Posted inCurrent affairs Salem

Salem Statesman Journal shouldn’t reveal retiree info

The Salem Statesman Journal, for reasons known only to its generally right-leaning editorial board, went to court so the newspaper could release hitherto private information about the retirement benefits of Oregon state government workers. My wife is one of them. A few days ago she got a letter from the Public Employees Retirement System (PERS) informing her that because of lawsuits filed by the Statesman Journal and Portland Oregonian, on November 21, 2011 her name and benefit amount will be made public. Download PERS Letter Then, on March 9, 2012 anyone in the world will be able to learn my…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Jon Huntsman — only sane Republican presidential candidate

Driving home this evening, I tuned my car's satellite radio to MSNBC. I wanted to hear at least a little bit of the Republican presidential debate in Simi Valley, California. If I'd heard more, my head might have exploded -- the rhetoric was that ridiculous. I couldn't understand why the audience didn't laugh out loud at some of the answers candidates gave to questions. For example, Ron Paul ranted on about the uselessness of building a fence along the Mexican border to deter illegal immigration. He said that this fence could just as easily keep people in the country, not…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Science

Richard Dawkins calls Rick Perry an “uneducated ignoramus”

I wonder if Rick Perry, Republican presidential candidate and Texas governor, knows what "ignoramus" means. Probably not. I'll help Perry out in case he stumbles across this blog. Here's the definition, Rick: Utterly ignorant person. Such is how noted evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins describes not only Rick Perry but also the entire leadership of today's Republican party. He's right on. Anyone who doesn't believe in evolution or other unarguable scientific facts indeed is an ignoramus. How is it that they even could be considered for high public office, especially the presidency of the United States? Here's how Dawkins starts off…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Science

Republican presidential candidates disrespect reality

Whenever the current crop of Republican presidential candidates make a public utterance, I think, Reality is a terrible thing to waste. WIth a single exception, Jon Huntsman, they don't care whether what they're saying is fact-based, scientifically-defensible, or otherwise firmly rooted in demonstrable consensual reality. They just spout off about whatever is politically expedient. If Republican primary voters demand crazy talk from a candidate, that's what they're given. This is dangerous. What if one of these reality-deniers somehow becomes President of the United States? Who wants the leader of our country to be out of touch with what is really…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Marion County clips wings of anti-govt “Gathering of the Eagles”

Ah, I so love it when a right-wing, self-righteous, anti-government group gets caught doing something illegal and has to bow down before the rule of law. Earlier this month Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, conservative Portland talk show hosts Lars Larson and Victoria Taft, plus a bunch of other Tea Party types assembled for a "Gathering of the Eagles" at the Ames Ranch in normally sleepy Jefferson, Oregon -- between Salem and Albany, just off I-5. However, the organizers somehow ignored the fact that the crowd of more than a thousand people needed a permit from Marion County in order…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Rick Perry acts like an idiot (no big surprise)

Well, it didn't take long for Texas governor Rick Perry to demonstrate why he is utterly, completely, 100% unsuited to be president of the United States. Even supporters of George Bush like Karl Rove are outraged by Perry using "treasonous" to describe the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, and threatening Bernanke with "ugly" treatment in Texas. Does this guy look presidential to you? Twenty-five other states have lower unemployement than Texas, and it is tied with Mississippi for the most minimium wage workers. Not exactly a model for our country.  
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Posted inCurrent affairs Salem

Patti Milne oversaw the failure of Salem’s Courthouse Square

Today's front page story in the Salem Statesman Journal is headlined, "Courthouse Square's Red Flags." Subtitle: Project's failures extend beyond bad engineering Yeah, no kidding. The county commissioners in office when construction problems first started to become apparent looked the other way, even though the project manager recommended taking action. When cracks appeared at the tops of columns during construction of Courthouse Square in 2000, the defects were taken seriously by Melvin Mark Development Co., a Portland firm hired as a project manager. The cracks were in critical locations beneath the bus mall at Courthouse Square. Melvin Mark wanted to…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Rick Perry is off to a rocky start with God

Here's a terrific piece about Rick Perry's reliance on religious fundamentalism rather than facts when it comes to governing, "Rick Perry's Unanswered Prayers." Doesn't seem to be working for him. A few months ago, with Texas aflame from more than 8,000 wildfires brought on by extreme drought, a man who hopes to the next president took pen in hand and went to work:“Now, therefore, I, Rick Perry, Governor of Texas, under the authority vested in me by the Constitution and Statutes of the State of Texas, do hereby proclaim the three-day period from Friday, April 22, 2011, to Sunday, April…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Obama should be willing to crash and burn

I want to see President Obama jet high into the political skies with his afterburner on full blast. Then, he needs to dive bomb the warring factions in Congress with every weapon at his disposal. Like I said before, Obama has got to become more extreme, crazier, committed, dangerous. If he crashes and burns, fine. I'll strongly support him up to and through his 2012 electoral destruction -- so long as he starts to fight hard for what most of the American people want: balance, moderation, centrism. Polls show that a majority of the public favors raising taxes on the…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

What’s most irksome about the S&P downgrade

Today I invested 18 minutes of my life in watching a self-serving video on Standard & Poor's "CreditMatters" multimedia web page. I was curious to see how two high-ranking executives defended their downgrade of the U.S. credit rating. As I watched David Beers, Standard & Poor's Global Head of Sovereign Ratings, and John Chambers, Chairman of the Sovereign Ratings Committee, I got increasingly irritated at them. They struck me as detached, rich, overly self-confident Wall Street types who enjoyed being fed canned questions by another S&P employee. I'd already read the S&P report that described the downgrade, so didn't learn…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Unvarnished truth about the S&P downgrade

There's nothing like going to the source. Politicians are trying to spin the S&P downgrade of the federal government's credit rating in all sorts of self-serving ways. I recommend taking a few minutes to read the short (eight pages) report for yourself. You might be as surprised as I was to see how the unvarnished truth about how this corner of Wall Street views our nation's finances. Here's a link to a PDF file of the Standard & Poors Research Update, "United States of America Long-Term Rating Lowered To 'AA+' On Political Risks And Rising Debt Burden; Outlook Negative." (Or…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

My favorite stock market crash headline

"Stocks plunge on fears of global turmoil." So says a banner New York TImes headline on its web site. Um, here's an idea for the world's stock markets. Why don't you hold off on crashing 4-5% in a single day, like you did today, until there really is global turmoil? Because you're producing the global turmoil that you're afraid of when the S&P 500 drops 4.8%, and other markets act similarly. So tomorrow investors will be even more afraid of the global turmoil that their fear today helped create, likely leading to more maket declines. Whatever economist came up with…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Obama and the Dems need to get more extreme

President Obama, Senator Reid, Representative Pelosi -- here's what this proud progressive wants you to do from now on: Get freaking crazy! Become as extreme on the left as Republicans are on the right. Act like you'll never compromise your revenue-raising, social program-preserving principles. Yes, it was just two days ago that I blogged, "Maybe Obama is the centrist president I long for." I still believe that. But after further reflection I've come to agree with what E.J. Dionne said in a column that I quoted. Obama’s advisers are said to be obsessed with the political center, but such a…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Maybe Obama is the centrist president I long for

This weekend should have been relaxing. It's almost August. Oregon is warm, dry, and sunny. Staining decks isn't my favorite activity, but I enjoy the simple manual labor. However, for the past few days I've been running to my laptop every hour or two and checking on the progress of the debt limit negotiations. Now that our investments have crawled back to within spitting distance of their value prior to the Big Crash, I'm not wild about a major market downturn -- which likely would happen if Congress and the President don't get their act together and avoid a totally…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

The U.S. is about to get a balanced budget catastrophe

The House Republicans appear to be poised to pass a bill that would forbid increases in the federal debt limit beyond six months from now unless Congress sends out to the states for ratification a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. This will never happen. There aren't enough votes in the Senate, and maybe even the House (two-thirds), to approve the amendment. And I predict that if the federal debt limit isn't raised by August 2, as appears increasingly likely, American voters will be horrified by the prospect of a balanced budget amendment -- dooming this foolish proposal forever. Why?…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Obama needs to “take the 14th”

I'm hoping that soon we'll have another constitutional slogan that will become as well known as "pleading the Fifth" -- take the Fourteenth. The Fifth Amendment provides a right against self-incrimination. To many, including me, the Fourteenth Amendment authorizes the president of the United States to do what is necessary to protect the validity of our nation's public debt. A month ago I was arguing for this, inspired by a fictional -- but today, all too believable -- speech that Garrett Ebbs wanted Obama to give if debt limit negotiation talks broke down. It ended with: I regret that the…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Boehner is a fool to walk away from debt limit talks

This progressive says, "Thank you, House Republican leader John Boehner. You just served up a juicy political victory to President Obama by throwing a hissy fit and walking away from the debt limit negotiations yesterday." If Boehner had accepted Obama's deal, which was tilted toward Republican positions, lots of Democrats (including me) would have freaked out. As Jonathan Cohn's cogent analysis in The New Republic points out, Obama was poised to cut Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security in ways that would have hurt seniors and poor people. This also would have taken away a powerful argument that Dems are eager…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Republicans out of touch with Americans on debt limit

Great analysis by Nate Silver of Five Thirty Eight. He supports what I've been saying: Republican "fundamentalism" about refusing to consider any additional federal revenues for any reason is way beyond how the majority of Americans feel. The average Republican voter, based on this data, wants a mix of 26 percent tax increases to 74 percent spending cuts. The average independent voter prefers a 34-to-66 mix, while the average Democratic voter wants a 46-to-54 mix. ...But the House Republicans are very unlikely to capitulate on their no-tax pledge. And Democrats have little reason to capitulate either: they are on the…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Religion is the cause of our debt limit problem

The more it looks like the United States is heading for a political and financial train wreck over raising the federal debt limit, which has to be done pronto to avoid a massive panic in the stock and bond markets, not to mention drastically increasing the government's future borrowing costs, the more I put the blame for this fiasco on religion. Why? Because Congressional Republicans who are "negotiating" with President Obama and Democratic leaders are acting like thou shalt not raise taxes is a divine decree rather than a ridiculous pledge cleverly engineered and promoted by Grover Norquist, a decidedly…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Why Republicans are so wrong about the debt limit

The Republican stance on negotiating an increase to the federal debt limit is illogical and ridiculous in so many ways, it's difficult for me to know where to focus my outrage.  First, it's deeply irritating to have the national interest held hostage by a quasi-religious "Thou Shalt Never Raise Taxes." And just as absurd, "Thou Shalt Always Have a Balanced Federal Budget." The first commandment is Grover Norquist pontificating, who knows zilch about economic reality. Conservative (but not a crazy one) David Brooks gets it exactly right in his The Mother of No-Brainers column. Over the past few years, it…
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