John Webster

When you hear Republican legislators brag about a bill that cracks down on teen tobacco use, check their wallets. Those wallets bulge with tobacco industry cash. And the bill is a fraud, a Trojan horse for the merchants of death.

The rush to clip taxpayers for yet another Seattle stadium smells worse than a locker room at halftime. The Senate found just enough votes to pass a subsidize-the-Seahawks scheme - but only because Majority Leader Dan McDonald, who opposed it, had left town. Shortly before the vote, the bill's Senate sponsors discovered, to their shock, a clause requiring taxpayers to pay even more than expected for the stadium if the project is delayed. Who wrote that fine print? Who really wrote that bill? Who cares? The Trojan horse rolled through anyway.

You get what you pay for. And that, dear voters, is the simple (thud) explanation for the (swerve) appalling condition (BOOM, clunk, rattlerattlerattle) of our roads (hissssss). Sure, it's been cute, these last few years, to chant "no new taxes" at our representatives in government. They listened. As a result, funding for street and highway maintenance suffered. Today federal government sends a dwindling amount to state and local road projects. States send a dwindling amount to the cities and counties.

What should Americans do when a judge makes a decision with which they disagree? The first thing we ought to do is thank God that we live in a nation governed by law rather than by paramilitary coups, privileged interest groups or the whims of popular prejudice.

It was enough to make a teenager blush. It was enough to make a legislator turn white as a sheet. It was a resounding display of community spirit. It was an indictment of the Legislature's failure to fulfill its "paramount duty" under the state constitution: funding public schools. It was the final Saturday-night performance of Ferris High School's well-known fund-raiser, Ham on Regal. Middle-aged moms and dads pranced and sang in fairy-tale costumes while a capacity crowd roared its approval. It's a tremendous effort. Hundreds of parents invest huge amounts of volunteer time - all to raise roughly $40,000 in donations. The money is used to buy computers, textbooks and other needs that taxes don't cover adequately.

Gary Locke, whose wife gave birth to a baby girl Sunday, has delivered his first state budget proposal as Washington's new governor. Congratulations are in order - on both counts. Locke's budget reflects priorities that will be good for this state. Priorities consistent with a new parent whose eye is on the future. Priorities consistent with a grandson of immigrants who knows firsthand the rewards of hard work and good education. Priorities consistent with his campaign promises for better public schools and colleges.

If political science seems boring, think about all that the U.S. Constitution has done for human history and freedom. Governmental design can lead to responsiveness, or arrogance. Human dignity, or human suffering. Like the U.S. Constitution, the Spokane city charter has a profound effect on local government here. Not having come from the pens of James Madison and friends (and even their work required amending), the charter could use some changes.

Automated teller machines cost far less to operate than a branch bank building. But that didn't stop Washington's biggest banks from starting recently to gouge ATM users with a breathtaking surcharge - often, $1.50 per transaction. The nature of this surcharge raised a suspicion that the big banks are using it to attack smaller competitors, such as credit unions.

Well, of course the board of the Spokane Transit Authority would rather not help pay for upkeep of the severely potholed pavement along its bus routes. STA enjoys its hoard of bullion and has some swanky buildings to prove it. But the more shocking evidence of STA's skill at milking taxpayers is a reserve of $33 million that for years has remained larger than the agency's entire annual operating budget. Some government entities are pleased with a 2 percent reserve.

Last week while members of Congress lamented the death of the Balanced Budget Amendment, the Consumer Federation of America released a startling report about the nation's other deficit problem. Credit card debt, which rose at double-digit rates during the past four years, broke records in 1996. Consumers charged more than $1 trillion. "Revolving" credit card debt, the sum left unpaid and collecting interest, was $400 billion. Credit card delinquencies and personal bankruptcies hit historic highs.

Societies that have lost their bearings tend to take offense at compasses. After all, efforts to assert the difference between north and south seem so moralistic, so judgmental, so intolerant ... So necessary.

While other states were implementing bold reforms to the now-abandoned welfare system, Washington state spent recent years tangled in partisan bickering - and shoveling billions into the dated, ridiculously complex bureaucracy of its Department of Social and Health Services. Now that even Congress has agreed on reform, the Legislature and governor of Washington can bicker no longer. They have to implement the new federal mandate that welfare be replaced by a jobs program.

If the city of Spokane buys the gorgeous riverbank site of the old Salty's restaurant, the owners of Clinkerdagger restaurant ought to send the city a thank-you note. So should the taxpayers. A year from now that land will become a construction zone, immersed in the roar of riveters, jackhammers, cement trucks, bulldozers and cranes.

Speaking of federal arrogance and confusion ... Last Wednesday we blasted the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for demanding the removal of huge, picturesque cottonwood trees that long have grown from flood-control levees along Idaho's St. Joe River. We asked why Benewah County officials didn't fight the Corps' mandate. On Thursday, Larry Comer, Benewah County's engineer, sent us correspondence indicating the county did question the Corps - but got steamrollered. Even though the Corps admitted it's reviewing the ecological wisdom of its rules, it still insisted that its rules (which ban big trees) are wiser than Idaho residents and wildlife experts, who note that the cottonwoods strengthened the levee and provided bald eagle habitat.

What does it take to make federal government embrace air pollution? Answer: Make it kin to the wolf, a tool of ecological restoration, an alternative to (ugh) salvage logging. Suddenly, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt has announced that forest fires are good. Just don't tell the clean-air division of the Environmental Protection Agency, or try to explain it to bluegrass growers in trouble for using fire to help their plants.

The difference between boys and men, or so the saying goes, is the price of their toys. Consider, for example, the rush being put on the boys who lob your tax dollars around Olympia. Back when they were kids, ecstasy was a new football. Now, they're told, it's a new stadium to throw one in. The price for a Seahawks stadium? Only $400 million, give or take a cost overrun or two. Most would come from public sources, including a new tax that'd gouge kids when they buy sports memorabilia, like baseball cards and Cougar sweatshirts. All this, for an arena to be used 10 days a year - by a mediocre team whose would-be owner is a billionaire who sneaks out the Capitol's back doors, leaving lobbyists to defend his pitch for a subsidy.

Idaho's St. Joe River is a cottonwood cathedral, but the government has been cutting down the trees. This is a crime. Every fall, people from miles around get in their boats and cruise up the St. Joe River to see a sight that rivals the sugar-maple woods of Vermont: Water, quiet as crystal. On both sides, tall cottonwoods. Leaves, yellow as fire, glowing in the cold mountain air.

What do young people learn when a high school basketball coach breaks his clipboard and screams at a referee? When Roberto Alomar spits in an umpire's face? When a church-league softball player slams his bat through the backstop fence? When Dennis Rodman head-butts a referee and kicks a photographer? Ask Bob West. He was injured while refereeing a Colville High School wrestling match. A young competitor head-butted him. West's recovery took months and cost thousands. Now he's urging the Legislature to pass a law that would authorize judges to impose exceptionally severe sentences when a criminal assault is directed against a sports official. The bill also would apply to assaults against teachers, from elementary school through college.

All over Spokane, potholes crater the streets. And it isn't even spring yet. These aren't ordinary potholes. Some resemble canyons, winding down busy city arterials where tires have worn away the pavement. Spokane is not alone. Other cities, such as Seattle, likewise suffer from the state's grossly inadequate commitment to local road maintenance. Funding formulas that are inadequate in Seattle are doubly inadequate east of the Cascades because Western Washington's roads aren't hammered by the freeze-thaw cycles of a snow-country winter. Other than the popular stampede to cut taxes - ironic in the context of neglected basic infrastructure - nothing on the Legislature's 1997 agenda is more important than transportation funding. Repeat: Nothing. Cops need roads, business needs roads, school buses need roads, job seekers need roads. The Legislature has neglected roads funding.

Now that campaigns are safely past, politicians have a lot to say - in between fund-raising dinners - about the need for campaign finance reform. The ruckus has a partisan flavor. Republicans want to rein in tactics that help Democrats, such as "independent" advertising funded by compulsory union dues. Democrats want to rein in tactics that help Republicans, such as the unlimited "soft money" that the wealthy can give for supposedly generic "party building" ads.

It took three decades of accelerating social collapse to get there, but the nation's biggest cities have reached a point at which they no longer deem it progressive to focus compassion on criminals, graffiti vandals, vagrants, panhandlers and squeegee men.

(From Opinion page, January 29, 1997): The architect who designed Mead's new high school is Fred King. His partner Steve McNutt, commended in Tuesday's editorial for a volunteer role in the Lewis and Clark High School project, was architect in charge of the Mead project but did not design it.

What happened to the high school graduates who've been expected to swarm Washington state's public universities? This year, experts say, more graduates than usual took a look at tuition rates and said no thanks. Some found low-wage jobs and are working, one hopes, to save for college. Others went to community colleges, cheaper and closer to home. This left two campuses - Eastern's at Cheney and Washington State's in Pullman - with significantly fewer students than they are funded to serve.

Perhaps it is too much to hope, but the past election may be the last election in which campaign rhetoric pretends that the bad guys will change Medicare and Social Security and the good guys won't. Change is necessary. Responsible politicians will start working to achieve it. Now.