Current affairs

I headed off to today's Salem City Club noon meeting thinking, this won't be very interesting. The subject was "Retirement Security (Or Not) for Oregonians: Can We Avoid a Crisis?" Well, I was wrong -- mostly because I'd forgotten how fluently entertaining the speaker, State Treasurer Ted Wheeler, is. Likely he could make a talk on "How Paint Dries" interesting. I've heard Wheeler speak several times before. Whenever I see him, I feel grateful that Oregon has talented guys and gals such as Wheeler in state government. This thought also runs through my head: He'd make a great Governor someday.…

One of the reasons I keep on subscribing to the Salem Statesman Journal newspaper, a Gannett USA Today clone that is failing our town, is that reading its editorials often gets my heart pumping faster with irritation. I'm not sure if this substitutes for genuine aerobic exercise, but, hey, it might be health-promoting. Even the irritation could be positive, since it leads me to mentally deconstruct the reasons I typically find the editorial page editor's (Dick Hughes) opinion pieces lacking in logic. Not as challenging as doing the New York Times crossword puzzle, but intellectually enjoyable. Case in point: yesterday's…

I'll give Michael Davis, executive editor of the Salem Statesman Journal, credit for this: he stimulated a lot of online comment discussion by writing his decidedly weird "Oregon's fatal case of the Pulitzer pox." As I said in the title of yesterday's post concerning Davis' rant about the Portland Oregonian editorializing in favor of Governor Kitzhaber resigning (which the Guv has done), Statesman Journal executive editor has some Oregonian envy. At the moment there are 77 reader comments on this opinion piece. Quite a few praised Davis for taking the Oregonian's editorial board to task in calling for Kitzhaber to…

Got to tell it like it is: The Portland Oregonian kicked the Salem Statesman Journal's butt with both its investigative reporting and editorializing on the Kitzhaber/Hayes scandal -- which has culminated in Governor Kitzhaber's resignation. Today the executive editor of the Statesman Journal, Michael Davis, indulged in some petty journalistic sniping at the "bad girls" who run the state's biggest and meanest newspaper to the north. His Oregon's Fatal Case of the Pulitzer Pox piece struck me as sour grapes rationalizing, given how the Statesman Journal was asleep at the wheel as this saga unfolded, seemingly doing no original investigative…

What the hell are Governor Kitzhaber and some Oregon legislators up too -- trying to undermine Measure 91, which legalized recreational marijuana in November 2014, even before it has gone into effect? It's deeply insulting to the 56% of Oregonians who voted "Yes" on Measure 91.  Look, I understand that a minority of people in this state don't want legal pot. But a freaking clear majority do!  There was an intense debate about the merits of Measure 91 for months prior to the election. Publicity certainly wasn't lacking about what it would do.  Tax marijuana at $35 an ounce. Allow…

Last night I got to watch The Health Care Movie in a marvelous way. In a living room on a big screen TV. For free. With the filmmakers, Laurie Simons and Terry Sterrenberg -- who now reside right here in Salem, Oregon. Here's the trailer.   After the showing I told Laurie and Terry that their movie about the American and Canadian health care systems was one of the best "cause" documentaries I've ever seen. And I've seen a lot.  The production is highly professional: beautifully edited, creative, humorous in parts. Most importantly, the movie is deeply moving. I spent…

At today's Salem City Club meeting, "The State of the Oregon Courts Address," I chose a good table to sit at after walking over from the food table, a vegetarian lunch cradled in my hands. The speaker, Honorable Thomas A. Balmer, Chief Justice of the Oregon Supreme Court, was sitting next to me. I thought I recognized him from his talk on the same subject last year. A confirming clue was him saying, "The speaker has to get here early and eat fast, or be hungry during his talk." Balmer and I had a pleasant conversation before the meeting was…

Salem is Oregon's capital, the seat of state government. But no one would call it the capital of Oregon's vaunted liberalism/progressivism.  (In the 2014 midterms we were the only state that added to its Democratic majorities in the state House and Senate; we reelected a Democratic governor and U.S. Senator; and we legalized recreational marijuana. Yay, us!) Rather, Salem lies between two cities with much stronger liberal reputations, Portland and Eugene. Salem has just about the same population of Eugene, but nowhere near its blue cool'ness. Portland kicks our butt in this regard to an even greater extent. Which is…

Almost always, the Salem City Club has highly enjoyable noon hour presentations. Last Friday's was especially interesting for a political junkie like me. Ed Dover, a professor of political science at Western Oregon University and chair of the department, spoke about "Election 2014: Outcomes and Implications."  Here's my top takeaways from his talk -- based on my scribbled notes and memory. (1) The 2014 mid-terms were more of the same "trench warfare." Just as World War I the opposing armies were dug in with little movement on either side, despite massive fighting and casualities, elections in this country don't result in…