Posted in2022 election Chris Hoy

Chris Hoy wants to be Salem’s mayor. Here’s how he became a city councilor.

Today KMUZ broke the news that Ward 6 city councilor Chris Hoy will run for Salem Mayor next year. His announcement is at the end of the 20-minute interview. Hoy joins two women who have already announced their candidacy: Chane Griggs, who appears to be to the right of Hoy politically, and Hollie Oakes-Miller, who definitely is to the left of Hoy politically.  So Hoy occupies a sort of Goldilocks sweet spot in the mayor's race. He'll be criticized by some as being too conservative and by others as being too liberal. Which isn't a bad place to be in,…
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Posted inEnvironment

Oregon’s snow and cold fits with global warming

This morning my wife and I woke up to a winter wonderland. Our ten acres in rural south Salem looked beautiful, as did most of the rest of western Oregon after arctic air flowing southward collided with a low pressure disturbance rolling into the northwest from the Gulf of Alaska. But with that beauty came a lot of problems. Many accidents on roads and freeways. Clogged traffic as people traveled the day after Christmas. And for us, five and a half inches of snow on our steep, long driveway. After lunch I got out our ergonomic snow shovel (with a…
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Posted inHumor

Our 2021 Christmas letter explains what we mean by “Fine”

For us, 2021 was one of those years when we felt like adding an asterisk to our usual reply when asked by a store employee, "How're you doing?"  Fine was an OK answer. But Fine* is even better. Our Christmas letter allowed us to describe what we mean by the asterisk. Here it is in PDF and JPEG formats.Download 2021 Christmas Letter PDF
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Posted inNational politics

Manchin puts Build Back Better bill on life support

It wasn't a great way to wake up this morning. With sleepy eyes, I picked up my iPhone to see what was new with the world, only to be met with a red banner notification from the New York Times saying that Senator Joe Manchin was a no on the Build Back Better bill. Wow. Not totally unexpected, but since President Biden had been having frequent talks with Manchin recently, I figured they were working out details of what it would take for Manchin to support the bill. Instead, Manchin went on Fox News to make his announcement. I guess…
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Posted in2020 election Donald Trump

Here’s the PowerPoint Mark Meadows turned over to Jan. 6 committee

It took me a while to find it, but I finally located a file of the 36-slide PowerPoint presentation dated January 5, 2021 that Mark Meadows turned over to the House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the nation's capitol. Here's a PDF file of the presentation:Download Mark Meadows Power Point There's so much craziness in the PowerPoint, it's tempting to not take it seriously. But the presentation found its way into the White House, and it echoes talking points put forward by both Trump acolytes and Trump himself. This is an excerpt from a Washington Post story, "The…
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Posted inPeter Fernandez

Why Salem’s Public Works Director should be fired

A few days ago I ended a blog post with a call to fire Peter Fernandez, the decidedly unethical Public Works Director for the City of Salem.  Peter Fernandez Today I got this message from Mark Wigg. Apparently Wigg planned to present what follows as testimony at tonight's City Council meeting. It provides a further reason for Peter Fernandez to be fired. Congratulations, Public Works Director Peter Fernandez Congratulations on spending all the 2008 bond money allocated for buying Marine Drive right of way without buying all the right of way. The other projects identified in the bond measure were aggressively…
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Posted in2022 election Chamber of Commerce Chane Griggs

Mayor candidate Chane Griggs was a Third Bridge backer

A few days ago the Salem Reporter had a story about Chane Griggs, the second candidate to enter the May 2022 race to be Salem's mayor, since Chuck Bennett, the current mayor, isn't seeking re-election. Reading the story, I got an impression that Griggs is a classic Salem Chamber of Commerce candidate. After all, the Chamber doesn't want to have a progressive take over as mayor, given that Bennett is quite conservative, and progressives already have a 6-3 majority on the City Council. Excerpt: A prominent community leader is throwing her name in the race for Salem's soon-to-be vacant mayoral…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem Steve Powers

With Powers leaving, time for a more dynamic City Manager

After six years on the job, Salem's City Manager, Steve Powers, is returning to Michigan -- where he served as the Ann Arbor City Administrator for four years before coming to Oregon. The most interesting thing about Powers' tenure as the most important City of Salem employee is how uninteresting he has been as City Manager. Sure, the blog posts I've written about Powers include a number of times that I've criticized him or called him a liar. But that comes with the territory at City Hall. All bureaucrats make mistakes and shade the truth now and then. And Powers…
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Posted inCity Council Climate Action Plan

Salem Climate Action Plan: controversial and good

Tomorrow, December 6, the City Council is getting an informational report on the long-awaited Salem Climate Action Plan. No action is being taken on the plan for now, because parts of it have generated a lot of controversy.  I see the controversy as a good thing. If everybody was fine with the plan, there wouldn't be any controversy -- and there also wouldn't be any strong greenhouse gas-reducing actions specified in it, since those actions inevitably are going to be opposed by those doing the greenhouse gas emitting. A call to curtail the use of natural gas in Salem is…
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Posted inNational politics

Outrage should follow Supreme Court denial of abortion right

It's time for all liberty-loving Americans to fire up their outrage engine in anticipation of the Supreme Court either overturning Roe v. Wade entirely, or eviscerating it so that abortion rights exist only in name only. That's the takeaway after today's astoundingly dreadful hearing on a Mississippi law that denies an abortion later than 15 weeks after a woman's last menstrual period. Observers came away feeling that almost certainly that law will be upheld.  This is a big deal. For almost fifty years, since Roe v. Wade legalized abortion nationwide in 1973, the test for when an abortion can happen has…
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