Author: jxindivisible

On Sunday, September 6, the upbringing and life of Aaron “Jay” Danielson, the man shot dead in Portland last week, was featured on the front page of the Spokesman Review. The article was entitled entitled “Search for Meaning” (in the paper version). Ted McDermott wrote his piece based primarily on interviews with Danielson’s father and stepmother. They live in Green Bluff, north of Spokane, the same area that Mr. Danielson spent his first twenty years of his yearly forty year life. I recommend the article. It does a good job of reminding us that every person has a story that precedes whatever thrusts them into the spotlight. That’s important. It is also a story of radicalization both of Aaron “Jay” Danielson, a radicalization that pulled Mr. Danielson’s parents some distance in the same direction. Mr. Danielson took a hard rightward turn around the time he hooked up with Joey Gibson and Gibson’s “Patriot Prayer.” During this period Danielson sent his parents links to right wing conspiracy videos that documented the views he was taking on. Last Saturday, August 29, Danielson rode with Gibson in the back of a pickup truck into Portland as part of the Trump-supporters caravan. Some of the participants shot paintballs and released bear spray at the bystanders. At 8:46PM, a quarter hour after the caravan left Portland, Jay Danielson, owner of a local moving business, accompanied by Chandler Pappas, another Patriot Prayer member, was walking a Portland street, wearing a Patriot Prayer hat, with a canister of bear spray in one hand, a collapsable baton in the other, and a loaded Glock pistol in his waistband, in short, a man looking for, or at least fully prepared for, a fight—and a man easily mistaken for Joey Gibson himself.  The man who allegedly shot Danielson, Michael Forest Reinoehl, now also dead in a hail of bullets shot by law enforcement, was similarly radicalized, but on the other side.  Like Danielson, Michael Forest Reinoehl has a story that leads up to the confrontation that ultimately left both men dead. He was doubtlessly propelled by extremist beliefs, just like Danielson, but on the other end of the spectrum. How did he arrive at those beliefs? Did he think he was shooting Joey Gibson? Did Gibson and Reinoehl have a history (maybe dating to the Cider Riot incident for which Gibson is [as far as I can learn] still under indictment for incitement, as well as facing a civil suit for damages)? What were the influences that radicalized Reinoehl? The “Meaning” in the “Search for Meaning” in this series of horrible events lies in the radicalization of these two men, Danielson and Reinoehl. Danielson is not representative of the majority of the people in the Trump caravan that preceded the shooting and Reinoehl is not representative of the majority of Black Lives Matter demonstrators. Both men were radicalized by in our dangerously polarized times.  Why was Danielson armed, wearing a Patriot Prayer hat, and walking in downtown Portland after the Trump caravan had left the city? Danielson’s father offers us some clues: “He started to get more and more concerned about government taking over, the U.N. coming in, China controlling everything. I mean, we started hearing about it. We hadn’t heard about it before that. He started getting very, very concerned.” Dave said he was texting them and “having us watch videos of things almost on a daily basis for two or three months. So it had escalated.” Some of what he sent, Dave said, was about how “Biden was linked with China” and how “their plan was to control the food as a possibility, so stock up. There was lots more that we deleted.” “Some of them, I thought, were a stretch,” Dave said. “Some of them seemed right on.” He also said he doesn’t believe his son was an extremist. The U.N. “coming in?” Biden “linked with China?” Government taking over? China controlling everything? “Their plan to control the food?” These are the recurring nightmares of the fevered right, the pipe dreams of groups like the John Birch Society and some Fundamentalist end-times preachers. As Dave (Jay’s father) says, they are “a stretch.” More worrisome is that Dave adds, “Some [unspecified] seem right on.” Which ones?  Perhaps Jay Danielson wasn’t an extremist, as his father believes, but Jay was certainly propelled by an extremist belief system fostered by the extreme right wing, pushed by conspiracy theorists and endorsers of conspiracy theories like Alex Jones and Donald Trump. Still, most of us in this crazy world, including Jay’s parents (and even Jay) want the same thing–the peace in which to live our lives. “It seems it has to mean something that a young man as wonderful as he was, that he was assassinated,” Dave [Danielson’s 80 year old father, resident of Green Bluff] said. “It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense. And maybe for Jay, this will serve as a catalyst, springboard, to wake people up that something awful has happened to our country and they have the power to do something about it.” “Without using guns,” Mary chimed in.  [The bold is mine.] Dave said he wants to see Democrats “get together with the Republican side and put a stop to this violence.” “If I can lose the life of my son,” Dave said, “they can sit down at a table and be civil to each other and start to work something out. I deserve that as a citizen.” I fervently share Dave and Mary Danielson’s wish. They sound like good people with whom I could find much in common. Nonetheless, I fear that while Donald Trump, the Great Divider and chief conspiracy theory promoter, remains President, and Mitch McConnell rules a U.S. Senate majority, we are destined for more people parading with guns, further polarization, and no peace. Vote. Keep to the high ground, Jerry P.S. Joey Gibson is an armed professional right wing agitator with multiple connections to armed right wing figures in our region: Matt Shea and his Covenant Church in north Spokane, and Ammon Bundy to name just two. Gibson appeared a Matt Shea’s May 1 protest against Jay Inslee’s lockdown order, in front of Dr. Bob Lutz’s homewith Casey Whalen ludicrously protesting against the mask mandate, and at the Spokane City Council in support of Covenant Church’s “Church at Planned Parenthood” as the City Council debated a noise ordinance on March 2.  Joey Gibson radicalized Mr. Danielson, and now, with Danielson dead from a bullet that might have been meant for Gibson, Gibson is in the business of using the media to eulogize Mr. Danielson and make him a martyr. Agitators egg people on, spin them up, until someone gets killed, then they take advantage of the fallout to spin things up further. Pay attention. This is a local manifestation of Trump’s “law and order” message.

The article that follows appeared originally in The Atlantic on August 25, 2020. Since then it has been re-published in multiple venues. It lays out the Republican platform that Trump and the Republican Party have made clear over the last four years. Mr. Frum is correct. Much of this platform has been evident for decades. Trump, by saying and tweeting “the quiet parts out loud” and by dog-whistling to the nastiest members of the base that elected him, has clarified the platform so well that actual publication of it would be a mistake.

To Mr. Frum’s listing of thirteen planks I would add a 14th plank: Judges are appointed to serve the interests of the Republican Party as laid out in the first thirteen planks. Senate precedent is to be ignored in this quest to advance our interests. (As in the Republican majority Senate simply refusing to consider judges nominated to federal courts by Barrack Obama.)

Enjoy your Labor Day. Learn the history of the holiday and why much of the last four years has been antithetical to its spirit. 

It is two months to the general election. Hang on tight. If recent events are an indication it is likely to be a rough ride.

Keep to the high ground,
Jerry


The Platform the GOP Is Too Scared to Publish

by David Frum

Republicans have decided not to publish a party platform for 2020.

This omission has led some to conclude that the GOP lacks ideas, that it stands for nothing, that it has shriveled to little more than a Trump cult.

This conclusion is wrong. The Republican Party of 2020 has lots of ideas. I’m about to list 13 ideas that command almost universal assent within the Trump administration, within the Republican caucuses of the U.S. House and Senate, among governors and state legislators, on Fox News, and among rank-and-file Republicans.

Once you read the list, I think you’ll agree that these are authentic ideas with meaningful policy consequences, and that they are broadly shared. The question is not why Republicans lack a coherent platform; it’s why they’re so reluctant to publish the one on which they’re running.

1) The most important mechanism of economic policy—not the only tool, but the most important—is adjusting the burden of taxation on society’s richest citizens. Lower this level, as Republicans did in 2017, and prosperity will follow. The economy has had a temporary setback, but thanks to the tax cut of 2017, recovery is ready to follow strongly. No further policy change is required, except possibly lower taxes still.

2) The coronavirus is a much-overhyped problem. It’s not that dangerous and will soon burn itself out. States should reopen their economies as rapidly as possible, and accept the ensuing casualties as a cost worth paying—and certainly a better trade-off than saving every last life by shutting down state economies. Masking is useless and theatrical, if not outright counterproductive.

3) Climate change is a much-overhyped problem. It’s probably not happening. If it is happening, it’s not worth worrying about. If it’s worth worrying about, it’s certainly not worth paying trillions of dollars to amend. To the extent it is real, it will be dealt with in the fullness of time by the technologies of tomorrow. Regulations to protect the environment unnecessarily impede economic growth.

4) China has become an economic and geopolitical adversary of the United States. Military spending should be invested with an eye to defeating China on the seas, in space, and in the cyberrealm. U.S. economic policy should recognize that relations with China are zero-sum: When China wins, the U.S. loses, and vice versa.

5) The trade and alliance structures built after World War II are outdated. America still needs partners, of course, especially Israel and maybe Russia. But the days of NATO and the World Trade Organization are over. The European Union should be treated as a rival, the United Kingdom and Japan should be treated as subordinates, and Canada, Australia, and Mexico should be treated as dependencies. If America acts decisively, allies will have to follow whether they like it or not—as they will have to follow U.S. policy on Iran.

6) Health care is a purchase like any other. Individuals should make their own best deals in the insurance market with minimal government supervision. Those who pay more should get more. Those who cannot pay must rely on Medicaid, accept charity, or go without.

7) Voting is a privilege. States should have wide latitude to regulate that privilege in such a way as to minimize voting fraud, which is rife among Black Americans and new immigrant communities. The federal role in voting oversight should be limited to preventing Democrats from abusing the U.S. Postal Service to enable fraud by their voters.

8) Anti-Black racism has ceased to be an important problem in American life. At this point, the people most likely to be targets of adverse discrimination are whites, Christians, and Asian university applicants. Federal civil-rights-enforcement resources should concentrate on protecting them.

9) The courts should move gradually and carefully toward eliminating the mistake made in 1965, when women’s sexual privacy was elevated into a constitutional right.

10) The post-Watergate ethics reforms overreached. We should welcome the trend toward unrestricted and secret campaign donations. Overly strict conflict-of-interest rules will only bar wealthy and successful businesspeople from public service. Without endorsing every particular action by the president and his family, the Trump administration has met all reasonable ethical standards.

11) Trump’s border wall is the right policy to slow illegal immigration; the task of enforcing immigration rules should not fall on business operators. Some deal on illegal immigration must be found. The most important Republican priority in any such deal is to delay as long as possible full citizenship, voting rights, and health-care benefits for people who entered the country illegally.

12) The country is gripped by a surge of crime and lawlessness as a result of the Black Lives Matter movement and its criticism of police. Police misconduct, such as that in the George Floyd case, should be punished. But the priority now should be to stop crime by empowering police.

13) Civility and respect are cherished ideals. But in the face of the overwhelming and unfair onslaught against President Donald Trump by the media and the “deep state,” his occasional excesses on Twitter and at his rallies should be understood as pardonable reactions to much more severe misconduct by others.

So there’s the platform. Why not publish it?

There are two answers to that question, one simple, one more complicated.

The simple answer is that President Trump’s impulsive management style has cast his convention into chaos. The location, the speaking program, the arrangements—all were decided at the last minute. Managing the rollout of a platform as well was just one task too many.

The more complicated answer is that the platform I’ve just described, like so much of the Trump-Republican program, commands support among only a minority of the American people. The platform works (to the extent it does work) by exciting enthusiastic support among Trump supporters; but when stated too explicitly, it invites a backlash among the American majority. This is a platform for a party that talks to itself, not to the rest of the country. And for those purposes, the platform will succeed most to the extent that it is communicated only implicitly, to those receptive to its message.

The challenge for Republicans in the week ahead is to hope that President Trump can remember, night after night, to speak only the things he’s supposed to speak—not to blurt the things his party wants its supporters to absorb unspoken.

The economy is shaky. People have lost their jobs. Families are running out of money with which to feed themselves and pay the rent. Teachers are challenged to educate the country’s children using the internet alone or by combining the internet and some version of in-person classes. Teachers, especially older ones with underlying health issues, face the risk of contracting Covid-19 from the children they teach. Meanwhile, families in Spokane County struggle with what is sometimes third world internet access as they try to balance at home learning, child care, and the risk of children returning to school. Families, children, and teachers are all stressed.

Former Legislative District 6 (southwest Spokane County) WA State Senator and current Spokane County Treasurer, Michael Baumgartner offers advice. His solution for the county’s fiscal woes and challenges facing education: Cut teacher salaries! The school districts should offer families a stipend to make up for the loss of in school instruction. In other words, instead of supporting public education as it faces the challenges of the pandemic, let’s defund and undercut it! A formulaic Republican fiscal opportunity! 

He offered his teacher pay cut proposal in the same news conference he used to announce he was extending the deadline for payment of property taxes. Extend the deadline, not cancel. That’s not in his power, he said. Neither is it within his power to cut teacher salaries, so why suggest it? In times of budget constraint it is a standard Republican tactic to focus attention (and therefore blame and a reason for them to sacrifice) on any group they can paint as under-performing and/or over-compensated. Remember Reagan’s “welfare queens” and his obsession with cutting income tax? 

According to a Spokesman article from June 24, 2020, “A beginning teacher with a bachelor’s degree and no experience is scheduled to earn $50,424. That jumps to $79,275 for a teacher with a master’s and 10 years in the classroom.”* At the very top end of the scale a Spokane Public Schools teacher can make (with extra hours) $101,482. Mr. Baumgartner makes $111,562.49. A high school science teacher with twenty years experience, teaching Advanced Placement course, and trying hard to incorporate online teaching into the curriculum is likely working harder than Mr. Baumgartner and probably has more education. Is Mr. B turning back some of his salary?

Like the entire Republican Party, Mr. Baumgartner is incapable of admitting that the State of Washington has the most regressive state tax system of all fifty states. (Roughly 50% of Washington State taxes are spent education.) “Poor residents here pay 16.8 percent of family income in state and local taxes while the wealthiest 1 percent pay only 2.4 percent.” To Republicans that’s the way it should be. The Republican answer to any shortfall, like the one we now face (consider the drop in revenue from shrinking sales tax receipts, a particularly regressive tax), is to ignore the revenue side of the budget and concentrate on defunding social services, education in particular.

For Michael Baumgartner government is not about collaboration, it’s about sticking it to people. The 2012 McCleary Washington State Supreme Court Decision told the State Legislature to live up to the State Constitution’s promise to provide “ample” funding for basic education. State Republicans maneuvered to avoid actually addressing the regressiveness of our state tax system. Instead they managed to wring out a compromise that drained funds from Spokane Public Schools and then blamed recent and long overdue teacher raises for the required belt tightening. The compromise “levy swap equalization” squeezed money out of school districts that were relatively well funded in order to shift the money to less well-funded districts and comply with the McCleary v. Washington decision. Republican legislators got a twofer: they avoided addressing of the regressive state system and (with the help of the Spokesman) they got reporting that put a lot of the blame for the Spokane Public Schools’ shortfall on the teachers and the teachers’ union. In a fundraising email from Baumgartner on July 21, 2017 he was proud of the Republican strategy to get around raising taxes–in Republican districts:

…we triangulated a strategy to fund the state’s K-12 McCleary case through a “levy swap equalization” that will reduce overall property taxes on nearly 75% of households (largely in areas represented by Republicans) and increase property taxes largely in the Seattle area (represented by Democrats).

Rural, previously underfunded school districts, often in predominantly Republican areas, got some improvement in funding through McCleary and Republicans like Baumgartner got to crow about sticking it to areas with more Democratic populations. What a nice civic-minded guy, don’t you think? 

Remember Baumgartner’s and his Republican Party’s tactics when you vote this November. Unfortunately, current Spokane County Treasurer Michael Baumgartner doesn’t face re-election until 2022. 

Keep to the high ground,
Jerry

*Tellingly, the Spokesman article discussing teacher salaries put the highest salary any teacher could make as the first number, while mentioning the salaries of less senior teachers as an afterthought. All the numbers appeared under a headline, “SPS teacher salaries cross $100,000 mark.” Most casual readers’ takeaway is the impression that the average Spokane Public Schools teacher is well paid. The reader is left to guess what percentage of the teachers are at each salary level mentioned in the body of the article. 

Everybody’s talking about Portland and Kenosha. Trumpian Republicans feel certain if they can just fan the flames hot enough to get a few people killed, people they can hold up as martyrs, then they can instill enough fear to get their autocrat re-elected. Trump not only needs the votes of his racist far right wing to get re-elected, but he needs this far right wing for provocation and intimidation. (Take note: I am not accusing all Republicans of being racist. I am accusing Trump of currying the support of militant racists in order to stay in power.)

The name of the man shot dead in a truck bed in a caravan of Trump supporters in Portland last Saturday came out last night, Aaron “Jay” Danielson. He is the new martyr. He’ll be portrayed as the innocent, unfortunate good guy just out exercising his 1st and 2nd amendment rights.  Even the CNN headline reads, “Aaron J. Danielson: Portland shooting victim was a ‘freedom-loving American,’ says friend.” He’s not “the man shot dead in Portland,” but the “shooting victim.” FoxNews.com on the morning of Tuesday, September 1st, is chock full of articles suggesting that Portland, Oregon, is riven with unrest, and it is all the fault of Democrats. One article, almost gleefully announces that the Portland police are investigating a potential shooter as a man who identifies as “100% antifa.” The same article is illustrated with a tweet from Mr. Trump that says “Rest in Peace Jay.” Trump has his martyr. 

The NBC News headline is clearer: “Far-right Patriot Prayer group says fatal shooting victim in Portland was a supporter.” If you dig deep enough you can even find an article on Fox that discusses Patriot Prayer and Joey Gibson. 

The new martyr, “Jay” Danielson, was a member of the group “Patriot Prayer,” so staunch a member of the group that when he was shot, Mr. Danielson (aka “Jay” Bishop–what sort of man has an alias?) was in the company of the founder of Patriot Prayer, Joey Gibson.  Gibson is a Washington State Republican provocateur hailing from Vancouver, Washington. 

Have we heard of Joey Gibson before? It turns out he has numerous local Spokane connections. Mr. Gibson has appeared as an agitator in Spokane twice in the recent past. On May 1 he was one of a far right group of marchers and speakers with Matt Shea and company, spewing invective in a downtown demonstration against Governor Inslee’s pandemic stay-at-home orders. Joey Gibson made local news again demonstrating with a megaphone in front of the home of Spokane Regional Health Officer, Dr. Bob Lutz’s, on the South Hill on July 17th. Last year in Portland, Oregon, Mr. Gibson and his Patriot Prayer were accused of inciting a riot in which a woman was beaten senseless. As I wrote in “Belligerent, Whiny Adolescents“: It seems that “Patriot Prayer” is more like “Brownshirts for Trump” than what their pious name tries to suggest. 

So now Joey Gibson has ridden through Portland, Oregon in a caravan of provocateurs shooting paintball guns and pepper spray at counter-demonstrators. Mr. Gibbon himself, of course, did not take the bullet that made a Trump-hailed martyr out of “Jay” Danielson. No, Mr. Gibson lives on to preach his twisted gospel, the same way Ammon Bundy, Matt Shea, and company live on after the Malheur Wildlife Refuge illegal takeover, live on after they got their martyr, LaVoy Finicum. Finicum’s death has been a rallying point among these gun-toting would-be revolutionaries ever since.

This whole affair with its multiple links to local and regional belligerents like Matt Shea and Caleb Collier gives me a profoundly uneasy feeling as Mr. Trump, with his dynastic family and Republican National Convention, purposefully fans the flames of discord in a desperate attempt to cast himself as savior. 

Pay attention to who these people are, the network they serve, and what they’re doing. 

My uneasiness was fueled by watching parts of the Republican National Convention. The best video distillation of that event is John Oliver’s RNC 2020 & Kenosha, a must-watch. 

Two more sober influences on my uneasiness are Thomas Edsall’s highly-reasoned “I Fear That We Are Witnessing the End of American Democracy.”  

Stoking violence by condoning, even encouraging, behavior like that of Joey Gibson, his martyr “Jay” Danielson, and Kyle Rittenhouse (the self-important 17 year old who killed two protestors with an illegally carried assault rifle in Kenosha) is shameful, autocratic behavior, worthy of a would be dictator. Today, condoning such behavior is the bedrock of the Republican Party. Vote them out, vote them all out.

Keep to the high ground,
Jerry 

P.S. Joey Gibson is dignified by Fox News as a “former Washington Senate candidate.” What they don’t say is that he ran against Maria Cantwell in 2018 as one of six primary candidates for U.S. Senate from Washington State. Despite (or because of?) his notoriety as founder of Patriot Prayer he garnered all of 2.3% of the vote. To dignify this man as a serious candidate should be an embarrassment to Fox News–but hardly anyone will likely notice.

P.P.S. It is remarkable how these names, once you know them, pop up again and again. Radical right “Christian” Casey Whalen of Boise, Idaho, was the organizer of the group that paraded around with Joey Gibson in front of Dr. Bob Lutz’ house on the South Hill on July 17. He was seen again in Shawn Vestal’s article, “Tale of Bundy and his melon highlights this sick, but silly, season in conspiracy world,” noting Whalen’s Facebook post saying, “The solution is simple, tried and true. Violate my rights and you will be shot.” Gadfly that the belligerent Mr. Whalen is, he surfaced again in the Spokesman on August 31 in a tiny article titled “Open carry rally leader arrested for warrant.” Mr. Whalen was arrested “for falsifying and/or concealing public records” just before an event he had organized for the “Open carry if you care” rally in downtown Coeur d’Alene last Saturday evening, August 29th. Apparently, stirring up trouble and discord and threatening people with mayhem is a full time job for these people. (Only a few showed up for Whalen’s march. Facebook had removed the event page for violating “community standards.”

A full day of hunting, picking, and processing huckleberries in the Selkirks yesterday derailed my best intentions for writing an email for this morning. Time for a day off. 

Besides reading a wide variety of newspapers and periodicals I look forward to reading several email blogs to which I subscribe:

The Weekly Sift, written by Doug Muder, comes out as two or three separate emails each Monday morning that summarize and offer perspective on the last week’s news. 

Letter From an American, written by Professor of History Heather Cox Richardson, comes out nearly every day late in the evening. 

Popular Information, by Judd Legum, features independent reporting, often on the media and on money in politics, comes out irregularly.

Update From an Epidemic, written by Betsy Brown, M.D., a family physician in Seattle with research experience and a particular interest in infectious disease, comes out most days. To subscribe go to https://betsybrownmd.substack.com/p/coming-soon and enter your email near the bottom of the page.

I value all four of these emails for the perspective and for the links they offer. I encourage you to check them out. 

Back on Wednesday.

Keep to the high ground,
Jerry

Contrary to the brainless boasting about “saving lives” heard from the Republican National Convention this week, we in the United States lead the world with 180,000 deaths from Covid-19. Brazil, with similarly abysmal national leadership and coordination, runs second with nearly 120,000 dead.  (You can slice and dice the numbers without a paywall at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/world/coronavirus-maps.html )

Fall and winter are coming. Most of us will have to spend more time indoors. There is ample evidence that the virus spreads not only in droplets (most of which fall to the ground within 6 feet), but also as aerosols, particles that float on currents of air. We will return to buildings that often lack ventilation systems to clear indoor air.  Since 20-40% of the people infected and shedding virus with every breath, song, shout, or cough never experience symptoms, that shared indoor air will sometimes contain virus. (Temperature checks might catch the rare person “powering through” their symptoms, but will miss all of those without symptoms) 

To be sure, the current downturn in the numbers is modestly encouraging. A great many sensible people are practicing some level of social distancing, wearing masks, and engaging primarily in outdoor activities. Viral spread and Covid deaths would be far worse without these sensible behaviors. Meanwhile, the economy is teetering (regardless of the stock market) and a safe, effective, and available vaccine in which enough people have enough confidence to actually receive it is at least many months away. No amount of wishful thinking or premature “all-clears” are going to convince the majority of our citizens to go out and engage in all the economically important activities in which they used to participate. 

A Way Out

Imagine a test that would tell you in a few minutes at home or on the way into a movie theater or a work place, a test that would detect clinically relevant amounts of virus in a small sample of spit or snot. “Clinically relevant” means enough virus to make it likely that you might actually spread the virus. (The current PCR based tests for viral RNA are so sensitive that they can detect clinically irrelevant amounts of virus and even viral RNA remnants that are no longer infective at all. Furthermore, PCR-tests are laboratory-based, relatively expensive, and, with a few exceptions, they are relatively slow, i.e. 2-14 days to yield results. In even two days your viral shedding status may have changed.)

Imagine this test is really cheap, widely available, and widely accepted, pushed by a massive educational campaign by the national government. Imagine that the national government spent a few billion dollars to further develop such a test and to ramp up production, the kind of government involvement appropriate to war time investment. (Recall that a few billion is a pittance compared to the trillions already spent to try to help companies and citizens to hold their lives and businesses together.)

Combine such widespread testing, isolating and further testing of people with positive results with continued social distancing and mask wear, then diligently trace the declining cases. It is a way out–a way back to a more normal life. 

We are close to approval of such rapid test-strip type tests. If we had national leadership that worked as one instead of floating contradictory information and adding to confusion, if we had national leadership and news media that could offer a consistent message about what testing was even being talked about, we could get this done and we could start crawling out of the hole we’re in–before there is a vaccine. 

This will not work without scientifically literate leadership, without leadership that speaks with one clear, honest voice. Remember that when you cast your ballot.

Further recommended reading and listening:

A fascinating podcast on Fresh Air entitled Why We Need Widespread Rapid COVID Testing from August 27, an interview with Alexis Madrigal, journalist with The Atlantic Magazine. (47 minute listen)

Alexis Madrigal’s print article The Plan That Could Give Us Our Lives Back in The Atlantic from August 14, 2020. 

For more detail on the various types of test for Covid-19, my article Testing – Fast and Slow, also from August 14. (It covers a lot of the same basic ground as the Atlantic article but might assumes less science background–and I wasn’t aware of some of the tests Madrigal discusses.) 

Finally, concerning Covid more in general, I’d like to recommend an almost daily email “Update on an Epidemic” written by a Seattle based physician, Betsy Brown, M.D. I found this one Kids: camps and schools particularly interesting.

Keep to the high ground,
Jerry

P.S. On technical note. Once the spread of the disease is down to a point where contact tracing can be used to find and isolate new cases the utility of the rapid test we’re talking about here will drop off. In a population with very few infected people the number of people flagged incorrectly as positive (false positives) will overwhelm the number of true positives detected. (This is based on Bayes’ Theorem.) At that point the contact tracers can take over. When that point is reached depends on the specificity of the test.

On Monday, August 24, I wrote about the mostly unrecognized concentration of power and influence in the hands of the three Spokane County commissioners.

Last Thursday, August 20, as I was researching Monday’s post, news on county governance in Washington State appeared in the Spokesman: Washington Supreme Court: 5 county commissioner bill is constitutional. That title sounds pretty dry. The full story is much more interesting than that title suggests.

In school we were taught about the U.S. Constitution, Congress, the Presidency, and a little about state government. I recall no mention of how county governments are formed and the rules under which they function–and yet this is part of the “rule of law” under which we say we are proud to function in this country. 

It turns out that in the State of Washington the structure and function of county governance is provided for in Article XI, Section 4 and 5 of the 118 page WA State Constitution. It states, “The legislature shall establish a system of county government, which shall be uniform throughout the state except as hereinafter provided, and by general laws shall provide for township organization.” In 1948, Constitutional Amendment 21 added an elaborate process by which a particular county might establish a different “Home Rule” charter for its county government different from the basic 3-commissioner system specified in state law. (I suspect this amendment was passed to allow a densely populated county to adopt a form of local government more suited to a population center than the 3-commissioner system specified in state law. Since 1948 and the 21st amendment, 7 of the 39 Washington counties adopted “Home Rule” charters. King County, the most populous county, was first, in 1969.)

In 2018 a law with bi-partisan sponsorship (from all three state legislative districts that are wholly contained in Spokane County, i.e. LDs 3,4, and 6) was enacted by the legislature that required counties without a “Home Rule” charter and with a population over 400,000 to do two things: expand from 3 to 5 county commissioners and to elect those commissioners by districts drawn in the county instead of by county wide general election. You can read the law here. The law was to come into effect for the 2022 election., The law passed and was signed without much fanfare in Olympia as a sensible acknowledgment of the need to expand county government in response to population growth. 

Case closed, one might have thought. Well, no. It turns out the Spokane County Commissioners (and Washington State county commissioners in general), when their power was threatened, didn’t take it lying down. Spokane County Commissioners Al French and Josh Kerns along with the Washington State Association of Counties filed suit in February, 2019, to declare the new law “unconstitutional” (under the state constitution). The suit was first filed with the Spokane County Superior Court where the commissioners’ case was dismissed by Judge Maryann Moreno six months later (August, 2019). The commissioners appealed to the Washington State Supreme Court. The case was argued before the Supreme Court in June, 2020. Finally, unanimously agreeing with Judge Moreno and slapping down the commissioners’ suit, last Thursday the Court handed down a unanimous (9-0) decision that the 2018 state law expanding commissioner seats in counties with a population over 400,000 from 3 to 5 is constitutional. In legal terms the Supremes granted the State’s motion for summary judgment and dismissed the commissioners’ case “with prejudice.” The “with prejudice” terminology means “we’re done with this, it’s settled, don’t bring this up again.”

Case closed, right? Well, maybe not quite. Shortly after Spokane County v. State of Washington was argued before the State Supreme Court on June 25, 2020, powerful Commissioner Al French, perhaps sensing that the argument had not gone well, requested that the state legislature postpone the expansion of commissioner seats (and changing to districtwide as opposed to countywide general election of commissioners) by two years. He pointed to Covid-19, census delay, and county finances as his rational. It cannot possibly be a coincidence that of the three Spokane County commissioners currently sitting, the only one up for re-election in 2022 under the current system is Mr. French. Delaying implementation of the law would see him through one more county-wide election. 

And that’s still not quite all. The Spokesman reported in the article on the Supreme Court decision, “French said he had not yet talked to Kerns or Kuney to see if they were also interested in pursuing a freeholder process.” Mr. French is wondering if he can pull together the complex process described in the Washington State constitution by which he could remodel Spokane County governance before the expansion law set in. That statement rings of a certain desperation.

Al French, arguably the most powerful elected official in Spokane County, has held office for nearly ten years. (Commissioners are not limited to two terms like City of Spokane officials.) Commissioner Mary Kuney was likely French’s favored appointee in 2017 to replace Shelly O’Quinn. She generally takes her cues from her senior commissioner. The third commissioner, Josh Kerns, running from the right of an appointed Republican, Nancy McLaughlin, was elected to office in 2016. 

Both Kuney (finishing out the last two years of O’Quinn’s four year term) and Kerns are up for countywide re-election in November. They are opposed by Ted Cummings and accountant David Green. Visit that link. It is time to question the overriding power of Al French and consider some new blood among the Spokane County Commissioners.

Keep to the high ground,
Jerry

One more note on the excess of power and prestige vested in the Spokane County Commissioners:

A Spokane County Commissioner salary is $110,693 (as of 2017). In contrast, the annual salary of a Spokane City Councilperson in 2017 was $45,100.