Celebration of a Movement Republicans have dissed for decades
Today is Labor Day. Most of us now see the day as the unofficial end of summer— rather than a federal holiday to commemorate the contribution of organized labor to our social fabric. Over the last half century more and more wealth has concentrated at the top thanks to Republican success at trashing labor unions, reducing marginal tax rates for corporations and the wealthy, and nearly eliminating estate taxes. Much of this has been accomplished with disingenuous (even if also meanly ingenious) propaganda campaigns like “right-to-work” and promoting sympathy for cutting estate taxes (for the wealthy) by citing inheritance of “family” farms. We would do well to remember why Labor Day was established. What follows is a quote from the Wikipedia article, Labor Day. The whole article is a refresher course worth the read:
Beginning in the late 19th century, as the trade union and labor movements grew, trade unionists proposed that a day be set aside to celebrate labor. “Labor Day” was promoted by the Central Labor Union and the Knights of Labor, which organized the first parade in New York City. In 1887, Oregon was the first state of the United States to make it an official public holiday. By the time it became an official federal holiday in 1894, thirty states in the U.S. officially celebrated Labor Day.
Lately, every other Wednesday, just like clockwork, Chris Cargill is given a “Guest Opinion” platform on the opinion page of the Spokesman Review. From that platform he pecks away at the cost of government, taxes, and unions. Right on cue, on August 24, he assailed the Spokane Public Schools, snidely claiming an inflated budget and substandard performance with a piece entitled “Paying more, getting less from Spokane Public Schools”. In his article Mr. Cargill offers a blur of large numbers as proof of his erudition. Constructive policy suggestions? Not one, none. His tone bespeaks a cheap-shot at the quality and cost of public education.
It was ironic to note a headline on the front page of the same day’s Spokesman Northwest Section: “Spokane Schools has dozens of job openings with two weeks until first day of classes”. In the sort of free market that Mr. Cargill’s employer, the Washington Policy Center, is always touting, the solution might be to offer higher salaries and benefits in hope of attracting staff. Perhaps the budget Mr. Cargill is whining about isn’t inflated, but, instead, insufficient.
Mr. Cargill is the Eastern Washington director of Washington Policy Center based in Spokane. Mr. Cargill’s background is in broadcast communication studies and political science, not education. Mr. Cargill has no children in Spokane Public Schools. Not only does he live in Liberty Lake, but he was recently elected to the Liberty Lake City Council in 2021. Shouldn’t he be writing about Central Valley School District?
Another irony: The Director of the Center For Education at the Washington Policy Center, Liv Finne, offers a position paper on Education Reform in which one of her recommendations is to double teacher pay. Apparently, Mr. Cargill missed the memo. Of course, as a member of a Republican/Libertarian “think” tank, Ms. Finne also strongly advocates for charter schools and school vouchers, that is, for the funding of private schools with public dollars.
Chris Cargill is paid by Washington Policy Center to write opinion pieces for the S-R, such as last week’s clarion call for transparency in negotiations between city government and unions (“Who will defend the taxpayers? Not the city or its unions,” June 8). As usual for Cargill and WPC, citizenship begins and ends with paying taxes.
As a citizen who has spent a lifetime contributing to the profits of the businesses and owners who make up WPC, I would also like some transparency. How much have I paid for each one of Cargill’s cookie-cutter opinions?
William Siems
Like Sue Lani Madsen, who, from her isolated perch out in Edwall holds forth in the Spokesman on City of Spokane politics, Mr. Cargill sees fit to opine from Liberty Lake on the budget of a school system that doesn’t affect him. The Spokesman should look for opinion writers on City of Spokane issues who actually live here.
It stands out in bold in McMorris Rodgers’ response: “We must be good stewards of our public lands, resources, and wildlife.” Stewardship. A great concept. McMorris Rodgers must really “get it”. You might be lulled into believing she will carefully consider, offer constructive amendments to, and vote for legislation that might positively benefit “public lands, resources, and wildlife.” But that is never, ever what she actually does. Inevitably she pivots away with a statement like the one she offers in the email copied below my sign-off: “I agree we should reduce our plastic waste and encourage the use of recyclable paper products, but I don’t believe heavy-handed government mandates are the best way to achieve that goal.” For emphasis this quoted sentence was printed in red in the email.
Let’s unpack that. “We should” reduce plastic waste. Yup. Think of all the persistent plastic materials blowing around on the landscape and, worse, polluting the oceans on a grand scale with ecologically harmful microplastics. We “should” do something about that. We the People “should” preach to each other and voluntarily agree to move away from plastics to more environmentally friendly materials, but government should never, ever regulate corporations use of plastics or create incentives to ramp up the use of other materials nor should corporations be forced to take responsibility for the pollution they produce.
God’s creation should be properly protected and stewarded. The environment is provided for our use to produce food and provide resources for abundant life. We have a duty to protect the environment for its beauty, provisions, and sustainability.
Genesis 2:15; Ezekiel 34:18
Issue Application: Prior to 2020, the USA had achieved energy independence. However, over the past two years with the shutdown of pipelines and fracking, America has, once again, become dependent on foreign energy sources, causing gas prices to double. A bill signed into law by Gov. Jay Inslee in April 2022 requires all new cars in WA State to be 100% electric by 2030. Ironically, pioneers in green industry technology favor increased oil and gas production because: a) green energy development requires fossil fuels; and, b) the transition to clean energy will take longer than predicted.
Response: Many current “green” initiatives are based on faulty models. They need to be reevaluated, restructured, and in some cases, eliminated. American needs to become energy independent again.
Right out of the box the “Issue Application” section is, to put it gently, intentional misinformation meant to fire up the deluded. First off, according to Forbes, a right of center magazine that still deals with facts, “Surprise! The U.S. Is Still Energy Independent.” “America” has NOT “become dependent” on foreign energy sources. The price of gasoline is determined on a worldwide free market—the supposed Republican ideal—not by minor regulations on the petrochemical industry. For McMorris Rodgers to blindly indicate her agreement with these statements is either a display of her woeful economic ignorance or an intentional pandering to the ignorance of those of her followers who rely on WBWV. You chose. Either alternative is a damning condemnation of the woman who pretends to represent eastern Washington in Congress.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
McMorris Rodgers’ email response to a request that she support a bill submitted to Congress to nudge us away from plastics:
Thank you for contacting me about the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act of 2021 (H.R. 2238). It’s good to hear from you.
We must be good stewards of our public lands, resources, and wildlife. We can strike a balance between effectively managing waste and promoting economic growth to ensure our local communities continue to thrive.
The Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act of 2021 was introduced by Rep. Alan Lowenthal on March 26, 2021. This legislation would aggressively reduce the use of plastic in everyday products and significantly increase producer responsibility for plastic waste. I agree we should reduce our plastic waste and encourage the use of recyclable paper products, but I don’t believe heavy-handed government mandates are the best way to achieve that goal.
H.R. 2238 has been referred to the House Committees on Energy and Commerce, Ways and Means, Transportation and Infrastructure, and Foreign Affairs. At the Republican Leader of the Energy and Commerce Committee, I will remember your support should this legislation come before me for a vote.
As your advocate in Congress, my top priority is to listen to you and lead on solutions you can count on. Please stay in touch. I send out a regular update that gives you an inside look at my week ahead. You can subscribe by clicking here.
WHERE: Spokane Convention Center, Centennial Ballroom, 202 West Spokane Falls Boulevard
I hope that someone will record and post this highly unusual event—McMorris Rodgers appearing in Spokane in the early evening (rather than midday in an outlying town) to attempt answers to a few written questions carefully screened by her staff. Perhaps she will surprise us, but I doubt she will risk another performance like her attempt, captured on video, to avoid saying that she believed or denied Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election.
Besides the obvious Big Lie question here are a few other potential lines of inquiry, questions one might pose on Wednesday. :
You have made the point many times that you believe that human life begins at conception and that abortion should be illegal. Now that the Supreme Court has finally overturned Roe v. Wade, will you reaffirm your commitment to voting for a federal law and/or a Constitutional amendment to ban abortion? Can we count on you to continue to work tirelessly to pass laws that elevate the right to life of a single cell over the right of a woman to control her own medical decisions?
If you or your daughter were impregnated by a rapist should it be your or your daughter’s legal obligation to carry the resulting fetus to term in recognition of its right to life? If so, can we count on you to vote for a law that would force other women to give birth to a rapist’s baby?
You consistently co-sponsor federal legislation that would make it legal for a mass murderer to obtain a silencer to muffle the sound of gunshots. (“Hearing Protection Act”). How many more innocent lives are you willing to risk to appease the NRA and relieve shooters of the need to wear ear protection?
When asked what you believed was the age of the earth, 6000 or 4.5 billion years, you responded, “The account that I believe is the one in the Bible that God created the world in seven days.” A sentence or two later you said, “And I do believe that we need to…ah…know what the science is, respect the science…” The science of paleontology clearly demonstrates that massive dinosaurs once existed. Since in your view all the species were created in the first seven days, does that mean that humans and dinosaurs once walked the earth together instead of existing millions of years before humans appeared? Or:
Perhaps a better question is Bob Gilles’ original: “Do you believe the earth is more like 6000 years old or four and a half billion years old?” It might be followed by “It is an either/or question, Cathy.” (Note that Bob Gilles posed his question as a man who once taught at Gonzaga Prep and worked with the Salvation Army and in a Dominican Orphanage, a man who lived his life in a manner consistent with Christian teaching—just not the Fundamentalist variety that dominates the mind of McMorris Rodgers.)
Which creation story in the Book of Genesis do you believe, the Chapter 1 version in which God created both man and woman on the sixth day and declared them good or the Chapter 2 version in which on the first day Adam was created by God from dust, Eve from one of Adam’s ribs, and after Eve ate of the Forbidden Fruit, God declared them cursed rather than good?
I was taught never to discuss religion in polite company, but when I’m deciding for whom to vote to represent me I think it is important to screen out those with rigid Fundamentalist religious views that preclude comprehending and acting upon the science upon which our continued existence depends. McMorris Rodgers says she (and we) need to “know what the science is, respect the science”, but, thanks to her Fundamentalist education and continued adherence to all its limiting principles, she is ill-equipped to either “know” or “understand” even the basics of how science works.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. For additional ideas for questions visit BigLieCathy.com and scroll to the bottom of the first webpage.
WHERE: Spokane Convention Center, Centennial Ballroom, 202 West Spokane Falls Boulevard
Today’s Post: Republican economics boils down to two principles:
Any tax that affects the wealthy or corporations is a tax on the middle class and the poor.
Any reduction in taxes on the wealthy or corporations is really “money in your pocket(s)”, the pockets of the middle class and the poor.
This is the rhetorical version of what Republicans like to call “supply side economics”. Others, more accurately, refer to it as “trickle down” economics, “voodoo” economics, or “horse and sparrow” economics, the idea that the sparrow will benefit from picking out any oats that have passed through the horse intact.
This self-serving economic construct foisted on the body politic by Republicans for at least the last forty years has resulted in massive redistribution of money from the working classes to corporations and the wealthy.
Cathy McMorris Rodgers, “our” U.S. Representative to Congress from eastern Washington (CD-5), displays her devotion to the two Republican economic principles at every opportunity. When the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 passed (as the singular legislative achievement of the Trump presidency) she was tirelessly on message with “money in your pocket”, even while most of the money went to the wealthy and corporations, money mostly spent on stock buybacks rather than capital investment that might have produced some jobs. Of course, she completely ignored the obvious: cutting taxes is, in budget terms, exactly the same as spending. A dollar not collected is the same as a dollar spent. Each contributes the same to overall debt.
Now, conveniently, McMorris Rodgers has shifted her rhetoric. Because the Inflation Reduction Act was passed by Democrats the Republican economic lens must be flipped in order to “properly” understand the consequences:
There are no new taxes on families making $400,000 or less and no new taxes on small businesses – we are closing tax loopholes and enforcing the tax code.
Someone is lying. Is it McMorris Rodgers or the Democrats who drafted the bill? The answer is found in McMorris Rodgers’ source link: Analysis: Inflation Reduction Act would increase taxes on nearly all Americans published in “Center Square”. The truth is buried in a barrage of numbers and speculation, apparently meant to impress the reader with its economic erudition. I particularly liked this one:
Overall average tax rates would increase from 20.3% to 20.6% in 2023 alone, according to the analysis.
Hold on to your wallet!! The average tax rate might rise a whole 0.3%!! Oh my god! Could it be that the increase in the marginal tax rate on large corporations and on annual earnings of more than $400,000 could raise the average rate for everyone by a whole 0.3% without touching the tax rate for those in lower brackets? You bet it could.
There are points in the Center Square article that McMorris Rodgers conveniently avoids articulating:
But The Wall Street Journal editorial board argues that’s exactly what it will do. The bill is “a tax increase on nearly every American,” they write. “Raise the corporate tax rate, and you’re cutting wages and salaries for workers.”
Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee argue the same. They warn it’s full of “hundreds of billions of dollars in wasteful inflationary spending [and] won’t reduce the deficit.”
This is trickle-down, horse and sparrow economics, another presentation of the very tired Republican economic gospel. Tax rates for those earning under $400,000 will NOT rise—that is a McMorris Rodgers perpetuated lie foisted on her followers for the purpose of ginning up anger, fear, and loathing. Shame.
The “wasteful inflationary spending”? To the Republican heirarchy, including McMorris Rodgers, any spending in an effort to combat climate change is “wasteful” and for her giving Medicare the ability to negotiate drug prices with the pharmaceutical industry is inflationary anathema—but she doesn’t want to talk about those features of the Inflation Reduction Act. After all she wouldn’t want to point out features of the Act that her constituents would actually find appealing and worthwhile.
Vote this woman and her voodoo economics out of office in November.
Keep to the high ground, Jerry
P.S. “Center Square”, the web-based “news” source of the article McMorris Rodgers quotes is a misnomer. It is not Center at all, despite its name. It exists to push Republican anti-tax rhetoric on its readers. Center Square is a project of the Franklin News Foundation, part of the Koch-funded right wing media echo chamber. Center Square was founded in 2009, during the astroturf Tea Party era. It is an affiliate of the State Policy Network, the Republican consortium of libertarian think tanks of which the Washington Policy Center is our local manifestation. Read Center Square with a healthy dose of skepticism. Do not be surprised when it is quoted by local Republicans as an authoritative source on local issues, e.g. homelessness. Center Square is a national organization with locally targeted stories.
And why we should re-elect Vicky Dalton as Spokane County Auditor
Trump and his minions, including the local Spokane GOP, are still pushing his Big Lie of election fraud, an attempt to undermine confidence in electoral systems. In this setting it is particularly important that we as citizens understand the checks and balances, the meticulousness, with which elections in the State of Washington are conducted.
Election procedures are specified in Washington State Law and overseen by the Secretary of State in conjunction with the thirty-nine County Auditors. Our County Auditor, Vicky Dalton, has served us 23 years. With that longevity and attention to detail as the Auditor of the fourth most populous county in Washington State, she has become a leader among election officials in the State.
An earlier post, Ballot Processing, offers details, through the eyes of a Spokane County election observer, of the process of signature verification and separation of ballots from their envelopes. That separation makes the individual ballots anonymous. Ballots must still be identifiable by precinct or (rarely) by sub-precinct (they are so identified by a barcode) because the actual ballot layout (i.e. which contests are offered in that precinct) may vary depending on overlapping voting districts. Ballots are batched into precinct groups in preparation for feeding them into the tabulator (the ballot scanning, reading, and vote tabulating machine).
The tabulator is programmed to read the precinct number and then tally the votes cast in each race in each precinct. Before each election checks are run on the tabulator’s programmed accuracy prior to feeding it official ballots. The tabulator is not connected to the internet and lives in a separate locked room. In this process every ballot is scanned and stamped with a number (for later retrieval). The paper ballots are carefully preserved for possible later reference in the event of a recount or an audit. The ballots can be retrieved and matched with the scanned image if necessary.
By State law a hand recount is triggered under certain conditions you can read about here at the Secretary of State’s website. Between 2001 and 2021 there were 17 hand recounts (see the tally). The agreement between the machine count and the hand recount is striking—and serves as a check on the integrity of the machine counting system. (The Gregoire/Rossi race for governor in 2004 is a spectacular example. Within Spokane County nearly two hundred thousand votes were cast in this race. The result of the mandatory recount narrowed the margin between Gregoire and Rossi by only 20 votes, a change of one thousandth of one percent. Note: This accuracy was achieved when there were still multiple polling sites, many poll workers physically separated from the central office, and separate scanners. The whole state went to all-mail-in voting in 2011. In the current system the ballots are processed centrally.)
The recount history offers great assurance of the accuracy of the machine counting procedure, but in 2018, even before Trump was blathering his Big Lie, the Washington State legislature passed a law (2018 c 218 § 1) that added an additional check of the counting procedures: a Risk Limiting Audit (RLA). (For an explanation of the principles of RLAs click here.) An RLA is a random sample of election results based on statistical math that is used as an additional check that everything worked properly. Spokane County under Vicky Dalton had the honor of overseeing the first ever official RLA in the State during this year’s (2022’s) primary election. (Other counties are still doing test runs.) The specific race to be audited in a county is chosen by a procedure done at the office of the Secretary of State. (For a detailed explanation of that process see the quote at the bottom of this post.)
What follows is the account of this Spokane County RLA written by a Democratic Election Observer, Dan Simonson:
Spokane County’s (and Washington’s!) First Risk-Limiting Ballot Audit
On the morning of August 9th, I was asked by the Democratic party to attend a “Risk Limiting Audit” (RLA) at the Spokane County Election Center. As I found out, this was the very first [official] use of a Risk-limiting audit in Washington. This approach to auditing ballots was first developed over a 10-year period in Colorado, and the software program was developed from their extensive research and testing. A representative from the Secretary of State’s office was there to offer assistance and support, but made it clear that the County is responsible for the audit.
First task: generating a random number to seed the RLA program. I had previously been certified as an election observer, a requirement for this event as well. I arrived at 9 am, got my badge, but instead of going directly back to the ballot-processing area, we (3 – 4 Repubs, 2 Dems – myself and Carmela Conroy, a Democratic Party official) were escorted into a conference room and helped the election officers create a 20-digit random number to “seed” the audit program. This was done by rolling twenty 10-sided dice and recording the numbers (the dice were thrown one at a time into a lucite contraption that “rolls” them through a baffle).
Each observer and some of the staff got to toss their dice by dropping it into the clear lucite device, and it rolled out the bottom to be read and added to the number. Then, with that number in hand, the officers escorted us into our usual area. There were some tables set up and two computers were running. There was a screen facing us observers, so we could see what was being done on the computer.
They started up the specialized RLA program on the computer, and to conduct the audit, the first thing they had to do was initialize the program’s random number generator by entering the truly random 20 digit number we just created to act as a seed. As you may be aware, computers generate random numbers all the time for various programmatic requirements – but since they are generated by algorithm rather than by a physical process, those numbers are not truly random – they are called “pseudorandom”. Initializing the program with the seed made sure we had absolute rather than “pseudo” randomness.
A single county-wide race was audited We were auditing one specific race: State Representative position 2 for Leg District 3 – Candidates were Poulson, Spurlock, and Ormsby. And even more specifically, we were focused only on any irregularities in votes between the 2nd and third place candidates. Why? As I was told, since the top-two vote getters are chosen, the differences between one and two aren’t decisive – but between 2 and 3 are.
Using statistical calculations based upon the size of the races and the amount of difference between candidates, the software told them how many ballots they would need to count. And the sample was not only of ballots in that legislative district, but across all races – which meant that some of the chosen ballots didn’t even have the studied race on them! The reason for choosing ballots randomly across the whole county was that we could also check to make sure that ineligible voters (for example, from a different legislative district) were not able to vote in the examined race.
As I recall, they only needed 67 ballots to do the survey, and the computer spit out a list of all of the particulars (Carton#, batch#, serial number in the batch, etc.). The boxes were brought into the room, and under our close supervision, the staff found the ballots, took them out of the boxes (leaving a paper trail on each) and replaced the others as before.
The stack of 67 chosen ballots were then brought over to the computer, and two staff members processed them – one reading the ballot, the other tapping the appropriate button on the screen (see photo). Their choices were: named candidate, write-in, blank vote, or “not on ballot”. In an additional nod to security, the two staff members entering and observing were replaced halfway through the ballots – I thought that was very clever!
Success! Finally, all the ballots were entered, the RLA program analyzed the responses, and lo and behold, we had 100% agreement! Election security and transparency in Spokane County has been affirmed.
A detailed explanation of how a race is randomly chosen for a Risk Limiting Audit by the Secretary of State’s Office, graciously provided to me via email by Hannah Taylor, Results Audit Specialist with the SOS’s office:
The target contest for the risk-limiting audit was selected by lot draw. The Office of the Secretary of State created a list of eligible contests for Spokane County. For a primary election, these contests needed to have three or more candidates. If a contest had only two candidates, both would proceed to the General Election, so it makes the most sense to look at contests where three or more candidates are on the ballot to make sure that the correct two finishers proceed to the General Election in November. We also include local measures when they involve a large enough percentage of a county’s voters. Based on these criteria we created the following list:
Legislative District 3 State Representative Pos. 2
Legislative District 4 State Representative Pos. 1
Commissioner District 2
Commissioner District 4
Commissioner District 5
Prosecuting Attorney
Sheriff
Spokane Valley Fire Department Proposition No. 1
Each of these contests was printed on a slip of paper and put into a capsule, then put into a bingo cage and mixed up. Then we pulled out a capsule and read the contest name—that’s it! This is actually the very same process our office uses to determine the ballot order for candidates.
The contest selected could have been a countywide contest. Whether it is or not, we always sample ballots from the entire universe of accepted and tabulated ballots. I often get the question, “Why don’t you just look at the ballots that have the contest on them?” The trouble with that is that we’d be relying on the voting system to tell us which ballots to look at, and if a problem existed we likely wouldn’t find it.
Spokane County has the distinction of conducting the first official risk-limiting audit in the state of Washington. The state law passed in 2018 requires all counties to conduct post-election audits, and RLAs are one option available. The RCW for audit of election results is 29A.60.185.
Please feel free to contact me if you have any additional questions! I love discussing audits.
The following is a press release concerning a demonstration to be held at Cathy McMorris Rodgers this evening, August 22nd, at 6PM. It came from Mike Suryan of the Spokane County Young Democrats. Please attend. Media coverage is expected.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
DEMONSTRATION EXPECTED AT CATHY MCMORRIS RODGERS’ OFFICE
Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Congressional representative for the 5th District of Washington, reasonably postponed her scheduled August 10th, 2022 town hall to attend the funeral of her colleague. There are only 16 days left in the US House of Representative recess, but she has yet to reschedule that town hall meeting. Not just in Spokane, but anywhere in the 5th district. It is customary and expected that our local legislators and representatives will hold town halls during their recess time in order to be held accountable by their constituents. The days are slipping by quickly, and we are being abandoned by our Representative. On Monday, August 22nd, 2022, concerned citizens will visit the Post Street office of Representative McMorris Rodgers in order to petition her to immediately reschedule the town hall meeting and fulfill this important civic responsibility. At 6:00 pm, Mike Suryan will address a group of citizens on the sidewalk in front of her offices to offer a report on McMorris Rodgers’ office’s plans to reschedule the town hall meeting.
