Scathing testimony

Last Monday the Washington State Department of Ecology (DOE) held a public meeting at the HUB in Airway Heights (12703 W 14th, parallel to and half a block south of Hwy 2). Its purpose was to discuss its recent enforcement order requiring Spokane International Airport (SIA) to complete a remedial investigation and feasibility study concerning PFAS contamination on the West Plains. Spokane County Commissioner Al French did not attend—in spite of the fact that he represents this part of the Spokane County and is heavily involved with both the SIA and a public/private development group know as “S3R3.” Perhaps for Mr. French it was best that he was not present. Below is the transcript of testimony given at the meeting. It contains information that every voter in western Spokane County should know concerning their county commissioner.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

Airport Public Comment to Ecology JH May 6, 2024 at the HUB

I’m John Hancock, a West Plains resident since 2006, in the Fairchild PFAS Zone on Deep Creek.  I’m a leader of the West Plains Water Coalition, but I speak today only for myself.

THE AIRPORT’S DISDAIN FOR ITS NEIGHBORS IS AN OUTRAGE

A thousand pages of internal PFAS communications illustrated a single strategy—dodge responsibility for contamination from firefighting foam.  After the Airport’s own PFAS well testing, its only considerations were legal and political.  There is no record of science or health inquiries.  The factual uncertainties of regulation and toxicity were treated as an opportunity to evade, not a responsibility to discuss, or protect.

Moral or ethical principles of care for neighbors have been absent from Airport management.  But that’s the clear and inescapable duty of the elected officials, both City and County, who own the Airport, to ensure that it operates responsibly, in service to citizens, not just passengers.

The 2-part mission of Spokane County government is economic opportunity and quality of life.  It says so on the first page of its website, side by side, not as hierarchy.  Airport’s expansions seem unchecked since its PFAS discoveries in 2017.

Mr. French’s conflicts of interest were built into his economic development fever.  He was the only leader with both knowledge and power.

He was the only leader with both knowledge and power.

Concurrently, he led the Commission, the Airport Board, S3R3, and the Board of the Health Department.  Twice, he prevented a half-million dollar PFAS assessment grant for Dr. Pritchard’s comprehensive exploration of nearby groundwater.  Al’s loyalty to the Airport’s real estate speculation is illustrated by the Airport’s first response to Ecology’s cleanup order: “We believe that these reckless statements by Ecology have removed all economically beneficial use of this property and may constitute a taking of the subject property that the Airport was seeking to sell.”

The customary legal standards of conflict of interest for any boards of directors require disclosure as a first step.  This ensures that other persons and systems know about the issue, establish the facts, and confirm that legitimate conflicting goals or methods are decided by additional persons or agencies.

The FAA gives the Airport an operating license, naming both requirements and opportunities.  We air travelers experience uniform expectations and obligations at every airport.  But SIA operates here as an independent enterprise, on properties owned by City & County.  SIA is not any sort of exempted federal facility, in spite of its assertions that “we were only following orders.”

But duties to FAA don’t excuse the airport from local or state law. 

The just-released opinion letter from FAA to SIA says, “In general, there is no bar on an airport using its own revenue to discharge its legal liability or to settle cases even where liability has yet to be adjudged.”

This 3-page letter says that SIA must follow local environmental requirements, on its own dime.  Beyond acknowledging PFAS as the topic, FAA’s requirement for the use of AFFF is not addressed.

So far, we don’t know whether SIA followed FAA’s safety requirements for firefighting foam.  But we do know that Airport did not join a national study about AFFF, ^[1] published in 2017 by the FAA and the National Academy of Sciences. 176 Airports participated, but not ours.

This report “is a comprehensive resource for understanding the potential environmental and health impacts of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) typically found in aqueous film-forming foams (AFFFs).

The report will be of particular interest to airport industry practitioners who wish to learn about the issue, take steps to identify areas of potential concern at their airport, and implement recommended management and remediation practices.

The report features a primer on PFASs that summarizes their composition, structure, and sources, as well as potential environmental and toxicological concerns about PFASs, regulatory issues, and how PFASs may affect airports.

The report also provides a discussion of AFFF management in an airport setting and recommended practices to investigate legacy environmental impacts, potential risks, and remediation options.”

Airport’s PFAS correspondence obtained through FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] showed no evidence of either contributing to or learning from this industry-wide study.  Two former Airport Board members have explained that such a research opportunity would not have received Board attention, nor would groundwater investigation costing less than $50,000.  Instead of assessing the current science and health dangers, or contacting WA Ecology, Airport called on its lobbyists and lawyers.  Airport’s hope was regulatory relief.  The CEO, Mr. Krauter, sought to escape his trouble, not admit it.  

SIA has grown fast, an accomplishment for which Mr. Krauter, and Mr. French have shared so much mutual self-glorification.  Mr. Krauter wins national awards from his peers, but none that I know of for environmental stewardship or ethical leadership.  I doubt that his performance evaluation invites opinions by the Airport’s neighbors or the County voters.

A former safety chief at Fairchild told me about a long-time Airport Fire Chief, who was prideful about evading regulations he didn’t care for.  That man’s duty, as the FAA report summarizes, probably included the safety obligations and record-keeping of AFFF training, storage, spills, and containment. 

SIA wasn’t interested in Fairchild’s PFAS, revealed in 2017 by the WA Department of Health, in the municipal wells of the City of Airway Heights.  Just 2 miles separate these two airports, where AFFF was used the same way since the 1970’s.  AFFF training drills often involved firefighters from both Airports.

Airport’s own drinking water was safe, because surrounding properties, then and now, receive DoH-regulated municipal water from the City of Spokane. Airport’s personnel and visitors drink PFAS-free water.  Not so the neighbors, and we had no way to know.

Airport’s behind-the scenes efforts towards regulatory relief were threatened by Washington’s new PFAS disclosure requirements, effective in 2022.   Airport chose not to comply, as its own records reveal.

Airport’s real estate speculation, across 14,000 formerly-agricultural acres, is largely hidden from public awareness.  It includes the two main paleochannels, in which PFAS flows most easily and quickly. Its public/private real estate development venture, with the meaningless name S3R3, operates in secret, behind the twin screens of confidentiality of real estate and legal affairs.  Its governors, Mr. French and Mr. Krauter, both involved in Airport groundwater PFAS, may not have ever officially revealed it to either S3R3 or its customer-developers.  We still don’t know, because the S3R3 Executive Director has not been allowed to discuss the matter.  He refused to attend a public neighborhood meeting even as a listener.  S3R3 is not a party to the Ecology cleanup, because it has no firefighting operations, so anwers to this question require an additional investigation.  Isn’t it interesting that S3R3 was founded in 2017, the same year as the Fairchild PFAS revelations and the start of the Airport’s own sampling?  I think that the “buy low, sell high” opportunities of quasi-government economic development have been too juicy to risk truth-telling about groundwater.

I encourage Ecology, with the Spokane County zoning and development authorities, to assess groundwater disclosures required in real estate development.  We know that homeowner properties are required in the RCW to disclose water contamination.  Have the Airport and its subsidiaries complied with that law, which in SuperFund neighborhoods establishes a national standard of environmental safety review? 

County’s recent approval of new gravel pits on Hayford Road may have violated this aquifer protection aspect of Washington’s Growth Management Act.  PFAS is proven in this paleochannel, and I fear that both deep-pit mining and dust-control water wells have the potential to spread PFAS-contaminated gravel products throughout the County.  I ask that the boundary of PFAS Airport sampling extends as far as the recent EPA test zone, and that the facts of the Hayford Rd boundary be established by new Ecology evidence shared with the public.

I’m glad that the Airport-area stormwater utility plan was abandoned.  We note that that plan to artificially recharge the aquifer was silent on PFAS, even though key leaders knew about it.  The City of Spokane paid the million-dollar design cost, but there’s no evidence that Airport shared what it knew about the aquifer contamination.

Unidentified Spokane County leaders chose not to notify potential rural property buyers of potential groundwater trouble.  A toothless notice was given to well-drilling companies, asking that they give cautionary notifications to their customers.  We doubt that notification meant much to the drillers, because we’ve heard from outraged new residents on properties developed since 2017, with brand new wells costing $30-40,000 drawing contaminated water from the Airport paleochannel.  Well permitting didn’t miss a beat, because SIA didn’t report the conditions.

At my own home near these 2 airports since 2006, our awareness was noisy planes over my house, growing traffic congestion, and industrial development on the airport margins.  Only in 2022 did I learn about the PFAS flowing 5 miles towards me in the groundwater, from sources known to government but hidden from me.

Because I’m not a scientist or an engineer, the cleanup details are far beyond my understanding.  But for us on the West Plains, the protections owed us by the people we vote for, and the agencies spending our tax dollars, are not hard to understand.  We want leaders who’ll do their best for us, not for themselves.

The current systems find too many excuses why nothing can be done, with pre-rehearsed responses, even when the facts are new.

I’ve tried hard over the last year and a half to speak up for our neighborhood.  Dozens of times in conversation or correspondence with actual agency representatives, I’ve met kind and skillful people who nonetheless give replies like this:

·      “good idea.  But we can’t do it

·      Regulations prohibit us from . . .

·      “you should ask agency X, not us

·      “confidentiality prevents . . .

These are agencies who say that to me:

·      Spokane County Environmental Services

·      Spokane Regional Health District

·      WA Department of Health

·      WA Dept of Ecology

·      EPA

·      Fairchild Air Force Base

·      Air Force Civil Engineering Corps

·      Dept of Defense

These agencies use lawful by arbitrary distinctions between surface water, groundwater, irrigation water, livestock water, and drinking water.  Since Washington was settled, tremendous legal energy has addressed water rights.  That system is all about ownership and quantity, not safety. We need a new and comprehensive method of public water stewardship.  The WA Constitution says, “all the water belongs to all the people”.  But whose duty is it to keep it all clean?

Here in the country, there’s just one kind of water, the original kind. It doesn’t follow government rules and regs.  We need water to stay alive, every day, in the original clean version.  That’s what we each invested in when we moved here, and we understood our duty to pump it out for ourselves.  But PFAS flowing 10 miles underground is not our fault.

Water is the original forever chemical.  The water has not been harmed by the PFAS.  It’s just the carrier of the contamination.  The toxicity harms us, not the water itself.

Government is the only force big enough to fix such a huge, widespread, and dangerous trouble.  I can’t do much myself, and I’m not the cause of PFAS pollution. The logjam of government rescue from government misbehavior must be resolved.

We need impatient new leaders, both professionals and electeds, with bold new ideas for how to solve this.  The old ways can’t do it.

I’m grateful to Ecology and all the persons who want to help solve our PFAS trouble.  Thanks to this Public Comment invitation, I now understand the legal mechanisms in place to ensure safe water in MTCA projects.  Full speed ahead, Ecology, and thanks for listening.

For any person with their own views on any of this, I urge your written comments to Ecology, because they’ll be published in the public record, and easily available online to others anywhere.

This cleanup will take a long time.  Let’s keep up scrutiny, patience, and intensity.

Thank you for listening.  Count me in on the work.

A largely unnoticed regulation change fueling the wealth gap

It seems that it is often the things you didn’t notice when they happened that make the biggest difference in the long run. The Substack column by Professor Robert Reich copied below highlights the effects of one of those seemingly minor changes in financial regulation, pushed by the plutocratic wing of the Republican Party under Ronald Reagan, that has had major consequences unforeseen by most of us. I urge you to subscribe to Reich’s Substack articles. (Click the title below to go to Substack and subscribe.)

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. If you want to delve further into how this all works after reading Reich’s article check out “Share repurchase” at Wikipedia.

Stock buybacks are lethal, literally

And they’re widening inequality. Here’s what to do about them

ROBERT REICH

MAY 06, 2024

Friends,

Shares of Apple lost 10 percent of their value in the first four months of the year. This may explain why Apple announced on Thursday that its board authorized $110 billion in stock buybacks, the largest buyback in U.S. history. It may also explain why, on Saturday, Warren Buffett — the “Oracle of Omaha” — announced that his company, Berkshire-Hathaway, would sell a big portion of its stake in Apple.

It is impossible to understand what’s happening to the American economy without considering the surge of stock buybacks — in which a corporation buys back shares of its own stock to artificially boost its share price, by creating fewer outstanding shares.

Large corporations are now devoting nearly 70 percent of their profits to buybacks.

Stock buybacks have also become a major force behind widening inequality. They mostly benefit CEOs and the richest 1 percent of the public, who own more than half of all shares of stock owned by Americans.

There is no reason for them. Before Ronald Reagan’s SEC allowed them in 1982, buybacks were treated as illegal stock manipulations in violation of the 1933 and 1934 Securities and Exchange Acts.

Yet they’re still stock manipulations. By using inside knowledge of when and how buybacks are scheduled, corporate executives can time when they exercise their own stock options — which now constitute most of their compensation — to reap maximum benefits for themselves.

Buybacks also impose a huge cost on the economy.

Every dollar spent lining the pockets of CEOs and investors is a dollar less to upgrade equipment and protect workers and the public.

Boeing failed to follow through with a promised $7 billion safety redesign of its 737 aircraft while it was spending roughly that much each year on stock buybacks.

Norfolk Southern Railroad paid investors $18 billion in buybacks and dividends over the five years before its equipment malfunctioned in the disastrous derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, which released over 300,000 gallons of toxic and flammable chemicals into the air and soil.

Abbott Labs spent $5 billion on stock buybacks while allowing plant conditions to deteriorate to the point where bacterial contamination of baby formula resulted in infant deaths and a nationwide formula shortage.

Money spent on buybacks also means less money for research and development, which hobbles American competitiveness at a time when China is breathing down our necks.

Apple now spends twice as much on stock buybacks as on R&D. Over the last fiscal year, Apple doled out $78 billion on buybacks.

Intel, the largest chip maker in America, with revenues last year of $54 billion, was recently awarded an $8.5 billion grant from the federal CHIPS and Science Act, plus $11 billion in subsidized loans.

But Intel fritters away its profits on stock buybacks. Its website proudly touts that it has spent $152 billion on stock buybacks since 1990.

There’s no way to be sure Intel isn’t using CHIPS money for stock buybacks. As Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen noted: “While the legislation specifically prohibits the use of CHIPS funds for stock buybacks and dividend payments, these restrictions do not explicitly prohibit award recipients from using CHIPS funds to free up their own funds, which they can then use for those purposes.”

As if all this weren’t bad enough, stock buybacks provide an added incentive for companies to monopolize their industries and keep prices high.

A new Roosevelt Institute analysis found that the 10 largest publicly traded fast-food corporations spent $6.1 billion on buybacks last year. At the same time, they hiked prices to consumers. The average markup in the fast-food industry jumped 8.4 percent last year, while markups for firms across all industries grew 6.2 percent. Fast-food corporations lasts year charged prices 27 percent above the marginal cost of production.

According to Oxfam’s recent report, America’s 200 largest corporations are more profitable than ever. Net profits soared to $1.25 trillion in 2022, a 63 percent increase over 2018. But 90 percent of that sum was paid out to shareholders ($448 billion as dividends and a record $681 billion as stock buybacks).

And because CEO pay is linked to share prices, CEO pay is through the roof. The typical worker’s pay is higher than it was two years ago, adjusted for inflation, but it is still in the cellar.

In sum, the social costs of stock buybacks continue to surge.

What’s the answer to all this?

Ban stock buybacks — as they were banned before 1983.

Why Now?

On April 23, Spokane County Commissioner Al French held a meeting at the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office Regional Training Center (“the small arms range”) on West Medical Lake Road (Hwy 902). At that meeting he offered an aspirational plan for dealing with the problem of PFAS contamination of well water on the West Plains. The tone of Mr. French’s slide presentation seemed to be “Everyone stay calm, I, Al French, have been working diligently on this problem and I have a solution.” 

Where was Mr. French when West Plains well water contamination with PFAS first came to light in 2017-2018? Both Fairchild Air Force Base and Spokane International Airport (SIA) had used PFAS-containing aqueous film-forming foams (AFFF) in firefighting drills for decades. Fairchild acknowledged its contribution to the problem early on. Thanks to a public records request we know that wells on SIA’s property also tested PFAS-positive in 2017 and again in 2019, but officials at SIA were silent. Mr. French served (and serves) on the boards of both SIA and S3R3 Solutions, a public/private partnership dedicated to development of the West Plains. Larry Krauter, the CEO of SIA, works with Mr. French on both of these boards. It strains credulity to imagine that Mr. French was not aware of the PHAS-positive well tests. 

Furthermore, as a Spokane County Commissioner representing the people of the West Plains, the plight of those drinking PFAS contaminated well water ought to have been a primary concern as soon as Fairchild and Airway Heights knew of the contamination in 2017-18. Instead, even in 2021 when Spokane County was asked to administer a grant of $450,000 to further investigate the extent of the contamination in private wells, Mr. French quietly removed it from the Commission’s meeting agenda (See below). 

So why Mr. French’s sudden interest in presenting a plan to address PFAS contamination on the West Plains? There is an election this fall. Mr. French is on the ballot and he has a very credible challenger with deep roots in the West Plains, Molly Marshall.

“The Plan”

Here is Commissioner French’s Plan as presented:

1. Spokane County currently processes 8mgd [million gallons/day] of wastewater at the Spokane Valley Water Reclamation Center
2. Transfer 8mgd of treated water via Spokane River to 7 Mile future well site
3. Pump and pipe water to the West Plains for distribution to every property, both in and outside of the cities that have been impacted by PFAS/PFOS
4. Establish a Water Utility of the members of the Leadership Group to manage water for the future

Mr. French’s cited encouraging quotes from two unnamed people: “Comment from E.P.A. Region 10 Director” and “Comment from Legislative Aide to Congresswoman McMorris Rodgers.” These are not agency sign-offs. They are off-the-cuff comments lauding a novel idea. One must ask if Mr. French has been working diligently on the Plan, why representatives of the agencies he says he’s been working with did not speak at the meeting.

The illustrations in the slide show presented by Mr. French came from the Spokane Valley—Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer Atlas, which is available through an online search or through the Spokane County or City of Spokane websites. 

The last slide in the show declared the intent to “Engineer water line to West Plains and properties” and “Construct water distribution system.”

The idea of Airway Heights drilling a new well near the Seven Mile Bridge Road as an alternative to continuing to pipe SVRP aquifer water from the City of Spokane is not new. The Seven Mile well proposal was discussed at length in the Spokesman two and half years ago in an article that made no mention of any involvement by Commissioner French. It appears that what Mr. French now adds to the Seven Mile well proposal is a water accounting trick: balance the withdrawal of water at a new Seven Mile well against water put into the SVRP Aquifer by the Spokane County Water Reclamation Facility (read sewerage treatment plant) near Freya and Trent. He then proposes to use Superfund dollars (as yet not available) to install piping from the Seven Mile well not just to Airway Heights but to every private holding on the West Plains. 

The presentation struck many as sketchy and largely aspirational. It was not universally well-received. Last Tuesday at the 2PM Spokane County Commissioners legislative session one of the residents of the West Plains had the temerity to confront Mr. French during the public comments period. You can watch the presentation here. It starts at about 2:00 (minutes) and runs three minutes. Mr. French, after two other unrelated public comments, offers a rebuttal. His comments run from 9:30 for another three minutes.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. I highly recommend reading Tim Connor’s “AL FRENCH AND THE “FOREVER CHEMICALS” COVER-UP” published December 23, 2023. It offers detailed insight into the behind-the-scenes actions of SIA officials and Mr. French. 

On what SIA officials knew—and when:

Additional testing revealed the PFAS contamination had spread well beyond Airway Heights. The Air Force expanded its response, offering free well water testing and providing water treatment systems to private well owners if tests found PFAS above a federal health advisory limit of 70 parts per trillion. By then, the management at nearby Spokane International Airport (aka Geiger Field) had test results revealing PFAS contamination in its groundwater [results obtained in 2017 and 2019]. Yet, the only thing SIA was offering its neighbors was its silence.

Emails obtained in response to public records requests offer compelling evidence that at least four SIA officials, including the airport’s CEO and public affairs director, knew about the groundwater contamination in 2017. There is no evidence the airport alerted public health officials.

As to Commissioner French’s behind-the-scenes effort to stifle further research into the extent of private well PFAS contamination:

Lindsay says French called to tell him the item had been removed from the agenda. When I [Tim Connor] asked Lindsay if French had given a reason for pulling the item he said he had; that French was “concerned about the timing and the potential effect on the airport.”

“I think my response was ‘this isn’t going away,’” Lindsay added. “And he (French) said, ‘I know that.’”

“I’m just very concerned about being potentially implicated in what I see as an obvious attempt on the part of the airport director and potentially others to hide information. And I can tell you that when I spoke to you last time, [in early June of this year] I was unaware. I was as surprised as anybody to learn that the airport board or the airport management was aware of PFAS in their wells as long ago as 2017 and 2019…it just makes me want to ask those folks out there ‘what did you know and when did you know it? In my opinion it’s lying by omission.”

–Spokane County Environmental Services Manager Rob Lindsay

Lindsay conveyed the bad news to Hermanson. Hermanson says Lindsay told him French said he’d pulled the item at the behest of a top airport official “who didn’t want people out there basically doing this work.”

By all accounts the Washington State Republican Party’s state convention held two weekends ago in downtown Spokane was a circus. Much of the news coverage was centered on the endorsement of Semi Bird for Washington State governor over former U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert. Reichert is the more obvious (and monied) candidate who would have been the establishment Republican candidate in any former time, while Bird is a man recalled from the Richland School Board in 2023, the only elective office he has ever held.

But it was the debate over the Washington State Republican Party platform that deserves scrutiny. I was brought up in a mostly Republican family in the 1950s and 60s to understand the U.S. Constitution as a hallowed document which, by sequential steps in the form of hard-fought amendments, was gradually perfected to ever greater small “d” democratic ideals, giving We the People a greater and greater direct voice in our governance. The 15th Amendment (1870) was meant to assure all men of voting rights. The 17th Amendment (1913) provided for direct election of U.S. Senators. (In the original Constitution two Senators were elected by each state’s legislature.) The 19th Amendment (1920) assured women of the right to vote.

What went on at Washington State Republican Convention in Spokane two weekends ago conformed to the very definition of reactionary, effectively wishing to dismiss what I have always understood as the fundamentally positive, small “d” democratic direction in which our country has gradually evolved from what it was before the U.S. Civil War. 

The gathering of the Washington State Republican Party was so off the rails that it made statewide and even national news. I encourage you to click this link and watch this two minute clip from the April 29 Rachel Maddow show covering a telling part of the gathering. 

The convention also made prominent state news on the west side, turning up in the Seattle Times. I’ve copied below a piece written by the excellent columnist Danny Westneat. 

Remember this Republican platform when you see someone on the ballot this fall with “Prefers Republican Party” behind their name.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

The WA GOP put it in writing that they’re not into democracy

Danny Westneat of the Seattle Times, April 24, 2024

Political forecasters called it that the state Republican convention would feature turmoil ending in endorsements of the most extreme candidates, all to match the party’s current MAGA mood.

Among the jilted was the Republican front-runner for governor, former Sheriff Dave Reichert, who was left putting out an APB for the GOP.  

“The party’s been taken hostage,” he told The Spokesman-Review.

But there was another strain to the proceedings last weekend that didn’t get much attention. Political conventions are often colorful curiosities; this one took a darker turn.

The Republican base, it turns out, is now opposed to democracy. Their words, not mine, as you’ll soon see.

After the candidates left, the convention’s delegates got down to crafting a party platform. Like at most GOP gatherings in the Donald Trump era, this one called for restrictions on voting. In Washington state, the delegates called for the end of all mail-in voting. Instead, we would have a one-day-only, in-person election, with photo ID and paper ballots, with no use of tabulating machines or digital scanners to count the ballots. All ballots would be counted by hand, by Trappist monks.

OK, I made up the monk part. I did not make up the part about banning the use of machines to count votes. All in all it would make voting less convenient and harder, by rolling it back at least half a century.

But then the convention veered into more unexpected anti-democratic territory.

A resolution called for ending the ability to vote for U.S. senators. Instead, senators would get appointed by state legislatures, as it generally worked 110 years ago prior to the passage of the 17th Amendment in 1913.

“We are devolving into a democracy, because congressmen and senators are elected by the same pool,” was how one GOP delegate put it to the convention. “We do not want to be a democracy.”

We don’t? There are debates about how complete of a democracy we wish to be; for example, the state Democratic Party platform has called for the direct election of the president (doing away with the Electoral College). But curtailing our own vote? The GOPers said they hoped states’ rights would be strengthened with such a move.

Then they kicked it up a notch. They passed a resolution calling on people to please stop using the word “democracy.”

“We encourage Republicans to substitute the words ‘republic’ and ‘republicanism’ where previously they have used the word ‘democracy,’ ” the resolution says. “Every time the word ‘democracy’ is used favorably it serves to promote the principles of the Democratic Party, the principles of which we ardently oppose.”

The resolution sums up: “We … oppose legislation which makes our nation more democratic in nature.”

It wasn’t that long ago when Republican presidents would extol democracy as America’s greatest export. Or sometimes try to share it with others down the barrel of a gun (see George W. Bush, Iraq).

Now the party is saying they don’t even want to hear the d-word anymore.

Of course we are not donning togas and rushing down to the acropolis to vote on legislation. So it’s true we don’t often act as a direct democracy (initiatives and referendums being exceptions).

It’s a hybrid system, a representative democracy, with the people periodically voting for elected leaders to do that legislating work for us. During much of our lifetimes the debate in this arena has been: How can representative democracy be made more representative? How can more voices be heard?

It’s jarring to hear a major political party declare that they’re done with that. They’re not even paying it lip service. You can’t get any blunter than “we oppose making our nation more democratic.”

Not everyone at the convention agreed with those sentiments, though they were strongly outvoted. Some of the delegates seemed to have contempt for voting and voters — at least when they come out on the losing end of it.

“The same people who select the baboons in Olympia are the ones selecting your senators,” said one delegate in remarks to the convention hall.

A party platform is a statement of principles; it has little to no chance of being implemented. So it’s tempting to ignore it. Or wish it away, as Reichert is trying to do, by suggesting the real party is out there somewhere having been abducted by impostors.

When people say “democracy itself is on the ballot” in this election, though, I think this is what they’re talking about.

For years now, since Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election, some Republicans have been on the defensive about charges they’re flirting with anti-democratic impulses or authoritarianism.

A while back, this newspaper ran an Op-Ed from a leading conservative, the editor of the National Review, Ramesh Ponnuru. He argued that despite Trump’s attempts to block the transfer of power, and the party largely backing him up on that, the whole thing has been blown out of proportion. It’s become a myth that Democrats hold about Republicans, he suggested. It’s similar, he argued, to the misconceptions Republicans have that Democrats are committing mass election fraud.

“Republicans aren’t against democracy,” was the headline of that Op-Ed.

Well a few years have passed, and now they’re putting it in writing.

Danny Westneat: dwestneat@seattletimes.com; Danny Westneat takes an opinionated look at the Puget Sound region’s news, people and politics.

How to look at them and what they might mean

All the candidates running in WA Congressional District 5 (eastern Washington) to replace retiring Republican U.S. Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers had to file their campaign finance reports with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) by March 31. On Sunday, April 28, Emry Dinman presented data in the Spokesman that he had crunched from the campaign finance numbers accessible on fec.gov. Hats off to Mr. Dinman. Navigating the FEC website requires diligence. Here’s the summary of the dollar numbers from Mr. Dinman’s article:

The total amount raised by the Prefers Democratic Party candidates (Conroy, Danimus, Bank, and Welde) is, in round thousands, $412K. The total raised by the Prefers Republican Party candidates is $607K. 

But let’s consider the numbers of contributors. Combing the numbers at fec.gov, the total number of contributors to campaigns of Democrats is 5,591. That is more than 9X the total of 616 individual contributors to Republicans. Ann Marie Danimus has been campaigning for many months longer than any of all the others, but, even so, her total number of individual donors is remarkable at 4179. Even if we discount that number as a wild outlier, the total Dem’s number of donors remaining is 1412 and that is still 2.3 times the number of donors to all the Republicans put together. 

Baumgartner likes to brag about his fundraising prowess. He is quoted in the April 9th Spokesman, “It takes more than just money to win in politics, but this is a good benchmark of who has the momentum and who has the most supporters.” Self-serving BS. What Mr. Baumgartner did not tout, and for good reason, is that his haul of $404K came from less than half the number of donors of his closest competitor, Carmela Conroy (419 to 938). That is far, far less than Ann Marie Danimus’ 4179 contributors, and also less than Bernie Bank’s 454. Baumgartner is bragging about having a lot of monied contacts.

Jacqueline Maycumber’s numbers, the second biggest Republican fundraiser and fourth overall, are even more telling. Her entire haul of $139K comes from just 89 high dollar contributors.

Absolute numbers of dollars are important, but they are only part of the story. Numbers of contributors offers a different narrative. In the end it is the number of votes that counts. Insofar as numbers of contributors speaks of interest in the election, numbers of small dollar contributors speaks volumes. 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. A few side notes:

1. Yes, three of the four Democratic candidates for CD5 have a head start in small dollar donations, having begun their campaigns before McMorris Rodgers disclosed (at least publicly) that she was retiring after her current term ends at the end of this year. Time will likely change some of the ratios calculated above.
2. Take note that fec.gov only reports on candidates for federal office, i.e. U.S. Reps, U.S. Senators, and the President/VP ticket. If you want to explore campaign finance for candidates for Washington statewide or local races you need to go to the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission, pdc.wa.gov. There you’ll need to mount a new and different learning curve. 
3. Figuring out actual donor’s names on fec.gov is an interesting challenge thanks to Actblue (established 2004) and WinRed (established 2019). Click the names to read interesting Wikipedia articles. Both are political action committees (PACs) that mostly serve to facilitate the collection of campaign contributions for Democratic and Republican candidates, respectively. Actblue, acting a lot like a credit card company, skims 3.9% off the electronic donations processed through the platform. WinRed skims a similar amount. That said, both make donating to a candidate’s campaign something that can be done on the spur of the moment unhampered by writing a check, addressing an envelope, finding the postage and putting the donation in the mail. No doubt the convenience they offer has stimulated contributions that might not otherwise have been made. Both PACs make researching contributors to federal candidates more challenging. A contribution made through either of them appears on the candidates’ pages with the PAC name only. To figure out who the actual contributor is requires several additional time-consuming steps.