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. 

Bead 17: Coup d' éTom, Part 1

Jessica Morse has lived in more third-world countries than most Americans have lived in states.  Fresh out of college, there was Ethiopia, where she worked for a famine relief NGO.  Then there was a gig in Iraq with the U.S. Agency for International Development.  In India, while at the U.S. Pacific Command, she was tasked with strengthening the U.S. / India defense relationship.  And in Nepal, she followed her own vision, helping Nepalese women launch careers as mountain guides. 

These days, Jessica is back home in California's 4th Congressional District.  She hopes to capture it from everyone's least-favorite Tom when it's up for grabs in 2018.  She is a better choice than Tom McClintock for myriad reasons. Take her extensive public service.  Take her emphasis on humanitarian issues and diplomacy.  Take her work at the State Department, where she managed the multi-billion dollar foreign aid budget.  And take her place of residence.  Jessica Morse lives among her potential constituents, rather than in a gated community outside of Sacramento.  In fact, Jessica presently lives among her potential constituents to the tune of their guest bedrooms and couches.  She is roaming the district, giving talks, meeting people.  What's more, she is listening.  And for those of us who have lost our voices pleading with the brick wall that is our incumbent congressman, that is perhaps Jessica's most shining asset.

I met Jessica in a bucolic backyard outside of Coarsegold, California.  She had been invited to speak at the monthly gathering of our local peace group.  There against a backdrop of horses, turkeys, and an emphatic parrot, and with Coarsegold Creek pooling and pulsing around boulders just down the hill, Jessica addressed us.

She started with a speech.  This took me somewhat aback, as the evening had been so informal up to that point.  We had all been drinking wine and snacking.  I had been sitting on a boulder, watching our hosts' small dog play in the creek.  There were kittens wandering around everywhere.  And then--a speech?

But Jessica's speech was as real and energizing as the springtime evening air around us.  She told us where she came from, and credited the whos and whats that made her.  She showed us how her values differed from those purportedly espoused by Tom (but suspected by many of us to just be stage props for his personal gain).  And she told stories that defined the contour lines of her character.  One of my favorites was from her time in Iraq.  She went for a run in what she had been told was a "safe zone," and promptly found herself surrounded by a dozen armed militants who intended to kidnap her.  She scrambled around in her head for what to do, and ended up sprinting directly at them--as if it were they, and not her, who were about to be taken prisoner.  They were startled, and let her go.

Jessica Morse at the Oakhurst Area for Peace's June 14 gathering.  Photo courtesy of Matt Henderson.

By the end of the speech, I knew Jessica to be courageous, innovative, and committed to the greater good.  Moreover, I liked her.  We had things in common; for example, our predilection for long-distance walking.  She once hiked 500 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail, covering the entire length of California's 4th Congressional District, and then some.  I once hiked the Pacific Crest Trail.  I never thought of my backpacking credentials as something that would strike a chord with any of my elected officials.  And yet here she was, talking about the High Sierra the way I knew it:  as a place to live, and cherish, and move through slowly.

Jessica's Q-and-A session impressed me even further.  One of the first questions came from a man who had driven several hours, from a town at the southern end of the district, to be here.  His was actually several questions in one, and they weren't softballs.  He was fed up with our government's foreign policy blunders and military overreach.  He wanted to know why we had 800 military bases around the world.  He wanted to know how we had managed to mess up Iraq so badly as to foment the rise of ISIS.  He wanted to know a number of other things that I don't remember now.

But Jessica remembered everything.  She addressed his questions thoughtfully, and in order.  She provided a detailed summary of our government's errors in Iraq, linking them to the present-day unrest.  She discussed our bloated military budget, and made suggestions for cuts that could be made.  And she laid her own, clearly-defined opinions out on the table for us to look at, rather than sticking to the safe, vague rhetoric that is the domain of so many modern politicians. 

Later in the Q-and-A, one of my fellow peace group members tipped Jessica off that "this is a Bernie crowd," and asked Jessica how she could help us reconcile the fact that she had volunteered on the Clinton campaign.  Again, Jessica did not disappoint.  She gave a good reason for her support of Hillary; namely, that she had worked under her at the State Department, and had been impressed with her approach for promoting democracy in Burma.  She didn't apologize for endorsing Hillary over Bernie, and she certainly didn't backpedal.  At the same time, she highlighted those Bernie planks that especially resonated with her; for example, free college tuition.

Also in the Q-and-A, we learned that Jessica is trilingual.  She once had the opportunity to employ all three languages simultaneously.  While in Nepal, she met a lesbian couple from Spain who had just finished a trek.  She chatted with them for a while in Spanish before noticing a little girl hanging around.  She began speaking with her in Nepalese.  Instantly, the women were exclaiming, beside themselves.  They explained that the girl was their newly-adopted daughter with whom they couldn't communicate.  They only spoke Spanish.  The little girl only spoke Nepalese.  Jessica spoke both.

For the next hour or so, Jessica helped the couple get to know their daughter, and vice versa.  The little girl knew that she had been adopted, and was excited to go live with her new family in Spain.  For foods, she liked to eat lentils and rice.  The women told their daughter how happy they were to have found her.  And Jessica put her English-speaking brain in the middle, and did her best to fold the gratitude, the shy joy of the moment, from one language into the next.

At the end of the Q-and-A, we gave Jessica Morse a noisy round of applause.  The parrot joined in, squawking its approval.  And then the evening circled back on itself, into more wine and snacking.  Jessica lingered, and spoke with anyone that wanted to.  I went up to her with two burning questions that I hadn't gotten to ask in the Q-and-A.  First, did she live in District?  (The answer was yes, and that was when I learned about the couch-surfing.)  Second, did she support single-payer health care, as in the bill that was currently making headway in the California State Legislature?  (The answer was yes again.)

And then we talked backpacking.  Her pack is a Deuter; mine is a Gregory.  We love all the same places.  I ventured that we must have crossed paths at some point, along the John Muir Trail or a quieter Sierran side route.  And we agreed to find ourselves in the mountains together at some point in the future--perhaps with a fundraiser hike up one of the 4th District's fine peaks in the Ansel Adams Wilderness or Yosemite.

California's 4th Congressional District is its own spectacular world.  It only makes sense that it should be represented by someone who has experienced it from top to bottom.  By someone who wants to protect it, to keep it clean and livable.  By someone who cares deeply for people, and most especially for the people of the 4th.  And, of course, by someone who calls our District home.

Bead 16: A Cleaner, Greener Retirement Plan

I know that there is the Irish Republican Army, and I know that there is also the Individual Retirement Account.  I know that I have one of the latter.  I know that I get a few statements a month pertaining to my IRA, and that they go one of two places.  On days when I'm feeling particularly mature, like a grown-up who handles her own business and plans for her own future, the statements go (unopened) in the wicker basket in my kitchen, joining a host of bills, receipts, and other items to be dealt with at a later date.  On days when I'm feeling more myself, the statements go (unopened) in the box of burnables next to the woodstove, or straight into the fire if there happens to be one. 

I'd say I open roughly 25 percent of my IRA statements.  There are just too many of them, and I don't really understand what they are trying to tell me.  But about a year ago, on one of my grown-up days, I opened a thick packet from my friends at the Growth Fund of America (AGTHX), who at that time had all my money.  I can't remember what made me do it.  Perhaps it was the heft of the envelope, and the hefty postage it cost for them to get it to me.  At any rate, I opened it, and it was sort of a hybrid brochure / coffee table book of what the Growth Fund of America was all about.  And then I saw, with my own eyes, exactly where my money was.

It was like an evil scientists convention.  For fossil fuels profiteering, I had Halliburton, EOG Resources, Exxon, Chevron, and Shell.  For toxic food, I had Monsanto.  For weaponizing the world, I had Lockheed Martin.  For exploiting addiction, I had Philip Morris and Teva Pharmaceuticals.  For deforestation, I had Weyerhauser.  For child slavery in Africa, I had Nestle.  For fake news, I had Fox.  And for big banks, I had all of them. 

It was more than a girl could bear.  Slipping the brochure into the firestarter box, I vowed to make a change.  I didn't quite know what to do, but I suspected it would start with calling my financial advisor.  That.  I would do that.

But twelve months came and went.  A ream of envelopes from Edward Jones and American Funds went into the wicker basket, or the woodstove.  It wasn't that I didn't care.  In my day-to-day life, I was attempting not to buy food from companies that used Monsanto products.  I had stopped eating Nestle and other peddlers of "slave chocolate."  I never tuned in to Fox news.  And as the Dakota Access pipeline cleared its final hurdles, I had divested from a couple of the big banks that were behind it. 

The culprit, I now see, was inertia fueled by lack of confidence.  I didn't know anything about IRAs, other than that they weren't the plural of Irish Republican Army.  I didn't know what "funds" were.  I didn't know if I got to decide where to put my money.  And so I just sat on my hands as my retirement fund continued to grow, courtesy of all my anti-values.

My friend Susan issued the wake-up call.  It was a small moment; she just mentioned at one of our local peace group meetings that she had brought her investments in line with her principles, and the rest of us could, too.

I scheduled a meeting with my financial advisor.  It was my second-ever meeting with him; the first was when I opened my account.  I told him what I wanted:  a retirement plan that would let me sleep at night.  I floated a couple of ethical funds past him that I had found in a quick Q&A with Google.  He agreed to research some funds of his own, and get back to me shortly with my all-new, earth-friendly, people-friendly portfolio.

I actually opened this envelope from Edward Jones!

 
The envelope came in the mail last week.  It was another big one, stamped three times to ensure its passage up the hill from the Edward Jones office in Oakhurst.  I have to confess, it did have a short stay in the wicker basket.  But just a few days ago I opened it, and found that my retirement savings now sit in funds with names like TIAA-CREF Social Choice Equity Fund (IFBFX), Neuberger Berman Socially Responsive Fund (NBSLX), and Hartford Environmental Opportunities (HEOIX). 

My work is not done.  My advisor evidently thought I would be comfortable with mostly ethical investing, and so he stuck a few bad apples from American Funds in there, including a fund with considerable fossil fuels and Philip Morris holdings.  But now that I know a little more about my finances, and have seen that I can be the boss of my own IRA, I'm not afraid to go back to him and ask for more.

Bead 15: Food Stamps, Medicaid, and Office Hours with Matt

When it comes down to it, I am a people person.  I get disgusted with humanity as a whole from time to time, or with large sectors of humanity.  But when I am face to face with another member of my species, I tend to find the good.  I find points of connection.

If I were to sit down with my Congressman, Tom McClintock, I am pretty sure things would not go well.  Even if I didn't have any preconceived notions about the guy--if I hadn't attended the Mariposa Town Hall, if I hadn't read his speeches and statements, if I didn't know his voting record--I suspect it would only take a few minutes before I felt justified in writing him off.  He is so smug, so patronizing, so fixed in his viewpoints; I can only assume that he would instantly offend.

Matt, on the other hand, is a charming and personable young man.  Matt is one of Tom McClintock's aides:  the guy who held the microphone at the Mariposa Town Hall, and has now manned several of Tom McClintock's scheduled office hours in Oakhurst.  I would drink a beer with Matt.  I would level with him.  Something along the lines of, "Come on, Matt.  You can tell me.  McClintock is a real dick, right?  I swear I won't publish it on my blog."

I attended McClintock's Oakhurst office hours for the first time a couple weeks ago.  I didn't know what to expect. Recalling the Mariposa Town Hall, when several progressive folk got their tires slashed, I chose not to walk my dog to the meeting spot.  I could have tied her up in the shade outside, but what if a McClintock supporter poisoned her?  I played it safe, and walked alone.

As it turned out, the office session was nothing like the Town Hall.  Matt was the only person in the room who identified with McClintock, and he certainly didn't seem like the dog-poisoning type.  He listened, smiled a real smile.  He made jokes, and not just about liberal people.  He took a lot of notes.  He didn't argue.  He was in a roomful of his political antagonists, and he managed to remain human. 

The hot topic at this month's office session was Trump's recently-released budget plan, a.k.a. A New Foundation for American Greatness.  No one mentioned it by name, I guess because we were trying to keep a serious tone.  But it was what drove the conversation.

A pharmacist was concerned about Trump's proposed axing of the student loan debt forgiveness program for public servants.  The executive director of our local tourism bureau was concerned about the axing of BrandUSA, which I had never heard of before, but which is evidently a publicly-funded organization focused on promoting U.S. tourism to the rest of the world.  And I raised my voice about Trump's proposed axing of poor people.

Okay, I guess he hasn't yet announced any plans to directly eliminate poor people.  But with A New Foundation for American Greatness, he proposes to cut the lifeline to America's most vulnerable populations with drastic slashes to food stamps and Medicaid.

One of many such billboards along Highway 99 right now, demonstrating how crucial California's Medicaid program is to its residents

If we are to believe the rhetoric about social welfare programs that has been promoted by Republicans since FDR's New Deal, I am an anomaly.  That is because I once used food stamps, Medicaid, and various other entitlements, and now I don't.  The reason I used those programs was that I was a single mom trying to get an education and somehow still put food on the table.  The reason I don't anymore was that I finally got that education, and was lucky enough to find work that allows me to pay my own way.  Contrary to the rhetoric, I was happy to give up entitlements once I saw my own, strong safety net taking shape.

The thing is, I'm not an anomaly--not the way McClintock and his ilk think I am, anyway.  This is what I tried to convey to Matt.  Nobody wants to be on public assistance.  Approach any welfare recipient of sound body and mind, and offer them a good job.  Not a Wal-Mart job, not something that will barely push them out of eligibility while decreasing their quality of life and probably also their income.  That's not a real choice.  Offer them a job that pays a livable wage and benefits, and allows them to still parent their children.  In that scenario, public assistance is well worth leaving behind.

The sense in which I am an anomaly is that I had certain privileges that made public assistance inherently temporary for me.  My parents bought my undergraduate education; I was on the familial dole for those four years, and didn't need to ask the government for help.  By graduate school, I had spent my share of the family's college fund, and had to go it alone.  I cobbled together a meager income from stipends, student loans, and credit cards.  At first, I was a relatively well-off poor person, eligible only for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) nutritional assistance and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP).  Toward the end, I dipped below the federal poverty level, and qualified for food stamps and Medicaid.  But I was a graduate student.  I knew that once I got my Master's degree, I could get a professional-level job.  Entitlements were just a waystation, a little cache of resources that I could pick up and be along my way.  I was a runner bearing down on the finish line.  

For most Americans on public assistance, it's not that easy.  These are people in generational poverty, who don't have family money to fall back on, and aren't considering grad school.  In fact, nearly a third of households receiving food stamps in 2014 were headed by people without a high school diploma.  In the past, that figure has been well over half [1].  These are people for whom accepting full-time work means relinquishing as much as 50 percent of their income to child care [2].  These are people with transportation issues, language barriers, physical or mental impairments severe enough to make working difficult, but not severe enough to yield disability benefits.  These are people living at the ragged edge of the American Dream.  They are keenly aware of the Dream; they see it every day on their screens, at the grocery store, on the subway.  But for them, it's as unattainable as the Presidency.

Meanwhile, our President is doing all he can to keep the Dream exclusive.  A New Foundation for American Greatness proposes to cut $194 billion from food stamps and $627 billion from Medicaid over a 10-year period [3].  If that weren't enough, he also proposes a $70 billion cut to disability insurance [4].  The goal is to "close eligibility loopholes, target benefits to the neediest households, and require able-bodied adults to work" [5].

The President would have us believe that a lot of undeserving people are getting a free ride.  But who are those people?  First of all, public assistance recipients are overwhelmingly not "able-bodied adults"; two-thirds of those receiving food stamps are children, elderly, or disabled [6].  Able-bodied adults with no dependents may receive short-term food stamps relief while unemployed, but for long-term coverage, such adults are required to work at least 20 hours per week.

Secondly, to be eligible for food stamps and Medicaid, you have to make less than 130 percent of the federal poverty level.  Perhaps you don't know how low that is.  The federal poverty level for 2017 is $24,600 for a family of four.  So, to qualify for food stamps and Medicaid, your gross income needs to be less than $31,980.  What's more, your assets, at any given point in time, can't exceed $2,250.  I learned the hard way that this includes college savings accounts for children.  The bottom line is, you need to be dirt poor to qualify for these programs, and the government needs to see you eat your kids' chance for a future before they will step in to help. 

Although the atmosphere at McClintock's recent office session was neighborly, my voice shook when I finally spoke up.  Any kind of public speaking makes me nervous; a casual chat with Matt and a handful of my fellow peaceniks was no exception.  On top of that, I was sharing something personal.  In our country, there is an undeniable stigma against people who rely on public assistance to make ends meet.  At the office session, I revealed that I was, up until recently, such a person.  I made a shaky plug for the protection of food stamps and Medicaid from Trump's proposed cuts.  I reminded McClintock, through Matt, that these cuts will certainly affect people in California's 4th Congressional District.  Matt nodded and took notes.

Tom McClintock is not a man of the people.  He doesn't listen.  He doesn't sympathize.  He doesn't even live in the district he represents.  I don't expect him to care whether his constituents have health coverage and enough to eat.  I do expect him to care whether they vote for him.  I can only hope that Trump's proposed keel-haul of entitlement programs will hit home with McClintock--or more accurately, just 22 miles up the hill from home, where his district begins.  In the meantime, you'll find me at the Oakhurst office hours.   

References

[1] Center for Poverty Research study on food stamps:  http://www.ukcpr.org/sites/www.ukcpr.org/files/documents/DP2013-01.pdf

[2] Cost of child care for people living in poverty:  http://www.chn.org/2015/01/07/fact-week-child-care-cost-nearly-half-income-family-poverty-level/#.WTRRVn2Tsxs

[3] How Trump's budget would affect every part of government:   https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/23/us/politics/trump-budget-details.html

[4] Trump's proposed cuts to the disability program:  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/31/us/politics/food-stamps-disability-benefits-trump-budget.html

[5] A New Foundation for American Greatness

[6] Primer on the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), a.k.a. food stamps: http://www.cbpp.org/research/policy-basics-introduction-to-the-supplemental-nutrition-assistance-program-snap 

Bead 14: I lied through my teeth for the Paris Accord

I get all my best advice from John Oliver.  For example, recently I was wondering how a little old nobody leftist like me could get through to our President as regards the Paris Accord.  Trump seems to be waffling on this one, dragging his decision out across days of front-page headlines.  It's like he's begging us to tell him what to do--and believe me, I want to.  But how?

All I had to do was recall last week's episode of Last Week Tonight, entitled Stupid Watergate.  In it, John Oliver revealed the twin secrets to gaining the ear of Trump.  You have to: 1) pander to his narcissism, and 2) keep it real, real simple.  Evidently, several White House officials have observed that, in order for a security briefing to be absorbed in its entirety by our Commander-in-Chief, it needs to fit on a single page, and contain visual aids like maps and photos.  Also, it needs to make obsessive use of his name.  Evidently, the goal is to plug "Trump" into as many paragraphs as possible to hold the actual Trump's attention.

Today, while reading another top story about The Most Powerful Man in the World's ambivalence on keeping the world inhabitable, it finally clicked for me.  I need to offer Trump a little guidance!  And thanks to John Oliver, I know just how to do it.

Here is the letter I just submitted to https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact.  I admit, it's super-creepy.  I hope it won't cost me my blog followers, Facebook friends, and real friends.  But I just had to try it.  You should, too!  It was actually quite fun.

Dear President Trump,

When I think Trump, I think big time.  I think success.  Before we elected you as President, you dominated the world of business.  Now you dominate the world. 

Everybody knows it, even if they won't admit it:  You are breathing new life into our nation.  You are a visionary, and Make America Great Again is the vision that will save us all.  Now more than ever, I am proud to be an American--proud for the world to see us come into our birthright as the political, military, and economic force we were always meant to be.

Right now, you are in the middle of a big decision.  You are weighing whether to keep your promise to unburden us from the Paris Accord, or heed the advice of businessmen, other world leaders, cabinet members, and your daughter Ivanka to stay party to the agreement. 

A month or two ago, I might have put in my two cents for you to get us out of the Accord.  But I've started to see things in a different way.  If we leave the Accord, we don't get viewed as stronger.  We get viewed as weaker.  Those of us who voted for you will personally be pleased that you kept your word, but I fear the rest of the world will cut us out of the grown-ups' table.  

Already, China is poised to become the new leader in climate policy.  I don't mean they are about to get the most kudos from environmentalists.  I mean they are about to get the most recognition from other nations, and a bigger piece of the pie.  Even if "global warming" was cooked up in Beijing, the notion of it has gripped the whole world.  A lot of money can be made off of notions.  China knows this.  And we know this, too.

The worldwide notion of global warming has turned solar and wind energy into a major market sector.  I've lived in Kentucky, and I have seen how environmental laws can wreck an industry.  But I also know that above everything, pulsing overhead and keeping our lights on, is the market itself.  It's fickle, and sometimes it doesn't make sense.  But if we want to keep running the show, we have to follow where it leads.

President Trump, I know that tomorrow you will announce your decision.  Perhaps you've already made it, and aren't reading any more letters.  I pray that something will move you to read mine.  You are a great businessman and a great leader.  I pray that you will see that staying in the Paris Accord will further your vision to Make America Great Again, rather than diminish it.

God Bless,

[Bekah]