John Webster

Who says political science is boring? It may not seem much like science, but this fall's campaigns at least have been entertaining. Here in Spokane, an out-of-town mall developer used scurrilous phone surveys and big "independent" campaign outlays to help a mayoral candidate hostile to his competition downtown. Statewide, two loony and lavishly funded initiatives aim to free junkies from prison and pester handgun owners with a nanny bureaucracy that would confiscate Second Amendment rights.

When Spokane Transit Authority assigned a bean-counting, out-of-town consultant to redraw its bus routes in a ruthlessly cost-efficient manner, it overlooked just one thing. Good managers don't just count beans. They know the customers - and listen to them. At the moment, some of STA's customers are howling mad.

For 25 years, residents of Five Mile Prairie fought to preserve the rural beauty of their windswept, big-skied plateau, which floats above the northern Spokane suburbs like a memory of the city's agrarian past. They lost. The prairie's fate is sealed. Its deep, rich fields, where meadowlarks sang and tractors plowed, will grow cul-de-sacs. Will sprout, row on row, with gable-roofed suburbia.

What makes a good City Council member? The ability to bomb fellow council members with verbal hand grenades? No. Effectiveness on Spokane's seven-member council requires the ability to persuade at least three other members to see things your way. How about partisans or ideologues? No again. The council's a nonpartisan body. The issues it confronts are best decided with reason, research and responsiveness to public concerns. The Spokesman-Review editorial board has interviewed the candidates for City Council, looking for those who'd advance the quality and credibility of city government.

Last spring's presidential summit on volunteerism turned a welcome spotlight on the marvelous work done by community volunteers in the strengthening and restoration of neighborhoods all over this country. The summit was a reminder that federal government's poverty programs just can't do it all.

Asthma inhalers save lives, allowing millions to breathe polluted air without choking. Environmental alarmists find this confusing, because inhalers also contain chlorofluorocarbons. CFCs might contribute to a suspected thinning of the ozone layer. But CFCs from asthma inhalers contribute only 1 percent of CFC emissions. Even if CFCs do thin the ozone layer, and that's disputed, the emissions that save asthmatics' lives are insignificant.

What's it like to be a faithful Jew in a country dominated by Christians? Indeed, what's it like to be a faithful Christian in a culture overrun with materialism and amorality? These thoughts come to mind after a recent protest by Rabbi Jacob Izakson of Spokane's Temple Beth Shalom. He objects that the Spokane Symphony again scheduled a concert on Yom Kippur, holiest day of the Jewish calendar.

The banking industry is trying to step on a tiny competitor: credit unions. On Monday, bankers urged the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse a 1982 policy that enabled credit unions to serve employees of very small businesses. Since banks are among the nation's biggest businesses, getting bigger and more profitable all the time, what are they complaining about? Two things: Fairness. Banks pay taxes. Credit unions don't.

The last time Washington state's voters had a chance to consider a proposed expansion of gambling, three fourths said no. That alone should make Gov. Gary Locke cool to a $17 million tribal casino proposed for Airway Heights, west of Spokane. Its future is up to him. However, Locke could be sorely tempted to ignore the wisdom of the voters. Many run-of-the-mill politicos are afraid to oppose Indian gambling projects. Diversionary shrieks of "racism!" greet those who tell the truth about this industry - namely, that casinos are a form of legalized robbery, all tarted up in the feather boas and sharkskin suits of deceptive marketing.

While Spokane Valley motorists grumble in traffic jams caused by a long-overdue project to repave Interstate 90, Congress is stuck in a related political gridlock. The Senate and House have failed to work out their differences over the federal highway program on which the entire country depends. So, on Tuesday, the current federal highway law expired. As a result, the flow of federal dollars for new highway projects has stopped. Federal dollars continue to flow only to previously approved construction projects such as the one in the Valley. But, federal highway funding has not been keeping pace with road maintenance needs, as Spokane motorists know after years of driving I-90's rutted lanes and clogged, unsafe interchanges.

Demonstrating anew that no good deed goes unpunished, state and local air quality police have ticketed Spokane's waste-to-energy plant for some insignificant air quality violations that occurred as the plant struggled, briefly, to burn debris from last winter's ice storm. How absurd. The ice storm created an emergency the likes of which the city had never before faced. It took thousands of hands to clear fallen trees and get the community back on its feet. People improvised. People took chances. People did the best they could.

How exciting it seemed, at the time, when the first mall opened on the outskirts of Olympia. Spurning downtown with its quaint old stores, my friends and I hopped on our bikes and pedaled for miles, clear across town, to explore the new attraction. That mall still stands, a faded concrete bunker on a vast old parking lot, its architecture dated, its gloss long gone. Now there's a newer mall. Miles away, it glistens with the latest in plastic ferns and look-alike corporate chain stores.

All you need to know about campaign finance reform is that the politicians who say they want it have built their careers on clever exploitation of the status quo. In other words, it's just talk. President Clinton, to name only one example of the political establishment's capacity for pretense in this matter, said he'll call a special session if the Senate ducks a vote this year on finance reform. But Democrats and Republicans have radically different definitions of reform. So, after some showy debate, votes and veto threats, the odds are that nothing will change. Why would anything change? After all, Americans seem nearly as cynical about campaign finance reform as their leaders do. Public opinion still gives high approval ratings to Clinton, who won re-election after brazenly renting out the Lincoln Bedroom to fat-cat contributors. And this week, as the Justice Department began to investigate fund-raising via White House telephones, Clinton felt free to claim that even though he can't remember what he did, he's sure it complied with "the letter of the law."

U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton rattled the education bureaucracy the other day. He proposes to remove regulatory strings from billions of dollars federal government sends to local public schools. After a brief but sharp debate, the Senate approved Gorton's scheme last week, 51-49. Next it goes to the House. But President Clinton threatens a veto.

1. Sitka's rebuilt Russian Orthodox cathedral stands as a proud reminder of the city's international past. Photo by John Webster/The Spokesman-Review 2. Travelers bask in the summer sun, their tents duct-taped to the deck, as the Alaska state ferry Columbia steams past islands of the Inside Passage. Photo by John Webster/The Spokesman-Review 3. George Holly chants an Athabascan song as he pounds an elkskin drum on the stern of the M.V. LaConte. Photo by John Webster/The Spokesman-Review

In theory it seemed so visionary: Ecosystems are interconnected. So, federal management of ecosystems should be interconnected, too. Take an ecosystem the size of France, study its condition, write a plan to manage it, and, wheee. Salmon, loggers and Sierra-Clubbers all live happily ever after, guided by The Plan. Thirty-five million dollars later, the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project has produced two things:

What do the following facilities have in common: Spokane International Airport, Riverfront Park, the Ag Trade Center, the downtown public library, the Spokane Arena and the Spokane Transit Authority's downtown Plaza? Each one is a success. Each one attracted prolonged opposition from local naysayers. Not one of these projects is perfect. Each cost a lot of money. Each has been refined in response to criticism. And each is a monument to the value of a tenaciously constructive approach in civic life.

The Washington state Supreme Court recently robbed law enforcement of a tool that has aided apprehension of many criminal fugitives and has protected both police officers and the public. Outraged police, prosecuting attorneys and legislators are demanding an immediate session of the Legislature to restore police powers before some predator gets away or an officer gets shot, courtesy of our state's highest court. The concern is justified. So is a special legislative session.

How do great leaders invest the closing years of their lives, when the wisdom of experience has borne its fruit and time narrows down for one final harvest? Pope John Paul II, failing in body but towering in spirit, is investing in a gentle force at the heart of the Christian faith: reconciliation. Speaking to last week's World Youth Day in Paris, the feeble pontiff fired off words favoring changes of historic magnitude.

Washington state school teachers are heading back to work this week, decorating rooms and preparing lesson plans for fall. Their union, meanwhile, is preoccupied with a very different kind of lesson. The state Public Disclosure Commission has just rapped the knuckles of the Washington Education Association for reporting violations. That's a big deal. This year's brouhaha about campaign financing is just so much hot air, unless the disclosure laws we do have are enforced against the biggest players in politics. Teacher unions are a huge force in politics, mostly backing Democrats. WEA's budget dwarfs the budgets of the state Republican and Democratic parties.

Ask Paul Redmond to reflect on his achievements as one of Spokane's most powerful leaders in a generation and he deflects the credit to others. He praises "the team" at Washington Water Power Co. He praises the hundreds of business people who joined him in a successful crusade to revive Spokane's economy and confidence. Ask him to leave some advice for the community and he says this: "We cannot become complacent." Complacent is not a word that anyone would use to describe Paul Redmond. Last week, he announced that he will step aside as WWP's chief executive. During his 12 years at the helm he fought to make his company strong, and succeeded. He fought to bring to bring more good-paying jobs to his community, and succeeded.

The Pacific Northwest already knows, from the spotted owl fiasco, what happens when the Endangered Species Act breeds intransigence and litigation: Industries wither, small towns rot, families crumble, attorneys make a killing and politics become poisonously polarized. Last week, the federal government announced it would invoke the species act to protect two Northwest steelhead runs, on the Snake River and the upper Columbia. The National Marine Fisheries Service also is keeping a close watch on more steelhead and salmon runs in Central and Western Washington.

In case you haven't noticed - in August, who'd want to? - there's a political campaign under way. Candidates for city council, school board and mayor are struggling to get their names before the voters of Washington state. But in the closing days of summer, politics are easy to overlook. This is not healthy for the essential ingredient in representative democracy: knowledgeable voters. In Washington state, candidates file at the end of July. During the month of August, however, many voters are out of town. August is a time for barbecues, gardening, family vacations and lazy evenings on the dock. Then Labor Day passes and suddenly, amid a forest of campaign signs, voters have two weeks to choose among a flurry of often-unfamiliar names that appear on primary election ballots in mid-September.

LOS ANGELES, Ecotopia, 16th Year of the Goddess (2017 A.D.) - Sensitivity Police today arrested five dissidents wearing fedora hats and pretending to be a 20th century cartoon character named Mr. Magoo. Blocking the entrance to Disneyland by bumping repeatedly into the turnstiles, the protesters shouted that Magoo is a reminder the country "has lost its sense of humor." Their hero was banned in the glorious revolution that removed the menace of freedom from our now-peaceful land. "Who would have thought the turning point would be a noxious little cartoon figure named Magoo," said Ima Beluga, spokesperson for the Ministry of Truth. During the 1950s and '60s, Magoo starred in a series of regrettably popular cartoons, as a nearsighted white male who bumped into fireplugs and other objects and spoke to them in the mistaken belief that they were persons. In the days before humor was regulated by the government, this was considered amusing.