Partners in Genocide?

by Michael Riordan

            If US forces withdraw from northern Syria as planned, the Kurds who live there face a potential massacre at the hands of the Turkish armed forces massing at the Syrian border. Better known to these long-suffering people as Rojava, they have established this region of relative sanity and democracy amidst the growing chaos gripping Syria and the wider Middle East. But led by strongman Recep Erdogan, the Turks regard them as “terrorists” in the same vein as the ISIS fighters that — with the aid of US special forces and air power — the Kurdish forces have driven from their lands.

            Since the Syrian Civil War began in 2011, the Kurds of northern Syria have been building a remarkable, multi-ethnic direct democracy in Rojava, in which the women play a signal role in governing and defending this region. Multiple articles and documentaries have revealed them in military camouflage and brandishing rifles, as well as participating as equals in village governing councils. Nowhere else in the Middle East, except perhaps Israel, do women enjoy any similar involvement.

            Their governing philosophy of “democratic confederalism” was conceived and promoted by Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan, now incarcerated in a Turkish jail, based on the political ideals of eco-anarchist philosopher Murray Bookchin, with whom I taught forty years ago at Goddard College in Vermont. His magnum opus, The Ecology of Freedom — on which I later served as his editor and publisher — has at Ocalan’s urging become the bible of the decentralized Rojava government.

            And this government is open not just to Kurds. Although they play leading roles, they have welcomed other regional ethnic groups into their midst, including Arabs, Turkomen and Yazidis. (In fact, Kurdish guerilla forces from Rojava helped rescue Yazidis from their ISIS captors on Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq.) And the Kurdish Peoples Protective Units have been fighting alongside Arab units in the Syrian Democratic Forces, coordinating with US, British and French air support.

            But this unique, fledgling experiment in democratic self-government is threatened by a vicious autocrat to the north who equates the Syrian Kurds with ethnic brethren in Turkey that, led by Ocalan, have been struggling for decades for recognition and political representation. Erdogan speciously calls them terrorists when they are only struggling to defend their homelands from brutal ISIS fighters, who have in fact benefitted from safe passage through Turkey on their way to Iraq and Syria. This is a political deceit of the highest order.

            And in a phone call on Friday, December 14, Erdogan convinced his fellow deceitful autocrat to withdraw US forces abruptly from northern Syria. If this ill-considered pullout goes through, it will expose the heroic Kurds and their allies to a savage Turkish onslaught, much like the one occurred in the Syrian border city of Afrin last March. US Defense Secretary James Mattis strove in vain to convince this president to rescind his knee-jerk order before resigning — followed a day later by Brett McGurk, the special presidential envoy to the global coalition fighting ISIS.

            I can readily understand why an absolutist Turkish dictator cannot tolerate a genuinely self-governing Kurdish society thriving immediately to his south. But it is difficult to comprehend how a democratically elected US president could facilitate his plans to snuff out such a hopeful society.

            It has become increasingly obvious that our accidental US president listens intently to other autocrats — Erdogan, Mohammed bin Salman and Vladimir Putin, to name a few — and not to the career diplomats and experts in his administration from the State Department, Defense Department and Central Intelligence Agency. How else to explain his ignorant, unyielding stance on the Syria pullout?

            And these crafty autocrats are taking advantage of his gross character defects to manipulate him, to the great detriment of US foreign policy.

            Should the Syria pullout go through, we can rest assured that Turkish tanks and troops will soon roll relentlessly through northern Syria, their advance covered from the air by Turkish fighter jets. Kurdish blood will again flow copiously, as has happened too often. But this time the blood will be on the hands of a US president.

            And an inspiring democratic experiment in the midst of the Middle Eastern chaos may unfortunately die with it.

Michael Riordan, author of The Hunting of the Quark and coauthor of Crystal Fire and Tunnel Visions, writes about science, technology and public policy from his home in Eastsound, Washington.

References

Akbar Shahid Ahmed, “America’s Best Allies Against ISIS Are Inspired by a Bronx-Born Libertarian Socialist,” Huffington Post, 12 January 2017.

Associated Press, Beirut, “Turkey Masses Troops near Kurdish-Held Town in Northern Syria, The Guardian, 23 December 2018.

Ghazi Balkiz and Angela Dewann, “Raqqa: The Women Who Helped Defeat ISIS,” CNN, 22 October 2017.

Karen DeYoung, Missy Ryan, Josh Dawsey and Greg Jaffe, “A Tumultuous Week Began with a Phone Call Between Trump and the Turkish President,” Washington Post, 21 December 2018.

Wes Enzinna, “A Dream of Secular Utopia In ISIS’ Backyard,” New York Times Magazine, 24 November 2015.

Carne Ross, “Power to the People: A Syrian Experiment in Democracy,” Financial Times, 23 October 2015.

Trudy Rubin, “Trump’s Green Light for Turkey to Massacre Our Kurdish Allies Must Be Countered,” The Inquirer, 26 December 2018.

Meredith Tax, “When Women Fight ISIS,” The New York Times, 28 August 2016.

Real 5G Concerns

           By Jon Humphrey

Originally published on NW Citizen on October 20, 2018

 We have to do 5G, the White House and FCC scream. We have to keep up with China! It will solve the problems with broadband in rural areas! It will out-pace any other network technology! The radiation levels coming out of the hideous small cells are there, but too low to worry about! Don’t worry, the small cells will look good, (except that in many cases we’ve been showing you distributed antenna system photos and not small cell photos). Shhh!

            This is but a small dose of the rhetoric coming out of the most corrupt FCC in American history, the anti-net neutral, anti-first amendment, un-trustworthy big telecoms, the White House, and high-level members of your own corrupt local government. But what is really going on? As usual, 5G, like 4G and 3G before it is mostly a marketing term and most of what you’re being told isn’t accurate.

            This move by the Trump administration and FCC is significant whether you support 5G or not. Why? Because, you can no longer say that this administration supports the values of small government, or cares about local, or state’s rights, after this. The new FCC rules, paired with corrupt local companies like Puget Sound Energy (PSE), the aforementioned wireless companies, and corrupt local officials allow the small cells to be installed virtually anywhere the companies deem fit. They can do it virtually whenever they want and wherever they want. The best we get for a guarantee is a bunch of loose promises about the “preferred installation heights and some camouflage” which will go out the windows if a competitor wants to install gear on the same pole.

            The partnership of PSE and Verizon, for example, allows small cells to be installed in communities without real notice, with few benefits to those communities, and whether people in those communities want them there or not. PSE does not provide maps for these installations and makes about 600 times more off of each pole rental than similar companies do in other communities.

            This makes it a direct conflict of interest for any PSE employee or investor to vote on these matters, but that’s exactly what Pinky Vargas does. Still, her conflicts pale in comparison with the total and complete incompetence when it comes to technology that Doug Ericksen displayed at the recent Point Roberts candidate night when he fawned over his big telecom owners and made sure to mention them and their importance as often as possible. He even erroneously claimed that Net-Neutrality was a complex issue when the truth is that it is the least complex way to route traffic. He also seemed totally unaware of the fact that small, internet-based businesses are one of the largest growth sectors in the economy, that fiber is used to back up all of the other technologies he mentioned, and that breaking up virtual monopolies is a good thing in general. He even seemed to think it was silly that California was fighting the FCC, and Ericksen was more than willing to use Big Brother to bring down California for daring to fight his friends. I guess he is also unaware that 87% of Americans support net-neutrality, California is a world leader in the development of new technology, and California is the 5th largest economy in the world. In short, they are well equipped to fight the FCC on this issue and win. If a few other states like Washington really join them the FCC doesn’t stand a chance. I hope at this point they don’t resort to violence against their own citizens, like they allowed that at Standing Rock. It should be noted that Ericksen already backed up forcibly removing protesters from BP and similar locations at the same meeting. I don’t think sending troops to California, to enforce the will of the big telecoms, is too far fetched in his mind. I sincerely hope I am wrong on that point. After all, the internet is not as valuable as human life.

            Still, you get the sense when it comes to tech that our choice between Pinky and Doug is very much like the choice in candidates mentioned on South Park in 2004 and again in 2016. You know, where neither choice is good, but you’ll just have to pick the lesser of two evils. Is anyone else sick of that?

            The FCC rules also don’t allow local governments to charge reasonable franchise fees for small cell installs. This may sound good at first. Fewer fees must mean cheaper service right? Well, no. The fees were never so high that they significantly affected your price. In fact, nationwide Verizon and other similar companies will only save about $2 billion. While that might sound like a lot, spread that out across 50 states. Then remember that in 2017 alone Verizon made $126.034 Billion. AT&T made $160.546 Billion. The list goes on and you can see the revenues by company at www.macrotrends.net

            What it means is that the amount these companies are stealing from local governments will not reduce the cost of your service. Or, if you’re on the side of the White House on this one, their savings in franchise fees is virtually nothing. In fact, the way that 5G is being done at this time will actually make the Digital Divide worse.

            It is a lot for PSE, though. They will make about $600 per pole for small cell attachments. Since each pole may have multiple small cells on it, this fee can be multiplied three or possibly more times. Again, this highlights why having PSE employees on council, just like having Verizon employees head up the FCC, may not be such a good idea. It also highlights why placing our critical infrastructure into the hands of private companies like PSE is a bad idea. At the end of the day they own the poles and will do just about whatever they want with them. Oh, but keep paying your bills.

            I got a first-hand view of just how deeply tied the upper echelon of our government is to PSE when our public works director, Ted Carlson, threatened to end my meeting about broadband when I mentioned how overpriced and poor PSE’s infrastructure is. They simply will not hear anyone out when it comes to PSE. This alone should make the argument for the necessity of public infrastructure.

Let’s get into the specifics.

Since many people have asked for it, I’ll start with the health issues surrounding 5G.

            Wireless technology is NOT safe and never has been. It is convenient, NOT safe. Don’t believe me, just look in the owners’ manual of your cell phone. Here is a short list for convenience. It will tell you that you should not use the phone within one inch of yourself and that’s just for starters. The FCC, until the Ajit Pai administration, stated that they were unsure of the effects of wireless on children. The document has been updated since then to side with the big telecom view on 5G safety. However, on the other side there are plenty of companies trying to sell you electromagnetic shielding (EMF) too. So what’s the truth?

            The bottom line here is that enough testing has not been done. I was about 60/40 on the issue a few months ago, but as time goes on I have changed my mind. I am now 75 percent against and 25 percent for. I want to see us move forward, but history shows us that if we don’t watch and regulate corporations, they will release dangerous technology and then claim that it is safe. Corporations told us that lead in gas was safe, that working in coal mines doesn’t cause black lung disease. And how about the Chevy Corvair (the car so unsafe, addressing the many issues with it would solidify Ralph Nader’s career). I could go on with examples like how the gas companies pollute people’s water and then get them to sign gag orders, individually singling them out so they can’t organize and file class action lawsuits against them, just to partially clean up the water the companies themselves polluted in the first place. There is a lot of dark money and bad data out there trying to hide the fact that EMF/RF has been classified as a “possible Group 2B human carcinogen.”

When is it unsafe? When you are exposed to it. How much exposure do you need? It depends on many complex factors like your weight, age, bio-chemistry, the type of radiation, and of course the intensity of the radiation and your proximity to the emitter. How we got from understanding with the detonation of the atomic bomb that radiation is not safe — to accepting ever increasing levels of radiation in our daily lives without question seems like brainwashing. We do this even after more and more legitimate experts come out with concerns about millimeter-wave (5G) technology. Here is a great link to a TedX talk about it conducted by an electrical engineer with decades of experience in silicon valley. I wrote an entire e-mail with peer-reviewed sources that I sent to our city council months ago. It was as long as this article. It was of course ignored by everyone but Michael Lilliquist, and even he is hiding behind the FCC. I wonder if hiding behind the FCC will be enough when this tech is proven to be unsafe. Guess we want to find out the hard way, because that’s what we’re doing.

            Among the organizations that were concerned about 5G pre-Ajit Pai were the NIH, CDC EPA, FCC (until Ajit Pai), the State of California, the Environmental Health Trust, many local professionals including mechanical and electrical engineers, the European Journal of Oncology, more and more pros from Silicon Valley, many doctors; the list goes on. The one thing that is clear is that as many people think it’s safe as think it’s dangerous.

            Disturbingly our governmental organizations recently, and almost uniformly, changed their tune with this FCC and the appointments made by this administration. Here is a link to a site called “The Parents for Safe Technology,” that has kept track of most of the changes to government documents since this administration took over. Here is a link to an article by the NIH showing that millimeter-waves (aka 5G) not only damage cells but cause odd fear response behaviors in other mammals. It’s not a technology that we technically need. So let’s do more testing.

            Sure, humans are bombarded by radiation everyday, but our ability to deal with it comes down to our level of exposure. For example, skin cancers are on the rise with the constant depletion of the ozone layer which increases our exposure to UV radiation. While we may enjoy some time in the sun, it is generally accepted that we need to shield ourselves from overexposure using sun screen, going indoors, or through some other means. 5G will be virtually everywhere, with the options of being able to simply “get away from it” being very limited as millions of small cell devices are rolled out.

            You may say, “but the market will balance problems like this out.” To that I would say, well OK, Volvo always took safety seriously, In fact, in a Dr. Salk like move the engineer of Volvo who developed the 3-point seat belt, Nils Bohlin, gave away the patent for the seat belt, saying, “it was too important not to share.” Still, this blows the market argument out of the water because even though the patent for the 3-point seat belt was free and the belts themselves were not expensive, many other car manufacturers argued that the required belts that we take for granted today were “an unnecessary optional add on.” They would still be treating them as premium accessories if we let them and, by the time they were done, millions more people would have died needlessly on our roads. This kind of recklessness in regard to the safety of their customers would require federal regulation to correct.

            So how does this relate to 5G? Well, the standard wasn’t even going to be ready until 2022 at first. They say they are getting it out there faster now, but that’s largely because they are cutting corners and skipping testing — especially independent testing. Too bad we don’t live in a town with a great university in it that could do some independent testing …. Oh wait, we do! I have suggested this to the COB, but with a public works director that runs out before 5G public commentary is made, the results were as expected.

            The EPA uses the standards of micro-Teslas and milli-Gauss to rate electromagnetic fields (EMF) exposure, a very accurate way to measure the effect of radiation by its effect in meters. The current FCC, uses a much less accurate means of measurement called Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) which tries to determine the effects of EMF by watts per kilogram. Why does this matter? Well, it says that if you weigh less you will have more exposure. So, for example, if you’re a kid you will have more exposure and probably exceed the recommended safe limits. It also, assumes a best-case scenario. Making a meaningful conversion between the two systems is hard, but the EPA standard is more accurate.

            In general, systems should be designed to tolerate the worst case scenario. Assuming a best-case scenario, like that kids will be inside often enough to have most of their exposure filtered out, is a reckless and immature way to design any safety standard. Also, rolling out 5G ahead of schedule, without more testing, will make the test population you and your family. It will make us the guinea pigs.

Keeping up with China.

            This is a joke. We can’t keep up with China on networking including with 5G. Why? Because China manufactures most of the fiber-optic cabling in the world. Fiber isn’t expensive here, and it’s even less expensive in China. Small cells, like the ones used in 5G, have to be hooked up to fiber-optic cabling and since China installs their fiber in a public manner they can leverage it for use in the most efficient, cost-effective manner possible. You can say that we have more fiber, at least for now, but since it’s privately owned it can’t be used as efficiently and access to it should largely be viewed separately by company. Until recently you could have made the “big brother argument” for our freedoms versus the Chinese, but the loss of Net-Neutrality paired with the Patriot Act, means that we too have censorship and government spying on average citizens.

It will solve rural broadband issues, give more people access and eliminate gaps in coverage.

            This is probably the funniest lie of all, since they say it every time they roll out a new standard. It is almost word for word what thye said about 3G and 4G.  5G is going to be so expensive that it will actually increase the digital divide. On top of that, wireless networks are much less reliable and require significant updates much more often than wired fiber-optic networks. They also, are more expensive to install since they are an extension to fiber. So again, you can make the convenience argument here, but not a reliability one. At best wireless is a complimentary technology to fiber, not a replacement.

            In Bellingham, like everywhere else, 5G will not work well without lots of small cells. Why? Because the millimeter waves that 5G uses bounce off of, are absorbed by, and get scattered by just about everything. Even heavy rain. Good thing we live in the flat arid desert environment of Bellingham. Phew! All of the small cells, therefore, have to be backed up by fiber anyway. This, and the many other short-comings of 5G are highlighted in the book, “The 5G Myth” which I have recommended to the council on more than one occasion. The book also highlights many, better, alternatives to 5G.

            As far as rural areas go, in 1936 we ran electricity to rural areas as part of the Rural Electrification Act. We didn’t do this entirely out of benevolence. We did it to make the most important workers in our civilization, farmers, more efficient. Now they need broadband, so we need to run them fiber. They can hook other things up to it once it’s there, if they want to, but we need to run it to them in the first place. Why? Because of technological advancements in agriculture, their educational needs, and all of the other reasons I’ve written about before. How about choice too? What if you really just want cheap fiber, and don’t mind plugging a cable in? Why do you have to be exposed to 5G if you don’t want to?

            While talking about the needs of broadband in rural American, Doug Ericksen recently talked about how they are constantly talking to their big telecom partners about serving rural areas. He mentioned 5G and satellites, apparently totally unaware of the aforementioned issues here and of the fact that all of this tech has to be backed up by fiber. Satellites and small cells, like any extension, increase the latency on the network. In short, they are convenient but not as fast or reliable as fiber. So why not offer both? You need the fiber to backup all of the other devices anyway.

            Historically, big telecoms never do a good job in rural areas since the population density is simply not high enough for them to really spend money on infrastructure, support, or really anything else in rural areas. They didn't do a good job in the past in rural areas, and they're not going to start now. Also, remember, 5G from big telecoms like Verizon won't be affordable to most people in rural areas. 

            Historically, we did give big telecom a chance to serve rural areas. They never took it seriously, stole $400 billion dollars from us, and even pulled out of some towns. This prompted many small towns to create their own networks. This is the best solution for rural areas. Why? Because grants exist to help them. Because no telecom is ever going to take serving small communities seriously. Because it increases their local self-reliance. Because it gives them more reliable, better service than any big telecom ever will. Because they have the equipment and know-how to build a fiber-based network themselves. Because they can hook whatever they want up to the network once it's built, including wireless devices if they want to. So why would they overpay anyone else to do it?

“Oh Jon, you’re full of crap. I searched about this topic myself and all I get is good stuff about 5G.”

“Yep, that’s because we lost net-neutrality and the big telecoms can flood the internet with pro-5G garbage, effectively drowning out any real discussion on the topic.”

The Path Forward:

            In my e-mail to the City Council about the cumulative dangers of EMF/RF exposure, I highlighted many reasonable compromises. I will do so again here.

0. We need to halt the installation of small cells and commission WWU and WSU to do proper, independent, studies of 5G technology. This includes demanding that PSE and the wireless providers provide maps of small cell installations well before they are done. Since it affects the whole community, this seems only fair.

1. The biggest problem with wireless technology and performance is a lack of adequate fiber for backhaul. So again, we need cheap fiber. The best way to do that is to establish a Dig Once Policy, and create public infrastructure.

2. We need to demand that spectrum is licensed in a more effective way. Had Apple not throttled your iPhones to force upgrades and companies like Verizon had actually built the 4G LTE networks they said they were going to, very few of you would feel the need to upgrade. Your phones would last three times as long and perform about 10 times better than they do. 4G LTE is actually better at covering large areas than 5G because the waves are bigger. 4G can also make sure of small cells.

3. Companies like Verizon should pay for reasonable EMF shielding to be installed near residences in direct line of sight of small cells and towers. Remember, there are restrictions on how close a large tower can be placed to residences. That’s because living under a tower is a bad idea. Now we’re all going to get to live by millions of smaller towers called small cells and we aren't 100% sure that they're safe.

4. An option like wi-fi calling will allow us to use the broadband connections we overpay for to make calls on, largely removing the need to use cell towers for calls in the first place. Carriers should be required to provide this option on all of their phones.

5. We should require providers to use a DAS (distributed antenna system) instead of small cells. This alternate system is much more attractive and has much less impact.

            I’ll close on the quick reminder that fiber is totally safe and costs less than fishing line. I have confirmed with Mount Vernon that they usually install conduit with fiber for $180,000 a mile. That’s well below anything our local government quotes. We need a good answer as to why.

The Two Americas

by Michael Riordan

            In the recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, the contrasts could not have been starker.

            On the right side of the panel facing the nominee sat eleven aging white-male Republicans, many from rural red states: Arizona, the Carolinas, Iowa, Nebraska, Texas and Utah among them.

            To their left were ten diverse Democrats, largely from coastal, blue states: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Hawaii and Minnesota among them. They included four women, two African-Americans and an Asian-American.

            In microcosm, this was an epochal clash between two distinct Americas that have been locked in increasingly bitter cultural warfare for more than two decades — especially since the end of the Cold War. And it is now patently obvious that the GOP under Donald Trump has become the party of white male supremacy, while Democrats are the party of multicultural diversity, trying to treat men and women of color as our equals.

            After a tense morning listening to the pained testimony of Christine Blasey Ford about her sexual assault, the afternoon session erupted into partisan rancor with Kavanaugh’s blistering, scornful statement and South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham berating his Democratic colleagues for “the most despicable thing I have seen in my time in politics.” As David Brooks wrote in the New York Times, “The Kavanaugh hearings were a look in the mirror, and a vivid display of how ugly things have become.”

            In the final vote on confirmation, senators representing 56 percent of the US population voted against it while others representing just 44 percent voted in favor, reflecting the awkward fact that low-population states like Vermont and Wyoming wield undue power in the Senate. It came on the nominee of a president who lost the popular vote to his adversary by nearly 3 million votes. The Republican minority prevailed in a decision that may have tremendous impact on our lives for decades.

            You have to go back to pre-Civil War days and the infamous Dred Scott decision to find such rancorous partisan strife between two US political factions so polarized, so uncompromisingly opposed. In that case, the principal battle raged over the ownership of slaves — whether their bodies could be treated as property. At least there was a major geographical divide between the warring factions.

            Although there are other important facets, today’s strife has much to do with the “ownership” and control of women’s bodies. Can a government regulate what women are permitted to do with their bodies — especially when it does nothing similar with men? And do women have sufficient protection against the violation of their bodies by men?

            In the present conflict, no significant geographical divide stands between the factions. Though the nation is deeply divided into red and blue states, the warring parties often live side-by-side in the same community.

            And although some women support this blatant patriarchy, its leaders are old white men like Trump, Mitch McConnell, Charles Grassley and Orrin Hatch. They are the same men who have been working for decades to suppress the rising tide of diverse, multi-ethnic America by gerrymandering, subtle voter-disenfranchisement measures, massive corporate contributions, and the innate rural bias of the Senate and Electoral College. Now they have a crucial fifth man on the Supreme Court.

            Short of another, all-but unthinkable civil war, the only recourse to this white-male minority rule is at the ballot box, beginning in just a month. And it is women who are the natural leaders of the resistance. We are soon to witness another Year of the Woman like the one that occurred in 1992 in the wake of the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings. Will this election begin to right the awful imbalance in the federal government?

            When people look back on our tumultuous times, 2018 will inevitably be seen for decades as a watershed moment in US history. How it eventually plays out depends on who shows up to vote.

Michael Riordan, author of The Hunting of the Quark and coauthor of several other books, writes about science, technology and public policy from Eastsound, WA.

References

Anne Appelbaum, “It’s official: Americans are living under the rule of a minority,” Washington Post, October 8, 2018.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/10/08/its-official-americans-are-living-under-the-rule-of-a-minority/

Philip Bump, “Senators representing less than half the U.S. are about to confirm a nominee opposed by most Americans,” Washington Post, October 6, 2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/10/06/senators-representing-less-than-half-us-are-about-confirm-nominee-opposed-by-most-americans/

David Brooks, “A Complete National Disgrace,” New York Times, October 4, 2018.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/04/opinion/kavanaugh-hearing-partisan-national-disgrace.html

Marc Fisher, “Behind Kavanaugh fight, a national struggle over trust, identity and sex roles,” Washington Post, September 27, 2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/behind-kavanaugh-fight-a-national-struggle-over-trust-identity-and-sex-roles/2018/09/27/8dbeb4d8-c25b-11e8-b338-a3289f6cb742_story.html

Ericksen Emails Suggest He Did Little Work at the EPA

by Michael Riordan and Elisabeth Britt

            A cache of emails recently obtained by the Center for Biological Diversity in Portland, OR, gives telling insights into what State Senator Douglas J. Ericksen was doing at the Environmental Protection Agency, where he served on the “beachhead” transition team during early 2017. After more than a year awaiting a response on its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for beachhead team communications, the Center received a huge pile of emails and other documents in June 2018, in the form of ten gargantuan PDF files.[1] Ericksen’s emails, (see Figure 1) that we found in this collection strongly suggest that he did little work to earn federal pay exceeding $42,000. 

            We made three separate FOIA requests for his EPA emails, but none of them have been answered directly; instead, this gargantuan cache was provided.[2] Thus it took us many hours of poring through the more than 15,700 pages of text to exhume 126 unique emails sent or received by Ericksen and put them in chronological order. While these are likely not the complete set of his emails and do not include phone conversations or text messages, they nevertheless provide a revealing window on his EPA activities, sampling what he was up to while there. From that subset, plus several emails we obtained from other sources, intriguing patterns have begun to emerge, which we will discuss in this and future articles.

            In response to the question of what Ericksen was doing during his 120-day EPA stint, we can offer a straightforward answer based on this evidence: not much.

            Because of his refusal to resign from his primary responsibility and his position as Washington state senator from the 42^nd Legislative District, Ericksen was explicitly enjoined at the outset from becoming involved in any policy or other matters that could affect the state.[3] That would represent a clear conflict of interest. He was therefore assigned a job as the beachhead team’s communications director, working with career EPA public-relations officials (such as press secretary Nancy Grantham) to attempt to align the agency’s public pronouncements more closely with the environmentally unfriendly policies of the incoming regime.

            But lacking much-needed experience and strong personal connections with the national and international press corps, Ericksen stumbled badly in this position during his very first week on the job. In the midst of widespread reports of a “media blackout” at the agency, he was quoted as stating that EPA scientists would have their work reviewed by political appointees before release. He also took the heat for inflammatory statements that content might be removed from the official agency web site and on internal discussions of “whether climate stuff will be taken down.”[4]

Figure 1. Frequency of emails sent and received by Doug Ericksen during his 120-day EPA stint, based largely on emails found in the agency’s response to FOIA Request No. EPA-HQ-2017-005827. Nearly half of these emails occurred during the first two weeks of his tenure.

            Just over 30 percent (or 38) of those 126 emails occurred during that first week and nearly half by the second week when Ericksen returned to Olympia on February 1. He appears to have been handling the wire services and national media, such as Associated Press, Bloomberg, Fox, National Journal and Reuters, as might be expected of a bona fide communications director, leaving local and regional media to other EPA officials and staff. And there were many hours of introductory meetings to attend.[5] But after his return to Olympia, this torrent of activity dried to a trickle.

            It turns out that another member had been added to the EPA beachhead team — John Konkus, who was concurrently working as the communications lead for the team guiding EPA Administrator-designate Scott Pruitt through the Senate approval process. Konkus begins showing up in the email record on February 2, the day after Ericksen left town.[6] One can reasonably conclude from this evidence that beachhead team leaders had decided after his disastrous first week that Ericksen was not up to the blistering requirements of this challenging job, and anyway could not effectively direct media communications while on the West Coast using email and cell phone.

            By the time Ericksen had returned to DC from Olympia during the second week of February, beginning on the 7th, he was clearly sharing the communications responsibilities with Konkus and himself handling matters of lesser importance. The bulk of his emails were either within the EPA or with Kevin Bogardus of E&E News, then working on a story about former Washington state senator Don Benton, a close Ericksen ally serving as a leader of the EPA beachhead team who was expecting to continue on at the EPA after Pruitt passed Senate confirmation.[7] In media parlance, this is derisively called “inside baseball” — definitely minor-league fare.

            That week Ericksen ‘s controversial “double dipping” made the pages of the Washington Post, in an article titled “"Trump EPA official juggles two jobs in Two Washingtons, and It Hasn't Gone Well."[8] Mention of his search for a prominent EPA position could not have endeared him to his fellow beachhead team members or more permanent agency employees. The following week, on February 13, E&E News picked up on this story with an article titled “"Trump aide eyes Regional Post." [9] In an email the following day to its author Robin Bravender, Ericksen confessed that this headline “is causing me a lot of serious problems at work.”[10]

            And sure enough, within days after Pruitt’s February 17 confirmation Konkus was effectively directing media relations, delegating a few minor responsibilities to Ericksen — who retreated again to Olympia on Tuesday, February 21, according to his per-diem records from the state legislature.[11] Over the next two weeks, we could find only six EPA emails involving him. And only one of them involved a member of the press corps. To that inquiry from the Christian Science Monitor, beachhead team member David Kreutzer replied, “For the moment, all communications are going through John Konkus and Doug Ericksen (copied),” copying Ericksen on that reply.[12]

            Shortly after stepping in, Pruitt began dissolving the EPA beachhead team, folding some of its members into regular agency positions and letting others go. On Thursday, March 2, Benton sent an email to team members making it official. “Since we are all being integrated into the agency in our respective roles, there is no need to continue our group meetings,” he told them.[13] “Each of you will be meeting with your respective department and office heads in your own meetings.”

            For Ericksen that would have been a difficult task to fulfill from nearly 3,000 miles away. In a February 2 press conference in Olympia, he had expressed interest in finding a more permanent position in the EPA Region 10 office in Seattle — as its administrator, it was widely rumored. But he didn’t want to leave Washington state and move to the nation’s capital. So he continued largely in his legislative capacity.

            Another burst of email activity occurred when Ericksen returned to the EPA headquarters in mid-March. (See Figure 1). This visit curiously overlapped a March 14 meeting there between EPA officials and Charles Constanzo, Pacific Region Vice President of the American Waterways Operators, which was then lobbying Pruitt to overturn a January 2017 ruling by the Region 10 office under President Obama that allowed the Puget Sound to be designated as a “No Discharge Zone” for vessel sewage. According to a string of emails reaching back into February, Costanzo and a trio of Washington state lobbyists were asking Benton and Ericksen to use their insiders’ clout to help them in their quest.[14] But for the latter, doing so would have represented an obvious conflict of interest and been a clear violation of his pledge not to engage in activities that could benefit the state. We will reveal more about this effort in another article.

            Almost all the other emails were internal ones — to EPA coworkers Benton, Grantham, Konkus, Kreutzer and David Schnare. One of Ericksen’s major activities that week appeared to have been to develop and circulate a letter, (see Figure 2), to the President from beachhead team members lauding Benton’s early leadership. “The success of the EPA transition team leading up to the confirmation of Administrator Pruitt was in many ways attributable to the leadership of Mr. Benton,” it read. But Schnare took a jab at Benton in his reply, promoting his own leading role. “Would be nice to show Don and me as the leadership team, since that was the reality,” he wrote Ericksen on March 14, “Nevertheless, I’ll sign it.”[15]

            A final email request came in from reporter Anthony Schick of Oregon Public Broadcasting on Thursday, March 16.[16] But it had little to do with the EPA and was much more about Ericksen’s double dipping. “Records obtained via FOIA show that between January 22, 2017, and February 18, 2017, you were paid $11,438 for 152 hours of work at the Environmental Protection Agency,” Schick noted. “Does this amount of hours and compensation present a conflict of interest with your work in the Washington state Senate?” To which Ericksen only replied, “I do not discuss my role as a State Senator from my EPA email system.”[17]

            And a day later on Friday, March 17, he sent an email to his personal email address with the “Benton letter” (see above), and an EPA phone directory attached, plus a Word file labeled “region 10 memo.docx” — which we could not track down.[18] Ericksen’s EPA email record then goes essentially stone cold for nearly two months, after he returned again to Washington state. (See Figure 1). The only email we could find during the rest of March and all of April was one on March 30 from a Virginia developer who copied Benton, Ericksen, Kreutzer, Schnare and three other members  of the original beachhead team.[19]

            It’s important to note, as we have done elsewhere, that Ericksen was being paid more than $77 per hour for his EPA work.[20] In fact, he was getting the highest possible salary rate for temporary federal employees, then $161,900 per year, corresponding to the GS-10, step 15 level that represents the highest level most federal employees can attain.[21] Many toil for years to get to that lofty level. While Ericksen may actually have earned this compensation during the first hectic week when he appeared to be serving as a bona fide communications director, however ineptly, it is extremely doubtful that he earned it in subsequent weeks and months, based on what can be concluded from his email record. We will say more about his EPA work record and compensation in a future article.

            As revealed in press reports that March, Ericksen’s Washington-state ally Don Benton was not getting along with Pruitt nor his Chief of Staff Ryan Jackson, in part because he continued serving as White House liaison, keeping stealthy watch over the EPA leadership. And according to anonymous insiders who spoke to the Washington Post, “Benton piped up so frequently during policy discussions that he had been dismissed from many of them.”[22] As his EPA tenure was coming to an end in early April, he emailed himself Ericksen’s testimonial letter at his private email address (which was redacted). The text of the email includes a telling statement in boldface:  “The attached letter serves as a testimony to the accomplishments of the Transition team at the EPA up to the point the Chief of Staff purged the Trump Loyalists.”[23]

Figure 2. Copy of the March 14, 2017 letter to President Trump praising Don Benton's leadership of the EPA beachhead team, which was drafted and circulated for signatures that day by Doug Ericksen.

            So our two intrepid loyalists Benton and Ericksen found themselves banished from EPA headquarters. Benton left in a huff for the Selective Service System, where he had managed to locate a position as its next director,[24] while Ericksen retreated to Washington state, still harboring hopes of a leadership role in the EPA Region 10 office. An April 17 article in the Inside EPA newsletter titled “Pruitt Fills Out His Slate of Aides” noted that Konkus remained on the payroll but stated that “several more beachheaders are not on the list, including Doug Ericksen” and Benton.[25] In addition to keeping Konkus, Pruitt brought in a press team far more experienced in national communications.[26] There was no meaningful work left for Ericksen to do.

            But he continued to draw substantial EPA payments — at $77.58 per hour — for supposedly working on communications from Washington state.[27] We wonder how Ericksen could ever do so without leaving any tracks whatsoever in the email records we could obtain for him. He was even given an office and computer in the EPA Region 10 office, according to three reliable sources there — including Public Affairs Specialist Bill Dunbar, who works with the regional administrator — but none of them could recall ever encountering him there.[28] One would think that, given his professed interest in a leadership role at the Region 10 office, he would have shown up at least occasionally to get acquainted with staff members and their activities. And he could have legitimately billed the agency for hours spent doing so.

            Over the two months ending on May 20, Ericksen was paid $18,619 in gross salary — or nearly one half of the total of $40,031 in federal compensation he was paid during his full 120-day stint as an EPA employee.[29] Yet we could find little to no evidence of any EPA work that he did beyond March 17. Did he in fact do any actual work to earn gross pay amounting to almost $19,000?

            It’s a valid question that deserves an honest answer. Thus far we have been unable to obtain any supporting documents for his pay statements, which could help to address this question, despite making three FOIA requests for this information. And two direct requests for answers to this question have not elicited any reply from EPA officials in a position to know. As one of us asked in an earlier article, “What is the EPA hiding?”[30]

            The EPA “swamp” that Pruitt had polluted and finally left in disgrace on July 5, 2018, became widely noted for questionable payments to his cronies and other staff appointees who did little or no corresponding work to earn them. Could it be that Doug Ericksen was another willing beneficiary of this climate of corruption?

            We will return to this possibility in a subsequent article.

---

References

[1] Margaret E. Townsend, Center for Biological Diversity, letter of February 22, 2017, to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (FOIA Request # EPA-HQ-2017-005827).

[2] Freedom of Information Act requests #EPA-HQ-2017-005827, EPA-HQ-2018-009523, and EPA-HQ-2018-009567 by Elisabeth Britt. In lieu of any reply to these requests, we have therefore assumed that the EPA’s response to the Center’s request is responsive to our own requests.

[3] Rob Davis, “Oil-backed Climate skeptic could get key EPA job in Pacific NW,” The Oregonian, February 10, 2017.

[4] Ericksen quoted in Associated Press, "EPA science under scrutiny by Trump political staff," New York Times, January 25, 2017 (plus many other publications).

[5] D. Ericksen, email to L. Ferris dated February 16, titled “Ericksen, Doug Calendar.” This email lists 19 meetings Ericksen was expected to attend in the very first week, from January 23 to January 28, 2017 — many of them organized and chaired by Don Benton. The total scheduled time for all of these meetings came close to 14 hours.

[6] D. Kreutzer, email to D. Ericksen and J. Konkus dated February 2, 2017, titled “We need to dump this news service.”

[7] For example, D. Ericksen email to K. Bogardus dated February 8, 2017, titled “Re: Don Benton staying at EPA.”

[8] Lisa Rein and Brady Dennis, "Trump EPA official juggles two jobs in two Washingtons, and it hasn't gone well," Washington Post, February 7, 2017.

[9] Robin Bravender, "Trump aide eyes regional post," Greenwire, February 13, 2017.

[10] D. Ericksen email to R. Bravender dated February 14, 2017, titled “Ericksen at EPA.”

[11] We thank Brian Estes and Sandy Robson for providing us copies of these records, obtained from public records requests to the Washington state legislature.

[12] D. Kreutzer email to Zack Colman dated February 22, 2017, titled “Re: Endangerment finding.” J. Konkus and D. Ericksen are CC’d on this email.

[13] D. Benton email to EPA beachhead team members (including D. Ericksen) dated March 2, 2017, titled “Trump Administration Team.”

[14] C. Costanzo email to D. Benton, S. Ruff and D. Ericksen dated February 15, 2017, titled “Puget Sound NDZ.” Ericksen and his legislative aide Sandy Ruff were emailed at their Washington state legislature addresses. There were later emails, too.

[15] D. Schnare email to D. Ericksen dated March 14, 2017, titled “Re: Letter for Don Benton.” The sentence quoted from the Benton letter is taken from an Ericksen email to Schnare and the other EPA beachhead team members earlier that day.

[16] A. Schick email to D. Ericksen dated March 16, 2017, titled “On Deadline: Questions about your EPA hours, compensation.”

[17] D. Ericksen email reply to A. Schick dated March 16, 2017.

[18] D. Ericksen email to “Doug Ericksen Personal Email” [address redacted] dated March 17, 2017, titled “stuff.” Only three things appear in the text field, indicating attachments: “Benton letter.docx”, “region 10 memo.docx”, and “EPA Phone Directory March 2017.pdf”.

[19] W. Sessions email to J. Valentine dated March 30, 2017, titled “Clean Water Act and Meeting.” Don Benton and Doug Ericksen were CC’d on this email.

[20] Michael Riordan and Elisabeth Britt, "Beyond the Veil at the EPA Beachhead" Northwest Citizen, April 26, 2017..

[21] Ericksen’s salary rate was also noted in: Tony Schick, “Washington Lawmaker Has 6-Figure Salary in Trump Administration, Documents Show,” OPB Earthfix, March 16, 2017; Joel Connelly, "State senator Also Feeding at Federal Trough to Tune of $161,000 K per year," SeattlePI.com, March 16, 2017; Walker Orenstein, “Records Show Sen. Ericksen Worked Nearly Fulltime at EPA While Drawing State Salary,” TheNewsTribune.com, March 17, 2017.

[22] Lisa Rein and Juliet Eilperin, "White House installs political aides at Cabinet agencies to be Trump's eyes and ears,” Washington Post, March 19,2017. Also noted in Elizabeth Williamson, “Trump’s Leaky Ship of State,” New York Times, March 31, 2017.

[23] D. Benton email to D. Benton “Personal Email/Ex. 6 – Benton” [address redacted] dated April 2, 2017, titled “Letter from Colleagues on Service to President Trump” (emphasis in original).

[24] Erik Lacitis, "After Tension at EPA, ex-state Senator Don Benton to Lead Selective Service," Seattle Times, April 11, 2017.

[25] The Daily Feed: “Pruitt Fills Out His Slate of Aides,” InsideEPA.com, April 17, 2017.

[26] Kevin Bogardus, “As White House Lags on Nominees, Pruitt Builds His Team,” E&E News,” April 14, 2017. Bogardus noted that Konkus would remain on Pruitt’s public-affairs team.

[27] D. Ericksen EPA pay statements for April and May 2017. Curiously, he received an additional payment of $1,879.72 on July 3, 2017, apparently for leave not taken.

[28] Bill Dunbar, phone conversation and email to M. Riordan, September 13, 2017.

[29 D. Ericksen EPA pay statements obtained by Sandy Robson, FOIA request No. EPA-HQ-2017-007854. Payments in April 2017 were deduced from the cumulative pay Ericksen had received by April 1 and by April 30, 2017.

[30] Michael Riordan, "Did Doug Ericksen in Fact Double Dip?" Northwest Citizen, April 12, 2018.