Category: Civics

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Matt Shea and His Business Donors

Dear Group,

Last October as the November election approached Matt Shea made a local and national media splash with exposure of his “Biblical Basis for War” manifesto, a document he tried to explain away as an outline for a Sunday School lesson. (Matt Shea, along with McCaslin Junior, are the two Representatives to the State House in Olympia from Legislative District 4, Spokane Valley and the territory north to Mount Spokane. For more on Shea and his activities see the P.S. below) When Shea was making national and local news with his Manifesto, articles appeared in the Spokesman on three consecutive days, October 31, November 1, and November 2 listing business donors who said they wanted a refund of the money they donated the Shea campaign. Some, in their press releases, said “Shea does not reflect our values.” Some insisted they would not donate again.

Northwest Credit Union Association was the first to publicly request a refund. The Washington Association of Realtors, AT&T, The Washington Hospitality Association, Avista Corp., and the BNSF Railway Co. followed. The Washington Hospitality Association and others acknowledged that Shea was under no legal obligation to return the money. 

Reading the Spokesman articles leaves the impression if Chad Sokol (the Spokesman reporter who wrote all three articles) had not taken the initiative to visit the Public Disclosure Commission’s website, and call Matt Shea’s donors for comment, few if any of these businesses would have made a public statement or requested a refund. 

I urge you to visit the Public Disclosure Commission’s website pdc.wa.gov. It takes a little electronic digging, but there is a wealth of useful information. Click “Browse,” enter the candidate’s name and select from the list. 

Did any of Matt Shea’s business donors get their money back? Visit Shea’s 2018 Campaign Expenditure page.  I could find no evidence of a refund. The real test comes in the lead up to Shea’s 2020 election campaign. Will these businesses “forget” over two years and write Shea another check? After all, even though businesses (at least corporations) are, for legal purposes, treated as persons, business memory is likely to be fragmented. Will the right person remember the 2018 promise? The first donation to Shea’s 2018 campaign fund arrived on March 15, 2018. Perhaps in early 2020 we should remind these and other donors of Shea’s activities.

The total business donations to Shea’s 2018 campaign were $40,250, of which only $8000 came from the donors who publicly withdrew their support. Using the Public Disclosure Commission website it should not be hard to come up with a list of the other donors from 2018 to whom to suggest in early 2020 that donating to Shea might shine an unwanted light on them. Another $40,900 came from Political Action Committees with names like WASHINGTON STATE AUTO DEALERS PAC, WASHINGTON OPTOMETRIC PAC, and the WASHINGTON STATE DENTAL PAC. Might they be educated as well?

What Shea does with all this money (a grand total of $113,145.98 after adding in individual donations) is a story for another day. It is all there on the Public Disclosure Commission website. 

Keep to the high road,

Jerry

P.S. While using the Search function at the Spokesman in preparing this email I came upon an article on Matt Shea written by Shawn Vestal that appeared December 14, 2018. I encourage you to click the link and read it. As usual Mr. Vestal nails it.

P.P.S. Public Disclosure Commission website is for in-WA-State candidates. Federal candidate campaigns are found at FEC.gov.

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Shutdown, The Country Held Hostage

Dear Group,

From McMorris Rodgers’ website [the bold is mine]:

For bills to reach the president’s desk in a divided government, both parties must work together to responsibly govern. It’s time to make deals, and the deal to make here is to secure the border, keep Americans safe, and give certainty to DACA recipients. Unfortunately, Democrats signaled today they would rather waste time on bills the Senate won’t consider and the president won’t sign. When this partial shutdown started, I called on Democrats to negotiate in earnest to fund the government and secure our border. These are priorities of the American people and the responsibilities of Congress. Speaker Pelosi pledged today this Congress will be ‘bipartisan and unifying.’ Let’s do it.

We have a petulant child in the White House who is holding hostage more than a trillion (1000 billion) dollars of discretionary government spending (the part of federal government spending covered by the appropriations bills) necessary for the government to function. He is holding the government and the people of the U.S. hostage over his non-negotiable demand for 5.7 billion dollars (only a downpayment) to begin construction of his ill-conceived and ill-advised border wall, a wall that has become for him a symbol of his presidency. 

McMorris Rodgers calls Democrats to “negotiate.” She offers no call for her President, her “positive disruptor,” to negotiate. How do you negotiate over a non-negotiable demand, a demand so entrenched that she considers passing appropriations bills that do not include the 5.7 billion dollars a waste of time? There is a frustrating lack of logic here. Has she never heard of over-riding a presidential veto? 

If Trump holds to his word and vetoes any bill that concludes the shutdown without giving him his $5.7 billion eventually the pain of his hostage taking will grow, and Congress will take the heat from constituents. Congress’ only alternative will be a veto override. (That assumes McConnell can be forced to bring the individual House appropriations bills to the Senate floor and enough Senators defect from Trumpism to get the bills passed.)

You can feel their pain. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-WA, CD3) is one of two other Republicans in the Washington State delegation to the U.S. Congress (after CMR).. She is a protege of McMorris Rodgers. She held onto her seat last November with only a 52.7% majority. She voted Wednesday, January 8, along with seven other defecting House Republicans and all the Democrats for H.R. 264, an appropriations bill that would end part of the shutdown without border wall funding. Her press release expresses her discomfort with the effects of the shutdown. She writes, “Entering the third week of a federal government shutdown, it’s easy to see why Americans are disgusted with politicians.” Almost plaintively she adds, “While I will never call $5 billion a small amount of money, in the context of a $4.4 trillion federal budget it doesn’t seem like a deal-breaker.” (Notice she inflates the number she uses for the federal budget by including mandatory spending.)

I feel Herrera Beutler’s pain. Please, please make this stop! It’s killing us! And she’s right as far as she goes, including that $5 billion is not chump change. She does not mention she voted for the partial funding bill. Perhaps she would rather her Trumpian base did not know.

H.R. 264 passed 240-188. If McConnell is finally pressured to bring this bill up in the Senate and it passes the Senate (there are already Republican Senatorial defectors) and Trump vetoes it, the House only needs 45 more votes to override. It might look like a high bar right now, but after a few more weeks of shutdown more like Herrera Beutler will feel the squeeze. They will worry over their vulnerability at the ballot box in 2020 if they remain tied to Trump in his shutdown. 

You can bet the Trump devotees are calling their Senators and Representatives to encourage them to hold strong with their spoilt child in the White House. It is time for us to start telling our Representatives and Senators it is time to end this. This President thinks he has autocratic powers, and will, along with his Party, ruin the country if allowed to make good on his promise to extend the shutdown “for months.” The Republicans in Congress at some level have to know this shutdown must end before they lose all the voters outside of Trump’s fevered base. 

Call, email or write your Representative and Senators today and tell them how you feel. They need to hear from us that time is running out to act and we know they can override a veto (even if they pretend they’ve forgotten).

CMR:

Spokane Office       (509) 353-2374

Colville Office         (509) 684-3481

Walla Walla Office  (509) 529-9358

D.C. Office              (202) 225-2006

Patty Murray (D-WA)

D.C. Office          (202) 224-2621

Spokane Office  (509) 624-9515

Yakima Office     (509) 453-7462

Maria Cantwell (D-WA)

D.C. Office          (202) 224-3441

Spokane Office  (509) 353-2507

Richland Office  (509) 946-8106

Mike Crapo

D.C.  202-224-6142

North ID,  208–664-5490

James Risch

D.C. 202-224-2752

Coeur d’Alene  208-667-6130

Russ Fulcher (new R, ID)

(202) 225-6611 

Then call Call/Email Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and ask him to bring the House-passed bills to the Senate floor for a vote in order to end the shutdown! There is no veto to override if this ultimate partisan and Trump enabler cannot be convinced to bring bills to the Senate floor. Phone: (202) 224-2541.

Kept to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S If you have five minutes Senator Jon Tester (D-MT), articulates this position on the Senate floor on January 10 better than I just did.

P.P.S. On Thursday, January 10, H.R. 265 and 267, two more partial funding bills passed the House with similar margins to H.R. 264. McMorris Rodgers and Dan Newhouse (R-WA, CD-4) each voted first to send each bill back to committee “with instructions” and the voted against each bill. Herrera Beutler each time voted to send the bill back, but then turned around voted to pass the bill. How odd… 

 
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Trust and Knowledge

Dear Group,

How do we know what we know? Most of us would say we “know” the world is round as scientific truth. Almost none of us have done scientific experiments to prove the earth is a sphere. We “know” the earth is spherical because we trust those who suspected the earth was round, assembled observations and did investigations like Eratosthene’s experiment and calculation of the earth’s circumference in the 3rd century BC. Eratosthenes was certainly part of the Greek elite of the time. In light of current events one wonders if his motivation for doing his famous experiment was questioned in an effort to undermine his work. (According to the wikipedia article Eratosthenes did have critics.)  The concept of a spherical earth was accepted gradually by humankind over millennia. Today the vast majority of us trust the honesty, the motivation, and the reporting accuracy of those who developed the concept of a spherical earth. Our modern way of thinking about time zones, NASA photos from space, and the movement of the sun are all based on trust in the people who developed the theory. 

Most of what we “know” is based on trusting other people. That is who we are as a species. If we are taught or come to doubt the motivation of a group of people or institutions, that is, if we lose trust, nowadays there are slickly presented alternatives only a few keystrokes away. For example, check out this page from the Flat Earth Society website, an interview (and transcript) with one Mr. Sargent. His “favorite proof” of a flat earth includes a dismissal of NASA photos, implying NASA is part of conspiracy to make us believe the earth is round.

A high school classmate of mine became a fundamentalist Christian preacher. His wife (possibly even more fundamentalist than he) insisted to me in the course of a discussion, “Wikipedia isn’t a reliable source.” She was unwilling to consider with me the references present at the end of any good Wikipedia article, so she was effectively saying, “It is all suspect, all unreliable.” Her only trust is in the Holy Bible or, better said, the interpretations thereof made by people she trusts.

Spend a few minutes with a search “How old is the earth?” on Google or DuckDuckGo.com. You’ll quickly discover online groups not only offering slick presentations attempting to refute the overwhelming scientific consensus of around 4.5 billion years, but even groups actively debating whether the earth was created 6,238 or 6,106 years ago (or some other similar number). All this is presented in glossy format and at minor expense. Add a whiff of conspiracy theory to taint the trustworthiness of centuries of scientific endeavor and you are on the way to unmooring a susceptible person’s thinking, to separate off a group smugly dedicated to a completely different worldview. 

Of course Trump is the conspiracy theorist in chief, so much so that his bid for the presidency was founded on his promotion of birtherism, the idea that Barack Obama was ineligible to be president based the location of his birth. Almost daily he promotes “deep state” conspiracy to instill distrust in any institution that opposes him. 

Promoting distrust by pushing conspiracy theories is not just a Washington, D.C. phenomenon, it is endemic to eastern Washington politics as well.

Matt Shea (R-WA Legislative District 4, City of Spokane Valley plus) is a flagrant promoter of conspiracy theories, even serving as a speaker at The Red Pill Expo (See Matt Shea and the Red Pill). He uses conspiracy theory to break trust, to separate, to insulate from reality his followers fearful of “gun grabbers” and dedicated to hyper-“Christian” State of Liberty cult. 

McMorris Rodgers and Sue Lani Madsen (conservative guest columnist for the Spokesman), both insert references to George Soros in speech and writing, a way to discredit and promote distrust in Democrats and liberal causes by posing Soros as the evil puppet master of whose manipulation his subjects are unaware. Notably and ironically, McMorris Rodgers, sometimes in the same discourse, will claim she wants to “restore trust in government,” I guess she means government by her Republican Party…

The promotion of dismissal and distrust, distrust in government, higher education, the media, and the legal system is a political tool honed by Gingrich, Limbaugh, Prager, and a host of other right wing personalities over several decades. Trump by his very nature, has taken this tactic completely over the top in his pursuit of power. By so doing he has highlighted the danger and depravity of the tactic itself. 

When allegiance requires acceptance of “alternative facts,” the belief in which is dependent on distrusting reality, we’re in trouble, we’re drifting into cult territory.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. The study of how we know what we know is epistemology, a branch of philosophy. The word is not new to me but I understand it’s application far better after listening to a podcast interview from Chris Hayes’ “Why is This Happening, entitled “The Information Crisis with David Roberts,” It is well worth the time spent to listen to the podcast. There is also a transcript. This podcast helped congeal many of the ideas expressed above.
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Smelters, Silicon, and Solar Panels

SCHEMATIC:

HHiTest Sand of Alberta, Canada would send high quality quartz ore from their mine to:

the proposed PACWest Silicon smelter in Newport, WA.  PAC West would use low cost electrical energy to smelt the quartz ore into silicon metal and would sell it to: 

Manufacturers like REC Silicon (a Norwegian company) of Moses Lake and Hemlock Semiconductor (? of Ohio) who produce polysilicon crystals they are currently selling to: 

Manufacturers of solar panels and semiconductors.  (worldwide?)

         _________________________________________

Dear Group,

On December 27 a tiny article appeared in the Spokesman entitled “‘Suspicious device’ found near Moses Lake manufacturing facility.” The manufacturing facility is REC Silicon, an enormous, brightly lit plant you see from I-90 just east of Moses Lake about a mile north of the highway. The bomb in the car apparently wasn’t intended for REC Silicon, but that was not the part of the article I found interesting. From Chad Sokol’s Spokesman article:

REC Silicon, one of the largest employers in Grant County, was spun off from a larger Norwegian corporation, REC Group, which makes solar panels.

REC Silicon, which also has a manufacturing facility in Butte, said earlier this year its business was damaged by the United States’ trade war with China and retaliatory Chinese tariffs on polysilicon materials.

In July, the company laid off about 40 percent of its Moses Lake workforce, impacting about 100 employees, according to news outlet iFiber One. At the time, the company warned that it could be forced to close the Moses Lake plant if the trade dispute was not alleviated.

Apparently, McMorris Rodgers’ “positive disruptor”’s tariff war with China isn’t just disrupting agricultural markets for our region, but is also costing the region jobs in the silicon industry related to manufacturing solar panels. Loss of 100 jobs and possible closure of a major plant with the potential loss of 150 more is a big deal in Grant County. In Grant County Moses Lake (pop. 20,366) is the biggest town and agriculture is already under siege. 

One thing leads to another: REC Silicon in Moses Lake supposedly would be a major buyer of the silicon produced by the proposed PACWest silicon smelter in Newport WA. From the PACWest website:

The majority of the silicon metal produced by PacWest Silicon will be converted to a high-purity form of silicon by polysilicon producers, such as REC Silicon in Moses Lake.

How much will decreased demand from the Moses Lake REC Silicon plant due to the Trump tariff war dampen the enthusiasm for PACWest Silicon (part of HiTestSand of Edmonton, Alberta) to build a silicon smelter in Newport, Washington? Trucking raw material (quartz rock) from Canada to Newport was supposed to make sense due to proximity to inexpensive hydropower, but proximity to and demand for much of its output of silicon metal must also factor in.

Well, here’s where things get a bit murky. Companies producing polysilicon (mostly for solar panels and semiconductors) in the United States have been struggling since 2011. That year the U.S. government imposed tariffs on Chinese solar panels, arguing the Chinese were engaging in dumping product on the U.S. market. (“Dumping” suggests selling goods below the cost of producing them [temporarily] in order to undercut competitors.)  The Chinese retaliated with tariffs on polysilicon from the U.S. That counter-tariff produced collateral damage to companies producing polysilicon in the U.S. like the REC Silicon plant in Moses Lake and Hemlock back east. Those two are generally recognized (in a web search) as the major producers of polysilicon crystal in the U.S. Since then the Chinese have worked hard to ramp up their own polysilicon production.

It is the recent Trump tariff war, though, that is precipitating the job loss and potential closure of the Moses Lake REC Silicon plant on account of even greater retaliatory tariffs against U.S. polysilicon, a tariff war that seems bound up in Trump’s wish to “bring back coal.” So where does PACWest plan to sell its pure silicon metal for use in the solar panels and semiconductors if the U.S. polysilicon industry is in the toilet thanks to tariffs? Will the Newport plant produce silicon from trucked in Canadian quartz and then export the product back to Canada and, through Canada, to the rest of the world, e.g. China (and avoid the tariffs)? I asked this of a contact in PACWest. He reassured me I had overlooked “other larger polysilicon producers in the U.S.” whose names he could not reveal due to non-disclosure agreements. Furthermore, “You will see in Q1 or Q2 [first and second quarters of 2019] several very large expansion announcements in the South East US that will increase US Poly demand.” I presume by this he means expansion of companies manufacturing solar panels, since solar panel production is now the main destination of polysilicon.

Interesting how all this interlocks and how much of it happens outside the consciousness of the 99% of the population, while jobs in Moses Lake are lost, jobs are dangled as bait in Newport, and multinational companies shuffle money in their endless pursuit of profit. I wonder if McMorris Rodgers has all this in mind as she praises her “positive disruptor,” the instigator of the trade war? 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. Silicon is an element (Si). In its highly purified crystalline form (polycrystalline silicon, also called polysilicon or poly-Si) silicon is used in solar cells and electronics.  Silicone is polymer, a synthetic compound with a repeating sequence of silicon, oxygen, carbon, and sometimes other elements. Silicone compounds are used in sealants (like caulking compound), adhesives, lubricants, medicine, breast implants, cooking utensils, and thermal and electrical insulation. The output from the Moses Lake REC Silicon plant looks to be mostly destined for solar cells and other electronics. In contrast the processed silicon metal from the proposed Newport plant could go to electronics (e.g. via REC Silicon) but might also find its way into more prosaic things like silicone polymer products. (PACWest indicates its metal will be so pure it will mostly go to solar panels and semi-conductors “and a small amount to the Aluminum market.”)
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A Few Votes Make a Difference Again

Dear Group,

Most of us probably were aware of elections in Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina that were squeakers. They made national news. In contrast, I needed to do a google search to see who won the race for Spokane County Assessor, Tom Konis or Leonard Christian. 

Why did I care? Tom Konis worked in the assessors office for decades. He clearly possesses the expertise, and, as I understood it, he was well liked and respected by those who work there. Mr. Christian’s prior experience was as a conservative real estate broker, and appointed Republican Representative to the WA State Legislature (LD 4, Spokane Valley and north). He was appointed in 2014 to fill the seat from which Larry Crouse resigned for health reasons. Mr. Christian apparently was insufficiently conservative, since he was defeated by both Republican challengers, McCaslin Jr. and Diana Wilhite in the fall of 2014. His other qualification for assessor was “Republican Party District Leader.” 

It seemed to me this was a clear example of expertise for the job (Konis) in a race with a politician (Christian). My view of Konis, also a Republican, was further enhanced by rumors I’d heard of his occasionally appearing as a friendly face at events mostly attended by Democrats. Why should Republican credentials have anything to do with the job of County Assessor?

On November 8th, two days after the polls closed, Christian was ahead by almost a thousand votes. Twelve days after the election the lead shrank to around five hundred (with about 3,500 write-ins and more than 46,000 undervotes). It wasn’t until a November 27, twenty-one days after the election, that Konis pulled slightly ahead “after elections officials counted more than 7,800 ballots that had to be duplicated because problems made them unreadable by the scanners.” The two votes over 150 topped the requirement for a hand recount, and Tom Konis was certified as the winner on December 12.

I am impressed by the diligence of the elections officials and the volunteers who watched over the process. I am impressed the electorate came through in favor of expertise over politics in this race [and distressed the electorate chose Michael (“door-to-door knife fight“) Baumgartner, a career politician,  over CPA David Green in the race for Spokane County Treasurer.]

Equally distressing is the 3,500 voters who wrote in a candidate and the 46,000 who turned in ballots (20% of the 232,000 turned in) but didn’t do the research and vote in this race. I suppose one also might wonder how many of the votes that were actually cast in this race were cast by informed voters…

Take home message: 1) Elections can turn on very few votes. 2) Elections for local officials are often undervoted. 

All politics is local. Let us all resolve to be better informed voters for the local elections in August and November THIS year.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry
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Shea/McCaslin Vote Discrepancy, What Does it Mean?

Dear Group,

Matt Shea is one of two State Representatives sent to Olympia by Legislative District 4, the area east of Havana to the Idaho/Washington state line, north to Mount Spokane, and south to include the City of Spokane Valley and Liberty Lake. (Here’s a map.) Among the places encompassed in LD4 are Greenbluff, home of NWGrassroots, and the official address of the Political Action Committee “We Believe, We Vote,” two groups linked with the Redoubt movement centered in adjacent north Idaho. Besides Matt Shea some others of the local Redoubter faithful are on display here in an ad for a rally in support of the re-election of council members Ed Pace, Caleb Collier, and Mike Munch to the City of Spokane Valley City Council.  I note all three of councilmen were defeated in November 2017 in spite of this rally. 

Matt Shea and the other Representative from LD4, McCaslin Junior (to distinguish him from his father, a former LD4 legislator, now deceased), both won re-election this November, Mr. Shea with 39,572 (57.74%) and McCaslin Jr. with 42,613 (61.88%) votes. (These are not quite final tallies.) Note the difference: 3000 voters bothered to “split their ticket,” casting a vote for McCaslin Jr. (R) but also for Ted Cummings (D), Shea’s opponent. 

The last midterm elections (2014), an election in which both Shea and McCaslin had Democratic challengers, they received very close to equal numbers of votes, roughly 25,000 (58% in each of their races). That year (2014) it seems among those who bothered to vote, almost no one was making a distinction between McCaslin Jr. and Shea (many fewer voted in LD4 in 2014 than did this year, 43K in 2014 v. 69K in 2018). It’s as if 25,000 voters said to themselves, “I’m Republican. These guys are both Republican, therefore they must represent my values. I’ll vote for both of them.”

Many voters claim to be “Independent,” that is, they claim to vote for the person, not the party. That is a lovely, high-minded sentiment. I know. It is a sentiment I expressed for years–until I noticed I hadn’t voted for a Republican in a decade and realized the Republican Party had wandered off to the far right into the weeds, far away from the principles for which I thought it once stood.

Claiming to be an “Independent,” that is, evaluating each candidate on his or her merits, is a great principle, but it actually requires that one pay close attention, attention that is often lacking, especially at a level less than national politics.

The spread between the votes for Shea and McCaslin in LD4 in the November 2018 election tells us more people are paying attention–but we need more. Is that 3000 vote difference due purely to the national attention blip around Shea’s “Biblical Basis For War” manifesto? Is it because volunteer canvassers and Democratic candidates knocked on doors and talked with people about this man Shea? 

We will never know for sure, but it all helped. People of good will have two years to work at getting the word out about Shea, McCaslin, Maycumber (LD7) and the groups and ideologies they represent. Share Shea’s extremist manifesto widely. They say all politics is local. It’s time to pay attention.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry
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The Ideological Takeover of the Judiciary Grinds On

Dear Group,

In the writhing froth of media attention that Trump constantly feeds, we might all be pardoned for missing an important story that surfaced only briefly in mid-October. This article appeared in the New York Times on October 18, “A Conservative Group’s Closed-Door ‘Training’ of Judicial Clerks Draws Concern”  

I have previously cited the Federalist Society’s takeover of the vetting process for Republican judicial nominees starting with Reagan. The prospective nominees, nearly all men, put forward by the Federalist Society don’t appear fully formed out of thin air. They are selected and nurtured by and for the far right. The Times article sheds light on the closed-door indoctrination offered by The Heritage Foundation, the “Conservative Group” in the title of the article. The Heritage Foundation is one of the first formed (1973) of conservative “think tanks” among a growing web of tax exempt non-profits established by wealthy donors in response to the Powell Memorandum (1971), Lewis Powell’s blueprint exhorting corporations to push back against the Consumer Movement of the 1960s. 

The first two paragraphs of the New York Times article are chilling. I’ve reproduced them below. They reveal much about the strategy to take over full control of the judiciary [the bold is mine]:

The closed-door “training academy” was aimed at a select group: recent law school graduates who had secured prestigious clerkships with federal judges. It was organized by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative group that has played a leading role in moving the courts to the right, and it had some unusual requirements.

“Generous donors,” the application materials said, were making “a significant financial investment in each and every attendee.” In exchange, the future law clerks would be required to promise to keep the program’s teaching materials secret and pledge not to use what they learned “for any purpose contrary to the mission or interest of the Heritage Foundation.”

Of course, it should be no surprise the Heritage Foundation would endeavor to identify, nurture, and lead “recent law school graduates,” especially any who might already demonstrate conservative, business-friendly tendencies, The chilling part is the “promise,” essentially a loyalty oath, to keep the contents of the all-expense-paid training academy a “secret” and never to use the them in any way contrary to the Heritage Foundation. What is the Heritage Foundation teaching prospective judges that they wished not to leak out to media? Can you imagine the hue and cry on the Right if a mainstream liberal organization were to require a loyalty oath of seminar attendees?

“Generous donors?” The Heritage Foundation, organized as a “charitable organization,” a 501(c)(3), can shield its donors’ identities, regardless of an overtly political agenda. Names like DeVos, Olin, and Bradley, families that figure prominently in Jane Mayer’s book “Dark Money” are identified as pivotal contributors to a annual cash flow approaching a hundred million dollars.

What was the response of the Heritage Foundation to this revelation in the New York Times?

…a few hours after The New York Times published an online article about the training, Heritage announced that it was suspending the program.

“Heritage is re-evaluating the Federal Clerkship Training Academy,” Greg Scott, a spokesman for the group, said in a statement. “As a result, the program will not go on as scheduled.”

That’s essentially, “Oh my! It is a bit embarrassing that got out. Let’s sweep it quickly under the rug in the hope it won’t dominate the news cycle or penetrate the popular consciousness.” So the Federal Clerkship Training Academy “won’t go on as scheduled.” What does that mean? Will there be a name change, a schedule change, what exactly?

There was a time I had confidence there were mechanisms in civil society that would properly deal with this sort of thing, mechanisms that would work without my involvement. I no longer have that confidence. I once thought the Heritage Foundation was an intellectually honest conservative organization dedicated to civil discourse. I no long think that either. 

We are in the midst of a so-far-bloodless government takeover attempt. The foundation for the takeover has been painstakingly laid over decades. Trump, with his tactics of sidelining, demonizing, belittling, and even firing all who stand in his way, has shone light on a movement not quite ready for full exposure to what until recently was a sleepy, disengaged electorate. The results of the midterms last week suggest many are awakening to the danger he and his most rabid followers represent to the fabric of our society and government.

We were the frogs slowly warming in the cooking pot prepared by the Heritage Foundation, the Washington Policy Center, and their like. Then Trump came along and abruptly turned up the heat. It is time to wake up and jump out–or boil.

We will live with the results of McConnell’s flood of conservative judicial appointees for decades. Short of a counter-revolution, the only pushback is to use our votes to take back the legislative and executive branches of the local, state, and federal governments. 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry