Nuts, Bolts, and Advisory Votes

Last week most of the readers of this email (the majority of whom live in eastern Washington State) probably received an 8 1/2 by 11 booklet in the mail entitled “Voters’ Pamphlet, Washington State Elections,” and labelled “2021”. Low on the front page there is a note that says, “Official Publication, Washington Secretary of State, Kim Wyman.” If you opened it and were puzzled by a lack of photos of and statements from the candidates, you were not alone. The only issues covered in the pamphlet are three “Advisory Votes”. Each vote allows you to express your opinion on whether your do or do not “favor” a bill that was passed by the Washington State House and Senate and signed into law by the governor during the last year. The pamphlet states, “Advisory votes are non-binding. The results will not change the law.”

Before discussing these irritating and seemingly pointless “Advisory Votes” and how they came to be, take note that this Washington State pamphlet actually contains a lot of information worth reviewing. Right on the front it says, “Ballots mailed out October 15”. That’s this coming Friday. The ballots need to be voted and turned in by the date of the General Election, November 2, just three weeks from now. On page 3 the pamphlet lays out the deadlines for registering online or by mail to vote in this election (October 25) or in person at your county’s elections office (November 2 by 8PM), explains that a “Local Voters’ Pamphlet” should arrive in your mailbox from the county elections office before or at the same time as your ballot, and directs you to VoteWA.gov for more specific information. Pages 4 to 8 and 18 to 23 of the pamphlet offer other voting background information that is worth paying attention.

You might wonder why the Secretary of State spends our state tax money to send out a state “Voters’ Pamphlet” at all when there are no candidates up for election at the state level in this off-off year election. (The election in our state in off-off, i.e. odd numbered years, are all for local offices and [theoretically] non-partisan.) The answer is that, as with every state in the union, such things are spelled out in state law. RCW (Revised Code of Washington) 29A.32.010 specifies, “The secretary of state shall, whenever at least one statewide measure or office is scheduled to appear on the general election ballot, print and distribute a voters’ pamphlet.” That brings us around to “Advisory Votes” again. 

According to that state law, if there were no “Advisory Votes” the Secretary of State would not have to spend our tax dollars to send every registered voter in the state a “Voters’ Pamphlet” this year. 

“Advisory Votes” trace back to a Republican operative, Tim Eyman, a man recognized by the far right “Conservative Political Action Conference” (CPAC) with the “Ronald Reagan Award” for his persistent efforts to promote anti-tax sentiment in Washington State by leveraging (and many would say perverting) the initiative process. In 2021 he was convicted of multiple violations of campaign finance law and fined 2.6 million dollars, but his pernicious legacy lives on in state laws modified by his efforts. 

To be honest, I was probably among those who voted for I-960 in 2007 (which passed with 51% of the vote), deceived by a vague distrust of government supported by endless Republican rhetoric. As you can read at that link, parts of I-960 were later declared unconstitutional, but I-960’s was constructed so that its remnants live on in the State Voters’ Pamphlet you just received. I-960 is enshrined in state law in RCW 29A.72.283, where even the slanted language of the Advisory Votes is specified: 

The description must be formulated and displayed on the ballot substantially as follows:

“The legislature imposed, without a vote of the people, (identification of tax and description of increase), costing (most up-to-date ten-year cost projection, expressed in dollars and rounded to the nearest million) in its first ten years, for government spending. This tax increase should be:

Repealed . . . .

[ ]

Maintained . . . .

[ ]”

“Without a vote of the people”? That is pure Republican anti-tax propaganda paid for with our tax dollars. Of course, “the people” didn’t vote on these bills. We vote for officials to represent us in state government, people we expect to study and vote on both sides of the budget equation, people we can vote out of office if we get disgusted with them. “Should be—Repealed, Maintained” rather than “in favor of or against” plays to idea that the legislature might have done something reprehensible by voting for a tax and to the illusion that the Advisory Vote is binding. 

Here we are fourteen years later still living with Eyman’s CPAC endorsed Republican propaganda enshrined in our election system. No legislature is likely to attempt changing the law that requires this nonsense for simple reason that it would surely ignite another round of bluster and anti-government rhetoric. The legislature has more important issues to which to attend. 

As you page through the ten pages of “Advisory Votes” in this year’s state-law-mandated Voters’ Pamphlet and review the clutter of useless Advisory Votes on your ballot, review once more the reason for our affliction: this is state-sponsored Republican partisan propaganda brought to you by Tim Eyman and CPAC. Then get past bit of irritation and do your homework: study the candidates, figure out where they are coming from, and vote accordingly.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. Civics can certainly be confusing, but with enough time and diligence the reasons for the way things are can usually be worked out. I’m still puzzling how it came to be that at the state level (at least in Washington State) it is the Secretary of State’s office that oversees elections, but at the county level all the nuts and bolts of elections are administered by the County Auditor’s Office.

Crunch Time

Redistricting is a process that is fundamental to our democracy. Redistricting has been happening (slowly and mostly quietly) for the last several months. I laid out the background, importance, and process of the Spokane County Redistricting Commission in this post back in March. Tomorrow, Tuesday, October 12, is the deadline to submit comments on the Spokane County Redistricting Committee’s draft maps.

Perhaps fifty to a hundred people in Spokane County seem pay much attention to the process of the county Redistricting. I think I understand why. Watching two people chosen by Republicans (Jim McDevitt and Robin Ball) and two chosen by Democrats (Natasha Hill and Brian McClatchey) figure out how to get three to one or four to zero agreement on the boundaries of five new Spokane County Commissioner districts seems an arcane exercise. What follows is my attempt to make sense out of what I saw. The opinions expressed are mine. 

The commissioners got off to a slow start, unable to agree on the selection of a non-voting chair person, a disagreement that, by law, gave the choice to the existing county commissioners. That seemed like a bit of a conflict of interest, since the current county commissioners fought hard against the entire process. Finally, after the process dragged on, the current county commissioners chose Elaine Couture as the non-voting chairperson of the theoretically independent redistricting commission. 

Early on, several people from county government attended the meetings, and it seemed the people from county government, perhaps with non-partisan intent, put forward a company, FLO Analytics, expert in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and data analysis. The choice seemed logical at first, but friction between FLO and the four members of the Commission over timelines, budgets, and lack of responsiveness developed early and persisted. In the end it seemed that FLO wasn’t really up to the task, even though their fees consumed something like three quarters of the budget. The impression I acquired as an onlooker was that FLO possessed a lot of data but little or no data on election patterns—patterns which, after all, are the bedrock of this process. The back and forth with FLO and the Commission took up a lot of time that, in retrospect, might have been better spent.

The state law requiring this new redistricting process is detailed in RCW 36.32.053 and RCW 36.32.054, but some of the criteria for drawing the districts are set forth in RCW 29A.76.010, one part of which reads:

(4) The plan shall be consistent with the following criteria:

…(d) Population data may not be used for purposes of favoring or disfavoring any racial group or political party.

That is essentially a mandate against gerrymandering. One cannot avoid gerrymandering or the suspicion of gerrymandering by ignoring prior voting patterns—and it seemed that FLO was ill-equipped to provide or discuss that data. 

Enter Dave’s Redistricting App, a free web-based application that substantially demystifies the process of redistricting by providing the data and tools to draw district lines and assess the level of fairness in the districts drawn. Read the wikipedia article for background. In contrast to the struggle the commissioners seemed to have with learning to work with FLO’s mapping program and expensive consulting, at least two of the commissioners mastered Dave’s Redistricting App on their own and used it in their own homework.

A friend of mine, Bill Siems, attended all or nearly all of the meetings and undertook to learn how to use Dave’s Redistricting App and used it rank the maps the commissioners and others proposed in terms of gerrymandering. The underlying assertion is based on the publicly available precinct voting patterns for the last many years. County records show that within Spokane County that of the votes cast those cast for Republicans average in the neighborhood of 52-55% of the total. That implies that, on average, any non-gerrymandered redistricting should yield 3Rs and 2Ds. That is the starting point for Bill’s explanation copied below with permission. 

If, after digesting this, if you wish to lodge your input to the commissioners before the Tuesday deadline you can use the comment box at the bottom of this webpage:

https://www.redistrictspokaneco.com/

On that webpage you can also see (with some study), the two D and two C maps. The best I can tell, the two D maps were submitted by the Republican appointees and the two C maps by the Democratic appointees. The two maps designated F were designed by Mr. Siems. The Community Map is presented here.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. On a national basis Republican pioneered computerized gerrymandering with their REDMAP in 2010, succeeding in adjusting boundaries in several states that gave Republicans a House majority while garnering fewer votes. It seems entirely fair that Dave’s Redistricting App now empowers computer savvy citizens to assess, shed light, and counteract the potential for computerized gerrymandering. [That’s true at least in states where redistricting is either a non-partisan or a balanced partisan process (the latter is the case in Washington)]

Keep the base angry and misinformed

I was going to take a day off, but this was just too much. For $10 you too can learn the “truth” tomorrow from the “experts” at the Greyhound Park and Event Center in Post Falls. Here’s the link to the ad online: https://allevents.in/post%20falls/the-truth-election-analysis/10000179024054767 . Equipped with the “truth” attendees will feel fully justified in bearing arms to the elections office any time their preferred candidate doesn’t win. They are laying the groundwork for an insurrection broader than January 6. The three “experts” are making a living peddling this tripe, and a certain segment of the population is gobbling it up. None of the “experts” has an internet presence that rivals their current gig. See “Suspended NMSU professor hits the road promoting election fraud claims after defying COVID-19 mandates” or https://celebpie.com/seth-keshel-wikipedia/ None of them has anything but self-declared expertise in their subject while Glen Morgan, the moderator, runs a toxic website of steeply slanted Washington State Republican propaganda that presents itself as news and reads like a political version of the old National Enquirer.

The image below is from an event that already occurred (on September 25). Note the familiar faces of former and current state legislators and the interweaving of politics, anti-mask and vaccination sentiment, and right wing religion. In addition we have Caleb Collier of the John Birch Society and John Jacob Schmidt of Radio Free Redoubt. Dr. Olp (not an M.D.) you can watch here. Be sure to click the SHOW MORE button to catch the associations. You can’t make this stuff up. This anti-mask, anti-vaccination rally was held just blocks away from downtown Spokane hospitals where Covid patients lay dying. These people and any candidates who pander to their malignant anti-scientism deserve to be shunned in life and at the ballot box.

Back on Monday.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

All of Us Need to Pay Attention

Pam Orebaugh and Rob Linebarger in Spokane valley are fomenting a hostile takeover of the entire five person School Board of Central Valley School District (CVSD). Their campaign is based on religio-political, anti-science rhetoric against mask mandates, masks, and vaccinations. Pam and Rob appear as supposed opponents for Position 5 on the CVSD Board on the November 2 general election ballot—but they are allies, partners in their attempt to replace the entire Board. In a sleepy August Primary in which only a quarter of the registered voters bothered to turn in a ballot, Pam garnered 5951, Rob 4962 and their opponent 4674 votes out of the 15761 votes cast. These are not large numbers, but Pam and Rob apparently see them as a mandate.

Rob and Pam’s fanaticism came on public display in the unofficial meeting they held on school property after they and their followers engineered a boisterous shutdown of the August CVSD Board meeting on August 23 by refusing to comply with the state mask mandate then in place. These are the same tactics and ideology that fired up the attack on members of the Coeur d’Alene School District Board I detailed on Monday. I urge you to watch and listen to Mr. Linebarger in this video:

https://www.facebook.com/ChalichForChildren/videos/1004052080442312/

Mr. Linebarger’s conspiracy-laden oration speaks for itself. This is not a man interested in the intricacies of school budgets and discussion under Roberts Rules of Order. This is a man who sounds primed for revolution, armed, if necessary. Rob’s partner in this plan, Pam Orebaugh, takes a quieter role at the unofficial gathering. She is seen intermittently sitting to the far right in the screen view and referred to by Rob as an ally. At 01:54 she walks across the room behind Mr. Linebarger.

This video should, and did, set off alarm bells. Stan Chalich, a retired Central Valley coach and civics teacher, stepped up as a popular write-in candidate for Position 5. Winning a write-in campaign is an up hill battle, but if you watch the video you will likely agree that the stakes are high. 

Bret Howell (seen in the flier above), encouraged by Rob and Pam, is running as a write-in candidate for Position 2, the only other CVSD board seat on the ballot in November. The only candidate already on the ballot for that Position 2 seat, Teresa Landa, Pam and Rob apparently think of as insufficiently right wing.

There’s more. On August 24th Rob and Pam, with Rob in the lead, filed an application with the IRS for 501(c)(3) [tax exempt non-profit] status for their “Washington Citizens for Liberty.” As “citizens4liberty.org” they began soliciting tax-deductible donations to pay for legal council immediately, counting on the IRS to validate and backdate the tax-deductible status for which they had applied. Visit “citizens4liberty.org” and see for yourself the far right news rathole on which these people rely as well as the wacko anti-vaccine rhetoric they espouse. Money gathered by the citizens4liberty “non-profit” is to be used to pay legal costs incurred to threaten the other three sitting CVSD school board directors with a recall election. Those directors, Debra Long, Cindy McMullen, and Keith Clark, in addition to their other volunteer board duties, now will need to defend themselves in court against a recall.

Contemplate for a moment the reaction you might have if you had been serving your community as an unpaid member of the school board with all the attendant meetings and homework—and then you were faced with hiring a lawyer and defending against a legal threat as the price you must pay for continuing to donate your time and good will. 

The September 28 Spokesman article written by Jim Allen announcing Rob and Pam’s recall petition filings against all three of the remaining CVSD Board directors left me puzzled (as newspaper articles often do) about the steps involved in an attempted recall. Recalls of “elective officers” in the State of Washington are addressed in Article I, Sections 33 and 34 of the Washington State Constitution. The details of the process are filled in by state law in the Revised Code of Washington (RCW) 29A.56.110 thru RCW29A.56.270. It is a complex process with many steps and deadlines, a process which, in the case of Linebarger’s three recall petitions, will hardly have started by the time the November 3 General Election voting is complete one month from now. 

The substance of these recall petitions is very thin. It consists of allegations that Debra Long, Cindy McMullen, and Keith Clark each 

committed acts of misfeasance, specifically misuse of power and wrongful use of lawful authority in the exercise of her office where she and her fellow Board Members, as a matter of policy, have mandated the use and placement of a medical device, specifically a mask, and now require District staff to have the first publicly available mRNA vaccination as a condition of employment

Essentially, Pam, Rob, and company allege that the CVSD’s Board directors are committing “malfeasance” by carrying out state level executive orders—a preposterous claim that will likely be thrown out, just like a similar recall against Governor Jay Inslee was thrown out when a judge ruled the alleged charges were “legally and factually insufficient last June.”¹

In summary, we have two candidates for the same Position 5 spot on the CVSD School Board, Pam Orebaugh and Rob Linebarger working together not only to get Pam elected to the board, but soliciting tax deductible unreported donations to their nonprofit, Citizens4Liberty, to 1) Support Pam’s and write-in candidate Howell’s candidacies and 2) Launch and fund dubious recall petitions against the other sitting school board members, petitions that function as a combination of grandstanding and legal harassment.

Whether or not you live in the Central Valley School District, this school board election is a consequential issue. It is one of the most blatant local manifestations of an organized national campaign. (Also in the Washington Post.) Watch the Rob and Pam video referenced above. Understand where Pam and Rob are coming from by visiting the News page at Citizen4Liberty.org . Then visit Stan Chalich’s website, check out the impressive endorsements on his Facebook page. Donate to his campaign. Tell your friends about the Stan Chalich write-in campaign.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P. S. I have obtained pdf copies of the recall petitions Linebarger filed on September 24, but I’ve been unable to attach them to this post. If any of my readers wants to see the pdfs request them of me by hitting “Reply” to this email and I will endeavor to send them to you electronically.

P.P.S. Pam Orebaugh draws points for herself as a faculty nurse educator for obstetric nursing at the Washington State University College of Nursing. However (and for good reason) she notes that she is “not representing WSU or speaking for WSU in my stances.” Her anti-mask, anti-vaccination stances do not represent reasoned medical opinion.1

Debra Long, the board president and one of the three board members defending against recall, is also accused of not meeting residency requirements for her position—while the other two are accused of knowing this and not tattling on her. This accusation is detailed in Jim Allen’s Spokesman article. It seems likely that the Superior Court Judge who, according to the RCW, will need to sign off on the petition for Rob, Pam and company to start gathering signatures will find this accusation “factually insufficient” as well, but who knows?

Who will be willing serve?

Unlike most elected positions in local government, serving on a school board (at least in Idaho or Washington) is an unpaid, volunteer position. On top of that, school board service requires time and effort spent on an election campaign, and, after winning a seat on a board, it requires many hours of meetings dedicated to budgets, levies, and other issues, often with little thanks or notice from the community served. We, as voters and members of our communities, have tended to take the service, selflessness, and goodwill of school board candidates for granted. 

You might be pardoned if all that makes you wonder who on earth would put themselves through an election campaign–and then endure seemingly endless meetings—as an unpaid and often unthanked community servant. If you take the time to meet currently serving school board members (in most communities) it turns out they are mostly altruists, people with a genuine interest in providing our youth with a quality education. They have day jobs, children, and families that they juggle just like the rest of us. 

This year many school board members all over the U.S. are enduring intimidation that threatens to drive these altruists away from serving their communities, tipping the balance in favor of ideological extremists who pander to the intimidators (or are the intimidators) while they present themselves to the voting public as reasonable people.

Case in Point: 

After rowdy, confrontational anti-mask protestors forced the cancellation of a School Board meeting scheduled to address the issue of mask mandates, about three dozen of the protesters then invaded the Coeur d’Alene School District offices and frightened staff, actions that prompted a 911 call and a building lockdown. (See videos here and here if you have any doubt about the threatening, intimidating nature of this crowd). A Spokesman headline on Friday, October 1, read “Two [of five] CdA school board members announce resignations following mask controversy.” Board Chair Jennifer Brumley and Trustee Tambra Pickford announced their intention to resign one week after the special board meeting cancellation. 

Board Chair Jennifer Brumley was appointed to the CDA School Board in 2018. Her term ends this December, but her resignation will be effective a month early. She had spoken out about the stress of intimidation and bullying before the protests depicted in the videos. One is left to imagine the subsequent stress that precipitated Brumley’s rushed resignation. The other resigning board member, Tambra Pickford, was elected to the Coeur d’Alene School Board in 2015 and re-elected in 2019. Her second term doesn’t end until December, 2023—yet she is resigning two years and a month early alongside Brumley. Brumley and Pickford were part of the 3-2 majority that had voted on September 13 to “strongly recommend” mask wear in schools in the face of the rapid spread of Covid 19 that has forced North Idaho hospitals into triage mode. Neither Brumley nor Pickford was candid in their resignation letters about the threats they faced for even this watered-down recommendation—but it seems that the bottom line here is that the belligerent anti-mask, anti-science, anti-protect-your-neighbor crowd has won. 

The remaining Board (two of whom voted against making any mask recommendation) will name a “successor resident” to the School Board per Idaho State law to finish Pickford’s two years of remaining term, probably ensuring a 3 to 1 like-minded, anti-mask majority on the board. The occupant of the fifth seat, Brumley’s, will depend on the results of the November general election. Brumley and one other of the four candidates originally on the ballot, Jeff Zember, have withdrawn from the November election. (See Zember’s response to a rowdy school board meeting in July.) Zember filed on August 31 to run for Brumley’s seat after he penned his response to the July meeting, but, after the recent belligerence protests, he changed course and withdraw his name for the November election.

In our neighboring Kootenai County the animosity and intimidation extends to higher education. On September 22 a 3-2 majority of the trustees of North Idaho College fired the President of the College, Rick MacLennan. The firing was officially “without cause”, but it came after MacLennan’s imposition of a mask mandate, the trustees rescinding of the mandate, and a few week’s delay, presumably to disconnect the firing from the rescinding in the mind of the public. MacLennan is not taking it his firing lying down. On October 1 MacLennan filed a lawsuit against the three members of the Board of Trustees who voted to fire him, Board Chair Todd Banducci, Vice Chair Greg McKenzie and Trustee Michael Barnes. The article in the Bonner County Daily Bee on the firing and the lawsuit is illuminating. (Click here.) The malignant interference of the far right Kootenai County Republican Central Committee (KCRCC) in establishing the 3-2 majority that fired MacLennan is made clear in this letter.

Intimidation and conflict over mask mandates and other cultural issues (like the bogus dustup over “critical race theory”) are obviously enough to discourage many reasonable people from running for and serving in these suddenly thankless volunteer positions. And such capitulation is exactly what the far right Republican ideologues fomenting these protests want to see. Ultimately, these ideologues want detailed control over public school curricula.

Spokane County school boards are not immune from intimidation. Protests have shut down school board meetings in the Central Valley and Spokane Public Schools Districts. Extremist candidates for the school board in Central Valley are trying to engineer a full takeover of the board (more in a post later this week). Some candidates for School Board for the two open seats in Spokane Public Schools (District 81) are more subtle than those in Central Valley, but are cut from the same cloth. 

It’s time to pay attention to School Board races. The altruists who volunteer their time and expertise on our School Boards are coming under increasing pressure and intimidation from the far right. School Board members deserve our thanks and our support—and more than ever we owe it to the current members to scrutinize the candidates running for positions on those boards before casting our ballots. 

In the meantime, send a note to your current school board indicating your support for their efforts to keep our children safe. 

Here’s the page with the email addresses for the Board at Spokane Public Schools:

https://www.spokaneschools.org/Page/1030

Here are the school board members and their email addresses for Central Valley:

https://www.cvsd.org/apps/pages/schoolboardmembers

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

We Must Tackle Climate Change! (Psst–But not now)

There is inherent evil and inanity in the concept of corporate personhood. Unlike the Roman god Janus, the god of two faces, the public face and lobbying face of a corporation doesn’t even share a brain. If all the faces of a corporation did so it would be harder to trot out a sincere spokesperson who can issue pronouncements without a hint of hypocrisy—while another arm of the corporation spends money, time, and lobbying effort to defeat precisely that legislation for which the spokesperson is publicly declaring their corporation’s support. 

Judd Legum, an independent researcher publishing on Substack, is doing a terrific job highlighting the hypocrisy of corporate public and legislative faces. I urge my readers to sign up to support and receive Legum’s work, but in the meantime I’ve copied below Legum’s post from September 30. In addition, I recommend an earlier post of Legum’s on the same topic, The corporate campaign to tank reconciliation.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

Walmart calls for “strong climate policy now,” backs campaign to kill strong climate policy

Judd Legum

In a new post on LinkedIn, Walmart’s Chief Sustainability Officer, Kathleen McLaughlin, underscored the company’s commitment to addressing climate change. But McLaughlin noted, correctly, that “even the most ambitious voluntary individual and collective actions are not sufficient” and “[b]old domestic climate policy action is needed now if we are to meet the demands of this generational moment.”

McLaughlin went on to say that effective climate policies are included in the reconciliation package pending before Congress:

In the U.S., Walmart is encouraged by the many climate-related policy proposals being debated by Congress, including proposals made through budget reconciliation and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, as well as additional ideas being surfaced in policy circles. We urge our national leaders to find ways to enact much-needed legislation to enable the U.S. to move forward on climate action now to avoid the worst effects of climate change in the future. 

…As the IPCC report affirms, global warming is not just a challenge we must address for tomorrow, but one whose effects are already being felt by many communities today. We need to act now and with urgency.

The centerpiece of the climate policy in the reconciliation bill is the Clean Energy Standard. The proposal would allocate about $150 billion to incentivize utilities to shift to cleaner sources of power. The goal of the Clean Energy Standard in the reconciliation package would be to reduce carbon emissions from the power sector by 80% by 2030 and 100% by 2035.

While McLaughlin is urging Congress to “act now and with urgency,” her boss, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, is leading a multi-million dollar campaign to defeat the reconciliation package.

McMillon is the current chair of the Business Roundtable, a group of influential CEOs who are participating in a “massive lobbying blitz” to kill the reconciliation package and its Clean Energy Standard. In a press release this week which featured quotes from McMillon, the Business Roundtable said its efforts to defeat the reconciliation bill would include “direct CEO engagement to Capitol Hill and the Administration, as well as high-frequency radio print and digital ads in over 50 media markets across the country, generating calls and letters from constituents in target states.”

Walmart is also part of another well-funded campaign to defeat the reconciliation bill by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Walmart did not respond to Popular Information’s request for comment. 

GM endorses reconciliation bill; GM CEO takes over Business Roundtable

GM released a statement on Tuesday officially endorsing the reconciliation bill, also known as the “Build Back Better” plan. The company says that the bill presents a “once-in-a-generation opportunity for our nation.”

General Motors applauds those who have worked tirelessly to advance the Build Back Better Plan, including the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework, and urges Congress and the Administration to move forward legislation that will bring critical improvements to the country.  Build Back Better lays the foundation for sustainability policies that will help address climate change and improve environmental quality and resiliency.  GM supports those goals and, critically, we support those provisions that accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles and establish the U.S. as a global leader in electrification today, and into the future.

On Wednesday, the Business Roundtable announced that GM CEO Mary Barra would be its incoming Chair in 2022.Business Roundtable @BizRoundtable.@GM Chair & CEO Mary Barra elected incoming Chair of Business Roundtable for a two-year term beginning on January 1, 2022. Read the press release: businessroundtable.org/general-motors…

September 29th 20214 Retweets6 Likes

Soon, Barra will lead a company that says the reconciliation bill is “critical” and a lobbying organization doing everything possible to defeat it. The media coverage of Barra’s appointment ignored this contradiction.

Under increased scrutiny, Apple stays silent

Walmart’s conduct is similar to Apple’s contradictory approach. Apple’s VP for Environment, Policy, and Social Initiatives, Lisa Jackson, put out a statement supporting “the enactment of a Clean Energy Standard (CES) that would decarbonize the power sector by 2035.” This is the exact policy in the reconciliation bill. Jackson called taking action on this issue “urgent.” 

But, as Popular Information reported earlier this week, Apple CEO Tim Cook sits on the board of the Business Roundtable. So Apple is describing the climate provisions of the reconciliation bill as “urgent” while also participating in a campaign to kill the legislation.

Apple did not respond to our request for comment but Popular Information’s reporting caught the attention of MSNBC’s Chris Hayes. On his program Tuesday night, Hayes said Apple also ignored MSNBC’s inquiry:

Today, journalist Judd Legum points out in this newsletter Popular Information that Apple CEO Tim Cook sits on the board of the Business Roundtable along with at least 12 other influential CEOs. The group is running ads on Facebook attacking the reconciliation bill’s higher corporate tax rate.

We reached out to Apple for comment. They did not get back to us….

Manchin snaps at reporter who asked about his financial conflicts

The reconciliation bill does not need any Republican votes to become law. But it is opposed by Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) and a handful of other Democrats. On Wednesday, Manchin released a lengthy statement criticizing the bill seeks to “vengfully tax” in pursuit of “wishful spending.” 

The statement did not get into specifics because the specifics are very popular.

Manchin did not mention it, but he reportedly also objects to the climate provisions in the bill, which would transition the energy sector away from fossil fuels by 2035. Manchin wants a policy that would give “a lifeline to the fossil fuel industry.”

As Popular Information reported earlier this month, Manchin has a financial conflict. He continues to hold an ownership stake in two coal companies that would likely be put out of business if the country stopped generating power from coal. Manchin has recieved hundreds of thousands of dollars in dividends from these holdings since he became a Senator. 

Manchin was confronted on Wednesday by Bloomberg’s Ari Natter about his financial interest in fossil fuels. It quickly got testy:Frank Thorp V @frankthorpMANCHIN asked by @AriNatter whether an energy company he founded is a conflict of interest as he negotiates reconciliation: MANCHIN: “I’ve been in a blind trust for 20 years, I have no idea what they’re doing. Ari: You’re still getting dividends. MANCHIN: “You got a problem?”September 29th 20211,186 Retweets3,541 Likes

When Natter brought up that Manchin’s son runs the companies, Manchin snapped back: “You’d do best to change the subject.”

Earlier this year a senior ExxonMobil lobbyist was caught on camera bragging that he spoke with Manchin’s office weekly. Manchin said these claims were exaggerated. Over the last week, ExxonMobil has spend $275,000 on Facebook ads opposing the reconciliation bill.

Buried on the Coronavirus page in the A Section in last Sunday’s Spokesman (September 26), there was an article entitled “Rally against vaccine mandates draws 4,000 to downtown”. The gathering was organized as the “Rally for Medical Freedom,” a title that obscures the motives of the rally’s principle organizers, Caleb Collier and Matt Shea. Shea and Collier have been featured speakers at nearly every anti-government protest and rally from the early days of the coronavirus lockdown to the present. Just enter their names in the Search window at Spokesman.com. (See here, here, here, and here.) Long before the coronavirus, Matt Shea allied with Ammon Bundy during the Malheur Wildlife Refuge armed standoff in 2016, something we would all do well to remember.

Matt Shea declined to run again for the seat he had held as Washington State Representative from LD4 (Spokane Valley north to Mt. Spokane) after the exposure and controversy over his tract, “The Biblical Basis for War.” Since then Shea, Collier, and company seize every opportunity to rile their far right religious flock against existing government. While regional Intensive Care Units fill with unvaccinated Covid-19 patients, the inanity of Shea and Collier’s current protests against vaccinations and masks is exceeded only by the extremist religious fervor with which they pump up their followers over gun “rights”, abortion (as “The Church at Planned Parenthood”), the establishment of the theocratic breakaway “Liberty State”, and over any effort government might make to limit the current pandemic. 

Shea declined to run again for his seat as the state representative from LD4 last fall after being credibly accused of “domestic terrorism.” For at least the last ten years Shea has disguised his anti-government agitation in a cloak supposed Christian piety. Shortly after leaving the Washington State legislature in January 2021 Shea’s extremist religious politics came on full display as he took on the mantle of pastor of the Covenant Church. Ken Peters, the founder and prior head pastor of this non-denominational entity on Princeton Ave in near north Spokane was moving on to establish more “patriot churches” elsewhere. (Non-denominational simply means that as a pastor in such a church there are no institutional checks and balances on the finances or on the personality cult the pastor establishes with his [or her] flock.)

In Pastor Ken Peter’s absence, Shea took over. When Peters returned from Nashville, Shea decamped with much of Peter’s former Covenant Church flock to a new location in downtown Spokane in a large building at 115 E Pacific Avenue. (On google maps the building is labelled “Healing Rooms Ministries International Office”. The building is also the address of the “Revival Culture Church”.) 

Caleb Collier is Shea’s apparent aide-de-camp in all Shea’s recent religio-political agitation. Collier, an ex-Marine who was once a council person on the City of Spokane City Council, is/was the co-host of “Church and State”, a local podcast producer with a flashy, flag-draped website. (That website may or may not be up-to-date. Its last “Latest Episode[s]” is dated July 23, 2018.) Collier was recently identified as “executive field coordinator” for the John Birch Society. Rumor has it that he has been fired under questionable circumstances even from that extremist organization. 

The common theme to all the protests that Matt Shea and Caleb Collier lead is straightforward: everything government tries to do is evil and must be resisted—resisted in the name of God and Shea and Collier’s particular concept of “freedom”. “Don’t you dare attempt to quell a pandemic with a requirement to wear masks or get vaccinated; don’t you dare attempt to limit the violent deaths by introducing common sense gun regulation; don’t you dare suggest that Biden was elected in a free and fair election!” Behind it all among these religio-political assault weapons toters is the implied threat of an armed uprising. Shea’s “The Biblical Basis For War” was a justification, not an outline for a Sunday school lesson. Shea and Collier, under the cloak of Christianity, are assembling an armed cult whose reason for being is to demonize and oppose government in any form but their own. Surely not everyone at the protest last Saturday fully subscribes to Shea and Collier’s message, but these two men are assembling a coalition of gullible believers carrying assault weapons instead of pitchforks. That last Saturday’s rally was entirely peaceful is no guarantee of future performance.

These people mean business. Learn their names and their backgrounds. Stay alert. Re-read the history of the takeover of the government of the Weimar Republic in 1920s and 30s Germany, by the religio-political movement of Nazi Aryanism. Take heed. It can happen here. It creeps up. 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. This post was partly inspired by reading an opinion piece by a conservative commentator, Robert Kagan, last weekend in the Washington Post, entitled “Our constitutional crisis is already here