Posted inSalem

I ask City officials Seven Great Questions about a new Salem police facility

Salem has lots of unmet needs. This isn't a rich town. Many people are struggling financially. Our City Hall and Library almost certainly are going to collapse when the Big One earthquake hits.  So why is Mayor Anna Peterson and her right-wing City Council majority pushing so hard for a supersized new police facility that is double the size and cost it needs to be? Not long ago, in 2014, they were happy with a proposal for a 75,000 square foot police facility. And with seismically retrofitting the Civic Center buildings so lives of staff and visitors won't be lost…
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Posted inSalem

Salem Statesman Journal — the incredible shrinking newspaper

How much smaller and more pathetic can Salem's so-called "community newspaper" get? I suppose it can shrink to almost zero on the Journalistic Quality scale and still keep on publishing.  But what's the point of that? In The Incredible Shrinking Man movie... Scott accepts his fate and is resigned to the adventure of seeing what awaits him in even smaller realms. He knows he will eventually shrink to atomic size; but, no matter how small he becomes, he concludes he will still matter in the universe because, to God, "there is no zero." This thought gives him comfort and ends…
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Posted inSalem

Why people will LOVE to use a multi-use path in West Salem

Mark Wigg is a marvelous advocate for multi-use cycling and pedestrian paths here in Salem. A few days ago, in a post I shared a video of his testimony at a City Council meeting where he persuasively argued for a Salemtowne to Downtown path in West Salem -- which would be built largely with volunteer labor if City officials would simply approve the right of way for it. At the meeting Councilor Jim Lewis, who represents West Salem, asked Wigg a skeptical question about how many people would use a Salemtowne to Downtown path.  Wigg gave a good answer at the…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

What’s most dangerous about the Malheur militants’ mentality

I'm glad the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge standoff is over. I'm equally pleased that Cliven Bundy has been arrested and charged with crimes that could lead to him spending the rest of his life in prison.  I readily admit that, like lots of other people here in Oregon and elsewhere, I became quasi-obsessed with the twists and turns of this drama -- especially after the four militants remaining at the refuge started broadcasting a live audio feed featuring their wacko rants and bullhorn pleas from a FBI negotiator to surrender peacefully. So it's good to have the Malheur situation on…
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Posted inSalem

Salem Chamber of Commerce mass transit bill to aid Cherriots is dead

Wow, what a non-surprise. The Salem Chamber of Commerce's BIG PLAN to fund improved bus service in Salem by a means other than a payroll tax is dead as the proverbial doornail (yeah, I'm old; people used to say that frequently). So says local state Representative Bill Post, who got the unenviable job of trying to convince legislators to fulfill the impossible dream of Salem getting a pot of money from State coffers so Cherriots could offer weekend and evening bus service. HB 4078 (link will  take you to the actual bill) is now dead in committee. I had hoped…
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Posted inSalem

Why the unbuilt Third Bridge boondoggle is hurting Salem

Last night's Salem City Council meeting showed how badly planning for the unneeded, unwanted, and unpaid-for Salem River Crossing project, a.k.a. the 3rd Bridge, is hurting this town.  This billion dollar boondoggle is nowhere near being built -- hopefully it never will be -- but the remote prospect that it might be constructed someday is causing problems. Agenda item 3.3c dealt with purchases of right of way that would be paid for from 2008 Streets and Bridges General Obligation Bond funds. Some of these purchases would be on the east side of the river in the Highland neighborhood, the location…
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Posted inSalem

Must read for Salem citizens: SCV Police Facility Position Paper

Today Salem Community Vision released it's long-awaited position paper, "Salem's New Police Facility: The Best Way to Achieve It." That link takes you to the Scribd document, which is an easy way to read a PDF file without Acrobat Reader. Here's the PDF version. The formatting is a bit cleaner on the PDF file, but the Scribd version is completely readable. Download Police Facility Position Paper Final PDF I said "long-awaited" not because other people have been waiting for the position paper (nobody outside Salem Community Vision knew we were working on it), but because I volunteered to write it…
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Posted inSalem

Salem City Council is trying to sneak through a sleazy decision

Oh, man. Here we go again. City officials here in Salem, Oregon are trying to do what happens so often in this town: screw over citizens with very little public notice in a fashion that goes against the will of the people. At next Monday's City Council meeting, February 8, the agenda has an Action Item that is difficult to decipher -- which is the goal when you're trying to do something sneaky. (c)  Marine Drive NW, Urban Growth Boundary, and Streets and Bridges Bond Funds – Wards 1, 8 – Councilors Bennett, Lewis – Highland, West Salem (PW)Recommended Action:…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

“You’re a dick” often means “You’re telling the truth”

I don't hear "You're a dick!" very often. Maybe never. But my citizen activism leads to me being called other derogatory names, like bombthrower.  I've made that into a term of endearment. Here's what I said in a 2014 post: I've been called a bomb-thrower by folks at City Hall. I guess this is supposed to be an insult. I consider it a compliment. I'm proud to speak out loud and powerfully when I see stuff going on in Salem that shouldn't be. My goal is to throw truth-bombs that open up minds and demolish barriers to seeing what is happening behind…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Rubio and Clinton are the odds-on favorites in presidential race

OK, let's get this straight right off the bat: I'm pretty much clueless about betting. So if I make some dumb-ass mistake about odds and what-not in this post, that's because I'm a betting dumb-ass.  (I'd say there's at least a 50-50 chance of that happening.) That said, I'm a believer in prediction markets. Which basically involves a bunch of people betting that something will, or won't, happen.  A Washington Post story, "Why Marco Rubio now has the best chance of winning the GOP nomination," caught my eye today.  Marco Rubio placed third in the Iowa caucuses Monday, but observers liked…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Is the presidential race over yet? It’s gone on too long already.

Way back when, I thought I'd be more excited tonight, what with the Iowa caucuses finally kicking off voting that will culminate in November 2016 with a new president of the United States. Problem is, it feels to me like the campaigning has already gone on forever, plus or minus a few eons.  I just looked at the online New York Times front page. With most of the Iowa voting counted, Ted Cruz appears headed to a narrow victory, as does Hillary Clinton. Whoopee. That's my lack of enthusiasm talking. And I'm a political junkie.  There's something wrong about an…
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Posted inSalem

City of Salem Facebook commenting policy doesn’t make sense

Who knew? The social media Powers That Be at the City of Salem don't allow external links in Facebook comments. Well, except their own, apparently.  I learned this after leaving a comment on a recent City of Salem post about a City Council work session regarding planning for a new police facility.  Brian Hines Well, after hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on police facility planning over the past six years, this is the third try -- and the second "redo." So I suspect there will be more twists and turns in the saga. As described in my blog post,…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Most irritating thing about the Malheur Wildlife Refuge takeover

Like so many other people in Oregon, I've been avidly following developments over in Harney County, where a bunch of wacko right-wing militants have taken over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge for bizarre reasons only their twisted minds have a chance of comprehending. (The Portland Oregonian has extensive coverage of the takeover, now in its 24th day.) Every morning I fire up my laptop and head to the Oregonian's "What you need to know today" page. There's always something newly irritating -- a fresh outrage by Ammon Bundy and his band of no-nothings. As we enter the third week of…
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Posted inSalem

Des Moines shows how Salem can become cool

Citizens of Salem, Oregon, listen up! I have great news. Our city can become as cool as Des Moines, Iowa! Ah, I sense your lack of enthusiasm. Des Moines? That's our urban model? I'll pass on that. No, wait. Don't hang up on this blog post. You've got to read on. Because today I came across a Politico piece that made me feel way better about Salem's chances of breaking out of its reputation as the drab something-or-other between vibrant Portland and Eugene.  I urge you to read "How America's Dullest City Got Cool" in its entirety.  But if the lengthy…
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Posted inSalem

“Redo” of Salem police facility planning costing taxpayers $142,000

This morning I went to City Hall and picked up a CD that contained public record documents I'd requested. It was a citizen activist pleasure to pay $24.43 to learn how much the City of Salem is paying the DLR Group for architectural services related to planning for a new police facility.  The answer is... $142,127 for the original contract signed in September 2015. See: Download 145145 Architectural Services for the Salem Police Facility Plus a possible $20,000 additional for analysis of a fourth police facility site (the original contract required analyses of just three sites). This is how much DLR…
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Posted inSalem

O’Brien site north of downtown is best place for new police facility

Salem Community Vision has analyzed the four sites that were selected by a City Council subcommittee last month as the best possible locations for a new police facility. One by one, they posted "reviews" of each site on the Salem Community Vision Facebook page. Below I've shared the analyses all together -- putting the Clear Winner first.This is the location known as the O'Brien site, where several car dealerships used to be on the east side of Commercial just north of downtown. It was by far the highest ranked site using criteria developed by consultants and approved by the council…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Why the Malheur militants aren’t like the Occupy protesters

Being a proud progressive, I'm committed to rationality, fairness, sound arguments, and fealty to facts. (Which makes me much different from most right-wing conservatives these days.) So I've been pondering whether I'm justified in being outraged at what the militants who have taken over the Malheur Wildlife Refuge here in Oregon are doing, given that I was supportive of the Occupy Movement.  After all, both groups took over public property in an attempt to bring attention to their causes. Which basically are transferring federal land to private ownership in the case of the militants, and reducing social/economic inequality in the…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Home life

Index investing lets me relax in a stock market crash

Nobody likes to peek at their investment portfolio after a day like today: a 390 point drop in the Dow (-2.4%), with the S&P 500 not much better at -2.2%. But even though I toyed with the idea of brewing up a Cheerful Cocktail before I logged in to our Schwab account -- recipe: equal measures of anti-depressants, whiskey, potent marijuana, and caffeine extract -- I realized that our index fund investing approach would leave me feeling fine after I inspected our holdings. Not happy. Not ecstatic. But fine. Why? Because since 2002 I've been a happy passive investor, having…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Congressional Republicans refuse to applaud a cure for cancer

Watching Obama's 2016 State of the Union address last night, my wife and I were struck by how rarely Republicans applauded anything Obama said.  The Daily Kos has a partial list of the subjects that left Republicans cold and apathetic in "What did Republican lawmakers hate about President Obama's State of the Union address?" For those keeping score at home, here are just some of the issues that President Obama raised during Tuesday’s State of the Union address that Republican Senators and Congressmen in attendance refused to clap for, let alone get off their asses and cheer: Nearly 15 million new jobs and the…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

I’m fed up with news being replaced by guesses about what might be

News and political junkie that I am, the presets on my car's satellite radio prominently feature the POTUS (Politics of the United States), MSNBC, CNN, and NPR channels.  Usually I listen to them. But today I kept channel surfing -- listening for a short while, then mentally blurting out a profanity and clicking on either my Chill or Classic Rock music channels.  My willingness to hear blather about what might be, what could occur, what the future possibly could bring, it's sunk to a low level.  I've been gradually heading in this direction for quite a while. Today, though, I…
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