http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2019/may/10/the-800-former-federal-prosecutors-who-signed-a-le/
A dynamic which should flood social media with opinions from both Progressives and Conservatives.
Having no particular political ideology, I look at this from the outside looking in and just want to point out a few things which might aid both sides in the discussion.
From the Conservative perspective it would be awful hard to dispute that Shawn Vestal is a diehard Progressive who’s columns and social media posts clearly reflect his political ideology as does this column. Shawn most certainly would love to see Donald Trump impeached, indicted, and sent to prison. Conservatives should however make note of the fact that Shawn Vestal as publicly admitted that he is “about 87 percent non-sense spewing”. 😊
From the Progressive perspective, although James McDevitt has been fairly prolific at stating his ideology but certainly not to the point of a weekly plus column in the Spokesman Review, I thought I should kind of help my Progressive friends out by providing a little background on James McDevitt.
As you may remember Jim McDevitt was primarily the one responsible for bringing us the likes of former Chief Frank Straub, and McDevitt’s friend former Assistant Chief Selby Smith. Beyond that McDevitt was Conservative Mayor David Condon’s very, very controversial choice to supposedly straighten out the Spokane Police Department, that didn’t work of course, and nothing has changed at SPD, as a matter of fact many SPD Officers believe McDevitt made things worse at SPD.
Jim McDevitt and his wife Gretchen have been deeply involved with the Republican Party at the local and National level for years, so I can only assume that Shawn Vestal chose McDevitt over the new local US Attorney (If Confirmed) Bill Hyslop because Shawn had a darn good idea what kind of quotes he would get from McDevitt, but it might make sense when you consider Vestal’s previous columns regarding McDevitt.
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2016/feb/18/shawn-vestal-listening-to-other-points-of-view-doe/
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2015/mar/08/james-mcdevitt-hindsight-give-insight-on-race-poli/
This quote from McDevitt in Vestal’s column struck me right away, “I’d rather be a part of the solution and not a part of the problem.” The reason is struck me is when McDevitt left the US Attorney’s Office he had a bit of a consulting career and during that career he revealed where he stands ideologically. McDevitt was hired by Washington State DSHS as a consultant to look into how DSHS handled fraud investigations, why the hired McDevitt who has zero investigative experience I never could figure out. McDevitt in that consulting Gig documented his “solutions” which I would think is good fodder for the Progressive side.
As you can see McDevitt believes in order to get benefits people should be randomly drug tested, and benefits should not be paid to “illegal aliens”. McDevitt even admits his beliefs are “Controversial”.
This quote from McDevitt sure threw me for a loop I’m not sure what he was trying to say?
“If I were only wealthy, I’d have a bigger house,” he said. “If I would only win the lottery, I would be wealthy. How ridiculous is that?”
A. He is wealthy by most standards.
B. He lives and has for years along with Gretchen in a big house on High Drive with an assessed value of $611,600.00 and a tax assessment of $7,301.31, so I don’t think he needs a bigger house.
C. He really doesn’t need to win the lottery, he is pretty well set.
I realize people aren’t privy to all the information I have, but I will tell you this, Jim McDevitt and his wife are real interesting folks with lots of interesting opinions and they don’t always speak real highly of people that one would think they would.
Buffalo Brian Breen 