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Dear Group, I was going to take the day off today, but then I read my email from Avista…and I can’t resist a comment. (The full text of the email is copied below, just to show I’m not making this up.) McMorris Rodgers, as you know, has been beating her messaging drum about the Republican Tax Law in an effort to sell it to the voters. She is so committed to her canned message she even dragged out “money in your pocket” for her opening remarks to high school students at a town hall on School Safety on Maundy Thursday at Ferris. Is she tone deaf…or was she nervous the students would want to talk about guns? Did “money in your pocket” come out as a reversion to comfort zone? In any case, polls have suggested her hand-crafted message is not sitting particularly well with the general populace. That fact only seems to make her more anxious to repeat her same talking points. When she pulls the string that activates her talking points on the Republican Tax Law the sound bite that falls out always includes “money in your pocket.” Then comes the well-worn calculation about the extra $2000 or so some hypothetical “average” taxpayer with a family income of $70,000 is supposed to get next year. A favorite local example of a bonus (and the one she memorably touted to the students at Ferris) is the “up to” $1000 Home Depot said last January it would give its employees. Earlier in the day of the Ferris event McMorris Rodgers had spent a few minutes as a stand-in employee. (You can see a clip of how that went here on the Katie Tur Show on MSNBC.) Of course, a one-time bonus offered by a huge company to their employees (more than a year before the effect of the Tax Law is actually felt) is nothing more than a public relations thank you to the Republican Party, a thank you for the eighty percent of the tax law proceeds (and increase in the national debt) that accrues to these companies and their owners. That eighty percent McMorris Rodgers seems incapable of discussing. The Home Depot bonus McMorris Rodgers touted was particularly sour since one of the founders of Home Depot, Ken Langone (current net worth 3.3 billion according to Forbes, up from 2.7 billion in 2014), is one of the frequent fliers in the Koch donor group chronicled in Jane Mayer’s book “Dark Money.” (See References below). The Koch group was among the most insistent in pushing the Tax Bill. Self interest knows no bounds. So why did the Avista email catch my eye? Here’s the excerpt (bold is mine): You may have heard that the Commission recently made a decision on our filings that will change your electric and natural gas rates beginning May 1, 2018. We’re pleased that these new rates include passing benefits of the federal Tax Cuts and Jobs Act to our customers through rates. Based on average monthly usage, residential customers in Washington can expect the following bill changes:
• Electric: Bill increase of $1.87 or 2.2 percent, for a revised monthly bill of $88.45. • Natural gas: Bill decrease of $0.77 or 1.5, percent for a revised monthly bill of $52.03. I burst out laughing when I read that. The “benefits” of the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” they’re passing along results in a net $1.10 increase in the average monthly bill! Are they math challenged at Avista or are they saying the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is a complete hoax? I know. I know. Mr. Christie, the author of the Avista email, only said the new rates “include” the “benefits” of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Must be monstrous “benefits” to result in a net increase in your utility bill… Keep to the high ground, Jerry Full text of the email I received from Avista May 2, 2018 at 5AM: Dear Avista Customer, In May 2017, we told you about filings we made with the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission to recover costs related to infrastructure, system maintenance, technology and power supply to serve our customers that would change the price you pay for energy. These requests were driven by the ongoing maintenance and improvements we make every year to the massive infrastructure of poles, dams, turbines, substations, pipes, and other equipment that provides you with safe and reliable power and natural gas. You may have heard that the Commission recently made a decision on our filings that will change your electric and natural gas rates beginning May 1, 2018. We’re pleased that these new rates include passing benefits of the federal Tax Cuts and Jobs Act to our customers through rates. Based on average monthly usage, residential customers in Washington can expect the following bill changes: • Electric: Bill increase of $1.87 or 2.2 percent, for a revised monthly bill of $88.45. • Natural gas: Bill decrease of $0.77 or 1.5, percent for a revised monthly bill of $52.03. It’s important to remember that the Commission sets the rate you pay for the energy you use. You can learn more about this and your energy prices here. Take control of your energy use Your monthly energy bill is influenced not only by the price of energy but also by the amount of energy you use. Avista offers a variety of ways for you to manage or reduce your usage and save on your bill. Learn more here. We know you want prices that are fair and reasonable, and so do we. Thank you, Kevin Christie, Vice President, External Affairs and Chief Customer Officer Avista Utilities |
CMR and Term Limits
Dear Group,
On Good Friday at Centerplace, McMorris Rodgers was asked about term limits. The question brought to mind the attack George Nethercutt unleashed on Tom Foley in 1994 when Foley argued honestly against term limits. At the time Nethercutt’s argument resonated as part of a national drumbeat against incumbent politicians. Four years later, after Nethercutt’s first two terms, he had a change of heart and ran again, a term beyond the limit he had promoted. The power of incumbency and the fading of the term limit argument allowed him to remain in office.
Like so many issues that make convenient sound bites in one argument and inconvenient sound bites in another (State’s Rights comes to mind), the term limit issue requires careful deployment.
McMorris Rodgers’ answer? She’s against mandatory term limits for Representatives. No surprise there. I agree with her. I even agree with the bulk of her argument. In four years (two two-year terms) a typical Representative is likely to have barely figured out the job. When new Representatives go to Washington, D.C. they need to establish relationships, learn the personalities, figure out who does what. After McMorris Rodgers’ thirteen and a half years in office she feels she is just hitting her stride.
The Congressional Representative does not go to D.C. and work alone. There is staff to hire and manage. These offices are small beehives swarming with people, some from the home district and some who have been enmeshed in the D.C. social and legislative machine for years. Between the D.C. and home district offices the Representative hires (with taxpayer money), interacts with, and is influenced and nurtured by around twenty worker bees. (For a look at CMR’s operation visit my post on the “Member’s Representational Allowance.”)
The Representative’s office personnel doesn’t count the swarm of well-paid career lobbyists circulating through their offices, forming relationships and interacting with the staff. For a recent and pertinent example of how Congressional staff rolls from a Representative’s service to the service of the lobbyists with whom they’ve formed relationships visit my post “M Perez And CMR” detailing Megan Perez’ migration to the Petrizzo Group and possibly to the service of the Petrizzo Group’s client Omeros.
In sum, it takes time for a Representative to establish a foothold. For a Representative to continue to serve their District and not become a cog in the D.C. machine requires qualities of diligence, intelligence, integrity and exceptional skill in choosing staff.
McMorris Rodgers has become a cog in the machine. She has joined the club. On a broad scale she functions as the message spreading and crafting maven of the Republican machine. She knows no other voice. She cheerleads the Tax Bill, the Repeal of the Individual Mandate, and oil drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge with no hint of nuance or substantive, reasoned argument. Hers are polished one-liners and short memorized paragraphs. “Never stray from the canned message” could be her motto. On a smaller scale she has succumbed to the siren song of the lobbyists. She defends an expensive perk to small Seattle drug company with a big lobbying budget by chanting that their obscure pupillary dilator (“Omidria”) as an example of “innovative, life-changing drugs,” something it certainly is not. See A Nice Business Perk With Your Omnibus Spending Bill, Sir?“
I find myself in unusual agreement with McMorris Rodgers on the subject of mandatory Term Limits. Longevity in Congress can have value for the home district, but only if the Representative is not mostly or wholly subsumed by the ideology of the national Party and the lobbying machine of the District of Columbia. McMorris Rodgers fails on both counts.
Keep to the High Ground,
Jerry
Drip, Drip, Drip–The Changing of Minds
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In Her Own Words
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FEC Rules And Volunteers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIH_kBQdmdQ&feature=youtu.be
Dear Group,
Have you ever felt uneasy about working with a political candidate or political party for fear you might be breaking some arcane campaign finance rule? I have. Digging around the Federal Elections Commission website FEC.gov wasn’t a lot of help at first, but then I found a link there to https://www.youtube.com/user/FECTube. It is a trove in nicely explained information. I haven’t digested more than a fraction of it so far. The video above answered a lot of questions I had.
First, remember these are the FEDERAL (Federal Elections Commission, FEC) rules, not the Washington State rules. The state rules are somewhat different and we’re not dealing with them today.
I got to thinking about this because I know a lot of people who are donating time and effort to political campaigns. It is clear to me that the monetary advantages of a Republican incumbent can only be overcome with “boots on the ground” AND money. I’m delighted to see the ranks swelling every day, folks knocking on doors, talking to neighbors, planting signs…and friends with Republican leanings acknowledging it is time for a change….
I urge you to watch the video above, but the short take is this:
- The volunteering of all personal services, as long as one receives no compensation in return, is NOT considered a campaign contribution. So writing a blog, canvassing, training others, or hosting an event in one’s home related to a federal candidate or a political party…all that is NOT a campaign contribution. Phew!
- The use of space in a home, library, church or community center is also NOT a campaign contribution as long as it is a space that a member or citizen can ordinarily use without paying a fee. If there usually IS a fee then that should be reported as a contribution. A discount offered to whatever is the regular fee is also an “in-kind” contribution and should be reported.
- “Independent Expenditures,” like a billboard not coordinated with a Party or a Campaign have special reporting rules I’d have to study more.
There is always a lot more to learn.
If you want to get out in the nice weather tomorrow as one of those volunteers, there is a canvass in the Perry District from 10A-1PM. Check it out and sign up here.
Back on Monday.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
M Perez And CMR
Dear Group,
Megan Perez is leaving McMorris Rodgers’ staff, according to her LinkedIn page, Most of you have probably never heard of Ms. Perez, but I find her story most interesting. Ms. Perez has served McMorris Rodgers as her “Legislative Director” for a year and eight months and as “Policy Advisor” for the ten months prior. As Legislative Director Ms. Perez annualized salary was $94,000 (see page 1370). Her LinkedIn page is worth visiting. Ms. Perez lays claim to a pivotal roll in legislation with which we are familiar, for example, the ABLE Act and the Steve Gleason Act, as well as work to “analyze and provide guidance on legislative policy on healthcare.” It is probably fair to assume Ms. Perez contributed to the last minute insertion into the Omnibus Appropriations (Spending) Bill a nice perk for the Omeros Corporation. I wonder if she is also responsible for McMorris Rodgers, framing the Omeros perk as ensuring access to “safe, innovative, and life-changing drug[s]?” The sole purpose at least of the Omeros drug in question, Omidria, is to dilate the pupil in cataract surgery, (For more detail check out my post from March 27, 2018.)
Ms. Perez is leaving McMorris Rodgers to join the Petrizzo Group. Never heard of it? Neither had I, but through the wonders of the internet you can visit its public face with just a click. I encourage you to visit and read what they offer…and to whom they offer it. The website mentions no partisan lean, only that they “…excel at complicated, high-stakes endeavors that blend skilled thinking, sophisticated strategy and precise execution.” Among the notable accomplishments they cite is “engaging influential policymakers on national healthcare issues.” They appear to me as the perfect example of a firm that makes its money by lobbying. Photos of the U.S. Capitol and Lincoln’s statue in the Lincoln Memorial are featured on the website. (Is Lincoln’s image borrowed as code for a Party whose major fundraising event is a “Lincoln Day” dinner?)
I pursued Ms. Perez’ imminent migration to the Patrizzo Group from McMorris Rodgers’ office while wondering if Ms. Perez were leaving what she may perceive as McMorris Rodgers’ sinking ship. Was she bailing out to the safety of a lobbyist position, part of the infamous D.C. “revolving door” between lawmaker’s offices and the lobbyists who are paid to influence them? While visiting the Petrizzo Group website, I clicked “Our Clients.” There I found eleven corporate insignia from the familiar (Starbucks), to the obscure (BSquare). But right there in the middle was Omeros, one of the companies for which McMorris Rodgers inserted a nice little perk paying out a total $26 million dollars over ten years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Even better, some investors must have gotten advance word, since the stock price of Omeros jumped 45% over the Wednesday night before the Omnibus Spending Bill finally passed on Friday.
On Good Friday at Centerplace in Spokane Valley McMorris Rodgers was specifically asked about the newspaper reports on the Omeros perk. For an instant she appeared flustered…and immediately reverted to message, defending her insertion to the bill as necessary “to provide patients across the country access to safe, innovative, life-changing drugs.” Omidria, a $400 per dose drug for dilating the pupil, fits none of those adjectives. Either McMorris Rodgers did not do her homework to understand the drugs for which she was putting forward this exception to Medicare rules or she did understand them and assumed the voters would be mollified by her messaging. In either case she failed us and she seems unwilling to live up to that failure. Even if we believed health care in this country were really a free market (it isn’t), how can she justify legislating a specific exception to Medicare rules for the benefit of a select few drug companies?
There is a pattern here. McMorris Rodgers and her Republican colleagues want to rein in the costs of “entitlement” programs, i.e. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act. She votes for a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution. It is just too expensive, too much of a strain on the federal budget to continue, she says…and then she legislates special expenditures out of those same tax coffers for a handful of drug companies.
She is either appeasing a Republican donor or she is in over her head. Either way, she is not representing my best interests or the interests of eastern Washington.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. The Petrizzo Group is not on K Street, the infamous location of so many lobbying firms. If proximity is any measure of wealth and influence take note: the Petrizzo Group is located at an easy ten minute walk from the U.S. Capitol. K Street is twice as far away.
P.P.S. Ms. Perez LinkedIn resume shows she has worked for U.S. Representatives since she graduated from the University of South Florida with a B.A. in Political Science in 2011. While still in college she served as an intern with Rep. Bill Young of south Florida, at time the longest-serving Republican member of Congress. It is probably fair to guess Ms. Perez will be amply rewarded in her new position with the Petrizzo Group. Not bad for someone apparently in her late twenties with an undergraduate degree in Political Science.
CMR/Republican “Ethics”
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Dear Group, The beginning of the 115th Congress (running from January 3, 2017 to January 3, 2019) seems like a lifetime ago, but we in Washington State Congressional District 5 would do well to remember it. Right at the opening of the 115th Congress, McMorris Rodgers, as Chair of the House Republican Congress, presided over a closed door meeting in which the first act was an attempt to eliminate the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) and put its function under the control of the House Ethics Committee. The key concept here is that the OCE is independent of House leadership, while the House Ethics Committee is directly responsive to the majority party. Elimination of the independent, non-partisan Office of Congressional Ethics at the opening of the 115th Congress was a blatant attempt to avoid scrutiny. It is essentially the House Republicans saying, “We want to control whether or not any ethics investigation of our members moves forward. We’re obviously so ethical we will assume responsibility for policing ourselves.” What were they thinking? McMorris Rodgers personally has reason to wish the independent Office of Congressional Ethics didn’t exist. Shawn Vestal wrote a scathing article in the Spokesman on McMorris Rodgers’ involvement in January 2017 in the dust-up after the Republican effort to disband the OCE: She has a history with the Office of Congressional Ethics and the House Ethics Committee. The former produced a stinging report in 2014 that McMorris Rodgers had apparently broken House rules and federal law by using taxpayer resources in election campaigns, and it recommended the Ethics Committee delve into the matter further. The committee declined, in utter silence. Vestal adds: “McMorris Rodgers told a reporter for Cox Media that she would have voted for the proposal had it been brought to the House for a vote.” I was reminded of ethics referral yesterday when I was researching the Members Representational Allowance. Taxpayer money used to cover House duties must be kept separate from campaign money (and also cannot be used for personal expenses). The allegations against McMorris Rodgers were referred from the independent Office of Congressional Ethics (the office she wanted to eliminate) to the House Ethics Committee with the following words, “...there is substantial reason to believe that Representative McMorris Rodgers used congressional funds, staff, and office space for campaign activities.” A specific allegation is that she used taxpayer dollars in her campaign in 2012 to become the Chair of the House Republican Conference, a position she assumed on January 3, 2013. Todd Winer, McMorris Rodgers former communications director (later the same for Raúl Labrador) is one of the sources. Part of his complaint can be read here in Roll Call. In it he adds that he was not the origin of the original complaint. On December 23, 2013, the Office of Congressional Ethics transmitted its referral of the matter to the House Ethics Committee for further investigation and review. By that time it was clear the House would remain under the control of a Republican majority. Three months later in early 2014 several articles appeared confirming the referral would languish in House Ethics Committee. The issue disappeared from the news until McMorris Rodgers was floated as a contender for a cabinet position heading the Department of the Interior after the Trump election: Read and listen to “Trump’s likely Interior pick from Spokane still under ethics probe” from KUOW on December 13. Perhaps that article was fresh in her mind when less than a month later she chaired the meeting that tried to eliminate the Office of Congressional Ethics entirely. Has she been in Washington, D.C. so long she thought no one was paying attention? If the allegations from the OCE referral have no merit why were they not investigated and dispensed with by the House Ethics Committee in 2014 when they received the referral? What are they afraid of? When McMorris Rodgers offers her slightly nervous toothy smile along with her tired talking points I see a conniving politician who has too long been in Washington. Judging by the article that appeared in Politico on Monday entitled, “The one woman in Republican leadership is under siege” I’m not alone. Keep to the high ground, Jerry |