The Spokane Record

I talked with a candidate for city council yesterday. The candidate would like to use the power of government to make the city into something desired in terms of land uses and places for people to gather and live and work. There was talk about redevelopment of this or that neighborhood, land use and comprehensive plan changes to evoke remaking various areas or preventing areas from being remade by “developers,” getting developers to do this or that, and so on. Not a word about the tough issues concerning the immediate and necessary functions city government.

These motivations are not surprising, but I think they are wrong. Government is not capable of providing for these various ever-changing ideas of public “make-overs.” It is only an organization which has come about because of the necessity to provide certain functions – police, emergency services, law enforcement and court, roads, water, sewer, garbage collection, parks, and so on. These are public functions. There is more than enough for local government to do to take care of these things. To make government more than what it really is this is is a waste of precious resources and political energy. 

Also, I am certain that many of the things such political “visionaries” desire would come about if the city ands its leaders would attend to the mundane aspects city management.

There is no real news about the Spokane City Budget for 2010.  The city website has a page and some information but it looks as though the publication date was about May, 2009.  City of Spokane Budget Page.

The mayor has to present a budget by November 1, 2009.  That will be good for the incumbents and indeed others running for city council.  The very tough decisions the city must make have to do with the budget.  No doubt, if history repeats itself, the city will continue to pay its overly generous benefits and wages.  To do so it will continue the 25% city utility tax (really a sales tax).  This tax is primarily a tax on the poor so that city workers may be paid more.

What to make of the voter turnout? More than 41,000 ballots were mailed out to the voters of City Council District 2. Only 11,000 or so were returned. That’s a turnout of 28%! What does this mean? What does it mean that 30,000 electors in a 41,000 elector district did not vote. What was in the mass mind of these nonvoters? The nonvoters represent 72% of the voters. The people who make up this group probably have some “reason” why they did not vote.

Maybe they did not vote because they are apathetic. I think that must have something to do with it. From my perspective I see an apathy about government even in the people who are elected. It seems apathy must be the driving force of council members who think it important to attend neighborhood meetings ad nauseam instead of looking into the deeper aspects of the city budget.

Maybe they did not vote because it just took too much time and trouble to fill out the ballot and mail it back. Maybe they did not have stamps. Maybe the postmen who come to the homeowners’ doors should sell stamps. Wouldn’t that be “good thing.”

Maybe they have just given up on government. Given it up because it does not provide enough good things and never will. Where’s my momma?

Maybe the mass of the non-voting electorate have found religion and have eschewed all things Mammon. See Matthew 6:24. (Somehow, I doubt that is the case.)

I think I know one thing for sure, if the District 2 non-voters had voted the difference between the number who voted for me and the votes for the other three would have been even greater.

Why would I say this: Simple, I stood and stand for a much more limited government and a limitation or even lowering of taxes. I stood and stand for a government which requires a more vigorous commitment of the people to take care of their own affairs. People who do not bother to vote are in the end result people who are dependent on others, who rely on others, who expect others to take care of them. Or, if they do vote they vote the candidates who will give them something, who will not will not demand anything from them, the candidate who will provide  “good things” and will “move forward” and be “collaborative.”

Today is the next to last day of the election. The election will be over in 28 hours or so. In the City of Spokane for District 2, 40,711 ballots were mailed out to voters. As of this afternoon 9,682 ballots had been mailed back. That means that only 23.78% of the electorate in the district has voted. In the next day or so another 9,000 or so will vote (maybe). That will bring the total up to 18,692 or 47%. Vicky Dalton, the Elections Supervisor (Auditor), says the participation will be about 33%. If she is right that will mean that only15, 500 or so voted out of 40,711.

During the campaign, some of the other candidates for the office I am “standing for” have been critical of my concern that the electorate of Spokane has become or is apathetic.  Seems to me what is happening in the Primary Election of 2009 is proof positive of what I have said.

The other candidates may not like it, but how can anyone deny the facts.  Out of 4o,711 ballots sent, only 33 % t0 47% will be cast.  What happened to the thousands of voters who did not particpate in the election? Surely one would have to conclude that they are apathetic.

Truth is the truth.

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.

Years ago I took a case up to the Washington State Supreme Court having to do with campaign expenditure limitations.  The court said the expenditure limitations were unconstitutional.  Bare v. Gorton, 84 Wn.2d 380, 526 P.2d 379 (1974) (Tom O’Hare, now practicing in Siverdale, Washington, was the trial attorney and a partial author of the appellate brief).  We represented a school board candidate for the Marysville school district.

The limitation was unconstitutional because worked as a limit on freedom of political speech.  (We won.)

We made the point that money is speech, or necessary for speech. The money was a part of the means by which the candidate communicated her positions to the electorate.   But these days it seems money has become the most interesting aspect of campaigns these days, even at the local level.  The fascination with money has become the focal discussions of the campaigns not the issues.

Today’s Spokesman-Review stories are an example.  With less than 8 days to the primary election the main topic seems to be who is raising the most money and who is spending the most money.  Campaigns note contributors.  It is as if money is not speech it is a sign of credibility.  Maybe that is where we are going these days.  Maybe that has been where we have been all along, fascinated by money, worshipful of money and those who seem to have it.

Regarding the Envision Spokane Community Rights Initiative the Spokesman-Review has a story about the money those in opposition have raised. Opponent’s fundraising exceeds that of bill of rights supporters.  (The money spent will be a waste.  Even if passed the Envision Spokane Bill of Rights Initiative is illegal and for various reasons.)

One wonders whether the electorate has any interest in the issues, in debate about the issues.  If the issues were really of interest there would be discussion.  At least, I would think the newspapers would discuss the issues so that they would sell papers.  But no, the issues have no real relationship to the campaign.  For example when the campaigns started, the Inlander did a piece on the candidates running for District 2, Position 2 — what was the piece about?  Which candidate was going to raise the most money!  Money Race.

So I come back to the point I started with, is money speech?  It could be, but it is not.  It is certainly not speech about the issues.  It is just advertising, image projection, effort at cajoling the consumers — the electorate.  It is ”commerical speech.”

Well, I gotta go now,  I hear there is another Ponzi Scheme unfolding someplace — maybe in a wealthy farming area someplace in the midwest — maybe a city which was the fictional Zenith of Sinclair Lewis’ Babbitt. – a sort of Kenny Oxborrow II?  Money, money, money —- why, its better than booze or sex!

The Spokesman-Review has a piece on global warming and the Spokane City Council election races.  Go here.  Huh? — one might say to himself or herself. 

Do we have global warming? Yes, many scientists have so concluded. Is there a solution? If Krakatoa east of Java erupted again and put layer of ash into the atmosphere, that would cool things down. What if a large meteor landed on the floating continent of garbage moving about the North Pacific and exploded it and all sorts of debris into the atmosphere around the earth? That too would cool things down.

What role does Spokane have in the global warming debate? None really. The article is talking about a “wedge issue.” Why not talk about religious preference, whether one is for obesity or against it.  Or, how about whether Spokane is for freedom of trade with Cuba?

Or, whether one likes this or that? (I prefer that most of the time.)

If there is any real concern here, the concern should be waste. Why is Spokane wasting its resources, its money, its tax revenues? Maybe the current city council and its incumbents like waste because it is good economics. Sort of a City of Spokane Keynesianism

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.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy, in his inaugural address, said

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country.

We have come a long way from these good words.  Today, the thought of asking what each of us can do for our country or for that matter our city does not cross the mind of many of our number.  Indeed, the attitude today is everyone can and should ask what the country, the government, the city can do for the individual, “for me.”

The “Cash for Clunkers” program is the paradigm for today.  Everyone is entitled to a subsidy from the federal government these days.  The government is the answer to everything.  Everyone, it seems, wants to have the government provide him or her with something.  As a nation, as a people, we are learning to give up our dignity, our self-reliance, our faith in ourselves.  We are becoming trained to be dependent on the government. 

Of course, there will be a large failure.  The nature of things is such that government cannot maintain itself so that the people will be dependent on government.  Government cannot spend if it does not have money to spend.  The money is running out, fast.  Just as the Soviet Union failed, we will fail unless we are reawakened to reliance upon ourselves and our own dignity.  The subsidies are bargains with the Devil.

The larger problem is that human nature will not allow itself to become dependent on illusions.  Human nature will shed the sham of false promises.

“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.