Posted inCity Council Downtown T.J. Sullivan

Chair of Salem Main Street Association says I’m not welcome in downtown anymore

At last Monday's City Council meeting, T.J. Sullivan, board chair for the Salem Main Street Association said in the public comment period, "There are a couple of people who are about the complaints who aren't welcome in downtown Salem anymore." T.J. Sullivan Sullivan was referring to the complaint against Mayor Julie Hoy that I filed with the Oregon Government Ethics Commission. (Another person filed a similar complaint.) That complaint was found to have merit after a preliminary review, and a full investigation of Hoy and city councilors will take place. It appears that Sullivan has been watching too much Fox…
5
Posted inDonald Trump International issues

Trump’s constant lying means he can’t be believed about Iran’s nuclear program

If there's one thing that can be said with certainty about Donald Trump, it's that he is a habitual shameless liar. This was annoying when he was a presidential candidate. As president, Trump's constant falsehoods are a clear and present danger to our national security. All American presidents have shaded the truth to some extent. That comes with being a politician. But in the past lying by the occupant of the White House about important issues was fairly rare. The most notable recent example was the George W. Bush administration lying about evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction…
No Comments
Posted inNational politics

Democratic Socialist wins New York City’s Democratic primary for Mayor. Wow!

Most of what I know about today's Democratic primary for the New York City mayor comes from posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, from people who follow NYC politics much more closely than I do from my perch some 3,000 miles away in Oregon. I learned that Andrew Cuomo, the former Governor of New York, was trying to mount a comeback after he resigned following allegations of sexual abuse and mismanagement of the Covid pandemic. Cuomo has been leading in the polls over his chief primary rival, Zohran Mamdani.  Zohran Mamdani Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist, was expected to lose…
No Comments
Posted inDonald Trump International issues

Trump’s bombing of Iran likely will have unintended consequences

Currently President Trump and the rest of his administration's merry band of MAGA acolytes are puffing out their chests, all proud that seven B-2 bombers dropped 14 giant 30,000 pound "bunker buster" bombs on three underground nuclear sites in Iran. But as I said in a post about the attacks on my Church of the Churchless blog yesterday, it's likely that things aren't going to go so smoothly from now on. The best case scenario would be that the attacks were successful, Iran doesn't retaliate in a major way, Iran agrees to a peace deal with the United States and…
No Comments
Posted inCity Council Julie Hoy

Mayor Julie Hoy can’t get her story straight about Ethics Commission investigation

A few days ago the Salem Reporter published another informative story about the Oregon Government Ethics Commission decision to investigate Mayor Julie Hoy and city councilors for failing to comply with our state's public meeting law. Julie Hoy Here's an excerpt from "State investigator concludes Salem council discussed manager's ouster out of public view" by Joe Siess.  Mayor Julie Hoy and Salem city councilors appear to have engaged in an illegal serial meeting leading up to the departure of former Salem City Manager Keith Stahley in February, a state investigator concluded in a preliminary report.  That report led the ethics…
2
Posted inDonald Trump International issues

I’m worried that Trump is going to order B-2 bombers to attack Iran’s nuclear sites

Usually I don't believe in magical thinking. But I'll make an exception this time. Because if expressing an anxiety means that it is less likely to occur, then I'm damn well going to say "I'm worried that Trump is going to order B-2 bombers to attack Iran's nuclear sites" -- since doing that would be a disaster. Here's why I think there's a decent chance that Trump is going to insert the United States into the conflict between Israel and Iran, which is looking increasingly like a full-on war. (1) Trump is leaving the G-7 summit in Canada a day…
No Comments
Posted inDonald Trump National politics

Trump’s military parade was boring. “No Kings” protests were inspiring.

Today I forced myself to watch a few minutes of Trump's military parade in Washington D.C. I expected that MSNBC and CNN would cover the whole parade, but they didn't.  Probably the reason was that it was exceedingly boring. I've never seen a parade that was more listless and uninteresting than this one. Once you've seen one piece of military equipment roll by, or soldiers marching by, the rest is just repetition.  Well, actually the troops I saw weren't marching. Not in the North Korean or Russian sense. They were merely walking. Boring! Apparently people had the good sense to…
No Comments
Posted inCity Council City of Salem Julie Hoy

Ethics Commission approves investigation of my complaint against Mayor Hoy

Really satisfying. Today the Oregon Government Ethics Commission agreed to open an investigation into my complaint against Salem Mayor Julie Hoy that alleged she engaged in prohibited serial communications with members of the City Council that resulted in the forced resignation of City Manager Keith Stahley.  You can read my complaint that's in the form of a blog post: "Here's my Oregon Government Ethics Commission complaint about Keith Stahley's forced resignation." Another person, Elliott Lapinel, also filed a complaint about the same allegation. Both the Salem Reporter and Statesman Journal have stories about the investigation. Here's excerpts from the Salem…
No Comments
Posted inDonald Trump National politics

U.S. moves closer to authoritarianism as Trump lies about immigrant “invasion”

We're not even five months into Trump's second term as president and already the warnings from the 2024 Democratic campaign are coming true: if Trump is elected over Kamala Harris, our democracy will be threatened by authoritarianism.  It's happening faster than I expected. Which means buckle up for the remaining three and a half years of Trump's time in the White House, because he's going to be putting pedal to the metal increasingly forcefully in his drive to become the first truly authoritarian president in our nation's history. This evening the Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, issued a warning in…
No Comments
Posted inDonald Trump National politics

Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill adds between $3 trillion and $5 trillion to nation’s debt

The reconciliation legislation recently passed by the House and being considered by the Senate is called the One Big Beautiful Bill, because that's the name Trump gave it.  Like just about everything Trump touches, the name is a lie. Actually the legislation is horribly ugly, though it is indeed big. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget summarizes the impact on the nation's debt, which is currently $36.2 trillion.  The House of Representatives’ Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 reconciliation bill – titled the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025 (OBBBA) – would add $2.4 trillion to primary deficits over the…
No Comments