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Whiteboard Justice

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Message BK Faunce

Katie Porter's Whiteboard
Katie Porter's Whiteboard
(Image by Katie Porter's Whiteboard)
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Who doesn't like Congresswoman Katie Porter and her whiteboards?

Ms Porter is a member of the US House of Representatives, from California's 47th district, and she's recently announced her intention to run for the Senate, taking aim at the seat that will be vacated by Diane Feinstein in 2024.

Her style of politics is a little different from what voters have been force-fed over the last few election cycles. A progressive without the bluster, so to speak. No shouting, no screaming, no dangerous nonsense. Just thoughtful, evidence-based arguments in the down-home tenor of a working single mom. Since announcing her campaign, Representative Porter has been sending out folksy emails every day or so, reminding voters who she is and what she stands for, and they read as if she were chatting with friends. In one, she offers to share recipes for home-cooked meals, including "grandma Doris's meatballs"; in another, she jokes about conversations she and her kids have over which pizza is better, hers or take away. Talk about a "kitchen debate." It's a smart approach, one that has appeal across the political spectrum, especially to those deep blue voters who dominate her state. Sympathy and solidarity with a personal touch.

The pitch is to present Ms Porter as a regular person, someone who not only understands the challenges of managing a family while living pay check to pay check, but who has the courage to legislate with those challenges in mind. Videos of her publicly humiliating high-minded corporate cheats are a master class in congressional oversight, whiteboard justice in real time, each one of them squirming, fumbling, fuming, dissembling, alternating between stupid and snarky, like frat boys who got caught cheating. It's not just good theater. Holding crooks and fraudsters accountable while keeping a close eye on the public purse are what the federal gov't ought to be doing. Or, as she writes in one of her emails, "standing up to the status quo and corporate special interests." It's the reason for having a federal gov't in the first place: to manage the country's affairs in such a way as to advance the health and well-being of all its citizens, not just a privileged few. Good for Ms Porter.

Then again, there's her record.

She is a reliable vote for the kinds of legislation one would expect: policing the police, helping veterans, supporting pregnant women, protecting whistle blowers, banning assault weapons, funding mental health facilities, taking care of the environment, and a host of initiatives advocating for human rights. But she also voted to expand NATO, a US-driven threat to Russian sovereignty and a potential trigger for war between nuclear powers, and she voted in favor of the US proxy war in Ukraine, an egregious act of lawlessness that has destabilized Eastern Europe. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians killed and their cities and homes destroyed because US elites want "regime change" in Moscow. It's inconceivable that anyone who truly believes in challenging corporate special interests could support this kind of insanity. Yet Representative Porter gave it her stamp of approval.

Equally troubling, she voted in favor of HR Resolution 246, a bill that effectively labels anyone who supports the "Boycott, Divest, Sanctions" (BDS) movement an anti-Semite. Does she really believe protests on behalf of Palestinian rights are somehow showing hatred toward Jewish people? Has she read the "Goldstone Report"? It was submitted to the UN in 2009 by a respected Jewish judge who concluded that the purpose of Israeli violence against Palestinians was to "punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population." That was fourteen years ago, before "Cast Lead" and "Protective Edge." Does Ms Porter know that both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have declared Israel an "apartheid state"? Has she read the reports? Mow the lawn? Carpet bombing? Anything?

Either the Congresswoman is unaware of the appalling conditions residents of Gaza and the West Bank are forced to live under, which seems unlikely, or she knows and has chosen not to include the information in her calculus, which is flat-out criminal. If she'd done the tiniest bit of research, she would have learned that Palestinians suffer state-sponsored "violence and terror" every single day, all day, nonstop. She might have even begun to understand why BDS was not only an appropriate response, but an ethical imperative.

Ms Porter's apparent willingness to do the bidding of elites doesn't stop there.

In a House Oversight Committee meeting on 7 February of this year, she scolded her GOP colleagues for their focus on Hunter Biden's laptop. She dismissed the entire affair as "a single story by a single outlet for a single day," a "free-for-all hellscape where anything goes." The wrath she normally directs at rat-bag CEOs was now being directed at her Republican colleagues for wasting time and energy on what she considered a non-story. Her message: we have serious business to do. Get over yourselves.

It was surprising, and disappointing, to hear her say this, as the comments sounded like they'd been taken directly out of the Democratic party's gaslight playbook. Every word she spoke is either misleading or false.

A single outlet? True enough, except the expose' on Hunter Biden's laptop was only carried by a single outlet because the Biden administration was actively working to censor it. A single day? Nope. The New York Post story was censored for a full "16 days," starting right before the 2020 presidential election. How's that for timing? And, yes, it might have been a single story, but it's a story whose contents resonate everywhere, and Ms Porter has to know this.

She has to know the information found on Hunter Biden's laptop implicates the current president of the US in high crimes and misdemeanors. The laptop contained emails detailing wide-spread corruption, shady connections and secret quid pro quos. They return us to Joe Biden's involvement in the disastrous military coup that brought Neo-Nazis to power in Ukraine. They return us to Joe Biden's threat to withhold funding earmarked for Ukraine if that country did not remove Viktor Shokin, the Prosecutor General who just happened to be investigating Biden's son. And finally, they return us to Hunter Biden himself, his cushy position at Burisma, his suspicious transactions with State Energy HK, and his selling access to his father. Corruption 101, practiced at the highest levels of the US gov't.

While we're on the subject, ignore the disinformation smokescreen fanned to a fury by establishment media. They're paid to mislead. So is the letter signed by more than 50 intelligence officers warning the laptop was part of a "Russian plot." These clowns were clever enough to admit there was no actual evidence of Russian involvement, but they catapulted the propaganda anyway. It's what they do. They lied about Iraq having WMDs, they lied about surveilling American citizens, they lied about civilian deaths under Obama's assassination program, and they lied about "Russia-gate." Don't believe a word they say. The laptop is authentic. Even the NY Times says so, albeit a bit late.

The question now is, where does that leave voters with regard to Representative Porter's Senate campaign? Is she a defender of democracy or just another player in the latest Democratic Party bait-and-switch? She wouldn't be the first.

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BK Faunce is a retired Associate Professor of English (UMW / UCSC) specializing in British Romantic Literature, Film Theory and Writing. His recent work examines the use of state power and its impact on visual culture.

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