Something hopeful for a change

This is what happens when Americans don't bother voting - a society where we expect tiny children to master lockdown drills rather than expecting politicians to stand up to NRA terrorists

Bring some sunlight into Oregon's tax picture

This is a great idea: Although this is somewhat late -- now that businesses have successfully almost eliminated corporate taxation in Oregon and put the entire burden of paying for government services on individuals and families -- better late than never!

Spread this among your friends and neighbors, and ask them to download & sign the petition and mail it in.

transparencyoregon.org

Sign the Petition for Corporate Transparency – Transparency Oregon

5-6 minutes

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The People of the State of Oregon enact this law, to be added to and made part of  ORS Chapter 317.
 
SECTION 1.
(1) All publicly traded corporations (including their affiliates and subsidiaries) that are required to file an excise or income tax return under ORS chapter 317 or 318 shall file with the Secretary of State the statement described in Section 2 if of this Act.

(2) For tax years ending between and including January 1, 2016 through December 31, 2017, the statement required by this section must be filed with the Secretary of State on or before March 15, 2019.

(3) For all tax years thereafter, the statement required by this section must be filed at the same time as the corporation’s state tax return is filed, but no later than November 30 of the year following the end of the previous tax year.

SECTION 2.

The statement required under section 1 of this Act shall be on a form and filed in a manner prescribed by the Secretary of State and shall contain:

(1) The name of the corporation, the address of its principal executive office, the corporation’s business activity code, the type of corporation and the name and address of its registered agent;

(2) The corporation’s 4-digit North American Industry Classification System code number;

(3) A unique code number, assigned by the Secretary of State, to identify the corporation, which code number will remain constant from year to year;

(4) The name and principal address of any corporation or other entity that owns, directly or indirectly, more than 50 percent of the voting stock of the corporation filing the statement;

(5) State Taxes. The following tax-related information reported on the corporation’s income or excise tax return filed under ORS chapter 317 or 318, or, in the case of a corporation included in a consolidated state return, reported on the consolidated state return:

a. Taxable income reported on the corporation’s U.S. corporate income tax return;
 
b. Total additions claimed, each addition individually enumerated;
 
c. Total subtractions claimed, each subtraction individually enumerated;
 
d. Apportionment percentage used to calculate the corporation’s taxable income in Oregon, including the apportionment factors for property, payroll and sales, individually enumerated;
 
e. Net operating loss deduction;
 
f. Oregon taxable income;
 
g. Total tax liability in Oregon before credits;
 
h. Tax credits claimed and carryforward credits, with each credit individually enumerated;
 
i. Total tax due;
 
j. Total property or real estate income and interest in Oregon;
 
k. Total wages and compensation in Oregon;
 
l. Total sales in Oregon;

(6) Domestic and Offshore Activity Not Otherwise Reported. Total deductions for management services fees and for royalty, interest, license fees and similar payments made for the use of intangible property to any affiliated entity that is not included in the consolidated state return, if any, that includes the corporation and the names and countries of domicile of the entities to which the payments were made.

SECTION 3. Any corporation submitting a statement required by section 2 of this Act shall be permitted to submit supplemental information that, in its sole judgment, can facilitate proper interpretation of the information included in the statement.

SECTION 4. If a corporation files an amended tax return, the corporation shall file a revised statement within 60 calendar days after the amended return is filed. If a corporation’s tax liability for a tax year is changed as the result of an uncontested audit adjustment or final determination of the Department of Revenue or by the Oregon Tax Court or Oregon Supreme Court, the corporation shall file a revised statement within 60 calendar days after the final determination of liability.

SECTION 5. A statement submitted under sections 1 to 4 of this Act is a public record to be maintained in the office of the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State shall make all information contained in the statements for all filing corporations available to the public on an ongoing basis in the form of a searchable database accessible through the Internet. No statement for any corporation for a particular tax year shall be publicly available until the first day of the third calendar year that follows the calendar year in which the particular tax year ends.

SECTION 6.

(1) The accuracy of the statements submitted under sections 1 to 4 of this Act shall be attested to in writing by the chief operating officer of the corporation and shall be subject to audit by the Department of Revenue under the normal procedures applicable to corporate income tax returns.

(2) The Secretary of State may impose annual penalties of up to 0.25% of the corporation’s gross receipts in Oregon on any corporation that fails to comply with the requirements of section 1 to 4 of this Act. The penalty may not exceed $1 million annually. The Secretary of State shall publish the names of any corporation subject to a penalty.

(3) The Secretary of State may promulgate any rules necessary to implement and enforce the provisions of this Act.

Libraries: What Salem needs a lot more of, in a lot more places

Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries.
― Anne Herbert

Derived from: Dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope. ― Gilbert Shelton

The only thing that you absolutely have to know, is the location of the library.
— Albert Einstein

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.
— Marcus Tullius Cicero

Yo, que me figuraba el Paraíso / Bajo la especie de una biblioteca.
I have always imagined Paradise as a kind of library.
— Jorge Luis Borges, from Dreamtigers

You see, I don't believe that libraries should be drab places where people sit in silence, that has been the main reason for our policy of employing wild animals as librarians.
― Graham Chapman

The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future of man.
— TS Eliot

I ransack public libraries, and find them full of sunk treasure.
— Virginia Woolf

Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.
— Walter Cronkite

Libraries store the energy that fuels the imagination. They open up windows to the world and inspire us to explore and achieve, and contribute to improving our quality of life. Libraries change lives for the better.
— Sidney Sheldon

A library is not a luxury but one of the necessities of life.
— Henry Ward Beecher

A library outranks any other one thing a community can do to benefit its people. It is a never failing spring in the desert.
— Andrew Carnegie

Google can bring you back 100,000 answers. A librarian can bring you back the right one.
— Neil Gaiman

When in doubt, go to the library.
— JK Rowling, from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future. Just ask Ray Bradbury.
— Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl, from Beautiful Creatures

A library is a miracle. A place where you can learn just about anything, for free. A place where your mind can come alive.
— Josh Hanagarne, from The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family

One can never have too many librarian friends.
— Jennifer Chiaverini, from The Wedding Quilt

Good librarians are natural intelligence operatives. They possess all of the skills and characteristics required for that work: curiosity, wide-ranging knowledge, good memories, organization and analytical aptitude, and discretion.
— Marilyn Johnson, from This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All

Libraries were full of ideas—perhaps the most dangerous and powerful of all weapons.
— Sarah J. Maas, from Throne of Glass

When the going gets tough, the tough get a librarian.
— Joan Bauer, from Best Foot Forward

I don't think I'll be able to help you find that.
— No librarian, ever.

Beautiful Evidence of an Ugly Predicament

https://earther.com/this-climate-visualization-belongs-in-a-damn-museum-1826307536

Climate chaos deniers hate being called climate chaos deniers because it echoes "Holocaust Deniers," the term for people who look at the Mt. Everest of evidence and testimony about the Holocaust and try to create doubt about it in order to try to wash away the moral stain of being a person not bothered by the Holocaust.

In other words, calling people who deny climate chaos equivalent to people who are Holocaust Deniers is actually pretty apt.

Of course, there's a vanishingly small chance that the deniers are "right," in the sense that there is some not-understood supernatural force at work that is a stealth climate forcing agent that somehow mimics the effects of all the well-understood climate forcing factors while not being detectable.

But the folks who cling to that notion -- that they are all brave Galileos, while  all the scientists working diligently to warn the world about perils of our present course are all closed-minded groupthink groupies persecuting the embattled Galileos -- are still deniers, because they're not doing science at that point, they're doing religion, appealing to an invisible supernatural force to explain natural phenomena.

That's why they insist so adamantly that people who recognize that humans are driving the climate off the stability cliff are part of a religious cult of "AGW" (anthropogenic global warming") -- because it's always projection with these people, about everything. See, Donald Trump, who unerringly accuses others of what he is doing.

Rally for Fairness for All Workers on May Day at the Capital

http://causaoregon.org/?lang=en

The Money Seeker (spoilers)

 As we Boomers age, there’s an increasing number of films that aim to provide succor for our pains, reassuringly telling us that we’ve still got it inside, despite the infirmities and the charming little foibles of our dotage. “Young@Heart,” the documentary about nursing home residents playing and belting out current pop hits of their grandchildrens’ generation was the best of these because, well, those folks still had it goin’ on. “The BestExotic Marigold Hotel” (first one only) wasn’t horrible, plus a great ensemble cast.

Way at the other end of the spectrum is “The Leisure Seeker” a criminal misuse of Donald Sutherland as a doddering old academic succumbing to a progressive dementia and an even greater criminal abuse of Helen Mirren as his cancer-wracked yet unweathered and gorgeous ex-Southern Belle wife who pines to show him Hemingway’s Key West home, which requires that they drive a 40-year-old rusty (plot point!) Winnebago from Wellesley to Key West, because flying Boston to Miami would not make much of a movie I guess.

It’s got the “Old people just can’t shut up” trope, run again and again. It’s got befuddled youngsters cowed into compliance with the old folks’ wishes through the sheer force of will. It's got a cancer victim who moans occasionally to presage what is only slowly revealed, where slowly means assuming that the audience is as intelligent as the average houseplant. (I found myself remembering fondly the old Carol Burnett Show, featuring a truly comic genius beauty, who would cough very softly just once whenever a sketch required that she indicate the presence of some fatal disease.) You’ve got your anxious and screechy antiques-loving middle-age son who is apparently still deeply closeted, though Helen (“Ella”) has her suspicions.

And it climaxes (ha ha!) with the miraculous Old Peen that gives Old Geezers the power to bestow healing on their cancer-ravaged septuagenarian wives, giving them the dewy afterglow and the courage to commit a murder-suicide. This proved to be a comfort in the end, as it assures that there can be no sequel.

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For the Calendar - Weds 11 April at Friends Meeting House

Interested in restoration agriculture, sustainable gardening, and local solutions?  Come join our latest free lecture to meet other like minded folk and learn more. NW Permaculture Institute Free Film and Lecture Series Held in Salem every 2nd Wednesday @ 6:30 pm At Salem Friend’s Meeting House, 490 19th Street NE (19th at Breyman) For more information: 971-218-4772, or dianedalychavez@gmail.com.

STRONGSalem's First Step: Mapping Salem

Join us next month for the second STRONGSalem meetup, where we will be further exploring our first project, mapping the net productivity (or drain) of each parcel in Salem, the tax paid by that parcel less the cost of municipal services provided to it.

We would especially welcome the artistically talented, who will be vital in helping turn the results into accessible and understandable info graphics.

At the IKE Box Fireplace Room (behind the stage area), 10 a.m. on Saturday, 5 May.
Please RSVP!

Putting Strong Towns ideas into Practice in Salem: New Meetup Group

If you want to debate or discuss the Strong Towns principles and how they might or might not work in Salem, please go to StrongTowns.org and participate there, and become a member of that group if you care to.

But if you have the vision and you want to do the work to help Salem put down all the Growth Ponzi Scheme plans and become a healthier, stronger, fiscally responsible place, join the new "MeetUp" group, called "Strong Towns: Reviving Our Native Geoconomy (STRONG)" Meetup Group.

With luck, we can come together as a group and activate -- build and execute work plans to localize Strong Towns principles and APPLY them here in Salem, with the long-term goal of having an entire city planning commission and city council who automatically know to "Do the Math" (and know HOW to do the math, and how to find the information needed) in all their decision-making.

https://www.meetup.com/Strong-Towns-Reviving-Our-Native-Geoconomy-Meetup/members/225345697/