Spokane City Council Attention

City Council Attention? Last week the city council devoted attention to an effort to keep the Spokane Tribe from competing with the Kalispel Tribe.

This coming week, the city council is going to devote its attention to marriage and sex.

What pray tell is going on? The city council has no power to act in these areas. There is no law which gives it such non-city power. One would suppose these unpleasant facts are known to the council and its lawyers.

So what gives? My guess is the council members are simply playing to the crowd, asking the crowd for love and attention, making the crowd the real electorate. This is pretty sad, and it does not forebode well for our city.

At a time when Spokane County and Spokane and its other cities and towns should be recognizing and taking steps to be what we are – a city, a single metropolitan area of nearly 500,000 – we are acting like we have nothing to do but play useless political games. Games of no necessary consequence for the taxpayers and people who need a well run city. What a shame!

City of Spokane is Anti-Competitive — Breaking the law yet again.

The mayor and the city Council only have such authority as authorized by the Washington State Constitution and the laws of  Washington. Nowhere does the mayor or the city Council have authority to engage in activities which are solely for the benefit of one economic entity over another.  Such  is not part of the governmental game.

Our new government believes it can use the power of the people of Spokane to benefit a particular group to the detriment of another group. This is wrong —  worse, it is illegal.

Spokane seems intent on engaging in conduct which is not only wrong but is corrosive of the strength and goodwill of our good city. Mayor Condon, Council President Stuckert and the Council members who voted in favor of opposing the Spokane Tribe’s legal development efforts should be roundly chastised and questioned.

John Henry Browne, Attorney for Staff Sargent Robert Bales

There is a good piece about John Henry Browne in the New York Times today — about him and his efforts to defend Staff Sargent Robert Bales.  The case is a terrible tragedy.  A tragedy for all.  I am sending some money to Mr. Browne to help a bit.

A thought:  The United States has created, I believe, a permanant state of war.  She demands that her soldiers become permanant soldiers.  I doubt the human mind, I doubt the emotions which are a part of each one of us, can sustain permanant states of war.

Think of it — your friends are murdered.  Do you think you will ever get over it?  Let me tell you, you will not.  Your friends live in you, but they are no longer there.  Your pain, your sorrow for them,  is everlasting.  It is an every day event.

Eugene McCarthy: Courage After Sixty

COURAGE AFTER SIXTY by Eugene McCarthy

Now it is certain.
There is no magic stone.
No secret to be found.
One must go
With the mind’s winnowed learning.
No more than the child’s handhold
On the willows bending over the lake,
On the sumac roots at the cliff edge.
Ignorance is checked,
Betrayals scratched.
The coat has been hung on the peg,
The cigar laid on the table edge,
The cue chosen and chalked,
The balls set for the final break.
All cards drawn,
All bets called.
The dice, warm as blood in the hand,
Shaken for the last cast.
The glove has been thrown to the ground,
The last choice of weapons made.

A book for one thought.
A poem for one line.
A line for one word.

“Broken things are powerful.”
Things about to break are stronger still.
The last shot from the brittle bow is truest.

The Ethics of Adolph Hitler: Have things really changed?

The Ethics of Adolph Hitler

Posted on February 29, 2012 by High Line

This past week I collected a number of quotations attributed to Adolph Hitler and sent them along to some friends for comment. I had expected a responses that would go something like this: These quotations tell us of the mind of a man who had no values other than the single value of “the judgment of power.” That is to say, I expected all to agree that what was truly wrong about Hitler, that what the evil was at the core of his being was that everything is permitted to the one who has power. His entire reason for being was the judgment of power.

Here are some of his thoughts:

What good fortune for governments that the people do not think.

If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.

Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.

Mankind has grown strong in eternal struggles and it will only perish through eternal peace.

Sooner will a camel pass through a needle’s eye than a great man be “discovered” by an election.

Strength lies not in defence but in attack.

Struggle is the father of all things. It is not by the principles of humanity that man lives or is able to preserve himself above the animal world, but solely by means of the most brutal struggle.

The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one.

The great strength of the totalitarian state is that it forces those who fear it to imitate it.

The leader of genius must have the ability to make different opponents appear as if they belonged to one category.

The very first essential for success is a perpetually constant and regular employment of violence.

The victor will never be asked if he told the truth.

Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live.

Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way round, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.

How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don’t think.

Humanitarianism is the expression of stupidity and cowardice.

I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator.

One correspondent thought Hitler was a “pretty smart guy.” Another said there was no difference between what Hitler did and what America did in its Westward Expansion and in the treatment of the Native Peoples. Others were silent.

What was it, is it, that caused the silence? Are the thoughts of Adolph Hitler, the essential thought that all things are judged by the power that has brought them about, that might makes right, is still very much a part of our moral fabric. Indeed, would anyone even give thought to the idea that there might be something frightfully wrong in an ethic which says that might is right.

Police In Spokane Today: We have a mess on our hands.

I think we have to wonder whether we haven’t created or are creating a police force (Spokesman-Review) which is too young and too aggressive (and too caught up in the use of force and bad judgment). Under the leadership of men like Roger Bragdon this probably would not have happened. But, maybe it would due to the increase in the culture of meth in the community. I do not know.  It has to be tough out there, and dangerous.  Just yesterday a state patrolman was wantonly murdered at a traffic stop.  Seattle Times.

But I do know (as a former city council member) we do have a significant mess on our hands. We are caught up in rules and legal systems which seem to encourage bad conduct and cost the city millions of dollars — much of it now uninsured because we are over insurance policy deductibles.

I fear our hands are tied. Mayor Condon and the Council are in a tough spot regarding attorney Robert Dunn’s latest efforts — the law may be on the side of his client and the city is afraid of him due to the size of the judgment he recently obtained in the officer Mehring – police chief Kirkpatrick case (Spokesman-Review). We should be considering legal changes because this sort od thing is likely to continue, maybe even get worse. There is a lot of money to be made and payments made to people on “administrative leave” (which is not insured).

As I have said, we have a signficant mess on our hands. But perhaps we should recall the great words of Pogo ”We have met the enemy and he is us.”  We do have the power to take action.  If we do not do it now before things get worse, things may well get worse.  Citizens do have power, at least for now.  But we sure have become indifferent, why is that do you not wonder?

Steve Eugster

Thoughts About the Government Party

Good clip. (View Video Clip Here!!) It shows how we have created a new political party which is in control of our lives – it is the Government Party.  It is made up of government workers at all levels, private parties and entities whose success is tied to government largess and assistance and who are favored by the Government Party, and political parties which now pander to the Government Party and the favored commercial powers whether they be the current Republicans or the Current Democrats.  Are we creating a new form of National Socialism – but perhaps one with a smiling face (for now, because the largess will fail and the power of government will have to be used to quell discontent thus becoming a police state). 

 

I do not know the answer – but some how the power of the truly independent voter must be energized to defeat this new Government Party, if indeed it can be defeated. 

However, I see nothing on the horizon which provides any hope of the defeat of the Government Party.  

 

But, I may be all wrong in my concern.  Maybe this new control of America and its citizens by Government Party and its favored private entities is not so bad.  The Government Party may well be thought to be enlightened by those of us who assent to what is happening by the way we vote.  Enlightened because we might already have been convinced everything is all right or will be made all right.  Perhaps we are convinced the Government Party will always do good things for us.  This is the underlying message – that the government we have is a government of good things (at least for a majority of the voters).  

 

We may have a government of illusion  — illusion which is adhered to by the voters by reason of their immediate short-term economic and social interests.

 

Frankly, I think we have a mess on our hands.