Bead 20: Fired Up

On Sunday, July 16, about 30 miles downslope of Yosemite, a flame was ignited in the steep, chaparral-cloaked ridge system flanking the Merced River.  Nobody knows the origin of the flame, but all the locals know what happened next:  It ran amok, quickly swelling into the Detwiler Fire and gobbling up a sizeable portion of Mariposa County.

A full week later, the fire is less than half contained, meaning fire lines must still be established around most of its perimeter.  It has burned more than 75,000 acres.  Although many of the evacuation orders have been lifted, there are still hundreds of people in limbo, living in shelters in Oakhurst, Mariposa, Planada, Sonora, and Groveland.  And then there are the 60 families facing long-term limbo, having recently learned that their homes were destroyed.

Facing the Detwiler Fire from the top of Miami Mountain, July 20

On Thursday, July 20, Congressman Tom McClintock held his monthly satellite office hours meeting in Oakhurst, staffed by one of his field representatives, Matt Reed.  At that point, all evacuation orders were still in place.  The entire town of Mariposa was evacuated and adrift.  At least one person attending the office hours was an evacuee.  Others had not yet been evacuated, but were close enough to the Detwiler front to be nervous.  And people were angry.

"Where is McClintock?" a woman from Bootjack demanded, nearly yelling.  "Why isn't he on the ground?"  She glared at Matt over her tablet, which she was using to shoot video of the meeting. 

Matt explained that, in fact, Tom McClintock's office was very involved in the Detwiler Fire.  They had reached out to Mariposa County's elected officials, offering help at the federal level.  And they were researching the air tanker issue. 

The "air tanker issue" refers to the use of a single Boeing 747 jet, dubbed the SuperTanker and owned by a man named Jim Wheeler, to drop retardant on the Detwiler Fire.  The SuperTanker can drop almost twice as much retardant as the stoutest air tanker currently in service, making it an attractive option for fires, like Detwiler, that threaten to snuff out entire communities.  Perhaps because of its price tag, an estimated $250,000 per day, the U.S. Forest Service hasn't approved use of the SuperTanker yet.  Until it does, Jim Wheeler won't be able to work the Detwiler Fire or any other fire in our country.

But it's not like Detwiler doesn't have air tankers on the job.  The Internet is a murky place, and I've had trouble determining the exact number of tankers in use.  I do know that at least two very large air tankers, or VLATs, have been working the fire.  In fact, one of the VLATs set a company record on July 18 when it flew ten missions in less than six hours, dropping 108,000 gallons of retardant on the fire.  The SuperTanker can evidently drop 19,000 gallons in a single mission.  But to me, that's not a deal-breaking difference.  And I don't see why one man's flagging business venture has become Tom McClintock's "air tanker issue"--unless he is secretly trying to portray the U.S. Forest Service as incompetent and out of touch.  Oh, right.  He is.

Of course, at the July 20 office hours, I didn't know any of this.  Matt's vague explanation of the air tanker issue suggested the Forest Service wasn't permitting the use of any large air tankers on the Detwiler Fire.  We were made to feel that once again, bureaucracy was taking it out on the little guy.  

You can imagine that the air tanker issue, as presented by Matt, might have been quite upsetting for the evacuees in the room, and those who feared evacuation.  But to their credit, they kept their dissatisfaction trained on McClintock himself.

I asked a woman who had identified herself as an evacuee what, specifically, she would like to see from McClintock.  She answered calmly, and with clarity.  First, she wanted his presence.  He needed to come to Mariposa County and show its residents that he cared about them.  Second, she wanted to know that he was communicating with all the involved agencies--with Cal Fire, the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service, and PG&E.  Finally, she wanted him to address people's concerns.  People were facing loss of income from the fire.  And some had lost their homes.  What did McClintock have to say about that?

Facing the Detwiler Fire from the top of Miami Mountain, July 21

Since the Detwiler Fire started on July 16, Tom McClintock has published two speeches on his website.  Both showed up on July 19, by which point the Detwiler Fire had burned 45,000 acres, and several homes had been lost.  Governor Jerry Brown had already declared a state of emergency.  The first of McClintock's July 19 speeches pertained to our federal spending deficit.  He cautioned his fellow House Budget Committee members that raising taxes above their "natural limit" would only drive us closer to economic collapse.  The second speech was an assertion to the House Budget Committee that the best way to lift people out of poverty was to wean them off their entitlements.  Also, corporate taxes strip ordinary Americans of their money and jobs.

Right.  So, nothing about Detwiler.  Nothing about Mariposa County residents, unless he meant to include them in the impoverished class he is trying to help by downsizing federal aid programs and slashing corporate taxes.

As it turns out, Tom McClintock did finally make his way to Mariposa County.  Earlier today, he visited a command center, where he met with Mariposa County Sheriff Doug Binnewies and Cal Fire officials.  He even shared a few photos online to prove he was there.  But I think many of those impacted by the Detwiler Fire would say:  too little, too late.

With a population of 17,410 souls, Mariposa County is home to only around 2 percent of Tom McClintock's constituents.  You would have to multiply the county's population by 10 to equal that of Elk Grove, the Sacramento suburb in which McClintock himself resides.  Mariposa County has no incorporated cities, and no permanent traffic lights.  But Mariposa County matters.  That was our primary message for Matt on Thursday, and that is what we hope will get through to Tom.

Facing the Detwiler Fire from the top of Miami Mountain, July 22

Bead 19: Office Hours Make Me Cry

The first time I attended my congressman's satellite office hours, I couldn't keep the shake out of my voice as I explained to the young staffer how crucial food stamps and Medicaid had been for me in the past.  The second time was worse; I cried and swore.

I didn't see it coming.  I was having a good day.  Walking to the meeting spot from work, I enjoyed the sensation of my arms and legs churning through the heat, creating a microbreeze to sustain me for my ten minutes between AC units.  In my purse was a letter from my congressman.  All the best words and phrases were accented with pink highlighter.  I was organized.  I was upbeat.  I was ready.

Inside, I was happy to see that the staffer was once again Matt Reed, the same personable fellow as last time.  Just like last time, I sat in the chair immediately to Matt's left.  I was a couple of minutes late, and the meeting was already underway.  Matt seemed to be providing an update on Tom McClintock's recent efforts in Congress.  Coincidentally, the agenda item I walked in on was the Emergency Forest Restoration Act, a pet peeve of mine that I've written about previously.  Matt was explaining how this bit of McClintock genius would benefit District 4, in that it would fund the removal of our beetle-killed trees, and otherwise improve forest health.  

It didn't sound half-bad, but the room was full of McClintock skeptics who knew to expect the proverbial drop of the other shoe.  Someone asked Matt how the program would be funded.  Matt explained that it would be through timber sales, but only of trees that would be dying soon anyway.  The sales, he said, would target the same species as the beetles--in our area, presumably the ponderosa pine--and would be located near the site of infestations.

This boded better than the bill text I had read a few months ago, which had not held the timber sales to any sort of sustainability criteria.  I gave Matt the benefit of the doubt, and assumed that the bill had been amended. 

But in re-reading it a few days later, I saw that the bill was just as it was originally introduced in February.  The Emergency Forest Restoration Act's main aim, from what I can tell, is to grease everyone's chainsaws.  Sure, it funds actions by the U.S. Forest Service and other agencies to deal with insect infestations.  But it requires those monies to be paid back in full through timber sales.  The bill sets no ground rules as to where and what to log, provided it's outside of wilderness and roadless areas.  The crux is that all activities carried out under the Act--both the insect-related actions and the timber sales--get to skip environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act.  That means that, while the Forest Service might analyze the projects internally, there will be no formal process for public participation.  No public notices, no public hearings, no public comment periods.

Big picture, that means less accountability.  And less democracy.

It wasn't McClintock's feigned concern for forest health that made me cry and swear at the office hours, though.  It was his lack of concern for human health.  The Better Care Reconciliation Act, or BCRA, is the latest attempt by U.S. lawmakers to topple Obamacare.  It's the Senate's version of the American Health Care Act, or AHCA, which McClintock helped pass out of the House in May.  And it's ugly.

The BCRA is a moving target.  Perpetually unable to garner the votes it needs, it's been revised twice since the June 21 office hours.  The version of it we were discussing on June 21 had a to-do list like this:  1) reduce subsidies, 2) rein in eligibility, 2) lower the bar for insurance plans, 4) cut taxes for wealthy income-earners and corporations, 5) defund Planned Parenthood for a year, and 6) gut Medicaid forever.

Nobody at the office hours, except for maybe Matt, wanted to see the BCRA--or anything close to it--become a law.  There was a pharmacist who knew firsthand how the "whatever the market will bear" dynamic hurt the low-income and elderly people that he dispensed prescriptions to.  There was an occupational therapist who spent a lot of her time in nursing homes.  If Medicaid collapsed, she didn't know how her elderly patients would be able to afford residential care.

There was a woman whose grown daughter had a serious health condition requiring regular infusions.  Her treatments were enormously expensive, and untenable without insurance coverage, which in her case happened to be Obamacare.  The woman worried about what would happen to her daughter under the BCRA.  Would she lose her coverage?  Without insurance, she wouldn't be able to get her treatments.  And without her treatments, she would die.

By this point, the emotional timbre in the room was dialed up a notch.  And I was close to losing it.  It was the way the woman talked about her daughter--so sweetly, with such motherly concern.  She didn't seem angry at Matt, or Tom McClintock, or anyone else.  She was just scared.

Then came my friend Lynn.  Lynn is a retired professor of social welfare policy who has pledged to spend the rest of her days fighting for people and the environment.  Diplomatic by nature, she didn't mince any words about the BCRA.  It was nothing more than an $800 billion tax cut for the rich, she said.  Obamacare had provided a mechanism for the most privileged members of our society to give a leg up to the most vulnerable; the BCRA would take that away, and then some.  At 76, Lynn worried about the future of Medicare and Medicaid not just for her own age cohort, but for those of her children and grandchildren.  She worried about it for everyone.

When Lynn talks about her causes for the greater good, she is always passionate.  But I've never seen Lynn get angry.  At the office hours, she was angry.  She interrupted herself to apologize for it--"I'm sorry to get angry," she said, and went on.  This is what did me in.

I started to cry.  It wasn't just an eye-misting sort of cry.  It was the kind of cry that comes from down deep, that clenches you up and cuts off your air.  I at first felt a little embarrassed to be sitting right next to Matt, wiping away tears with the backs of my hands.  Then I worried that I was headed toward wholesale sobbing.  I focused on breathing, and kind of blacked out for the tail end of Lynn's contribution.  But my heart was wide open, and fused with most of the other hearts in the room.

Matt had a few things to say in response to people's concerns about the BCRA.  To Lynn's point about the $800 billion tax cut, he acknowledged that yes, a medical device tax had been removed.  McClintock and others like him considered it to be unfair double taxation.  But Matt didn't mention the tax cuts of consequence--the ones that actually accounted for the $800 billion price tag.  He didn't mention the elimination of a 3.8 percent investment income tax for families with annual incomes over $250,000, or a 0.9 percent Medicare surtax on wage income in excess of $250,000.  And he didn't mention the tax breaks promised to insurance and drug companies over the next 10 years.

As to Medicaid, Matt echoed McClintock's sentiments that some people just weren't needy enough to be receiving government-sponsored health care.  To me, this notion is heartbreaking.  Obamacare expanded Medicaid for American children by raising the household income cutoff from 100 percent to 133 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL).  It also gave states the option of covering childless, able-bodied adults with income at or below 133 percent FPL; previously, this population was categorically disqualified from Medicaid.  As the pharmacist at the office hours put it, Obamacare's Medicaid expansion helped the "donut hole people" of our nation--those who were plenty poor, but just not poor enough to receive government aid.

Just how poor is 133 percent FPL?  For an individual, it's $16,040 per year.  For a family of two, it's $21,599; for three, it's $27,159.  And so on.  We are not talking big income here.  These aren't people who are trying to scam the system.  These are people who work, and can't pay their bills.  These are people who, prior to Obamacare, might have had to weigh out the relative benefits of a doctor's appointment and a shopping cart full of groceries.

These aren't people that should be getting the ax.  But according to Tom McClintock, who presumably earns at least the $174,000 default salary afforded to members of House of Representatives, 133 percent FPL is far too generous a threshold.  If the BCRA passes, these people are once again headed for the donut hole.

In response to the mother who feared what the end of Obamacare would mean for her medically needy daughter, Matt said simply that people don't die from lack of health insurance.  There was no hostility in his voice.  It was as if he meant to reassure her.  But coming from the office of a man who acknowledges his constituents' concerns only insofar as they dovetail perfectly with Tea Party ideals, I doubt the mother felt any relief.

Me, I felt ready to burst.  How could people be so greedy?  How could people be so mean?  Why was everything ruled by money?  How had we let corporate interests infiltrate every aspect of American life, so that the very few at the top dictated our principles, our morals, and--through puppets like McClintock--the Law of the Land?

With just a few minutes remaining in our office hours with Matt, I pounced.  Unfolding the letter from my purse, I said I was deeply disturbed by McClintock's recent words for his newsletter recipients.  He had appealed to his readers, many of whom hadn't even voted for him, to take a stand against the "radical left," who were attempting to "deny the legitimacy of the election, to obstruct the administration from fulfilling its promises and to threaten, intimidate, and bully anyone who disagrees with them."  He warned his readers that their progressive neighbors were operating under centralized direction, and were working to "portray their radical views as mainstream."  He suggested that he and his ilk were "men of good will," while those on the other side of the aisle were "evil."

I shared with Matt and the rest of the group, as if it wasn't obvious, how distressed I was over what we had heard today.  Over the past hour, people had spoken about life-and-death health struggles, their concern for their loved ones, their concern for their patients, and their general apprehension about the future.  Where, I asked Matt, were the radical views?  Were we radical because we believed our society could, and should, take care of its most vulnerable?  Were we radical because we saw health care as a basic human right, not a privilege?  Were we radical because we were afraid?

My voice rose in pitch, and I started to lose track of what I was saying.  I think I might have waved the letter around a little bit.  I wrapped up my speech by bellowing "That's bullshit!"--not exactly at Matt, but through the portal of Matt to Tom McClintock.

Matt remained calm.  He explained that the letter had come from McClintock's campaign office, not his congressional office.  ("What difference does it make?" people protested.)  It had already been the subject of much scorn at Town Hall meetings and other venues.  People were upset, he admitted.  And the letter was probably a mistake.

Having spoken my piece, I settled down.  The meeting ended.  Walking back to work, I again swung my limbs in the heat, trying for the fan effect.  I chuckled at myself for having lost my composure.  And I nourished just the tiniest nugget of pride that I, a fundamentally non-confrontational person, had mustered up the indignation to call bullshit to Tom McClintock at a public forum.

There is a beautiful mural on one of the outbuildings at the Methodist church, which marks the approximate halfway point of my monthly walk to McClintock's office hours.  I'm not sure how long it's been around.  I started noticing it only recently.  On June 21, it was a salve for my spirits.  They tried to bury us; they didn't know we were seeds.

Bead 18: Coup d' éTom, Part 2

It turns out a bunch of fine women are after Tom McClintock.  After his job, that is.  Presumably no woman save Lori McClintock likes likes the guy, and since they married in 1987, I imagine the jig is pretty well up by now.  He lies.  He scapegoats.  He doesn't listen.  He consistently denies reality.  These are deplorable traits in spouses and congressmen alike.  So why don't we all agree to file for divorce in 2018?

The women who are presently after Tom's job are Regina Bateson, Jessica Morse, Roza Calderon, and Rochelle Wilcox, all Democrats and 4th District residents.  Here in the nether region of the District, we've already been visited by two of the candidates.  Jessica Morse was the main attraction at an Oakhurst Area for Peace / Coarsegold Indivisible gathering on June 13, and Regina Bateson at a June 24 meeting at the Oakhurst Public Library.  Previously, I wrote about Jessica.  Now it's Regina's turn.

First off, I have to say that after Jessica Morse, I didn't think it would be possible to be truly impressed with another candidate.  Jessica was special.  She flew in the face of all my political stereotypes.  The other candidates would, I reasoned, be just as I knew politicians to be:  impersonal and inauthentic, with loads of mascara, hair sculpted into no-nonsense helmets, and well-lipsticked mouths flapping rhetoric I couldn't even begin to trust.   

So when Regina Bateson bustled into the room ten minutes late, looking harried, apologetic, and distinctly human, I was surprised.  And when she started to talk, and filled up the room with warmth and humor instead of rhetoric, I sat up in my chair and started taking notes.  Regina Bateson was not the droid I was looking for.

Regina's backstory, as told in that little meeting room at the Oakhurst Public Library, is that she grew up in an average American household in Roseville, California.  She went to public schools, and as a teenager worked a variety of service jobs.  She joked that if any of us were passing through Roseville in the late 1990s, there is good chance that she sold us an ice cream cone.

There was nothing average about her college years, though.  She earned her BA at Stanford, and went on to study political science at Yale, where she emerged with an MA and a PhD.  She carried her ivy league streak into her career, taking a job as an assistant professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  She's been there since 2013; however, she shared with us that she'll be taking a leave of absence next year to serve as a visiting fellow at Stanford and focus on her bid for Congress.

Like Jessica Morse, Regina is an alumnus of the State Department.  Between Stanford and Yale, she trotted off to Guatemala, where she worked as a Foreign Service Officer at the U.S. Consulate in Guatemala City.  There, she interviewed visa applicants and supported American citizens living or traveling abroad.  Not surprisingly, Regina is fluent in Spanish.  And like Jessica, she has another language or two under her belt; her CV states she is "intermediate" in French and "conversational" in Portuguese.

But at the Oakhurst Public Library, Regina didn't belabor her own biography.  She wanted to talk about Tom.  To my delight, she confessed that she is actually somewhat obsessed with Tom McClintock and has taken it upon herself to track his slime trails through California and U.S. politics. 

She asked if anyone knew how Tom McClintock came to represent California's 4th Congressional District.  Some of us, including me, faintly nodded--but as she began to tell the tale, I realized I didn't know the half of it.  By 2008, Tom was due to term out in the California State Legislature, where he'd represented various Southern California districts as an Assemblyman and Senator for more than 20 years.  At the same time, the 4th District's incumbent congressman, John Doolittle, was in the hot seat for having skimmed campaign funds via his wife's consulting firm.  The Republican Party instructed Doolittle not to run for reelection in 2008--and District 4, which always went red, dangled in space like a fat carrot, just waiting to be snatched by the first opportunistic conservative that came along.

Enter the ever-smirking face of Tom McClintock.  With no future at the California Legislature, and having already failed in four separate bids for statewide offices, he decided to take a stab at federal politics.  And despite a strong showing by his Democratic opponent, actually named Charlie Brown, McClintock won the 4th in 2008, and has won it every two years since.

Regina talked strategy with us.  Why can't a Democrat ever beat Tom McClintock?  The key here, she explained, is fundraising.  Tom consistently raises $3 million in campaign funds.  No Democrat since Charlie Brown has raised more than $100,000.  Lacking money, Tom's opponents haven't been able to put anyone on payroll; no one since Charlie Brown has had paid staff.

Needless to say, Regina hopes to turn this around.  She is planning a fundraising sweep of the District.  She is inviting her supporters to throw house parties that she will attend, regardless of anticipated kitty size.  She is calling for even the smallest individual contributions (think Bernie and his $27).  She is turning to the District's wealthy groupies in the Bay Area, who own second homes in Tahoe and care about what happens here.  Regina's vision is that, come primary time, we Democrats will be a force to reckon with, and that we can "signal our strength" with votes meeting or exceeding Tom's. 

There is a strong sense of "us" with Regina.  You don't get the feeling this is about her career.  Indeed, as she put it, she had already been quite busy, and hadn't been looking to take anything else on.  She loved her job, and enjoyed being a mom to her three small kids.  But then came the 2016 election.  It was, she said, a call to action.  She decided to throw herself into overthrowing Tom.  Her first thought was to form a super PAC to support the Democratic contender that would surely step forward.  But when that didn't happen, she took matters into her own hands.   

Regina Bateson, left, talks with a potential constituent after the meeting at the Oakhurst Public Library

 

On her Facebook page, Regina Bateson describes herself as a moderate Democrat.  That was borne out in the Q-and-A at the Oakhurst Public Library.  When asked about single-payer healthcare, she said that, while she can see the benefits of such a system, she feels it will be at least ten years before single-payer is workable at the federal level.  For now, she said, she would work on strengthening the Affordable Care Act.  When asked about the student debt crisis, she talked about lowering interest rates, improving community colleges, and bolstering loan forgiveness programs and vocational education--but stopped short of advocating free college tuition.  When it came to the latter, she said, she'd have to look into it more.  She didn't know if it would pencil out.

In general, Regina Bateson seemed a bit more hesitant to advocate particular points of view than Jessica Morse.  She answered a number of questions with variations of "I'd be open to that, but I need to look into it first."  She praised a friend of mine for having posed the first-ever foreign policy question at any of her campaign stops, but didn't reward her with a substantive answer; she merely lamented that getting out of Afghanistan would be a "conundrum."  I never felt that Regina was being disingenuous.  To me, her hesitation reflected a shortage of experience with the wide range of issues we lobbed at her, and that she would presumably encounter if elected to the U.S. Congress.     

Perhaps Regina's biggest Q-and-A challenge came in the form of a California Democratic Party county-level official who lives locally.  On the heels of a question from a man who was clearly skeptical of the Democratic establishment, this official detailed, at length, the process of endorsing a particular candidate for a House race.  It involved an incestuous tangle of meetings, caucuses, votes, and rules, and meant exactly nothing to me.  In fact, after trying to listen for about a minute, I spent the rest of the lecture silently congratulating myself for not being a registered Democrat.  Elsewhere in the room, people got up and left.

Regina handled the diversion with grace.  When the official finished speaking, Regina thanked the original question-asker for his patience, and attempted to translate some of the party jargon into human speak for his benefit.  She restored the original flow of the evening, and the Q-and-A continued.

Having spent the bulk of her adult life in the study of political science, Regina Bateson clearly understands politics.  She knows what it will take to beat Tom McClintock, and her path for getting there is well-lit by her academic credentials.  She is bright, she is likeable, and she already knows how to play the game.

But leaving the Oakhurst Public Library that day, I felt vaguely depressed.  Tom McClintock is a politician.  He has no other trade; he has been a politician his entire career.  If he were a woman, he would certainly sport a helmet hairdo and too much mascara.  Regina Bateson is not a politician.  She seems like an honest, down-to-earth human being.  But her career has been mostly confined to the ivory tower, where she has busied herself with... politics.  And it's paying off.  The county-level official made a few comments at the meeting that, to me, suggested Regina was the California Democratic Party's 4th District darling.

I would like my next representative to be a leader rather than a politician or, frankly, a political scientist.  I would like to know my representative has lived in the world, and has muddied her boots in the management of real-life problems.  I would like my representative to embrace input from her constituents without shying away from her own truths, which she will unequivocally share with anyone who asks.  And of course, I would like those truths to swing pretty far left.

My process for endorsing a particular candidate in the race to unseat Tom McClintock is nothing like the California Democratic Party's.  There are no mind-boggling formalities here--just good, old-fashioned thinking tempered by gut instinct.  So far, my candidate of choice is Jessica Morse.  I will try to keep an open mind, however.  Stay tuned for the next installment of Coup d' éTom, to be published after Roza Calderon's visit to Oakhurst on July 19.