Shame On West For Not Making Threat Earlier

I awoke Wednesday morning to a shocked-sounding radio reporter announcing that Spokane’s Sen. Jim West is under police investigation for threatening to kill a lobbyist.

Let me repeat this: Republican West is in big trouble for wanting to kill a lobbyist.

Putting partisanship aside for a moment, what’s so wrong with that?

It’s not as if West clubbed a pack of baby seals to bloody mush.

He didn’t get caught using ozone-endangering deodorant. He didn’t take a bundle of campaign cash from a temple full of impoverished Buddhists.

He didn’t let communist agents into the White House or rent out the Lincoln bedroom. Women aren’t lined up claiming West used his political power to sleep with them.

West threatened a lobbyist, for gawd’s sake.

This is like grabbing a can of Raid and spraying under your sink. Lobbyists are humankind’s two-legged cockroaches who scuttle out from the dark crevices of government to peddle their dirty influence at a tune of $100 million a month.

A fine dinner here. A bribe there. A weekend at a sun-baked resort… LOBBYIST: “Get me the Jack Daniels distillery on the phone. I need six cases of their Black Label. Pronto.”

SECRETARY: “Getting ready for New Year’s?”

LOBBYIST: “Naw, we need Ted Kennedy’s vote on that day-care bill.”

Want to know what a lobbyist is?

Go rent the movie, “The Devil’s Advocate.” Watch Pacino. If that isn’t the perfect portrayal of a lobbyist, I’ll put on a dress and be a Clinton intern.

The trouble with America’s bloated pork-barrel system is that there aren’t enough lobbyists being threatened.

Take, for example, the big headlined story this newspaper ran Tuesday: “Bike safety bill imperiled by late tinkering.”

It seems the bill named on behalf of Cooper Jones - the Spokane boy killed on his bike by a clueless driver - may not become law even though it passed both houses.

One of the bill’s original sponsors, Rep. Duane Sommers, has all of a sudden come down with a bad case of missing-spine syndrome. Now the Spokane Republican wants to alter a portion of the legislation that hacked off the insurance industry.

“We’re going to risk this whole thing because some lobbyist is upset?” complained Sen. Lisa Brown, a Spokane Democrat.

What’s the matter, Duane? Did the insurance sugar daddies take you off their goody list?

What did West do that was so wrong?

He got steamed over some cockamamie half-truth ads placed in The Spokesman-Review last week by the Building Industries Association of Washington. So West, who’s always been something of a hothead, dialed Tom McCabe, the building industries’ chief mercenary.

West left the following taped message: “McCabe, you son of a bitch, you better get me, ‘cause if you don’t, you’re dead.”

Swearing, of course, is not appropriate for a senior senator active in Boy Scouts. The responsible threat for West to have made was: “McCabe, you’re a good-for-nothing-spawn-of-Satan lobbyist. I’ll kill every last one of you unctuous bloodsuckers.”

McCabe is now having a field day at mouthy West’s expense, telling the media how knee-knocking terrified he was. He sure was scared. After hearing the tape, McCabe went to bed and waited until the next day to file a complaint with Olympia police.

This is all political posturing.

Next week, after this tiff runs its course, McCabe will be back slithering around the Statehouse trying to woo West’s vote.

Nobody who’s met West would ever take seriously a threat from this guy. One good punch to West’s pudgy midriff and the soft senator would collapse like a sack of dirty laundry.

West is sadly just a blowhard, but his heart’s in the right place.

Kill a lobbyist?

You got my vote, Jimbo.

, DataTimes