Shawn Vestal

Has Mike Jorgenson lost his mind? Or will he simply prove that the residents of his Hayden Lake legislative district have not lost theirs?

Economics are an utter mystery. For example: I thought I understood a central economic belief of the past 30 years, a value going back to Reagan and JFK, that when you put money in people’s hands, it ripples through the whole country. Trickles, if you will. But this turns out to be much more complicated: If you cut a rich person’s taxes, that money will radiate outward, turn into jobs and make everyone’s lives better. But if you supply, say, 1 million poor people with money to buy groceries, that money does no rippling whatsoever. It simply bankrupts the country, financially and morally.

If a tree falls in a forest, but you simply don’t believe it – did it fall? If you believe a tree is going to fall, but it hasn’t yet, is it a fact that you say it will? And if it’s not a fact, is it “untruthful”? And if it’s untruthful in a way that might be arguable, is it a lie?

Growing up in Southern Idaho, I did my share of farm work. Some of that was unpaid work on my family’s farm, and some of it was paid labor. Chores versus employment. Picking rock in the spring. Moving pipe in the summer. Bucking bales in the fall. Milking, feeding calves, cleaning barns.

If you had to identify the epicenter of Spokane crime, what would you pick? One of the maligned neighborhoods on the near North Side? Somewhere just east of downtown? An overlooked corner of the Peaceful Valley or lower South Hill?

The Hoopfest towing case is moving on to a new court. Now a Superior Court judge will decide whether Evergreen State Towing has committed violations of the law egregious enough to warrant the “corporate death penalty” – a five-year revocation of its license – or whether it has been the victim of unwarranted assumptions and nit-picky interpretations of law by state regulators.

Sometime this year, you may see a new governmental notice in the lunchroom or HR office at work. You may not even notice it, given that it will be full of the usual jargon, legalese and fine print as the governmental notices that you’re already ignoring. What you may not realize is that this poster is one of the things that’s stifling the economy. Killing jobs. Ruining America.

Norm Stamper’s told the story a lot: He was a rookie cop, working a “one-man car” in an affluent San Diego neighborhood, when he approached a home and smelled “burning vegetable matter.”

On Feb. 16, 2005, a copy machine in the Spokane County Building and Planning Department began spitting out reproductions of an office seating chart. As employees took notice, they were surprised to see two names on the chart. Two names that did not ring any bells. Two names occupying positions for which no one had been hired. Positions that had not even been advertised. “Ron & Steve.”