Tonight the City of Liberty Lake City Council is poised to take advantage of a quirk in seating timing following the November election to ram through a controversial ordinance giving itself veto power over the Library Board (See below).
After a lengthy discussion at the last city council meeting, with one of the major sticking points being whether the nearly 25% of property taxes that fund the library should be pulled from the $3 million pool prior to sending $1 million out to the Tax Increment Financing (TIF) district the city shares with Spokane Valley, or a proposal to instead pull it from the $2 million in property taxes leftover after the money is sent to the TIF, effectively slashing the library’s budget by a significant amount.
Let’s reword and unpack that. (Note: I’m working here on interpreting what Erin and Alyssa wrote and in response to a rumor that alarm bells are going off in some quarters.) If I understand correctly, there is a pool of 3 million dollars in property taxes. The standard allocation has been for the Liberty Lake Library to receive 25% of that pool, which, in this case would be $750,000 (i.e. 1/4 of 3 million). However, there is another annual line item of a million dollars, the Tax Increment Financing (TIF) district, that, in prior years, has come out of some other place in the budget. At tonight’s council meeting there is a proposal to take the million dollars out of the 3 million dollar property tax pool BEFORE awarding 25% of the REMAINDER in the pool to the Library, that is, 1/4 of 2 million or $500,000. That would be a reduction of the funds to the Library of $250,000 or, differently put, a reduction in funding (from this source) by a third. That is real money.
Knowing no better at this moment, that budgetary proposal reeks of someone’s subtle way to punish the Liberty Lake Library and the Library Board for daring to challenge some members of the City Council’s efforts to dictate Library policy.
Below I’ve copied Petra Hoy’s Be the Change 509 email where it pertains to the Liberty Lake City Council.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
From Be the Change 509:
PLEASE JOIN US AT THE NEXT LIBERTY LAKE CITY COUNCIL MEETING Tuesday December 5, 7:00 PM.
HELD REMOTELY & IN PERSON AT CITY HALL 22710 E COUNTRY VISTA DRIVE LIBERTY LAKE WA 99019
PUBLIC COMMENT If you wish to provide oral public comments during the Council meeting, you may do so in person at City Hall or virtually via zoom. If you wish to speak in-person, please fill out a yellow Request to Speak Form.
If you wish to speak via zoom, please join the zoom meeting using the meeting information above. The Mayor will invite public comments during the appropriate section of the agenda, at which time you can send a request to speak to our meeting host using the chat function within the zoom meeting.
WRITTEN PUBLIC COMMENTS If you wish to provide written public comments for the council meeting, please email your comments to khardy@libertylakewa.gov by 4:00 p.m. the day of the council meeting and include all the following information with your comments: 1. The Meeting Date 2. Your First and Last Name 3. If you are a Liberty Lake resident 4. The Agenda Item(s) which you are speaking about *Note – If providing written comments, the comments received will be acknowledged during the public meeting, but not read. All written comments received by 4:00 p.m. will be provided to the mayor and city council members in advance of the meeting.
ZOOM MEETING To view the meeting live via Zoom Meeting, join the Zoom web meeting: Meeting Instructions:
NOTE: To watch either the City of Spokane City Council briefing session at 3:30P today, December 4, or the Legislative Session that follows at 6P online click here. To contact your council person(s) click here. One can also attend one or both sessions in person at City Hall. In person public input is accepted only at the 6P meeting.
The Background
Near the end of July the City of Spokane with Mayor Nadine Woodward at the helm, put out a request for proposal (RFP) for prospective operators of TRAC (“Trent Resource and Assistance Center”) for 2024. The current contract with the Salvation Army is due to run out. TRAC is the city’s congregate homeless shelter east of downtown in the industrial district near the junction of Trent and Mission. The shelter, Woodward’s answer to the issue of homelessness downtown, has been controversial since its inception, plagued with issues over over shelter conditions and budget overruns. The Salvation Army hurriedly took over running TRAC (without competitive bidding) when the contract with the previous operator, the Guardians Foundation, was terminated in late 2022 over concerns of embezzlement of funds. In response to the city’s July, 2023, request for proposal (RFP):
The Salvation Army and Jewels Helping Hands applied for that new contract, as did Hillyard Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1474, whose commander, Mike Fagan, served on the Spokane City Council. That organization was considered too inexperienced for serious consideration by the committee reviewing proposals.
The city committee tasked with reviewing the RFPs overwhelmingly voted in favor of Jewels Helping Hands (JHH). Here was the logic of the recommendation:
Jewels came out on top, according to committee members, in large part due to the depth of its network of agreements with other organizations and service providers, which are needed in order to provide support services at the shelter, as the facility is meant to be a brief stop on the path out of homelessness. Jewels Helping Hands [JHH] also emphasized the dignity of those they served in their application and included money in its budget for addiction and mental health treatment, said Karen Ssebanakitta, a member of the city’s Community, Housing and Human Services Board, which was tasked with forwarding the committee’s recommendation to the City Council.
In early September, 2023, the city administration under Mayor Woodward, abruptly backtracked, calling for a pause in the selection process, citing “uncertainties” in funding sources and in the formation of a new regional coalition on homelessness.
As Erin Sellers of RANGEMedia accurately detailed in mid November, after Woodward’s pause the entire process didn’t just pause, it “ground to a halt”—in spite of the looming deadline to settle on an operator with the nimbleness to take over operating TRAC for 2024. No one but Nadine Woodward herself knows for certain whether her administration dropped the ball on the process due to administrative ineptitude or due to Woodward’s antipathy toward Julie Garcia, the executive director of JHH with whom Woodward butted heads over management both of the Cannon Street Shelter and of Camp Hope. Either way, thanks to Woodward and her administration dallying, the City of Spokane City Council is now left with what looks almost like a fait accompli of having to grant an expensive contract renewal to the Salvation Army to keep TRAC running through the depths of winter. This is all in spite of the city’s Community, Housing and Human Services Board’s hearty recommendation of Jewels Helping Hands.
In the words of newly elected City Council Member (CM) Paul Dillon [District 2, South Hill] who will be first seated this evening, “This is like a lump of coal in a stocking that the mayor has left the city and the taxpayers with.” I highly recommend reading RANGEMedia’s Erin Sellers’ last Saturday, December 2, article “With city council cornered, a TRAC contract compromise could guarantee shelter” for orientation. The same day, December 2, Nate Sanford of the Inlander covered quite a lot of the same territory. Both articles almost require a published cast of characters in order to follow the details—but both also offer a window on the pressing problem the City Council will need to clean up this evening—Woodward’s “lump of coal”.
At tonight’s council meeting the extension of the city’s contract with the Salvation Army appears in the “Current Agenda” as item number 11 of the “Consent Agenda”. The actual contract wording appears on pdf page 160 as “AGREEMENT AMENDMENT B, Title: TRAC Shelter Amendment”. I’m no lawyer, but I do not see wording to confirm Erin Sellers’ mention of an “option for the city to terminate the agreement early”, an option that might have made this Amendment palatable. I also fail to see in this contract amendment any proration of the contracted $3.93M. The only clause that hints at either issue is “April 2024 will serve as a transition month in provider and/or service levels.”
One would hope at the very least for clarity on these issues before a vote.
There is still some hope held out that changes in the agenda could occur during the Briefing Session.
[Julia] Garcia said that should JHH be awarded the original RFP she applied for, moving in as the new operator would be possible. But if the city instead decides to post a completely new RFP for a service provider, she won’t apply again.
“My only objective is to help the people of Spokane,” Garcia said. “I am unwilling to hurt my organization by continuing to waste time and man hours on things that we’ve already done.”
What this article fails to mention is the cost of TSA [The Salvation Army] for 4 months is the entire cost of JHH for a year. The JHH part in this RFP was 3.5 million in the contact. The rest was for an influx of services to actually exit folks out of homelessness, private trauma informed security which eliminates the use of police overtime utilized now and telehealth medical to curb the over utilization of the emergency room. Also provided sobering services and medically assisted drug treatment. On call mental health and behavioral health on site.
True leadership does not burn down the ship over their own personal feelings, real leadership works towards a goal for the whole. Nothing, absolutely nothing benefits our community more than getting our homeless population off the streets and housed. Warehousing them is not solving anything and costing tax payers an enormous amount of money. Bankrupting our city.
This city is hell bent on destroying homeless services through political agendas instead of actually moving the needle for the entire community. Business owners concerns are valid. Neighborhood concerns are valid. People experiencing homelessness concerns are valid. Yet the only concern of our city administration is proving that their “ridiculous “ solution works. It doesn’t. It was a terrible, poorly planned, worse executed, no evidence based, no best practice based, unbelievably costly idea.
No one wants to run the TRAC shelter but someone has to. The JHH proposal is not sustainable. It was meant to lower the capacity so the next provider could be affordable or close the shelter due to the cost. But doing so in a compassionate, housing driven way. Not exiting people back downtown or into neighborhoods.
Candidacy in eastern Washington–what it accomplishes and why we need it
Democracy requires participation. Democrats and progressives need to participate more. As we look ahead to the fall 2024 elections in which, I believe, democracy itself will be on the ballot, what follows is a call to action.
You’ve probably noticed that Republicans never fail to run a candidate for every position—no matter how quixotic the candidacy appears. For example, in Legislative District (LD) 3 (essentially the City of Spokane) State Senator Andy Billig and State Representatives Timm Ormsby and Marcus Riccelli always have a Republican challenger.
Contrast that to the Spokane-surrounding, Republican-dominated Legislative Districts (LDs) 4 (Spokane valley north to Mt. Spokane), 6 (north & west of LD3), 7 (north), and 9 (south). [For detailed maps click here or explore an interactive map here.] In 2022 in those four Legislative Districts (LDs 4, 6, 7, and 9), only two Democrats signed up to run for what were a total of ten legislative positions on the ballot that election—all occupied by Republican incumbents. Hats off to Michaela Kelso, who ran against State Rep. Jenny Graham in the 6th, and Ted Cummings, who ran against State Rep. Suzanne Schmidt in the 4th. Even though neither Michaela nor Ted won, they (and any Democrats who take on a Republican incumbent) deserve our thanks—for several reasons most of us fail to consider.
In 2022, the other State Rep in District 6, Mike Volz, ran unopposed, just like seven other Republican incumbents in LDs 6, 7, and 9. As a result none of those eight Republicans needed to spend much, if any, time campaigning among their constituents, knocking on doors, or dealing with challenging questions. Instead, they were free to stump for other Republican candidates or simply relax. Moreover, in the unchallenged Mike Volz example, in 2022 Mr. Volz only felt the need to spend $8,291 on his campaign—while he deposited the other $70,000 he raised in campaign funds into the MIKE VOLZ SURPLUS FUND. Those “surplus funds” (more than 50% of which came from business contributions) can be rolled over without restriction to “a political party or legislative caucus committee” (and thence to other Republican candidates), among other possible uses.
Repeat the Mike Volz story again and again with each unopposed Republican candidates and pretty soon you’re talking real money, real money that can be sloshed around to defend or support other Republican candidates.
Under-appreciated candidates like Michaela Kelso and Ted Cummingsperform another essential service by running against Republican incumbents: the fact of their campaigning in “red” districts gives Democrats in those districts a reason to cast a ballot—and serves notice to all whom they contact that Democrats are real people concerned with their communities.
This post is a plea for people to step up as candidates for 2024, even though winning might seem unlikely. Gaining office and governing in a democracy is a team project—and all members of the team deserve support. Forty-four elected positions will be on the ballot in the fall of 2024. It would be ideal if a Democrat were represented in every race. If you have the slightest curiosity about running you don’t have to learn the ropes by yourself. Sign up as a volunteer at spokanedemocrats.org. That will get you on the mailing list for candidate training, volunteer training, and other outreach planned by the Dems for 2024.
Emerge Washington specializes in training progressive Democratic women to run for public office in the State of Washington. Visit their website here and sign up for updates on their 2024 training program.
Be sure to thank and contribute to those who do step up. Recognize them for the way their candidacy helps the team.
I came to these conclusions slowly. In the wake of Lisa Brown’s loss to incumbent U.S. Rep. McMorris Rodgers in 2018 someone pointed out to me what should have been obvious: even though Lisa did not win, her strong candidacy tied up Republican campaign funds controlled by McMorris Rodgers that would otherwise have gone elsewhere. The 2018 fall general election resulted in a U.S. House Democratic majority—with a gain of 41 seats. Some part of this was due to tying up McMorris Rodgers’ war chest in defending her own seat.
I headed this post “Blue Missouri” to highlight an effort by Democrats to regain a foothold in a painfully “red” state. The presentation in which I heard about Blue Missouri offered the points I covered above, but “Blue Missouri” takes it a step further. The organization crowd sources small monthly contributions which it guarantees will be used to top up the campaign coffers of Democratic candidates for the Missouri legislature running against incumbent Republicans. The idea is to give prospective candidates a head start. “No more free passes for the GOP.” I like their logic. Visit their website’s home page where their endeavor is explained. Check out the FAQs on that page. I’m not saying this can be immediately replicated in eastern Washington, but it is certainly food for thought.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. Ted Cummings and Michaela Kelso were featured in this post because I was looking back at the latest Legislative District elections. Many more such candidates deserve our thanks for their efforts. Most recently they include Lindsey Shaw running against Michael Cathcart in the City of Spokane, District 1 (NE), municipal elections this fall. Many others remain active in our communities after having run for office, for example, Naghmana Sherazi who now works with the Lands Council, serves on the Board of Emerge Washington, and helped with this post.
Brian Heywood is a fifty-something year old man with means and motivation. He graduated from Harvard in East Asian Studies in 1991. Before “graduation he spent three years living in Japan as a missionary and as a student. He joined and later served on the board of JD Power and Associates, a data analytics, software, and consumer intelligence company, with offices in California. In 2010 Mr. Heywood moved to Redmond, Washington, where he works as a hedge fund manager, now serving as the CEO of Taiyo Pacific Partners LP. His current level of involvement at Taiyo is slightly uncertain. His employment is variously self-described in Washington State Public Disclosure Commission reports as a horse boarder, artist, and as retired.
Speaking at a gathering at the Reset Church in Marysville in 2021 (why is it always a Fundamentalist, non-denominational church?) he said, “I came from ‘the people’s republic of California’. I am an economic refugee. I came here to make money and to be free.”
Clearly, Mr. Heywood knows his way around using money to make money. Now he wishes to use that money and his expertise to change the politics of the State of Washington to suit his own pecuniary and political interests. His donation to the Loren Culp campaign for governor of Washington in 2020 (see page 12) offers a window on his political leanings. In the Facebook videoof his Reset Church talk in 2021 he says, “I and some of my friends have begun to fund” various efforts, including the Washington chapter of the right wing news outlet, The Center Square. He “will be starting” Unleash.com. In his speech, Mr. Heywood likens building back the Republican Party in Washington State to the many years of planning and groundwork in re-building a corporation.
Apparently unfettered by monetary constraints, Mr. Heywood has almost singlehandedly funded “Let’s Go Washington (Sponsored by Brian Heywood) – 2023”, a Washington State Political Committee backing six Initiatives to the Legislature. Mr. Heywood is in for donations and loans adding up to nearly $6 million. What is he pushing?
Danny Westneat, columnist for the Seattle Times, provides a rundown:
No income tax, says one. Repeal the new capital gains tax, says another. Make the new long-term care tax optional, says a third. (Like I said, he really doesn’t like taxes.) Repeal the climate change law that’s adding to gas prices, says a fourth.
The one culture war one calls for a “parents’ bill of rights” in public schools, so parents could demand copies of the curriculum and opt their kids out of lessons they don’t like. Bleh. If you want to know what’s going on in your kids’ schools, just get involved. Or ask your kids.
Statewide ballot measures, which include Initiatives to the People, Initiatives to the Legislature, and Referenda, were enshrined in the Article II, Section 1, of the Washington State Constitution during the Progressive Era in 1912 after more than a decade of effort. Initiatives are “the first power reserved by the people”, but that does not mean that getting an initiative to the ballot is easy, to say nothing about the effort necessary to pass the measure. The steps are detailed here. The process starts with a sponsor filing a copy of the proposed wording of the initiative with the Washington State Secretary of State. After several additional steps, the final wording of the ballot title and summary are formulated by the Washington State Attorney General. Only then can the sponsor(s) begin the process of gathering the required number of signatures.
We’re accustomed to the idea that “the people” come up with an important issue to put on the ballot as an initiative or referendum and that the people, that is, volunteers, work to gather the necessary signatures in support. Indeed, it appears that Referendum 20, legalizing abortion in Washington State in 1970, was such a grassroots effort. Referendum 90, opposing a law that mandates sex education in public schools that failed in 2020, is another example. The biggest single contributions to the Referendum 90 campaign were $25,000 and it appears that no money was spent paying signature gatherers.
But at least in more recent years it seems that our ballot measure system is often hijacked by narrow monied interests intent on stirring up a particular part of the electorate for electoral advantage. Tim Eyman’s endless, irritating anti-tax initiatives and the current batch of Heywood initiatives are perfect examples. The use of paid signature gatherers instead of being able to rely on volunteers is a solid indicator of this type manipulative ballot measure. Brian Heywood’s Let’s Go Washington is a particularly glaring example. Tallied to the end of October his Let’s Go Washington reported spending $5.4 million on paid signature gatherers of the total $6.5 million spent by the Committee.
Signing the petition for any of these initiatives would be to support far right Republican electoral strategy—and to support the efforts of one very wealthy Mr. Heywood to become even more wealthy. (You need not memorize the numbers of these ballot initiatives. They are the only Washington state-wide ballot measures looking for signatures before the end of December deadline. Just decline to sign any offered.)
If you are approached by a signature gatherer for a statewide initiative consider reporting the encounter on this recorded hotline: (425) 553-2157. The best outcome would be all six of these initiatives fall short of the signature gathering requirements in spite of Mr. Heywood’s multi-million dollar effort.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. Danny Westneat’s September 23 article, “Dumb money? A Redmond man bets $5 million on resurrecting the state GOP” in the Seattle Times covers the same story with the slightly different slant of a progressive who lives west of the Cascades. If you have the time and can wend your way around the Times’ paywall, I recommend clicking and reading it. The article provided a number of useful leads.
P.P.S. In the course of this research I visited the Washington State Secretary of State’s website, the place where ballot measures are first filed and where the final wording of the ballot title and summary as formulated by the Washington State Attorney General appears. A visit to the Secretary of State’s site is instructive. Click here. First, notice that many ballot measures are filed while very few ever make it to the ballot. Second, many are filed by the same individuals, people like Jim Walsh, and, yes, despite his chapter 7 bankruptcy, still by Tim Eyman. (It only costs $50 to file a ballot initiative.) It seems that this is an example of throwing many things at the wall to see what sticks. If the ballot title and summary come back from the Attorney General written in a way that looks like it might be salable to voters these industrial ballot measure gadflies might convene focus groups and run surveys. If those yield positive results the next step is to test the waters for financial support. Then and only then does one build a signature gathering campaign with any hope of making it to the ballot. Of course, in the case of the initiatives under discussion here, Jim Walsh provided the filings after Brian Heywood was already on board with lots of money and a strategy. (Heywood filed “Let’s Go Washington” with the Public Disclosure Commission on April 14, 2022, nearly a year before Walsh officially filed the 2023 ballot measures that Heywood was gearing up to support.)
The final message here is that many or most ballot measures these days are brought up, funded, and make it to the ballot as part of a greater strategy by a special interest. Who is funding the measure and whether the signatures are gathered by volunteers or paid signature-collects are strong hints. A true citizens’ ballot measure like the 1970 Referendum 20 (abortion) requires planning, money, an enormous investment, conviction, and commitment of time and effort on the part of many people. Finally, with a citizen’s ballot measure, one had better have a very, very strong belief that when the election finally arrives the majority of the electorate will vote YES.
Last week Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, the High Ground forwarded historian Heather Cox Richardson’s 2019 post detailing our modern-day Thanksgiving celebration’s origin in the Civil War—something we’re not taught in school. I recalled the Thanksgiving image presented in my childhood of noble, pristinely dressed Pilgrims and Indians around a table groaning under the weight of a Thanksgiving feast featuring a huge turkey.
The next day Professor Richardson offered more background on how we came to adopt the image of the Pilgrim’s feast:
In 1841 a book that reprinted the early diaries and letters from the Plymouth colony recovered the story of that three-day celebration in which ninety Indigenous Americans and the English settlers shared fowl and deer. This story of peace and goodwill among men who by the 1840s were more often enemies than not inspired Sarah Josepha Hale, who edited the popular women’s magazine Godey’s Lady’s Book, to think that a national celebration could ease similar tensions building between the slave-holding South and the free North. She lobbied for legislation to establish a day of national thanksgiving.
And then, on April 12, 1861, southern soldiers fired on Fort Sumter, a federal fort in Charleston Harbor, and the meaning of a holiday for giving thanks changed.
The national celebration of peace and goodwill imagined by Sarah Josepha Hale based on letters and diaries from more than two hundred years before was certainly well-intentioned—but we as Americans do ourselves a disservice by mythologizing the “first Thanksgiving”, to the exclusion of understanding and appreciating the actual history of the holiday.
The twisting of history through myth and imagery was vividly illustrated for me later in the day when I received this image from the locally-grown “We Believe We Vote Ministries” sent out with its Thanksgiving greeting:
Of all the stock depictions of the “first” Thanksgiving WeBelieveWeVote could not have chosen a more telling one. In the year from the time 102 Pilgrims landed at Plymouth in 1620 until this feast half of these immigrants had died of disease and starvation. They might have all died had it not been for food aid and education provided by members of several groups of local native Americans, groups that had themselves suffered epidemic death from Old World diseases that had coursed through native populations since first contact with Europeans.
The tale of peace and tranquility that Sarah Josepha Hale sought to popularize—and the one we were taught in school—featured the contribution of native Americans, particularly Tisquantum (Squanto), to the survival of the remnant Pilgrim band. In contrast to actual history, WeBelieveWeVote’s chosen stock photo retells a myth verging on a lie—a lie that all but erases the pivotal native American contribution to the Pilgrim’s survival and the Thanksgiving story. Look carefully. Perhaps the diminutive third person at the table in the right foreground is meant to suggest a native. The only other might arguably be the misty, fading individual depicted in the back row.
The choice of this particular stock photo, whether intentional or not, fits the Fundamentalist narrative to which the people of WeBelieveWeVote adhere and with which they seek to electorally dominate. “The Holy Bible is the supernatural, full, and inspired Word of God; it is inerrant, supreme, and final.” is listed first among their list of “core values”. There is no room in that core value to acknowledge the wisdom and aid of native Americans. In this mythology, the particular chosen ascendant Christians settled on this barely occupied pristine land God made available. Those pesky native Americans simply fade into the background.
With this mythic portrait of the first Thanksgiving it is the smallest of wonders that so many Christians of this particular Fundamentalist ilk are happy to legislate against teaching “DEI”, diversity, equity, and inclusion; references to the inhumanity and lasting legacy of slavery, racism, and settler colonialism; and the availability to anyone of any book that doesn’t quite fit with their view of history, geology, biology, and sex.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. For additional appreciation of how we’ve come to celebrate Thanksgiving in the way we do I recommend this article on History.com.
P.P.S. The Fundamentalist faith in Biblical inerrancy is circularly based in II Timothy 3:16-17. From the King James version of the Bible: “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” This verse comes from a letter written by one missionary to another in which the first conveniently claims divine inspiration for “all scripture”. Considering that at the time of writing of this second epistle to Timothy the collection of books and writings later called “the Bible” was not yet even defined, what does “all scripture” even mean?
Here’s the take-home: When you’re out and about this holiday season in Washington State from now until January 1st—and a signature gather approaches you—Decline to Sign. The Tim Eyman paid signature gatherers are out there once again, funded by wealthy political activists, and pushing no less than six deceptive initiatives. Not one of them is worthy of your signature. Below is a circular put out by FUSE Washington, a group I trust and respect with the details. Pass this on and tell your friends.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
Dear Friend,
This is sinister.
Washington’s wealthiest MAGA donors have teamed up with the state Republican Party and Tim Eyman to launch an insidious slate of regressive initiatives.
Their initiatives would cut taxes for the ultra wealthy and let our biggest polluters off the hook. They would cut nearly $900 million from public schools and child care, while increasing Big Oil profits and rolling back our investments in clean energy. They would also repeal Washington’s capital gains tax, defund long term care for seniors, and more.
There’s 3 simple things you can do to help stop these initiatives now:
Don’t sign any initiative in the next three months. The bad ones are the only initiatives out there right now
Make sure your friends and family members don’t sign them
Report any signature gatherers you see for these initiatives to this hotline run by our partners: (425) 553-2157
Don’t get fooled. The petitioners are paid by the signature, and will often lie shamelessly about what the initiatives do to get you to sign.
These “Backwards Washington” initiatives are an extreme Republican agenda aimed directly at our kids and their schools, working families trying to afford childcare, seniors who benefit from long-term care, and clean energy solutions that tackle the growing climate crisis.
Here’s the initiatives and what they do:
I-2109: Repeals Washington’s capital gains tax on top 0.2%, defunding early learning and education
I-2117: Ends Washington’s program to fund clean energy and fight climate change by making polluters pay and repeals the Climate Commitment Act
I-2124: Repeals long-term care coverage for working Washingtonians
I-2113: Repeals best practice safety standards for dangerous high speed chases
I-2081: A confusing mishmash of existing law designed to entice parents into signing the other initiatives while doing nothing for kids and schools
I-2111: Ensures that Washington’s wealthiest 1% won’t contribute to our communities by banning progressive income taxes at the city, county, and state levels
Right-wing multi-millionaire Brian Heywood is bankrolling these initiatives in a cynical effort to dodge the taxes he owes to our communities. Heywood is joined in this effort by his co-sponsors: Washington’s MAGA Republican Party Chair Jim Walsh, and serial initiative con artist Tim Eyman. These are initiatives to the Legislature, and signatures are due at the end of the year.1
We’re joining our partners across the progressive community to fight back against these harmful initiatives. The first step is to decline to sign any of them and encourage your friends to do the same! And please call the hotline if you see signature gatherers – (425) 553-2157.
They are counting on holiday shoppers to sign their petitions. Let’s make sure they don’t succeed!
Thanks for all that you do, Aaron and the entire team at Fuse
P.S. We need to ramp up our campaign right away to stop this initiative from ever reaching the ballot. Will you chip in $5 to help us stop these initiatives?
Initiatives to the Legislature go before lawmakers before they appear on the ballot. The Legislature has three options. They can 1) approve them as is, 2) do nothing and let them go to the ballot, or 3) pass an alternative that would appear on the ballot alongside it.
If you’re like me you were brought up on a myth of Thanksgiving. The myth comes to life as a painting that depicts noble Pilgrims and equally noble Indians near a table creaking under the weight of a fantastic feast featuring a huge turkey. This bucolic Thanksgiving scene infused my young mind probably in grade school. Having only the sketchiest understanding of historical events back then, this bucolic portrait of Thanksgiving populated every fourth Thursday in November all the way back to the sixteen hundreds in an imagined unbroken continuum. Like so many mythic concepts of my youth, reality is far more interesting—and more consistent with the complexities of history and humanity as I’ve come to know them.
Heather Cox Richardson, professor of history at Boston College, is a widely known for her column, Letters from an American, published on Substack (the same forum from which you receive The High Ground, this publication, three times each week). Professor Richardson’s publishes a column (occasionally just a photo) seven days a week. The is the most widely read author on the entire Substack. Many, perhaps most, of my readers are already signed up to receive Dr. Richardson’s email. If you are not signed up, I recommend it highly. Click here to sign up by entering your email address.
Today, as a thought provoking essay I copied below Dr. Richardson’s post on the origin of our particular formal harvest festival we call Thanksgiving, first published in 2019. I found it enlightening then—and is, perhaps, even more so now.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. For clearer-eyed view of the Pilgrim’s 1621 harvest celebration, a mythologized version of which we’re told as children, I recommend the subsection of Wikipedia’s article under Thanksgiving (United States). The recommended subsection is entitled “Harvest festival observed by the Pilgrims at Plymouth”.
Thanksgiving is the quintessential American holiday… but not for the reasons we remember.
Everyone generally knows that the Pilgrims and the Wampanoags shared a feast in fall 1621, and that early colonial leaders periodically declared days of thanksgiving when settlers were supposed to give their thanks for continued life and– with luck– prosperity.
But this is not why we celebrate Thanksgiving.
We celebrate thanks to President Abraham Lincoln and his defense of American democracy during the Civil War.
Northerners elected Lincoln to the presidency in 1860 to stop rich southern slaveholders from taking over the government and using it to cement their own wealth and power. When voters elected Lincoln, those same southern leaders pulled their states out of the Union and set out to create their own nation, the Confederate States of America, based in slavery and codifying the idea that some men were better than others and that this small elite group should rule the country. Under Lincoln, the United States government set out to end this slaveholders’ rebellion and bring the South back into a Union in which the government worked for people at the bottom, not just those at the top.
The early years of the war did not go well for the Union. By the end of 1862, the armies still held, but people on the home front were losing faith. Leaders recognized the need both to acknowledge the suffering, and yet to keep Americans loyal to the cause. In November and December, seventeen state governors declared state thanksgiving holidays. New York governor Edwin Morgan’s widely reprinted proclamation about the holiday reflected that the previous year “is numbered among the dark periods of history, and its sorrowful records are graven on many hearthstones.” But this was nonetheless a time for giving thanks, he wrote, because “the precious blood shed in the cause of our country will hallow and strengthen our love and our reverence for it and its institutions…. Our Government and institutions placed in jeopardy have brought us to a more just appreciation of their value.”
The next year Lincoln got ahead of the state proclamations. On July 15, he declared a national day of Thanksgiving, and the relief in his proclamation was almost palpable. After two years of disasters, the Union army was finally winning. Bloody, yes; battered, yes; but winning. At Gettysburg in early July, Union troops had sent Confederates reeling back southward. Then, on July 4, Vicksburg had finally fallen to U. S. Grant’s army. The military tide was turning.
President Lincoln set Thursday, August 6, 1863, for the national day of thanksgiving. On that day, ministers across the country listed the signal victories of the U.S. Army and Navy in the past year, and reassured their congregations that it was only a matter of time until the United States government put down the southern rebellion. Their predictions acknowledged the dead and reinforced the idea that their sacrifice had not been in vain, as Lincoln himself did just three months later in the Gettysburg Address.
But this is not why we celebrate a national Thanksgiving.
In October 1863, President Lincoln declared the second national day of Thanksgiving. In the past year, he declared, the nation had been blessed.
In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, he wrote, Americans had maintained their laws and their institutions, and kept foreign countries from meddling with their nation. They had paid for the war as they went, refusing to permit the destruction to cripple the economy. Instead, as they funded the war, they had also advanced farming, industry, mining, and shipping. Immigrants had poured in to replace the men lost on the battlefield, and the economy was booming. And Lincoln had recently promised that the government would end slavery once and for all. The country, he predicted, “with a large increase of freedom,” would survive, stronger and more prosperous, than ever. The President invited Americans “in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea, and those who are sojourning in foreign lands” to observe the last Thursday of November as a day of Thanksgiving.
THIS is why we celebrate a national Thanksgiving.
Americans went to war to keep a cabal of slave owners from taking control of the government and turning it into an oligarchy. The fight against that rebellion seemed at first to be too much for the nation to survive. But Americans rallied and threw their hearts into the cause on the battlefields even as they continued to work on the home front for a government that promoted the common good.
