Shawn Vestal

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Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: Coincidence gave flight to Expo butterflies

Sun., Feb. 25, 2018

In fall 1973, Eric Grohe was a young graphic artist working in New York City when he returned home for a visit to Seattle. “I ran into Brent Blake, literally on the street in downtown Seattle,” Grohe said. “He said, ‘Hey, I need a graphic designer.’ ”

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: Groups say prosecutor’s policy punishes refugees, legal immigrants

Fri., Feb. 23, 2018

A group of local leaders has asked Spokane County Prosecutor Larry Haskell to reconsider a provision in some case-resolution agreements that could inadvertently impose life-wrecking consequences on refugees and legal immigrants.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: Idaho schools should teach science, ignore legislators

Sun., Feb. 18, 2018

By stripping the truth about climate change from educational science standards, the members of the Idaho House Education Committee have equated established scientific knowledge with overconfident ignorance, columnist Shawn Vestal writes.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: Another shooting, another wave of paralyzing congressional sorrow

UPDATED: Fri., Feb. 16, 2018

Congress is super, super sad right now, you guys. Their hearts are broken. Their grief is boundless. Their minds are reeling.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: Feds injection of uncertainty into state pot industry stunts business growth

Tue., Feb. 13, 2018

When Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded the feds’ take-it-easy policy on pot prosecutions, he threw a ton of uncertainty into Washington’s marijuana industry.

News >  Spokane

From cradle to Maeve: A Spokane fire captain’s long road to transition

Sun., Feb. 11, 2018

For decades, John Griffith was, to the outside world at least, an ordinary guy: a veteran of the Air Force, captain in the Spokane Fire Department, a husband and a father. But Griffith also carried a secret, buried in a remote corner of the self: she was transgender.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: ‘Live PD’ paints Spokane at its ugliest

Sun., Feb. 4, 2018

The reality-TV shows “Live PD” and “COPS” have gleaned plenty of footage in working with local police agencies – and have helped fuel an image of the city as a place where a methed-up man stands on every corner, the arms of his T-shirt cut off, bleeding from an ear and blaming the other guy for starting it.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: Spokane schools should stop tiptoeing through sex ed controversy

Fri., Feb. 2, 2018

Not too long ago, a relatively small but relatively loud group of people approached the Spokane School Board to oppose a planned sex-ed curriculum. The result: The process of adopting a comprehensive human growth and development curriculum for middle schools was halted, and the district dove into a bureaucratic public-relations murk.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: The American Redoubt is alive and well in the Idaho Capitol as ‘Bundy sniper’ receives hero’s welcome

UPDATED: Tue., Jan. 30, 2018

An Idaho man who has become a symbolic hero in the American Redoubt for aiming his assault rifle at the feds during the Bundy ranch standoff in 2014 – and who was convicted of a federal misdemeanor for it – was greeted with enthusiasm by a number of Idaho lawmakers on Jan. 19.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: When cows were the cornerstone of income inequality

Sun., Jan. 28, 2018

One of the earliest and most potent forces dividing the haves and have-nots may have pretty humble roots: the agricultural beast of burden.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: Hollering at McMorris Rodgers is rude and counterproductive

Fri., Jan. 26, 2018

Here’s a revolutionary idea for the next time Cathy McMorris Rodgers takes the stage in Spokane: Let her speak.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: If you think tax cuts are unleashing the economy, wait till you see the pot numbers

Thu., Jan. 25, 2018

The new federal tax cuts should add a jolt to the state’s economy, a new revenue forecast says. Not a huge jolt. Not a marijuana-sized jolt.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: How did a system – and a community – fail a boy so completely?

Sun., Jan. 21, 2018

Long after the fact, little Wyatt’s neighbors told police that his parents treated him like “crap.” His father, Melvin Bledsoe, 27, and his stepmother, Joy Tamika Anderson, 30, are facing felony charges stemming from the abuse and awaiting trial in jail.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: This is at the Spokane Public Library?

UPDATED: Thu., Jan. 18, 2018

We’re off to the library tonight. Not looking for books. Not checking out DVDs. Not planning to Google stuff on the computer. Not seeking to check out another installment of “Captain Underpants” for the kid or a Margaret Atwood title for us parents or a copy of a Bon Appetit magazine from last March with that one special recipe.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: Only in Wonderland is Congress insuring children’s health

Sun., Jan. 14, 2018

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers’ claim that the House reauthorized the Children’s Health Insurance Program is fit for a fact in Wonderland.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: Mayor Condon should have argued his case against city’s new campaign finance law

UPDATED: Fri., Jan. 12, 2018

Rather than making a public appeal tied to his opposition to the new campaign finance legislation, Mayor David Condon stayed strategically quiet during the two months that the proposal was public – and then vetoed it abruptly.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: Cheers for tax cuts overlooked downstream effects

Tue., Jan. 9, 2018

The chairman of Idaho’s tax-collection agency, Ken Roberts, addressed lawmakers in Boise last week, reporting his analysis of the effect that the new federal tax-cut package. His conclusion: Idahoans could collectively pay almost $100 million more in state taxes in the year to come, based on effects from the new federal law.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: Tokio Weigh Station’s cannabis shop a literal sign of the times

Sun., Jan. 7, 2018

It looms above the freeway about 45 miles west of Spokane: a literal sign of the times.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: At a moment of acrimony in city politics, Amber Waldref chose compromise over conflict

UPDATED: Thu., Jan. 4, 2018

In a time of combat at City Hall, Amber Waldref has been a peacemaker.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: The Christmas my new BB gun nearly shot the eye out of my cousin

Mon., Dec. 25, 2017

Well before “A Christmas Story” came out and made BB guns and the shooting out of eyes a ubiquitous theme, I got a BB gun that almost immediately nearly shot the eye out of my cousin.

News >  Spokane

Layne Pavey is using her own experience as a felon to push ‘Ban the Box’ and give former prisoners a chance on the outside

Sun., Dec. 24, 2017

The day after she was released from prison, Layne Pavey went to Target to buy makeup, where she encountered children for the first time in almost two years. “I was so terrified the parents would know a felon was walking around, free, among their children,” Pavey said.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: The problem with men who harass, and the men who enable them, is not a lack of training

UPDATED: Sat., Dec. 23, 2017

As a man, on behalf of men, speaking with the full power and authority of the patriarchy at my back, let me just say: We don’t need sexual-harassment training. None of us needs a seminar to learn not to swap a job offer for sex.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: WSU should keep printing the Evergreen student newspaper each day despite campuswide cutbacks

UPDATED: Tue., Dec. 19, 2017

WSU managers are considering cutting the Evergreen publication schedule from five days a week to two, as a way to address the student daily newspaper’s budget deficit that has deepened as campuswide belt-tightening has largely eliminated one key source of revenue: Advertisements purchased by colleges and departments.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: Spokane police Chief Craig Meidl has defied the fears of his critics to become a model leader

Sun., Dec. 17, 2017

If Craig Meidl’s first 13 months as police chief are any indication, he has done more than rise above the lowest expectations of his doubters. He’s acting like the kind of chief the community has needed all along.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: Five years since Sandy Hook, Congress slumbers on gun safety

Thu., Dec. 14, 2017

Five years ago today, 20 children and six adults were shot in class at a Connecticut school, and a lot of people thought it had finally, tragically arrived: The watershed. The intolerable affront. The tragedy that broke the back of our plodding, desensitized, do-nothing political approach to gun violence.