As you may remember from our previous meeting, the San Juan County Democrats chose to endorse progressive challenger Jason Call as well as incumbent Rick Larsen. I am starting off this communication with a message from each of them. We will hear first from Jason Call.

Dear San Juan County Democrats,

Our congressional campaign has quietly become one of the strongest progressive campaigns in the nation. We are running a no corporate money grassroots campaign to support Medicare For All, the Green New Deal, and many other vital progressive policies.

If you haven’t had an opportunity to hear from me directly, I have many interviews and forums on my campaign website media page https://www.callforcongress.com/media/ . If there’s any one of them I would want you to watch, it’s the forum I organized on June 16th that delves into Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) https://www.pscp.tv/w/1MnxndBLrvMGO . Our current economic structure is broken, and only works for the already wealthy. MMT is a way to restructure taxing and spending to have a democratic economy that works for everyone.

I look forward to being on the ballot with the incumbent in the general election, and again I am extremely grateful for the endorsement of the San Juan County Democrats.

Solidarity

Jason Call

[Notes from David Turnoy]

1. Jason just appeared on a program for progressive candidates yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWp48pSd6fE

2. Jason just received the endorsement of the Snohomish County Democrats today.]

Here are some items from Congressman Larsen’s campaign:

You can watch Rick’s latest Facebook Live at https://www.facebook.com/RickLarsenWA02/videos/628850097735172/?v=628850097735172 ,

where he talks about the past two weeks in Congress. House Democrats recently passed the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act to end police brutality, hold police accountable and build trust in law enforcement, as well as the Moving Forward Act https://mltnews.com/larsen-champions-changes-in-federal-legislation-that-would-invest-1-5-trillion-in-transportation/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter , a more than $1.5 trillion investment in infrastructure, and a bill to strengthen the Affordable Care Act. It’s now up to the Senate to act.

You can contact Rick’s campaign staffer Jack to sign up to phone bank at jack@ricklarsen.org .

Also, here is information about a virtual conversation on education:

San Juan County Virtual Conversation on Education

Tuesday, July 14, 6 – 6:45 p.m.

Hosted by retired professors Miriam Ziegler & Tom Baldwin

Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83042902714

Or call: +1 253 215 8782 – Meeting ID: 830 4290 2714

At our general meeting today, the County Fair committee updated us on their plan for a virtual exhibit. This will include short statements by individual Democrats in our county as to why you are a Democrat. If you are interested in recording a short statement for this exhibit, please contact Ryan Palmateer (our secretary and candidate for county council from San Juan Island) at ryanpalmateer@gmail.com . Ryan will take care of the technical end so you don’t have to; all you need to do is to prepare a brief statement that you are willing to share.

We had a brief presentation today from local members Bob O’Connell and Sharon Abreu on Modern Monetary Theory, or MMT. MMT is a new way of looking at our monetary system. Since we are no longer on a gold standard, we don’t have to have anything backing our currency except the faith of the people, productive capacity, and a low inflation rate. The government can issue as much money as it wants as long as we have productive capacity and low inflation. For instance, we spent billions we didn’t actually possess to fight WWII, and we spent more billions on the economic stimulus after the crash of 2008. Did we have to pay this back? No. In essence, the idea that we have to pay back the deficit is a myth. The federal government is a currency issuer, and it can issue as much money as it wants with the above caveats. The Federal Reserve can keep the rate of inflation low by keeping interest rates reasonably low, so all we need to really make sure we have is productive capacity, i.ie. the ability to produce things. We have the money for universal healthcare, a Green New Deal, and any other enterprise that involves producing something. MMT creates a whole new paradigm for spending on social needs, and we need to educate our government representatives so they get on board. The book to read on this subject is The Deficit Myth by Stephanie Kelton. There are many articles on the internet about MMT, and a great way to learn about it is the video listed above in Jason Call’s letter at https://www.pscp.tv/w/1MnxndBLrvMGO . The short presentation at our meeting was well received, and we look to have perhaps an hour at our next meeting to delve further into this subject.

We had updates from both of our members running for County Council. You can find Ryan Palmateer’s campaign at ryanpalmateer2020.com (San Juan Island). You can find Cindy Wolf at https://votecindywolf.com/ or https://www.facebook.com/votecindywolf/ (Orcas). Both appeared on the League of Women Voter forums this past week. If you missed them but would like to view them, here are the links:

Orcas: https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/xcMsdYjXxnpJaI3r6mfyV4kBGZ39X6a8g3Af-aVbzRu_Llx8AMOHal4zSIjBcjFq (1st half hour missing)

Password: 1g&X+.I$ Type in the password rather than copying and pasting.

San Juan I: https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/wZZTA_bC72pOcpHo5B7THZ4KFIe4eaa80CdI-_YMmUsrrL6KA2dhqwltBz2M_w6q

Password: Password: 2V&8W02q

Dr. John Geyman has released another book on the perils of our current healthcare system: Profiteering, Corruption and Fraud in U.S. Health Care. I am part way through the book, and it is excellent. I have especially appreciated learning about how we went from a service-oriented medical sector to a profit-oriented system.

Ryan and a buddy are working on a new logo for us. It will be three-dimensional, and on live broadcasts it will actually move. Cool!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You need to be aware of an item that will be on this fall’s ballot related to sex education in schools. The legislature passed a law providing for age-appropriate sex education in schools, but some people in the state would seem to prefer ignorance, and they put a referendum on the ballot to overturn this law. The way the referendum is worded, we will need to vote yes to approve the law providing for this education. I will have more information about this as we get closer to the election. It is titled R-90.

You may have wondered what happened with I-1776, the initiative to overturn I-200 and 22 years of systemic racism. Unfortunately, the timeline was too short, and in less than a month, while more than 230,000 signatures were collected, this fell short by about 40,000. A new effort will begin later this month to gather signatures for an initiative to the legislature so that when they meet in January, they can move it right onto the ballot for November, 2021. This effort will have until the end of December for signature-gathering.

You will see our campaign endorsements shortly in the local newspapers (July 22 and 29) and online at Orcas Issues and the San Juan Islander (July 15-Aug. 4). You should receive your ballot in the next week. There will also be an article in the local newspapers on July 15 that lists our endorsements. Be sure to vote.

While we have had our disagreements with the DNC (Democratic National Committee) over the years, they are actually on the right track with climate action. They have adopted a bold, ambitious and transformative climate policy platform for 2020. If you want to take a simple action to support this plan, please go to https://www.dncclimate.org/platform-petition where you can read about the plan and sign the petition.

Finally, after meeting once or twice a week over the past four months, the platform committee has finished its work revising and updating our platform. It is probably about four times as long as the previous platform. The progressive nature of the previous document is what first attracted me to the San Juan County Democrats, and we have now gone way beyond in crafting a pretty amazing platform of what we stand for and believe in. Our hope is to share this widely, getting other Democratic locals to buy into this so that we can try to hold our elected officials accountable in representing us. The whole document is available at https://sjdemocrats.org/platform/

I am pasting in the highlights page that appears at the beginning of the new document:

SAN JUAN COUNTY DEMOCRATS PLATFORM HIGHLIGHTS

1) Election Reform: Publicly Financed Political Campaigns (buy back our lawmakers), Constitutional Amendment overturning Citizens United and declaring that corporations are not people and money is not speech. (This is listed first because none of what follows can be adopted until we buy back our legislators.).

2) Voting Reform: Ensure universal voting rights; institute vote-by-mail; install Ranked Choice Voting; eliminate the Electoral College (popular vote election of the President).

3) Green New Deal/Fight Climate Change/Protect the Environment, Paris Climate Accord.

4) Single payer Medicare-for-All-type universal healthcare.

5) Reduce the Military Budget and Stay Out of Endless Wars.

6) Racial Justice and Law Enforcement Reform; opposition to the killing of Black people in interactions with law enforcement (see recently adopted Resolution).

7) Free Public Education (including pre-K-12 and four-year public college or trade school), plus elimination or easing of college debt.

8) Federal Job Guarantee, linked to the restoring and upkeep of our infrastructure; Establishment of a Living Income Guarantee.

9) Immigration Reform.

10) More progressive tax policy, including higher income tax rates at the top end, a wealth tax, and a Wall Street transaction tax.

11) Immediate Adoption of the Equal Rights Amendment.

Note: This list is only a glimpse at the Platform, which contains many other invaluable provisions.