April 2023 - Salem Political Snark

Sexual assault claim spices up school board candidates forum

Once upon a time school board elections were a sleepy affair. Mostly the problem was finding candidates willing to serve in a position marked by long hours, boring meetings, and no pay. That time has passed for the Salem-Keizer School District. Recent elections have been marked by competing slates of candidates: progressive and conservative. This makes what used to be a nonpartisan election highly political. Politics definitely was on display at today's forum for school board candidates vying for three positions in the May 16 Special District Election. The forum was jointly sponsored by the Salem City Club, Salem Chamber…

Hines Brian April 28, 20233

City of Salem Downtown

A tale of two Salem streets: McGilchrist and Court

Streets are kind of strange, when you think about it. Essentially they serve no purpose other than to get people and goods from here to there, usually by car or truck. So by themselves, streets are basically useless. For example, unlike a park, you can't have a picnic on them. By and large streets are a highly visible and unattractive testament to our American addiction to vehicular travel. But this isn't a given. At least, not now. There's no reason why modern transportation planning has to be bound by the outmoded rules that have given us the ugliness of south…

Hines Brian April 25, 2023No Comments

Uncategorized

Angry men used to just complain. Now they shoot people.

Recently there's been three shootings of people who made an innocent mistake and were shot by an angry man. That got me to thinking about Mr. Wilson of the Dennis the Menace comic strip. (Yeah, I'm old.) Dennis irritated Wilson, but back then cranky men just swore and complained. These days, given how awash our country is with guns, all too often angry men start shooting. We don't have a mental health problem. We have a gun problem. I wrote about this on substack. Now that I've tried writing several posts on substack, I probably won't be doing so again,…

Hines Brian April 21, 2023No Comments

Salem-Keizer school district

Here’s the Salem-Keizer school board candidates to vote for in May election

Two years ago, four progressive candidates were elected to the Salem-Keizer School Board. As I said in a a blog post congratulating them on their victories, this was a big win for quality education. Pleasingly, each of the four progressive candidates ended up winning -- an amazing accomplishment. Amazing, because Oregon Right to Life and its associated PACs (political action committees) went all out this time around, as they have in previous school board elections, in support of a conservative slate of candidates. ...With the four Salem-Keizer school board victories (assuming Cottingham survives the recount), progressives will end the nightmare…

Hines Brian April 17, 2023No Comments

National politics

Abortion medication ruling threatens our prescription drugs

There's many reasons to criticize the ruling by a federal judge in Texas, Matthew Kacsmaryk, declaring that the abortion medication mifepristone has to be withdrawn from the market by the FDA. I talked about some of those reasons in my first post about this wacko legal decision. Today the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an initial ruling on an appeal by the Justice Department which provides more fodder for those of us who consider this to be a classic case of judicial overreach and incompetence. It was great to see that executives of leading pharmaceutical companies, along with many others,…

Hines Brian April 13, 2023No Comments

City Council City of Salem

City wants to increase taxes while giving millions to an airline

Since I'm a Democrat, most conservatives would say that I favor big government. But that's only partially true. I'll all for big government doing big things for the general public. However, when government wants more money to do things that don't make sense, I'm opposed to that -- as most people are. That's why two recent stories in the Salem Reporter and Statesman Journal made me wonder, What are the folks at City Hall doing? This seems more than a little crazy. The April 6 Salem Reporter story is titled "City looks to boost fee and tax collections by millions…

Hines Brian April 9, 2023No Comments

National politics Oregon politics

Republicans want to ban abortion in blue states like Oregon

Most Oregonians, like most Americans, want abortion to be available to pregnant people who want one. But it's easy to become complacent about abortion access in our state because we lean so Democratic. Today's abortion ruling by a far-right federal judge in Amarillo, Texas shows that this complacency is misplaced. For if it stands, the ruling would make mifepristone, a drug used to induce an abortion, unavailable in all 50 states. A Texas federal judge ruled Friday evening to suspend the FDA’s approval of mifepristone — one of two drugs used together to cause an abortion — virtually banning the…

Hines Brian April 7, 2023No Comments

Donald Trump

Democratic worries about Trump indictment are overblown

Democrats worry about things going wrong politically even when they're going well. Republicans are optimistic about things going right politically even when they're going poorly. OK, that's a broad generalization. But there's still a lot of truth in what I just said. Evidence in support of my thesis comes from the reaction to the indictment and arraignment of Donald Trump. Yesterday Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan District Attorney, presented an outline of his case against Trump in a post-arraignment news conference. I thought he did fine. Basically, a few weeks before the 2016 election Trump paid hush money to an adult…

Hines Brian April 5, 2023No Comments