The work of video documentarian, Ken Burns, is a national treasure. His most recent contribution, Benjamin Franklin: A Film by Ken Burns, comes in two episodes, each about two hours long. Both episodes are currently available to stream on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) with a donation to your local PBS affiliate (for Spokane it is KSPS). No matter how much you know about the life of Benjamin Franklin, the century in which he lived, and the Revolutionary period of U.S./European history you are guaranteed to find something new and insightful in this documentary, including insights relevant to current events. Here is the link:
https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/benjamin-franklin/
Each viewer will be struck by different insights from the film based on the viewer’s background. Here are just a few of mine:
Benjamin Franklin’s life (1706-1790) spanned most of the 18th century, overlapping with the rigid Boston Puritan Clergyman Cotton Mather (1663-1728) and extending to the writing of the U.S. Constitution.
Franklin was the only man from the British Colonies in American who was widely known and revered in France, and much of Europe, for his scientific achievements.
Franklin’s proof that lightning was an electrical phenomenon and therefore not simply the judgement of God relieved 18th century Christians of the need to explain why God’s wrath should be so frequently visited on church steeples and church bellringers.
Franklin was by far the most worldly of our “Founding Fathers” after years spent in London and in Paris and, before that, years spent traveling the colonies as deputy postmaster-general.
At age 81 Franklin was by far the oldest of the prominent influencers the U.S. Constitutional Convention in 1787. At the time Jefferson was 34, Hamilton was either 30 or 32, James Madison 36, and John Adams was 52.
The Revolutionary War might in many ways be considered the First Civil War. It pitted neighbors against neighbors, brothers against brothers, and, in Franklin’s case, fathers against sons.
Watch Ken Burns’ Benjamin Franklin. You’ll not regret the experience.
Mayor Woodward needs to listen to voices beyond the business community that got her elected. We all share a goal of making downtown Spokane a happy, vibrant place to visit. Apparently, we differ about how that should be achieved.
In an article dated April 27 in the Spokesman entitled “Mayor still supports 250-bed shelter” Mayor Nadine Woodward revealed what she thinks of the growing number of Spokanites who find themselves unable to secure a place to live:
I think we need to get to the point where we’re working to make homelessness less comfortable and get people connected to services.
Mayor Woodward offers us some clarity on her concept of human nature: People who find themselves without shelter in Spokane, a place with an extremely tight housing market characterized by skyrocketing rents and home prices just need to be made a little more uncomfortable in order to motivate them to “get connected with services”. The implication is clear: The fact of a person being homeless means they are lazy, deficient, lacking in the qualities that should motivate them to somehow acquire an address, a cell phone, proper clothing, transportation, medical care, and a job, all the things necessary to seek still possibly unaffordable and unavailable housing, never minding any of the details of how they wound up homeless. In that laziness and deficiency, even less comfort, according the Ms. Woodward is a desirable motivator.
Mayor Woodward’s goal is single-minded: provide enough nominally available “low barrier” beds in one simple facility so that, in accordance with Martin v. Boise, it becomes legally defensible to enforce the sit/lie ordinance and thereby clear downtown. Were it not for Martin v. Boise one has the feeling that Mayor Woodward would have been thoroughly content with simply making the unsheltered “less comfortable” by simply directing the police to chase them from camp after camp.
Evidently, whatever visits to homeless shelters Ms. Woodward made before her 2019 election, visits featured in the media to demonstrate her compassion, those visits must have left her with the impression these shelters were a little too comfortable to provide proper motivation. Never having significant contact with the homeless who had no access to a bed in a shelter; never having taken part in a point-in-time (PIT) count; and refusing to hear the voices of those who actually worked with the homeless population for years, Ms. Woodward assumes that anyone who has fallen on hard times needs the same one-size-fits-all approach—and a bit less comfort—in order to motivate them to find a way out of their predicament.
George Critchlow, like any good citizen should, quickly took up Mayor Woodward’s solution in a proposed letter to the editor:
Mayor Woodward thinks we should make the homeless “less comfortable” apparently on the assumption that their discomfort will motivate them to improve their circumstances. I ran across a man sleeping on a downtown sidewalk this morning. He had no blankets or sleeping bag. His only “shelter” was a couple of pieces of cardboard. My immediate thought was how we might motivate him by making him less comfortable. The answer, of course, was to take away his cardboard so that he might have an incentive to pursue a better life. I believe we citizens should personally participate in advancing the Mayor’s compassionate agenda, but I regret to say I did nothing. Now I am feeling a bit guilty. I will endeavor to be a better person in the future. And I hope other concerned citizens will actively work to help the homeless by making them more uncomfortable. There are a range of options – we can take away their blankets, their tents, maybe even their food and meds. The task will be easier come winter. Mother nature will do the trick so long as we remain committed to improving the lives of the homeless by making sure there is no emergency shelter.
Mayor Woodward would like nothing more than to make the homeless issue disappear. She squeaked into office backed by real estate, developer, and business money that endeavored to link crime and homelessness—and offered simplistic “solutions”. Prominent among these solutions were those proposed by Larry Stone in his video entitled “Curing Spokane”: a newer, bigger jail; more police on the streets; and, bizarrely, more downtown parking and a downtown bus station put underground. Is it any wonder that it is Mr. Stone’s building out on Trent Avenue that Mayor Woodward now proposes to lease as a primary warehouse for the homeless, a place where they presumably can be made less comfortable in order to better motivate them to connect to services that have, up to the present time, proven to be inadequate?
The Mayor’s revealed strategy is to provide the number of one-size-fits-all beds necessary to declare the problem of Martin v. Boise solved—so she can move on. Ms. Woodward’s “We need to get to the point where we’re working to make homelessness less comfortable” is right up there with “Let them eat cake” (Marie Antoinette) and “the 47%” who “believe they are victims” and “are dependent on government”. One can only hope Woodward’s quote will be as memorable as presidential candidate Romney’s—and yield the same electoral result come November, 2023.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. Maurice Smith, local video documentarian, a man with vastly more experience with those who find themselves homeless in Spokane than Mayor Woodward will ever have, writes:
“The 2020 PIT [Point in Time] count showed 541 “Unsheltered” individuals experiencing homelessness outside the shelter system. Although the 2022 PIT results have not been officially released, preliminary numbers that are circulating suggest that the 2022 “Unsheltered” count is 800(+), for a NET INCREASE of 259 (or 48%). In other words, the Mayor’s proposed shelter will only accommodate the increased numbers from 2020 to 2022, without creating a net increase in shelter bed availability.
“I’m encouraged by the public announcement by Catholic Charities of their plan for a NEW shelter to replace HOC [House of Charity on Pacific Ave downtown]. Many of us in the service community have been aware of this plan for a couple of months. I find it interesting that Catholic Charities was able to secure 3 possible locations for their new shelter while the City couldn’t find one location until Larry Stone rode to their rescue. The 300 bed capacity of the new shelter would represent a net increase of 165 new beds after accounting for a 135 bed swap between the new shelter and the existing HOC. By my math (800 minus 250 minus 165 equals 385) that would leave us 385 beds short of accommodating the “Unsheltered” population (with nearly all adult shelter beds currently running full). That’s roughly the population of Camp Hope (last count was 401).
“The administration (and the downtown business community) should be enthusiastically supporting Camp Hope [the homeless encampment on Department of Transportation land near 2nd and Thor] as its existence means that 400 homeless individuals are there and are NOT under bridges and in alleys and doorways downtown. Close Camp Hope (as the Administration has been trying to do with DOT since its inception) and those people are going to head downtown.
“Now that the Mayor is getting the shelter she has invested most of her political capital in [the proposed 250 bed shelter on Trent [in an industrial area near Trent and Mission], her true attitude and agenda is being more brazenly revealed, “I think we need to be able to offer the kinds of resources that people need to move them out of homelessness rather than make them comfortable in their homelessness.” In case you’ve missed the point, the purpose of law enforcement sweeps of the homeless from downtown and from camps has been (and continues to be) to make them so uncomfortable that they will give up and go to a shelter (apparently, with or without available beds). In the Mayor’s 17-page Homeless Plan DRAFT (which I read and critiqued), this is called “Compassionate Accountability.” How it is somehow compassionate to make people experiencing homelessness miserable is a twisting of the English language that is beyond reasonable comprehension.
Julie Anderson is eminently qualified for the job–Meet her today in Spokane
One of the prime responsibilities of the Washington State Secretary of State (SOS) is oversight of elections that are administered by county auditors. Events in the State of Georgia and elsewhere in the 2020 election highlight this managerial responsibility. The job demands an administrator with experience. In 2022 we will choose among candidates for Washington State Secretary of State to finish out the last two years of Kim Wyman’s (R) four year term. Ms. Wyman resigned last November (2021) to take a position in the Biden administration. Ordinarily, statewide offices only appear on our ballots in this state in presidential election years. This out-of-sync SOS race should get more than the typical attention—as well it should, considering all the concerns around election security.
Kim Wyman served as Washington State Secretary of State for almost nine years. Regardless of her party designation, she was no partisan political hack—she had more than twenty years appropriate experience before she ran for Secretary of State in 2012 to replace the well-respected Sam Reed (R). She came to the office of Secretary of State after serving from January 2001 to 2012 as the Thurston County Auditor—a position to which she was initially appointed only after serving as the elections manager in the Thurston County Auditor’s office for eight years. In 2012, when Kim Wyman first won her seat as WA Secretary of State, she won against a former Democratic WA State Senator with no experience in elections management. Apparently, some voters look beyond “prefers ____ Party” designations—as well they should.
This year we have a similar choice between experience and politics. Julie Anderson has served for twelve years as Pierce County Auditor. Her resume is replete with a multitude of certifications pertinent to both the Auditor and Secretary of State positions. According to our own highly respected Spokane County Auditor, Vicky Dalton:
Julie has been a statewide leader for the County Auditors. She possesses vision and successfully articulates that vision to others. She then brings people together, drawing out each person’s best attributes to contribute to the success of the project.
She is truly a remarkable person who is absolutely the best person to be our Washington Secretary of State.
Ms. Anderson is running against a former Democratic Washington State Senator with scant qualifications for the job. He (Mr. Hobbs) was appointed to serve as Secretary of State by Governor Inslee last November, for reasons known only to the governor and about which we can only speculate. His choice was certainly was not based on experience relevant to serving as Secretary of State, based on this article detailing the candidates and published before the governor made his choice.
This evening in Spokane you have a chance to meet Julie Anderson. I encourage you to drop by The Backyard Public House, 1811 W Broadway Ave, Spokane WA 99201, this afternoon, Wednesday, April 27, 4:00 – 6:00 p.m.
Bill Siems and I, as loosely designated representatives of Spokane Indivisible, visited with Ms. Anderson on Zoom recently. We were both impressed—and we think you will be, too. ‘
(If you live in Walla Walla, she’ll be at Big House Brew Pub, 11 S Palouse St, 5:00 – 6:30 p.m., tomorrow, Thursday, April 28.)
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. SOME BACKGROUND: Washington State candidates officially file for election between May 2 and May 20 of the year of the elections. (That’s in contrast to many states, including Idaho, where the candidates who will appear on the November ballot have already been chosen by primary elections held in May [before many voters are even aware that it’s an election year].) Serious candidates for most offices in Washington State who are gathering money for their campaigns file much earlier than May with the WA State Public Disclosure Commission (pdc.wa.gov). One can get an idea of who is running and how seriously by checking out the fund raising for a particular office as reported on the PDC website.
WASHINGTON STATE SECRETARY OF STATE PDC FILINGS: If you go to pdc.wa.gov and enter 2022 for the “Election year” and “Secretary of State” for the “Office” you can see who has started raising money for this campaign. As of the current date, although six candidates have filed with the PDC, only two have acquired significant contributions: Julie Anderson (O) with $81,257.92 and Steve Hobbs (D) $208,526.01. Hobbs’ campaign coffers demand explanation.
Hobbs has been in political office for fifteen years as the State Senator from LD44, during much of which time he has served on or chaired the powerful Transportation Committee. More recently he has served on the Environment, Energy & Technology Committee, a committee of particular interest to Governor Inslee. Serving on these committees and running for office every four years as a state senator (and sometimes in between for the post of Lieutenant Governor) Mr. Hobbs accumulated a substantial war chest of campaign contributions from corporate donors.
Our Washington State campaign finance regulations allow unused campaign funds to be rolled over into another campaign, even for another office (within certain rules). Consequently, a career politician like Mr. Hobbs, after jumping through a few hoops, can start out with substantial campaign coffers that are not necessarily indicative of endorsement for the new office they are seeking. (Twice in the past, 2016 and 2020, has initiated an unsuccessful campaign for Lieutenant Governor based at least in part on accumulated contributions.)
The moral of this story: Career politicians often have a financial advantage based on prior contributions when they pursue another office —if they follow the rules.
The following post is a mildly modified version of an article I first sent out April 24, 2018. I have not gone to the trouble of updating to current numbers because I expect there has been little change.
Elected U.S. House members establish an almost dynastic presence in their congressional district (e.g. McMorris Rodgers’ Congressional District 5, eastern Washington). That presence shores up their power and makes challenging them an uphill battle. It is more than name recognition—it is also our taxpayer money they are given to manage for the benefit of their constituents.
Like other U.S. Representatives, McMorris Rodgers’ personal salary is $174,000. $174,000 might provide a home and support for a husband and three children in Washington, D.C., but that wouldn’t begin to cover the costs of staff, travel, and maintaining district offices in Spokane, Colville, and Walla Walla. The MRA (Members’ Representational Allowance (MRA), covers those expenses. Both the personal salary and the MRA are separate from all that campaign money McMorris Rodgers raises from entities like the National Rifle Association, Omeros Pharmaceuticals, and benefit auctions of AR-15’s(snideness alert).
The MRA: As explained in a richly referenced article, the Members’ Representational Allowance (MRA) is allotted from federal coffers, yours and my tax money. The MRA is a prescribed sum budgeted between 1.2 and 1.4 million per House member (in round figures). The actual amount offered a House member depends on the Congressional District’s distance from Washington, D.C. and the local cost of office space rental. The MRA is to defray the cost of the House member’s “representational duties.” These duties are made up of a personal expenses component; an office expenses component; and a mailing expenses component.
In 2017 McMorris Rodgers’ spent $1,273,844.71 of her MRA. Her actual expenditures are close to the average allowed. As you can see from the tables below, the biggest share of the money, $1,013,209, was paid as staff salaries. Look at the last two tables below, covering the last quarter of 2017. [To figure the annual salary multiply by four (the presented numbers are last quarter of 2017 only)].
Each House Member is allowed to employ up to eighteen full time staffers. I count sixteen staffers with annualized salaries over $30,000, including four with annual salaries between $95,000 and $120,000. (For reference, $30,000 is $15/hour annualized. $11/hour was the minimum wage in WA in 2017, $7.25 in ID.) There are also five “shared employees” on McMorris Rodgers’ roster. I recognize four or five names as employees primarily located in Eastern Washington, and several that are mostly in Washington D.C. (I believe office space in D.C. is not paid for out of the Members Representational Allowance.)
A few observations:
$1.3 million annually is quite a large amount of money. Much of it (1/2?) is likely devoted to “constituent services,” i.e. helping Eastern WA people and businesses deal with issues they have with Social Security, the Veterans Administration, and other government programs and services. This is help McMorris Rodgers gets credit for, but it is help every Representative is expected to provide. It’s part of the job.
Most of the staff in Eastern WA seems devoted to interfacing with constituents, not discussing legislation. In fact, my experience has been the local staffers are usually less informed regarding legislation than I am. In McMorris Rodgers’ case, policy research and guidance seems to come mostly from the Washington Policy Center locally and the Republican Party apparatus nationally.
Whoever holds this office uses the money to help advance like-minded individuals by offering internships and work opportunities. During McMorris Rodgers years in office she has fostered the careers of several. Toppling an incumbent House member changes the political landscape of the District more broadly than one might appreciate.
None of this $1.3 million is supposed to be spent on political campaigns, including campaigns to acquire leadership positions in the Congress itself. The Members Representational Allowance (MRA) is meant for just what it says, the Member’s duties as a Representative of the District. By law a Representative is not supposed to benefit personally from the Members Representational Allowance, although a Representative may use personal funds to supplement Representational expenses if the expenses exceed the allowance.
Part of the duty of Member of the U.S. House of Representatives includes managing this $1.3 million “representational” budget of taxpayer money for the benefit of the Member’s constituents
Keep to the high ground, Jerry
P.S. The basic information presented here comes from a series of fascinating articles from Thoughtco.com, in particular an article available here. I highly recommend further reading if you have time.
P.P.S. The details for 2017:
2017 HON. CATHY MCMORRIS RODGERS OFFICIAL EXPENSES OF MEMBERS. The first column is the Year-to-date, the second column is Quarterly, from the STATEMENT OF DISBURSEMENTS OF THE HOUSE, October 1, 2017 to December 31, 2017, page 1369. You can click on it and scroll around it here.
2017 McMorris Rodgers Staff Costs:
These numbers are just for the last quarter of 2017, so for annual salaries multiply by four. This is publicly available information, the same pdf referenced above, pages 1369 and 1370. Use COMMAND (CMD) + to magnify the table if it is hard to read.
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.”
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”.
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.
