Bloglander

Personally, I know if there's a category on cats, I should be able to carry the Inlander's team through at least one round of tonight's inaugural Spokane Trivia Championship. 

The event tonight at the Bing Crosby Theater, at 7 pm, seeks not only to name one of the smarty-pants team the local champions of random, trivial facts, but also has the bigger goal to raise money to support the Spokane Public Library's STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education programs. 

While it's unfortunately not open to the public as your favorite local pub trivia nights are, there are chances for the audience to participate beyond cheering for their favorite team. Play along (quietly) Jeopardy style, as the questions are projected onto a screen. There's also prizes offered for the best cheering section and funniest wrong answers.

The format of the event has groups of three-person teams coming up on the stage together to compete in 10-question rounds of typical trivia categories such as nature, arts, geography, local history and sports. Teams get 20 seconds to write their answer on a white board, and the team with the most correct answers in the final round is named champion. Emcee for the night is Mark Robbins, the frontman of local rockers the Camaros and a Lewis & Clark English teacher, yet who's probably most widely known as the glasses-wearing dude in the Northern Quest's commercials/billboards.

If you're not coming to cheer on your friends or family, maybe one of the following teams prompts your support. Tickets are $12, and the proceeds support the library. Kids 12 and under get in free.

• The Fall Guys; Spokane Community College
  
• Masters of the Minutiae-Verse; The Inlander
  
• Shroovy Goos; North Central High School
  
• The Rubber Chickens; Lewis & Clark High School
  
• The Press Club; Spokesman-Review
  
• Team Flamin' Joes; Flamin' Joes
  
• The Grey Matters; an individual team
  
• The A Team; Avista
  
• Umpqua Nation; Umpqua Bank
  
• Team Tidbits; Wells Fargo Bank
  
• Dunk the Mustard; Witherspoon Kelly
  
• Etter McMahon; Etter, McMahon, Lamberson, Clary & Oreskovich PC
  
• T.E.T. Offensive; individual team
  
• Trivia Trifecta; individual team 
  
• Smart Grid Smarty Pants; Itron
  
• Team DKM; 92.9 ZZU
  
• The Standing Ovations; WestCoast/Best of Broadway
  
• 700ESPN; 700ESPN
  
• Paging Mr. Dewey; Spokane Public Library
  
• Lakeside Trivia Trio; individual team
  
• Hoods from Millwood; individual team
  

Nick Hanauer is filthy, stinkin' rich. The Seattle-based venture capitalist and serial entrepreneur has started or funded more than 30 different companies. He was one of the first major investors in a small bookseller start-up you may have heard of: Amazon.com. Seven years ago, he sold one of his businesses, an Internet advertising company called aQuantive, to Microsoft for $6.4 billion in cash. 

A self-professed "proud and unapologetic capitalist," he's also an unlikely advocate for raising the minimum wage and reducing income inequality in our country. Last week, Hanauer spoke with the Inlander over the phone ahead of his lecture this evening at the Fox Theater. The event, hosted by the Thomas S. Foley Institute at Washington State University, is free to attend and starts at 7:30 pm. For more information, click here. (His responses have been lightly edited for length.)

INLANDER: Your Politico Magazine article this summer, a memo to your "fellow zillionaires," and 2012 TED Talk on inequality both have gone viral. Why do you think your arguments have resonated with so many people?

The first reason is that economic inequality is a much bigger problem in our country than it once was. The income share of the richest one percent has tripled over the last few decades while everyone else’s income has stagnated, so ordinary people are feeling the effects of economic inequality in a more and more palpable and real way in their everyday lives. The subject is very much on most people's mind.

The second thing is that my argument is quite different from the traditional liberal, fairness-based argument, which is that we should feel sorry for people and pay them for that. My argument is a more effective and robust argument about the nature of prosperity and capitalist economics and the obvious connection between the money that workers earn and the sales that businesses enjoy. Pointing out the connection between those two things and the necessity of making sure workers earn enough to continue to support the businesses that form the backbone of our economy is just common sense. People who argue otherwise are just idiots. 

Income inequality in this country is growing to historically high levels. CEOs today make 300 times more money than their workers. How did we get to this point?

It’s a combination of things. Part of the problem was a misunderstanding and misinterpretation of economic theory by policymakers. Some of this is a consequence of good-natured misunderstanding. Some of this is consequence of the pursuit by wealthy citizens of their narrow self interests.  For 30 years policy makers on the right and left accepted that trickle-down theory and they enacted policies that they thought would create general prosperity, and in fact, only enriched the already rich. What we're trying to do is point out that that’s idiotic. We’re trying to remind people that a thriving middle class is not a consequence of growth, it’s the source of growth and prosperity in capitalist economies.

In fact, your “middle-out” economic theory is based on your argument that trickle-down economics doesn't work. In nut shell, what's middle-out economics all about?

The essential argument for middle-out economics is that a thriving middle class is not a consequence of growth. Rather, a thriving middle class is the source of growth and prosperity in capitalist economies, which means that a policy focused on the middle class is how you generate prosperity and growth — not policy focused on rich guys like me.

What policy solutions would you recommend for reducing income equality and helping grow the middle class?

A tax code focused on the middle class — where rich people actually pay more in taxes than middle class people unlike in our current system, where the $400 billion the government spends annually on tax exemptions theoretically to make people rich (which are simply rewards to rich people for being rich) are rather deployed to help middle class people become rich. A fairer split between workers and owners in the value of what business enterprises create by raising the minimum wage and ensuring middle class people are fairly paid and closing the gap between the pay of CEOs and ordinary workers.

In your Politico Magazine piece, you warn your fellow plutocrats that the "pitchforks are coming" as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, noting that the United States isn't immune to the "same forces that started the Arab Spring—or the French and Russian revolutions." Do you think we really should be worried about some kind of social uprising?

At the end of the day, what history will show is if you concentrate power and wealth enough you will either have a revolution or a police state or both. That there’s only so much abuse ordinary citizens are willing to take. It makes little sense in a democracy to disenfranchise most people. Participation and inclusion are the most important things in an economy. The more people who are included, the better it goes, and democracy is the form of government that leads to inclusion, which is why it causes prosperity and why all prosperous places are democracies. But when you allow wealth and power to concentrate, you end up with an economy that isn’t inclusive. And that kills the economy.

Did the Ferguson thing scare you? It scared the shit out of me. That is what I’m talking about. That’s not about race. That’s about exclusion. That’s about disenfranchisement. That’s about a bunch of people who are excluded from the economy and they’re pissed. The thing that happened in Ferguson — that is what I'm talking about. These are people who are poor, angry, disenfranchised and poorly treated and not well politically represented, and so you have this powder keg situation where you have a bunch of white police officers trying to keep under control poor, angry people of color. Then something bad happens. And that can happen in Spokane where you live if we are not careful.

So what do your one-percenter friends have to say about your views?

I would say five years ago my views made my fellow one-percenters very angry and very defensive. Today, most of the wealthy people I know and associate with have in one way, shape or form come around to generally agreeing with my view. And I think the nation is making progress. Morgan Stanley, of all institutions, released a report stating economic inequality is the number one threat to the economy. The fast food industry is struggling. No one can afford to eat their stuff anymore. Walmart sales are flat and that's because when you don't pay for your workers enough to buy their stuff, that doesn't work out for anybody.

Is this a problem we can expect Congress to solve? 

Oh jeepers. I would say forget about Washington D.C and focus locally. I see no hope for the federal government to do anything materially or constructively in the near term, but Spokane, Washington, could institute a higher minimum wage and should, for my money. That's where people's energy should go. Spokane could certainly use a slightly higher minimum wage, not $15 dollars an hour because the cost of living out there is much lower than out here, but you could certainly do more than $9.32. But me? I’m absolutely not thinking or worrying about the United States Senate. 

Indie rock crew Sebadoh made its first stop in Spokane Wednesday night, a mere 28 years after first forming in Boston, and the trio was in pretty classic, somewhat cranky form. 

Lou Barlow, the most recognizable member, announced before the first song that he was sick — and his bedraggled Grizzly Man appearance led one to believe it was true. Yet he still sounded great and filled the show with hilarious, often self-deprecating, one-liners about his whiny nature and his age. Jason Loewenstein, the band's other singer/songwriter, played comic and musical foil to Barlow, grinning widely and throwing good-natured barbs at his long-time music partner. Drummer Bob D'Amico was the straight man, a stone-faced rhythmic killer who propelled Sebadoh's blend of power-pop, straight-up punk and lo-fi noise through more than 20 songs over the course of nearly two hours. 

Sebadoh started as a side-project for Barlow's songs when he was bass player for Dinosaur Jr. in the mid-'80s, specializing in homemade recordings full of tape hiss and incisive, personal lyrics. As the band evolved into Barlow's full-time gig, and Loewenstein joined the fold, the band's sound got more polished and its audience, in turn, grew after they signed to SubPop Records and released some of the finest indie albums of the '90s, including Bubble and Scrape, Bakesale and Sebadoh III. They never really found a hit on alt-rock radio or MTV, but they found a dedicated audience who loved their combination of raucous noise and delicate balladry. 

Many of those fans were on hand at the Bartlett Wednesday, repeatedly thanking the band for coming, hollering out things like, "We've been waiting 20 years!" Sebadoh obliged with a career-spanning set that set a furious pace from the get-go — save for the occasional lull as Barlow and Loewenstein swapped places on stage or disappeared backstage in search of beer. The opening trio of "Magnet's Coil," "On the Rebound" and "The Ocean" made for a thrilling start, packaging three of the band's most insistent, poppy songs right out of the box. Barlow mentioned after "Arbitrary High" that he was trying to write what he thought a Queens of the Stone Age song would sound like, adding, "I think the real key to writing a Queens of the Stone Age song is to write something like you're trying to seduce a 15-year-old."

He introduced "Too Pure" as a song about "smoking WAY too much pot." After "Forced Love," he asked "Do people actually swim in Medical Lake? Are there syringes floating in that shit or what?" Before launching into "I Will" from 2013's Defend Yourself, the band's first new album in 14 years, he bemoaned the discovery of an empty beer fridge a song earlier, pointing the blame on youthful opening act Literature: "You can't leave a fridge full of beer around a bunch of dudes under 40." 

Philadelphia-based Literature, who played a fine set full of jangly guitar-pop reminiscent of the old "Paisley Underground" sound, delivered some drafts to the stage and Sebadoh forged on through fine takes of "License to Confuse," "Careful," "Soul and Fire" and a show-closing rip through "Brand New Love." Pretty satisfying show all around, and well worth the long wait for Spokane's Sebadoh fans.

HERE

The Spokane Valley City Council is once again considering a parking ban for semi trucks on residential streets. (S-R)

A 16-year-old was arrested on Tuesday night and charged with arson for setting numerous fires around the Spokane Valley area over the past few weeks. (KXLY)

A female wolf roaming near Ione, Wash. that's gotten a little too friendly with area dogs is being relocated to a Western Washington wildlife park. (S-R)

With the first case of Ebola diagnosed on U.S. soil, how likely is it that the disease shows up around here? (KXLY)

THERE

A roundup of the White House security breaches leading up to Secret Service director Julia Pierson's resignation. (Vox)

Verizon is moving away from a proposal to throttle the data connections for heavy 4G connection users. (CNN)

The Liberian Ebola patient in Dallas may have had contact with up to 100 people who are now being monitored for symptoms, though only a few have been isolated. (NYT)

The North Korean military has been digging new tunnels through South Korea. (CNN) 

On this first day of October, it's really starting to feel like fall. We were lucky to have yet another gorgeous Inland Northwest Indian Summer, and while the weather isn't totally going to crap yet (we'll have mid-70s this weekend), it's more than okay to fully embrace all that is autumn: corn mazes, cozy layers, apple cider, pumpkin-flavored everything, Oktoberfest beers and, of course, the month-long lead up to Halloween. To to get into the spirit of it all, here's a rundown of some regional events happening through October that epitomize fall.

Colville Corn Maze & Pumpkin Patch
Take a scenic drive north of the city to explore 12 acres of corn mazes and pumpkin patches, where you can find the perfect pumpkin pre-picked or still on the vine. Open daily (hours vary by day) through Oct. 31. $5/ages 5-12; $7/adults. Located at 73 Oakshott Rd., Colville, Wash. colvillecornmaze.com (509-684-6751)

Incredible Corn Maze & Pumpkin Patch
This maze is also well worth the short journey across the Washington-Idaho state line, as the Hauser, Idaho, maze covers more than 12 acres, and also boasts attractions like a corn cannon, pumpkin patch, a zombie paintball bus, and the "Field of Screams" haunted maze. The maze is open Fri-Sun, with special hours on the days leading up to Halloween. Prices vary depending on what events you want to check out, but find all the details at incrediblecornmaze.com. Located at 3405 N. Beck Rd., Hauser, Idaho. (855-855-6293) 

Beck's Harvest House Fall Harvest Festival 
Although end-of-summer harvest celebrations up on Green Bluff have been going on for weeks, the Bluff is always a favorite place to visit when the colors change from green to golds, browns and red. The annual fall festival events at Beck's include a five-acre corn maze ($8/person; Sat-Sun from 10 am-5 pm), pumpkin patches, apple cider, fresh pumpkin donuts and other sweet fall treats, and fresh fall produce. Stay updated on Harvest Festival events on the Harvest House Facebook page. Located at 9918 E. Greenbluff Rd., Colbert, Wash.

Scarywood 
Silverwood's annual haunted theme park is not for the faint-of-heart, but for those who like to be scared, it's something to make tradition. The North Idaho theme park sheds its sunny, summer feel for a dark and evil atmosphere from Oct. 3-Nov. 1, and is open on Thur-Sat nights. Tickets are a little steep ($21-$40), but for the spookiness in store, we expect you'll get your money's worth. Find the details at scarywoodhaunt.com.

Nightmare on Fourth Street 
This annual haunted house hosted by the Post Falls Lions Club has some new scares in store for 2014. It's also a fundraiser for the local food bank, offering discounted entry with two nonperishable food donations. This year's dates are Fri-Sat, Oct. 3-25, and Oct. 31, from 6 pm-midnight, and the week of Halloween, Oct. 26-30, from 6-10 pm. Find more details on the event's Facebook page. The haunted house is located at the corner of Fourth Ave. and Post St.

Welcome back to Weed Wednesday, your weekly dose of pot news. Wondering what this is about? Click. Looking for our previous marijuana coverage? Click. Got a question or tip? Email me at heidig@inlander.com.

Slowly but surely, Washington. The state has now licensed 235 growers (up just two from last week) and 61 stores (four more than last week). Seattle's second store has finally opened and you can find Spokane's stores on a map here. Statewide sales as of Monday totaled $18.75 million, generating almost $4.7 million in state taxes.

Here in Spokane, there's been talk about the city government testing sewage for THC levels to see if more people are getting high now that it's legal (see this SR story and this KXLY piece and this one from KREM). I know. It makes a great headline, right? But here's the thing: No one is actually talking about doing this in Spokane. In a city council committee meeting last week where city and state leaders talked about good ways to measure the effects of marijuana legalization, I-502 author Alison Holcomb mentioned the tactic as a way to test usage levels because there are university researchers doing it on the westside (we told you about this back in July). “What an awesome new use for our sewage,” Councilman Jon Snyder said in response, cracking a smile.

That was it.

There is no actual plan to pursue this tactic in Spokane, Snyder tells the Inlander. He says since the comments got media attention, he's checked into the project in Tacoma and found that the researchers "are getting a $100,000 grant, plus they have a quarter-million dollars worth of equipment to do this, which is not cheap." Combine that with the fact that there's other data that's easier to get, and that the city is dealing with much bigger wastewater issues. Since this non-issue hit the local news, Snyder has even done interviews with Reuters and The Guardian about it, and says he's gotten angry calls from people worried the city is trying to figure out who's smoking pot.

"You know, you work on issues for years and try to get publicity for them, and it's funny how one offhanded comment in a meeting gets attention," Snyder says. "Nothing fascinates people like sewage and drugs, I guess."

Don't light up in your car. That's the message from the Washington Traffic Safety Commission, which wants the state to ban people from opening marijuana inside vehicles, reports the Tacoma News Tribune. When we talked to legal experts, including the chief author of I-502 this summer, we were told it's not legal to have marijuana open inside a vehicle because that's considered in view of the public, but the Traffic Safety Commission wants more explicit language inked into law.

Oregon's legalization campaign has launched its first TV ad, featuring a retired cop who says the time he and other officers spent on marijuana cases would be "better spent solving murders, rape cases [and] finding missing children." Watch the ad below.

Washington pot lawyer Hilary Bricken says "'pay to play' is going to be the new theme for Oregon’s recreational marijuana industry" as cities there start imposing taxes before the measure is even passed.

Biologists say water use in the Emerald Triangle — an area of Northern California and Southern Oregon where a ton of pot is grown for medical users and the black market — is threatening salmon already in danger of extinction, reports the AP.

It's a big week in Colorado. Back when the recreational industry started there in January, medical marijuana dispensary owners were given a head start to open recreational stores. Now, everyone else can get into the business, with 46 new stores licensed. And the Colorado State Supreme Court heard the case this week of a quadriplegic Dish Network employee who was fired from his job after he tested positive for pot, even though there's no evidence he was high on the job, reports the Denver Post. The decision could have big implications for states where medical marijuana is legal but employers continue to ban it.

ICYMI: Attorney General Eric Holder, who recently said Americans should consider rescheduling marijuana, resigned (via The Cannabist and Politico).

Washington Grown, a 13-episode television series highlighting local farms, premieres its second season with a preview party tonight at 5:30 pm at the Magic Lantern. 

The show was created by Spokane film studio North by Northwest, in partnership with the Washington Farmers and Ranchers. The latter is an organization that helps promote the locally owned farmers in our state.

A new "food journey" is chronicled in each episode, beginning at a Washington farm where an ingredient or product is grown, and following the goods as they travel to a local restaurant to be prepared. Spokane restaurants Sante, Luna and the Steam Plant are among those to be featured in season two. 

During the preview, the Magic Lantern is serving light hors d'oeuvres and drinks, because what's the point of watching a food show without snacks? 

Northwest Cable News airs Washington Grown on Sundays at noon and 8:30 pm beginning this week. Episodes can also be streamed online the following Monday after its original airing at wagrown.com. Also on the site, find recipes for many of the featured ingredients and restaurants on the show. Several caught our eye — including Dick's fries and Sweet Frostings' cupcakes.

Military thriller author Tom Clancy’s novel Debt of Honor made headlines back in 2001 because it ended with a commercial airliner used as a weapon in a massive terrorist attack on Washington D.C. The novel had been published 7 years earlier.

The day of the September 11 attack, I remember running to the North Central High School library, checking out the book, and pointing out to my friends the passage describing the terrorist attacks.

More recently, events have called to mind Clancy’s 1996 doorstopper follow-up, Executive Orders, in which Clancy hero Jack Ryan (Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck, Chris Pine) finds himself thrust into the role of the president of the United States, where he must handle a slew of threats, foreign and domestic.

Read this plot summary and tell me you don’t spot a few odd parallels with common events. Off the top of my head:

- Extremists from neighboring countries take advantage of a power vacuum in Iraq, invading the country to form an Islamic state. The United States has to put together a coalition of Arab countries to repel them.

- An armed attacker penetrates deep into the White House, exposing some embarrassing vulnerabilities on the part of the Secret Service.

- The president celebrates the use of guided missiles as a crucial tool to assassinate Islamic extremists.

- An ally of Iran helps “accidentally” shoot down a commercial airplane, killing hundreds.

- A political rival files a lawsuit against the president, questioning the constitutionality of unilateral actions.

- And of course, an Ebola outbreak hits America.

Most of this, of course, is confirmation bias. There are plenty of differences between Clancy’s novel and current events, starting with the fact that his President Jack Ryan is portrayed as much more conservative than Barack Obama, and with the fact Obama has not declared martial law or threatened the use of tactical nuclear weapons against his enemies.

A couple of freak coincidental guesses doesn’t mean anything else in Clancy’s novels will come true. In his follow-up novel The Bear and the Dragon, for example, Clancy depicted large crowds of students in China taking advantage of the Internet to get past censorship and catalyze massive protests. And that’s just outlandish.

HERE

SCRAPS is hosting an adoption event this afternoon, from 2-6 pm, at the Spokane County Fairgrounds to find homes for the nearly 100 animals seized last week from a home in Deer Park. (KXLY)

A Spokane man who's admitted to voyeurism is now facing charges for inappropriately filming young girls on STA buses. (KREM)

Washington state's minimum wage is set to rise again at the beginning of 2015, to $9.47 an hour. (Inlander)

Coffee stand robbers have struck again, and police have arrested three suspects tied to two robberies at Spokane drive-through stands yesterday. (KREM)

THERE

The world's oldest living and performing clown, a Billings, Mont. man, has died at age 98. (AP via S-R)

The parent company of Albertson's stores is reporting another data breach, affecting stores in Washington, Idaho and the Pacific Northwest. (ABC)

The Dallas man hospitalized with Ebola wasn't asked about, nor did he voluntarily reveal, his travel history upon arriving to the emergency room, though he'd just flown to the U.S. from Liberia. (CNN)

The New York Times is planning to cut 100 positions from the newsroom due to print revenue declines. (WaPost)