Shawn Vestal

These days local, knock-on-the-door, face-to-face politics is being swamped by the most corrosive elements of post-Citizens United moneyball politics: Dark money, gray money, PAC shell games, special interests, and cash rescues by political parties.

The up-and-coming generation of white “nationalists” in American colleges are taking the old recipe of racial provocation in a new direction, with the “It’s OK to Be White” campaign.

As Washington State University tries to turn around its financial ship, a couple of faculty members have made a modest proposal: Cut the six-figure salaries at the top of the organization. They don’t want to cut all the six-figure salaries, mind you. The faculty did not propose, for example, cutting six-figure faculty salaries.

Spokane’s undisputed heavyweight champion of racial appropriation is surfacing with new commercial projects, including a 2018 wall calendar, “Rachel Dolezal – Pictures and Quotes.”

In the online world of conspiratorial patriot poseurs, Ephrata’s Gavin Seim has repeatedly cast himself as a hero, a valiant knight in battle with the tyrannical “psychopaths” of the justice system of Grant County and America itself. Now he’s fled to Mexico, dodging a charge of obstruction of justice that arose from his repeated, petty harassment of cops on the job in Ephrata.

There’s a fascinatingly circular argument the attorneys for the Washington Legislature are making for why lawmakers should be allowed to keep the records of their activities secret from the public. Simplified, it goes like this: The people who write the law wrote laws exempting themselves from the law, so the law they wrote doesn’t apply to them.

As the grandiose comfort and convenience of our lives expands, our ability to recognize our good fortune simply can’t keep up.

Even in the imaginary world of ‘Tom’ and ‘Cindy’ the GOP tax plan falls short in the long run.

The Condon administration moved seven employees from one office to another.

Kelli Johnson didn’t just attend Expo ’74 – she got the whole VIP treatment. A Greenacres fourth-grader at the time, Johnson had an uncle who was closely involved in preparations. Her family had access to preview events and admission throughout the six-month fair. She and her family attended the opening ceremonies. She shook the hand of President Nixon. She later watched the event’s closing ceremonies from a hospital window, while recovering from a tonsillectomy.

Let’s not paint the Spokane Valley blue just yet. Maybe just a lighter shade of red. A nice pink, say.

Here’s a fun thought, regarding Washington State University’s plans to climb out of a $30 million budget trench: Some graduate students will probably be taking on more personal debt to help cover the costs of administrative overspending.

What neighborhood should the city of Spokane “target” next for the East Sprague treatment?

It’s campaign season, and ethics vanish as Election Day approaches. Enter Stephanie Cates, chair of the Spokane County GOP. After weeks of local conservatives, including at least one prominent elected official, attempting to pitch a smear to reporters on City Councilman Breean Beggs, and getting no bites, Cates posted a slimy attack on Facebook on Tuesday night.

The end may be near for Spokane for Honest Government, the political action committee representing the firefighters union and other labor groups.

When it comes to health care legislation, Patty Murray lives squarely in the congressional minority. Not the Democrats. The grown-ups.

Jared Bernstein says there are plenty of reasons to mistrust the “fairy dust” of tax cuts. One of his strongest arguments is one of the most familiar: The past five years in Kansas.

A flyer that attacked Spokane City Council candidate Matthew Howes for restaurant violations was a slimy and poorly executed effort that fuels our political cynicism.

Now that Bill Moos is climbing the ladder from WSU to Nebraska, here’s a question for Cougar Nation: How much is a good football team worth?

Not long ago, the Seattle Times editorial board asked members of Congress what they were going to do about violence and guns. Cathy McMorris Rodgers answered that she was on it: She’s been “sharing meals with Democrats to help society come together,” as the Times put it.

She grew up amid the church bombings in Birmingham, Alabama, of the 1960s – and went on to study at the Sorbonne. She was fired by the University of California system – then became a distinguished professor emerita at UC-Santa Cruz. She was an outspoken communist and radical opponent of racism who spent months on the FBI’s Most Wanted List (for charges of which she was ultimately acquitted).

A gleaming new apartment building sits at Third Avenue and Coeur d’Alene Street. In brick and blue siding, it fills the lot at the western edge of Browne’s Addition, overlooking Latah Creek. It’s sleek, modular, modern – attractive, but not much like the rest of the neighborhood or the two homes it replaced, both of which were built in the 1890s.

He must be running for mayor. That’s the current conventional wisdom with regard to Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich.

One in four Spokane County households lives on $25,000 or less a year. More than half of those households live on $15,000 or less, according to census data. And more than half of those live on $10,000 or less.