Posted inEnvironment

Owner of property where Liberty Fire began allowed use of ATVs that started fire

Thanks to an informative story by Capi Lynn in today's print edition of the Statesman Journal, we learned the cause of the August 23, 2023 brush fire in south Salem known as the Liberty Fire, because it was adjacent to Liberty Road. The fire grabbed the attention of me and our neighbors out here in rural south Salem because we live off of Liberty Road about five miles from where the fire started. Yes, that's quite a ways, but brush fires can move very rapidly under windy conditions. And of course the fire was of vastly more concern to the…
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Posted in2024 election Donald Trump National politics

Trump owes $454 million in civil case penalty. Don’t vote for this fraudster.

Justice is finally catching up to Donald Trump. He's spent his whole adult life, and surely part of his childhood, feeling like he can get away with anything, thanks to the power of money he inherited from his father and subsequent business dealings that not only skirted the law, but sometimes broke the law. He's been found legally liable for defrauding people who signed up for Trump University. He's been found legally liable for defaming E. Jean Carroll, who he sexually assaulted and then lied about her making the story up. His list of other lawsuits and indictments goes on…
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Posted inLand use

I love Oregon’s land use system. But it will survive some legislative tweaking.

On this Valentines Day it seems appropriate to express my love for Oregon's land use system. It dates from 1973, shortly after when I moved to Oregon in 1971 to attend graduate school at Portland State University. So yeah, I guess Senate Bill 100, which established the land use system, was intended in part to protect our state's farm and forest land from Californians like me. A Department of Land Conservation and Development web page summarizes the bill. Oregonians in the 1960s and '70s became concerned as they watched rapid population growth begin to take place around the state. Lawmakers…
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Posted inOregon politics

Oregon needs daylight saving time, not permanent standard time

One of the worst bills introduced in this year's short legislative session calls for Oregon to move to permanent standard time, thereby doing away with the much-beloved (by me and many others) daylight saving time. This is a horrible idea. State Senator Kim Thatcher of Keizer introduced Senate Bill 1548, which hopefully will have a well-deserved legislative death. Senator Deb Patterson, who represents part of the Salem area, is a co-sponsor of the bill. I hope she comes to her senses. Oregon already has passed legislation calling on Congress to allow our state, along with Washington and California, to be…
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Posted inDonald Trump Joe Biden National politics

Biden’s too old and forgetful to be president. So is Trump. We’re screwed.

It didn't take long for my reading of a story about the special counsel's report on Biden's retention of classified documents after he was no longer vice-president to turn from yay, good news to oh no, bad news. The good news was that Robert Hur, the special counsel who was a holdover Trump appointee, determined that Biden shouldn't be charged with a crime. That's a big contrast with Trump, who is facing "40 felony charges related to the documents case, including charges of obstruction of justice and violation of the Espionage Act for willfully retaining national defense information." But then…
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Posted inNational politics

Republican dysfunction on full display today in Congress

I'm so old, I remember when Republicans deserved their nickname as the Grand Old Party, GOP. They were known as solid citizens, skilled in business, dedicated to fighting communism, defenders of freedom, committed to our Constitution, competent leaders. Those days are gone, at least when it comes to Republicans in Congress. Now the GOP is best known for dysfunction, incompetence, unreliability, lack of a moral compass, fealty only to Donald Trump. Today was a clear example of this. It was a remarkable Tuesday for political junkies like me. Any doubt that the GOP is better termed the POP, Pathetic Old…
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Posted in2024 election International issues Joe Biden

Recent poll finds Biden in big trouble against Trump. Hamas war is one reason.

I enjoy watching Meet the Press on Sunday. But today's episode disturbed me when results of a new NBC poll were presented by Steve Kornacki.  For one thing, Biden trails Trump nationally by five points, with his poll numbers steadily declining. Also, Trump is seen as more competent than Biden on most policy issues. It's astounding that Biden only has a two point lead over Trump on protecting democracy. A NBC News story about the poll describes the bad news for Biden. Despite a growing economy and little opposition for his party’s nomination, President Joe Biden confronts a dissatisfied electorate…
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Posted inOregon politics

Republican state senators who walked out can’t run again. Sweet justice!

It was an Oregon Supreme Court decision that made me ever so happy. Yesterday the court ruled unanimously that a ballot measure passed by voters in 2022 meant that ten Republicans in the state Senate can't run for re-election because they walked out of the 2023 legislative session for ten days. An Oregon Capital Chronicle story describes the decision.  Republican senators who participated last year in the longest walkout in state history cannot seek reelection in 2024 or 2026, the Oregon Supreme Court ruled Thursday.  In a unanimous decision, the court rejected arguments from five Republican senators that Measure 113,…
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Posted inOregon politics

Measure 110 should be reformed, but going back to “war on drugs” is a bad idea

Oregon is continuing to get national attention for Measure 110, which voters approved in November 2020. It decriminalized possession of previously illegal drugs. Now, though, the backlash against Measure 110 threatens to make Oregon a poster child for what not to do about drugs. An article in the January 22, 2024 issue of The New Yorker describes the high hopes that accompanied the passage of Measure 110. In November, 2020, Oregon launched a historic experiment: the Drug Decriminalization and Addiction Treatment Initiative, known as Measure 110. Approved by fifty-eight per cent of voters, it made Oregon the first state to decriminalize…
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Posted inDonald Trump National politics

Trump threatens border deal and Ukraine aid. He screws up everything.

I don't need more reasons to detest Donald Trump. He's given me plenty already during his disastrous appearances on the nation's political stage. But there's always a new disturbing Trump outrage that adds fuel to my Trump-hating fire. At the moment my gripe is with how Trump has inserted himself into negotiations in the Senate about a border deal that reportedly would give Republicans much of what they've been wanting. Stricter rules for individuals seeking asylum. Tightening security at the border. Not allowing whole groups of people, such as Afghans who helped us there, to be eligible to enter our…
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Posted in2024 election Donald Trump Joe Biden

After New Hampshire, it’s almost certainly Biden vs. Trump

Following tonight's vote in New Hampshire, it seems clear that Nikki Haley's odds of beating Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination are about as strong as me winning a billion dollars in a lottery. Same is true of Dean Phillips beating Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination, though his odds are even lower. Phillips is on track to get about 20% of the vote in New Hampshire, where Biden wasn't even on the ballot due to his commitment to have South Carolina be the first state to award Democratic delegates.  Losing so badly when votes for Biden had to…
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Posted inOregon politics

Priorities for upcoming legislative session revealed at Salem City Club

I tried to make the title of this blog post convey an enticing peek into what's going to be focused on during the 35-day short legislative session in this even numbered year, which begins February 5. But anyone who follows Oregon politics at all closely won't be surprised by what the Speaker of the House, Democrat Dan Rayfield, and House Minority Leader, Republican Jeff Helfrich, agreed would be the session priorities at a Salem City Club meeting today: Big Decisions -- A Preview of the 2024 Oregon Legislative Short Session. Addressing the shortcomings of Measure 110, which largely decriminalized the…
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Posted in2024 election Donald Trump Joe Biden

Trump wins big in Iowa. May he lose big to Biden.

Living as I do in a vote-by-mail state where ballots are filled out in the comfort of one's home, then put in a mailbox with postage paid by Oregon's enlightened government, it baffles me why a state would vote in any other way. Like, by traveling to a site where you may have to stand in line for a long time before being able to vote. But that makes more sense than choosing a candidate in the Republican primary for president by having people attend caucuses in bitterly cold weather in mid-January where a couple of hours of discussion precedes…
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Posted in2024 election Donald Trump National politics

Republicans, January 6 criminals are prisoners, not hostages

It's a good thing that I don't have a blood pressure problem. If I did, I'd ask my doctor to increase my medication until the 2024 election is over in November, because the lies being spread by Donald Trump and his Republican sycophants are making me furious -- and it's just January 7. Which is one day after the three-year anniversary of the despicable insurrection, or riot if you prefer that word, at our nation's capitol in 2021.  Immediately after January 6 of that year most Republicans acknowledged that this violent attempt to prevent the certification of Joe Biden as…
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Posted inCity Club

Gen Z featured at youthful Salem City Club program

Today the Salem City Club program was Exploring the 'American Dream' with Gen Z. The average age of the five panelists -- Reid Millis, Patrick Hirsig-Gutierrez, Elijah Leutwyler, Llayne Ngo, and Emma Jensen -- was markedly lower than the mostly gray-haired audience. Which was refreshing. I felt younger just being in the presence of Generation Z members, who, as the chart below shows, were born between 1997 and 2012. Here's the panelists, plus moderator Melanie Zermer (holding a microphone). I didn't keep track of what each panelist said, so their comments will be lumped together. When asked about the American…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem

Why is the Salem Public Library so bad? A retired librarian shares the facts.

The Salem Public Library sucks. Sure, I could come up with synonyms for "sucks," which I did in the title of this blog post: bad, horrible, disappointing. But sucks conveys the anger and sorrow library lovers should feel about a recent decision by the City of Salem to cut library hours a lot. Retired state librarian Jim Scheppke has been sharing Facebook posts that provide solid facts to back up the inescapable conclusion that while the Salem Public Library sucked in comparison to other public libraries in Oregon before those cuts, the Suck Factor is now much worse. Below are…
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Posted inNational politics

GOP insanity: Nikki Haley doesn’t think slavery was the cause of the Civil War

At the risk of having my head explode, I've watched each of the debates between the non-Trump candidates for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Well, except for the last debate, which was on some network that I'd never heard of. Aside from Chris Christie, who I like when he bashes Trump, but not otherwise, the only other candidate who didn't totally disgust me is Nikki Haley. She actually made sense at times, particularly when she talked about foreign policy and the urgent need for the United States to keep supporting Ukraine. Haley is supposed to be the moderate alternative to…
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Posted in2024 election Donald Trump

Should Trump be banned from the Oregon ballot? I say, no.

Yesterday Colorado banned Trump from that state's primary ballot. The Colorado Supreme Court issued the decision, which almost certainly now will be appealed to the United States Supreme Court. A divided Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday declared former President Donald Trump ineligible for the White House under the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause and removed him from the state’s presidential primary ballot, setting up a likely showdown in the nation’s highest court to decide whether the front-runner for the GOP nomination can remain in the race. The decision from a court whose justices were all appointed by Democratic governors marks the…
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Posted inNational politics

On abortion and Ukraine, Republicans are dangerously crazy

If our major political parties were to undergo a psychiatric examination to determine whether Republicans or Democrats are acting most crazy, there's no doubt who would be committed to a mental hospital for some serious treatment. The Republican Party, of course. There's so many current examples of this -- including the perennial favorite, how the lying, incompetent, democracy-defying, obnoxious Donald Trump is the clear favorite to be the GOP presidential nominee in 2024 -- that I'm going to limit myself to two issues that are particularly dangerously crazy. Abortion and Ukraine. Look, I've got no problem with Republicans opposing abortion.…
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Posted inReligiosity

Oregonian column about Liberty University makes fun of Oregon’s moralistic football opponent

Thank you, Bill Oram. I needed your Oregonian sports section column about Oregon's opponent in the Fiesta Bowl on New Year's Day 2024. These wintry days have been dark, drenching, and dismal recently.  Making fun of Liberty University is just what I needed from you to raise my spirits. Below I've taken the liberty of sharing the entire column, copyright law be damned.  For as many Oregon football fans as possible need to have at least a half-smile put back upon their face, given the crushing disappointment of Oregon's third three-point loss to Washington in a row, with the most…
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