hawkins’ email was another gem. I take this missive of Hawkins’ as the relatively polite, glossy version of Eric Greitens’ widely criticized, truly gross and inappropriate MAGA political ad, “Hunting for RINOs”. As you read, remember this plea for ideological purity was sent out in early January of 2022:

SCM Report for End of Year 2021 January 4th, 2022 Board Meeting

…Coming into the new year, we need to lay plans for ensuring we are restoring confidence in our Elections, which Ruth’s Elections committee is doing a fantastic job. [Presumably this Ruth is Ruth Ryan, the woman who is also organizing the SpokaneGOP’s election observers.]

I am hearing discussions around the State about the need to evaluate not just our new candidates that are planning on running this year, but to also evaluate our current elected officials that may be looking to run again in this next year. Yes, the idea may become reality in that a Red Wave could be coming both within the State of Washington, as well as in Washington DC. We need to ensure that as Republicans are elected that they will be a cohesive force in getting the results we would like to see. The following observations should be discussed locally:

1. Do our candidates support a Comprehensive Audit of the Election system?
2. What are the defining issues we need to layout as action items for our Candidates to act upononce they are elected to office and do, we have their support today?
   1. Schools & education
   2. Elections
   3. Technology and the impact on …
   4. Mandates
   5. Others
3. How do our candidates support Constitutional policy? We all know Insley claims he does, but what does this really mean?
   Some have likened this to the “Newt Gingrich” Contract with America, from 25 years ago. There have been discussions for a Contract with Washington.

How do we ensure that if we are fortunate to experience a Red Wave, that measurable results can be identified that will improve our State and local communities for the benefit of our families?

Respectfully,
Matt Hawkins, SCM

The Christian Nationalist Message is Loud and Clear

Tomorrow and Sunday, September 16th and 17th, from 10AM to 6PM, you’re invited by Matt Shea and company to “The Great Re-Awakening,” aka the “ReAwaken America Tour” held just over the border at Stateline Speedway in Post Falls. The tour is brought to you by the entrepreneur, former DJ and business coach, and failed candidate for mayor of Tulsa, Oklahoma (in 2009), Clay Clark. Mr. Clark hatched the show as “Health and Freedom” tours in 2020 peddling conspiracy theories about Covid-19. In the summer of 2021 Clark rebranded the show as the ReAwaken America Tour, shifting emphasis to conspiracy theories surrounding the 2020 election and now featuring the Trump-pardoned criminal, Michael Flynn. 

I encourage you to explore the background of the ReAwaken America Tour in its wikipedia article. With the exceptions of Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Post Falls, Idaho, all listed ReAwaken events have been held at mega-churches, even as multiple other Christian Church leaders have condemned the tour—but, apparently, with much less fanfare and media attention. 

The poster for the Stateline event displayed below suggests (but carefully does not promise) that if you attend you might see not just General Flynn, the keynote speaker, but a lineup of a great many other far right grifters and supporters of insurrection, including Mike Lindell (the “MyPillow Guy”), Sean Feucht (recently in Spokane at Riverfront Park), Josh Hawley, ?Lindsey Graham, and Roger Stone, among a sea of others, some of whom I recognize but cannot name. 

The attraction of the headliner in Post Falls, Michael Flynn, is well-covered in this Associated Press article: “Michael Flynn: From government insider to holy warrior”. I urge you to click and read. It draws heavily on an August 12-13 ReAwaken America presentation at the Cornerstone Church in Batavia, New York, that is said to have drawn thousands.

According to the AP article:

Flynn is “one of the most dangerous individuals in America today,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian and expert on authoritarianism and fascism who wrote the book “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present.”

“He is spearheading the attack on our democracy, which is coming from many quarters, and he is affiliated with many of these sectors, from the military to Christian nationalism to election denial to extremist groups,” she said. “All of this comes together to present a very live threat. And he’s at the center.”

Flynn’s worrisome “Christian” Nationalist message reads like incitement to attack your neighbors:

He’s repeated falsehoods about Black Lives Matter and said that so-called globalists created COVID-19. He tells the tens of thousands of people who have paid to see him speak that there are 75 members of the Socialist Party in Congress, and has said the left and Democrats are trying to destroy the country. He asserts, above all else, that the United States was founded on Judeo-Christian values. The bedrock, he warns, is crumbling.

The country, Flynn often says in speeches and interviews, is in the midst of a “spiritual war,” and he goes after many of the institutions and ideas that stand as pillars of American democracy.

He has told audiences he doesn’t trust the U.S. government or government institutions that oversee the rule of law. He called the media “the No. 1 enemy” and said it has done a “horrible, horrible disservice to the country by just constantly lying and trying to deceive us.” He says elementary schools are teaching “filth” and “pornography.” He continues to assert, ignoring all evidence to the contrary, that elections can’t be trusted. He says, over and over, that some of his fellow Americans are “evil.”

“They dress like us and they talk like us, but they don’t think and act like us,” he told a podcaster recently. “And they definitely do not want what it is that we want.”

Note well the link to “a certain kind of Christian”:

“If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion. One nation under God, and one religion under God, right?” he [Flynn] said.

Christian nationalism seeks to merge the identity of Christians and Americans, so that to be a “true” American is to be Christian — and a certain type of Christian. The ideology pushes the idea that the United States was founded on biblical principles and has a favored relationship with a Christian God, said Samuel Perry, a sociologist at the University of Oklahoma who studies conservative Christianity and politics.

I find all this chilling. Worse, this is the sort of riled up crap that parts of the local Republican Party depend upon for votes—and the sane Republicans know better than to openly cross swords with these people (a topic for next week). Have a listen to this tiktok video of Matt Shea, former Washington State Representative from Spokane valley, self-appointed pastor, and endless promoter of his theocratic “Liberty State”. Then visit Redoubt Newsand note that the same quasi-military code appears on the top of the page. If you are tempted to want to dismiss all this, I urge you to recall the origin of the name of one of the militia groups that stormed the Capitol of January 6, the Three Percenters: 

During the American Revolution, the active forces in the field against the King’s tyranny never amounted to more than 3% of the colonists. Three Percenters today identify with this 3% because they were true patriots fighting for the freedoms the nation we love and honor was founded on. 

These people are nuts, but they’re nuts and organizing, and now they have a famous retired general and Trump-pardoned criminal to rally around in their quest. Worse, they are deceiving the gullible by cloaking themselves in distorted Christianity.

Add your name to this petition organized by local Christians and Christian sympathizers against this “Christian” Nationalist “ReAwaken America Tour”. Here’s the link to the petition: https://secure.everyaction.com/jQ4VzMGfe0yZdwJy7Ymttw2?emci=5cb756c2-312f-ed11-ae83-281878b83d8a&emdi=4265d07b-922f-ed11-ae83-281878b83d8a&ceid=155031

With its religious trappings and appeals to violence this gathering may be worse than having a Trump “Stop the Steal” rally in our backyard..

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. I have no idea what the attendance will be at this Stateline event tomorrow, but the fact that it is happening in our neighborhood I find chilling and worrisome. Yesterday I texted to the number (918.851.0102) on the poster for a ticket. A few hours later I received a phone call from an excited, fast talking young man backed by boiler-room sounds who rattled off a dozen names of people pictured on the poster he said would appear in person at the tour. I asked it that included Josh Hawley. He asked if Hawley were pictured on the poster. I said yes and he reassured me that, then, yes, Hawley would be there in person. (I should have asked if Roger Stone was also going to be in Post Falls in person since he is also pictured on on poster.) Then he offered to sell me a $500 “VIP” ticket…or a $250 General Admission ticket…or a “scholarship” for $135…or, finally, “name your price”. The poster says that “4000 tickets will be sold”—and my young man insisted that I should buy now because as we talked the remaining tickets had dropped from 130 to 129—and they would surely sell out. I didn’t have the presence of mind to say “$5, but I don’t give my credit card information over the phone, so would you reserve a ticket and I can pay at the door?” I wonder how many true believers and how much money this hard sell will attract?

P.P.S. Apparently Sean Feucht, another Christian Nationalist pictured on the placard, came and went from the Spokane Pavilion with a free concert on Sunday, August 21. No one got back to me to say that they attended, and I cannot find any media coverage to say what actually happened. 

Another Example of Ignoring (or twisting) the Science

According to Fundamentalist Christians, including all local Republican respondents to WeBelieveWeVote.com’s Survey, “The Holy Bible is the supernatural, inspired Word of God; it is inerrant, supreme, complete, and final.” That statement could not be clearer. One consequence of Fundamentalist belief is straightforward: the Creation Stories (there are two, not one) in the Book of Genesis are not allegorical, they are not an attempt by members of a primitive society to explain their existence. Instead, for a Fundamentalist, the Creation Stories are the literal truth—and, by implication, the science of geology and all that it implies is junk science. “Our” eastern Washington Representative to the U.S. Congress, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a woman steeped in Fundamentalist education, makes this clear: “The account that I believe is the one in the Bible that God created the world in seven days.”

For a Fundamentalist (a status self-confirmed by every local Republican who responded to Question 1 of the WBWV Survey) there are other doctrinal consequences. Genesis 1:27: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” There is no room in that statement for ambiguity. That binary statement is simple, direct…and factually wrong.

I was brought up to think of sex as a clear dichotomy, male and female. For my parents, it wasn’t so much an article of faith, it was simply obvious to them based on common observation. Obvious, that is, in the same way as it was “obvious” at one time that the earth was the center of the universe, the earth was flat, and the sun and the moon were moved in the sky for the benefit of Man. 

The Fundamentalist Biblical doctrine of binary, dichotomous sex determination, fails just as miserably under careful observation as does the doctrine of an earth-centered universe—but fewer Fundamentalist Christians have studied human embryology than they have studied the basics of modern astronomy. 

There was much that I found fascinating in my medical training, but the study of human embryology was, given my upbringing, an eye opener. “Gender assigned at birth,” for some percentage of babies is exactly that: assigned. Little seen, appreciated, or discussed outside of medicine, some percentage of babies are born with “ambiguous genitalia”. When I was in medical school the sex/gender of such babies was often surgically assigned according to the best guess and cultural bias of the doctors and the parents. When biological reality is actually studied it is far messier than simplistically binary. 

Still, Fundamentalist Christians, that is, all of the local Republican respondents to question one of the WBWV Survey, hang their hats on this binary notion and deny the messy biological reality that “gender assigned at birth” is a biologically wobbly concept. For this narrow segment of Christianity that seems to permeate local Republicans the biological fact that gender is messy—a clear challenge to the written Word—must be seen as the work of the Devil and, somehow, as an evil personal choice or, for minors, the consequence of being evilly “groomed”. 

Robert Hubbell, author of the highly recommended blog “Today’s Edition” eloquently addressed this issue in his July 19th entry in a subsection entitled “GOP accelerates pace of anti-LGBTQ agenda:” 

The GOP has determined that the last acceptable group to discriminate against (after women) is the LGBTQ community, and it is pursuing that agenda with a vengeance.

I have been outspoken in my defense of transgender people because . . . . well, they are people. Period. Full stop. I am always surprised when a well-intentioned reader sends an email that says either “God created two sexes” or “there are two sexes.” Both of those statements are wrong to their core. Anyone who believes so has not educated themselves about human sexuality, gender, and biology.

          If you believe there are “only two sexes” and are open to a scientific discussion of same, I recommend Dr. Steven Novella in Science Based Medicine, The Science of Biological Sex. I will not repeat his lengthy discussion but will note that 2% of infants have ambiguous genitalia and that common chromosomal variations include XXY, XYY, and XXX. And some people have cells in their body with XX chromosomes and other cells with XY chromosomes. And those chromosomal variations do not account for the role of gene variation in gender identity. I could go on, but you can read the article if you are interested in the science of biological sex.

          In the tens of thousands of cases each year when doctors must make their “best guess” as to the sex of an infant, that guess becomes ironclad in the view of GOP lawmakers and judges—even if the “guess” is wrong. So, all of the GOP bills that talk about “gender assigned at birth” create the illusion of certainty that does not exist.

          Even if the numbers of biological and genetic variants are small—say 2% of the population—that is no excuse for asking that segment of the population to “Sit down, shut up, and pretend to be someone you are not.” Nor is it grounds for discriminating against them. One day, we will look back on the institutional discrimination against LGBTQ people with the same shame and guilt that we feel looking back on discrimination against Black Americans in the Jim Crow south.

People are entitled to believe what they like. It is (still) a free country. But I don’t vote for people who reject reality and project hate on vulnerable groups based on adamantine adherence to a literal interpretation of an ancient text. Hate is not a Christian value.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. Of course, it was only a few centuries ago when those who literally interpreted the Bible believed as an article of faith that the Man and the Earth he lives on were the absolute center of the solar system, that is, that the Sun orbits around the Earth. The dominant Christian authorities of the time bitterly persecuted scientists like Galileo for suggesting otherwise. Consider where that ended. (Of course, ideas now viewed as wrong and archaic almost never completely die out. Witness the endless and witless “proofs” that the earth is flat found on the internet.)

P.P.S. If you’ve read this far I want to put in a plug for Robert Hubbell and his blog “Today’s Edition.” People I meet often say they can’t bear to read the news any more, it is “too depressing”. Hubbell’s blog is a welcome antidote. He describes himself as “Citizen. Optimist. Realist.” and the blog as “A reflection on today’s news through the lens of hope.” I became a subscriber three months ago. I encourage you to do the same. 

Celebration of a Movement Republicans have dissed for decades

Today is Labor Day. Most of us now see the day as the unofficial end of summer— rather than a federal holiday to commemorate the contribution of organized labor to our social fabric. Over the last half century more and more wealth has concentrated at the top thanks to Republican success at trashing labor unions, reducing marginal tax rates for corporations and the wealthy, and nearly eliminating estate taxes. Much of this has been accomplished with disingenuous (even if also meanly ingenious) propaganda campaigns like “right-to-work” and promoting sympathy for cutting estate taxes (for the wealthy) by citing inheritance of “family” farms. We would do well to remember why Labor Day was established. What follows is a quote from the Wikipedia article, Labor Day. The whole article is a refresher course worth the read:

Labor Day is a federal holiday in the United States celebrated on the first Monday in September to honor and recognize the American labor movement and the works and contributions of laborers to the development and achievements of the United States. The three-day weekend it falls on is called Labor Day Weekend.

Beginning in the late 19th century, as the trade union and labor movements grew, trade unionists proposed that a day be set aside to celebrate labor. “Labor Day” was promoted by the Central Labor Union and the Knights of Labor, which organized the first parade in New York City. In 1887, Oregon was the first state of the United States to make it an official public holiday. By the time it became an official federal holiday in 1894, thirty states in the U.S. officially celebrated Labor Day.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

And his platform from which to play it

Lately, every other Wednesday, just like clockwork, Chris Cargill is given a “Guest Opinion” platform on the opinion page of the Spokesman Review. From that platform he pecks away at the cost of government, taxes, and unions. Right on cue, on August 24, he assailed the Spokane Public Schools, snidely claiming an inflated budget and substandard performance with a piece entitled “Paying more, getting less from Spokane Public Schools”. In his article Mr. Cargill offers a blur of large numbers as proof of his erudition. Constructive policy suggestions? Not one, none. His tone bespeaks a cheap-shot at the quality and cost of public education. 

It was ironic to note a headline on the front page of the same day’s Spokesman Northwest Section: “Spokane Schools has dozens of job openings with two weeks until first day of classes”. In the sort of free market that Mr. Cargill’s employer, the Washington Policy Center, is always touting, the solution might be to offer higher salaries and benefits in hope of attracting staff. Perhaps the budget Mr. Cargill is whining about isn’t inflated, but, instead, insufficient. 

Mr. Cargill is the Eastern Washington director of Washington Policy Center based in Spokane. Mr. Cargill’s background is in broadcast communication studies and political science, not education. Mr. Cargill has no children in Spokane Public Schools. Not only does he live in Liberty Lake, but he was recently elected to the Liberty Lake City Council in 2021. Shouldn’t he be writing about Central Valley School District? 

Another irony: The Director of the Center For Education at the Washington Policy Center, Liv Finne, offers a position paper on Education Reform in which one of her recommendations is to double teacher pay. Apparently, Mr. Cargill missed the memo. Of course, as a member of a Republican/Libertarian “think” tank, Ms. Finne also strongly advocates for charter schools and school vouchers, that is, for the funding of private schools with public dollars.

An letter to the editor from June 16th puts Mr. Cargill’s use of his Spokesman soapbox in context:

Chris Cargill is paid by Washington Policy Center to write opinion pieces for the S-R, such as last week’s clarion call for transparency in negotiations between city government and unions (“Who will defend the taxpayers? Not the city or its unions,” June 8). As usual for Cargill and WPC, citizenship begins and ends with paying taxes.

As a citizen who has spent a lifetime contributing to the profits of the businesses and owners who make up WPC, I would also like some transparency. How much have I paid for each one of Cargill’s cookie-cutter opinions?

William Siems

Like Sue Lani Madsen, who, from her isolated perch out in Edwall holds forth in the Spokesman on City of Spokane politics, Mr. Cargill sees fit to opine from Liberty Lake on the budget of a school system that doesn’t affect him. The Spokesman should look for opinion writers on City of Spokane issues who actually live here. 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry