Category: Uncategorized

A forty plus year failed proposition that deserves to be put to rest

I’m on vacation, but I want to feature something I thought was profound and far better written than what I’m capable of. I offer an entry posted on April 15 from Robert Reich, retired Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley. 

Don’t miss the 8:25 video at the end of the post. For several decades I passively absorbed many of the featured myths, something I now realize was a remarkable sales job performed by writers and talking heads carefully selected and funded by exactly those folks most likely to benefit. I’ve discarded all of these myths over the last decade, but seeing all twelve presented and dispelled in one video really puts them into perspective.

Remember Reich’s presentation this fall when you are asked on the November ballot by the Washington State Republican Party and hedge fund manager Brian Heywood to repeal the Washington State capital gains excise tax (Initiative 2109) on capital gains in excess of $262,000.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

Happy Tax Day, and the coming fight over extending Trump’s tax cut

It’s behind the big money financing Trump’s 2024 campaign

ROBERT REICH, April 15

Friends,

Happy Tax Day. As Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.”

But who should pay the most for this civilized society? As Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, instructed in his The Wealth of Nations, a tax system should be based on the principle of equal sacrifice. This means the richer should pay a larger share of their incomes in taxes than the poorer.

But today’s wealthy Americans are paying a much smaller share of their incomes in taxes than most Americans.

Which is why the debate that’s already begun over the 2025 expiration of the Trump tax cuts is so illuminating and important.

The major reason some very wealthy people are backing Trump is they want the Trump tax cuts to become permanent and not expire as scheduled in 2025.

As this debate unfolds, you should know four basic facts. The Trump tax cut that went into effect in January 2018 is:

1. Skewed to the rich. Households with incomes in the top 1 percent will receive an average tax cut of more than $60,000 in 2025, compared to an average tax cut of less than $500 for households in the bottom 60 percent, according to the Tax Policy Center. As a share of after-tax income, tax cuts at the top — for both households in the top 1 percent and the top 5 percent — are more than triple the total value of the tax cuts received for people with incomes in the bottom 60 percent.
2. Expensive. The Congressional Budget Office estimated in 2018 that the Trump tax cut would cost $1.9 trillion over 10 years. Recent estimates show that making the law’s individual income and estate tax cuts permanent would cost another $350 billion a year beginning in 2027.Together with the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts enacted under George W. Bush (most of which were made permanent in 2012), these laws have severely eroded America’s revenue base.
3. Budget-busting. Federal tax revenue as a share has fallen from about 19.5 percent of the total economy in the years preceding the Bush tax cuts to just 16.3 percent of the economy in the years following the Trump tax cuts. Whenever you hear Republicans complain about the federal budget deficit, bear this in mind: The Bush and Trump tax cuts are the major culprits. Moreover, the relatively smaller share of the economy financing the federal government is not enough to pay for the nation’s investment needs and our commitments to Social Security and health coverage.
4. Based on a “trickle-down” lie. Trump claimed that the corporate tax cut would “very conservatively” lead to a $4,000 boost in household income. Research shows that workers who earned less than about $114,000 on average in 2016 saw no change in earnings from Trump’s corporate tax rate cut, while top executive salaries increased sharply. Similarly, research has shown that the law’s 20 percent pass-through deduction, which was skewed in favor of wealthy business owners, has failed to trickle down to workers in those companies who aren’t owners. Like the Bush tax cuts before it, the Trump tax cut was a trickle-down failure.

***

More generally, trickle-down economics — the abiding faith on the political right that tax cuts as well as deregulation are good for an economy — continues to live on, notwithstanding its repeated failures. Ever since Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher first tried them, trickle-down policies have exploded budget deficits and widened inequality.

Reagan’s tax cuts and deregulation at the start of the 1980s were not responsible for America’s rapid growth through the late 1980s. His exorbitant spending (mostly on national defense) fueled a temporary boom that ended in a fierce recession.

Yet the U.S. never restored the highest marginal tax rates before Reagan. And deregulation — especially of financial markets — is a continuing harmful legacy.

The result? From 1989 to 2021, typical working families in the United States saw negligible increases in their real (inflation-adjusted) incomes and wealth.

Over the same period, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans became $29 trillion richer. The national debt exploded. And Wall Street’s takeover of the economy continued.

Meanwhile, and largely as a result, Americans have become more bitterly divided along the fissures of class and education.

So why is trickle-down economics still with us? What explains the fatal attraction of this repeatedly failed economic theory?

The easiest answer is that it satisfies politically powerful moneyed interests who want to rake in even more. Armies of lobbyists continuously demand tax cuts and “regulatory relief” for their wealthy patrons.

But why has the public been repeatedly willing to go along with trickle-down economics when nothing ever trickles down? What accounts for the collective amnesia?

The answer is that the moneyed interests have also invested a portion of their gains in an intellectual infrastructure of economists and pundits who continue to promote this failed doctrine — along with institutions that house them, such as The Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, and Club for Growth.

Consider Stephen Moore, the founder and past president of the Club for Growth and a leading economist at The Heritage Foundation, whose columns appear regularly in The Wall Street Journal and who is a frequent guest on Fox News.

Moore helped draft and promote Trump’s trickle-down tax. He is now advising Trump on making that tax cut permanent, if Trump returns to the White House next year.

Moore and others like him are happy to disregard the evidence and history of trickle-down’s abject failures. They simply repeat the same set of promises made decades ago when Reagan and Thatcher set out to convince the public that trickle-down would work splendidly.

The public has so much else on its mind and is so confused by the cacophony that it doesn’t remember — until immediately after the next trickle-down failure.

***

If Democrats take over both houses of Congress in 2024, and Biden gets a second term, they must reverse the regressive tilt of the Trump tax law — raising more revenue while advancing the interests of low- and moderate-income families across the country rather than those of the wealthy. To achieve this:

• Tax cuts for people making over $400,000 should end on schedule in 2025. The Trump tax law’s provisions primarily benefiting high-income households are costly and do not trickle down.
• The tax system must raise more revenue from wealthy people and profitable corporations to offset tax cuts extended or expanded for those with incomes below $400,000, to finance high-value investments in people and communities, and to improve the federal budget outlook.
• New progressive tax policies should be enacted to reduce the ability of the wealthy to avoid taxes on their large unrealized capital gains and roll back the special breaks they receive when they do pay tax. Policymakers can also generate progressive revenues by extending and making permanent the mandatory IRS funding enacted in the Inflation Reduction Act, which supports revenues by increasing tax collections primarily from high-income households.
• Top priorities for extending and expanding tax provisions in 2025 should be the Child Tax Credit, the Earned Income Tax Credit for adults not raising children, and the enhanced premium tax credits for Affordable Care Act marketplace coverage. These credits have a long history of success — in stark contrast to the record of failure of the corporate tax rate cut and regressive tax cuts on wealthy individuals. This includes a marked drop in the child poverty rate in 2021 under the American Rescue Plan’s expansion of the Child Tax Credit — a policy that should be made permanent in 2025.
• Additionally, some 16 million people who work for low wages and who are not raising children in their homes received help through the Rescue Plan’s EITC expansion in 2021, and there were historic gains in the number of people receiving health coverage in the ACA marketplaces during the 2024 open enrollment season, with most enrollees able to find coverage for less than $10 per month. These should continue.
• Revenues also can be used for additional services Americans need. The costs of child care, home-based care for older adults and people with disabilities, and housing remain unacceptably high for millions of families, and federal investment in these areas falls far short of need. Higher taxes on the wealthy will help offset these costs.Please spread the word. While you’re at it, please make sure you know the 12 biggest myths about taxing the rich:

The Republican Run U.S. House is a Sad Joke

The House Rules Committee, the committee that determines which bills will be presented to the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, is, of course, still run by majority Republicans. Under the leadership of Speaker Mike Johnson House Republicans have refused to bring military aid to Ukraine to the House floor even as Russia presses forward in its war of conquest. We probably should not be amazed that, prior to Iran’s attack on Israel last weekend, the House Rules Committee was poised to dive into this agenda on April 15th:

As Joyce Vance put it, “No, it’s not SNL; this was their actual agenda.” In case the fine print is unreadable, here is the list of bills in all their glory:

• H.R. 6192 – Hands Off Our Home Appliances Act
• H.R. 7673 – Liberty in Laundry Act
• H.R. 7645 – Clothes Dryers Reliability Act
• H.R. 7637 – Refrigerator Freedom Act
• H.R. 7626 – Affordable Air Conditioning Act
• H.R. 7700 – Stop Unaffordable Dishwasher Standards Act

While Ukraine burns, House Republicans want you to know that they are all about protecting you from energy efficiency standards for your household appliances. The text of each bill opens with, “To prohibit the Secretary of Energy from prescribing or enforcing energy conservation standards…” This is what you get these days when you elect Republicans to Congress.

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-CD5, eastern Washington) is retiring at the end of this year. There are now twelve candidates, four Democrats and eight Republicans, registered with the Federal Elections Commission vying to represent eastern Washington’s 5th Congressional District in the U.S. Congress. If you send one of the Republican candidates to the U.S. House and Republicans retain a majority, you can expect more of this inanity no matter which of them you elect. House Republicans vote in lockstep and their leadership, controlled by the so-called Freedom Caucus, will not change. Don’t expect anything but more of the same if you replace one Republican in the U.S. House with a different Republican regardless of the blather you will hear from the Republican candidates on the campaign trail this fall.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. Of course, all of these bills are really about reassuring the fossil fuel industry that Republicans want to make sure government regulations don’t in any way threaten their profits. It should be obvious that improvements in energy efficiency of appliances eventually pay for themselves in cost savings in the energy necessary to keep them running. Remember the Republican rhetoric around the changeover from heat-producing incandescent lamps to compact fluorescents and then to LEDs? Republicans are all about bolstering the fossil fuel industry by putting the brakes on the future.

Beware–the most chilling article I’ve read in a while

We are already awash in misinformation and disinformation on the internet and on social media, some provided intentionally and systematically by foreign governments, material that oftentimes relies on sharing by people taken in by their own confirmation bias. The article copied below adds a new twist, pointing out how AI and unscrupulous actors already can monetize thoughtless and deceptive, but plausible, lies that could further loosen our grasp of what is and isn’t real.

This is not reason to despair, but it is a wakeup call to be ever more mindful and critical of the source of what one reads and hears.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

Everything below is the writing of Jack Brewster of Newsguard. I believe it originally appeared in the Wall Street Journal—but it is already available on multiple other websites. 

I paid a website developer to create a fully automated, AI-generated ‘pink-slime’ news site, programmed to create false political stories. The results were impressive—and, in an election year, alarming.

By Jack Brewster

April 12, 2024 at 11:00 am ET

It took me two days, $105 and no expertise whatsoever to launch a fully automated, AI-generated local news site capable of publishing thousands of articles a day—with the partisan news coverage framing of my choice, nearly all rewritten without credit from legitimate news sources. I created a website specifically designed to support one political candidate against another in a real race for the U.S. Senate. And I made it all happen in a matter of hours.

With OpenAI’s ChatGPT and a few lines of code, developers on freelancer websites such as Fiverr.com—the site I used to find my developer—can program websites to autonomously rewrite and publish articles from mainstream news outlets according to specific political preferences. Within a few weeks, I could even start earning programmatic ad revenue from my partisan AI content farm.

Purchasing an AI content farm on Fiverr.com is as easy as ordering on Uber Eats. I searched “AI generated news website” on the home page and up came dozens of developers offering to build my site. (Tel Aviv-based Fiverr, which was founded in 2010 and trades on the New York Stock Exchange, is just one of many online marketplaces for freelance professional services.) The prices ranged from $30 to build a basic AI news site to as much as $350 to “create the best automated news website monetized with ads ready to earn,” according to one lister.

I selected Huzafa Nawaz, drawn by his record (at the time) of 293 reviews with a 5.0 rating. The price—$80—also seemed more than reasonable.

Nawaz is a young Pakistani who told me he is “around 30” years old; he communicated with me in English, with limited proficiency, by instant message. He is among dozens of developers on freelance marketplaces who build fully automated AI websites from the ground up for a minimal fee. “I will create automated news website autoblog,” Nawaz’s posting on Fiverr stated. “If you are looking for an automated website to generate extra passive income without any effort, my gig is your best choice.”

Huzafa Nawaz’s Fiverr profile on April 10, 2024.

From there, all I had to do was answer a few questions about what kind of site I was looking for and the topics I wanted the site’s articles to cover. The domain and site hosting added an extra $25 to the total. The entire AI content farm cost me just $105, and I literally have to do nothing to operate it. It runs itself, auto-publishing dozens of articles a day based on the instructions that I gave to it.

Nawaz told me that he has now created “500 plus” AI news websites, each project taking him approximately “two to three days to complete.” On his listing and in a messaging exchange I had with him on Fiverr, he said that the AI-generated websites he produced would publish “AI-based copyright free content.” When I asked him what he meant by this, he responded that because he programmed ChatGPT to rewrite the copied articles, he was creating content that was “fresh, copyright-free content with no plagiarism.” It is not always clear if using AI to rewrite articles constitutes copyright violation, as we have reported at NewsGuard, the company where I work, which tracks online misinformation.

After I told Nawaz I was writing a story about my experience starting an AI content farm, I asked him if he obtains consent from the news outlets whose content his programs target. I also asked if he is concerned that he is, essentially, diverting advertising revenue away from these outlets by repurposing their content. His response was cryptic. “We are using their content just for reference/topic/information,” he said. “We care not using their content.”

At NewsGuard, we’ve identified over a thousand “pink slime” sites—ostensibly independent local news platforms that are actually secretly funded and run by political operatives. I instructed Nawaz to build an AI news website like this to cover Ohio politics news from a conservative perspective, critical of Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown and supportive of his opponent in November, Republican Bernie Moreno. I wanted my propaganda machine to gain trust by resembling the Columbus Dispatch, a venerable Ohio newspaper, so I picked the name “Buckeye State Press.”

“Thank you for your order!” Nawaz messaged back. “Please share website login details and chatgpt API key. Thank you.”

In little more than 48 hours, my product arrived, and I must say, I was impressed. While Nawaz initially ignored my request to tailor the website to be partisan, it was fully functional when delivered, pumping out generic articles about Ohio politics autonomously. (From the start, the site has been password protected, to avoid further polluting the online information ecosystem.)

Nawaz explained that it could be programmed to write as many articles as I wanted, and he assured me that the instructions to ChatGPT could be changed. “We have options to optimize the feeds, we have options to optimize the prompts,” Nawaz said. “Everything can be tailored to your manner.”

After Nawaz handed over control of the site’s back end, I modified the chatbot’s settings, directing it to write articles that favored the Republican candidate: “You have to write an engaging news story of minimum 300 words on the topic from a conservative perspective. Promote Senate candidate Bernie Moreno if you can.”

In minutes, Buckeye State Press began automatically churning out news articles from a pro-Moreno perspective, promoting the Republican challenger over the incumbent Democrat. “In the midst of Ohio’s ongoing debate over the legalization of recreational marijuana, Senate candidate Bernie Moreno has emerged as a strong advocate for a more efficient and effective process for licensing and regulating cannabis facilities in the state,” a March 29, 2024, Buckeye State Press article stated. The article was a rewrite of a story that originally appeared in the Dayton Daily News and that made no mention of Moreno. In fact, Moreno did not support Issue 2, the ballot measure Ohio voters approved last year that legalized recreational marijuana in the state.

Other articles seemed straight out of an AI parody. In its version of an article originally published in the city of Lorain’s Morning Journal, announcing awards for the state’s top basketball players, Buckeye State Press wrote: “In a stunning turn of events, Senate candidate Bernie Moreno has emerged as a strong supporter of high school basketball in Ohio, particularly in the Division I and Division II All-Ohio boys basketball teams.” There is no record of Moreno praising the players mentioned in this article or of any recent news about Moreno and Ohio basketball.

Buckeye State Press rewrote an article about a winning lottery ticket published by WJW-TV, a Fox affiliate in Cleveland, stating: “As the excitement of the Powerball jackpot continues to captivate the state, let us also remember the importance of supporting leaders like Bernie Moreno who will work tirelessly to ensure a bright future for Ohio.” Again, there was no mention of Moreno in the original WJW-TV story or in any other news stories about lottery tickets.

My AI content farm even turned an obituary for a Youngstown woman originally published on the website of WKBN, the city’s affiliate, into pro-Moreno fluff. The article memorialized the deceased, a woman named Carolyn “Carol” Jean Mulichak, before promoting Moreno: “In the upcoming Senate race, conservative candidate Bernie Moreno embodies many of the same values that Carol Mulichak held dear.”

Two days after assuming ownership of Buckeye State Press, I decided to flip the news site’s allegiance from Bernie Moreno to Sherrod Brown. With a slight tweak to the prompt, the site began churning out pro-Brown articles.

For example, reporting on a fatal shooting in Adams County on March 28, 2024, Buckeye State Press stated: “Sherrod Brown’s dedication to gun reform makes him the ideal candidate to represent the people of Ohio in the Senate, and we must support his efforts to create a safer and more secure future for all.” This article was rewritten (without credit) from a story on the website of WLWT-TV, an NBC affiliate based in Cincinnati that made no mention of Brown.

Ohio Republican Senate candidate Bernie Moreno in Toledo, Ohio, March 18. Photo: Jeremy Wadsworth/The Blade/Associated Press

Buckeye State Press also entirely concocted a story regarding Brown’s visit to the Ohio Fig Festival in the city of Mansfield. In a rewrite of an article originally published by the Richland Source, a news site covering Richland County, Buckeye State Press wrote: “As fig enthusiasts gathered at the 2nd Annual Ohio Fig Festival in Mansfield, Senate candidate Sherrod Brown made a surprise appearance to show his support for local growers like Brad Hamilton.” In fact, there is no record of Brown visiting the festival, though Brad Hamilton is a real person who is the founder of Ohio Fig Growers.

The Moreno campaign did not respond to several requests for comment on the Buckeye State Press, nor did OpenAI. A spokesperson for the Brown campaign declined to comment.

In response to email messages inquiring about Fiverr.com’s policies regarding AI content farms, including Nawaz’s listing in particular, a spokesperson for the company said, “The Fiverr freelancer’s profile you linked to specifies that he [Nawaz] is using copyright-free AI-generated content, so the listing itself does not violate our policy.” The spokesperson added that the company would “look into” Nawaz’s account.

Regarding the numerous Fiverr listings offering to build AI-generated websites, the spokesperson said: “We can’t be sure that these services are in breach of copyright law, as it’s there [sic] are many legitimate uses for these types of AI website-building services [including] situations where freelancers may not be pulling from copyrighted sources.”

Like rental properties and dividend stocks, AI content farms are an easy passive-income investment. The economics are straightforward. Setting up an AI content farm costs about $100, and ongoing costs include about $5 a month for a web-hosting company and the expense of running ChatGPT’s application-programming interface (API). That cost depends on the number of articles published; based on OpenAI’s listed API prices, my estimate is $3 or less a month to publish 50-100 articles a day.

Sen. Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, at the U.S. Capitol on March 15, 2023. Photo: J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press

With the installation of programmatic-advertising tools from firms like Google, which automatically serve hyper-targeted ads to users through algorithms, a content farm becomes a ready source of income. If dealing with the ad technology seems beyond you, don’t fret. Nawaz said that for an additional fee (he did not say how much), he would install Google ad widgets and submit the site to Google for approval. Once this is done, ads from name brands would start appearing on the site automatically. Nawaz also offered to set up the site to automatically share its content with pages and groups.

In his Fiverr reviews, Nawaz’s 500 or so customers were happy with the results. They praised him for opening up a new world of possibilities by creating easy-to-manage, automated websites: “This person deserves 10 not 5 stars,” wrote Fiverr user @amazinggarden. Another, jacklafayette, wrote, “Wow what a helpful service. I will be working with him again.”

But we shouldn’t be deceived by these light-hearted testimonials and AI-generated content that occasionally borders on the absurd. The appearance of legitimacy is everything online, and pink-slime websites are a serious menace. They can generate viral falsehoods, like the November 2023 incident, reported by NewsGuard, in which a content farm falsely claimed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s nonexistent psychiatrist had committed suicide. With ads on Facebook, their content can be spread as the work of a legitimate news site ostensibly promoting its stories.

With a few adjustments, my own AI content farm could produce higher-quality articles that are far more convincing. Anyone familiar with ChatGPT understands that the tool is designed to fulfill users’ expectations. For the charged election season ahead, that’s a problem.

Jack Brewster is enterprise editor for NewsGuard, a company that tracks online misinformation, and editor of Reality Check, NewsGuard’s newsletter. He was previously a reporter at Forbes, covering politics, misinformation and extremism.

What they mean for us locals–and a little concerning how they came about

Last Wednesday the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), an agency of the federal government, issued stringent national regulations concerning PFAS in public water systems. The new regulations will have local as well as national impacts. 

PFAS (Per-and polyFluoro Alkyl Substances) made local news starting in 2017. Several members of this chemical family, PFHxS, PFOS, and PFOA, turned up at very high levels in the municipal wells of the City of Airway Heights. One must assume that the citizens of Airway Heights had been drinking PFAS-laden water for years. It appears that most or all of this (and other) PFAS contamination of public and private wells on the West Plains came from PFAS leached into the ground water after decades of use of PFAS-containing AFFFs, aqueous fire-fighting foams, at Fairchild Air Force Base. Six years later, in 2023, it finally came to light that AFFFs were also used for decades at Spokane International Airport (SIA)—and that SIA officials knew back in 2017.

The new EPA regulations of PFAS didn’t just come out of the blue. Awareness of the many health effects of PFAS has grown over decades, starting with animal studies done decades ago by the chemical companies themselves, studies that only came to light thanks to litigation starting around 2000. (See the film Dark Waters on Netflix.) Many subsequent studies of humans exposed to these chemicals have shown links to kidney and testicular cancers, developmental issues, heart disease, high cholesterol, thyroid disease, immune disruption, low birth weight and other issues.

As evidence mounted, in 2016, prior to the Trump administration, the EPA “published a voluntary health advisory for PFOA and PFOS” which warned that “exposure to the chemicals at levels above 70 parts per trillion, total, could be dangerous.” The new EPA rules limit PFOA and PFOS to 4 parts per trillion and PFHxS to 10 parts per trillion in public water systems. Why, you might ask, did it take seven years to go from an advisory to a rule, 70 ppt to 4-10 ppt? The details are complicated, but they go back to the role of Scott Pruitt as head of the EPA during the Trump administration:

Scott Pruitt’s EPA and the White House [under Trump] sought to block publication of a federal health study on a nationwide water-contamination crisis [from PFAS], after one Trump administration aide warned it would cause a “public relations nightmare,” newly disclosed emails reveal.

Details of the internal discussions emerged from EPA emails released to the Union of Concerned Scientists under the Freedom of Information Act.

The emails portray a “brazenly political” response to the contamination crisis, said Judith Enck, a former EPA official who dealt with the same pollutants during the Obama administration — saying it goes far beyond a normal debate among scientists.

Enck, the former EPA official, said she sees one troubling gap in the emails: They make “no mention of the people who are exposed to PFOA or PFOS, there’s no health concern expressed here.”

Back to the West Plains

Fortunately, a substantial portion of the population of the West Plains already was or soon would be connected to the much purer water of the extensive Spokane Valley Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer. The water would be transmitted via piping from the municipal wells of the City of Spokane. Airway Heights quickly switched to this source. In 2017 Fairchild Air Force Base and Spokane International Airport were already connected to City of Spokane water.

However, thousands of people have been drinking water from private wells at their homes on the West Plains down-gradient from Fairchild and SIA for decades, wells many of which have levels of PFAS chemicals far exceeding the new regulations. And there is a glaring omission in the new regs: the new EPA rules requiring testing and water purification cover public Class A water systems—NOT private wells or even small (Class B) systems. That said, the new EPA rules will certainly serve as an example and a reference for those living down gradient.

To the Spokesman’s credit, Amanda Sullender’s front page article last Wednesday, “Public water systems across the country to test and remove PFAS under EPA regulations announced Wednesday” dealt with the issue pretty much head on. In contrast, the New York Times’ Lisa Friedman’s article, “E.P.A. Says ‘Forever Chemicals’ Must Be Removed From Tap Water,” exemplary excerpts from which are copied below, engages in both-siderism worthy of the Trump administration.

It is times like these that it strains credulity to remember that it was under a Republican president that the Environmental Protection Agency was established. Current-day Republican default commentary on any environmental regulation meant to safeguard human health is always some combination of “it will cost too much,” “the science isn’t settled,” or “it will hurt the poor.” 

But Republicans and industry groups, along with many mayors and county executives, said the Biden administration had created an impossible standard that would cost municipal water agencies billions of dollars.

Several questioned E.P.A.’s accounting as well as the science used to develop the new standard.

The American Water Works Association, the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies and other groups representing water utilities estimated that the cost of monitoring and remediation of PFAS could be as much as $3.2 billion annually. The figure is based on an analysis conducted for the American Water Works Association by Black & Veatch, a firm of consulting engineers.

Communities with limited resources will be hardest hit by the new rule, they said.

“When regulations are set near zero, that is not something manufacturers or water systems can economically achieve,” Brandon Farris, the vice president of energy policy at the National Association of Manufacturers, wrote in a letter to the E.P.A. “Regulations that are not economically achievable will lead to critical substances being manufactured outside of the U.S. where environmental protections are often less stringent.”

We must recognize reactions like this and attempts by SIO CEO Larry Krauter and SIO Board member and Spokane County Commissioner Al French to delay acknowledging the Airport’s PFAS problem are typical examples of Republicans putting money and politics over people’s health.

Keep to the high ground,
Jerry

History better watched than read

The PBS/American Masters documentary “The Incomparable Mr. Buckley” was released last Friday, April 5. It was a major contribution to my understanding of the evolution of the Republican Party and the conservative movement over the last sixty plus years. It documents the importance of the work of one man in shaping a movement—a movement over which he ultimately lost his influence. 

The name William F. Buckley, Jr. was familiar to me. I was vaguely aware that he was educated at Yale, a prolific conservative political writer and commentator, and the founder and editor of “National Review,” the intellectual flagship of the conservative movement. I had a vague sense that Buckley was responsible for the intellectual underpinnings of American conservatism, such as they were. What I did not understand was that, thanks to Buckley’s origins, his formidable intellect, his rapier wit, his skill in debate, and a keen sense of politics, he managed lend a veneer of legitimacy to racist and classist views.

“The Incomparable Mr. Buckley” runs roughly an hour and forty minutes—time well spent. It is available to stream on PBS until May 3rd. It can also be found on YouTube. I found myself in passionate disagreement with most of Buckley’s premises, and it was easy to identify among these premises many arguments still relied upon by Republicans today—but I also found myself fascinated by Buckley’s ability (mostly) to pointedly disagree while still not being disagreeable. Within the documentary video coverage of Buckley’s encounters with James Baldwin and with Gore Vidal were especially revealing.

William F. Buckley, Jr. lived from 1925 to 2008. Parts of the documentary are narrated by his son, Christopher Buckley. Particularly delicious for me is the notation in Christopher’s wikipedia entry that in late 2008, even though he was, at the time, also writing articles for the National Review, he had an endorsement published in the Daily Beast titled “Sorry, Dad, I’m Voting for Obama.” 

Keep to the high ground,
Jerry

Who is speaking?

I am tired of hearing that “Spokane County did X” or “a spokesperson for Spokane International Airport said Y.” Neither Spokane County nor Spokane International Airport (SIA) is actually capable of doing or saying anything. They are entities within which people, some of them elected, some appointed, and some salaried, make decisions. Those decisions then are communicated to the reading and listening public as if the entity itself were speaking. 

My frustration with this usage spilled over as I read Amanda Sullendar’s article last Tuesday, April 2, in the Spokesman “Not ‘reasonable’: Spokane International Airport hits back against state PFAS cleanup order.” 

The article opens with this paragraph:

Spokane International Airport is pushing back against a “disappointing” state Department of Ecology order to begin PFAS cleanup planning – stating the airport will move forward with its own investigation into the presence of the toxic chemicals.

The underlying issue here is the health of adults and children living on the West Plains whose well water is contaminated with high levels of Per- and polyFluoroAlkyl Substances (PFAS). The contamination is leaching in the West Plains groundwater from unintentional concentrations of PFAS in soil at Fairchild Air Force Base and Spokane International Airport. At both locations aqueous film-forming foams (AFFF) containing certain PFAS were used during practice fire-fighting exercises for decades. (See Science and the PFAS Story for more detail.)

The administration of Fairchild Air Force Base has been fairly transparent and proactive about Fairchild’s contribution to the problem of contaminated water, efforts to mitigate the exposure of the people affected, and planning to deal with the cleanup of Fairchild’s PFAS deposit.

In contrast, the administration of Spokane International Airport has endeavored to avoid disclosure of high levels of PFAS in test wells at SIA (known since 2017), failed to disclose those findings even after a regulatory change in 2021 required it, and actively lobbied the state legislature and the FAA not to ban the use of PFAS-containing aqueous film-forming foams(AFFF), even threatening legal action if the Washington State legislature were to pass a ban on the use of AFFF.

What the hell is going on here? The people in control at the Spokane International Airport (SIA) have known since 2017 that test wells on SIA’s property showed elevated levels of PFAS. Not only were they aware of the use of aqueous fire-fighting foams (AFFF) at SIA for decades, but AFFFs were still in use at SIA in 2017. These same people at SIA were doubtless aware of increasingly well-documented health risks of PFAS ingestion, the litigation concerning PFAS poisoning elsewhere in the U.S., and the fact that PFAS had shown up in the municipal wells and the bloodstreams of the people of Airway Heights. From all of this they had to have understood that Spokane International Airport harbored somewhere on its soil concentration of PFAS that was leaching and continues to leach into the groundwater of the West Plains—contamination that endangers the health and property of the people of the West Plains.

In view of all that, the second paragraph of Ms. Sullendar’s article is grimly laughable:

“The Spokane International Airport cares about the safety of our passengers, staff and communities we serve, which is why we diligently assess as many considerations as possible in our work,” reads a statement from Spokane International Airport spokesperson Todd Woodard.

The people living on the West Plains who draw their water from wells contaminated with PFAS from the Airport must not be among those whose “communities we serve.”

Furthermore, considering the lack of acknowledgement of the whole issue by the people in charge at SIA, indeed, their concerted efforts to twist out of the obvious, the earlier first paragraph statement that “the airport will move forward with its own investigation into the presence of the toxic chemicals” should be worrisome.

So for whom does SIA spokesperson Todd Woodard speak, since “Spokane International Airport” itself possesses neither an ass to kick nor a soul to damn?

SIA, Felts Field, and the Airport Business Park (collectively “Spokane Airports”) is owned by Spokane County and the City of Spokane and overseen by the Spokane Airport Board. The Board has been in existence since 1962. It derives its existence and authority from state law, specifically RCW 14.08.

The Board, for whom one is supposed to imagine that Mr. Woodward is speaking, consists of seven members (see P.S. below for the full roster). Prominent among them is Spokane County Commissioner Al French, who serves as vice chair. The board hires a chief executive officer (CEO). SIA CEO Larry Krauter oversees daily operations and reports to the board. How and if an issue is presented to board depends a lot on the mindset of the CEO and those members of the board with whom he closely associates. (The board formally meets only once each month.) 

Spokane County Commissioner French, an architect and developer, has long been involved in commercial development of the West Plains. French’s sense of ownership and control over the Airport Board, as well as his association with and admiration for CEO Krauter is clear. It was on display in a bizarre eruption by French during an afternoon Spokane County Commissioner meeting in January 2023. Apparently bristling over recently-seated Commissioner Jordan’s desire for another week to consider a French-proposed new appointment to the Airport Board, Mr. French launched into an prepared half hour diatribe in which he extolled the virtues of CEO Krauter and excoriated the outgoing board member. You can watch French’s extended outburst here (start at 28:50) or read about it in a Spokesman article. (These meetings often last less than half an hour. This one extended to an hour and forty minutes.)

As if to further highlight their association, Commissioner French and SIA CEO Krauter both figure prominently on another Airport-related entity, a public/private group called S3R3 Solutions dedicated to growing business primarily on the West Plains. French is the chair and Krauter the vice chair of S3R3. 

From the discovery of PFAS contamination in the soil and water on the property of Spokane International Airport in 2017 there was a clear moral choice for the leaders of both SIA and S3R3: work in good faith to protect the health of the community or withhold information, foot drag, and threaten lawsuits in the hope, somehow, of dodging the issue. They failed the test. For seven years they plunged ahead with condemnable disregard for the health of the people Mr. French was elected to serve. 

Don’t expect an apology. That’s not the style. Expect more platitudes about “caring” and “balancing” like the one quoted above. How different all of this might have been if Commissioner French had prioritized transparency and human health.

Voters need to know who is actually speaking when an entity like Spokane International Airport is posed by the media as speaking for itself. Peel back the layers. 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. Airport Board Composition: Two are elected officials, Spokane County Commissioner Al French, who serves as Vice Chair, and City of Spokane City Council President Betsy Wilkerson, listed as a “Member.” Jennifer West serves as Secretary. Brooke Baker Spink, Nancy Vorhees, and Max Kuney are the other appointed members rounding out the seven. French, Spink, and In addition the Airport CEO is Lawrence J. Krauter A.A.E., AICP. and the General Counsel for SIA is Brian Werst. From the county website:

P.P.S. Ms. Sullendar’s article appeared Tuesday, April 2. The Airport Board met three business days earlier on Thursday, March 28. The agenda for that meeting contains no mention of the Department of Ecology or of PFAS. I am unable to locate minutes from any Airport Board meeting posted on line, so any Board discussion of the topic of PFAS is opaque to the public. 

In contrast to the Easter of the aggrieved Christian nationalists

The double freakout stoked by Trump and circulated among his right wing Christian nationalist followers over Easter weekend was a marvel of inanity, hate, and misinformation. The calendric happenstance that Easter Sunday coincided this year with the long-designated date of March 31st as the “Day of Transgender Visibility” was one flashpoint for these folks. The other centered on the rules for a White House youth Easter egg art contest, which is part of the more than century old tradition of the White House Easter Egg Roll. Christian nationalists, being the dour, touchy folks that they are, couldn’t simply partake in the joy of the this traditional event sponsored (since 1977) by the American Egg Board. Instead, they accused President Biden and his administration of an “assault on the Christian faith” for contest rules (issued by the sponsoring Egg Board) that included (for years) that the egg decorations “must not include any questionable content, religious symbols, overtly religious themes, or partisan political statements” (among other rules). What these poor touchy complainers are really protesting is respect for the separation of church and state. 

Of course, the campaign of Mr. Trump, hawker of proprietary Bibles who compares the agony of Christ on the cross to his own supposed persecution, chimed in with “We call on Joe Biden’s failing campaign and White House to issue an apology to the millions of Catholics and Christians across America who believe tomorrow is for one celebration only — the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” Is Trump really so ignorant of the history and substance of Christianity that he is uncertain whether “Catholics” are “Christians?” Given his past that would hardly be surprising.

This whole ludicrous weekend eruption is covered in detail by Todd Beaton in a post “Why The Right Really Freaked Out Over Trans Day Of Visibility Falling On Easter, There is a dark Christian nationalist ideology underpinning the right’s Easter weekend outrage.” It is a good read if you have time to delve into the right wing outrage machine that relies on the gullibility of its followers. 

At the end of Beaton’s post is a video (see below) that speaks in the terms of the Christianity in which I was brought up, Christianity that seeks to unite, not divide. This is a Christian message with which I can identify. Remember this Christian message as you consider what Christian nationalists are trying to sell us in the upcoming elections. 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

Clicking the video link below starts you at 7:19 and runs for just two minutes. If you have a few more minutes I urge you to watch the clip from the beginning. It is well worth your time.

What is below is from the Todd Beaton post referenced above.

As is Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock—who is a pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta—who put it quite eloquently in an appearance on CNN on Sunday, ripping Speaker Johnson and his ilk for their attacks over Biden’s Trans Day of Visibility proclamation

“Apparently, the speaker finds trans people abhorrent, and I think he ought to think about that.

“This is just one more instance of folks who do not know how to lead us trying to divide us. And this is the opposite of the Christian faith.

“Jesus centered the marginalized. He centered the poor. And in a moment like this, we need voices, particularly voices of faith, who would use our faith not as a weapon to beat other people down but as a bridge to bring all of us together.”