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!

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.

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.

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.

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

Recent ‘news’ about my City pay resulted from misplaced trust in advisors who said that, if I submitted letters, written just-so, I would receive an evaluation of the last two years of my declined salary and impacts on my retirement.   . . .   I presumed these were private personnel matters.

Then she says:

But as hastily as my letters were prepared, they were hastily leaked and … a story was born! I walked into a crafty political trap, and I’ve learned another valuable lesson that strengthens me for the work ahead.

Was there a trap?  Was there a crafty political move?  We need to know whether or not what  former mayor Mary Verner says in true.  If it is then steps should be taken to identify the people involved and punishment or censure of some sort should be undertaken.

Mayor Condon and the Spokane City Council cannot let this go.  The people of Spokane need to know the truth.  If things are as Ms. Verner says they are, action must be taken.

From what one reads over the Internet the movement is about evils of  “corporatism.”  Energies of movement supporters are directed to the separation of corporatist interests from the state.

Think of the constitutional principle of separation of church and state.  Do we want a government tied to a religious movement?  Of course not.  Along these same notions, do we want a government tied to “corporate” movements – certain economic and power groups?  Of course not.

The people of Occupy are saying that the government we are developing in the United States of America is the government which is joined with a movement like that of a religious movement. The government has already been handed over to the corporatists. Occupy seeks to say something about this, seeks to change the direction we have taken or are taking – perhaps things can be put right before it is too late.

Corporatism has many definitions. The basic idea is expressed in this from the Occupy LA website:

The marriage between Corporations and Governmental Power has overthrown the basic principles of Rule of Law, Equality Under the Law, Due Process and the protection afforded to the Citizens of the United States by the Constitution.  As long as the above described condition is allowed to persist, the interests of the People will be prejudiced in favor of the Corporate interests of the 1%.  We will seek out all peaceful means, including citizen legislative, legal and protest action to END CORPORATISM.

The dictionary definition of corporatism is as follows:

A system or principle in which a whole society is organized into industrial and professional corporations serving as organs of political representation and controlling to a large extent the persons and activities within their jurisdiction with emphasis on labor-management cooperation.”  Reference is made to the corporatism of Fascist Italy.  Merriam Webster.

The notion of corporatism is found in the experience of national socialism, our military industrial complex, the never-ending desire to create “public – private partnerships”, government economic development gimmicks and endeavors, the extensive control of the legislative process by lobbyists, the corporate financing of political campaigns and the new American political reality of “crony capitalism.”

Corporatism is antithetical to capitalism, and it is antithetical to socialism.  It is a new power within the political spectrum, a power which has infiltrated government, political parties, candidate character and allegiances, it is the new political force, the force of the “government party.”  It is a force which seeks power, its own aggrandizement.  Economic success is sought but so is political control and solidarity.  Those on the outside of this new force are there to serve, to consume, to legitimize.  Corporatists seek to control the government – they seek to be the force behind what might be called deep government – the forces behind whatever government we have — whether it leans toward capitalism or socialism.  Corporatism seeks to be THE GOVERNMENT PARTY.  Sure they are there to serve, but in reality, they are there to be the government.

The world economic social systems are houses of cards ready to fall.  Yet, as things now stand, the people who make up the corporatism class are very strong:  Very strong because they are so enmeshed into the system of things “they” cannot be allowed to fail.  Already we have seen this and  we are now,  must be, convinced it is indeed true.  The 1% are so necessary we have been convinced that we, the 99% , will have to shirk and suffer anything just to maintain the corporatists’ claims to the benefits and power of the system, of the government.

The Occupy Movement uses the idea of the “1%” to speak of its concerns about the this new merger of “religion” – corporatism–  and the state.

The hope of the 1% is that the Occupy Movement will go away, that it will somehow be made unimportant, inconsequential.

Perhaps in Davos, Switzerland in the coming days the champions of this new world national socialism will find a way to placate the restless.  Look here. The restless however cannot be placated.  Why?  Because the course of the history of the economic nature of things is such that no change will have an impact regarding the desire of corporatists to take over and become the state.  Just as there is no way to have a government merged “to some extent” with religion, there is no way to have a government merged with some corporatism.

There is no way to have a middle ground.  Either you have a cancer or you do not.  Government cannot serve two masters.

We have a general morality gap, we are over-leveraged, we have neglected to invest in the future, we have undermined social coherence, and we are in danger of completely losing the confidence of future generations,” said Klaus Schwab, host and founder of the annual World Economic Forum.

Davos elites to seek reforms of ‘outdated’ capitalism.  

Or, so one can hope.