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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Posted in2022 election Chamber of Commerce

Chamber of Commerce political action: “It’s quiet…too quiet”

Suddenly it hit me. The political part of my brain had been freaking out over national politics, as it always does.  Biden's approval rating sucks. Senate Democrats need to do away with the filibuster for voting rights legislation, but Sinema refuses to do this. The 2022 midterms look like a Dem disaster in the making. What's up with Kamala Harris' disappearing act, since I thought she'd run in 2024 rather than Biden. But then it dawned on me that locally, when it comes to political activities of the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce, as the saying goes, It's quiet...too quiet. …
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Posted inCitizen involvement Coronavirus

Salem, and the nation, needs more social capital

My wife and I had a pleasant, albeit low-key, Thanksgiving. Laurel's apple pie tasted great. The Trader Joe's meatless roast turned out fine once I realized that because I forgot to put the frozen roast in the refrigerator a full 24 hours before it went into the oven, that's why it was mushy. After another 15 minutes of cooking, the roast was perfect. Not so perfect was the news I woke up to on Friday. A new Covid variant was freaking out the world, including me. The world reacted with alarm on Friday to the highly mutated new coronavirus variant…
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Posted inOregon politics

Oregon Democrats thankful their redistricting maps are legal

Just in time for Thanksgiving, Oregon Democrats got a double dose of good redistricting news this week. So quite a few Dems will be happier at the dinner table tomorrow, while Republicans will stew about the legal decisions. On Monday the state Supreme Court upheld the redistricting maps for the state legislature.  Up, in, around or out? It's a question facing dozens of incumbent lawmakers and scores of potential challengers after the Oregon Supreme Court on Monday removed legal obstacles to implementing new legislative political districts. The justices dismissed two lawsuits against new maps for 60 House and 30 Senate…
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Posted inChuck Bennett City Council Police reform

Unwise: Salem Mayor wants 60 more police officers

Of all the things that Salem needs, 60 more police officers should be way down on the priority list. But I've been told that this is what Mayor Chuck Bennett is calling for, apparently during a recent City Council work session about the 2022 Policy Agenda. Adding 60 officers to the force is a big deal that needs to be justified with extremely solid data and reasoning, not just because the Mayor or Chief Womack likes the idea.  Here's a thoughtful analysis of this seemingly unwise notion that someone sent to me. I would like to suggest that you snark…
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Posted in2022 election Chuck Bennett City Council

2022 Salem City Council and Mayor races get interesting

Even though we're still six months away from the May 2022 election that typically decides City Council and Mayor races (50 percent + 1 vote and you win outright, even though the election is a "primary"), things are already getting really interesting.  The Statesman Journal has a story that describes the current state of affairs: "Salem City Council set for a shake-up in 2022. Here's who's in and who's out so far." Tom Andersen, the Ward 2 city councilor, isn't running for re-election. He was the first progressive elected to the City Council and serves as the unofficial leader of…
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Posted inCity Council Homeless

City Council struggles with managing vs. ending homelessness

Tonight the Salem City Council had a work session on its 2022 Policy Agenda. I watched some of it, but I have a low tolerance for discussions of this sort that tend to have elected officials and staff talking at length without really coming to grips with key issues in a fashion that ordinary people can relate to. (If you have a high tolerance for this, the work session can be viewed here.) Of course, maybe I missed a part of the work session where city councilors did come to grips with the top priority of the City of Salem…
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Posted inCity Council Police reform

Crisis response team for Salem showing some life

Good news! City Councilor Vanessa Nordyke sent me a message today about state grant money being available for a Salem mental health crisis response team similar to Eugene's highly successful CAHOOTS program.  This comes after the crisis response effort Nordyke has been pushing for met with a setback in September, when the Marion County Board of Commissioners balked at allowing Salem to use state funds that went to counties for crisis stabilization services. As you can read below, $10.5 million in state grant money is coming directly to Salem, so Nordyke hopes a chunk of that can be used for…
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Posted in2022 election

Rep. Kurt Schrader not running for re-election in Salem’s district

The good news for Salem progressives is that Rep. Kurt Schrader won't be representing this area any more, which now is in the 6th congressional district, since Schrader often acts more like a Republican than a Democrat. The (possible) bad news for central Oregon progressives is that Schrader has decided to run in the 5th congressional district -- his current district -- which after redistricting includes Bend. Moderate is the charitable way to describe Schrader. A more accurate way is to call him an obstructionist, since he delights in standing in the way of President Biden's priorities, most recently delaying…
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Posted inNational politics Oregon politics

Bad and good news for Oregon Democrats after Tuesday’s elections

Yesterday was horrible for Democrats. There's no other way to put it.  After going for Biden over Trump by ten points in 2020, Virginia elected the Republican candidate for Governor, Glenn Youngkin, by several points. He was endorsed by Trump, but avoided an overly close connection with Trump. And it looks like the GOP will recapture the Virginia House of Delegates Almost equally disturbing for Democrats was the close race for New Jersey Governor. That state went for Biden over Trump by sixteen points in 2020. The incumbent Governor, Democrat Philip Murphy, beat his Republican challenger, Jack Ciattarelli, by just…
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Posted inCitizen involvement National politics

Sustaining Democracy book fizzles out on how to do it

I loved Robert Talisse's Sustaining Democracy book. Until I read the final chapter. Then I felt the same letdown as when I put in many hours watching a TV series that promises to eventually tie together compelling plot threads in a satisfying fashion, only to find that the final episode falls flat. But this doesn't take away from the brilliance of Talisse's analysis of what typically goes wrong in a democracy. It has a certain Marxist feel, since he persuasively argues that a democracy contains the seeds of its own destruction. In brief, his argument is that democracies want citizens…
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