Campaign Report: The race for Congress in Alaska

Jeff Lowenfels was one of the 51 people who ran for Congress in Alaska.

Here's how it went.

Jeff Lowenfels is famous in Alaska. He has been writing an award-winning garden column for the Alaska Daily News for over 45 years. He is also an attorney who managed Alaska's largest law firm. This made him both popular and qualified. Who better to rise to the top of the 51 candidates who filed to be Alaska's new congressperson? Jeff Lowenfels is a college classmate. He describes how it worked out for him.

Guest Post by Jeff Lowenfels

I ran for Congress in Alaska’s special election. Just to save you the suspense, I did not win.

Why in hell did I want to run for public office? Frankly, until Don’s Young’s passing, I never gave it a first thought (nor a second one) so ably had Don filled that seat. Besides, he was a friend. He had a thing for a particular magic trick involving money I would do for him. He usually ended by threatening to report me to the FBI if I didn’t show him how to do it. (I never did).

But I digress. (Did I mention I am almost 74?). I owe Alaska an awful lot. I am comfortably retired thanks to her, having raised a wonderful family and lived the good life here for almost 50 years. It just seemed like a good idea at the time.

I was an assistant Attorney General for six of Alaska’s early years so I know how to read and write statutes. When it comes to Alaska issues, I literally represented all of Alaska’s resource agencies and was schooled in the arcane laws that impact Alaskans’ relationship with the Federal government.

I became managing partner of the state's largest law firm with offices across the state as well as in Washington, D.C. I arranged the permits for what was then the world’s largest project and interfaced with dozens and dozens of Federal agencies (requiring a week or so a month wandering the hallowed halls of D.C.) Surprisingly, I was considered a polished and extremely humorous public speaker. Blah, Blah, Blah. Oh, left out that I am decidedly modest. (Somewhere I can dig up a great 60-second radio ad explaining this.)

Moreover, with rank choice voting, surely I could pull it off. Who wouldn’t put their favorite garden columnist, the guy who has been responsible for every Alaskan's yard for 45 years, at least 2nd? Even Sarah Palin takes my gardening advice, sometimes.

Anyhow, I believe the role of Alaska’s lone Congressman consists of only two duties: Make sure Alaska is not forgotten during the Federal legislative and regulatory processes and help Alaskans deal with the federal bureaucracy. As by far the state's largest landowner and employer, the Feds have had their many hands in everything Alaskans do or try to do. In all seriousness, I did this for a living for my clients.

Silly me for not realizing 50 other people would decide they, too, were eminently qualified. It was funny at first. And because of the huge number, it felt like democracy was working once again. We all wanted to serve to help Alaska.

Aggggggh. Fifty-one candidates! Some had name recognition, not the least of whom were Sarah Palin and Al Gross, the nephew of a fellow college classmate of Peter and me. Al Gross spent $18 million to lose a previous race for Senator. Name recognition? A guy from North Pole, Alaska (yes, Virginia, there is such a place) legally named "Santa Claus" was in the race. Yes, I played off being "The Garden Columnist," but Santa Claus? Come on!

You know what happened: Sarah Palin and Santa just sucked the air out of the out of state's news cycles. CNN, MSNBC, probably Fox and Newsmax (I am not a viewer) had stories on the hour. Sarah was making a comeback. Santa's candidacy was just too funny.

Local press? We all got an inkling this was not going to be a normal race when the first articles came out. How do you write a 500-word newspaper article when you need 300 of them to just list the candidates' names, ages, and occupations?

Then there is the Fairness Doctrine. Radio and TV stations couldn’t offer air time to just a select few and not the entire hoard. The one radio group-event consisted of each of us making a one-minute statement. Period. That was not a show destined to get high ratings.

Anyhow, I bet you didn’t know Alaskans also get most of their news from outside sources? (Haven’t you been paying attention the TV show “Alaska Daily?” About a state paper with 6 employees?) So much for that campaign tool.

Al Gross posed as the only one who could beat Sarah Palin. He claimed he was just a few points above her in the polls and raised a ton of money. I can’t tell you how many outside-Alaska friends gave Al money. They had no idea I was even in the race!

And what polls? 50 people were running; there was no one left in the state to poll.

There was literally only one live public event and even then only 14 of us were invited to a resource-development oriented breakfast. This time we got two minutes.

To my very small credit, I got the only laugh of the campaign. We were lined up like horses at the start of the Kentucky Derby. I was sitting next to Sarah Palin. In her two minutes she mentioned to the audience she would be going to her Dad’s to help him rake leaves. I couldn’t help but blurt out “Raking leaves is a no-no.” Big laugh. OK, you have to read my columns (www.adn.com, on Fridays) to understand the hilarity. I advise against raking leaves and people knew it and they got the joke! It was the only time I got to show any chops in public. There simply and literally were no other opportunities. This was a painful campaign. Only one laugh!

I came in 7th. Al Gross dropped out. In the end, I did learn a few things--and isn’t that what is important?

I learned about FEC forms (ugh). I learned I don’t like walking districts to shake hands for votes in COVID times. I learned I have some very good and generous classmates and other friends. I learned how to describe my entire past life in a one minute radio ad. I learned I have a tolerant wife, which after almost 50 years I already knew. Oh, I also learned Santa Claus is much more popular than Mr. Garden Columnist.

In the end, I can only say I tried to do some civic duty. Fortunately the race went to a wonderful person, Mary Peltola. She is simply the finest politician (and I mean that in a good way) I have ever come across. She has screaming charisma, a shiny sense of humor, the empathy of a mother and the wisdom and the heart of a grandmother. Toss in that she is part Native Alaskan, and you have a person all Alaskans can be proud to have represent them in Washington. She is so good I am sort of glad I lost.

Lowenfels shares his gardening advice in his columns and in books: 

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Easy Sunday: Halloween costume

Maybe the costume works too well to be funny.  

I thought it was over-the-top crazy, and therefore funny. People didn't laugh. I scared people. I decided to put the costume away. It is disrespectful to the poor and unwashed.

I put on this hat, with stringy hair coming out the back.

Then I inserted these false teeth.

The result is that I went from this:

To this:

The costume works better when I add a tee-shirt. I am not wearing overalls. It is just a tee shirt with a printed design of plumber's overalls and a hairy chest.

I keep the costume as a reminder about how we use cues to profile one another at first glance. We fit people into categories. The hair, teeth, and tee shirt define me.

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Get real on oil.

Oil companies are very profitable again.

Exxon Chairman:

There has been discussion in the US about our industry returning some of our profits directly to the American people. In fact, that’s exactly what we’re doing in the form of our quarterly dividend.

President Biden, via Twitter: 

Can’t believe I have to say this but giving profits to shareholders is not the same as bringing prices down for American families.

American oil companies are not ramping up production. They are exercising what investment firms call "capital discipline." They have been burned in the recent past. Exxon, a decade ago the most valuable company in the U.S.,  was dropped from the group of 30 stocks that make up the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Oil companies were looking at public enthusiasm toward conversion to electric cars. They were looking at endowment funds bowing to pressure to "divest." Fossil fuel companies were out of favor. They were looking at repositioning themselves to survive in a dying industry. 

There was real risk if they leaped into new production capacity in the face of $90, $100, and even briefly $120 oil. They had experience with bear markets in oil. There were three in the prior 12 years.

Trading Economics, via John Mauldin, Thoughts from the Frontline

There is a good reason why oil companies are cautious. U.S. oil fields have oil--but at a price. Fracked oil is profitable at $70/barrel and wildly profitable at $90/barrel. But Russia and the Middle East could deliver oil at prices well below break-even for domestic producers of fracked oil--if they wanted to. On the chart above, those sharp drops look like temporary blips. In the life of an oil company executive and the stockholders of oil companies, those were a decade of misery. They had stranded assets. They were selling their product for less than cost. Plus they had environmentalists telling them they were destroying the planet. What if Biden had succeeded in getting Saudi Arabia to pump more? What if Russia and Ukraine negotiate a peace?

Meanwhile, here is the reality of renewable energy. It is not yet a substitute for fossil fuels:

The chart is a snapshot of reality--80% fossil fuel. Every one of the non-fossil fuel energy sources has some problem. Nuclear has an intractable waste problem. If solutions to isolating nuclear waste were easy there would not be storage tanks at Hanford still "temporarily" storing nuclear waste from World War Two. Wood, biomass, and biofuels are renewable, but they release carbon when they burn. Hydropower changes rivers and kills fish. Wind kills birds and enough people object to seeing them that they are difficult to site. People like solar, but the panels come from China, and the power is intermittent. If the transition to renewables were easy and cost effective, we would have done it.

Senator Ron Wyden, Chair of the Senate Finance Committee, has campaign advertisements saying he favors a windfall profits tax on oil companies. They are making extraordinary profits. Some of that profit comes from the refinery spread--a doubling of the normal markup between crude oil and refined product. That is the oil companies charging what the market will bear. The U.S. is under-stocked with refineries in some parts of the country. They are hard to site, and energy companies are looking ahead at demand in 20 years and don't want to over-invest in what may be unused capacity. Some of their extra profit comes from the higher world price of oil, due to dislocations arising from the Russia invasion of Ukraine. A windfall profits tax will be popular. That tax probably makes policy sense, if it is combined with some kind of price support if prices fall again. Support could be tied to some kind of co-production agreement, combining wind and natural gas, or solar and natural gas. 

Voters will hate the notion of subsidies for oil companies if prices drop and gasoline becomes cheap again. A complicated bill would be necessary to get the issue passed. Plus, it is in the interest of American consumers for the domestic oil industry to survive. Prepare for it:  A windfall profits tax will need to come with strings attached. There is a reason oil companies aren't drilling to scoop up quick profits. The market could turn again.

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Curt Ankerberg

Curt Ankerberg represents the Republican id. He is the Marjorie Taylor Green of the local GOP.

He is a candidate for Medford City Council.

If Republicans are unhappy with him, they can clean their own house.

In prior campaigns I have warned voters about Curt Ankerberg. He is a perennial candidate for local offices. This time I will leave that job to others.

Very occasionally I will publish comments on this blog by Curt Ankerberg. I reject most of his submissions, but sometimes he reveals something about the political mood among Republicans in this community and he does it without being obscene or defamatory. I publish some of those.

The Ankerberg page in my Voter's Pamphlet

This week he was triumphant in a proposed comment. I posted it. It is an unguarded statement of what a Republican majority in Salem or the Congress might do. It is a warning. Kevin McCarthy and Jim Jordan, the two most likely Republican successors to be Speaker of the House, both propose to do exactly as Ankerberg predicts: 

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are going down hard, as is Pelosi. The GOP is going to make Pelosi's January 6th committee look like Amateur Hour.

Christine Drazan will reverse the tranny-mania currently polluting the Oregon school system.

Oregon will be saved from Tina Kotek and her Marxist radicalism. No more climate change and New Green Deal nonsense.

Ankerberg's comments in the Voters Pamphlet give a flavor for what kind of city council person he would be. Voters can decide if they like it:

Medford is more corrupt than a Banana Republic. The Chamber of Commerce good old boys have spent millions of dollars getting their puppet candidates elected, and in-return our corrupted, bribed city council has given hundreds of millions of your tax dollars to the Chamber good old boys to subsidize their privately-owned projects. The Chamber controls the lying, corrupt, Marxist local-media. . . .

Over the years Ankerberg has sent me multiple emails and proposed comments. Some express his happy contemplation of my death. (I send those to local law enforcement.) More frequently his comments accuse me and various prominent local people of sexual crimes. He particularly targets named employees of the Mail Tribune. I moderate comments so I can stop their publication.

Ankerberg reflects tension within the GOP between the populist, anti-elitist Trump GOP and the establishment Trump GOP. The local Chamber of Commerce PAC has become a reliable funder for Republican candidates. They make token contributions to sure-winner Democrats, but their endorsements and their multiple $10,000 and $20,000 contributions are to Republican candidates. Meanwhile, the local newspaper, the Mail Tribune has made a turn toward the political right, in alliance with Sinclair. Although Ankerberg criticizes both of them, I consider Curt Ankerberg to be their problem now. He is on their team. Ankerberg won almost 50% of the GOP vote in a state senate primary campaign against a moderate Republican candidate who outspent him 50-to-one. Ankerberg reflects the GOP's position on abortion, election denial, and 2020 fraud. Like nationally prominent GOP officeholders, Ankerberg makes accusations of grooming, pedophilia, and corruption against political opponents. Locally and nationally, GOP leaders and donors overwhelmingly support Trump and candidates who support Trump.

Ankerberg makes obscene comments and accusations, which must create some embarrassment to local GOP leaders. Still, this is a party whose officeholders lead cheers of "F--- Joe Biden." Donald Jr. and Eric Trump sell "Let's Go Brandon" and "FJB" merchandise. Ankerberg is not a typical Republican, but he is no longer an outlier Republican. He isn't different, except that he names names among Republicans, not just Democrats. He is less racial than current Republican thought leaders. Mostly, Ankerberg is more and cruder.  But he is a Republican of the Trump populist mode. He doesn't represent every Republican, but he represents a lot of them.

If Republican leaders in Southern Oregon don't like Curt Ankerberg as a visible example of their party, then they can deal with him. They can either speak up against him, or they can hope he self-destructs by his own words. If he is elected to the City Council, they can secretly enjoy the vivid way he condemns Democrats as corrupt pedofile Communists. Or they can decide he goes too far when he includes Republicans in his attacks, and they can try to recall him.

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A human zygote

It is what it is.

If we are going to put so much mental energy into this, let's see it.

We cannot look at a photograph of a fertilized human egg or a zygote or an embryo without fitting it in a narrative. We don't see it.  We see it in context. A zygote is a biological thing, a social thing, a personal history thing, a religious thing, a political thing. Amid all the narrative and complexities of thought around the thing, there is the thing itself. 

Even that is false. The zygote isn't what we see. Everything important about it--the zygote--is unseen. It is alive. Living things are more than what we see physically.

Still, stripped of all the narrative and complexities there is a physical thing. Let's look at it as if we had no idea what it was, with fresh eyes, without context. 

The photographs are from MYA Network, and The Guardian.

Five weeks:

Six weeks:

Seven weeks: 

Eight weeks:

Nine weeks:

Composite:

No commentary from me. Just observe. Let the context and meaning that rushes to mind come independently. First, just see.

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Secret Service: "Troubling behavior patterns."

Something isn't right at the Secret Service.

Prior to Trump, most of the concern about the political orientation of the FBI, the CIA, and the military came from the political left. 

Trump changed that. He said those agencies were part of the Deep State, a group in opposition to him and conservative policies. He complained that his generals weren't as compliant as he thought Hitler's generals had been. His Justice Department, his cyber-security staff, his Vice President, and now even the National Archives were all part of the Deep State. The political left found itself defending these agencies. 

Amid these accusations, the Secret Service was above reproach. It was supposedly utterly neutral. The left is re-thinking that. 

Washington Post

Herbert Rothschild, Jr. summarizes what we now learned from recent revelations of the House January 6 Committee. He has been associated with the political left for over six decades. He was an advocate for civil liberties, racial justice for Blacks, for peace, for the environment, and most recently for quality local journalism. This Guest Post originally appeared on October 21 in www.ashland.news, a nonprofit community news medium serving Ashland, Oregon. Rothschild was a founder of Ashland.news and currently serves as president of its board.

Guest Post by Herb Rothschild

Rothschild

At the last public hearing of the January 6 Committee, televised on October 13, the focus of Rep. Adam Schiff’s presentation was what the committee had learned about Secret Service agents’ behavior before and on the day of the assault. At one point he said that the documents the committee had received from the Secret Service indicated that testimony agents previously had given before the committee was “not credible.” 

Concerns about the conduct of the Secret Service detail under the direction of Agent Robert “Bobby” Engel and Anthony “Tony” Ornato, Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, began long before it turned over a huge cache of documents (“hundreds of thousands,” according to committee member Rep. Zoe Lofgren) to the committee on July 26. Indeed, the committee believed it had to issue a subpoena for the records because, the week before, Department of Homeland Security Inspector General Joseph Cuffari sent a letter to the House and Senate Homeland Security Committees that crucial text messages agents sent on January 5 and 6 had been erased.   

The agency claimed that those messages were lost by accident when there was “a device-replacement program,” and that Congress hadn’t requested until after the data migration was done that all records related to the insurrection be preserved. However, CNN reported that Congress informed the agency on January 16, 2021 and again on January 25, 2021 that it needed to preserve and produce those records. Adding to the January 6 Committee’s concern was a letter Cuffari sent directly to it in which he revealed that, in June, 2021, after he requested messages sent and received by 24 Secret Service agents between December 7, 2020 and January 8, 2021, the agency only provided one.  

In an interview with MSNBC, Lofgren said there are "troubling behavior patterns" emerging from the committee's dealings with the Secret Service. She added, "I'm also concerned about the actions of the inspector general (Cuffari). He sat on this stuff for months and months and months as well, and now he has ordered the department to stop the forensics analysis of the phones, which we need.” On July 26, Bennie Thompson, chair of the January 6 Committee, and Carolyn Maloney, chair of the House Oversight Committee, demanded that Cuffari step aside from the investigation into the missing messages and that a new inquiry head be appointed.

A key question is why the Secret Service didn’t act on information it received both before January 6 and on that morning about how dangerous the crowd would be. At the televised hearing, Schiff quoted a tip the FBI relayed to the Secret Service on December 26, 2020: "Their [White Nationalists’] plan is to literally kill people. Please, please take this tip seriously." And we already knew that the Secret Service had observed on the morning of January 6 that many in the crowd were carrying weapons, including firearms. Nonetheless, the Secret Service didn’t urge the Capitol Police or the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department to beef up security around the Capitol.

Washington Post reporter Carol Leonnig, author of Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of The Secret Service (2021), characterized Engel and Ornato as being "very, very close to President Trump." During an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on June 29, 2022, Leonnig said, "some people accused them of at times being enablers and 'yes men' of the president — particularly Tony Ornato — and very much people who wanted to ... see him pleased." She claimed that there was a large contingent of Trump's Secret Service detail that wanted Biden to fail, and some "took to their personal media accounts to cheer on the insurrection and the individuals riding up to the Capitol as patriots." [I’ve found no verification of that last assertion.]

Ornato testified in January and again in March before the January 6 committee, although perhaps not under oath. Members of the committee have expressed frustration with aspects of Ornato’s testimony. Rep. Adam Kinzinger posted on Twitter, “There seems to be a major thread here… Tony Ornato likes to lie.”

Were Ornato and perhaps members of Trump’s security detail intentionally abetting the insurrection? The erased text messages might have answered that question. Maybe the committee will find other sources that will answer it. Weighing against complicity, perhaps, is Engel’s insistence that Trump be driven back to the White House after his speech at the Ellipse, which infuriated Trump, who wanted to join those besieging the Capitol.

There is, however, one more huge piece to the story of what transpired that day. When the Secret Service detail protecting Vice President Pence had led him to an undisclosed area where they could put him in a vehicle and drive away, the detail was in communication with Ornato. Apparently, Ornato wanted them to get Pence away from the Capitol and take him to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. Pence refused (“I’m not getting in the car”), later explaining he felt that if the mob saw him fleeing, it would “validate” their assault.

But another explanation is that Pence knew he wouldn’t be able to finish the work of certifying the election results if he left. Rep. Jamie Raskin, another committee member, spoke about this in a televised conversation with Rev. Jim Wallis at Georgetown University’s Center on Faith and Justice on April 21, 2022. He explained that if Pence was gone, Republicans could have used the Twelfth Amendment to let the House--state delegation by delegation, with each state having one vote--select the President. 

Nicole Wallace of MSNBC on air July 14 read an excerpt from a new book by Lennig and Philip Rucker, I Alone Can Fix It, in which they reported that Pence’s National Security Advisor, Gen. Keith Kellogg (ret.), was in the White House just then, and Ornato told him that Secret Service agents were taking Pence away. Reportedly Kellogg replied, “You can’t do that, Tony. Leave him where he’s at. He’s got a job to do. I know you guys too well. You’ll fly him to Alaska if you have a chance.”

I don’t know why this aspect of Trump’s attempted coup hasn’t garnered sustained attention. It strikes me that the moment I’ve just discussed (“I’m not getting in the car”) was a decisive one. We’ll see how much prominence it gets in the committee’s final report. 

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Cue the scary music: Campaign attack ads

Maybe attack ads work. Maybe they backfire. 

Maybe they just make people hate democracy.

I wrote a week ago that the attack ads by local state senate candidate Republican Randy Sparacino against the incumbent Democrat Jeff Golden were a net loss for Sparacino. I said they backfired. The denoted message of the ads is that Golden is terrible--that he wants to increase fire insurance rates, that he is somehow responsible for worldwide inflation, that he likes or tolerates crime. I concluded that no persuadable voter thinks those charges are real. The one message that actually gets through is that Sparacino is a Republican riding on the back of a huge number of Republican business PACs. I wrote that this message hurts Sparacino in a Democratic-leaning district. 

People told me I was dead wrong. They said that by election day a great many people will dislike Jeff Golden and that is the point. Make him a villain. Moreover, he will look like a patsy for getting dumped on and not returning fire. People want a fighter who will win for their team. That is the election choice: Fighter or nice guy, winner or loser. They told me there is indeed a subtext message in all those ads. It is that Sparacino is on the winning team. He has powerful backers. It doesn't matter where he gets the money or what they want. What matters is that he has it. People vote for the strong guy, the guy that is doing the kicking. "Don't be naive," friends told me.

I asked veteran journalist Tam Moore about this. Tam Moore has been in politics and writing about it for over 60 years. He has seen it all. He sent me this:

Guest Post by Tam Moore

Attack ads abound.

Moore

Some of us hate them. But political scientists say negative advertising has its place in campaign strategies. 

This is the season – the countdown is on for mid-term elections. The TV breaks in my local news casts are exploding with attack ads for two races. Oregon’s three-way gubernatorial election weeks ago blossomed with negative ads. Now the well-financed effort to oust an incumbent state senator is broadcasting scary TV spots.

As a retired journalist with experience in both broadcast and print media, and with four years in elected office at the county level back in the 1970s, I think negative ads do a disservice to democracy. When you say bad things about an opponent, be they the incumbent or the challenger, some of it sticks in the minds of the electorate. In effect, negative ads lower trust in government.

But historians would tell you Americans have a track record of nasty political dialog. Check out the 1800 presidential race between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. One contemporary printed commentary called Adams a “blind, toothless man who wants to start a war.” Fast forward to 1824 and the emergence of Andrew Jackson, a controversial president credited with fathering modern American party politics. Jackson was crucified in the opposition press which called his wife an “adulteress and a whore.” He lost that campaign by a slim margin but came back to win in 1828 – after facing a replay of public attacks on his wife.

The advent of television after World War II added an audio and video dimension to negative political advertising. Click here for Lyndon Johnson’s famous “Daisy Ad.” It ran once with lasting impact on Johnson’s opponent, Sen. Barry Goldwater. For context, Goldwater, a brigadier general in the air national guard, had said he thought tactical unit commanders – not the President of the United States – should decide when to use smaller nuclear weapons.

Daisy is the favorite ad of John G. Greer, author of the 2008 book in Defense of Negativity: Attack Ads in Presidential Campaigns. He notes that Daisy aired one time on national TV, and folks still talk about it. Says Greer, negative advertising, through focus on important political issues, give voters “critical information” which enriches the democratic process.

It is estimated by those following this year’s mid-term elections that nearly $10 billion will be spent by candidates and political action campaigns. Much of it goes to broadcast and cable TV ads, plus a growing number of targeted ads place on the Internet. Michael Schaus, writing last month in the Nevada Independent, observes that while we used to be able to hit the “mute” button on TV remotes, that’s not the case with impressions on our Internet feeds.

“Today’s political ads don’t merely play on endless loops during brief commercial breaks, they seem to appear everywhere. Even for those voters who have “cut the cord” and done away with traditional TV, the ads have followed them to the new and once-wonderous world of online streaming,” wrote Schaus.

Annual Review of Political Science

 

Political scientists, psychologists and communications experts have studied negative ads nearly to death. Here’s a chart from one 2009 literature-search paper showing the rise and fall of the attention given negative ads in recent decades – both in printed stories and academic publications. 

Some takeaways from all that research: 

*** In the United States attack ads apparently have almost no negative effect on voter turnout; the several differences observed over the decades just aren’t statistically significant. 

*** 82% of Americans dislike attack ads. 

There’s a big caution from some of the studies. Apparently after a voter decides on a candidate, if a flurry of attack ads surface late in the campaign, voter turnout does decrease. Not only that, voters favoring the victim of the ads tend to mobilize – their turnouts increase. It’s the candidate on whose behalf the attack was launched who suffers decreased turnout. 

Attack ads late in a campaign may backfire, to say nothing of the ad’s impact on credibility of all office holders. There’s a trust factor here. 

And in these times of Political Action Committees buying advertising without permission of the candidates or their campaigns, these campaigns are at risk of suffering a loss from a tactic which wasn't part of their strategy.

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The sad truth about inflation

You don't fix inflation by giving everyone more money to spend. 

Biden did not cause inflation. Inflation is worldwide: 10.9% in Germany and the U.K; 12% in Belgium; 10.3% in Sweden. It is 8.2% in the U.S. 

An international poll of voters in Western democracies asked what governments should do to reduce inflation. Here are the results:

Global Progress/YouGov

Notice a pattern? The popular suggestions would make inflation worse.

Price caps ration goods. They temporarily remove a money price while they create a new, more expensive price in the form of wait times and cancellations. Net-net, they add costs. Cutting taxes on highway fuel simply backdates costs by deferring payment for the ongoing maintenance. Increasing the minimum wage and increasing welfare benefits for working people would address poverty among the working poor, but it is inflationary, not deflationary. Cutting taxes is inflationary. Reducing interest rates is twice as popular as increasing them, but it has the opposite of the desired effect. It is inflationary, not deflationary.

Politicians don't offer realistic suggestions. The problem is worldwide, so domestic solutions are inadequate, plus they are unpopular. It is politically smart just to complain.

The inflation we are seeing today is strongly affected by rising energy costs. OPEC, including Russia, just reduced oil production, which is pushing prices back up. The focus is back on American oil production.

Democrats are getting an unpleasant dose of political reality. Democratic policy discouraged domestic oil production. However, energy technology and infrastructure did not move as fast as Democratic message and policy. Electric vehicles are not yet cheaper. There are 280 million existing vehicles on the road in the U.S. that use gasoline and diesel. Those aren't worn out. Most Americans need a car to live.

The practical mechanism for conversion to green energy was price signals. Ideally, this would happen world-wide, with renewables having gotten cheap and available, with fossil fuels an expensive second choice. Ideally, too, the conversion would be fast enough that conversion would reduce carbon emissions worldwide, but slowly enough that the adjustments don't cause political or economic disaster. This is too much to ask. We see an international move toward populist nationalism and authoritarianism.

The renewed Republican message of "Drill, baby, drill," is potent political signaling. It implies that the Democrats and climate activists caused high gasoline prices and inflation. It declares that in a choice between lower gasoline prices and climate, the GOP is for lower prices. Drill, baby, drill implies that there is nothing America can do about climate that China won't cancel out, so any sacrifice is for naught. Besides, climate is long term, and high prices are now. That message has appeal to rural voters, stressed consumers, climate doubters, non-college people who resent snooty environmentalists, and Republicans.  A big coalition.

Democrats are conflicted, so their message is muddled. Long term, Democrats like the market signals of high fossil fuel prices which hasten conversion to renewables. But not now. Now they want it cheap. Biden goes hat in hand to Saudi Arabia. The Democratic message lacks clarity and consistency. Democrats are ready for renewables, but renewables aren't ready for them.

The policy that works to stop inflation is raising interest rates enough to slow the economy and maybe push it into recession. It is happening and it is painful. No one like inflation. No one likes the cure. Both are bad for incumbents. Russia and Saudi Arabia are at war with Biden, and they are using the weapon they have. There is a price to pay for supporting Ukraine and Biden is paying it.

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Grass roots event

Sometimes a Republican candidate's position on abortion is loud and clear.

Sometimes it isn't.

Democrats organize an event to try to get GOP candidates to say where they stand on abortion.

Scott Hays' Guest Post is a report on the effort of Democrats in Clackamas County, Oregon to force Republican candidates to report their positions on reproductive health care rights. Clackamas County is Oregon's third most populous county, with about 420,000 people. It includes the close-in suburbs south and east of Portland, plus farm and forested area to their east. 

Hays

Speaking as citizens, the Democratic activists thought they had a right to know where Republican candidates stood on the abortion issue. As Democratic partisans, they thought it likely that GOP positions would be unpopular. They wanted a campaign event that could move public opinion.

Scott Hays is a retired school teacher. He is Secretary of the Democratic Party of Clackamas County and Chair of its Platform & Resolutions Committee. Political campaigns are more than advertisements. They are also grass root events, organized by citizens like Hays, done with the hope of making a point and getting noticed.

Guest Post by Scott Hays

Our resolution began as a campaign strategy to use in our Clackamas County Commissioner races. We have two Republicans running for two seats and neither has been forthcoming about their position on this issue. For good reason. Both are pro-life (one more radical than the other) and the issue is not a winner with most voters in Clackamas. We hoped to present a resolution in favor of reproductive rights to the County Commission, fully expecting the 3 Republicans to ignore it--whereupon we would launch a letter-writing and public comment campaign demanding to know why they were keeping it secret. 

Some of our membership had concerns about the narrowness of the resolution, so we broadened it and wrote to all local jurisdictions in the county. This created a new problem. Taking it directly to each city council in the county would be difficult for the media to cover. We finally opted to do a media event promoting our resolution. We also wanted to spotlight local candidates in very close races, expecting support for the issue to cross party lines.

On Friday, October 14, we gathered ten elected Democratic officials and candidates. The speakers included Jamie McLeod-Skinner – the Democratic candidate for congress whose race has garnered nationwide attention. (She unseated a conservative Democratic incumbent in the primary and is now attempting to keep this a Democratic seat.) Also speaking were Mark Meek, Sonya Fischer, and Libra Forde – candidates for state and county offices – plus representatives of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Oregon, Pro-Choice Oregon, and the Portland Chapter of NOW. 

The speakers asserted that access to abortion and reproductive health care was a fundamental right that should be made by individuals and their health care providers, not politicians. The speakers said that abortion rights are no longer "settled law" in Oregon or nationally – the position of the GOP candidate for governor, who is attempting to sweep the issue under the rug. State Representative Rachel Prusak said, “the same people saying Oregon laws are strong and we don’t have to worry also said we shouldn’t worry that Roe would be overturned.” This is why Clackamas County Democrats say there is urgency to know where local GOP candidates stand. If they win office and are part of GOP majorities, they will be under tremendous pressure to pass extreme laws.

 Both KOIN-TV and the Pamplin Media sent reporters, but neither have reported on the event. We are undaunted. We are going to post it on our Party Website and FB page and push it through other avenues of social media. Our resolution puts Democrats of Clackamas County on record in support of measures "necessary to protect a person’s right to abortion and reproductive health care services, and a person’s right to privacy in Oregon." It also sets a standard against which to compare Republicans who refuse to be transparent and forthright about their plans. We are being transparent. We want Republicans to be transparent, too.

As Libra Forde so eloquently pointed out in her presentation, "It is high time we all get together and build a legacy that we can all be proud of. In the future, when this history is told, we have to make sure we are on the right side of history."

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Easy Sunday: Hello, Teacher

Schoolchildren in Thailand choose how they want to greet their teacher.

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Herschel Walker is an insult

Some things can only be said by a person inside the group. 

A Black man talks about Herschel Walker.

He says that Herschel Walker is a walking, talking, caricature. He embodies every racial stereotype White racists have about Black men.

The commentary is by Thomas Bishop, an actor and poet. He goes by "Thomas, the Villain, Bishop," on TikTok, where he does "social commentary from a villain's perspective."  Here it is on video--three minutes. 

https://t.co/oxaLAYYrFU

The text of his commentary: 

"So USA Today put out an opinion piece and it's basically something I've been saying all along about Herschel Walker. You see, in the annals of the Republican brain Herschel Walker is the perfect representation of Black people--without question. 

He is every stereotype we have been called for 40, 50, 60 fucking  years. Every single one.

Absentee father-- check.

Abusive--check.

Illiterate--check.

Athletic--check.

Will listen to what his masters say--check.

He's a perfect representation, and sadly he might just win. He might just win, you see because Black men like Fred Hampton, Huey P. Newton, Malcom X, and Martin Luther King at no point would they do the step-and-fetch-it for American society. They weren't going to do it. Too much pride, too much dignity, too much manliness for that to happen. But the racist tropes never went away. They never did. We never confronted them unless we confronted them in the Black community, but we never confronted them nationwide, society-wide. So they persisted. And to look at someone like Raphael Warnock who embodies the spirit of the Fred Hamptons, the Malcolm Xs, the Martin Luther Kings--well how do you beat that? You beat it by putting someone so polar opposite but so acceptable because he's under your banner that he might just win. And they found it.

Lusting after White women--check.

He is everything we have ever been called in society. I keep saying all along, if they find a picture of Herschel Walker eating chicken and watermelon you will have inward bingo. And sadly he might win. So when people start talking to me about how much we have progressed as a society the only thing I'm going to say from this point forward is 'look at Herschel Walker and tell me that you still believe that.'

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