When you sneeze, you should cover your mouth – it’s because germs spread scattershot when people sneeze or cough. But what do you do when someone sneezes or coughs directly on you?  All you can do is clean up the best you can and hope nothing sticks.

It’s a similar phenomenon when someone puts smears and attacks in print. Generally, the scattershot attacks are reserved for blogs or ideologically driven sites – in my experience, newspapers usually demand columns address specific news, policy or events.  And personal attacks are frowned on.  But recently a column emerged that left WPC in the position of being victim to a printed sneeze – a scattershot attack prescribing false motivations, hateful intentions, and distortions that we must do our best to wipe off and clean up to avoid having any of the offending matter stick.

The column was published in The Spokesman-Review and was from “Accountable Northwest,” which is essentially a one-man attack squad aimed at those who oppose the agenda of their funders in the SEIU or other organized labor groups. The column attacked Washington Policy Center and warned readers they needed to know Washington Policy Center’s (WPC’s) “true agenda” but then cited several issues WPC is well known for and has spent considerable time and treasure trying to promote. But the author assigned to the positions false motivations or left glaring omissions that served to smear rather than inform our positions to readers. 

Further, while both the column ("WPC should come clean about their real agenda...") and its print title "Washington Policy Center is not what it seems" seek to paint WPC positions as secretive and promise readers a mystery unraveled, it then cites several positions (supposedly part of this conspiracy) that WPC has published materials about on our website, testified about publicly before the legislature, published columns on and advertised in various media (including The Spokesman-Review).

But casting WPC positions as hidden makes for a better smear and allows for author Peter Starzynski to then ascribe false motivations to each policy position in a sophomoric exercise that allows him to ignore the actual reasons for his policy disagreement and instead pretend that any WPC disagreement with his funders in organized labor is motivated by some form of cruelty or evil. 

The column claims that WPC presents itself as unbiased. Actually, we present ourselves as a “free market oriented think tank.” It’s even in our tagline, “Improving lives through free market solutions.” Since precision and accuracy are not among the author’s stronger skills, perhaps he meant that WPC presents itself as “nonpartisan,” which is true. But that’s because WPC is non-partisan in that we do not identify with Republicans or Democrats. Of course, being a free market oriented think tank, it’s less common for us to find common ground with ideological Progressives, but it happens. Black Lives Matter supported WPC’s position on occupational licensing reform.  Republicans and Democrats have supported WPC recommendations. We’ve recognized the achievements of legislators from both parties and had the 2000 Democratic Vice Presidential nominee, Senator Joe Lieberman, as a keynote for our Annual Dinner event. We are both non-partisan and independent, but we do have a point of view – we publish our views and encourage legislators, media and the public to read them all the time. We also offer many of our views in Spanish. 

Senator Lieberman was at WPC’s Annual Dinner in part because of his support for expanding options for parents and students stuck in schools that are failing. Each year, 40,000 Washington state students are assigned to schools that are known and identified by the state as failing schools. We believe parents and students should have options to leave those schools and get the help they need wherever they can find it. “Accountable Northwest” calls that “gutting public school funding.” We call it, “giving kids opportunity for a better future.”

The Starzynski column then ‘revealed’ (gasp!) that Washington Policy Center opposes the recently passed income tax on capital gains – only Accountable Northwest doesn’t mention it’s an income tax even though the IRS and the revenue departments of all 49 other states and the Congressional Budget Office all identify capital gains taxes as income taxes.

Why omit that fact? The same reason legislative advocates hid it. Income taxes are unpopular and have been rejected by the voters. Voters in this state have overwhelmingly said no to income taxes including targeted income taxes aimed at “the rich” many times. Washington voters recognize that introducing one income tax is to introduce them all.

The column then offers the “scoop” that we have ties to the “Opportunity for All Coalition” opposing the income tax on capital gains in court.  This ‘revelation’ is something likely learned by reading our blog, our social media, or attending one of our many events. 

As mentioned earlier, income taxes on the rich become broader income taxes as inevitably as day turns to night. But the Starzynski column also asserts “no working Washingtonians” will pay the new income tax, an assertion sure to shock Washington’s farmers and ranchers who not only find themselves in the crosshairs of the new tax, but also insulted by lawmaker advocates who ignorantly claim Washington’s farmers only work half time.

The column cited numerous policies backed by big labor that WPC opposed because the policies harm job opportunities for the most vulnerable or offer mandates that erect higher barriers to entry for entrepreneurs.

It also claims WPC has “tried to continuously attack the state’s labor unions” to “destroy unions in Washington” in reference to WPC’s support of First Amendment rights public employees have to choose whether or not they wish to belong to a union. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed in the Janus decision that governments could not require individuals to join a public employee union as a condition of employment. Public unions are inherently political. Janus didn’t destroy unions, but it did require that they earn member support like every private organization, including Washington Policy Center, does.

When the Janus ruling was delivered by the U.S. Supreme Court, King 5 TV in Seattle interviewed Lynne Dodson, the Secretary Treasurer of the Washington State Labor Council AFL-CIO who said, “We need to focus on organizing. We need to focus on talking with our members showing what the value is with unions. I think it will grow power and numbers we have. We will do much more direct talking and organizing.” 

In other words, the decision requires unions to be more accountable to their members and persuasive rather than entitled when it comes to seeking membership. That’s not destroying government unions, that’s forcing them to play by the rules.

Accountability Northwest then asserted that WPC “tried to discredit safety measures employed by the state” to battle COVID and “[manufactured] doubt about the severity of the virus in Washington.” The reality is all over our website. WPC’s Todd Myers pointed out the governor’s reopening metrics were not scientific and that the state was failing in what it described as the ‘number one weapon’ in the war on COVID – testing. Changes in state metrics and testing quickly followed WPC’s criticism and analysis. WPC’s Dr. Roger Stark published recommendations on expanding health care resources to address COVID at the outset of the pandemic.

Once again, Accountable Northwest is banking on the ease of making allegations and the fact that it’s unlikely for their readers to go back and actually read the materials to see if they do what is alleged. For some reason, Starzynski wasn’t required to offer proof of this assertion, it was just another word germ slapped on the page to see if it would stick.

Same pattern goes for the criticism leveled against WPC’s opposition to Critical Race Theory mandates in public schools and elsewhere. Accountable Northwest wants to define it as “anti-racism education,” but its principal objective of dividing people into victims or oppressors based on their race makes it the opposite of that. Again, “Accountable Northwest” leaves that out because it destroys their case. They omit a truth in order to perpetuate a lie. At the very least, the author redefines WPC’s position into a straw man he can knock down and call himself a hero for doing so. 

Accountable Northwest then asks who is “bankrolling” WPC and proceeds to smear WPC donors as having ties to various forms of hate. “Accountable Northwest” has long sought to smear opponents with a variation of the game, “Six degrees of Separation.” They exclude themselves of course, or they’d learn the Davis Bacon prevailing wage policies they are so keen to support were spawned from efforts to discriminate against Black workers.

The ties WPC does have are to family. Our staff has immediate and extended family ties with Spanish, Black, Korean, Filipino, Japanese, Native American, and various other ancestries. The attack from Accountable Northwest was a disgusting, dishonorable, baseless smear.

Laughably, the close of Mr. Starzynski’s column questions WPC’s independence (again confusing our free market principles with partisan affiliation). He asserts that readers need to know “our biases” which are again printed in our motto, “improving lives through free market solutions” and printed on our website. He asks us to “come clean” about an “agenda” we post on our website, email to supporters, media, legislators, talk about on the radio and advertise in the media.

Readers, the column asserts, are “owed this kind of information.” Yet, when Spokane voters demanded transparency in collective bargaining negotiations between government and unions (since those agreements represent some of the largest taxpayer obligations) Accountability Northwest’s desire for transparency disappeared.

Even more laughably, immediately after challenging WPC’s independence, the author asserts “Accountable Northwest” is an “independent watchdog” and claims broad-based funding.  However, research into their funding reveals they are almost completely funded by a handful of organized labor groups.

Smears like this have long lives in the Google era. It takes more work and more words to respond to them than they deserve. In the past, Starzynski’s rantings have been isolated to the Accountability Northwest’s (aka Northwest Accountability Project’s) echo chamber of a blog, so we’ve not bothered with a response (especially since a reasonable sample of our work shows his sophomoric tactics are dishonest). But The Spokesman-Review opinion page chose to publish this scatter-gunned, conflicting, mess of an attack just a few weeks after one of their other columnists published an attack on WPC’s Todd Meyers. That column led the paper to issue a correction (the columnist did not, as initially asserted, try to contact Todd), but their social media page asserted they “stand behind” their columnist and his painting of Todd’s work as manipulative.  This means they either have not read Todd’s “autopsy” of that column or have decided to ignore the data regardless of evidence and condemn Todd come Hell or high water.

I suppose this attention means WPC is effective and making the right kind of enemies.  Still, it’s a cheap debate trick masquerading as a policy criticism to point to your opponents, label them as wicked, and try to preempt debate on the merits of policy by smearing your opposition as too wicked to listen to. Honorable people can disagree on policy and interpret the same data and come to different conclusions about the best solution, but that’s not the aim here.

That about cleans the mess up. If anything sticks, it’s because the growing incivility in policy debate too often rewards clicks over truth.