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Mitch

Dear Group,

Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has served as the Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate since 2015. He was first voted into the Senate in November, 1984, seated on January 3, 1985. That election was a squeaker. He would have lost if the 0.6% of the vote that went to a Socialist Workers candidate had gone to his Democratic opponent. He leapt to the Senate at 42 years of age from a position as “Judge/Executive of Jefferson County”, Kentucky. He is currently 76 years old. He is up for re-election in 2020. (Sources: Wikipedia and Ballotpedia.)

Ballotpedia reports McConnell’s net worth increased by 512% from $3,734,414 in 2004 to $22,841,026 in 2012 while the American citizen experienced a median yearly decline in net worth of -0.94% in the same period. (You can see his top 5 contributors to his political campaigns at Ballotpedia.)

For me, Mitch McConnell stands out as the most partisan and least statesmanlike of highly placed politicians in Congress. His statement in 2010 after the 2008 election of Barrack Obama, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” stands out for me, but not nearly so much has his unprecedented months-long stiff-arming of Merrick Garland, the moderate judge Obama nominated to the Supreme Court. For that latter act McConnell already deserves a special place in hell. 

Now McConnell is refusing to bring to the Senate floor bills already passed by the House since this Congress opened on January 3, bills that would re-open most of the government, appropriations bills the contents of which passed the Senate by a voice vote last December (but need to be taken up again, since we’re in a new Congress, in order to present them to Donald Trump). 

McConnell is in a delicate spot. In 2014, his last election, he won with 56% of the vote. (There still are Kentuckians who are Democrats!) McConnell’s base, we have to imagine, is increasingly Trumpian. He must fear doing anything that angers Trump. That certainly includes presenting Trump with bills he would have to veto to keep the government shut down. Worse, if Trump vetoed, the Congress might have to consider a veto override. Each and every Representative and Senator would then be on record as having voted for or against continuing the Trump shutdown. This is pure partisan politics. 

But there is more. Evidence continues to mount that Trump colluded with the Russians to swing the 2016 election. McConnell, in his steadfast pursuit of the Republican agenda, has consistently defended Trump against such accusations. Explore that by reading “Trump is doing immense damage. He has a hidden helper.” an opinion piece in the Washington Post by Greg Sargent on January 14th.

Once again here are the numbers to call and express your ire over Congressional dysfunction on the issue of the shutdown. It is their job to present legislation to the President and to override (or not) his veto if it comes to it. (

CMR:

Spokane Office       (509) 353-2374

Colville Office         (509) 684-3481

Walla Walla Office  (509) 529-9358

D.C. Office              (202) 225-2006

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA)

D.C. Office          (202) 224-2621

Spokane Office  (509) 624-9515

Yakima Office     (509) 453-7462

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA)

D.C. Office          (202) 224-3441

Spokane Office  (509) 353-2507

Richland Office  (509) 946-8106

Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID)

D.C.  202-224-6142

North ID,  208–664-5490

Sen. James Risch (R-ID)

D.C. 202-224-2752

Coeur d’Alene  208-667-6130

Rep. Russ Fulcher (new R, ID)

(202) 225-6611 

Then call Call/Email Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and ask him to bring the House-passed bills to the Senate floor for a vote. He needs to let the Senate do its job. Phone: (202) 224-2541. Reports are that McConnell’s phone lines have been jammed. They need to stay that way.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

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What makes it “Partial”?

Dear Group,

Why a “partial” shutdown? Why isn’t it a “full” shutdown? That’s a pretty basic question for which I didn’t have an answer. In a media ecosystem of soundbites I often find the basic information necessary to understand what’s going on is left out of the discussion. 

The federal fiscal year (the “year” established for accounting purposes) runs from October 1 of one year to September 30 of the next. If Congress hasn’t “appropriated” (authorized the money to be made available) to the fifteen departments of the executive branch before October 1 then the money starts to run out. In 2018 the October 1 deadline passed but funding continued on a series of “Continuing Resolutions” until December 21. (A continuing resolution says the departmental funding will continue at the same level as the previous appropriations bill until some specific date.)

The shutdown is “partial” because the 115th Congress (that just ended) passed some appropriations bills (not just continuing resolutions) during 2018 that provided money to six of the fifteen departments for fiscal year 2019 (which ends September 30, 2019). Those departments have money with which to function. In fact the appropriations bills that were passed and signed by Trump for those six departments cover roughly 75% of the discretionary budget. The departments that have money already include the Pentagon (Department of Defense—a big spender) as well as the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Labor. 

The other nine departments received no more money from the Treasury after the continuing resolutions ran out on December 21. As a result they have to cut back services and require employees deemed “essential” to work without a paycheck (but with the hope they will get their money later). You can read a fairly comprehensive fact sheet on what our current record-breaking partial shutdown affects here. There is a superb wikipedia article on the current shutdown with a lot more background and detail here.

All this brings me to two rhetorical points: 1) Six departments are already funded under appropriations bills passed in 2018 AND there are appropriations bills covering the other departments on Mitch McConnell’s desk, sent there by the House. On what ground does he refuse to bring them to the Senate floor, apart from his own petulance? 2) The current shutdown might never have happened if the Department of Defense were not already funded. Can you imagine the wailing if Trump were responsible for demanding the military to serve without pay? 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. I wonder what percentage of voters were taught about this process in high school Civics (or learned it on their own). I was certainly fuzzy on the details… One way to look at the current partial shutdown is to use it as an opportunity to learn some of the detail of how the government budget process is supposed to work.

P.P.S. Rush Limbaugh is touting the partial shutdown as a way get rid of some of what he considers the surplus, do-nothing federal workers, a classical Libertarian canard.

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Life Imitates Art

Dear Group,

I look forward each Monday to Doug Muder’s weekly emails under the title The Weekly Sift. (I encourage you to visit his website and sign up for them.) Yesterday Mr. Muder ended his email with a must-see video. Remember when westerns on television came in 1/2 hour segments and often came with a moralistic overtone? The parallels between this episode of “Trackdown” (click “full episode” below) and our current predicament with the Trump shutdown are uncanny. I found myself questioning if this were a modern production made to look like 1950s TV, but, no, the main actor really is Robert Culp, and Robert Culp died in 2010 at the age of 79.

Life imitates art:

“Trackdown” aired on CBS between 1957 and 1959 and took place in Texas following the Civil War. The series followed Texas Ranger Hoby Gilman, played by Robert Culp, on his adventures protecting the people of the Lone Star State. The 30th episode of the show, titled “The End of The World,” premiered on May 9, 1958, and saw a con man named Walter Trump, played by Lawrence Dobkin, attempt to scam the entire town.

The fictional Trump warned the Texans that apocalyptic meteors would strike the town at midnight, but he could protect everyone. … His solution was to build a wall made of magical metal that would repel the meteors and keep everyone safe.

The full episode is on YouTube.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry
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Matt Shea and His Business Donors

Dear Group,

Last October as the November election approached Matt Shea made a local and national media splash with exposure of his “Biblical Basis for War” manifesto, a document he tried to explain away as an outline for a Sunday School lesson. (Matt Shea, along with McCaslin Junior, are the two Representatives to the State House in Olympia from Legislative District 4, Spokane Valley and the territory north to Mount Spokane. For more on Shea and his activities see the P.S. below) When Shea was making national and local news with his Manifesto, articles appeared in the Spokesman on three consecutive days, October 31, November 1, and November 2 listing business donors who said they wanted a refund of the money they donated the Shea campaign. Some, in their press releases, said “Shea does not reflect our values.” Some insisted they would not donate again.

Northwest Credit Union Association was the first to publicly request a refund. The Washington Association of Realtors, AT&T, The Washington Hospitality Association, Avista Corp., and the BNSF Railway Co. followed. The Washington Hospitality Association and others acknowledged that Shea was under no legal obligation to return the money. 

Reading the Spokesman articles leaves the impression if Chad Sokol (the Spokesman reporter who wrote all three articles) had not taken the initiative to visit the Public Disclosure Commission’s website, and call Matt Shea’s donors for comment, few if any of these businesses would have made a public statement or requested a refund. 

I urge you to visit the Public Disclosure Commission’s website pdc.wa.gov. It takes a little electronic digging, but there is a wealth of useful information. Click “Browse,” enter the candidate’s name and select from the list. 

Did any of Matt Shea’s business donors get their money back? Visit Shea’s 2018 Campaign Expenditure page.  I could find no evidence of a refund. The real test comes in the lead up to Shea’s 2020 election campaign. Will these businesses “forget” over two years and write Shea another check? After all, even though businesses (at least corporations) are, for legal purposes, treated as persons, business memory is likely to be fragmented. Will the right person remember the 2018 promise? The first donation to Shea’s 2018 campaign fund arrived on March 15, 2018. Perhaps in early 2020 we should remind these and other donors of Shea’s activities.

The total business donations to Shea’s 2018 campaign were $40,250, of which only $8000 came from the donors who publicly withdrew their support. Using the Public Disclosure Commission website it should not be hard to come up with a list of the other donors from 2018 to whom to suggest in early 2020 that donating to Shea might shine an unwanted light on them. Another $40,900 came from Political Action Committees with names like WASHINGTON STATE AUTO DEALERS PAC, WASHINGTON OPTOMETRIC PAC, and the WASHINGTON STATE DENTAL PAC. Might they be educated as well?

What Shea does with all this money (a grand total of $113,145.98 after adding in individual donations) is a story for another day. It is all there on the Public Disclosure Commission website. 

Keep to the high road,

Jerry

P.S. While using the Search function at the Spokesman in preparing this email I came upon an article on Matt Shea written by Shawn Vestal that appeared December 14, 2018. I encourage you to click the link and read it. As usual Mr. Vestal nails it.

P.P.S. Public Disclosure Commission website is for in-WA-State candidates. Federal candidate campaigns are found at FEC.gov.

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Shutdown, The Country Held Hostage

Dear Group,

From McMorris Rodgers’ website [the bold is mine]:

For bills to reach the president’s desk in a divided government, both parties must work together to responsibly govern. It’s time to make deals, and the deal to make here is to secure the border, keep Americans safe, and give certainty to DACA recipients. Unfortunately, Democrats signaled today they would rather waste time on bills the Senate won’t consider and the president won’t sign. When this partial shutdown started, I called on Democrats to negotiate in earnest to fund the government and secure our border. These are priorities of the American people and the responsibilities of Congress. Speaker Pelosi pledged today this Congress will be ‘bipartisan and unifying.’ Let’s do it.

We have a petulant child in the White House who is holding hostage more than a trillion (1000 billion) dollars of discretionary government spending (the part of federal government spending covered by the appropriations bills) necessary for the government to function. He is holding the government and the people of the U.S. hostage over his non-negotiable demand for 5.7 billion dollars (only a downpayment) to begin construction of his ill-conceived and ill-advised border wall, a wall that has become for him a symbol of his presidency. 

McMorris Rodgers calls Democrats to “negotiate.” She offers no call for her President, her “positive disruptor,” to negotiate. How do you negotiate over a non-negotiable demand, a demand so entrenched that she considers passing appropriations bills that do not include the 5.7 billion dollars a waste of time? There is a frustrating lack of logic here. Has she never heard of over-riding a presidential veto? 

If Trump holds to his word and vetoes any bill that concludes the shutdown without giving him his $5.7 billion eventually the pain of his hostage taking will grow, and Congress will take the heat from constituents. Congress’ only alternative will be a veto override. (That assumes McConnell can be forced to bring the individual House appropriations bills to the Senate floor and enough Senators defect from Trumpism to get the bills passed.)

You can feel their pain. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-WA, CD3) is one of two other Republicans in the Washington State delegation to the U.S. Congress (after CMR).. She is a protege of McMorris Rodgers. She held onto her seat last November with only a 52.7% majority. She voted Wednesday, January 8, along with seven other defecting House Republicans and all the Democrats for H.R. 264, an appropriations bill that would end part of the shutdown without border wall funding. Her press release expresses her discomfort with the effects of the shutdown. She writes, “Entering the third week of a federal government shutdown, it’s easy to see why Americans are disgusted with politicians.” Almost plaintively she adds, “While I will never call $5 billion a small amount of money, in the context of a $4.4 trillion federal budget it doesn’t seem like a deal-breaker.” (Notice she inflates the number she uses for the federal budget by including mandatory spending.)

I feel Herrera Beutler’s pain. Please, please make this stop! It’s killing us! And she’s right as far as she goes, including that $5 billion is not chump change. She does not mention she voted for the partial funding bill. Perhaps she would rather her Trumpian base did not know.

H.R. 264 passed 240-188. If McConnell is finally pressured to bring this bill up in the Senate and it passes the Senate (there are already Republican Senatorial defectors) and Trump vetoes it, the House only needs 45 more votes to override. It might look like a high bar right now, but after a few more weeks of shutdown more like Herrera Beutler will feel the squeeze. They will worry over their vulnerability at the ballot box in 2020 if they remain tied to Trump in his shutdown. 

You can bet the Trump devotees are calling their Senators and Representatives to encourage them to hold strong with their spoilt child in the White House. It is time for us to start telling our Representatives and Senators it is time to end this. This President thinks he has autocratic powers, and will, along with his Party, ruin the country if allowed to make good on his promise to extend the shutdown “for months.” The Republicans in Congress at some level have to know this shutdown must end before they lose all the voters outside of Trump’s fevered base. 

Call, email or write your Representative and Senators today and tell them how you feel. They need to hear from us that time is running out to act and we know they can override a veto (even if they pretend they’ve forgotten).

CMR:

Spokane Office       (509) 353-2374

Colville Office         (509) 684-3481

Walla Walla Office  (509) 529-9358

D.C. Office              (202) 225-2006

Patty Murray (D-WA)

D.C. Office          (202) 224-2621

Spokane Office  (509) 624-9515

Yakima Office     (509) 453-7462

Maria Cantwell (D-WA)

D.C. Office          (202) 224-3441

Spokane Office  (509) 353-2507

Richland Office  (509) 946-8106

Mike Crapo

D.C.  202-224-6142

North ID,  208–664-5490

James Risch

D.C. 202-224-2752

Coeur d’Alene  208-667-6130

Russ Fulcher (new R, ID)

(202) 225-6611 

Then call Call/Email Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and ask him to bring the House-passed bills to the Senate floor for a vote in order to end the shutdown! There is no veto to override if this ultimate partisan and Trump enabler cannot be convinced to bring bills to the Senate floor. Phone: (202) 224-2541.

Kept to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S If you have five minutes Senator Jon Tester (D-MT), articulates this position on the Senate floor on January 10 better than I just did.

P.P.S. On Thursday, January 10, H.R. 265 and 267, two more partial funding bills passed the House with similar margins to H.R. 264. McMorris Rodgers and Dan Newhouse (R-WA, CD-4) each voted first to send each bill back to committee “with instructions” and the voted against each bill. Herrera Beutler each time voted to send the bill back, but then turned around voted to pass the bill. How odd… 

 
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The Dues We Pay

Dear Group,

The dues we pay for our membership in society, the money that city, county, state, and national governments gather, those dues fund goods and services from which we all benefit. We can (and do) argue about exactly what that funding should be used for and whether it is being spent wisely. We wince when we pay our property taxes and sales taxes, we grumble as we file our income tax, but without these dues most of the physical and societal structures on which we all depend to one degree or another would not exist (or might exist only for use by the monied few, e.g. toll roads).

Roads, railroad rights-of-way, airports, air traffic control, shipping ports, fire protection, education, the public health system, sewers, sewerage treatment, drinkable water, the judicial system, the police all function to one degree or another on the dues we pay to cities, counties, states and the federal government. No wealthy person anywhere in the world (and certainly no wealthy person in this country) made their money without benefitting from these dues. The idea of a pure “self-made man” (or woman) is a libertarian myth. Underpinning every “self-made” wealthy person is a myriad of publicly funded structures, plus the judicial system and law enforcement on which their success depends. The richest among us have benefitted the most. It is only fitting they pay back a much higher portion of their monetary winnings as the dues that hold together the fabric of society upon which we are all dependent. (Elizabeth Warren makes this point better than I in a 2 minute 2011 youtube video you should watch.)

The Republican/Libertarians, including our very own McMorris Rodgers, tried to sell us on the idea an even greater reduction in the dues the wealthy pay to live in the society would benefit everyone. The bill was called the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Among its many provisions was a reduction of the top income tax bracket from 39.6% to 37% for tax year 2018. The Republicans crowed about the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, how it was going to be “money in your pocket,” Did you notice as the November elections approached “money in your pocket” dropped out of McMorris Rodgers’ rhetoric? Did her messaging prowess help her keep her supposed position of power as Chair of the House Republican Caucus? No. Her message fell flat. She and her cohort abandoned talking up their signature achievement. Instead it was properly framed as a tax giveaway to the wealthy. 

McMorris Rodgers does not clearly say she advocates for “trickle down economics” but her rhetoric is clear: give the titans of industry, the movers and shakers (like her “positive disruptor,” Mr. Trump) more money and they will expand the economy and we’ll all be better off. OK. There are more jobs now in our wobbly, overstimulated economy, but the wealthy have become wealthier and the gap between them and the average worker continues to grow, fueled by a massive increase in national debt. 

Have the Republican/Libertarians overreached in their effort to make toxic the very word “tax”? Perhaps. We all need to pay our dues, but “To whom much is given much is expected.” We the People have given much to the wealthy and too little of it trickles down. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), the progressive dancing firebrand newly elected to Congress from the Bronx is openly advocating a 70-80% tax on very high incomes. Is this nuts? Well, consider: “…it’s a policy nobody has ever implemented, aside from … the United States, for 35 years after World War II — including the most successful period of economic growth in our history.” [the bold is mine.] I urge you to read the opinion piece in the New York Times by Paul Krugman, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics (2008), from January 5, 2019 from which I took that quote. Ocasio-Cortez is no dummy. The top income tax bracket topped 90% for several years between 1940 and 1965. Of course, the wealthy did not like 90% then any more than they like 37% now. 

With a widening income gap, growing national debt, and crumbling infrastructure it is time to change the narrative around taxation. Taxes are the dues we pay to be citizens.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. “Trickle down” economics descended from what’s been dubbed the “Horse and Sparrow Theory” of the late 1800s: “If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.” Providing the rich and corporations with more money in order to better the average person is an economic theory worthy of the vehicle in which the half-digested oats reach the sparrows. 

P.P.S. A much less emphasized part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act doubled the inheritance tax exemption to 11.18 million dollars, enabling the wealthy to pass on untaxed more than twice the previous amount without even bothering to engage in the fiscal shenanigans the Trump family engaged in. The bogus Republican messaging about the “death tax” and bankrupting “family farms” was nowhere to be heard. That messaging, pushed by “think tanks” had served its purpose…in the glee of the Republican Congress the doubling passed with no fanfare. No doubt there was quiet celebration among some of the uber-wealthy.
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Trust and Knowledge

Dear Group,

How do we know what we know? Most of us would say we “know” the world is round as scientific truth. Almost none of us have done scientific experiments to prove the earth is a sphere. We “know” the earth is spherical because we trust those who suspected the earth was round, assembled observations and did investigations like Eratosthene’s experiment and calculation of the earth’s circumference in the 3rd century BC. Eratosthenes was certainly part of the Greek elite of the time. In light of current events one wonders if his motivation for doing his famous experiment was questioned in an effort to undermine his work. (According to the wikipedia article Eratosthenes did have critics.)  The concept of a spherical earth was accepted gradually by humankind over millennia. Today the vast majority of us trust the honesty, the motivation, and the reporting accuracy of those who developed the concept of a spherical earth. Our modern way of thinking about time zones, NASA photos from space, and the movement of the sun are all based on trust in the people who developed the theory. 

Most of what we “know” is based on trusting other people. That is who we are as a species. If we are taught or come to doubt the motivation of a group of people or institutions, that is, if we lose trust, nowadays there are slickly presented alternatives only a few keystrokes away. For example, check out this page from the Flat Earth Society website, an interview (and transcript) with one Mr. Sargent. His “favorite proof” of a flat earth includes a dismissal of NASA photos, implying NASA is part of conspiracy to make us believe the earth is round.

A high school classmate of mine became a fundamentalist Christian preacher. His wife (possibly even more fundamentalist than he) insisted to me in the course of a discussion, “Wikipedia isn’t a reliable source.” She was unwilling to consider with me the references present at the end of any good Wikipedia article, so she was effectively saying, “It is all suspect, all unreliable.” Her only trust is in the Holy Bible or, better said, the interpretations thereof made by people she trusts.

Spend a few minutes with a search “How old is the earth?” on Google or DuckDuckGo.com. You’ll quickly discover online groups not only offering slick presentations attempting to refute the overwhelming scientific consensus of around 4.5 billion years, but even groups actively debating whether the earth was created 6,238 or 6,106 years ago (or some other similar number). All this is presented in glossy format and at minor expense. Add a whiff of conspiracy theory to taint the trustworthiness of centuries of scientific endeavor and you are on the way to unmooring a susceptible person’s thinking, to separate off a group smugly dedicated to a completely different worldview. 

Of course Trump is the conspiracy theorist in chief, so much so that his bid for the presidency was founded on his promotion of birtherism, the idea that Barack Obama was ineligible to be president based the location of his birth. Almost daily he promotes “deep state” conspiracy to instill distrust in any institution that opposes him. 

Promoting distrust by pushing conspiracy theories is not just a Washington, D.C. phenomenon, it is endemic to eastern Washington politics as well.

Matt Shea (R-WA Legislative District 4, City of Spokane Valley plus) is a flagrant promoter of conspiracy theories, even serving as a speaker at The Red Pill Expo (See Matt Shea and the Red Pill). He uses conspiracy theory to break trust, to separate, to insulate from reality his followers fearful of “gun grabbers” and dedicated to hyper-“Christian” State of Liberty cult. 

McMorris Rodgers and Sue Lani Madsen (conservative guest columnist for the Spokesman), both insert references to George Soros in speech and writing, a way to discredit and promote distrust in Democrats and liberal causes by posing Soros as the evil puppet master of whose manipulation his subjects are unaware. Notably and ironically, McMorris Rodgers, sometimes in the same discourse, will claim she wants to “restore trust in government,” I guess she means government by her Republican Party…

The promotion of dismissal and distrust, distrust in government, higher education, the media, and the legal system is a political tool honed by Gingrich, Limbaugh, Prager, and a host of other right wing personalities over several decades. Trump by his very nature, has taken this tactic completely over the top in his pursuit of power. By so doing he has highlighted the danger and depravity of the tactic itself. 

When allegiance requires acceptance of “alternative facts,” the belief in which is dependent on distrusting reality, we’re in trouble, we’re drifting into cult territory.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. The study of how we know what we know is epistemology, a branch of philosophy. The word is not new to me but I understand it’s application far better after listening to a podcast interview from Chris Hayes’ “Why is This Happening, entitled “The Information Crisis with David Roberts,” It is well worth the time spent to listen to the podcast. There is also a transcript. This podcast helped congeal many of the ideas expressed above.