Posted inCoronavirus

Covid isn’t over in Marion County. Get vaccinated!

This is a bad time to get complacent about COVID-19, unvaccinated people in Salem and the rest of Marion County. The Delta variant is much more transmissible. Covid cases are rising markedly nationally. Increases in deaths likely will follow. It's beyond crazy that so many people are refusing to get vaccinated. New cases and deaths are almost entirely among the unvaccinated. Since vaccines are readily available, virtually all hospitalizations and deaths are preventable.  Why would anyone choose to risk serious illness or death when a vaccine is free, safe, and highly effective? Often the answer is misinformation and right-wing politics. …
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem

“Slow walking” aptly describes what Salem city officials do

Let's be clear about the title of this blog post. I have no knowledge of how rapidly City of Salem officials such as City Manager Powers, Public Works Director Fernandez, and Police Chief Trevor Womack walk from place to place. But I do have considerable experience with city officials engaging in a different sort of slow-walking, defined as: For example, on May 17 I filed a public records request with the City of Salem, which, thankfully, gave me a fee waiver for the request: All emails, text messages, documents, and other communications between Peter Fernandez, Steve Powers, and Trevor Womack…
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Posted in2020 election Donald Trump Joe Biden

63% of Republicans believe Biden won because of voter fraud

Today is the six month anniversary of the January 6 insurrection at the nation's capitol where Trump supporters tried to overturn Biden's free and fair election as president of the United States. Chris Hayes marked the occasion on his MSNBC show by discussing with guests the upcoming special House committee that will investigate the insurrection, and the continuing Republican inability to recognize a simple truth. Biden won the election fair and square.  No reasonable person doubts this. The Trump campaign filed about sixty lawsuits challenging the counting of votes in a number of swing states. They lost all but one,…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem Steve Powers

Salem’s City Manager ignores calls for a fireworks ban

Recently city councilor Tom Andersen, along with several other councilors, called on City Manager Steve Powers to issue an emergency order banning the use of fireworks in Salem this Fourth of July. Yesterday Andersen shared a Facebook post where he said, "Other Councilors and I have asked that fireworks be banned in Salem over this weekend. Here is City Manager's response to the general public." I found the response by City Manager Steve Powers so clueless and irritating, I just had to comment on what Powers said in blazing red below. The message from Powers is in regular type.  What I…
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Posted inDowntown

Good news and bad news about Nordstrom building replacement

There's a lot to like about what's going to replace the Nordstrom building in downtown Salem, as reported in today's Statesman Journal story, "25.7M apartment, retail project replacing former Nordstrom building downtown." Come April 2023, Salem can expect a multi-use housing project — known as Central City Apartments — in place of the former Nordstrom building downtown. The $25.7 million endeavor includes demolishing the existing structure and replacing it with a five-story, mixed-use building consisting of 162 rental units, ground floor commercial space and approximately 32 on-site parking spaces. Current Nordstrom building The apartments are supposed to appeal to young people who can afford $1,000/month for a…
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Posted inEnvironment National politics

Chris Hayes features extreme Oregon heat on MSNBC

This afternoon I felt good for a couple of reasons. Marine air coming from the south finally lowered Salem-area temperature from about 113 to the mid 90s.  And the first 20 minutes of MSNBC's All In With Chris Hayes featured the crazily high Northwest temperatures we've been suffering through as obvious evidence that dealing with climate change has to be the top priority in any Congressional infrastructure bill or bills. So that's one good thing that came out of the past three days, when an amazing number of cities in Oregon and Washington not only broke their all-time high temperature…
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Posted inEnvironment Oregon politics

Time to really freak out about climate change, Salemians

I'm a big believer in global warming. But until this weekend the stark reality of what climate change means for everybody on our planet hadn't really hit home for me. Sure, last September Oregon suffered through devastating wildfires exacerbated by drought conditions and rare high winds. My wife and I breathed a lot of smoke as our furnace filters turned black. And February of this year saw an unusual ice storm that cut off power to hundreds of thousands of Oregonians. We had no electricity for eleven days and got to be best friends with our wood stove and Honda…
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Posted inNational politics

George Packer critiques the woke narrative of Just America

I love books that take a broad view of American politics and find something good, and something bad, in each of the main currents of our modern political life. That's why I'm enjoying George Packer's "Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal" so much.  Because I'm a progressive, I found his critique of the liberal political narratives -- Smart America and Just America -- to be more interesting than his critique of the conservative political narratives, Free America and Real America. Most of what I'm sharing in this blog post are excerpts from Packer's take on the Just America…
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Posted inLGBTQ issues

Scott Hosner speaks at 2021 Salem Gay Pride event

Last night my wife heard about a mostly unpublicized Gay Pride event in Riverfront Park. We checked it out this afternoon, taking our canine companion along to mix our support for the LGBTQ community with a park dog walk. It was a colorful event. I snapped a few photos. I enjoyed Scott Hosner's seven-minute talk. A video is below. He spoke about how far the gay community has come from his days in high school, when coming out wasn't an option. Now he feels that Salem embraces LGBTQ people. Near the end of his talk Hosner says that he hopes future…
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Posted inCarole Smith Downtown

Carole Smith argues against restaurant tents in downtown parking spaces

Carole Smith is a downtown property owner and resident who sent me the following argument against restaurants being allowed to use downtown parking spaces for outdoor seating during the Covid pandemic. A May 27 Salem Reporter story says this program is going to be permanent, with design standards for structures in parking spaces that could cost tens of thousands of dollars. Smith makes some good points about whether this is fair to the downtown businesses who pay a parking tax, since restaurants are being allowed to use parking spaces that are supposed to benefit all businesses in the area, not…
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Posted inCity of Salem

City of Salem gives me 1/3 of the public records I paid for

This is something that should outrage liberals, conservatives, and everybody in-between. Why? Because we all can relate to the irritation of not getting what we paid for. On May 12 I made a public records request to the City of Salem after being perplexed by how it was that the May 1 gun rally at Riverfront Park, where Proud Boys provided "insecurity," didn't need a permit even though for weeks prior a city web page said that reservations were needed for events in city parks as of May 1. I wanted to know who authorized changes to that web page…
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Posted inSalem-Keizer school district

Congratulations to the four progressive school board winners

Finally, all the votes have been counted. It took two weeks after the May 18 Salem-Keizer school board election day for this to happen, since that's how long voters have to "cure" ballots with signature problems: a missing signature or a signature that doesn't match the one on file. Pleasingly, each of the four progressive candidates ended up winning -- an amazing accomplishment.  Amazing, because Oregon Right to Life and its associated PACs (political action committees) went all out this time around, as they have in previous school board elections, in support of a conservative slate of candidates. Yet Ashley…
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Posted inNational politics Oregon politics

Walkout in Texas legislature, good! Walkout in Oregon, bad!

I'm tribal. No, I'm not a Native American. But I belong to a variety of other sorts of tribes that define my identity. Democrat, atheist, environmentalist, blogger, citizen activist, Subaru owner, Apple aficionado, author. To name a few. It's easy for me to see when other people allow their tribal'ness to lead them into liking actions that, if an opposing tribe had done the same thing, would have been met with outrage.  Yet when it comes to my own tribal leanings, it's more difficult for me to recognize when this happens.  For example, on Sunday night Democrats walked out of the…
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Posted inCity of Salem Steve Powers

City of Salem raises price of my public record request from $302 to $900

I wish laws prohibiting "bait and switch" sales techniques applied to officials at the City of Salem. Because yesterday I was notified that the cost of a public records request I submitted relating to the Proud Boys gun rally at Riverfront Park on May 1 had jumped from $302 to $900 -- after I'd already paid the $302. Here's the message I got. Read it and see if you think it's fair that a citizen activist like me should have to pay $900 to learn why, and how, two changes to a City of Salem parks reservation web page were…
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Posted inNational politics

Democrats need to get serious about saving our democracy

This wasn't a good day for American democracy. In fact, the past four-plus years -- ever since Trump was elected -- have all been bad days for our democracy. Today Senate Republicans filibustered a bipartisan commission that would have looked into the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol, making recommendations to prevent something similar from ever happening again. The commission was carefully modeled on the 9/11 commission. Equal number of Democrats and Republicans. Subpoenas would require at least one Republican vote. Everything that Republicans had asked for, they got.  But Trump didn't want anyone looking into the insurrection, because he…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem Homeless

Salem’s homeless need Biden’s infrastructure plan

Whenever I read about Salem's homeless problem, I feel way more sympathetic toward city officials and the City Council than I usually do. There's simply no easy answers. They're damned if they do and damned if they don't. Today's excellent story by Whitney Woodworth in the Statesman Journal lays out the "Mission Impossible" facing city leaders.  After more than a year, Salem officials are poised to end sanctioned camping for those living in Wallace Marine and Cascades Gateway parks starting June 1. But the problem that has plagued the city for years persists — there are not enough shelter beds, transitional…
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Posted inSalem-Keizer school district

Cottingham and Ortiz likely to win school board races

After Ashley Carson Cottingham and Karina Guzman Ortiz had comfortable leads over their Salem-Keizer school board opponents on election night, their margins have shrunk considerably after additional votes were tallied. Currently Cottingham has a slim 86 vote lead over Linda Farrington in the Zone 3 race, while Ortiz has a 279 vote lead over Mike Slagle in the Zone 5 race. Cottingham and Ortiz are part of the progressive slate that competed against a conservative slate. The other two progressives have insurmountable leads. Osvaldo Avila is up by 1,807 votes over Kari Zohner in the Zone 1 race. Maria Hinojos…
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Posted inCity of Salem Steve Powers

To get public records, city officials want me to know what I seek to learn

Just when I think I've seen all the weirdness Salem city officials are capable of, they surprise me with a fresh dose of absurdity. On May 12, I submitted a public records request to the City of Salem. You can read it via this PDF file.Download Public records request PDF I wanted to learn who authorized changes to the "Reserve a City Facility or Park" web page on or around March 27, 2021, and also who made the actual edits to that web page. Likewise, I asked for the same information regarding changes to the web page on or around…
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Posted inSalem-Keizer school district

It’s extremists vs. moderates in school board races

Today the Statesman Journal has an illuminating story by Natalie Pate about the Salem-Keizer school board races that will be decided on next Tuesday's election day, May 18.  There's two slates competing for votes on opposite sides of the political spectrum. These are the moderate candidates that I urge you to cast your ballot for if you haven't voted already. (Take your ballot to a drop box, since it is too late to put it in the mail.) The Statesman Journal story says about them: Osvaldo Avila (Zone 1), Ashley Carson Cottingham (Zone 3), Karina Gúzman Ortiz (Zone 5) and…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem Steve Powers

City Manager gives poor excuse for permitless Proud Boys rally

Ten days after the May 1 gun rally at Riverfront Park where gun-toting Proud Boys threatened citizens and journalists with expulsion from the park, city officials keep changing their story about why a permit wasn't required for the rally. As I said in "Typogate" adds a twist to Proud Boys rally, at first City Councilor Tom Andersen was told that a typo on the city web site caused a page to say that May 1 was the date permits would be required for events in city parks, since a missing "3" would have made the date May 31. But I pointed out…
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