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Posts published in June 2024

A MAGA tilt but not a lockdown

A MAGA tilt but not a lockdown

June 30, 2024

Conservative southern Oregon, often an afterthought for many other Oregonians, may be the most politically dynamic large area in Oregon.

Few other areas show as much potential for political change.

Consider a couple of large Medford-area events just a few miles apart and on the same day, June 22.

The Jackson County Fairgrounds was dominated by the Republican political rally called MOGA 2024, the acronym standing for “Make Oregon Great Again.” Its headliners included national figures, including Mike Lindell, the MyPillow founder and advocate for Donald Trump. This may be the only really large-scale Oregon event on this year’s Republican calendar, presented as “Come help us take back southern Oregon.” It was heavily promoted by the local Republican organization, by other groups around the region, and around the dial on area radio stations.

From a pro-Trump perspective, you might wonder if there’s much to take back in the southern Oregon area. Most of this large sector of the state already votes Republican.

But it may not be as locked-down some may think. The Jackson-Josephine counties seem to be on the cusp of something subtle that events like MOGA could be critical in influencing: Deciding if the area becomes MAGA-dominated enough that other points of view are swamped, which hasn’t happened yet.

One piece of evidence in that argument is the second event held only a few miles from the MOGA event, over in Pear Blossom Park in Medford, where organizers were holding the well-attended 3rd annual Medford Pride event. One participant said, “It gives a space for young people to be free to express themselves however they want. And an opportunity in an area that’s not always the most accepting to really give an opportunity for our community to be queer.”

These two events may fit into the larger picture of conservative southern Oregon as pieces of a puzzle shifting and developing.

The two big counties in the area are Jackson (where Medford is the county seat) and Josephine (Grants Pass).

Jackson leans Republican, but not by a great deal. In the last two decades, it has voted Democratic for president just once, in 2008, but no one has won its presidential vote by as much as 51% since 2004. Its legislative delegation has included mostly Republicans, and Republicans hold county government, but Democrats as well, including state Sen.Jeff Golden and state Rep. Pam Marsh, who represent a large share of the county’s voters. There are some indicators it has been moving gently away from hard right positions. It is one of 11 counties in Oregon to legalize therapeutic psilocybin. Hard-line positions on property taxes seem to have eased a little in recent years. Jackson shows no signs of becoming a blue county, but its tint seems to be shading gradually purple.

Josephine County is more solidly Republican. No Democrat has won its vote for the presidency since 1936, the longest such run of any Oregon county, and Trump just cleared 60% in both of his runs. Its state and local officials are Republicans, and there are no indications that will change in the near future.

Still, there are indicators of attitude shifts. Josephine has been one of the most rigorous anti-tax counties in Oregon, along with neighbors such as Curry and Douglas. Having experienced some deep austerity in local services, however, voters seem to have recentered on the subject.

Libraries are a good example. All libraries in the county were closed in May 2007 for lack of county funding, but since then libraries have been reopened, and a library funding measure was passed in 2017 with 53% of the vote. Law enforcement is another useful case study. Severely crunched funding during several years for the sheriff’s office was addressed in this decade with creation of a law enforcement taxing district, also approved by voters.

Both counties seem to have developed stronger tourism, recreation and wine industry sectors, which over time usually lead to a moderation in politics, and some of that seems to be playing out. That’s especially true in the well-known cultural and tourism centers at Ashland and Jacksonville, both growing and prospering, but also to a degree in both Medford and Grants Pass and several smaller communities.

Most of the more rural areas remain hard-right conservative, and the traditional “Don’t Tread on Me” and other similar signage is not hard to find outside the cities. These areas are a MAGA redoubt, and few people outside their tribe make themselves visible. That absence of a contrary culture allows for more sweeping adoption of the MAGA message.

But increasingly, alternative messages are becoming visible in some of the cities. They are not near changing the partisan lean of the area. But they may be enough to slow an overwhelming adoption in the region of support for Trump and his allies. Much depends on whether people are exposed more to one message or the other.

The margins are close. That is why events like the MOGA event and the Medford Pride activity, in their different ways, may have some real rippling effects.

 

John Peavey

John Peavey

June 28, 2024

I got to know John Peavey as a state senator, a job he held in two runs, for three terms in the 70s as a Republican and later in the 80s and 90s as a Democrat, 10 terms in all. He was a capable and active senator, and often in some kind of leadership position - formal or informal - while he was there.

Peavey, who died on June 16, may also have been one of those unusual people whose personal efforts actually helped transform the politics of a local area. Blaine County, which he represented and ran for office for so many years, probably moved away from a Republican tilt toward the Democratic side in considerable part because of the highly visible role Peavey played.

And yet Peavey, who was also an important figure in Idaho’s sheep industry and ran a livestock ranch all his adult life, might be as well remembered for demonstrating the impact a person can have even outside of elective office. He was a personal inflection point in Idaho history in at least three ways that had nothing to do with the Idaho Senate, or directly with his occupation either.

Peavey was in office in the early 70s when he tried pressing for passage of a campaign finance and lobbying disclosure law, and found that the legislature (notably members of his own party) weren’t very interested. So he went to work on it outside the Statehouse. In 1974 he was a key figure in promoting an initiative (the 1977 Idaho Almanac has a great photo of him carrying boxes of petitions up the statehouse steps) to set those open government requirements in Idaho law. With some adjustments over time, that law is still in force. Peavey is part of the reason we know as much as we do about who is behind changes in Idaho politics.

Some of Peavey’s compatriots also were less than thrilled when he helped lead opposition to the Pioneer Power Plant proposed by Idaho Power Company. That effort helped derail his legislative career for a time, when he lost his Republican primary in 1976. The Pioneer campaign he helped lead prevailed, however, and may have had a critical effect on Idaho development. With hindsight, Pioneer, then thought to be needed as a source power, likely would have become an expensive white elephant, and Idaho Power rates which for many years have been low might have ratcheted much higher. Idaho’s economic development in the last half-century is likely in part a piece of Peavey’s legacy.

By the time Peavey returned to the Senate (as a Democrat) in 1980, he was also a central figure in the debate and eventual lawsuit over water rights at the Swan Falls Dam on the Snake River. That lawsuit, one of the most consequential in the state’s history, resulted in the Snake River Basin Adjudication and many other developments.

Wendy Wilson, former leader of the Snake River Alliance, said of Peavey’s efforts that, “As a result, Idaho now has one of the most progressive water management systems in the West. When someday this system prevents the Snake River from being pumped completely dry – it will be in no small part because of John’s vision.”

There was much more too, notably on the environmental front, and watchdogging the Idaho National Laboratory (his Flat Top ranch is not far from its boundary line). The Trailing of the Sheep event at the Wood River Valley that he co-founded has become a local institution.

He did most of these things not from a position of special power, but from the office of citizen. There’s a lesson in that.

John Peavey had an instinct for grasping what was important and how to push to make a difference at the key moments when change could be had. He can continue to have an influence by showing us through example how much power we each can have.

(image/Pixabay)

 

Those election claims

June 26, 2024

So, you still think that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged” and that former President Trump should have been in the White House all along. Perhaps you believe Trump when he continues to insist that he won the election by a wide margin.

Obviously, Trump has not spent time with Ken Block – who the Trump campaign hired to find voter fraud in the wake of the 2020 election. Block isn’t about to get into a shouting match with Trump, but he has written a book (“Disproven”) that knocks down every claim that Trump and his supporters made. And Trump’s campaign attorney, Alex Cannon, has provided testimony to the validity of Block’s findings.

“It simply was not there,” Block told me in a telephone conversation. “There was fraud, but not enough to change any of the results in any of the swing states. That’s different from the campaign rhetoric saying that the election was stolen. None of the rhetoric comes with any kind of defensible data.”

Even Trump’s White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, couldn’t dispute Block’s findings. “So, there’s no there there,” he said in a talk with Cannon.

Block had all the motivation for finding election fraud, and the expertise to do the job. He’s a technology entrepreneur from Rhode Island with expertise in analyzing voter data. He sifted through mounds of claims and theories, from the “plausible” to the “outrageous,” during his time with the Trump campaign. Basically, he was looking for fraud with the gusto of a prospector panning for gold.

“Attorneys were not going to court with false claims of fraud. They wanted me to, if I could, determine if the fraud cases were true. Or if they were false, they asked me to prove that they were false,” Block said. “Every one was determined to be false. So, when people hear there was massive voter fraud, they need to think critically about what the claim is, because the only claims that matter from a legal sense are the ones that can be defended in court.”

Block had a short time frame for his work, but he said time was not a factor and he had sufficient resources. “If there was massive voter fraud, heck yeah, I wanted to be the guy to find it, because our democracy would truly be at risk if there was demonstrable provable voter fraud. I knew we had the ability to find it if it was there.”

Block’s decision to write a book came during publicity surrounding the Jan. 6 Committee. As he explains, “I didn’t want somebody else telling the story, or providing a framework that was not mine. I’m essentially talking about all of this at the risk of perjuring myself. If you are trying to figure out if I’m full of it, there’s no way I would risk my freedom to make up stuff like this.”

Although Block found no evidence to help with Trump’s case, he found plenty of quirks in the election process. In New Jersey, for instance, there are 25,000 registered voters with a birth date of 1800.

“Before anyone views that as a smoking gun gun for voter fraud, it’s not,” Block says. “New Jersey has a bad computer system and election officials are negligent in cleaning up something that’s missing, which is an actual date of birth.”

One glaring weakness in elections overall is the lack of systemic uniformity, he said. “It’s hard to track voters who move from state to state, because states are not sharing their data. What we don’t have is a federal data base to ensure that voters have just one registration. So our elections are by no means perfect. That being said, I haven’t seen in more than a decade of doing this any claims of fraud that survives scrutiny.”

Over time, we’ll see if Block’s work survives scrutiny from the MAGA crowd. The book may not read like a compelling John Grisham page-turner, but it provides interesting fodder for those who want to know once and for all if the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.

Chuck Malloy is a long-time Idaho journalist and columnist. He may be reached at ctmalloy@outlook.com

 

Digging through numbers

June 25, 2024

Though statistics more often than not make dull reading, once-in-a-while some come along that need our attention.

The U.S. Census Bureau folk postulate about 336,639,585 of us are living border-to-border and coast-to-coast in our nation.  While that's an increase

of a few million since the last official census in 2010, it works out to be only about four-percent more for the period.

One of those "got-my-attention" numbers from the Bureau was this.  As a nation, we're experiencing a birth about every eight seconds and a death about every 12.  Net migration is adding one person to our population total every 33 seconds.  So, the combination of births, deaths and migration adds a new face to feed and house every 16 seconds or just over four a minute.

Another set of interesting numbers.  If asked to name the four most populous states in order, could you?  Well, there's a surprise there.  Of course, California is the largest at about 38.8 million souls.  And Texas is second at about 27 million.  But the attention-getter is Florida which passed New York as it grew to 19.9 million - adding about 803 residents a day.  Poor old New York slipped to fourth at 19.7 million.  All of the ten fastest growing states are in the South or West.

 

Now that you know about how many of us there are and where most of us live, "How are we doing financially," you ask?  Well, those numbers are both a bit surprising and a bit grim.

Major credit card and credit rating companies did a new survey of 4,000 Americans and found more than 18 percent expect to be in debt the rest of their lives!  Those 65 and older totaled 31% believing such.  Younger respondents were more positive.  But, also less experienced.

Another sampling of citizens nationwide, done by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, showed numbers that have become one of our national shames.  Student loan debt rose from an aggregate of $390 billion at the end of 2005 to $966 billion at the end of 2012.  Just seven years!  No surprise that student admissions applications are tapering off substantially.

Next, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) says many Americans are drowning in uncollected medical debt.  Some 43 million are carrying heavy medical red ink and - complicating their problem - a difficult maze of systems to collect that debt makes it almost impossible for consumers to come out with a clean credit report.

The CFPB's examination showed the process for medical care can be confusing and the system for reporting overdue medical bills is haphazard at best.  That could explain why half of all overdue debt shown on credit reports is for medical bills.  One-in-five personal reports now carries a black mark for overdue medical expenses.

The Federal Reserve concludes the Great Recession has not ended for millions of us despite improvements in major portions of our economy.  Fact is, 25% of respondents said they were "just getting by financially" and 13% believed they were "losing ground."  Looking back five years, 34% said financial conditions are worse now.

The University of Arizona has been polling students and graduates on financial matters each year since 2007.  One of the most disturbing findings: only 49% of participants have full-time jobs two years after graduation!  Less than half!

There are more numbers out there.  Billions of 'em.  But you get the idea.  As I said, sometimes statistics need our attention.  These are some I've come across recently that certainly do.

The sum of all these surveys seems to be: there are more of us - we're leaving the traditionally larger Eastern states for the West and South - previous and continuing medical costs are overburdening too many of us - we're paying too much for a college education that, too often, results in employment not justifying the expense - the middle and lower levels of income in our national economy are not sharing in any real "recovery."

New news?  Probably not.  Will the folks in our Congress do anything to make the numbers - and conditions -  better?  Probably not. They could, you know.  But statistics are just not that interesting to most of 'em.  Except the ones tied to their own personal employment. Those numbers always get their attention.

 

The detoxification campaign

The detoxification campaign

June 24, 2024

Dorothy Moon held onto her position as boss of the extremist branch of Idaho’s Republican Party at the GOP convention in Coeur d’Alene on June 15. Mary Souza challenged Moon for the chairmanship in hopes of bringing more moderation to the party but failed on a vote of 376-228. A tremendous effort had been made by reasonable Republicans to win a majority of precinct committee positions in this year’s closed GOP primary. The objective was to vote the extremists out and change the direction of the party. Despite creditable success in some areas of the state, the reformers did not get their majority. They will in the next election, if they keep at it.

Moon demonstrated that the official party wants to tighten its minority control over the political life of the state. She proclaimed that her GOP “is a private group. It’s a private association.” She told a reporter that convention proceedings were closed to the press and that transparency was not part of the equation. Moon allowed that one reason for locking out the press was so that she and her cohorts could figure out a strategy to defeat the Open Primaries Initiative, which will be on the November ballot.

Moon is well aware that she and her branch of the GOP will be history if every Idaho voter can have a say in who gets elected to office. Extremists have been able to grab and maintain control of the Legislature by stacking the deck in favor of their candidates in the low-turnout GOP primary. Reasonable Republicans are defeated by scurrilous disinformation campaigns supported by out-of-state dark money interests. Idaho’s 275,000 independent voters, which includes about half of Idaho’s 160,000 military veterans, are effectively denied their right to vote in the primary election, unless they claim to be Republicans.

As if the present bossism of the Moon GOP is not enough, the convention delegates voted to file suit against Secretary of State Phil McGrane to prevent crossover voting. McGrane had correctly informed Moon that state law takes priority over GOP rules, but Moon apparently thinks her rules are the law of Idaho. It will be interesting to see if Moon’s Attorney General will effectively defend the lawsuit.

The delegates then went about the business of gearing up for a variety of culture war battles. Among other things, they opposed “using taxpayer funding for programs beyond high school.” So, Moon’s GOP platform would now withhold state funds for higher education, while making taxpayers cough up for K-12 private and religious schooling. Is there a fear that too much education is bad for our kids?

The delegates resolved that “Idaho has the right and obligation to remove from our state any and all people that are unlawfully present within our borders.” This would devastate the construction business across the state, as well as Idaho’s agricultural industry, particularly our dairies, their feed suppliers and their processors. It’s good that the state does not have the legal authority to enforce this resolution.

The delegates voted to prohibit the destruction of embryos, which would hamper in vitro fertilization. They called for an end to no-excuse absentee voting and for ending all government funding and programs not required by the Constitution. The delegate failed to consider the number of present-day programs that are not even mentioned in the Idaho Constitution. They overlooked the fact that their own extremist legislators have failed to carry out a duty specifically required by the Constitution–to provide adequate funding for “a general, uniform and thorough system of public, free common schools.”

Even though the reformers were not able to replace Moon as Chair or eliminate the extremist planks of the Republican platform, Moon and her cohorts have clearly demonstrated that they are incapable of responsible, responsive government. Their continued misbehavior leading up to the November elections will result in the passage of the Open Primaries Initiative. The reformers lost in the convention, but the example set by Moon and her wrecking crew will lead to the detoxification of the GOP.

(image license)

 

Fueling the detoxification

June 24, 2024

Dorothy Moon held onto her position as boss of the extremist branch of Idaho’s Republican Party at the GOP convention in Coeur d’Alene on June 15. Mary Souza challenged Moon for the chairmanship in hopes of bringing more moderation to the party but failed on a vote of 376-228. A tremendous effort had been made by reasonable Republicans to win a majority of precinct committee positions in this year’s closed GOP primary. The objective was to vote the extremists out and change the direction of the party. Despite creditable success in some areas of the state, the reformers did not get their majority. They will in the next election, if they keep at it.

Moon demonstrated that the official party wants to tighten its minority control over the political life of the state. She proclaimed that her GOP “is a private group. It’s a private association.” She told a reporter that convention proceedings were closed to the press and that transparency was not part of the equation. Moon allowed that one reason for locking out the press was so that she and her cohorts could figure out a strategy to defeat the Open Primaries Initiative, which will be on the November ballot.

Moon is well aware that she and her branch of the GOP will be history if every Idaho voter can have a say in who gets elected to office. Extremists have been able to grab and maintain control of the Legislature by stacking the deck in favor of their candidates in the low-turnout GOP primary. Reasonable Republicans are defeated by scurrilous disinformation campaigns supported by out-of-state dark money interests. Idaho’s 275,000 independent voters, which includes about half of Idaho’s 160,000 military veterans, are effectively denied their right to vote in the primary election, unless they claim to be Republicans.

As if the present bossism of the Moon GOP is not enough, the convention delegates voted to file suit against Secretary of State Phil McGrane to prevent crossover voting. McGrane had correctly informed Moon that state law takes priority over GOP rules, but Moon apparently thinks her rules are the law of Idaho. It will be interesting to see if Moon’s Attorney General will effectively defend the lawsuit.

The delegates then went about the business of gearing up for a variety of culture war battles. Among other things, they opposed “using taxpayer funding for programs beyond high school.” So, Moon’s GOP platform would now withhold state funds for higher education, while making taxpayers cough up for K-12 private and religious schooling. Is there a fear that too much education is bad for our kids?

The delegates resolved that “Idaho has the right and obligation to remove from our state any and all people that are unlawfully present within our borders.” This would devastate the construction business across the state, as well as Idaho’s agricultural industry, particularly our dairies, their feed suppliers and their processors. It’s good that the state does not have the legal authority to enforce this resolution.

The delegates voted to prohibit the destruction of embryos, which would hamper in vitro fertilization. They called for an end to no-excuse absentee voting and for ending all government funding and programs not required by the Constitution. The delegate failed to consider the number of present-day programs that are not even mentioned in the Idaho Constitution. They overlooked the fact that their own extremist legislators have failed to carry out a duty specifically required by the Constitution–to provide adequate funding for “a general, uniform and thorough system of public, free common schools.”

Even though the reformers were not able to replace Moon as Chair or eliminate the extremist planks of the Republican platform, Moon and her cohorts have clearly demonstrated that they are incapable of responsible, responsive government. Their continued misbehavior leading up to the November elections will result in the passage of the Open Primaries Initiative. The reformers lost in the convention, but the example set by Moon and her wrecking crew will lead to the detoxification of the GOP.

 

Boundaries of extremism

Boundaries of extremism

June 21, 2024

A reader wrote recently with a reasonable question which likely is not his alone:

“My question is what you consider extreme.  Some current law makers and organizations that support them, such as the Freedom Foundation, you continually label extreme. Many of their ideals have been quite central in Idaho for generations. So just wondering why you consider their views being so far from central.”

Several ideas are packed into this, so let’s separate them.

First, not everything said by the IFF or the leadership of the Idaho Republican Party is extreme. The Idaho Republican Party has a platform running over quite a few pages, and much of what’s in it could be endorsed by most non-Republicans as well as party members, and close analogues for some of it can be found in the Democratic platform.

But any organization making policy decisions has to be judged not by its blandest statements but by those that mark out distinctive territory - that make it really different from the others.

Here’s a little more from the Republican 2022 Idaho platform: “We believe Social Security must be stabilized, diversified, and privatized … We support the total abolition of inheritance taxes [which are paid only by the very wealthy, not the vast majority of us] … The Idaho Republican Party hereby recommends that the Idaho Legislature and Governor nullify any and all existing and future unconstitutional federal mandates, federal court opinions, and laws, funded or unfunded, that infringe on Idaho’s 10th Amendment sovereignty.” Idaho citizens should lose their right to elect their U.S. senators, too, and the income tax should be wiped out without anything to replace it.

To that, this year you could add opposition to state funding for education beyond the high school level (the language of that measure was interpreted by some people as specifically targeting vocational-technical education, but that was unclear - and not a lot better). In-vitro fertilization was targeted as well, along with demands for tougher abortion laws (and considering where Idaho is now in that area, this should be interesting to see). When I see librarians and physicians arguing that a party’s direction is making it impossible for them to do their jobs in the state, you just might be extremist.

But many of us have what are clear minority opinions. So let’s weigh a couple of other considerations as well.

Second, extremism is also marked by an absolute unwillingness to accept the legitimacy of anyone who thinks differently. Don't listen to them, Anything they do is illegitimate. Even if what they’re doing is something you agree with, don’t join them because they're evil.

You can point to a near-obsession with concern about any involvement in the political process - not just the party organization - on the part of anyone who doesn’t toe a strict party line. The sensibility is strictly totalitarian.

Third, an organization waves the flag of extremism when it shuts itself off from transparency and outside review. We all need an editor (I know I do) and if we have any sort of power, we all need some oversight; it’s mainly the operators of far-gone organizations that shut out the outside world.

Mary Souza, the former legislator who ran for state GOP chair last week, recognized as much, saying, “When the party obfuscates and covers things up and isn’t transparent – and this leadership is not transparent – this kind of lack of transparency, lack of honesty, all of those things need to change. I’m running because there is a lack of respect for people in the party from leadership, and also (a lack of respect for) the voters.” She said that before the convention was held, a convention in which armed guards patrolled the grounds to make sure reporters and others weren’t watching any of the party activities which for decades had been commonly assumed (in the Republican as well as the Democratic party) to be open-access to the public.

She lost to the incumbent Dorothy Moon, who laughed when asked about transparency, and when asked if it was a consideration said, "Yeah, not really. Not in my mind. In my mind, this is a private group. It's a private association.”

I’ll credit her at least with honesty about that.

The Republican Party Idahoans have chosen by simple biennial reflex to run their state has morphed into, according to its chair, a private organization with broad control over the state’s public decision-makers and which is totally unconcerned about whether the policies it is pushing - with enforcement by penalties - are acceptable to more than a sliver of the people of the state.

To my reader inquiring about extremism: Yeah, in the context of politics I’d say that’s close to a practical definition of extreme.

(image)

Coverage

Coverage

June 20, 2024

I know many conservatives don’t want to consider that the government we endow with our, the people’s power, has any obligation to those who give this power. We’re talking entitlements here.

I don’t like thinking anybody is entitled to anything. I grew up poor. But I find myself now among the entitled. So, forgive me this rant.

When children are taken from their parents by the state, we owe these children something.

I wish their parents had provided for them. But they didn’t. Believe me, the bar in Idaho is pretty high for a court to remand custody to the state.

In a recent Board of Health and Welfare meeting we heard some of the new Director’s solutions to our problem. He proposed rules to get more foster parents eligible to take in foster children. I fully support this step. He may see the problem as budget balance, but I see it bigger.

I hope you can too.

When a child is enrolled in foster care, they become eligible for Medicaid health insurance. The DHW does its best to get them enrolled and the benefits available.

Before we go on, ask yourself if you think a taxpayer benefit of health insurance to a child ward of the state is proper. Some may not.

Currently, in Idaho that eligibility for health insurance lapses when the foster child reaches the age of 26. Why?

The age of 26 limit was a decision by our federal government. It was a part of the Affordable Care Act. Obamacare. Just as the option to continue your own kids off in college on the family plan up to age 26, the foster kids got rolled into that negotiated limit. Remember, Obamacare was negotiated not with Republicans, but with the health insurance industry. I guess somebody thinks these wards should be out paying premiums by the age of 26. Maybe you do too.

Some states accept other states foster children into their Medicaid benefits, should they move here. Say the foster child leaves their Utah foster home at the age of 18 and moves to Idaho. They will not be eligible for benefits in Idaho. That is a choice our state has made.

I here propose that any child who has been awarded to state custody should have health insurance supported by the state for the rest of their lives.

The Idaho legislature has acknowledged there are significant Adverse Childhood Events, ACES. The impact of these events is lifelong. Children who experience childhood trauma carry this with them onward.

We, the people who have given the state the authority to retain custody when a parent cannot provide for their child, should see to the fostering of that child to the best of our ability.

Maybe you don’t think the state should intervene into this. I would welcome your thoughts. I could tell you some stories.

Indeed, at our IDHW Board meeting we heard some stories. Two people told how they had taken children into their families outside of the foster system. I suspect many Idaho families step up like this. Indeed, our family has.

So, I believe the kids that become “wards of the state” have very little resources. Shouldn’t we support them?

My proposal that Medicaid eligibility for foster children be lifelong is not without precedent.

When kidney failure could be treated with dialysis, Congress decided the diagnosis of “End Stage Renal Disease” would make the person eligible for Disability and Medicare health insurance.

Congress should roll up the age of Medicaid eligibility for foster children to the end of their life.

All people should have access to health care. But the children awarded to state custody deserve this, even if we can’t decide we all do.

(image)

 

Revolutionary Spring 1848-49

Revolutionary Spring 1848-49

June 19, 2024

At about 750 pages, Revolutionary Spring: Europe Aflame and the Fight for a New World, 1848-1849, may seem a little much in the effort department to justify the time: A tightly-written an detailed review of the many concurrent revolutions erupting across Europe at almost exactly the same time, in the middle of the 19th century - revolutions that nearly all failed and did not revive.

Unless you're already well up to speed with European history of the period, most of the people involved won't be familiar either (though a number of them were striking characters with dramatic story arcs). The best-known probably is Karl Marx, who was merely an observer of the action (he wasn't at all well-known at that time, and is only a minor figure in the book) and often misread the events as they transpired.

What's the point?

The point here, besides filling in a lot of prospective gaps in knowledge of history (it filled some for me), is the usefulness of seeing the dynamic, how these eruptions from seemingly out of nowhere did emerge, what ground was needed to sustain them, what happened at first and why they were crushed.

And the point of absorbing that is the connection with our world today. The dynamics of human society may change over time but human nature often stays much the same, and while the author Christopher Clark makes only a few quick, peripheral explicit references to the state of our world today, a thoughtful read will find parallels between that unusual time and place and ours - with some implicit lessons for what could happen if our future turns darker.

The story here starts at around 1830, nearly a generation after the Napoleonic wars and at a time when Europe's political and governmental structure seemed mostly settled, that being a major goal of a lot of people, not just royalty, after the upheaval of the Frank revolutionary period. But while Napoleon and the politics of the earlier revolutionary time may have been crushed militarily and administratively, with mostly strong monarchies left in place, the ideas and desires that had made them popular in the first place had not gone away. France had a small-scale revolution, resulting in a regime change, in 1830, and the shock waves from it spread across Europe. While modern transportation and communication weren't yet around (no long-distance railroads or telegraphs quite yet) word of what was happening tended to spread fast, resulting in 1848 in a series of revolts, monarchical abdications and radical takeovers in country after country, almost all within a few weeks of each other, even though no one was actively trying to orchestrate it that way. The rebels were acting as a result of receiving distant signals - newspapers and other publications were central to this, as the internet would be now -  but there was no coordination.

The details of how all this happened should in some ways seem startlingly familiar to people in our age. An example: The radical rebels were extremely popular in the capital and main regional cities, and in many cases were able to chase monarchs out of town. But the monarchs didn't have to go far: The people in the countryside were much friendlier to them, and provided a strong base of support when time came, as it did, for the counter-revolution. That's one reason the powers that got removed were able to return. (Clark does make some references to how, later on, many of them would lose their way in years yet to come.)

The background is not simply analytical; Clark threads the historical narrative with accounts from people, famous and unknown, put concrete detail, sometimes of a grisly nature, on the proceedings.

We understand our world better when we can look at it from different angles. In Revolutionary Spring, there's a fresh angle for looking at where we are now, and where we could be going.

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