Month: December 2022

Does He Actually Have to Shoot Someone on Fifth Avenue?

Electing a representative to any prominent position in government requires projection, the ability to imagine, at least deep down somewhere, that the person for whom you cast your ballot shares your values, that they will study the issues (just like you would—if you only had the time and interest), and that they will vote in government the way you would vote. 

It follows that being a successful politician requires that one studiously avoids taking any stand that might alienate any block of voters upon whom you depend to win the next election. There are two corollaries:

1. Every politician will quietly rejoice when the media (and their voters) don’t ask the hard questions at all. This is the issue addressed in this email.
2. The best of circumstances arises once you’ve figured out a messaging means, like McMorris Rodgers’ targeted emails, of fostering your extremist voters ability to project while independents and less extreme voters can discount or totally ignore the message you feed your extremist wing. 

Last Friday, the leader of the Republican Party, the presumed frontrunner for the Republican nomination for President in 2024, and, so far, the only declared candidate, Donald Trump, declared on his “Truth Social” social media site that such “Massive Fraud” had occurred in the 2020 election that it justified “termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution”. Here’s the full message, lest anyone wonder if the quote were taken out of context:

Absorb that: former President called to “terminate…the Constitution”. The context was his effort to play up a nothing-burger about the 2020 election pushed by Elon Musk on his newly-purchased Twitter platform. (The best write-up of that context [and why it’s a nothing-burger] that I’ve seen is Robert Hubbell’s “What the heck just happened?)

Those of us who read Hubbell’s Today’s Edition Newsletter or Joyce Vance’s Civil Discourse or Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American (or all three) were apprised of Trump’s plea to put aside the rules and regulations of the U.S. Constitution, make him President once again, and the details of the Twitter context that elicited his outburst. Were independents and political moderates made aware of Trump’s outrageous sedition by the standard media? 

The headline of the Spokesman article covering Trump’s statement? “White House rebukes Trump’s suggestion to suspend Constitution over 2020 election” was buried on page A13 in the lower right hand column in the Sunday, December 4th, Spokesman—an article purchased from the Washington Post. The headline was NOT “Trump calls to suspend the U.S. Constitution”. Instead, the headline hints at a minor tiff between the White House and the former President.

This takes us back to politicians and projection. If the average citizen isn’t even aware of Trump’s sedition (See P.S.) one cannot expect the average Republican politician to step up and call it out. After all, if, like “our” McMorris Rodgers (U.S. Representative from CD5, eastern Washington), a significant portion of your voting base thinks Trump is a virtual deity, you will wish for Trump’s words to be buried, and, if confronted, you will do anything you can to weasel out of issuing a direct repudiation. Surely you will not volunteer a statement unless you are hard-pressed. 

Every time McMorris Rodgers’ name appears in electrons in the media I receive a “Google Alert” email. I waded through all nineteen “Alerts” dated after Trump’s sedition. Did she comment? Crickets. Statement on her website? Nothing. If she, and other Republicans, are not pressed hard for answers they will ignore the sedition of their presumptive leader and move on as if nothing had happened. 

There are several things you can do: 1) Add you name with mine to this petition on Change.org 2) Call McMorris Rodgers’ local Post Street office at 509-353-2374 and ask for her comment 3) Or take this advice from Joyce Vance:

Let’s keep the heat on them this week and for as long as it takes. You can call (202) 224-3121 and ask to speak with your senators and representatives. Don’t forget email, postcards, letters and calls to district offices too, in addition to social media and requests for in-person meetings. They’ll be keeping track of the calls and other incoming messages this week. Sometimes they need to be reminded that they work for us, and that no matter how difficult they make it, we’re committed to voting in our elections to keep it that way.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry 

P.S. From wikipedia (the italics are mine): Sedition is overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that tends toward rebellion against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent toward, or insurrection against, established authority. Sedition may include any commotion, though not aimed at direct and open violence against the laws.

Monster Tax Savings for the Median County Homeowner!

Colin Tiernan reported on December 1 in the Spokesman that “Spokane County commissioners vote against raising property taxes”. [At the Spokesman (and probably most other newspapers) the editor decides on headlines, not the reporter who writes the story.]

As a county resident I might assume from that headline that I was just saved hundreds of dollars by the fiscally responsible action of the Spokane County Commissioners—who, at great effort—managed not to raise property taxes in these inflationary times. Careful reading of Mr. Tiernan’s article suggests a different, and more truthful, headline that you will never see: “Spokane County commissioners voted not to raise the median Spokane County property owner’s 2023 tax bill by—wait for it—seven dollars”. One might argue that foregoing a seven dollar rise in the 2023 property tax bill for the average Spokane County property owner isn’t even worthy of news coverage, much less a headline hinting that Spokane County Commissioners Al French, Josh Kerns, and Mary Kuney (all Republicans) had just saved county taxpayers a devastating rise in their property tax bill. 

The calculations and legal constraints imposed on local Washington State governments as they puzzle out how to balance their budgets are bewilderingly complex—rife with opportunity for misrepresentation and misunderstanding. A visit to the local social media site Nextdoor offers a window into the confusion around coverage of the recent tiff between the City of Spokane City Council and Mayor Woodward over whether to take legally allowed one percent increase in the City’s property tax levy. Here’s an example from a Mr. Dow of Altamont Heights:

Who else has done the math? Ready for dollars per day increase in property tax? Yup 1% property tax increase. Rent will go up again! Possibly by hundreds. And for what? I’m sure the Spokane city council could cut out some useless items, and find the funds. Nope, they pass it on to us.

He “did the math” alright, and, in so doing, got it totally wrong, not that, given the news coverage and the complexity of the topic, that he should be much faulted for his misunderstanding. Scarier were the dozens of comments that followed on Mr. Dow’s post as others piled on. The overall tone of the comments was at least “Vote them out!” with some comments verging on “Bring out your pitchforks, string them up!”

The headline of the news article in the Spokesman by Emry Dinman that Mr. Dow is playing off of is as bad as Mr. Dow’s math, “Spokane Mayor Nadine Woodward vetoes City Council-approved 1% property tax hike”. Isn’t a “1% property tax hike” pretty clear? You might be excused for simply multiplying your last year’s tax bill by 1% (0.01). Let’s say that last year’s bill was close to an average $4000. The terrifying “City Council-approved 1% property tax hike” is then $40. First, note $40 is not “hundreds” as Mr. Dow inflammatorily suggests, but that isn’t even the right calculation. 

The “hike” of the headline is a one percent rise in the City of Spokane’s total levy amount, the amount of money in dollars that the City can collect in property taxes the following year spread out among all the property within the City limits. For Spokesman subscribers who actually read the article, its author, Emry Dinman, even writes “a cost of a few dollars to most property owners”, NOT the “hundreds” of Mr. Dow’s post. But the damage is done. Thanks to these headlines and the spreading misinformation/miscalculation on Nextdoor some number of folks will bolster their internal anti-tax, anti-government, anti-one-particular political party narrative.

The trouble with all this is with the required messaging. Frequent few-word, subtle misinformation like “1% property tax hike” (intentional or not) leaves a lasting impression in the minds of people who lack the time, resources, and inclination to puzzle out the full story. Any time the counter to a simplistic (and wrong) statement requires paragraphs to explain, the person offering the counter argument starts at a distinct disadvantage. Trying to understand and then explain the complexity of property tax determinations in the State of Washington is mind-bendingly daunting. 

That said, here are a few relevant concepts to keep in mind:

1. Any increase in property taxes in Washington State that will appear on your tax bill is constrained by multiple legal limits on the taxing authority of the (many) taxing districts in which your property is located. Big changes in the average property tax bill cannot happen without voter approval.
2. The assessed value of your property is relevant to your next year’s tax bill only in proportion to the assessed value of all the property contained in a particular tax district’s boundaries. Imagine a tax district in which the assessed value of every property doubled from one year to the next year. For simplicity, let’s also assume that the allowed 1% levy rise was NOT voted in. In this case of a doubling of the assessed value of each and every property, the levy rate (expressed as dollars per thousand of assessed value) would be cut in half—and the taxing district would collect the same total dollar value in property tax as it did the year before. However, in the unlikely event that the assessed value of your property doubled while the value of all the rest of the property in your taxing district stayed the same, your particular property’s tax bill would double while everyone else’s remained the same. (There are caveats to all of this, but none of them would materially affect the conclusions.)
3. Also, keep in mind that in Washington State the total tax bill paid on a property is made up of levy rates determined by multiple overlapping tax districts, each multiplied by the assessed value, not just, for example, the levy rate imposed by the City of Spokane. To explore this, look at your detailed property tax bill (or access the details of your property by entering your address at https://cp.spokanecounty.org/scout/map/ and clicking “View more parcel information” on the page you see.

This is the sort of material that ought to be taught in a combined “practical math plus civics” course in high school—and offered to all citizens.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. For more (and perhaps clearer) examples of how levy rates and assessed values inter-relate see Calculating the Property Tax Levy. 

The Election Fraud Narrative Persists

The votes are in and counted. Last Tuesday, November 29, Spokane County, in a meeting that ordinarily attracts little notice, certified the results from the November 8th general election. Most local voters thought the results of this year’s general election were settled a couple of weeks ago. News coverage has moved on, even though the results were unofficial until Tuesday’s certification meeting. (You can inspect the certified results here. Use the Command-Find keys [CMD-F] on your computer to locate specific candidates and races.)

At last Tuesday’s certification meeting of the Spokane County Canvassing Board one could still hear local echoes of Trump’s Big Lie, Dinesh D’Souza’s bogus “documentary” 2000 Mules. (2000 Mules was widely distributed locallyby an unidentified political operative), Flynn’s ReAwaken America Tour, and, of course, the local Republican Party’s pushing the narrative of election fraud. The most prominent representative of the SpokaneGOP’s effort is, of course, Bob McCaslin, Jr., the losing candidate for Spokane County Auditor and the only candidate to appear as an observer at the canvassing board’s certification meeting. 

The certification meeting included a 15 minute Open Public Forum segment at which six people spoke. Five of the six were from the SpokaneGOP asking that the board vote against certifying the election. Matt Hawkins, the Spokane County Republican Party’s state committeeman, requested a revote or hand count of the auditor’s race that McCaslin lost by 1183 votes. To request a “revote” is a preposterous grandstand, but, let’s consider a manual recount. The statutory trigger for a hand recount in a non-statewide election for this particular race would be a difference of only 546, far less than 1183. (See P.P.S. for details.) If Mr. Hawkins were actually convinced that a hand recount would produce a different result he could use the legal mechanism in the RCW to request (within two days of the certification) and obtain a hand recount at his expense. There are no reports that Mr. Hawkins has made such a request. Apparently Mr. Hawkins faith in his suspicion of faulty ballot counting is insufficient for him to risk his money on a recount. (The payment is refunded if the recount changes the result of the election.) [LAST MINUTE UPDATE: The Spokesman reports this morning that McCaslin requested a partial hand recount of the ballots from five precincts in the Eagle Ridge area in which the original count was not in his favor. The partial hand recount will cost him (or his backers) a few thousand dollars. It is uncertain what he expects to accomplish. One wonders if he and his backers are such true believers in the election fraud narrative that they expect a blockbuster reveal of miscounting that would drive a mandated recount of the entire contest.]

Alene Lindstrand, another of the commenters, claimed (among other complaints), in spite of the Risk Limiting Audit, that no meaningful election audit was performed. Ms. Lindstrand is a perennial purveyor of complaint and suspicion, including arguments against fluoridation. Ms. Lindstrand ran for Spokane County Auditor against incumbent Vicky Dalton in 2014 and lost by nearly 18 percentage points in the general election. 

The other three GOP commenters raised similar questions and requests, all without evidence. One, a Mr. Tim Kinley, videoed the meeting with his smartphone. 

The November 8 general election’s now-certified results in Spokane County(for statewide results click here) show a relatively high ballot turn-in rate for a mid-term (middle of the four year presidential term) election. A total of 222,676 ballots were counted in Spokane County from among 359,764 registered voters (an election “turnout” of 61.9%). 

“Ballots counted” and “election turnout” aren’t quite the same. Seven hundred and thirty-five ballots were rejected because the postmark on the outer envelope was after election day (November 8). There’s a lesson here: Do your homework and vote early or, if you’re voting on election day, either deposit your ballot in a drop box before 8PM or pay close attention to the pick-up times on the mailbox in which you put your ballot. 

Another reason to vote early is this: 3374 Spokane County voters in this election were sent letters notifying them that if they wanted their votes to be counted they needed to take additional steps to “cure” signature issues. Of those 3374 voters, 49% (all but 1705) voters took the prescribed action to cure their ballot so the envelope could be opened and their (now anonymous) ballot could be entered into the counting system. If you turn in your ballot in the late rush it may take a while to receive the letter notifying you of the problem. When one of the election contests on the ballot is really close political parties obtain publicly available lists of voters whose ballots require curing. The parties match names with other publicly available data that might suggest party sympathy and then make efforts to encourage people to go to the trouble of curing their ballot. Remember that if you turn in your ballot early you can check to see that your ballot has been accepted by visiting vote.wa.gov.

In Spokane County in this November 8 general election the final numbers show that 2443 people’s efforts to vote were rejected either for signature or witness problems that they didn’t (or couldn’t) cure—or on account of a late postmark. In the closest race on the ballot, the Spokane County Auditor’s race, the number of votes separating the candidates was 1183. Given that even if all these 2443 ballots had been cured, 1813 of them (74%) would have to have been votes for McCaslin to make up the difference. The odds of a 74% edge for McCaslin showing up in those cured ballots is vanishingly small. But in a closer election… Moral: Vote early and make sure your ballot is accepted. 

One final remark: The election irregularity folks from the GOP conveniently ignore that every “Prefers Republican Party” candidate who ran for a Spokane County-wide office subject to the voting of all the voters in Spokane County, every one of them, other than Bob McCaslin, won their contest. In LD-4 (Spokane Valley), McCaslin’s election conspiracy counterpart, Rob Chase, lost his state representative seat to fellow Republican Leonard Christian. Mr. Christian’s opinion on local election integrity? 

“If (the county auditor )is cheating, why are all the county spots Republicans?”…

Christian said he has observed the election process, and though he does not believe it is perfect, it is secure.”

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. The canvassing board is a three-member board made up of a designee from the Spokane’s County Commission, the Auditor’s Office, and the Prosecutor’s Office. This year those designees are Mary Kuney, Randy Bischoff, and John Grasso, respectively. Minutes for the November 29th meeting are here. More details on the canvassing board’s makeup can be found in the minutes for its November 22nd meeting. (Other minutes for the board can be accessed here.)

P.P.S.  “If the difference in the number of votes cast for the apparent winner and the closest defeated candidates is less than 150 votes and less than 0.25% of the total number of votes cast for both candidates” a hand recount is triggered. In the Spokane County Auditor’s race that is (108,631+109,814)*0.0025=546.