Following a number of current issues in our community of late, I've come to see a common thread running through them. In each instance there is an actor who is insincere, is not frank, and refuses to address the community with candor.

The extent of the problem is so great that I fear we have reached a point that can only be described as a “disingenuity” epidemic.

We are clearly suffering an outbreak of “malingeniousness” of frightening proportion.

For instance, consider Dan Gibson, one of our Prosecuting Attorney Dave McEachran's assistants. First he warns the county council that they shouldn't violate the law and rescind his boss's and Pete Kremen's sneaky pay raises. Then, after a deal is cut with a few council members, tells them it's OK to violate the same law because no one will do anything about it.

Of course we can't overlook his boss's own remarks. Standing before the county council as their legal advisor with, given his position, one hand figuratively raised in oath and the other in the cookie jar, he tells them he can't be expected to think of everything they might need to learn from him. All the time knowing full well they needed to know what he full well knew; that if they didn't act in time, he would receive a nice fat windfall at the taxpayers' expense. He was able to find the time to explain it to Kremen.

And His Mellifluousness, the Wizard of Ooze; well, who ever expected candor from him anyway?

Next up, the Darling of the Waterfront and his gaggle of groupies who, with the straightest of faces, feign victim hood supposedly having rightly believed that an agreement to agree is an agreement to agree to whatever they find agreeable. Hey, what's a few hundred million from the taxpayers anyway. Obviously for these port partisans, it's “chump change.”

And almost lost in the hullabaloo, the Lake Whatcom Water & Sewer District, now ready to move ahead with water and sewer for all sorts of new development in the reservoir's watershed, scuttles the city's effort to protect Lake Whatcom, claiming it's unfair to expect district customers to pay the same for city water as the city's customers. You really gotta love these folks. Let's see 'em flush their toilets without our help.

And last, but certainly not the least of this hypocritical lot, somebody keeps prolonging Britt and Paxton's fifteen minutes of fame. Now they want us to know they're not obsessed with embarrassing Dan Pike. Their's is a higher purpose. The tag team that has tried their damnedest to keep the technicalities coming this last year, even starting a blog ostensibly to promote open government, has used it to post an almost constant stream of innuendo, accusations and anonymous smears of the mayor. OK, you're not obsessed with Pike. You're just obsessed.

Do these people all think the public is so inastute as to not recognize the bias foist on them? What would it be like if the public discourse on such issues included some reservations, some acknowledgement that another view might have merit?

So what to call this epidemic? Disingenuity? Malingeniousness? Go ahead, make up your own word. But what ever you call it, let's find a cure for it.