The Spokane Record

Recently, I received an email from Larry Shook addressed to Chad  at Envision Spokane and sent to an odd grouping of people.  Here is the message and the grouping:

From: Larry Shook <lwshook@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 11:53 AM
Subject: Re: Strengthening Our Economy - Yes on Proposition 4
To: chad@envisionspokane.org
Cc: Stacey Cowles <staceyc@spokesman.com>, “Verner, Mary” <MVerner@spokanecity.org>, CityCouncil@spokanecity.org, Anne Kirkpatrick <akirkpatrick@spokanepolice.org>, “Knezovich, Ozzie” <oknezovich@spokanesheriff.org>, Katherine Shook <flippybat@gmail.com>, Jim Camden <jimc@spokesman.com>, Jonathan Brunt <jonathanb@spokesman.com>, Ted McGregor <tedm@inlander.com>, Kevin Taylor <kevin@inlander.com>, Gary Graham <GaryG@spokesman.com>, “Geranios, Nick K.” <ngeranios@ap.org>

Hi, Chad: Thanks for sharing this with me. I deeply admire your enthusiasm for and commitment to this project. I also respect your sincere desire to serve the public interest. Unfortunately, as I have mentioned to you, Envision Spokane is not compelling to me because of what I consider to be the deep denial built into it. For a group of Spokanites, particularly a group with important support from the Center for Justice, to idealize about the potential to “revolutionize” Spokane while pretending that the community’s structural public corruption does not exist is simply an exercise in building castles in the sky, in my opinion. I think that reporting at www.camasmagazine.com and www.girlfromhotsprings.com makes this clear. Throughout her nine-year tenure, former Spokane City Councilwoman Cherie Rodgers warned that Spokane’s public corruption represented a form of civic cancer. (Please see “Judge Guy Meets Cherie Rodgers” at www.camasmagazine.com) An important source of this civic cancer is Spokane’s publishing dynasty, the Cowles family. (Please see “All In the Family” at www.camasmagazine.com). This cancer turned deadly on April 8, 2006, when a woman perished in the downtown parking garage built and maintained as a result of this cancer. (Please see “Death by Parking” and “Deathtrap” at www.girlfromhotsprings.com.) As you know, two highly credentialed retired law enforcement professionals have been frustrated in their pursuit of justice in the matter of the victim’s death (See “Deathtrap”) while government at all levels has ignored the staggering evidence they presented that Spokane’s public corruption was the cause of what they allege was First-Degree Manslaughter under Washington State Law. In view of these circumstances, I’m afraid that enthusiasts for Envision Spokane remind me of a smoker dying of lung cancer, or an alcoholic destroying his life, daydreaming of a bright future but refusing to give up the poisons that are killing him. I wish this were an unfair comparison, but in view of the evidence of Spokane’s public corruption and that the River Park Square parking garage may well remain a serious public safety hazard, I don’t think it is. At this moment, Spokane has a mayor who was directly implicated in settling the RPS securities fraud case in a way that let the beneficiary of that fraud, the RPS developer go, while saddling Spokane’s citizens with the devastating cost of the fraud. It’s worth noting that this settlement flabbergasted both the bondholder attorney whom the city ostensibly hired to protect Spokane’s citizens and the city’f first RPS special counsel.  (Please see “A New RPS Fraud?” at www.camasmagazine.com.) I take no pleasure in saying these things. I love Spokane and long for it to fulfill its potential. I just don’t think that’s possible until the community faces the truth not just about its public corruption but about its own tolerance of that corruption. I invite those who doubt the validity of this conclusion to study the hundreds of thousands of words of unrefuted reporting, some of it the recipient of national commendations, on the Web sites cited above. Those wishing to truly envision a better future for Spokane might wish to study Daniel Goleman’s “Vital Lies, Simple Truths: The Psychology of Self-Deception.” N.B. chapters five and six, “The Collective Self” and “The Construction of Social Reality.” Pay particular attention to such findings as “how members of a group come to share a unified fantasy life…” p.163.

Sincerely, Larry Shook

At some point I may have some comments about this message and the thrust of Mr. Shook’s thoughts.  My first thought is that there are no real villians in Spokane except “us’”  As Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Another thought I have about Mr. Shook’s piece and that has to do with how one goes about creating a messianic movement.  First, you create a scapegoat and then you instill angst and vigor and blood lust in “the folk.”  Next you keep talking about the two and in time the disenfranchised and the greatly discontented will rise up.  Eric Hoffer, The True Believer (1951); Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (1929); and others I recall from reading the history of Europe in the 30’s and 40’s.

The comprehensive plan amendments and the three zoning decisions to be made this coming Monday concerning this area at the southeast edge of the City of Spokane will create a new “central business disctrict” in the midst of a residential area.   See South Hill group bows out of fight against big retailers by Jonathan Brunt in the Spokesman-Review.

What will happen if the development sought to be allowed actually takes place (and it will)? The area will become a shopping and commericial destination for an area having at least a ten mile radius. The stores will need dense residential and major highways to profit from their investments. The stores and the apparatchiks who are the local cheerleaders of the stores will demand ever increasing urban development.

This is just the way it is, just the way it works. This lovely area of southeast Spokane will never be the same.

One must wonder — how did the developers ever get the Spokane City Council to go along with this. Did they provide financial and social support for the council members? The decisions are so contrary to good comprehensive planning under the Growth Management Act one has to wonder.

I have said these decisions are “senseless.” Quite possibly they are worse than that, they are destructive a liveable residential area and areas which should not be developed as commercial sites or residential areas. It is as though a cancer has been invited to the area.

Where is Mayor Mary Verner these days?  She is keeping a low profile but she has done that since the day she was elected. 

She has come into public view now and then.  The most recent viewing was when she came to the City Council to talk about the so-called “sustainability” plan she and others have cooked up at considerable public expense.  She was quite animated about that.

(The sustainabilty dialogue is interesting.  On the campaign trail many of the candidates talk about sustainability in the context of changing from one light bulb to another.  The city did this in 2003 as I recall, when I was on the council.  The city got thousands of dollars from Avista to make the change.  Another interesting fact about the mayor’s sustainablity discussion is thare is nothing said about the methane burners at the land fills in the city, nothing said about the emissions of the city incinerator, nothing said about the subsidation of the water use with the funds from the city power facility at the Upriver Dam.)

You do not see her involved in the Envision Spokane Community Bill of Rights fiasco.  Perhaps she is for it?  One can only suppose because she should have taken the leadership to ensure that the City Council did the right thing under the law to prepare a proper ballot title and summary statement for placement of the initiative on the ballot in November.  She did not and the ballot title and summary statement are as Envision Spokane has prepared them.  Since they are misleading the initiative has a better chance of passing.

The City Council, having shirked its job regarding the ballot title and summary of measure, has now voted to place two Envision Spokane Community Bill of Rights advisory propositions on the ballot with the intiative.  Here are the proposisitons:

RES 09-63  Relates to the advisory vote proposition asking the voters whether the City should pursue additional funding sources in order to fund the implementation of the provisions of the Envision Spokane Community Bill of Rights if approved by voters.

RES 09-64 Relates to the advisory vote proposition asking the voters whether the City should reduce funding in existing General Fund programs to reallocate funding in order to fund the implementation of the provisions of the Envision Spokane Community Bill of Rights if approved by voters. 

Its all pretty tacky.  See my previous post.

Seems to me a “strong leader” of the community would weigh in on these matters.

“Sustainability, in a broad sense, is the capacity to endure.”  Wikipedia.

Most of the time today we talk about “sustainabiliy” in the context of ensuring that the enviroment as we know it will endure, that we will conduct ourselves such that we do not do so much damage to the environment that it fails to sustain us.  This concept of sustainabilty has a material element to it.  And, rightly so.  But I one wonders whether there may be a more important way of looking at “sustainabilty.” 

Of myself I ask “Can we have a sustainable way of living if our basic moral point of view is contrary to the principles necessary for a sustainable way of living?”  I think not.  The essential problem here has to do with moral concepts of self-limitation, waste, abuse of the environment, a way of living which requires waste and unnecessary consumption and so on.  Buying florescent light bulbs instead of incandescent light bulbs is not the answer to the problem of waste and unsustainability.  The answer is a change in our moral point of view.

Waste is simply a taboo.  It is something that is wrong.  The point does not need to be argued.  It is simply wrong.  It is wrong just like stealing is wrong, assault is wrong, unfair business practices are wrong, perjury is wrong.  Waste endangers everyone, harms everyone.

Tonight, August 3, 2009, the Spokane City Council is going to consider two resolutions regarding the Envision Spokane Community Bill of Rights Initiative, Initiative 2009-2.   Here are the resolutions being proposed:

RES 09-63  Relates to the advisory vote proposition asking the voters whether the City should pursue additional funding sources in order to fund the implementation of the provisions of the Envision Spokane Community Bill of Rights if approved by voters.

RES 09-64 Relates to the advisory vote proposition asking the voters whether the City should reduce funding in existing General Fund programs to reallocate funding in order to fund the implementation of the provisions of the Envision Spokane Community Bill of Rights if approved by voters.

 These proposed resolutions are beneath the dignity of the Spokane City Council.  They are nothing less than a political effort to defeat the Initiative.  The council would use its power to muck up the ballot for purely political reasons.  The resolutions are not legislation, they are misuse of the power of government for purposes of partisan political debate.

If the council was worth its salt it would have challenged whether the Initiative complied with the initiative requirements of the Spokane City Charter.  It did not and in doing so turned the initiative process into a logrolling free for all of legislation for and of “good things.”  Some council members have even suggested that the way in which Envision Spokane is making use of the initiative process is ”democracy.”  (These council members should take a course in civics and perhaps logic.  Or, maybe just read the city charter.)

The council should know that the initiative is illegal to its core.  Not only does it violate the single subject rule, fail to present amendments to the laws being changed in the proper form, have a ballot title and summary of measure which were not approved by the council as required by law, it seeks to create laws and rights which the people of Spokane have no right under the law to create. 

Initiative 2009-2 is shear nonsense.  And so are the resolutions to be discussed tonight.  No court in Washington would conclude that the Initiative is legal.  (This case will more than likely go to the Washington Supreme Court, and not Division III of the Court of Appeals (which has judges unlawfully elected to it – see this page and the Article to be found there).)

And there is another point which must be made.  What the council seeks to consider is exactly the sort of thing the Government Party thinks government should do.  The notion of the Government Party and its adherents (whether they be Republicans, Democrats, Capitalists, Marxists or proponents of Keynesian Economics by local governments which do not have resources to adopt fiscal policy or a money printing press for a monetary policy) is that government is to be used for the parochial power desires of the “current trustees” of the Government Party.

Spokane would do well if it gradually elected people to the City Council who were not members of the Government Party and instead who saw themselves as trustees of the public trust of the true government of the people of City of Spokane.

Bloomberg News reported today:

The first 12 months of the U.S. recession saw the economy shrink more than twice as much as previously estimated, reflecting even bigger declines in consumer spending and housing, revised figures showed.

Recession Worse Than Prior Estimates, Revisions Show

Times are not getting better.  There may be a bit of good news here, there, or what looks like good news here or there but the facts remain, the economy is in a downturn.  In Washington state we have unemployment at 9.2% – look at this graph of unemployment statistics over the last several years in Washington.  Look at the graph for Spokane County.  The rate today is over 8.9%.  A few weeks ago it was over 10%.

It has been reported that 41 US cities have unemployment rates in excess of double digits.  In California major cities like Los Angeles (11.4%) and cities in the San Joaquin Valley like Fresno and Bakersfield have double digit unemployment.  See this story.

What does all this forebode for Washington State and Spokane.  It means that times are tough and are likely to become tougher.  For Spokane, a city dependent on sales tax revenues, there are lean times coming.  The future health of the community depends on fiscal responsibility.  The good times are over.  And, they will only come back if taxes are used for essentials and government makes way for entrepreneurial activity.  I am not talking about subsidies or business clinics or good time booster-ism, I am talking about simplicity and better and simpler laws which support economic activity rather than hinder it.  It also means getting government out of the business of owning property which is not necessary for the functions of government (the downtown YMCA and the Anthony’s restaurant properties are good examples).

Here is something else of importance.  Spokane city employee wage rates are measured and set considering other cities in Washington.  The wage rates in Seattle are 10% higher than elsewhere.  Seattle Workers Paid 10% More than U.S, Average. 

So what have we here, how is Spokane affected? 

City revenues are dropping and they are going to drop even more in the future.  The city council thinks its hands are tied on wages because in the collective bargaining process people are going to look to Seattle and environs for comparable wage rates.  And they are high over there and high over there in comparison to the rest of the country. 

This cannot be allowed to happen in Spokane.  We would be naive to let it happen in Spokane.  The truth of the matter is, we cannot afford what the people presently in control of city government would have us pay.

The other candidates in the race I am in talk about “collaboration” “common sense solutions” ” moving forward” (there is a lot of “moving forward” talk).  City of Spokane, Council District 2, Position 2.

They talk about light rail, but the city has nothing to do with county public transportation.

There is talk about sprawl, but we already deal with the issue in our Growth Management Act compliance with Spokane County.

There is talk about a bike and pedestrian friendly city, but no talk about traffic safety, snow removal problems, real street repairs, the devotion of part of the budget to annual street maintenance.

There is talk about a farmers market so that Spokane farmers will have a place to sell their produce. But there may only be one or two farms in the city.

There is talk about government encouragement of businesses and job creation in Spokane (or is it the county?) but what that means is bureaucracy and subsidies  — taking money from taxpayers and giving it to special businesses — some candidates call these people “visionaries.”  At this point you might want to make a slight diversion and watch the newsreel “In the Realm of Fairies Festival” in the Methow River Valley which never seems to leave the Spokesman-Review website.

There is talk about (1) lambasting the Cowles Family, (2) putting the police department under scrutiny by an ombudsman, and (3) spending over $5 million to buy a functioning and well maintained commercial building, take it off the tax rolls and make an open space of less than an acre of the land left over.

And then there is talk about getting a new high rise built in downtown (or Browne’s Addition?)  for purposes of mere vanity.

Finally, the candidates speak well of, are silent with respect of, or fail to take positive action regarding the illegality of — you guessed it —  the Envision Spokane Bill of Rights, Initiative 2009-2.  You can also find the “community bill of rights” part of  intiative on the Envision Spokane website but it will take you time to find it.

All of these good things will cost money, much money. You do not create such temporary good things without money. So where is the money to come from? Money will have to be taken from the taxpayer to pay for all these rights, pie in the sky stuff and “good things”?

There is something terribly amiss in most of the candidacies of people running for city council.

They will have Spokane “move forward” –  forward off a Buffalo Jump.

City Council Members, Council Meeting July 27, 2009

Besides the requirements if the City Charter, the city has laws which apply to the city initiative process. SMC Ch. 2.02. Envision Spokane did not use the Optional Initiative Filing Procedure. SMC 2.02.030.

Because it did not, the ballot title and summary of measure have not been decided upon as required by law where the city is to participate in the process to ensure legality of at least that much of the initiative.

Under the initiative laws the council has a role to play in the preparation of the ballot title and summary of measure which will be presented to the voters. Tonight you are supposed to decide the ballot title and summary of measure.  SMC 2.02.100(C). You are required by city law to do so. SMC 2.02.040(C). Instead, you are going to shirk your responsibility and put the matter on the ballot as is - with Envision Spokane’s ballot title and summary of measure. Both of which are unlawful. In doing so you will be providing Envision Spokane with vital strong assistance in getting this unlawful initiative passed in violation of city charter and now city initiative laws.

Respectfully,

Steve Eugster

There are strong forces at work in Spokane to cause the government of the City of Spokane to become ever more involved in actions and expenditures which go beyond what local government is intended to do.  Given the current zeitgeist, the notions that government is the cause and the solution to much of our trouble, the desire to do good so as to take care of the poor, the worker, the environment, the sick, the halt —  none of what is happening is surprising.  This summer and fall the people of Spokane are going to have an opportunity to vote to take action all these fronts.  They, the voters, will, in essence, be told they can create a New Jerusalem right here in Spokane by telling the government to provide a host of rights to various deserving people and their neighborhoods.

Envision Spokane’s “Community Bill of Rights” fascinates.  It is a near perfect expression of what we have come to these days — an understanding that government is not us, is something else, maybe controlled by those who are not us, the bad guys, the rich guys, the corporations, the evil ones, and that all  that has to be done is to take control of it and tell it to do good things.

What is to become of us?  What are we becoming?

Spokesman-Review political columnist Jim Camden seems to be saying forget about whether the Envision Spokane initiative is procedurally illegal, send it to the voters anyway so that they can decide.  He’s saying “procedure” be damned, lets vote! 

 Here’s the problem.  The city charter says legislation can only cover one subject at a time.  This is a constitutional requirement of the state constitution too.  The single subject rule applies to the city council when it advances legislation.  It applies to the legislature.

The procedural legality of the “Community Bill of Rights” initiative will not be tested in advance of the election.  The city council does not have the courage to test it.  And, individual council members for the most part would like to punt hard questions to “the courts” and “the lawyers.”

The initiative violates the single subject rule, City Charter Section 13.  No reasonable person can disagree. 

One must wonder whether we are engaged in a dumbing down of politics and constitutional rights in favor of current fads of “good things.”