Posted inReligiosity

A business sent us a Judeo-Christian Thanksgiving card. But we’re atheists.

A few days ago my wife and I got a Thanksgiving card from a business that we use regularly. This is the front of the card. The back said, "We are awed by the blessings God has poured out on us this past year. Thank you for your trust in and support of our business. Wishing you a wonderful holiday season!" OK. Nice sentiments. Aside from the God parts. That didn't go over well with us, since we're atheists.  We realize that Judeo-Christianity is the dominant faith in the United States. So we're used to being exposed to all kinds…
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Posted inDonald Trump Oregon politics

Election workers deserve our thanks in these divisive times

We should be thankful all of the time, not just around Thanksgiving. But it was auspicious timing for the Salem City Club to have an "Elections Under the Microscope" presentation last Friday, since I came away from the presentations by Marion County Clerk Bill Burgess and Polk County Clerk Kim Williams with an increased feeling of thankfulness for the often thankless job election workers do in these divisive times. Bill Burgess By divisive, naturally I'm referring to the indisputable fact that one of our two major national political parties, the Republican, is in the thrall of Donald Trump, a notorious…
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Posted inCity of Salem Police reform

Man awarded $3 million due to excessive force and false arrest by Salem police officer

Not a positive moment for the reputation of the Salem Police Department, to put it mildly. Last week a jury awarded $3,150,000 to Christopher Garza after a Salem police officer, David S. Baker, treated him badly in 2021. Christopher Garza (Oregonian photo) An Oregonian story by Maxine Bernstein tells the tale in "Jury awards $3 million to Salem man falsely arrested by an officer who used excessive force." (The Salem Reporter reprinted this story.) Excerpts: A jury Thursday awarded more than $3 million in damages to a Salem man wrongly accused by a police officer of stealing a car and…
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Posted inCitizen involvement City Council City of Salem

Resounding defeat of payroll tax should spur City officials to explore fresh ideas

In elections, usually even the most unqualified and unknown candidate gets 30 to 40% of the vote. So when the payroll tax got a "Yes" from only 18% of Salem voters in yesterday's election, they weren't just sending a message. They were screaming it from the rooftops. Both in the Marion County part of Salem and the Polk County part in west Salem (where just 16% said "Yes"). With the election over, and the certainty that remaining ballots to be counted won't appreciably change the outcome, we enter the what now? phase.  A Salem Reporter story about the payroll tax…
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Posted in2024 election Donald Trump Joe Biden

I’m freaking out about Biden’s weakness against Trump

With a year to go until the 2024 presidential election, is it too soon for Democrats to freak out about the horrific New York Times/Siena College poll released yesterday? President Biden is trailing Donald J. Trump in five of the six most important battleground states one year before the 2024 election, suffering from enormous doubts about his age and deep dissatisfaction over his handling of the economy and a host of other issues, new polls by The New York Times and Siena College have found. The results show Mr. Biden losing to Mr. Trump, his likeliest Republican rival, by margins…
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Posted inNational politics

Israel is squandering its moral authority with attack on refugee camp

Like most people, after Hamas terrorists brutally attacked Israeli civilians on October 7 my sympathies were almost totally with Israel. Sure, I was aware that Israel has treated Palestinians badly and has done little recently to move toward the two-state solution that is recognized by everybody except for far right Israelis as the best way to assure lasting peace between Israel and its neighbors. But I felt that Israel occupied the moral high ground after the Hamas attacks. Now, though, Israel is squandering that moral authority by the brutal way it is conducting war in Gaza, which is run by…
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Posted inNational politics

Choice of House Speaker shows how extreme Republicans have become

Here in Oregon, Republican politicians often try to look moderate because they're in a state that leans Democratic. But don't be fooled. These days, virtually every Republican office holder has to be a MAGA devotee of Donald Trump in order to be elected. So they buy into right-wing craziness, no matter how hard they may try to appear all centrist and reasonable. Case in point is the newly elected Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson of Louisiana. If you've never heard of him, join the club. He isn't exactly a household name even in Washington D.C., much less…
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Posted inEnvironment

Check out these visual facts about electric vehicles in Oregon

They (whoever they is) say that a picture is worth a thousand words. So rather than describe last Friday's Salem City Club presentation about electric vehicles in Oregon, I figured it would be better to share some screenshots from the report the presentation was based on, the Oregon Department of Energy's 2023 Biennial Zero Emission Vehicle Report. I didn't read the report. I just looked at the pictures and chose the ones that I thought were most interesting and could be grasped at a glance. My commentary will be brief. BEV stands for Battery Electric Vehicle. PHEV stands for Plug-in…
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Posted in2024 election City Council City of Salem

Salem payroll tax like blood in water to conservative sharks

As a progressive who was happy when liberals wrested control of the Salem City Council from conservatives in 2017, now I'm worried that the payroll tax debacle could be a harbinger of a right-wing renaissance in local politics. What's disturbing is that this is a self-inflicted wound by five of the six progressive members of the City Council who provided the votes to pass a new payroll tax on everyone who works in Salem on a narrow 5-4 vote. Now that wound is like blood in the water to energized conservative "sharks." (The five were Mayor Chris Hoy and councilors…
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Posted inInternational issues

Israel’s citizens lack confidence in their government, as they should

Obviously it's difficult to find any bright spots in the war between Hamas and Israel. I summed up my attitude toward the war in a post on my Church of the Churchless blog, Religion plays a large role in the horrible Hamas-Israel war. Though I'm an atheist, I recognize that wars often don't involve religion to a significant degree. But sometimes they do, which means that rather than being a force for good in the world, religion encourages death and destruction. Politically, my goal is to be an open-minded progressive. So I embrace the notion being espoused by many liberals…
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Posted inCitizen involvement City Council City of Salem

Watch the video of Salem Reporter’s town hall meeting on the payroll tax

Everybody should applaud the Salem Reporter, our city's online alternative to the Statesman Journal, for holding a town hall on the proposed payroll tax at the Elsinore Theatre this evening. For whether you oppose or favor the payroll tax, or don't have an opinion on it, it's great that a public debate on the tax happened prior to voters casting their ballot on it in the upcoming November election. I didn't attend the town hall. But I've watched some of the You Tube video of it, which I'll share below. (The screenshot above is just to show the debaters, Oregon…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem

Salem payroll tax looks like it’s headed for defeat

While I won't be surprised if the controversial payroll tax is passed by Salem voters this November, since nothing in politics is absolutely certain, it appears more likely that it will be defeated. I'm guessing by a 60-40 margin or thereabouts. I'm not aware of any publicly available polling on the payroll tax. But the Salem Reporter and Statesman Journal have each conducted unscientific surveys about how people feel about the tax, which would be levied on anyone who works in Salem even if they don't live here. Each survey found the payroll tax to be unpopular. Here's an excerpt…
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Posted inNational politics

It’s a Republican lie that U.S. money fueled the attacks on Israel

It's no surprise when Republican politicians lie. Donald Trump has gotten us used to that, and his love of falsehoods has spread to others in his party. Still, I was shocked when I saw that members of the not-so-Grand Old Party were criticizing the Biden administration for supposedly providing $6 billion to Iran that had been used to support the recent attacks on Israel by Hamas, a Palestinian group backed by Iran. Aside from being flat-out wrong, it bothered me that Republicans would use a horrific attack on Israeli citizens for blatant political purposes. Here's the facts about this lie. …
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Posted inNational politics

McCarthy’s ouster as House speaker is a Democratic dream come true

It was an entertaining day for political junkies like me, especially those of us who are retired and could watch Kevin McCarthy being fired as Speaker of the House in real time. The pleasure was intensified by this being a battle between two truly obnoxious people, McCarthy and Representative Matt Gaetz -- a far-right House member who initiated the "move to vacate" procedure that ended up with the Speaker position being vacant because eight Republican House members and all of the Democratic House members who voted on this wanted McCarthy gone. So today, on a 216-210 vote, McCarthy became the…
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Posted inNational politics

House GOP clown car would be funny if it wasn’t driving to a government shutdown

I heartily enjoy watching Republicans self-destruct. It's so much more pleasant than seeing Democrats do the same thing, which for me is painful, since I'm a progressive.  However, the current Clown Car episode in the GOP-controlled House, though amusing on one level, is deadly serious on another, because Speaker McCarthy and the wacko MAGA extremists in his caucus are speedily driving the federal government toward a harmful shutdown. That will happen at 12:01 am tomorrow night, since that's when the federal fiscal year ends and the current budget is no more. Now, an entirely reasonable question is why Congress has…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem

Story of Salem firefighter’s widow being denied benefits is more nuanced than outrageous

Look, I never pass up an opportunity to become outraged at something officials at the City of Salem have done. That's why I called this blog Salem Political Snark rather than Salem Political Praise. So when I saw a story on KGW News a few days ago about how the widow of a Salem firefighter, Maurice "Mo" Stadeli, was being denied workers compensation benefits after her husband died of tonsil cancer because the city was asking the state Supreme Court to reverse a Court of Appeals ruling that approved the benefits, my outrage meter was prepared to rise into the…
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Posted inSalem Weekly

Desperately seeking these Salem Weekly issues

Salem Weekly was our city's alternative newspaper from 2004 until 2018. I loved reading it. I also wrote a Strange Up Salem column that appeared in it from May 2013 to May 2015. This was the cover of the issue where my first column ran. The drawing was by the multi-talented Salem Weekly publisher, A.P. Walther. Though Salem Weekly is no more, it isn't forgotten. Jim Scheppke, retired librarian for the State of Oregon, is working to have every issue of Salem Weekly bound and preserved professionally. The volumes will be made available to the general public. Mark Wigg and…
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Posted inSalem-Keizer school district

School superintendent Andrea Castañeda wows at City Club talk

I've listened to a lot of talented speakers at Salem City Club programs. Fewbhave impressed me as much as Andrea Castañeda, the superintendent of the Salem-Keizer school district who said that she's been on the job for 81 days as of last Friday. All I can say is, Salem and Keizer are super fortunate to have her heading up the school district. Castañeda came across as deeply caring, highly competent, and most importantly, genuine. That's a quality that can't be faked. It isn't something that can be taught, or pretended, because it springs from the root of who a person…
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Posted inDonald Trump

Meet the Press shouldn’t have interviewed Trump

I'm a big fan of Meet the Press. It's been a Sunday viewing habit of mine for as long as I can remember. I enjoyed Chuck Todd when he was the host. But he's no longer with Meet the Press. Today was the debut of Todd's replacement, Kristen Welker. The show was devoted to a taped interview Welker did with Donald Trump. A transcript of the interview is here. The best part of the interview for me was seeing how old Trump looks. Either his makeup artist has gone on strike, or the pressures of his four indictments is getting…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem

Salem city officials playing some games with budget problems

Yeah, I know. The title of this blog post is kind of like a headline saying "Dog seen chasing a squirrel." What's obvious really doesn't need mentioning. But even though we expect government officials to play games when they're talking about their budget, it still makes sense to point out specific instances of this so we don't become overly accustomed to the game-playing. Yesterday the Salem Reporter ran a story about ways officials at the City of Salem want to cut the city general fund budget in light of a potential defeat of a controversial employee payroll tax to be…
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