Another example of dishonest labelling

This morning I want to share with you Thom Hartmann’s November 11th email. It stands very well on its own, but it also follows well on my last Friday’s (November 5) post on estate taxes entitled “Wealth and Taxes”. Hartmann’s post will go into my file labelled “Devastating arguments I wish had occurred to me.”

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

The Tragic Plight of the Children of Wealthy People Exposed

Why is free money a good thing for the children of wealthy white kids but free money to poor people or minorities is a terrible social ill that damages those young people for life?

Thom Hartmann

Earlier this week, Newt Gingrich dropped by my show to promote his new book, Beyond Biden: Rebuilding the America We Love.

We talked about how terrible it is when people get “free money” from the government, how it destroys individual initiative and turns otherwise productive people into lazy whiners.

Thom: “You have, throughout the years that you were in congress, repeatedly pointed out that it’s destructive to people to give them free money, whether it’s free housing or free food or, you know, any kind of welfare payments generally, particularly over a long period of time and particularly enough money that they never have to work again. Please correct me if I’m mischaracterizing your position?”

Newt: “Yeah, it’s actually a paraphrase of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 1935 State of the Union speech when Roosevelt says welfare ultimately undermines and debilitates the entire society and that we should be very careful not to create a system of permanent welfare. So in that sense I’m quoting the greatest Democratic president of the 20th century who understood culturally that if you create a dependency class that it is very, very dangerous and it’s very bad for the people who end up on welfare.”

Thom: “Would it be even worse if those people who are now damaged and lazy as a consequence of getting free money had considerable power in society as well? I mean, therefore, shouldn’t we tax inheritances at 100 percent so that we don’t create a whole class of trust fund babies who now not only are damaged and lazy but also have considerable political power because of their wealth?”

Newt: “Well… I mean… I… I find your premise fascinating.  Why do you think it’s your right to say to a parent or a grandparent who’s worked their whole lifetime, ‘We’re not going to take care of your family we’re going to take all of your money away for the government?’”

Thom: “Because you just told me that it would be a bad thing to do to our children.”

Newt: “Well, uh, but I also think it’s a very bad thing to have government think that it’s their money that they didn’t earn the money, uh, the government, I mean…”

Thom: “So you’re saying that government money makes people lazy but daddy’s money doesn’t?”

Newt: “I think that it depends on how smart daddy is and I know a lot of successful people who put their kids on allowances and make them work for it. I don’t, I don’t, you know, but, but I’m also raising a deeper point which is, why do you think it’s your money? Why do you think it’s your right to say to a parent or a grandparent, ‘I’m taking away your lifetime’s work because I have moral superior judgment to you and I’m going to save your child because I’m going to intervene and rip off all of your money?’”

Thom: “Well it’s simply the same money isn’t it? Is it not the same thing as saying, ‘No I’m not going to help you out with food or housing or other things, or even disaster relief, because it’s going to make you lazy and crazy?”

Newt: “Well, that’s the reason, I mean, you jump wildly…”  From there he went into an extended discourse about how fully he supported disaster relief for New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

Jumping wildly or not, Republicans have a problem here.  For forty years, since Ronald Reagan began attacking the estate tax (which is now so full of loopholes it’s largely meaningless), they’ve argued that giving free, unearned money to wealthy white kids after their parents die is a vital part of The American Way. 

Billionaire heirs even reportedly hired Frank Luntz to change the language around the Estate Tax and he recommended that Republicans start calling it the “Death Tax,” although it’s actually a tax on unearned income, not on dead people (who can’t be taxed because they’re dead).

At the same time that they’re pushing this line — that free money is a goodthing for the children of wealthy white billionaires — Republicans also argue that giving free money to poor people or minorities is a terrible social ill that damages those young people for life.

Saint Ronnie Reagan used to tell voters in the South about how upsetting it is when standing at the check-out line in a supermarket watching “some strapping young buck ahead of you buy a T-bone steak” presumably with food stamps while “you were waiting in line to buy hamburger.”  Reagan loved that line and repeated it as often as he did his story about the Black “Welfare Queen” who no newspaper was ever able to find.

While no reasonable person is suggesting the extreme, confiscatory Estate Tax example I ran by Newt, the truth is almost certainly somewhere in the middle.  Giving people the means to be totally indolent for the rest of their lives, whether from inheritance or unlimited government welfare, often turns out badly: just look at all the ne’er-do-wells produced by dynastic families.

On the other hand, giving people enough money or resources to meet their basic needs in life — the bottom two-thirds of the pyramid of Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs — gives them a launching pad from which they can become their very best.  Just ask any middle-class parents who paid for their kid’s college or helped them buy their first house.

It’s time for us to put aside rhetorical arguments and get serious about this issue. 

The experience of every other advanced democracy in the world demonstrates that society needs a basic foundation that includes free healthcare and college, decent wages, minimum standards of housing and access to food, and assistance with raising children. 

In that context, “welfare” programs should be available to people who can’t work or are experiencing a temporary crisis, but much of what we call “welfare” today in America is just the foundational responsibility of government to its citizens.

The Republican failure to understand the difference between “a basic floor for society” and what they call “welfare” is the real problem here.

Instead of constantly reaching down to pull up those among us who have fallen through the cracks, let’s seal up the cracks and provide a solid floor for all Americans.

Similarly, when people receive vast sums of money that they didn’t earn or work for in any way — money that was simply a result of them having been a member of the lucky sperm club — society has every right to tax that money at least as enthusiastically as it taxes money that people earn by the sweat of their brow or through actively making investments.

If we want to avoid the tragic plight of the children of wealthy people, and also produce a society that works as well as those democracies that have a higher quality of life than America, it’s time for an honest discussion about unearned income.

She Operates in a Parallel Universe

Last Friday the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 3684, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (AKA the INVEST in America Act) and sent it President Biden’s desk. H.R. 3684 passed the House the first time on July 1, 221 to 201 (with only two Republican Yea votes). The U.S. Senate took up the bill, revised it, and passed the revised version on August 10th, with a startling 69 to 30 vote, with 19 Republicans joining 50 Democrats and Independents. The revised bill was returned to the House for final approval. 

With 19 Republican Senators voting for the revised bill the media hailed the effort as “bipartisan”. Polling in early July confirmed that broad majorities of Americans were in favor of legislation to support the “hard” infrastructure funding in the bill that finally passed, so one might expect that many more House Republicans would make the final passage a “bipartisan” event on November 5. After all, in the Senate nearly 40% of Republican Senators voted for the revised bill. But no, the final House vote on the revised INVEST in America Act was 228 to 206, with only 11 more Republican votes over the original 2. To say this bill passed the House on a “bipartisan” vote would be a gross misrepresentation. 

A whole lot of the INVEST in America Act is directed at rural communities, communities generally thought of as a mainstay of the Republican base. INVEST in America provides funds “$66 billion in passenger and freight rail improvements and $17 billion for ports and waterways, infrastructure fundamentally important to rural communities.” The law includes “$65 billion to expand broadband connectivity and affordability in low-access areas,” a rural internet program reminiscent of the rural electrification program of the 1930s that first brought electricity to rural households left behind by private utility companies. Then there is funding for water infrastructure maintenance, essential for western rural communities facing years long drought. 

McMorris Rodgers, one might think, would vote for such a bill and talk it up with her rural base. Instead, here is her statement (the bold is mine):

The Senate infrastructure bill and the massive tax and spending spree are not the will of the American people. The Democrats’ radical agenda to spend a reckless amount of money will raise costs and make it even harder for people to build a better life. It will lead to blackouts, unaffordable electricity bills, tax hikes, jobs destroyed, weak defenses against our adversaries like China and Russia, no hope to cure diseases, long lines of the sick begging the government for lifesaving treatments, and slashed funding for hospitals that are trying to care for our country’s most vulnerable patients. Is that the future we really want? It’s reckless. We should be working to address crises that are threatening our future like the chaos at the border, broken supply chains, surging costs, and record-high overdose deaths.

McMorris Rodgers lives in an alternative universe where money spent on sadly needed infrastructure maintenance and upgrades will “lead to blackouts…jobs destroyed…and weak defenses.” What is her solution to crumbling infrastructure? Privatizing roads and bridges and charging tolls? She’s been talking about rural broadband for years—and accomplishing nothing. Now she casts a Nay vote on a bill that proposes to expand rural broadband? She voted Yea on the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017” inflating the deficit with tax giveaways to corporations and the wealthy. No worries about inflation there, I suppose, because the wealthy and the corporations simply banked the money instead of spending it back into the economy. Now she votes no on a bill to improve infrastructure for all of us. 

McMorris Rodgers’ Nay vote on the INVEST in America Act is one more declaration of Republican obstructionism and anti-government ideology. As long as CMR holds her office eastern Washington will remain poorly represented.

Fortunately, McMorris Rodgers already has a credible challenger in 2022. Natasha Hill is a young, extremely bright, well-spoken, locally-involved lawyer who recently served on the Spokane County Redistricting Commission. Remember that name—and get involved early. 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

Proportional Thinking

We humans grow up on stories, not numbers. For most of us, language and literacy (the ability to read and write) comes fairly early. Numeracy (the ability to understand and work with numbers) comes later and to a lesser degree. We speak, tell stories, and read frequently, but how often are we called upon (or bother) to work out a percentage or think proportionally. Discomfort and unfamiliarity with numbers and math is corrosive, because it leaves us susceptible to people who lace their stories with numbers meant to impress, to shut down rational inquiry, but which are total BS. (For an example see the P.P.S. below.)

In the Saturday, November 6, Spokesman the front page article, “VANDALISM DOWN IN DOWNTOWN BUT BROKEN WINDOWS PERSIST” featured a dramatic photo of a shop-owner seen through a vandalized window. It is an odd juxtaposition, dramatic photography to tell us about a decrease in police calls downtown for “malicious mischief”. Here’s the article’s presentation of the numbers:

There were 491 malicious mischief incidents reported to police in 2020 between Jan. 1 and Sept. 13 and 448 during the same period this year, according to information provided by Spokane Police Department Officer Stephen Anderson, a department spokesperson.

There were 565 calls for service downtown related to malicious mischief in the entirety of 2019.

What shall we make of those numbers? In the eight and a half months (minus two days) between January 1 and September 13, 2020, for the downtown area there were 491 malicious mischief incidents reported to police. This year, 2021, during exactly the same 8.5 month period there were only 448 such reports. Let’s rejoice! But wait a minute. Let’s look at a monthly rate:

2020 491 / 8.5 = 57.8/month

2021 448 / 8.5 = 52.7/month

Now look at 2019’s 12 months of data (which, to make a comparison, assumes that the monthly frequency of malicious mischief reports is relatively constant within a given year—possibly an invalid assumption):

2019 565 / 12 = 47/month 

Whoa! Malicious mischief crime reports from downtown Spokane soared from a low of 47/month in 2019 to 58/month 2020 and only came down by half to 53/month in 2021! Panic! 

What the reader ought to take away is this: the treatment of numbers in this Spokesman article is shallow reporting. The counts presented are all relatively small numbers with a lot of variation. Extracting valid statistical meaning from such raw information requires looking for a trend in ten or twenty years of comparable data. Without such comprehensive analysis these numbers are of marginal use and are readily twisted to confirm whatever bias the reader already possesses.

A current national example of misuse of numbers is the incessant harping of the media on “President Biden’s 3.5 trillion dollar infrastructure bill” rather than calling it the “Build Back Better Act,” its official name. (A 1.2 trillion dollar piece of the Build Back Better Act was signed into law this week. The fate of the broader bill remains to be seen.) Oh my! 3.5 trillion! OMG, that’s a huge number! Panic! The media focuses us on that giant, incomprehensible number rather than on what the bill would do. Hardly ever are we reminded by the same media that blares “3.5 trillion dollar spending package” that the quoted number is the authorized spending played out over 10 years, or, on average, 350 billion dollars per year. Still a large number? Consider that number in the context of the entire U.S. economy quoted on a per year basis, the Gross National Product, the “total domestic and foreign output claimed by residents.” In round figures the GNP of the U.S. is 20 trillion dollars. In a given year the entire Biden proposal is 0.35 trillion/20 trillion = 0.0175, just 1.75% of the U.S. economy. Put in the context of the wages of an hourly employee making $15/hour (~$30,000/yr), 1.75% of the annual salary is $525. That’s still a significant number but it offers perspective. Biden’s full infrastructure bill would cover a host of initiatives that would help out the families of that hourly worker. 

When you see a large number quoted without contextual reference you ought to suspect a political agenda aimed at convincing voters of something. Republicans are great at this. For any bill that actually might help the common man the focus is on a large number cost, not what the bill does. When Republicans added trillions to the national debt with the 2017 “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act”, you rarely heard of those trillions—and when you did they were lost in dry discussions of “net economic effect”. The talking point that emerged from every Republican mouth around the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” spoke of “money in your pocket,” trusting that neither the media nor the general public would see the other side of the budget: a dollar given away in a tax cut is budgetarily equivalent to a dollar spent. 

News articles and politicians rarely offer context for incomprehensible numbers. Enhance your numeracy by looking up and memorizing a few relevant numbers for context. Think in proportions. Every weekday the Spokesman’s Covid page in the main section tells us the number of new cases of Covid reported in two counties, Spokane County, Washington, and Kootenai County, Idaho. Comparing the two numbers is meaningless without population numbers. Spokane County’s population (2020 estimate) is 528,000; Kootenai’s is 171,000. To compare case numbers sensibly, multiply Kootenai’s cases by 3. Last Friday, for instance, the raw numbers were Spokane 179, Kootenai 88. Multiply Kootenai’s 88 by 3 to get 264, the number of new cases Kootenai would have if it had the same population in which to spread. After adjusting for population the story is more in line with the prevalence of vaccination in these two adjacent counties. 

Dust off your numeracy. 

Jerry

P.S. Looking up population figures in wikipedia is enlightening. The population of the island nation of New Zealand, for instance, a nation that looms quite large in the minds of many English speakers, is only a little over 5 million, about the same as the population of South Carolina. The population of Canada is around 38 million, about the same as the population of California, our most populous state. The U.S. population is around 330 million, nearly ten times that of our northern neighbor. Memorizing a few numbers and comparisons like these provides a useful perspective in reading numbers in the news. 

P.P.S. Some presentations of numbers should set off alarm bells. “Sustainable Minimalists” is a moderately interesting podcast associated with a rather glitzy-looking website. The podcaster covers a variety of topics, but the episode that caught my ear was an interview with a very sincere and apparently well-informed man, Mr. R Blank, talking of the many dangers of human exposure to “EMF” (electromotive force) from all manner things in the modern world, for example, wifi, cell phones, and 5G. Had Mr. Blank assembled solid scientific evidence of this threat, evidence I had not yet heard of or was this another advertising rabbit hole? I had to know.

The podcast linked to R Blank’s website, “Shield Your Body (SYB).” On the website R Blank declares: “There are literally thousands of high-quality, peer-reviewed scientific studies linking EMF exposure with many negative health effects— cancer, infertility, melatonin suppression, blood brain barrier leakage, and many more.” Tellingly, Mr. Blank offers not a single a link to any study. There is no space limitation (as in a newspaper or a print ad) on a website, so why not offer links to some of the most convincing evidence? In another spot on the SYB website, apparently “thousands” didn’t sound impressive enough to Mr. Blank, so he makes it “TENS of thousands of different scientific studies demonstrating negative health effects from EMF radiation.” If a reader has dug into such a website and run onto this level of misuse of numbers, one’s bullshit alarm should be screaming. By then, the even mildly skeptical website visitor might have noticed that R Blank’s company is selling EMF-blocking Faraday cages and even EMF-blocking underwear to protect the believer from the supposed scary threat of EMF (electromotive force) pervading homes and offices. 

Anyone who has listened to the radio programs of conservative commentators like Rush Limbaugh or Dennis Prager or watched late night TV should be familiar with this infomercial style of advertising meant to gain the consumer’s confidence by posing as the possessor of special knowledge or insight, ramp up diffuse worry in the listener, and then sell something of dubious value to those taken in.

Not different rules, but rules only a few understand

Cathy McMorris Rodgers (U.S. Rep from Congressional District 5, eastern Washington) sold the all-Republican Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 to her voters by talking endlessly about “money in your pocket.” This pocket money phrase focused on the skimpy reductions of income tax rates on wages and salaries reportable on W-2s. These same tax rate reductions were scheduled to expire in 2025 (something she steadfastly avoided talking about). Publicly McMorris Rodgers and her fellow Republicans barely acknowledged the decrease in taxes on corporations, a decrease not set to expire. When pressed, Republicans defended these corporate tax cuts as necessary to attract jobs back to America. Republican propaganda-meisters understood that most people, once focused on their own finances, would ignore the details. 

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is immensely complex, with a plethora of other provisions, some of the expiring in the near future, that, understandably, hardly anyone noticed except those affected. 

One of those expiring provisions was a long sought goal of Republicans: raising the estate tax exemption. For years Republican propaganda focused disingenuously on the supposedly disastrous effect of estate taxes on passing the value of family farms to the next generation. Bolstered by this propaganda, Republicans had hoped to make their wealthy donors happy by abolishing estate taxes entirely. Unfortunately for them, on account of the constraints of the reconciliation process they had to settle on doubling the estate tax exemption (threshold) to an inflation-adjusted 11.7 million dollars (in 2021)—but to do even that they also had to let it expire and return to a 5.6 million exemption for the estates of those who die after January 1, 2026. 

Most Americans barely noticed the estate tax provisions, since very few will possess even the lower amount, a 5.6 million dollar estate, when they pass on. Those few who did notice the estate exemption changes probably felt good about saving the fabled family farms of Republican propagandists. It’s all about how things are framed. 

In 2019, after passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, only 4,100 of the 2,800,000 Americans who died that year reached the 11.7 million dollar estate threshold and had to file an estate tax return. That’s less than 1%, specifically, just 0.15% of estates. Of course, that 4,100 didn’t include those who managed to whittle down their estate values to below the 11.7 million dollar exemption using every arguably legal means to shield money from the tax collector. 

Most Americans, those of us who make an hourly wage or salary and receive a W-2 at the end of the year, don’t need to worry about strategies to keep their estate below either level of exemption. We don’t have the time or expertise to enter the arcane world of legal estate tax avoidance. Out of sight and out of mind. 

Let’s dream for a moment that we have an estate that might be worth 13.7 million dollars, 2 million more than the exemption, once we tally up a primary residence, a vacation home, rental properties, appreciated stocks and bonds and bank accounts. If that were the number at the time of our death, those extra 2 million dollars would require a payment of $745,800 due in estate tax. Fifty or sixty thousand dollars spent on the services of specialized tax attorneys and tax lawyers might save us ten times that amount if they could figure out legal angles to diminish the paper value of such an estate. 

First off, the value of real estate or a private business is always debatable to some degree. The “right” appraisals could help a lot. (You know you’ve entered a different world when an appraiser starts out by indicating that the value might be different depending on the purpose of the appraisal. You can’t do that with a bank account…) Then there are a variety of trusts, legal/financial vehicles that offer estate tax avoidance (and other) advantages in transferring wealth to heirs. 

Among the more arcane of these trust vehicles is something called a Grantor Retained Annuity Trust (GRAT). Let me walk you through this beauty as I best understand it. Let’s pretend we’re one of the super-wealthy with millions or billions of dollars more than the exemption, far more money than we need even for our lavish lifestyle. Imagine one chunk of that wealth consisting of stocks and bonds valued at 1 million dollars. Without some form of shielding, that value would require payment of $400,000 in estate taxes at the time we die. With the help of a tax lawyer we put that million dollars worth of stocks and bonds into a GRAT. This “Grantor Retained Annuity Trust” will pay us back $100,000 plus some small IRS-specified rate of interest each year for ten years, such that the original million plus its nominal interest all comes back to us over those ten years (that’s the “annuity” part). Paying a lawyer to set this up seems sort of expensively pointless, doesn’t it? But wait. If those stocks and bonds have been growing in value over those ten years in excess of the paltry IRS-specified interest rate (which seems likely based on years of recent stock market performance) after fully paying the annuity back to me there might be monetary value left in the GRAT. Here’s the trick: When the GRAT is set up an heir(s) is specified who, at the end of the term of the GRAT, will receive excess value remaining in the GRAT—and that value is free of gift and estate taxes. (For legal purposes, a GRAT, once established, exists outside of our estate.) If the value of the assets in the GRAT decreases (as they might have anyway were the assets outside the GRAT), then the value of the annuity is less and the heir gets no benefit. The estate tax utility of the GRAT is a bet on an overall increase in the value over the GRAT’s term. A properly executed GRAT is described as a “heads I win, tails we tie” proposition (minus the money paid to advisors for set up and maintenance of the trust). (Click that link for more detail and real-life examples.)

An ultra-wealthy person once said, “If you can put an accurate number on what you are worth, then you are not wealthy.” In the world of this sort of wealth values are slippery, and estate tax avoidance is a game played not by different rules but rules buried in the legal fine print only a few understand. The rest of us are busy with W-2s displaying fixed, unarguable sums subject to annual income tax. Meanwhile, the wealthy grow more wealth in bonds, stocks, business, and real estate, wealth mostly subject only to the lower capital gains tax rate—and subject to capital gains tax only when it is sold. The ultra-wealthy then pay accountants and lawyers to plot maneuvers that will pass along that wealth while avoiding estate taxes to the greatest degree possible under the interpretation of existing tax law. Meanwhile, the gap between the wealthy and the workaday world ever widens. 

Closing the GRAT loophole was just one of the reforms on the agendas of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and other progressives, agendas expressed in bills that not one Republican in Congress will vote for and of which most Republican voters (and a lot of Democrats) are oblivious. Many pin their hopes for redress on the words of a tax cheat who says that he, being rich himself, knows how to “fix” the loopholes and, instead, delivers the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act for himself and his rich buddies.

There is something very wrong with this picture. Getting it right will require changing the mindsets of many in both parties—and voting current Republicans out of office.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

Ballots are due (or postmarked) by 8PM, Tuesday, tomorrow

NOTE: I plan to take a day off this coming Wednesday. Election results may not be final for days or weeks. 

POST: Since these elections mostly concern local races, depending on where you live your ballot will vary. It would be a major challenge to make recommendations in every race. This is where voters need to do some homework. My favorite positive source for voting advice in Washington is the Progressive Voters Guide:

https://progressivevotersguide.com/washington

My favorite inverse source, i.e. a guide to those for whom you really ought to think twice about voting for is WeBelieveWeVote:

https://webelievewevote.com/

Don’t take their front page recommendations at face value. Click the candidate, slide down the page, click Questionnaire, Survey Responses, read the survey and take note of the candidate’s level of agreement. Most of the questions have more to do with adherence to Republican talking points than they have to do with the Christian values with which I was brought up. In general, refusing to respond to WeBelieveWeVote’s litmus test survey should be viewed positively…

One specific race: 

Zack Zappone v. Mike Lish in Spokane City Council District 3 (NW): Have a look at this Rotary Club debate, the most telling moments of which start at 32:00:

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1776422332745351&extid=CL-UNK-UNK-UNK-AN_GK0T-GK1C&ref=sharing

Although school board races and many city council races are supposedly non-partisan, the Republican Party is pushing a national strategy to take over school boards using bogus issues like “critical race theory” (which is not taught in K-12 schools), social and emotional learning, and opposition to mask and vaccine mandates. Watch for the buzzwords—and don’t vote for these people. Their motivation is not to help optimally run a school district, but rather to push an extremist agenda. 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

Lies, Sponsors, and Attack Ads

Ozzie Knezovich, the Sheriff of Spokane County, has signed on with local Republican business interests to offer fearmongering, negative sound bites in place of reason. Shame on Ozzie. 

Here’s a link to Ozzie’s scurrilous attack ad:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MIzCjM64S1rZoGFAh9KD5mu1RBmv40F1/view?usp=sharing

The substance of Ozzie’s ad is a lie which quickly unravels on the screen with the aid of the pause button. Ozzie’s claim is that Zack Zappone has “signed a pledge” to “Defund the Police”. The ad raises the spector of chaos with dramatic music, hyperbolic narrative and a video clip of burning cars. At 17 seconds the supposedly incriminating evidence is displayed in the ad—flashed for three seconds. Pause on that incriminating evidence. The display is Zack Zappone’s name (not a signature) under a point number “5 Redirect police department funding to community-based organizations” with a reference to the Seattle police department. The broader context of that fragmentally displayed statement is seen here and makes perfect sense under calm consideration:

1. De-militarize the police.
2. Further restrict the use of excessive or deadly force by police.
3. Increase accountability and transparency in police union contracts.
4. Give subpoena and other investigative powers to independent oversight boards.
5. Redirect police department funding to community-based alternatives.

Nowhere in the supposedly incriminating document displayed for three seconds or on the webpage from which it came does one find “Defund the Police”. The Republican propaganda machine has seized on that unfortunate phrase (much like it did with the more obscure phrase “Critical Race Theory”), re-defined into something evil and worrisome, and held it up as an object to be viscerally and irrationally feared. 

Who is putting up the money for Ozzie’s ad? The legally required notice (shown for 4 seconds at the end of the ad at the bottom of the screen) spells it out, but only for those able to ignore the uncomplimentary photo of the subject of the attack, the dire-sounding voiceover, and the dramatic music. The sponsors want the viewer to concentrate on the emotional drama, not on their identities or motivations. They would much rather you were unaware that wealthy Spokane developers and builders (and Washington Trust Bank) are funding this nasty, misleading rubbish. 

Ozzie’s attack ad is one of those “independent expenditures” by local interests hiding behind the name “Spokane Good Government Alliance”. The top five contributors to the SGGA are the Spokane Home Builders Association PAC , Larry Stone, Pearson Packaging, Pyrotek, and Washington Trust Bank. All ought to be shamed and avoided for supporting Ozzie’s ad. Thanks to the Citizens United Supreme Court decision declaring money as free speech, the donors to these PACs are limited only by their willingness to spend their wealth to further their financial interests. Mr. Stone, the developer, for example, kicked in $50,000 to the Spokane Good Government Alliance. (In contrast, direct contributions to a candidate’s campaign are limited to $1000 by Washington State law.) Thanks to the Republican stacked Supreme Court, these “independent” PACs have deep pockets. 

The Spokane Good Governance Alliance has spent $51,143.44 on attack ads and mailers against Spokane City Council candidate Zack Zappone and and another $17,776.75 against Naghmana Sherazi. In fact, all the “independent” attacks against Zappone and Sherazi are funded by this “Alliance”. All of this money was paid out to two far away firms, one in Phoenix, Arizona, and the other in Alexandria, Virginia. Not a penny was spent into the Spokane economy. (This information freely available on the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission’s website, PDC.wa.gov.) 

Attack ads focusing on fear have been a Republican campaign staple for decades. (Think Willie Horton [1988] and the Swift Boat [2004] attack campaigns.) 

I cannot recall the source, but I was once told that Ozzie’s response to a question about why he used attack ads was, “Because they work.” It is time to call out the people who make and fund such ads, shame them, understand their motives, and recognize that it is in the best interest of the majority of voters to see these ads as an inverse indicator.

If Zack Zappone or Naghmana Sherazi appears on your ballot, fill in their oval today and turn it in to one of the dropboxes by 8PM tomorrow, Tuesday, November 2. 

When Ozzie Knezovich next runs for office be sure to remember the disgusting tactics to which he willingly stoops for political gain. (He says he is not running again for sheriff.)

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

Railing against manufactured threat

It is now the standard trick of the Republican playbook: Take a set of words out of context (and out of their original meaning in that context), purposefully re-define their meaning and intent into something that sounds sinister and threatening, then blast out the scary sounding re-definition on all available Republican propaganda channels in order to rally the base around the imagined threat. 

Humans react viscerally to any perceived threat to children, a visceral emotion ripe for exploitation. The more a manufactured threat is untethered from reality the better. The now classic example (even though it was only five years ago) is the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, the assertion that Democrats were running a child-sex-trafficking ring out of the basement of the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in Washington, D.C. For the believer and self-styled defender of children, basic facts (like Comet Ping Pong does not have a basement) are easily tossed aside as distractions from “the truth”.

The more untethered the assertion or re-definition the better to insulate against any challenge from rational discussion. Once adopted by a true believer, no amount of evidence to the contrary is sufficient to quell the suspicion that sex-trafficking is linked a whole group of evil people, in this case, Democrats. 

The Trumpian majority wing of the Republican Party is exploiting similar, but less obviously false, contrived threats to children in the current election: evil forces are trying to take over your children’s minds or threatening your children’s health. “Critical Race Theory” and “Equity,” for example, are re-defined and made fearsome by asserting (falsely) that they are vehicles for sowing divisiveness, racism, and indoctrination with “liberal ideology”. 

Education is no proof against these visceral fears. A friend reports that his brother, a well educated retired engineer, lies awake at night worrying over “all the children committing suicide because they are forced to wear masks in school by evil Democrats.” (This man is a devoted listener to right wing media.) Of course, this is claimed association of mask mandates and child suicide is total hogwash—but so was Pizzagate…

The new Republican fear for children, following on “Critical Race Theory” and “Equity” is “Social-Emotional Learning (SEL).” Never mind that SEL has been used as a framework in education for decades, makes perfect sense, and has been endorsed for years by Republican legislators. SEL has been proven to improve children’s social and academic lives—and saves society money. That makes no difference. Tucker Carlson and other extremists have seized on it as the new Republican child-threatening bugaboo. 

I’ve copied below Judd Legum’s excellent summary below. I heartily encourage you to sign up for his email blog, Popular Information (small fee). 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

The new bugaboo

Judd Legum

October 25, 2021

Across the country, conservatives are mobilizing against the inclusion of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in K-12 education. There is just one problem: CRT is a complex theory developed by law professors and included postgraduate education. It is not taught in K-12 schools. 

So the same activists have switched their focus to something that is included in schools’ curricula: Social-Emotional Learning (SEL). Right-wing critics have called SEL “racist garbage,” “anti-white,” and “a vehicle for introducing leftist propaganda in the classroom.” The argument is that SEL is a vehicle for CRT and should be eliminated. 

What is SEL? Broadly, SEL helps develop skills “not necessarily measured by tests,” including “critical thinking, emotion management, conflict resolution, decision making, [and] teamwork.” The SEL framework focuses on developing skills “across five areas of social and emotional competence” — “self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making.” 

The term SEL was popularized in a 1997 book. But the concept is rooted in the idea of character assessment and development that dates back at least to Benjamin Franklin in the mid-1700s.

Maurice Elias, professor of psychology at Rutgers University and Director of Rutgers’ Social-Emotional and Character Development Lab, explained to Popular Information that SEL is based on “neuroscience and other research” that shows “the role of emotions in learning.” He stressed that “these factors are color blind” because all kids “do not learn well when they are scared, hungry, threatened, depressed, drug-involved, or unhealthy.” SEL education can benefit all children “regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, economic status, [or] political affiliation of their parents.” 

Elias emphasized that SEL does not instruct students to adopt a political ideology. Rather, students learn skills like problem-solving, organization, focus, preparation, collaboration, and emotional awareness. Removing SEL from schools, Elias says, will harm all children — including those with parents that oppose CRT.

SEL does not seek to enforce uniformity; it encourages respectful disagreement. One SEL technique that Elias helped develop is called “Respectful Debate.” In that exercise “students have to take both sides of an issue and in doing so, must listen carefully to the views of the other side and be able to replicate them” to demonstrate full understanding. SEL, Elias notes, is “about the process, not the outcome.”

Importantly, research has shown that incorporating SEL into school curriculum “bolsters academic performance.” An analysis of 270,000 students in 2011 found that “SEL interventions that address the five core competencies increased students’ academic performance by 11 percentile points, compared to students who did not participate.” The same study found that students participating in SEL programs “showed improved classroom behavior, an increased ability to manage stress and depression, and better attitudes about themselves, others, and school.” Another study, published in July 2021, found that SEL is effective at “enhancing young people’s social and emotional skills and reducing symptoms of depression and anxiety in the short term.” 

The impact of SEL education, research shows, is long-lasting. A 2015 study “found significant associations between social-emotional skills in kindergarten and young adult outcomes across education, employment, criminal activity, and mental health.” As a result, “every dollar invested in SEL programming yields $11 in long-term benefits.” These benefits “include reduced juvenile crime, higher lifetime earnings, and better mental and physical health.”  

Now, these benefits are at risk. Conservative activists, as part of a political strategy, are trying to stigmatize SEL and purge it from schools. 

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The consequences of politicizing SEL

SEL only recently became politically controversial. That’s why all 50 states have SEL standards for Pre-K students and nearly 30 have established SEL standards for K-12 education. 

In Idaho, state superintendent Sherri Ybarra, an elected Republican, has “advocated the need for social-emotional learning in Idaho schools.” Establishing SEL standards was a key recommendation from a 2019 education task force established by Idaho Governor Brad Little (R).

But this month, the Idaho State Department of Education decided not to act on the recommendation because SEL has become a political football:

The work plan is missing one of the recommendations from the state group: Adopting a common framework for discussing social-emotional learning in Idaho’s classrooms.

The SDE leadership team decided not to pursue that recommendation in light of a national poll suggesting the term “social-emotional learning” is unpopular with parents, and the divisive political rhetoric around the term, Studebaker said. Social-emotional learning (SEL) has been drawn into partisan debates around whether schools are teaching critical race theory, or trying to “indoctrinate” youth with liberal ideology.

While a Fordham survey found that the term SEL was mildly unpopular with parents, there was overwhelming support for schools to teach the skills that are at the core of an SEL curriculum.

This month, the Idaho State Department of Education announced that it would continue to pursue SEL education, but stop using the term. “We are not distancing ourselves from the concept of SEL, and the important work of supporting students,” Idaho State Department of Education spokeswoman Kris Rodine said. “But the term ‘social-emotional learning’ has recently been co-opted to become a point of controversy.”

North Dakota, which Trump won by 35 points in 2020, established SEL standards for K-12 students in 2018.

Virginia, Tucker Carlson, dark money, and SEL

Parents Defending Education (PDE), the dark money group connected to the Koch political network established in March 2021, is at the forefront of politicizing SEL. The group is particularly active in Virginia, where much of its leadership is based.

In 2020, the Virginia legislature passed legislation to establish SEL standards. It cleared the legislature with large bipartisan majorities in the House (72-26) and the Senate (27-11). PDE recast this as a leftist plot to “indoctrinate” Virginia students with Critical Race Theory.

PDE took issue with the draft standards produced by the Virginia Department of Education, which provides guidance, not requirements, for schools. For 5th and 6th graders, it includes standards such as: “I can identify the importance of setting academic goals for personal growth.” PDE objects to a handful of standards, including this one for 11th and 12th graders: “I can make ethical decisions about when and how to take a stand against bias and injustice in my everyday life or community.” The idea that bias and injustice exist in the world, and that people should respond to those issues ethically, is not a radical theory. 

Later, PDE objected to Fairfax County Schools contracting with a consultant to conduct an ongoing survey of students about SEL issues. The questions included in the screener undercut the idea that SEL education is about political indoctrination. Instead, students are encouraged to consider a variety of viewpoints and have respectful disagreements. The questions include:

If you fail at an important goal, how likely are you to try again?

When things go wrong for you, how calm are you able to stay?

During the past 30 days, how carefully did you listen to other people’s points of view?

During the past 30 days, to what extent were you able to disagree with others without starting an argument?

There are only two questions related to race and, again, the questions are centered around considering other people’s perspectives and productive dialogue:

How often do you think about what someone of a different race, ethnicity, or culture experiences?

How confident are you that students at your school can have honest conversations with each other about race?

Parents have the option to opt out their children from the survey. Nevertheless, this screener was reframed as a “scandal” when, earlier this month, Asra Nomani, PDE’s Vice President for Strategy and Investigations, reported that the company developing the screener, Panorama Education, was co-founded by Xan Tanner, who is married to Attorney General Merrick Garland’s daughter. 

Nomani asserted that this was a “conflict of interest.” She claimed the Department of Justice announced on October 4 that it will address “violent threats against school board officials and teachers” to benefit Garland’s son-in-law. 

This all makes very little sense. Neither Garland nor his son-in-law financially benefits from addressing violent threats against school boards. But Garland was questioned about the alleged conflict on October 21 by Congressman Mike Johnson (R-LA). Here is the exchange:

JOHNSON: Did you have the appropriate agency ethic official look into this? Did you seek guidance as the Federal regulation requires?

GARLAND: This memorandum is aimed at violence and threats of violence.

JOHNSON: I understand that, but did you — excuse me — did you seek ethics counsel before you issued a letter that directly relates to the financial interest of your family, yes or no?

GARLAND: This memorandum does not relate to the financial interests of anyone. 

Nevertheless, the controversy landed Nomani an invitation on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show. Carlson began the segment by claiming that “Garland’s son-in-law [is] profiting from racist theories taught to your children.” He added that Garland was a “repulsive little sleazeball” who “sicced the F.B.I. on people who criticize his family’s business.” 

During her appearance, Nomani claimed there is “no evidence” that SEL education is “effective” for students. Rather, it was a “Trojan Horse” for “consultants that bring in the very divisive ideas of critical race theory.”