John Webster

So eager is federal government to mine our pocketbooks that it taxes some income twice - once for Social Security taxes, and a second time for income tax. U.S. Rep. George Nethercutt proposes to change that, by giving Americans an income tax deduction for the amount they shell out for the Social Security payroll tax. It's an attractive proposal. It would make the tax code more equitable, help the economy grow and boost the take-home pay of average working stiffs at a time of stagnant wages.

It was Ronald Reagan - that liberal! - who signed no-fault divorce into California state law. The year was 1969. By 1974, 44 states had followed suit. Now, even feminists agree that America's affair with free love and frequent divorce was bad for women, children and other living things. Dozens of states are discussing a return to fault-based divorce laws. But was law the problem? Can a change in law be the solution? No. The problem was cultural. It is culture that must change. If popular values once again grant marriage the reverence and support that societal survival requires, we will not need to go back to old divorce laws. Nor should we.

Bob Dole's eloquent, emotional departure from the U.S. Senate should silence, for a few minutes anyway, those who mock his homespun speaking style. With one bold decision, the Kansas Republican made it more likely that President Clinton will get a run for his money and the voters will get a choice in November. Clinton does need a vigorous foe and voters do need a real choice. In recent days, it had appeared both candidates in the coming presidential campaign would just insult the public with cheap, single-issue abuse of their respective powers. When a seasonal jump in crude oil prices caused an entirely normal jump in gasoline prices, President Clinton pledged to investigate oil companies, while Senate Majority Leader Dole maneuvered to cut federal gasoline taxes. Both reactions had everything to do with politics and nothing to do with economic reality. Clinton, of course, will keep using the White House as a campaign device, tailoring his policies to the latest opinion polls.

Animal-rights activists are foaming at the mouth, again - this time because a dying Minnesota teenager made a wish to go bear hunting in Alaska and some kindly donors made his wish come true. Being in a perpetual lather seems to come naturally for quite a few Americans these days. Outsiders unfamiliar with our ways might look at the single-issue tantrums of our countless specialinterest groups and wonder if we have gotten just a bit spoiled. Here we sit, in the most prosperous democracy on the planet, fussing about how extremely offended we are that hunters kill game animals, loggers cut down trees and (fill in your favorite whining here). All of us believe passionately, of course, in our narrow little causes. And we can donate big bucks for organizational newsletters that will keep us constantly agitated about people whose lives and opinions differ from our own.

As April came to its chilly close and the phony posturings of a presidential campaign year spread like flu through the Capitol, the U.S. Senate did something remarkable. Setting partisanship aside, member after member rose to speak in moving terms about mental illness and loved ones who have suffered from it. Then they voted, surprising even themselves, to impose a federal mandate that at long last could open doors to equitable treatment of the mentally ill. Federal mandates have fallen out of favor, but even conservative Republicans were supporting this one.

The pounding of heavy traffic from the suburbs has worn deep ruts in Spokane's Grand Boulevard. Once a quiet, tree-lined residential area, the South Hill is being overrun by impatient speeding motorists. "To hell with your neighborhood," the drivers seem to say as they gun their minivans toward anyone who dares set foot in a crosswalk. "We're headed for our neighborhood, and you're in our way." Is this any way to build a community? No, but it's how we do it here - as North Siders know, having watched traffic from the 'burbs fight its way through their neighborhoods. Arterial improvements have brought some relief to the North Side; not so for the South Hill. And city growth forecasts indicate the problem there will triple in intensity.

Wheat farmers face an agonizing transition, and wishful longing for the past won't make the future go away. After 60 years of dependence on federal subsidies, our region's leading industry has just seven years to get off the dole. This will - or should - force an urgent campaign to change the way this crucial industry does business. But it's not clear where the industry, consisting as it does of numerous independent business people, will find the leadership and coordinated reform it needs.

Someone assaulted our community early Monday morning. A pipe bomb stuffed with nails damaged an entrance to City Hall and scattered shrapnel across Post Street and into Riverfront Park. The 3 a.m. timing indicates the terrorist may have tried to avoid hurting a large number of people. Yet, the bomb clearly was designed to inflict horrible human suffering. Why? What's the point? What sort of rage makes a person fabricate a bomb and leave it where it may kill or injure passers-by?

He is 50-something and he feels betrayed. A couple of corporations have played a game of checkers and they have swept his job and his decades of loyalty right off the game board as if they never happened. He is not alone. Downsizing. It's happening everywhere. Last week, Bell Atlantic and Nynex announced a merger that will eliminate 3,000 jobs. The trend is particularly stark in telecommunications, where AT&T; has eliminated 40,000 jobs. It is common, in reports of a downsizing, to mention critically the benefits to shareholder profits and the high salaries of CEOs who make the cuts.

On Tuesday in this space, Spokane County commissioners read deserved compliments about some of their recent land-use decisions. If they had clipped out that editorial and turned it over, they would have found a news story reporting that they are worried about how to improve their image. The story said commissioners are inviting proposals for a new and perhaps more expensive public relations aide. In the interests of saving the taxpayers some money and continuing for a moment longer in a constructive vein, we would like to point out that the complimentary editorial did not spring from the imagination of some taxpayer-funded flack ... er, public relations professional. Good image comes from good policy. A government that is open, receptive and responsive toward the public needs no spin doctors. The praise comes naturally.

Spokane County commissioners, accused for years of being quick to rubber-stamp whatever developments the real estate industry proposes, lately have shown some sensitivity to the larger community's interest in land-use planning. Commissioners have taken steps to make zoning policy clearer and more consistently enforced. And they have said "no" to several projects that ran contrary to county policy. Developers point out - rightly - that the community needs growth. A lack of building sites can inflate housing prices and deter new industry from moving in and creating jobs.

The city of Spokane proposes to raise Upriver Dam and wipe out the most popular half-mile of rapids along the Centennial Trail. The project's goal is to gain revenue and cut costs in the city's $21 million-a-year water department budget. Estimated benefits range from $57,000 to $170,000 a year. The higher estimate is the city's; the lower is the federal government's. That's absurd, alongside the damage this proposal would do.

Three times in the past five years, Spokane Valley voters have refused to organize their independent-minded suburbia into a city. No wonder advocates of the latest Valley incorporation proposals want to avoid as many voters as they can. In a democracy, though, it takes some pretty brazen shenanigans to elude voters. Consider: First, the die-hards tried to single out neighborhoods where voters have been least hostile (but still opposed) to incorporation. The result: proposals to rope 19,000 people into one city and 15,000 people into another. This would leave most of the Valley still unincorporated - and a target for competing annexation moves by the two new cities plus the existing cities of Spokane and Millwood.

You know the feeling. You're reading about the latest exploits of city government and suddenly there's steam coming out your ears. Believe it or not, the folks who work at Spokane's City Hall don't lie awake at night inventing ways to make the public blow like an overheating teakettle. They'd rather make decisions that reflect the community's values.

Executives at top U.S. corporations have earned the current public criticism. Who but the recipients can say with a straight face that they have earned those six- or seven-figure salaries and bonuses? Private-sector CEOs are not alone. In government agencies all across the nation, there is a managerial class whose salaries and annual nest-featherings make the taxpaying public gag. High managerial salaries - and especially the annual increases in them - become unconscionable at a time when layoffs, relentless productivity demands and other punishing cuts are forced upon employees who perform the work for which business and government organizations exist. The most recent local example was at Spokane's City Hall. There, 16 administrators whose annual pay ranged from $65,000 to $93,000 received across-the-board raises of 2.75 percent to 3.25 percent. The public, which has watched taxes rise and services wither as a result of these same administrators' actions, is enraged. Similarly, at Eastern Washington University, faculty members are steamed over their top administrators' out-of-line salaries, which range from $85,000 to $130,000. And teachers at local community colleges have protested salaries and raises granted to administrators there; the top job, at $106,000, pays 30 percent more than it did five years ago.

Police who have spent years enforcing narcotics laws say that more than half the people they arrest are repeat customers. But junkies scuttle constantly from place to place, trying to keep a half step ahead of their pursuers. Local crack dealers, for instance, have moved back and forth from motels to apartments to street corners to friends' or relatives' homes to girlfriends' apartments. All a community can do is make this socially destructive trade difficult to conduct by keeping the vermin on the run.

Believe it or not, the method for choosing presidential candidates has improved over the years. In the old days when nominating conventions mattered, men in rumpled suits brokered deals among corrupt big-city political machines, sweating out their party's ticket in hotel rooms littered with bottles, bimbos and cigarette butts. This year, voters or caucus-goers in roughly half of the states actually had a chance to influence the choice.

Some Spokane residents barely know who Ruth and Kevin Coe were, if they have heard of them at all. Once, they were the center of a sensation - a series of vicious crimes and bizarre trials that gripped and tore at this community in the same way the O.J. Simpson trial recently gripped the nation. No longer. The recent death of Ruth Coe, at age 75, in a remote Nevada town, puts the tragic saga in perspective. Her son Kevin is negotiating middle age in prison, where he belongs. The judge and prosecutor who helped put him there, whose murder a vengeful Ruth Coe attempted to arrange, have retired. And what of the 40 or so women Kevin Coe stalked and raped? The frightened 14-year-old would be turning 30 about now. And the young woman who pointed at Coe in court, defiantly declaring that even as he battered her body she had resolved to "memorize his face," has perhaps experienced the healing forgetfulness of time. And the satisfaction of knowing that her bravery protected others and put a predator behind bars. Spokane itself has grown, and it has changed.

The Cold War ended years ago, but costs and casualties continue to rise. And the responsible governments are handling shabbily their obligation to the people who pay the bills and bury the dead. In Belarus, extraordinary numbers of children are arriving at hospitals with fallout-related conditions such as thyroid cancer. They live - and die - in a region contaminated by one of the last tragedies of the U.S.-Soviet nuclear contest - the meltdown at Chernobyl of a reactor which had the capacity to produce bomb ingredients as well as electricity. But their government at least has devoted some funds to the treatment of fallout victims, although money is short and much of the sophisticated equipment required has been donated by other nations.

It is time to acknowledge that the annual burning of grass-seed fields has an adverse effect on public health. It is also time to acknowledge that if grass-seed growing ends, new environmental problems will take the place of the smoke. For long enough, our region's battle over grass-field smoke has come across as a two-sided screaming match. But it's not that simple. There are responsible, frustrated citizens on both sides.

"We're on solid ground," John Roskelley declared after he and the other Spokane County commissioners approved an outrageous fee increase for the Junior Livestock Show and other youth groups that use the county fairgrounds. It's not ground they're standing on. As any 4-H kid with a nose could tell them, the commissioners and their lawyer are hip deep in a mess of their own making. And as any 4-H kid with common sense could demonstrate, when a barn stinks you don't stand there looking for a cow to blame. You grab a shovel and get to work. The commissioners claim their lawyer recently discovered they must start charging youth groups rent for the fairgrounds. Other lawyers disagree. Regardless, commissioners set rent at a level which says they have lost their minds.

Who needs ice hockey when there are politics? See Pat Buchanan high-stick Bob Dole. See Bill Clinton slam Newt Gingrich up against the boards. Watch the gloves fly as Republicans and Democrats clear the benches for a wild fist-swinging brawl. Isn't this fun? Does this have anything to do with leadership or governing? No. As the partisan fisticuffs intensify this year, voters ought to ask themselves what sort of statecraft they want to reward with their support. Consider, for example, what partisan politicking has done to the performance of Congress and the White House. Today, President Clinton will unveil a budget proposal for the fiscal year that will begin Oct. 1. Congress will greet it like a skunk at a dinner party. Clinton will pretend surprise. Then, Congress and the president will go back to bickering over the budget that they have failed to adopt for the fiscal year that began last Oct. 1. Due to that refusal to agree, portions of the federal government once again are approaching a shutdown.

If the judicial branch of government is as impartial as legal theorists contend, why does the Senate wage fierce battle over Supreme Court nominees? Why do special interest groups pour more and more money into judicial election campaigns? Why have candidates with little experience begun to file for judicial office, flaunting special-interest-group support? The truth is, the judiciary has brought this problem on itself. Every time a judge invents law - as in the recent judicial fabrication of a "right" to assisted suicide - the public realizes anew that the ideology of one who makes law by judicial fiat is at least as important to weigh as the ideology of a legislator. Every time a court takes over management of forests, fisheries, prisons or schools, the public becomes as interested in judges' policy preferences as it is in those of a governor. Granted, federal rather than state judges have perpetrated the most dramatic departures from the judiciary's constitutional role. But that hasn't stopped interest groups and candidates from injecting big money and hot ideology into races for judicial power at the state and local level.

Public schools face abundant criticism but nevertheless are the place where most American children get their education. Should the public improve them, or abandon them? A growing number of Americans, particularly social conservatives, seem inclined to do the latter. They feel that parents who want academic excellence, classroom discipline and respect for western values can make no headway against the education establishment's regulations, bureaucracies, political correctness and powerful unions.