Posted inDonald Trump National politics

Trump’s pick for Bureau of Labor Statistics head favors “feelings” over data

It was clear that something bad was in store for the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) when Trump fired the head of the agency after the BLS reported poor job creation numbers recently. That's Trump's style: fire the messenger when they report an accurate message that the Dictator in Chief doesn't like. Today the bad thing came into view. Trump has nominated an unqualified MAGA loyalist, E.J. Antoni, to be the next commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is unheard of, since the BLS is a nonpartisan agency that is known for producing world-class high quality statistics on…
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Posted inDonald Trump National politics

All I want for Christmas is a Democratic leader with a killer political instinct

It's tough being a Democrat these days. After being depressed over Kamala Harris' disappointing loss to Trump last November, there hasn't been much to raise my spirits on the national level. (Locally and statewide in Oregon, Democrats are faring better.) Just about every Democrat on the national stage either irritates me or fails to inspire me. I get countless,  more or less, text messages and emails every day urging me to contribute to some Democratic cause. I never read them before I delete them. Sure, I realize that Democrats have no power in Washington, D.C. They don't control the White…
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Posted inDonald Trump National politics

Trump fires Bureau of Labor Statistics head because he didn’t like some statistics

In any other presidency, two things Trump did today would be so outrageous to both Democrats and Republicans, our representatives in Congress would waste little time protesting the president's actions. But with this presidency, it's just another day in the Office of Sleazy Goings-On for Trump's acolytes. Outrage #1 was Ghislaine Maxwell being moved to a minimum-security camp in Texas from a regular federal prison in Florida. The move required a waiver of guidelines that prohibit prisoners convicted of serious crimes with more than ten years remaining on their sentence from being in such a camp, which doesn't have any…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem

City Council needs to forget about commercial air service in Salem

Wow. Travel Salem and other Chamber of Commerce types really have memory problems. It's only been a few weeks since Avelo Airlines announced it is pulling out of the Salem Airport as of August 10 after just a couple of years of sucking up hundreds of thousands of dollars of subsidies provided to the airline, along with benefiting from $2.4 million in airport improvements that came out of the same general fund that city officials claim is going broke, which is why voters were asked to approve a property tax increase to fund city services, which they did. Yet even…
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Posted inEnvironment National politics

Democrats need to take a stand for the natural world

We live in increasingly artificial times. The most obvious sign of this is the rise of Artificial Intelligence, A.I. While A.I. has a lot of potential to improve human life, the dangers are obvious: gosh, what could go wrong if Artificial Intelligence is in control of society's crucial elements -- the internet, power production, business, education, the military, politics? Answer: a lot. What's especially worrisome, stepping back and looking at our current situation more broadly, is how technology is separating us from the natural world. An article by Jill Lepore in the November 11, 2024 issue of The New Yorker,…
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Posted inInternational issues

Israel is purposely starving the people of Gaza. That’s a war crime.

I guess Israel has forgotten the lessons of the Holocaust, because a nation founded to protect the lives of innocent Jews has been wantonly killing innocent Palestinians since its war against Hamas began. Many thousands of those killed are women and children. They've been blown apart by bombs, shredded by bullets, and most horrifying of all to my mind, starved by uncaring Israeli leaders who have blocked almost all humanitarian aid from entering Gaza for several months. What kind of monsters stand by and watch children starving? The monsters in charge of Israel, who are extreme right-wing zealots unashamed to…
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Posted inJulie Hoy

Mayor Julie Hoy raises $12,100 even though she’s not facing reelection this year

I'm no fan of Salem's mayor, Julie Hoy. When she orchestrated the resignation of City Manager Keith Stahley this year in an unseemly manner, I filed a complaint with the Oregon Government Ethics Commission. Now the commission is investigating Hoy and the city councilors who appear to have been involved in prohibited "serial communications" that violate our state's public meetings law. I do give Hoy this underhanded bit of praise, though. She breaks new ground as Mayor. To my knowledge no other mayor of Salem has ever been investigated for a significant ethics violation. And information someone sent me shows…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem

City leaders wrongly preventing councilors from attending neighborhood association meetings

Officials at the City of Salem -- city attorney, mayor, city manager, maybe others -- really need to take the story of Goldilocks to heart. Or the Buddhist middle way.  Because they've jumped from one extreme that got city officials in hot water (an ethics complaint that I filed, which currently is being investigated by the Oregon Government Ethics Commission), to the other extreme where those officials are putting on ice the ability of a city councilor to attend neighborhood association meetings in their ward. So because Mayor Julie Hoy and other members of the city council engaged in a…
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Posted inDonald Trump National politics

Trump’s war against science, including climate change, will be disastrous

Those of us opposed to Trump have lots of choices when it comes to his most dangerous actions. Mass deportations of law-abiding undocumented migrants. Tax breaks for the wealthy paid for by huge cuts to Medicaid. Slow-walking support for Ukraine. Mass firings of career federal employees. To name but a few. But in the long run, I suspect that historians of the future will look back and judge that Trump's most disastrous action in his second term was to engage in a war against science, notably including the science of climate change. The world has already surpassed the 1.5 C…
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Posted inChamber of Commerce City Council City of Salem

Avelo Airlines leaving Salem in August. My reaction: “I told you so”

To nobody's surprise except the City Council, Chamber of Commerce, and Travel Salem -- who assured citizens in 2023 that this time, really, you can count on it, an airline offering commercial service will remain at the Salem airport -- Avelo Airlines has announced that as of August 10 it will no longer have flights to and from our once-again airline'less city. Here's an excerpt from today's Salem Reporter story by Rachel Alexander and Mirandah Davis-Powell, "Avelo pulls out of Salem." Avelo Airlines is ending flights out of Salem in August, leaving the community again without a commercial operator after…
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Posted inInternational issues

Netanyahu has prolonged Gaza war to keep himself in power

I detest Israel in the same way that much of the world detests the United States. Not because I dislike the people of Israel. Not because I dislike the nation of Israel. Because Israel is being led by a despicable leader and a far-right government that is responsible for harming many innocent human beings. By carrying out what comes close to being the genocide of Palestinians living in Gaza -- destroying their homes, indiscriminate bombing of hospitals, denial of humanitarian aid, mass killings of noncombatants -- Israel has squandered the goodwill that was directed at the country after Hamas attacked…
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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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