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Dear Group,

Many of you recognize the name Matt Shea, fewer know he has been the the State Representative from Spokane Valley, Legislative District 4, since 2008, and even fewer know how far out on the flapping fringes of conspiracy theory his ideas really are. 

Let’s start with this premise: If most voters actually spent the time necessary to get to know the candidates rather than voting based on name recognition or not voting at all, legislators like Matt Shea would be voted out. If I didn’t believe that I would fall into a fit of despair. 

Which brings me to Matt Shea and the Red Pill. The Red Pill Expo runs June 21-23, this Thursday afternoon through Saturday evening, at the Spokane Convention Center. For a mere $470.25 you can still get an all inclusive (apart from lodging) general admission ticket online. The only mention in the Spokesman Review occurred on June 10 and identifies the gathering as “Freedom Force Red Pill Expo Conference – Freedom Force International, June 17-26, Spokane Convention Center, 100 attendees.” If you visit the Freedom Force International website you find this whole thing is the brainchild of G. Edward Griffin, a now 86 year old conspiracy theorist who has pushed his views through books, films, and conferences. He is also the lead speaker among twenty-eight speakers at the Spokane Red Pill Expo. For much of his life Mr. Griffin has been a member and officer of the John Birch Society.

The term “Red Pill” comes from a scene in the film The Matrix, in which the protagonist is offered the choice of a red pill, representing truth and self-knowledge, or a blue pill representing a return to blissful ignorance. I invite you to explore the Red Pill Expo website and decide if any of their tripe represents the “truth and knowledge” they claim to offer.

Check out the twenty-seven Speakers. Copy and paste a name or two into wikipedia.org. You won’t be disappointed. My personal favorite is Lord Christopher Monckton, “Internationally known expert on climate change.” He has zero education or credentials in science, unless a British lordship qualifies. His education includes a degree in Classics and a diploma in journalism. His many other bizarre views byond vociferous climate denial are detailed and referenced in his wikipedia article.

In the second row of speakers at Red Pill is Washington State’s very own Matt Shea. His bio includes the statement: “As the ranking Republican on the House Environment Committee, Matt insists legislative decisions are based on sound, peer-reviewed science that protects both the state’s environment and jobs that preserve Washington’s quality of life.” Really?? A man without a single scientific credential who shares the podium with a cast of conspiracy theorists?? Sorry, if these are the peers to whom he looks for review…

To round out your acquaintance with this man I encourage a visit to his wikipedia.org entry. Look under Personal Life and Controversy. Check out the links to articles detailing allegations made by his ex-wife and his experience threatening a motorist with an illegally carried pistol. Visit his Facebook page. Sample his leadership qualities expressed on his bi-weekly show on Patriot Radio broadcast on the American Christian Network. 

I still have hope that the average oblivious voter, even a standard fiscal conservative Republican voter, if they took the time to check out Red Pill might think twice about casting a vote for this man. 

I’ve met and talked with Matt Shea’s Democratic challenger in Legislative District 4, Ted Cummings. He’s the real deal. Visit his website, tedforwashington.com. Make a donation. 

If you’ve followed some of the links in this article you will have confirmed a disturbing truth about the Republican Party in general. The Party may have the same name. It may claim descent from Abraham Lincoln. But today’s Republican Party is not even the Republican Party of the Bushes. Today’s Republican Party is well on the way down the road to right wing extremism. The election of Donald J. Trump has just shined a spotlight on the takeover. Leave them in office at your peril.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. Several of Mr.Griffin’s books were published through the John Birch Society, a far right fringe group whose founder list includes Fred C. Koch, father of Charles and David Koch, current instigators of the Koch donor group detailed by Jane Mayer in Dark Money. William F. Buckley, Jr., for many years the intellectual underpinning of American conservatism and founder of The National Review, kept the John Birch Society identified as a fringe element of the conservative movement. With Buckley’s death in 2008 many would argue the Birchers have taken over the Republican Party with the help of the Koch brothers. This New Yorker article chronicles Buckley’s resistance to the JBS and the subsequent rise of the Tea Party. Written in 2010 the article foreshadows things that have now come to pass.

P.P.S. In case you missed it on the Red Pill website, a featured speaker at the Spokane Red Pill is the widow of LaVoy Finicum, the man who guaranteed his own death by pulling a gun on the law enforcement officers who pulled over his vehicle outside the Malheur Wildlife Refuge. Matt Shea visited the illegal occupation of Malheur in support of the occupiers…

Dear Group,

The WA State Primary Election is Tuesday, August 7. That’s only 7.5 weeks away. You wouldn’t know it from the local media, but the ballots are set and the Voters Guide is already available on line. It is time to put your “all politics is local” hat on and get informed. Spend a few minutes right now for orientation. Go to MyVote.wa.gov, put in your name and birthdate. Explore. 

1) Check your Registration Details. Update as needed. Have you been a regular voter? Click the Voting History button.

2) Be Proactive. Do your homework. Write down on a piece of paper to display on your refrigerator what positions you get to vote for, who the incumbent is, and the names of candidates. (Obviously, you don’t need to write down the names of all twenty-nine primary contenders for the U.S. Senate Seat currently held by Maria Cantwell.)

3) When you see a yard sign or a news article quiz yourself: Is this person among my choices or is this a different District from mine? Who is this person? Your vote is a good tool. Use it wisely.

4) Figure out for whom you want to vote and why. Engage other voters in conversation about your choice. There is nothing quite like a suggestion from a friend or a respected acquaintance to influence voting behavior. 

For races for which you’re not already sure for whom you want to vote there are links to basic information about each candidate at the MyVote.wa.gov webpage. Talk with friends who might be familiar with the candidate you’re interested in. Go to a campaign event. Consider making a donation to the campaign. Visit the candidate’s Facebook page(s). You’ll be surprised how revealing THAT can be. 

Not already a registered voter in Washington State? The deadline for registration that will allow you to vote in the Primary is July 9. That is also the deadline to change the address to which your ballot will be sent. (Under the “Voter Registration Details” button, you can have your ballot sent to where you’ll be and still keep your official Residence Address–just remember to change it back!) It even looks as though you can use MyVote.wa.gov to fill out, print, and then send in that ballot.

Then take your newly oriented self out to a canvass. Spokane Indivisible is running one on Monday (see the box above). There are multiple other opportunities with the Lisa Brown Campaign and with the Spokane County Democrats. Come on out. Every time I find it hard to get started I remember the last time I went and how rewarding the conversations felt. These are great days to take a walk and meet new people!

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. For more orientation check out the Reference section below for links to Spokane County and WA State voting district maps. Know your turf!

Dear Group,

McMorris Rodgers beat the drum for the “Balanced Budget Amendment” at several recent town halls. It is a perennial favorite on the right. Currently it stands zero chance of passage, but she votes for it as a demonstration of her supposed credentials as a fiscal conservative. 

But there is something wrong here. McMorris Rodgers constantly harps about “getting control of the federal budget” and “the hard work of the appropriations process” and how “entitlements” must be controlled since they represent so much of non-discretionary part of the federal budget. All that sounds really important and difficult and essential, doesn’t it? She must be really smart to have her head wrapped around all that. 

In my childhood my parents taught me about budgets. I was expected to keep track of every penny in a little notebook. Back then I was taught budgets have both an income and an expense side. Making my budget balance required me to have…and to maintain…an income. 

McMorris Rodgers wants us to focus on the expenditures, but she really, really wants to keep us from thinking about the income side. Government budgets, just like personal budgets, have both. The income side of a government budget is taxes. McMorris Rodgers slashed that federal income last December with her vote for the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.” In fact, she cannot quit talking about that vote and how proud it makes her. Eighty percent of that government income was turned around and given to corporations and the already wealthy. 

The federal government does some really important things. It is supposed to fund maintaining and modernizing our infrastructure, the interstate highway system, bridges, dams, weather prediction, flood control structures. It certainly maintains substantial expenditures dedicated our common defense. It maintains relations with other nations. It provides funding for scientific research, looks after the purity of our food, guards against the spread of disease, tries to keep our air breathable and our water drinkable. Until recently, our federal government tried to improve the efficiency of energy use so as to make us less dependent on foreign oil. The federal government, at least since the 1930s forward has helped maintain and administer a social safety net. These are just a very few of what most of us think of as essential functions of our federal government. 

So why are McMorris Rodgers and her Republican colleagues so proud of reducing the income stream that helps support all this? Their donors certainly took notice. As an example close to home, the Schweitzers of Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories in Pullman waited until it was clear they were going to receive a good chunk of that money as a result of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Then they wrote checks for more than a half a million dollars to McMorris Rodgers’ campaign and Republican interests.

If you wish to “Balance the Budget,” Cathy, you have to consider both sides of the ledger. You just gave away a significant chunk of federal income (1.3 trillion over ten years). You gave most of that to corporations and the already rich. 

Oops! Horrors! After that income giveaway, suddenly we’re poor as a nation so we need to tighten out belts, we need to “rein in entitlements” we need to “balance the budget.”

Let us remember “entitlements” are things like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, programs that offer some small security for the common man. “Entitlements” aren’t something that benefit someone else, some imaginary faceless, nameless, lazy, undeserving slacker. No, “entitlements” are by and large the programs put in place starting with Roosevelt’s “New Deal” in the 1930s, programs many Republicans would like us to think sap the common man’s will to work. 

Of course, McMorris Rodgers has to use that word “entitlement” careful discrimination. For instance, the Steve Gleason Act, directing Medicare to foot the bill for expensive voice synthesis machines, well, the money for that can’t be an “entitlement.” Heavens no, that would be an “empowerment.” 

McMorris Rodgers’ often touted ABLE Act benefits people with disabilities like Cole, McMorris Rodgers’ son with Down Syndrome. I’m very much in favor of helping the disabled, all of them, not just the ones who happen to have relatives with money. ABLE offers a tax loophole for those folks demonstrating a disability before age 26. It allows each such person to establish or have established for them a special savings account in which money earned within the account accumulates tax free. Of course, someone has to have the money (maximum of $15,000 annually) to put in the account in the first place. The foregone taxes on the money earned in the account is money off the income side of the federal budget, isn’t it? Well, we certainly wouldn’t want to call that an “entitlement,” would we? (I prefer this to further enriching the already wealthy out of our tax coffers, but from a budget perspective it is still money removed. On top of that, isn’t this “picking winners and losers” among the disabled? Isn’t that supposed to be a terrible no-no for every Republican?) 

Then there is the renewal of the Medicare pass-through for, among others, an eye drug of negligible utility, a renewal McMorris Rodgers slipped into the Appropriations package. That was a 26 million dollar benefit to the Omeros Corporation, a drug company, over ten years, Apparently, that wasn’t an “entitlement” for Omeros’ stock holders. No, that would be a “improving access to life-changing drugs.” 

Isn’t it odd how it matters what you call things? A tax cut sounds appealing, but a giveaway of national income? Well, not so much. Yet, an income giveaway to corporations and the mega-wealthy is what McMorris Rodgers’ touted tax cut was. 

Budgets have two sides. McMorris Rodgers wishes us not to notice when she robs the income side of budget to give to the wealthy and when she chooses corporate and individual winners and losers. Now she wants to ratchet down on programs she has put in artificial jeopardy. 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

Dear Group,

Today I defer to Shawn Vestal’s article in the Spokesman from Wednesday, June 6th. It concerns James Allsup, an enthusiastic attendee of the Charlottesville torchlight parade, former President of the WSU College Republicans, current GOP Precinct Committee Officer in Whitman County, “Identitarian” and recent speaker at Identity Evropa. This is the supposedly respectable version of what in my youth was called, plainly and simply, a Nazi. That, of course, was a time when many were still alive and walked among us who fought to free the world from such people and their ideas. Today, In an era in which we have a President who refuses to explicitly denounce these people (for fear of losing his base?), we need to pay special attention to the folks his movement would vilify, deport, or worse. So come out on Saturday before you go canvassing (see above) and celebrate some of the diversity Mr. Allsup would love to quash for the sake of his sense of purity.

Dear Group,

In school it used to be taught (and perhaps still is) that the U.S. Supreme Court’s wise judges with their king-like, life-long appointments served the purpose of interpreting the Constitution, assuring the “rule of law”, and guaranteeing that our majority-rule democracy did not run roughshod over the human and Constitutional rights of the minority. It all sounded very august and comforting. I recall only vague awareness of dissent over how the Supreme Court functioned. I saw, but did not really understand, the “Impeach Earl Warren” bumper stickers. In high school history there may have been a passing mention of FDR’s attempt to “pack” the court with sympathetic judges. 

I was blissfully naive. With the perspective of age, experience, travel, and thought I now understand the Supreme Court merely as a sort of ballast to wildest impulses of the Congress, the President, and the people. The Republican/Libertarians have understood this for decades and have worked systematically to fill the Court with judges sympathetic to the concerns of the wealthy. You might ask “What about abortion? What about the ‘right’ to keep and bear arms? Aren’t those those the rallying cry of the Republicans?” Well, in a word, no. Certainly many Republican voters are passionately devoted to these issues, as carefully framed by the Republican thought machine and spoon fed by Fox News, Sinclair News, Rush and company. Indeed, one can hardly be a Republican without paying homage to gun rights and banning abortion…but they are just rallying cries, not the main point. Does anyone think most of the mega-wealthy members of the Koch donor group are passionately devoted to gun rights and banning abortion? Hardly. 

A primary, perhaps the primary, goal of the Koch donor group is to change the composition of the Supreme Court to represent the interests of business and the mega-wealthy over the interests of lesser folk, workers, unions, and, of course, Democrats.

Soon you will hear of the Supreme Court decision in the case of Janus v. AFSCME. It is likely to be another 5-4 decision, couched in supposed defense of the First Amendment Right of “free speech.” You might recall the deceptively named “Citizens United” decision (Citizens United-Part I) was also based on a supposed “free speech” right. In Citizens United “free speech” was the personal right of corporations to political speech. 

On the one hand corporations are supposed to have the “free speech” right as persons to spend unlimited money on political advertising. On the other hand, “free speech” is applied as a cudgel against mandatory union dues in Janus v. AFSCME. Read the Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity logic around Janus’ “free speech” here. Mr. Janus contends that, based on “free speech” he need not pay union dues. Never mind the union bargains for all employees and Janus would benefit from the results of that bargaining. In fact, there is even a unanimous Supreme Court case, Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, from 1977, that will be overturned when the current court finds in favor of Janus. 

When Janus v. AFSCME was argued back in February, Grover Norquist (famous for his quip about shrinking government to a size where it could “drown in a bathtub”) commented tellingly on his partisan hope for the Supreme Court to declare Janus the winner:  “Try funding the modern Democratic Party without union dues. Good luck.” 

Why does Mitch McConnell deserve a special place in hell? I offer this quote about Janus v. AFSCME from an article I encourage you to read here entitled “Little Scalia”:

It was for moments like these that Senator Mitch McConnell, in 2016, had engineered the unprecedented nullification of President Obama’s nominee to replace Scalia, when he blocked a Senate vote on Merrick Garland. To partisan Democrats, McConnell’s galling land grab wound up being a fitting antecedent to Donald Trump’s election: first a stolen Court seat, then an illegitimate president. For partisan Republicans, though, a solid right-wing vote on the Supreme Court made the chaos and lunacy of the Trump presidency tolerable. “But Gorsuch” has become the “Keep Calm and Carry On” of Trump-era conservatism.

Never forget that Mitch McConnell stole a seat on the Supreme Court from a moderate nominee, Merrick Garland, in order to push a 5-4 doctrinaire majority on the Supreme Court that shifts the judicial ballast toward the mega-wealthy, a shift that could far outlast the horror of the Trump Presidency by decades. This is not just “playing politics,” this is class warfare on a grand scale. The Koch funded Republican chattering class is using specious arguments around the First Amendment to tip the judicial scales back to the 1920s, possibly to the Gilded Age of the late 18th Century. Those focused just on guns and abortion are missing the point.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

 “Conversations with Cathy” are not “conversations.” In a conversation there is back and forth, a chance to hear a talking point and respond by questioning the validity of the point. A conversation is what I had with a Republican friend over a three hour breakfast a couple of weeks ago. I came away with a better understanding of the underlayment for his thoughts and he might have heard enough from me to shift his position a few mental millimeters. 

At the Green Bluff Grange night before last, Tuesday, May 29th, McMorris Rodgers held forth for an hour in front of an audience of about thirty. It turned out I chose a seat next to McMorris Rodgers’ mother. When I asked she told me she had heard of the Town Hall “from an email.” She offered that she wasn’t familiar enough with Facebook to know if it had been posted there. I offered that I had also heard “through an email.” Several of the others if the thirty in the room were paid McMorris Rodgers staff. Even with the very limited advertising, if one were to judge by the questions asked, the audience was divided about half and half between dyed-in-the-wool supporters and detractors. 

Evidence of the limited advertising was not hard to find. One woman I spoke with lives within a mile of the Green Bluff Grange and knows members of the Green Bluff Growers Association (of whom she thought only 4-5 were in attendance). She only heard about the gathering from my email the day of the event. The man sitting next to said he thought he’d seen something in the local community paper. He was very, very impressed that McMorris Rodgers would take time from her important work with President Trump and Paul Ryan to spend some of it with such a tiny crowd in Green Bluff. He later thanked McMorris Rodgers for her vote on H.R. 38, not mentioning it was the “Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act.” (See CMR’s “Courageous Conversations”) Clearly, the NRA (or his church?) was keeping him informed of important developments. 

In a conversation there is quite a lot of back and forth, a chance to challenge background. The crowd was too polite to get beyond niceties of letting her trigger all the mind frames she wanted.

Take the “Balanced Budget Amendment,” for example. At its mere mention there were approving murmurs. One commenter lamented out loud how they’d been working to pass a balanced budget amendment for years. No one, including me, butted in to point out that budgets have two sides, expenditures and income, No one pointed out she had just proudly dropped 1.3 trillion dollars from the income side of the ledger over the next ten years by giving 80% of that money to the already wealthy. No one, including me, probed to see if she had any concept of how a balanced budget amendment would work in the next economic meltdown. (How do you do a stimulus when you have to balance the budget?) No, the approving murmurs went unchallenged. The people of the approving murmurs were highly appreciative of McMorris Rodgers’ vote for a Balanced Budget Amendment even though all of us realize the vote is only symbolic, kept at bay by those evil, misguided Democrats–at least until such time as the forces of good rational capitalism can prevail. (To me this is a wake up call to pay close attention to all those seemingly quixotic votes on abortion, guns, the REINS Act, and many other issues. They may never actually pass–but tilting at these windmills unites the base.)

In short there was no “conversation” around the Balanced Budget Amendment. There was only a nod to a Republican/Libertarian shibboleth.

Net Neutrality? Ah. The regulation as it came from the Obama administration was bad, according to McMorris Rodgers, because it was based on 1930’s law concerning public utilities. “I’m in favor of ‘a law’ against ‘blocking and throttling’ that would apply to ISP’s AND tech companies.” OK. No one asked, including me, if she had put a bill in the hopper. Is this high on her priority list or is she just hoping we’ll forget and let it ride? Forget while the ISPs take up blocking and throttling, warming us slowly like the famous frog in the cook pot. If she tried writing a bill that would regulate anything of financial import her donors would have stroke. Don’t tell us you’re “in favor.” Write a bill, promote it, convince your colleagues, get it passed. 

Climate Change? McMorris Rodgers will not say if she subscribes to the science of climate change. She doesn’t want to be outed as an outright climate denier, but she gives a hint: “The Paris Accords would have wrecked the economy! We’ve already done our bit by improving the fuel efficiency of our cars.” In other words, either she denies the science of climate change or she has given up hope and given up cooperation, preferring a “race to the bottom” in which our children will deal with increasing climate disasters and the rich will build walls to protect their golf courses from the rising sea.

It seems odd she is so sure she can predict the economic future (we must cut entitlements to balance the budget!) and yet she denies the predictions of atmospheric science. The last I checked, atmospheric physics was far more reliably predictive than economics. 

There is more, but I’m out of gas. I hope many will attend today’s 3-4PM pseudo-“Conversation with Cathy” in Pullman. There is a rumor there will be national media in attendance. I hope you will press her for answers to questions I didn’t ask. There is another opportunity in Deer Park on Friday. See the Calendar below for details. 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry