Editorial

He smoked marijuana as a teen but just got his learner’s permit, so at age 20 my son knows more about cannabis than about driving. But he does know the two don’t mix.

When the Federal Communications Commission repealed President Obama’s net neutrality rules last year, it launched a movement. Around the country, there is a rising tide calling for permanent new rules to keep the internet open and free. No company should be permitted to interfere with our internet experience by blocking or prioritizing traffic or discriminating against anyone’s ability to participate online. In a digital world, net neutrality is a civil rights imperative – the only way to be sure that all citizens have a full and equal chance to be heard in the new public square.

On March 16, I spent the day with my family waiting to hear whether I would be fired, after 21 years in the FBI and one day before I qualified for my long-planned, earned retirement. As day turned to night, I had a lot of time to reflect on how it would feel to be separated from the organization I loved – and led – and the mission that has been the central focus of my professional life. Despite all the preparation for the worst-case scenario, I still felt disoriented and sick to my stomach. Around 10 p.m., a friend called to tell me that CNN was reporting that I had been fired. She read me the attorney general’s statement.

In response to “Neighborhood bounded by old and new: Mix in Latah/Hangman area poses challenge for neighborhood council”:

It has now been nearly three months since I took over the duties of coordinating The Spokesman-Review’s opinion section. I’d like to share some of the things I’ve learned in that time, as well as some recent and upcoming developments. I want to begin by clearing up some misconceptions about letters to the editor. At the bottom of every opinion page, we include the following advisory: “Unfortunately, we don’t have space to publish all letters, nor are we able to acknowledge their receipt.” It should have served as an advisory to me as well.

The Spokane City Council last week approved rules that will make it almost impossible for television crews embedded with law enforcement to broadcast what they film. Along the way, they ran roughshod over the First Amendment. At a time when verifiable facts are labeled as “fake news,” this is exactly the sort of thing our nation’s founders worked so diligently to avoid. The council seems to think it can recognize “bona fide news organizations” as opposed to “reality-based police shows.” In Spokane, some news sources are more equal than others, especially if it means protecting the city’s reputation.

An informal public comment period just ended regarding the development of alternatives for the new forest plan on the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forests in north central Idaho. The plan will provide management direction for these forests over the next 10-30 years. A Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the revision is expected in December, in which there will be another opportunity for public involvement. The recent comment period was an opportunity for citizens to shape those alternatives.

Shortly after the Charlottesville riots last August, I made the private decision to step down as President Donald Trump’s personal representative and ambassador to the government of Panama. The president’s failure to condemn the white supremacists and neo-Nazis who provoked the violence made me realize that my values were not his values. I never meant for my decision to resign to be a public political statement. Sadly, it became one. The details of how that happened are less important than the demoralizing take-away: When career public servants take an oath to communicate dissent only in protected channels, Trump administration officials do not protect that promise of privacy.

At the lowest point in my life, I almost did the most horrible thing imaginable. I grew up in a very chaotic and violent household. My mother tried to take care of my brother and me, but she too was a victim of my father, a violent and evil man. My stepfather was not much better, replacing the outright horror with drugs and crime. At 14, I was kicked out of my house for brawling with him. By 11th grade, I was a quiet, sensitive, obese social outcast with an affinity for poetry and comic books. I had no home and often slept outdoors; I felt alone and unloved. The isolation and bullying eventually became unbearable, and at 16, having already dropped out of my Denver high school, I tried to reach out for help. I went to a mental health clinic I’d passed to discuss my anger and my suicidal thoughts. I had no idea whether it was the right place to go. I knew only that the sign said “mental health,” and I needed some help on that front. I met with a very young “care provider” who did not seem trained to identify my problems and did not agree that I needed inpatient care. She sent me home.

“Trade wars,” President Donald Trump recently declared, “are good, and easy to win.” But it’s questionable whether the president’s proposed tariffs – a tax of 25 percent on imported steel and 10 percent on imported aluminum – will be a war or an act of friendly fire. As I recently wrote, tariffs are generally not a good way to promote domestic industry. They encourage American producers to hunker down behind the tax’s protective wall, focusing on the captive local market instead of figuring out how to prevail in the rough-and-tumble of global competition. Forcing American consumers to use the domestic-made product might eventually result in American steel and aluminum becoming bywords for low quality.

Once again, the Trump administration has proposed drastic cuts to public media. The president’s 2019 plan proposes to fund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) at $15 million, a 97 percent reduction. Idaho Public Television has an annual budget of $9 million, of which $1.5 million is allocated from CPB. $3 million comes from the state general fund, and the balance of about $4.5 million comes from contributions from Idaho residents and from grants. Under the president’s proposed budget, Idaho’s public TV station would lose $1.5 million of base funding, weakening the sustainability of IdahoPTV as we know it. What are we risking?

Across the nation there is an urgent need for massive new broadband investments which will help to usher in the fifth generation of internet services: the technology that will enable connected cars, connected appliances and all the innovations that will come with the internet of things.

The Spokesman-Review’s Saturday (Feb. 17) article, “Officials ponder protections for ponderosa pines, Spokane’s official tree,” appeared the day after I received an announcement for a proposed 230-unit development of a beautiful, pine-studded parcel near my home on the South Hill. My first thoughts on both these pieces of news was the precarious existence of the ponderosas in our city. Spokane’s unique character is defined in part by its setting in a ponderosa pine forest. As a residential landscape architect, I find the basalt rock, pine needle duff and rugged ponderosas as beautiful and distinctive as the elegant Craftsman homes from the turn of the century that grace our city.

Education finance laws passed in 2017 eliminated the staff mix factor. This factor was used to provide state salary funds based on a teacher’s experience and training. Instead of the staff mix factor, the state adopted an average teacher salary funding plan whereby each district will receive the same funding for each teacher within each regional salary designation. (The state also ended equal statewide salary funding and adopted regional salary funding based on housing costs.)

A new group of advocates spanning Vancouver, Bellingham, Seattle, Spokane, Tacoma and Portland are coming together to connect Cascadia through high-speed intercity transport.

On Wednesday, a nasty piece of character assassination summited YouTube’s trending list. The video spread like a rash, and not just among those sympathetic to its wingnut paranoia. If the comments on YouTube and in the media were any indication, it also fascinated hate-watchers. Culled from a local news segment about a 2017 spat between a lifeguard and a swimmer, it showed a bronzed teen on a beach with the caption “David Hogg the actor.” How could something so basic climb the charts? Hogg is a survivor of the massacre in Parkland, Fla., and one of the newly minted student leaders now calling for tougher gun laws. The video suggested that he is actually a performer, paid by sinister left-wing forces to advocate repeal of the Second Amendment.

I am a retired schoolteacher with about 40 years’ experience working in the middle school through postgraduate levels of the language arts, and a former police reserve officer with about eight years in service. I am currently a T/A/C officer for the Benton County Sheriff’s Department Police Explorer Program. I have taught hunter education for the Washington state Department of Fish and Wildlife for over 35 years. I am not without some experience in the public eye, thinking on my feet. Monday night – Feb. 12 – I helped teach a class on Active Shooter Response to a cadre of Law Enforcement Explorers. Over the years I have taken or taught many such classes, elements and units. There are only a few resulting themes. Defense wins games. Ask the Eagles and the Patriots. The only way to increase school safety is to train and arm teachers, staff and administrators. The notion of “gun-free zones” is ridiculous. Those areas become “target-rich environments” for predators. Time and again we see that the only thing stopping a willing bad person with a gun is a willing good person with a gun. Trying to reduce violence by stacking restrictive gun laws is absurd.

College teaching often begins like this: Turn on the podium PC, a video projector and a wireless mic. Lower a projection screen. Figure out the light touch panel, the DVR and the volume controls. Open the course management system. Then navigate via laser pointer through a PowerPoint, remember every student’s name and condense decades of expertise into one lecture. Frankly, the laser pointer is always the first to go.