Republicans and the IRS

Slow strangulation of the IRS feeds the Republican narrative

For me two quotes exemplify Republican attitudes toward government: Ronald Reagan’s “The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” and Grover Norquist’s, “I’m not in favor of abolishing the government. I just want to shrink it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” 

Both the quotes came to mind as I read the Monday, April 18, Orion Donovan-Smith’s front page article in the Spokesman, “TAXPAYERS CAN EXPECT MORE DELAYED RETURNS, Watchdog warns IRS ‘is in crisis’ with staffing, funding”¹

The article offers some balance on the issue with discussion of the dysfunction of the IRS by noting that 1) Republican have systematically cut funding for the agency and 2) by blocking Biden’s Build Back Better Act, Congress has stonewalled the badly needed funds for modernization and staffing of the IRS (although Smith points at a few “moderate Democrats” rather than the glaring no-to-everything solid voting block of Republicans).

Years of Norquist-inspired Republican underfunding of the IRS feeds a vicious cycle: outdated computer systems and understaffing render the IRS incapable of interacting with taxpayers in a timely and helpful manner, an incapacity that fuels taxpayer outrage with “the system” and fosters exactly the distrust of government that Reagan famously endorsed. 

Meanwhile, as the average taxpayer slogs through tax season angry with the IRS and government in general, the wealthy backers of the Republican political machine smile all the way to the bank. After all, they managed to push through the 2017 “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” that massively cut their tax liability. Furthermore, the more cash-strapped and understaffed the IRS remains, the less the IRS is capable of challenging the convoluted tax dodges in which the wealthy can afford to engage. 

Donovan-Smith’s article points up another quirk of the U.S. tax system (the bold is mine): 

While many other countries provide benefits to their citizens through social service agencies, Holtzblatt said, the U.S. government relies on the IRS, through programs like the Earned Income Tax Credit that provides up to $6,700 for low-income families with children. When Congress approved economic stimulus payments as part of pandemic aid packages in 2020 and 2021, it relied on the IRS to distribute those funds. 

Starving the IRS of operating and capital improvement funds thus gums up even the federal government’s attempts to help low income families, fostering additional frustration and distrust among precisely the folks who most need a break.

Underfunding the IRS thus helps fulfill the Republican narrative in multiple ways. It takes the pressure off the so-called “job creators” to pay their share of taxes under the law while underfunding simultaneously reduces the efficient distribution of funds meant to reach those disdained by Republicans as “living on the dole”/”living on welfare”. The resultant dysfunction is then criticized as a failure of government and held up as a reason to further shrink it. It’s a vicious cycle that will only break by shrinking the number of Republicans in public office.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry1

Note that the headlines of articles appearing in the print version of the Spokesman are often somewhat different than the online version. This particular article appeared online under the headline, “After ‘horrendous’ year for cash-strapped IRS, taxpayers can expect more delayed returns”.

CMR, Insulin, and Drug Prices

Does she really “share a goal”?

According to the Spokesman article from April 1st, “House passes $35-a-month insulin cap as Dems seek wider bill”.

Public opinion polls have consistently shown support across party lines for congressional action to limit drug costs.

Eastern Washington’s U.S. Representative McMorris Rodgers not only voted against the $35-a-month insulin cap, but saw fit to rail against it in a 3 minute floor speech you can watch here. She starts with “We all share the goal of reducing the cost of insulin”. If that’s true, she certainly isn’t demonstrating any appetite for it. The insulin bill, she says, is “price fixing” and a “socialized medicine approach”. This bill, according to her, would “lead to fewer cures” and result in “higher costs someplace else”. 

Let’s stop and consider those vacuous assertions. How will putting a cap on the cost of insulin, “lead to fewer cures” and “higher costs someplace else”? Overall drug costs must, in McMorris Rodgers’ world, be a zero-sum game: if you cap the price of insulin in her system, then the lost insulin revenue resulting from the price cut will simply reappear somewhere else. Evidently, in her world, there is no elasticity in drug company profits, drug companies and their investors in her world must have a fixed or growing profit margin. Moreover, if these private companies don’t enjoy a high profit margin then they’ll quit innovating, quit looking for “cures” (as if drug company excess profits were always spent on the next “cure” rather than advertising, detailing drugs to physicians, and legal efforts to lengthen patent protection on existing medications). McMorris Rodgers’ simplistic, zero-sum world of drug pricing is imaginary economics.

This is the same Congressperson who, with most of the rest of the Republican Party, stone-walled a bill to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices. According to their thinking, drugs are priced in a “free market” and giving Medicare the power to negotiate price with drug companies would violate “free market” principles. A free market requires a buyer and a seller each with the freedom to walk away from the negotiation. For an insulin-dependent diabetic walking away from a negotiation about the price of insulin means debility and death. That’s not a free market. Giving Medicare the power to negotiate drug prices is a form of collective bargaining on behalf of otherwise powerless individual patients. (Consider, of course, that the notion of collective bargaining, a method of giving a lot of small players a voice against the big players in an economy, is anathema in Republican ideology.)

If, according to McMorris Rodgers, she shares the goal of reducing the cost of insulin, what is she doing to achieve that goal? In her floor speech she touts her bill (this year it is dubbed H.R. 19, the “Lower Costs, More Cures Act of 2021”) to rein in “pharmacy benefit managers” (PBMs). To be sure, Pharmacy benefit managers need reining in. But with her nearly eighteen years tenure in the U.S. House what headway has she made? She has put this legislation forward for years, including under a Republican majority Congress and Republican president—with no significant progress. If an eighteen year veteran “shares a goal” we might expect more than words. 

To close on this topic, I offer a letter-to-the-editor written by Bill Siems, a letter published in the Spokesman on April 7:

Cathy McMorris-Rogers loves the phrase “putting more money in your pocket” to explain her passion for legislation she supports, such as the Trump-era tax cuts which mostly benefitted the wealthy (permanently) but did (temporarily) lower rates for us ordinary taxpayers. 

However on March 31 her “money in your pocket” passion was inoperative for a bipartisan bill to cap insulin costs at $35 per month for the millions of Americans who need this lifesaving medication, many of whom have to ration their use because US prices are eight times the average for wealthy nations. 

Not only did CMR not join other Republicans in voting for the measure, but she spoke strongly against it.  Her reasons:  price caps never work, and controlling insulin prices will simply make other things more expensive.  No doubt her diabetic constituents struggling to control their disease will take comfort from that thought. 

Despite CMR the measure passed and went on to do battle in the Senate, where hopefully there will be some Republicans whose opposition to price controls can allow an exception in the case of a life-saving medication. 

Keep to the high ground,
Jerry

Chief Meidl, SPS, and Restorative Practice

“School resource officers” vs. “campus safety specialists”

City of Spokane Police Chief Craig Meidl recently, in a letter to the Superintendent of Spokane Public Schools (SPS) that was soon made public, accused SPS of violating state law. Chief Meidl accused the District of not reporting “assaults and threats” to the Police, reporting that he claims is required by the law as detailed in the Revised Code of Washington (RCW). The media details and the background are well covered in Luke Baumgarten’s article, Custody of the Kids. Spokane Public Schools quickly contested the allegations, but Meidl went to the media and then, abruptly, the FBI was called in to investigate. Now neither Meidl or SPS will comment until completion of the FBI investigation. 

When a public figure like a police chief makes such an accusation in a letter and in the media it leaves an impression, warranted or unwarranted, on those exposed to the reporting. “Gee, there must be something bad going on in the public schools.” It is hard not to suspect a political motivation on the part of Chief Meidl—or at least some sort of payback—to explain his public action. 

Spokane Public Radio, using a public records request, obtained and reviewed the thirty reports Chief Meidl reviewed before issuing the letter with his legal interpretation of state law. You can listen to or read the resulting story by Rebecca White here on SPR’s website. It’s entitled “Spokane police chief says Spokane Public Schools is not reporting violence; police reports show more complicated picture”.

For reference, keep in mind that Spokane Public Schools serves nearly 30,000 students, so this Meidl-media-event is based on 30 reports involving a tiny fraction of students. Meidl’s allegation of a violation of a legal requirement to report all of these incidents is, to be generous, subject to legal argument: 

Kim Ambrose, a law professor who specializes in juvenile law at the University of Washington, says some of the police reports Meidl reviewed, such as students threatening to kill their teachers, don’t fall under mandatory reporting. 

In instances where parents called the police, Ambrose says it’s difficult to make a judgment because of the vagueness of state law and the limited information captured in a police report, but the common understanding of mandatory reporting is as a tool to address adults abusing children.

It used to be that “school resource officers” in the Spokane Public Schools had the power to arrest, embroiling a student in the criminal justice system. 

Spokane Public Schools is one of many districts across the country that reviewed and revised its policies in response to racial justice protests and complaints from parents of children with disabilities. 

The district’s current approach bars school staff from arresting students, and focuses on restorative practice. It has garnered praise from some, and criticism from others – including Spokane Police Chief Craig Meidl. He alleges the district leadership may be telling staff to not call the police when they are legally required too.

School resource officers have been replaced with campus safety specialists, who cannot arrest students. 

The policy does not tell teachers to not call law enforcement, but it does discourage staff from criminalizing students. It calls law enforcement a “last resort” for serious threats to campus safety.

An example of the difference in approach under the new guidelines is illustrative:

Erin Carden is a member of the local Every Student Counts Alliance group and the mother of an autistic student. She says the newer approach has changed the district for the better.

Carden says her son’s first of many encounters with school resource officers came in second grade. He was handcuffed after he laid down on the ground during story time and wouldn’t follow orders. In his teens, interactions with resource officers became more violent. Carden says once when she went to school to pick her son up for non-compliant behavior, she arrived to find a resource officer restraining him face down on the ground, and he was repeatedly hitting his head on the linoleum floor.

She says the experience was traumatic for them both, and she contacted school leadership and eventually worked with several groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union.

“This isn’t what our kids deserve, and for me those were two really defining moments,” she said.

She says in the last two to three years, the district changed its approach when working with her son. They’ve given him more personal space and time, stopped putting him in isolation rooms, and removed school resource officers.

“He’s a different person,” she said. “I feel like we waited almost 19 years to really get to see glimpses of this, glimpses of his potential because he was so constantly kept under this magnifying glass, or pressure to be something that he was not. If he didn’t fit into that little box that they wanted him to be, the punishment was go to jail.”

Could Chief Meidl have asked to sit down with representatives of Spokane Public Schools and discuss his concerns over the reports he had read? Of course he could have, but no one is suggesting that he did. Instead, he chose to air his allegation to the media in a manner to suggest an adversarial relationship between the police department and the public schools. And the Federal Bureau of Investigation?? One has to wonder if the FBI was called in to further dramatize the supposed gravity of the accusation and foster public distrust. Is Meidl chaffing over the loss of “school resource officers” and, thereby, the police department’s direct route to criminalizing student behavior? Meidl’s media enlistment rather than cooperative effort doesn’t pass a basic smell test.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

CMR on the Age of the Earth

And Why What She Believes is Critical

Is U.S. Rep. McMorris Rodgers (R, CD5, eastern Washington) educationally capable of comprehending global warming (and taking it seriously) or does her use of the words “renewable energy” simply serve as smokescreen to hide full fledged climate science dismissal?

As McMorris Rodgers faces another August primary and November general election it is important to re-examine the core qualifications and understanding (or lack thereof) with which she represents us to the federal government. Today I want to re-visit a telling exchange that occurred four years ago.

Only the first hour of the debate at the Bing in Spokane on Wednesday, September 19th, 2018, was televised. That hour is available to watch here. Another half hour of audience questions followed, questions and answers KHQ did not post. Parts of that half hour I’ve transcribed from recordings made by members of the audience.

Thanks to Bob Gilles (who, sadly, has since passed away) for the following question, which he posed in a very jolly, upbeat fashion I cannot express in print.

Bob Gilles: “What is your take on evolution and science? Do you believe the earth is more like 6000 years old or four and a half billion years old?”

CMR: “I get to go first, huh? [laughter] Well. OK. Ummm. The account that I believe is the one in the Bible that God created the world in seven days. [clapping] …made by His creation… [noise] I’m not here…I can’t say how old the earth is. I believe this is an exciting time for us to be living. I’m proud of the innovation and ingenuity of the American people. I’m proud to be an American. It’s the greatest country [loud clapping]…liberty and human rights and religious tolerance and self-determination. So this is a [murmuring] …and science. And I do believe that we need to…ah…know what the science is, respect the science…I’m battling right now to make sure we use science when it comes to making decisions around the Lower Snake River dams and the Snake River system…[trails off]”

It is a free country. Everyone is entitled to their point of view. The point of view McMorris Rodgers publicly revealed in her answer (a little reluctantly) is consistent with her education. She has never been exposed to the foundations of geology and biology, except, perhaps, to discount the evidence. Her undergraduate degree was taken at the Pensacola Christian College where, among the Articles of Faith, one finds:

We believe that God created the heavens and the earth in six literal days, and that God created all life (Gen. 1). We reject the man-made theory of evolution occurring over millions of years and believe that the earth is approximately 6,000 years old.

No instructor at such an institution would dare offer an unbiased presentation of the physical evidence for a planet that is three and a half billion years old. (The evidence is not only fossils in layers of rock but also the physics of the decay of radioactive isotopes, the stuff of basic science.) 

If everything one is taught begins with the unshakable belief the earth is around 6000 years old (a number calculated based on the “begats” in the Book of Genesis) one must intentionally disregard the bases of nearly all modern science, especially modern geology, continental drift, and, importantly, the geological understanding of the history of climate. (If all ice ages and past documented changes in climate all occurred over 6000 years then everything has to have happened fast. In that mindset modern day concerns over the speed at which climate is changing can be glossed over as unremarkable and natural. That is the sobering background underlying McMorris Rodgers’ analysis, “We’ve been through times when the earth warmed and then also we’ve been through times when the Earth…there’s been more ice on…in the world”.)

It is important to recognize adherence to the idea of a 6000 year old earth is not a majority view in America, probably not even among self-described Christians. Much of Christianity, including United Methodism, the tradition in which I was brought up, considers the biblical creation story to be allegorical: “We find that science’s descriptions of cosmological, geological, and biological evolution are not in conflict with theology.”  It is worth noting there have been recent (and un-successful) efforts to change Methodist doctrine to an anti-science view. Christianity is not monolithic, and McMorris Rodgers’ views represent only some of those who call themselves Christian. That realization is at the core of her hesitation to directly answer the question Mr. Gilles posed. 

Look at McMorris Rodgers’ answer again. She performed an almost immediate hard pivot to the only “scientific” refuge she knows, her claim of a scientific basis for preserving the Snake River dams, the same pivot she employs every time climate change comes up as a question.

We need a representative whose understanding of science is not crippled by her upbringing and education. Her mouthing of words like “renewable energy” ought not be mistaken for a clear understanding of the threat we face from global warming. Even less should her utterances be mistaken for willingness to legislatively support conversion to non-carbon sources of energy.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

Homelessness Issue Tonight at City Council

A lot has happened

That homelessness is a major issue in our community is no surprise to anyone. Nadine Woodward, our mayor, was elected to “solve” homelessness—a task she now quietly admits is more daunting than she had imagined. After the debacle at the Convention Center last January made it clear that the number of those needing shelter from the cold far exceeded available shelter beds people and groups from across the political spectrum began talking with more urgency and sense of purpose. Part of that conversation took place on an email listserv organized and managed by Dan Simonson, a retired CRNA. I have watched with great interest as people with varying perspectives weighed in and actually seemed to listen to each others’ point of view. Julie Garcia of Julie’s Helping Hands (JHH), an organization with a lot of experience and perspective on this issue in Spokane, has been a major contributor. 

Mayor Woodward recently articulated a proposal (The Mayor’s Homelessness Plan) involving one large building on an as yet undisclosed site. It is a good faith effort, but putting everything in one large building (as you will read below) is a concept many providers who have been involved with this issue for years caution against. Julie’s Helping Hands produced a highly detailed proposal that does not involve a single larger building. JHH’s proposal was in response to a Request for Proposal (RFP) put out by the city to which JHH’s was the only response. As I have watched the listserv I have come to highly respect Julie Garcia’s experience and perspective on the issue of homelessness, and also her ability to articulate her understanding.

There are indications that there is enough money available through the American Rescue Plan to fund both the Mayor’s Homelessness Plan and JHH’s proposal.

Tonight, Monday, April 11 at 6PM the Mayor’s Homelessness Plan is up for consideration at the City of Spokane’s City Council meeting. Please read Dan Simonson’s plea below for you to read up on the two plans and attend the City Council Meeting either in person or virtually. Meanwhile,

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

Today [Monday, April 11] at 6 pm may be our last best chance to make sure that our city has adequate emergency shelter in place for next winter – and allow us to once again hold up our heads as a city that will never turn our fellow citizens out into the frozen streets to fend for themselves.

Monday at 6 pm the Spokane City Council meets.  The Mayor’s Homelessness Plan is on the agenda.  We need to be in attendance to show solidarity – given that next winter is now only 7 months away, WE MUST ATTEND AND MAKE OUR VOICES HEARD.  Please forward this to as many friends and supporters you can.I am hoping we can all attend and support the Jewels Helping Hands (JHH) response to the City’s RFP that is currently being considered by the Mayor and the City Council.  You can review both the RFP and the JHH response HERE.The City Council makes the final decision on the submitted proposals (subject to possible veto by the Mayor).  While I applaud the Mayor’s new path and the positive energy she and the City are putting into finding a solution, I cannot accept the portion of her plan calling for attempting to house 400 – 500 people in a big building.  With even my limited knowledge as a newcomer to this issue, I just don’t see how that will work. It is just warehousing, and not a credible attempt to induct these folks back into a true community, which I think we all realize is the only long-term answer to the problem.  Just as quickly as people fall off the table, we need to pull them back into our community.  After we provide emergency shelter for all of our citizens who need it, we then have to move on to achieve Functional Zero – the sweet spot where the growing number of people falling into homelessness is balanced by a similar number, aided by their city, climb back out.  But before we get there, we need adequate emergency low-barrier shelter.  Here’s our chance! Here is a link to the meeting web page – https://my.spokanecity.org/citycouncil/meetings/2022/04/11/legislative-meeting/

You can either attend in person or by Webex.  I am doing my best to find out the correct Webex URL, and will post it as soon as I am sure it is correct.In addition, those wishing to give testimony virtually can sign up between 5:00 – 6:00 p.m. at 

https://forms.gle/Vd7n381x3seaL1NW6

Instructions for participation are provided on the form when you sign up.More to come, let’s do our best to prepare.  This is one of the most consequential decisions our city will make to assure we do not repeat last winter.  We must attend this meeting and support a solution.  No more studies, consultants, and platitudes.  No matter which proposal you support, we must demand action now so we are not kicking homeless people out into the streets in freezing weather next year.  We cannot let that happen again.

Dan — dsimonson@mac.com

https://sites.google.com/view/shelterspokane2022

Mission: my city will have adequate emergency shelter space available for Winter, 2022.  

What follows is from JHH posted on the listserv. It is worth your time to read as plea for working together:

Posted by Julie Garcia yesterday [April 8] at 6:39 pm:

I would like to share my vision. I would like to stop all the politics and focus on “solving” for lack of a better word, homelessness. 

JHH believes that two RFP’s should get funded. Because both are needed. This is a huge investment in our community. It is a chance and opportunity that can not and should not be missed. 

As a low barrier service provider who is “boots on the ground” just as all the providers in these RFP’s, we are asking for unification of providers. JHH’s RFP includes Truth, City Gate, Family Promise, Consistent Care, Compassion Addiction Treatment, Revive and overseen by someone with a lifetime of service to the low income, marginalized and homeless populations, Ben Stuckart. 

The Guardians also are proposing to run a low barrier shelter. The numbers in our population continue to grow and increase year after year. The optic and division in our community towards homelessness continues to divide our city. This is a perfect storm to highlight the need. What happened at the Convention Center can not be unseen. 400ish people were kept alive and that is a win. If we expect the community to become stakeholders and help our neighbors experiencing homelessness, we as providers need to do the same. Help each other. 

One organization can not and does not have all the answers but together we can build a system that actually benefits all members of our community. Businesses and housed population have valid concerns, people experiencing homelessness have valid concerns and service providers and non profits have have valid concerns. All these concerns can be considered and addressed simply by creating enough space, transparency and accountability. Not just on the part of people experiencing homelessness but those that serve them as well. 

If we support each other, we can all be successful in supporting the most vulnerable in our community. And perhaps decrease the rising numbers of people experiencing homelessness. The only way to truly solve homelessness is houses. But until those things come available providing safe, humane and dignified “waiting” spaces is needed. 

We have to first admit that the numbers are wrong and significantly underestimated. We need to also accept that “tough love” is not working. It’s time we use data and evidence based practices to meaningfully and intentionally address the issues. I personally will be a city council on Monday to speak on the investment in my community. We need to stop being reactive and become pro active. 

It costs less money and trauma that way. Wouldn’t it be amazing to enter a winter with adequate space and options instead of what we have and currently do. Wouldn’t it be amazing to not address the space instead focus on how to get these folks supported, helped and out of homelessness. 

I would encourage all to attend the city council meeting and support both RFP’s and the investment in our community. We are only as strong as our weakest member. Right now people experiencing homelessness are asking for help. Lets do our part to help them be successful. 

Yours for the Shalom of the community, 
Julie Garcia
Executive Director 
Jewels Helping Hands 
509-263-5502

WPC and Fossil Fuels

Chris Cargill is casting doubt on EVs from a position of ignorance and ideology

The Washington Policy Center in eastern Washington now seems to have an open propaganda platform in the Spokesman Review. About every two weeks Chris Cargill of WPC gets a Guest Opinion slot in which to propound Republican talking points. He was recently elected in November 2021 to the City of Liberty Lake City Council. Mr. Cargill is also the Eastern Washington director of the Washington Policy Center and seems to be WPC’s primary representation in eastern Washington. Mr. Cargill credentials are ideally suited to a career in politics and communicating a political agenda. He holds a B.A. in broadcast communication studies and political science from Gonzaga University. His experience is in broadcast journalism and marketing campaigns. 

Working for WPC, it is not surprising that Mr. Cargill should find himself called upon to cast doubt on anything that might reduce oil company profits, so, on April 1 he weighed in electric vehicles with a Guest Opinion entitled “Political push for electric vehicles might not make sense, or cents”. Notice, first off, that he frames conversion to EVs as “political”. He carefully avoids any mention of climate change, the primary reason for EV advocacy. Instead, he dives into his version of economics, whining in his first paragraph:

Maybe you’re one of the millions of Americans fed up with high gas prices. You might be thinking about buying an electric vehicle but are concerned about the price. Would an EV pay for itself and save you money?

Mr. Cargill then offers a hodgepodge of claims, brands, and occasional cherry-picked numbers in a rambling effort to cast doubt. His source, his proof? “The state has a spreadsheet” that “proves” the costs “might not make sense.” [The italics are mine.] He pretends to have dived into the weeds for his proof (without offering a link so one could see the methodology), and the best he can come up with is a “proof” of a “might”. He must be trying really hard…

Let’s do a little back-of-the-envelope math as a rough fact check. Gasoline right now is hovering around four dollars a gallon. For argument let’s assume (generously) that most police vehicles (the EVs Mr. Cargill seems most anxious to criticize) get around 25 miles to the gallon. To go 100,000 miles, that’s 4,000 gallons or $16,000 at $4/gal. Unlike Mr. Cargill, I’ve actually driven a dual motor Model 3 Tesla for the last three years. Plugged in at home in Spokane a kilowatt hour (kWh) of electricity costs just about 8 cents. The stats on my onboard computer tell me that I have averaged 4 miles per kWh since I’ve owned the car. To go 100,000 miles, that’s 25,000 kWh or $2,000 at 8 cents/kWh. Two thousand dollars per 100,000 with a powerful EV vs. $16,000 per 100,000 miles for a gas vehicle, a saving of $14,000 per 100,000 miles. Hmmm.

Mr. Cargill’s “proof” that EVs “might” not make sense has to contend with maintenance as well. The only fluids one has to watch and maintain on an electric car are for the windshield washer and the hydraulic brake system. No messy engine oil changes and disposal, no oil filter, no air cleaner, no radiator fluid, and none the leaks of those fluids to which fossil fuel vehicles are prone. Furthermore, the brakes on an EV get far less wear than on an fossil fuel vehicle on account of regenerative braking—a technology that partly reclaims the energy from deceleration and puts it back in the battery rather than wasting that energy heating up and wearing down brake pads and rotors.

Of course, Mr. Cargill cannot leave out McMorris Rodger’s, WPC’s, and national Republican major, must-be-repeated talking points that come out whenever climate change is mentioned:

The additional [unproven] cost [of EVs], …is so large that it would be far more environmentally friendly to purchase gas-powered vehicles and invest the thousands of dollars saved in projects that reduce CO2 emissions or other environmental priorities.

Just what “projects to reduce CO2 emissions” does he endorse? You guessed it. The next two paragraphs go right to keeping the Snake River Dams and promoting nuclear power. 

Mr. Cargill’s Guest Opinion reeks of fossil fuel industry efforts to slow walk dealing with climate change. He may truly believe that burning fossil fuels does not cause climate change, or that climate change is myth, but he certainly believes that spending even an extra penny to avoid the worst results of climate change cannot be justified. He will use every bit of rhetoric in the Republican-fossil-fuel-industry playbook to slow down conversion away from fossil fuels. After all, there are still profits to be made, and some of those profits eventually pay part of Mr. Cargill’s salary at WPC. Why does this man even have a platform for his hand-waving? Perhaps the answer is in the words at the end of Mr. Cargill’s article:

Members of the Cowles family, owners of The Spokesman-Review, have previously hosted fundraisers for the Washington Policy Center and sit on the organization’s board.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. I acknowledge there is likely some resistance to change in the law enforcement community. Hardly anyone welcomes change with open arms, no matter the importance to the planet. Change is even less welcome when the argument for change comes from someone else, especially from a government containing a majority of Democrats. Mr. Cargill is following a long Republican tradition undermining climate urgency and fostering doubts of its importance.

Too Close, Too Raw

The Settlement over Ethan Murray’s Death

On Wednesday, March 30, “Spokane County to pay $1 million to family of mentally ill man shot and killed by deputy” written by Emma Epperly appeared on the front page of the Spokesman Review. I urge you to click that link and read. 

Eleven days after Ethan Murray’s life was extinguished by five shots from Deputy Joseph Wallace’s service pistol on May 4, 2019, I wrote a post entitled “A Humane World” in which I lamented the social circumstances, the fear, and the training (or lack thereof) that led to a Sheriff’s Deputy gunning down an unarmed, mentally ill young man. 

After reading Ms. Epperly’s article, mulling over the knife (dropped by another Deputy by accident? by intent?), the delayed writing of the incident report (a full month later), Spokane Prosecutor Larry Haskel’s office’s finding the “use of force” justified, and the subsequent promotion of Deputy Wallace to detective it is hard not to see a closing of ranks and wonder about a coverup. As to how it all looks, I’m inclined to agree with this statement from the article:

“A million-dollar settlement speaks louder than any denial of wrongdoing,” wrote Braden Pence, an attorney for Murray’s mother, in an email Tuesday.

To date the only good thing that may have come in part from this miscarriage is that Sheriff’s Deputies (as of this year, two and half years after Ethan was killed) now wear body cameras. Had a body camera recorded this tragic encounter, certainly there would be much less to dispute.

I expect that in the coming weeks I will be able to write something more coherent.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry