John Webster

During the past three years, the executive branch of federal government has spent $349 million establishing a presence on the Internet. Government Internet sites are an investment in better democracy and an increasingly popular source of reliable information. For instance, the day after the Pathfinder landed on Mars, NASA's Web site (www.jpl.nasa.gov) logged more than 40 million "hits," or connections by World Wide Web voyagers. These government Web sites have begun a profound power shift in favor of the ordinary people government serves and represents. For the moment, some lack easy access to this new medium. But that will change. Digital television, for instance, will bring Web surfing to the family room. As occurred with other devices - radio, television, pocket calculators, videocassette recorders - Internet technology likely will become cheap and commonplace.

It's summer and in higher education circles that means it's time for a break. Students are in summer jobs, sweating to pay skyrocketing tuition. Administrators are hoping the expected number of customers show up in the fall, and the most thoughtful ones are wondering if they're still providing what customers want, or if it's impure for an academician to care. Legislators, after a session that boosted capacity of public colleges, are home from Olympia, back in the real world. And faculty members are recharging their batteries. It's a good time, therefore, to reflect on a service crucial to Washington state's future. Colleges, of course, provide the inventive human capital that makes our economy grow. For more than a decade, state analysts have warned that Washington state lags the whole nation in access to a four-year university. In addition, they noted that demand for university admittance will soar due to the emergence of baby boomers' kids, a demographic bulge, from high school.

Public officials who make decisions by sticking a wet finger into the wind of public opinion aren't leaders. They're weather vanes. If all it took to run representative democracy was a weather vane, we could just put some polling organization in charge of the whole country and save a lot of money on government salaries. Real leaders represent more than popular opinion. They represent the public interest. Real leaders guide public opinion - setting the agenda, making a case for it and then forging ahead in spite of risk and criticism.

Once upon a time, defenders of the status quo were called conservatives. Now that "conservative" Republicans have been calling the tune in governmental reform for several years, we could use a new description for those who resisted the reformers with anguished predictions of disaster. Would "reactionary liberal" do the trick? These thoughts come to mind as evidence rolls in that controversial changes of the last few years have not led to the disasters the reactionaries had predicted.

Gol, if the chickens would just clear off this dad-blamed keyboard, mebbe I could peck out a response to Erik Lacitis' little caffeine fit. BLAMBLAMBLAM. There. And they wonder why we East Siders (no, Erik, that doesn't mean Bellevue residents) need gun racks in our pickup trucks. Those chickens do get in the way sometimes. Now, where were we? Ah, yes. The gentleman from latte-land seems to be perturbed that Eastern Washington voters were less than enthused about Paul Allen's proposal to build a new stadium for the Seahawks, mostly at public expense.

Beyond the media spotlight, Congress has been making progress this year on one of the biggest issues in federal government: Medicare's solvency. Key congressional committees have approved several Medicare reforms and the White House seems supportive as well. The changes probably will be included in the federal budget later this year. The reforms would extend the solvency of the Medicare Part A hospital trust fund for 10 years, advocates say. They also would provide a big piece of the cost control needed in this year's plan to balance the federal budget. Few will lose sleep over one big-ticket item: saving $115 billion over five years by scaling back the growth rate in Medicare payments to hospitals and physicians. The medical industry's income expectations have been extravagant, to say the least.

The Spokane City Council recently sent some proposed City Charter amendments to the oblivion known as "needs further study by another committee one of these days." That's too bad. One of the amendments would have opened the door to civil service reform and the privatization of city services. Privatization is a boon to governments all over the planet, as well as the people they serve and the taxpayers who finance them. Numerous countries that have turned away from socialism are returning nationalized industries to private entrepreneurs. Here in the United States, states and cities are inviting competitive bids for contracts to perform selected government services. Not in Washington state, though. Not in Spokane, either. A regrettable state law bars private contracting for work state agencies perform. The Spokane City Charter's civil service process, coupled with the bargaining rights given the city employee unions, does the same. A current proposal concerning handicapped parking tickets illustrates why it would be healthy for Spokane to allow privatization. The proposal comes from Stuart Evey, a former vice president of Getty Oil Co. After struggling to find handicapped parking for his mother, who has a disability permit, Evey concluded that the city is not working hard enough to ticket people who illegally use the parking spaces. He proposes to form a business that would ticket cars that hog handicapped parking without a permit. The business would pay the city the amount of fine revenue the city received last year for this violation, plus 25 percent of whatever additional fine revenue the business generates. At $175 per ticket, this could add up. Evey's proposal wouldn't cost the city a cent and it would increase city revenue. Under a well-drafted contract, the city could hold Evey's firm accountable for its performance. However, the city's unions objected. So did its civil service bureaucrats and transportation departments, all of whom sensed a threat to their empires. The result might be a decision by the city to hire another ticket writer, in hopes the cost will be outweighed by revenues gained. But, due to the lesser incentive to work hard, enforcement under the city's approach may not be as aggressive - or as beneficial to the disabled - as Evey's would be. Experience elsewhere shows that City Hall's unions and bureaucratic turf defenders may not have as much to fear as they think. Indianapolis is a leader in privatization of city services and the people of Spokane would find its experience fascinating. For example: That city's street repair employees won competitive bidding to do their old job, but with 18 fewer supervisors. They figured out how to fill potholes and seal cracks with one truck instead of two, five workers instead of eight. Pothole patching costs fell 25 percent and sealing costs fell 60 percent. A private contractor took over operation of Indianapolis sewage treatment, cutting costs 44 percent. Its employees, hired from the city, receive higher pay and benefits than before and are represented by the same union. Union grievances dropped from 38 to one and accidents fell 70 percent. Wastewater is cleaner. Privatization trims bureaucracy and offers a direct reward to employees who work harder, smarter and more efficiently. Taxpayers enjoy lower cost and better service. Credibility of government soars. Does this seem relevant, Spokane? Next question: Whose interests do City Hall's foot-draggers represent?

If Timothy McVeigh spends the rest of his life in prison, he will be free to write a book, give interviews, visit with family members, draft screeds for the Internet and encourage fellow paranoids to join domestic terrorism cells. That's justice? If the United States retains any of the backbone and moral discernment required to make a society civil and just, it will allow him to do none of these things. It will execute him.

What do you suppose would happen to kids in a nation whose educators deemed it insensitive to correct youngsters who made errors in grammar, spelling and mathematics? And what would happen to kids if educators promoted them from one grade to another regardless of whether they had learned? Some of the kids - the lucky ones who can learn on their own or with tutoring from parents - would be fine. Kids who need the help of a teacher would be out of luck. They'd fall farther and farther behind, and eventually, they'd drop out.

Quite aside from the enhanced opportunities for ballot fraud and the abandonment of the civic rituals of voting in public, there is a bright side to this month's vote-by-mail election in Washington state. The forms and instructions in those mailed-out ballots are so awkward, so veiled in bureaucratic gibberish, they just might make people miss the noble simplicity of joining their neighbors at a polling place.

The secretive, corrupt, accident-plagued, taxpayer-subsidized industry that created Hanford's radioactive nightmare has not died. It was only taking a nap. Today, while Americans concentrate on Paula Jones, the nuclear processing industry is attempting a quiet comeback. It is lobbying for funds in dark recesses of the congressional budget process. Why should Americans care? They'll pay the bills. They'll face a new risk of nuclear terrorism. And their descendants will have to clean up yet another radioactive mess, exactly like the mess the Cold War left at Hanford.

Some wept. Some cheered. And many of us felt, more than anything else, a sense of overwhelming relief. The system still works. Guilty, the jury concluded. After flaky verdicts and flubbed investigations in other prominent trials, there were two defendants in the trial of Timothy McVeigh. One was McVeigh. The other was the government McVeigh hated and had hoped to destroy.

If the Clinton administration cares as deeply as it claims about clean air, clean water and wildlife habitat, it must reconsider the undeserved slap in the face it has delivered to Washington state's farmers. For a decade Washington's air, streams and wildlife have benefited tremendously from the federal Conservation Reserve Program. Indeed, CRP is a nationwide success story, with strong support across the political spectrum - from conservationists, hunters, fishermen and farmers. CRP has restored prairie grass and wildlife on a million acres of ecologically sensitive farmland in Washington state. The program pays farmers to return the land to a natural state.

A freeway runs through it. And that makes the Spokane Valley ideal for the explosive growth now taking shape around I-90 and Sullivan Road. Late this summer, the Spokane Valley Mall will open 750,000 square feet of new retail space. That's three department stores and 60 smaller shops. Nearby land is sprouting a crop of "big box" stores, such as Circuit City and Wal-Mart. This adds up to a million square feet of new retail space - and that's only a beginning. Additional phases could double and triple the retail space.

Suppose your neighbor neglects his dog and leaves the poor thing outside on a chain, to howl and bark at all hours of the night. How could you get your neighbor to treat the dog kindly? By blocking his driveway, cursing into the phone and turning all the other neighbors against him? Or by cultivating a civilized relationship? Foreign policy is even more complex than individual human relations, but similar principles can apply.

A tank explodes at one of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation's most dangerously contaminated buildings. Hanford officials delay notification of local and federal emergency authorities. Days later, Hanford officials say they don't know what blew up or why - but they do insist it wasn't radioactive. Hmmm. This real-life scenario from last week's news calls to mind a scene from the movie "Star Wars." After a noisy battle with some storm troopers , Han Solo informs a suspicious voice on the Death Star's intercom that everything is under control. Situation normal. Minor radiation leak. Everything's fine. Just fine. Stay away. Then he shoots the intercom.

Only in the make-believe land of the modern American media could a person accused of adultery become a national celebrity. In real life, extramarital sex is a cause of deep personal suffering, bruised careers, smashed families, epidemic disease and profound societal decay. But who wants to face that? Poor Kelly Flinn. Her court-martial hasn't even begun and feminists are already grinding their ideological axes and leaping to her side. Twice, the mighty New York Times has stationed her on its front page as our next national martyr. Soon, the daytime talk shows will be lining up to air her story.

It was only a news brief on CNN. But what a story it tells. In Little Rock, Ark., construction workers were prying into the ceiling of a 102-year-old elementary school. There, they found a treasure: 18 student essays, dated Oct. 24, 1910. The essays discussed Shakespeare's comedy, "A Midsummer Night's Dream." The authors were in fifth grade.

Spring is here! Who cares about the perennial bickering between Democrats and Republicans? The trees are in bloom, the grass is green, the birds are singing. Out in the real world, the air is fragrant with the promise of new life. There are walks to take, flowers to plant, Bloomsday times to compare. This year, however, there is a new fragrance even in the corridors of political power - something almost as startling as spring. Democrats and the Republicans are engaging in bipartisan statesmanship - negotiating settlements to hard-fought issues that will affect us all. Naturally, this makes ideologues livid. To the poor fools who think politics can be treated like theology, compromise is heresy. In representative democracy, however, compromise is how things get done.

The federal government stepped in to help the mentally ill last week, clarifying the right to sue employers who don't accommodate their symptoms. This might be a big step forward - certainly, it was intended to be - for a nation that still attaches ignorant, tragic stigmas to mental illness. Modern medications and therapy have made many psychiatric disturbances eminently treatable. This is good news indeed, for one in 10 Americans suffers at one time or another from a mental illness - depression being the most common.

The only reason Washington's Legislature adjourned on time Sunday is that it fumbled away the most important issue of the year. No, that is not a reference to the scheme to subsidize another stadium for Seattle. It is a reference to transportation. The state's roads are in poor condition - congested, potholed, unsafe.

It was only a handshake. Only? In the searing climate that scorches public life today, Tuesday's handshake between an umpire and a second baseman felt as refreshing as a cup of cool water. Last September, Roberto Alomar spat at umpire John Hirschbeck to protest a call in a Baltimore Orioles game. Last week as another game was beginning in Chicago, Alomar walked across the field and shook Hirschbeck's hand in full view of an applauding crowd.

What is the purpose of the power the voters have given to the men and women who represent them in Olympia? Is it to stifle debate, stomp partisan opponents and make back-room deals out of public view? No, but that is the style of politics the Legislature's Republican leaders have practiced this year. What a disappointment.

Politicians in Olympia are bickering seriously at last about welfare reform legislation. But whatever they do, there are some things they can't do. Some of the most important reforms will occur closer to home. It is not enough to blithely say, or legislate, that welfare recipients ought to get jobs. Some, such as elderly grandparents whose children have run off leaving grandchildren to raise, are not physically able both to hold a job and be a parent. It's with good reason that reformers plan to exempt 20 percent of the caseload from the five-year lifetime cap on welfare grants.