Posted inNational politics

Trump’s Agriculture Secretary expects Medicaid recipients to work in fields

It's always hard for me to figure out which of the many absurd pronouncements by Trump administration officials is most deserving of ridicule. This statement by Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins came out on top today. I'm not sure what the "34 million able-bodied on Medicaid" refers to. There are about 41 million adults on Medicaid, with a bit over 7 million aged 65 or older, so Rollins seems to be speaking about every adult on Medicaid aged 19 to 64 (41 million minus 7 million equals 34 million). But only 8% of the 34 million, or about 3.3 million, reported…
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Posted inDonald Trump National politics

I’m not feeling proud to be an American on this Fourth of July

I've never been a flag-waving sort of American. Yet I consider myself patriotic. I vote in every election. I'm active in my community. I want the United States to be an international leader, helping bring democracy and prosperity to other less fortunate countries.  But on this Fourth of July, when we celebrate our Declaration of Independence from Great Britain, I'm not feeling great about my country. I've got a lot of company from my fellow Democrats, only 36% of whom are extremely or very proud to be an American. There's a simple reason. In 2015 80% of Democrats were extremely…
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Posted inDonald Trump National politics

Trump’s megabill is both unpopular and uninspired

Liberals like me hate what used to be called Trump's Big Beautiful Bill before Senate Democrats deleted that name for an excellent reason (it's big, and a bill, but isn't at all beautiful). Among other things it will: -- kick many millions of Americans off of Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act -- make permanent tax breaks for corporations and wealthy people at the expense of poor people-- cripple our country's renewable energy industries, leaving China to lead in this area-- increase the national debt by $3-4 trillion-- throw many billions of dollars into deporting hard-working undocumented migrants Polls show that…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Posted inDonald Trump National politics

Trump’s tariffs blocked by multi-state lawsuit led by Oregon Attorney General

Way to go Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield. Yesterday the lawsuit brought by Oregon and eleven other states challenging the legal authority for Trump's tariffs got a win from the U.S. Court of International Trade. Here's what Rayfield said in a media release. Today, the U.S. Court of International Trade struck down the tariffs imposed by President Trump’s executive orders under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). The decision was made in a multi-state lawsuit led by Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield. In reaction to the ruling, Attorney General Rayfield said: “The court’s ruling is a victory not just…
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Posted inDonald Trump National politics

Trump has definitely become an authoritarian

There's good reason to argue that Donald Trump has always been an authoritarian. He admires strongmen such as the dictators and quasi-dictators who run Russia, North Korea, China, Turkey, and Hungary. He demands absolute loyalty with no backtalk from people who work for him. He despises central tenets of democracy like free and fair elections unless he manages to win. But after four months of his second term as president, now there's no doubt on which side of the authoritarian fence Trump is on. Just about every action he's taken has either pushed to the limit norms that have been…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem Salem-Keizer school district

Salem area special election results looking good, especially to liberals

With Oregon allowing mailed ballots to be counted as long as they're postmarked on or before election day, more ballots will be received in the next few days. But the current results for key races in the Salem area likely will hold up, given the margin of victory (or defeat) in each of them. The biggest news is the 56-44 passage of Measure 24-514, also known as the Livability Levy. Given that there was no organized opposition to an increase in Salem property taxes to fund the library, parks, and Center 50+, it wasn't a surprise that the measure passed.…
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Posted inCity Council

Conservatives up to dirty tricks in Ward 6 City Council race

Thanks to a Salem Reporter story by Joe Siess, "Newly formed PAC jumps into Salem council race as election winds down," I learned about the latest dirty trick that conservatives desperate to regain control of the Salem City Council are playing on voters. In almost every local election cycle something like this occurs. The basic reason is that while liberals value playing fair (naturally with some exceptions), conservatives value doing whatever it takes to win. Here's how the Salem Reporter story starts out. Dru Draper says his days-old political action committee has jumped into Salem’s contested council race to make…
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Posted inCity of Salem Donald Trump Julie Hoy

One thing that Salem Mayor Julie Hoy and President Trump have in common

Understand: I'm not equating Julie Hoy, the Mayor of Salem, Oregon, with Donald Trump, the President of the United States. Though they're each conservative, fortunately Hoy isn't nearly as obnoxious and dangerous as Trump. But they do have this in common. Both Hoy and Trump benefit from the fact that doing something illegal or unethical can be done quickly, while holding someone to account for such an action can take months or years. This relates to the adage, "Justice delayed is justice denied." Wikipedia explains: "Justice delayed is justice denied" is a legal maxim. It means that if legal redress…
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Posted inDonald Trump National politics Oregon politics

Oregon’s Attorney General leading 12-state lawsuit challenging Trump tariffs

It warmed my Oregon heart to see my state prominently featured in a Politico story today, "'There is No Rational Basis Behind What the President is Trying to Accomplish': Oregon's Attorney General is suing to block Trump's tariffs -- and he might win." Excerpt: Attorney General Dan Rayfield Dan Rayfield, Oregon’s rookie attorney general, says he didn’t want to spend his first months in office fighting presidential edicts in court. But along with the consumer protection and law-and-order duties that more typically define his role, the Democrat is now a key combatant in Donald Trump’s trade war, leading a 12-state…
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Posted inCity Club City Council City of Salem

Vanessa Nordyke makes closing argument for Salem’s livability levy

City Councilor Vanessa Nordyke is an attorney. Today she made a presentation to the Salem City Club that she called a closing argument for Measure 24-514 on the May ballot -- which is unofficially called the livability levy, being a property tax increase to fund the library, parks, and Center 50+. Nordyke said that she chose her black suit because it's what she likes to wear to a closing argument. "Closing," because ballots need to be postmarked on or before May 20, or put in a drop box before 8 pm on the 20th. That's just eleven days away. Here's…
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