Holiday shopping, done.

For locals, especially those enjoying the fabulous "Movie a Week" habit at Salem Cinema:

Cinebucks are back starting tomorrow, "Black Friday," and running to New Year's: Get $30 Cinebucks for great movies and tasty treats at Salem Cinema or High Street Cinema for only $25.

In their own words:

You can buy an entire year's worth of great movie entertainment for a lot less.

Our special annual holiday savings offer is back!

Beginning Friday and running through the end of December, you can purchase $30 worth of our CineBucks for only $25, $60 worth for only $50, $90 worth for only $75, $120 worth for only $100!

Pick some up for friends, co-workers, teachers and relatives . . . and even pocket a few for yourself! CineBucks come in $5 increments and work just like cash at our box office or concession stand.

Outstanding gifts for loved ones far away -- no shipping costs, no needless junk, always fits right.

Today also offers us a chance to be thankful for the many fine locally owned businesses that we enjoy.

I'm thankful for these places because their owners live and work here, care for our concerns, and plan to stay in the community. These are the people who, when they say, "business community," you don't feel like vomiting.

And it's not just the wonderful Salem Cinema, but it's also places like Bike Peddler and Santiam Bicycle, Cooke Stationery, Cascade Baking Company, Saffron Supply Company (so old school there's no website!), LifeSource Natural Foods, One Fair World, Clydes Lock and Key (also old school), Church Street Pizza, La Margarita Express, Willamette Noodle Company, Marco Polo . . .

(Note -- all mentions above unsolicited and unpaid.)

In other news, water is wet

Image by Bert van Dijk via Flickr

What Good Is Wall Street?

Much of what investment bankers do is socially worthless.

by John Cassidy

WORD: Chris Hedges

As Orwell noted, the hallmark of totalitarian power is the ability to call black white and have throngs of apparachiks dutifully nod and say "Yes, black is white."

So with "health care reform," a massive attempt to cement the corporate takeover of health care into place forever, especially with its absurd individual mandate, an order from the mob bosses to buy their "protection" or pay a penalty to their enforcer, the thug they hire to do their collections.

In true Orwellian fashion, Palintards and the Faux News crowd endlessly shriek about the "government takeover of health care" -- the point being to call black white and keep people from noticing that "Obamacare" is nothing more than a more expensive, more profitable, more totalitarian version of what we have now: health care rationing by wealth, with a collapsing public health system cheek-by-jowl with ultra-high-tech care for the apparachiks who please the mob bosses.

We have much to be thankful for this November, but much to be dismayed about. People like Chris Hedges are among the former. Some excerpts from his latest blast:

Power and the Tiny Acts of Rebellion
Monday 22 November 2010
by: Chris Hedges | Truthdig | Op-Ed

. . . Dr. Margaret Flowers, a pediatrician from Maryland who volunteers for Physicians for a National Health Program, knows what it is like to challenge the corporate leviathan. She was blacklisted by the corporate media. She was locked out of the debate on health care reform by the Democratic Party and liberal organizations such as MoveOn. She was abandoned by those in Congress who had once backed calls for a rational health care policy. And when she and seven other activists demanded that the argument for universal health care be considered at the hearings held by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, they were forcibly removed from the hearing room.

"The reform process exposed how broken our system is," Flowers said when we spoke a few days ago. "The health reform debate was never an actual debate. Those in power were very reluctant to have single-payer advocates testify or come to the table. They would not seriously consider our proposal because it was based on evidence of what works. And they did not want this evidence placed before the public. They needed the reform to be based on what they thought was politically feasible and acceptable to the industries that fund their campaigns." . . .

“You can't effect change from the inside,” she has concluded. “We have a huge imbalance of power. Until we have a shift in power we won't get effective change in any area, whether financial, climate, you name it. With the wealth inequalities, with the road we are headed down, we face serious problems. Those who work and advocate for social and economic justice have to now join together. We have to be independent of political parties and the major funders. The revolution will not be funded. This is very true.”

“Those who are working for effective change are not going to get foundation dollars,” she stated. “Once a foundation or a wealthy individual agrees to give money they control how that money is used. You have to report to them how you spend that money. They control what you can and cannot do. Robert Wood Johnson [the foundation], for example, funds many public health departments. They fund groups that advocate for health care reform, but those groups are not allowed to pursue or talk about single-payer. Robert Wood Johnson only supports work that is done to create what they call public/private partnership. And we know this is totally ineffective. We tried this before. It is allowing private insurers to exist but developing programs to fill the gaps. Robert Wood Johnson actually works against a single-payer health care system. The Health Care for America Now coalition was another example. It only supported what the Democrats supported.

There are a lot of activist groups controlled by the Democratic Party, including Families USA and MoveOn. MoveOn is a very good example. If you look at polls of Democrats on single-payer, about 80 percent support it. But at MoveOn meetings, which is made up mostly of Democrats, when people raised the idea of working for single-payer they were told by MoveOn leaders that the organization was not doing that. And this took place while the Democrats were busy selling out women's rights, immigrant rights to health care and abandoning the public option. Yet all these groups continued to work for the bill. They argued, in the end, that the health care bill had to be supported because it was not really about health care. It was about the viability of President Obama and the Democratic Party. This is why, in the end, we had to pass it.”

“The Democrats and the Republicans give the illusion that there are differences between them,” said Dr. Flowers. “This keeps the public divided. It weakens opposition. We fight over whether a Democrat will get elected or a Republican will get elected. We vote for the lesser evil, but meanwhile the policies the two parties enact are not significantly different. There were no Democrats willing to hold the line on single-payer. Not one. I don't see this changing until we radically shift the balance of power by creating a larger and broader social movement.”

The corporate control of every aspect of American life is mirrored in the corporate control of health care. And there are no barriers to prevent corporate domination of every sector of our lives.

“We are at a crisis,” Flowers said. “Health care providers, particularly those in primary care, are finding it very difficult to sustain an independent practice. We are seeing greater and greater corporatization of our health care. Practices are being taken over by these large corporations. You have absolutely no voice when it comes to dealing with the insurance company. They tell you what your reimbursements will be. They make it incredibly difficult and complex to get reimbursed. The rules are arbitrary and change frequently.”

“This new legislation [passed earlier this year] does not change any of that,” she said. “It does not make it easier for doctors. It adds more administrative complexity. We are going to continue to have a shortage of doctors. As the new law rolls out they are giving waivers as the provisions kick in because corporations like McDonald's say they can't comply. Insurance companies such as WellPoint, UnitedHealth Group, Aetna, Cigna and Humana that were mandated to sell new policies to children with pre-existing conditions announced they were not going to do it. They said they were going to stop selling new policies to children. So they got waivers from the Obama administration allowing them to charge higher premiums. Health care costs are going to rise faster.

The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services estimated that after the legislation passed, our health care costs would rise more steeply than if we had done nothing. The Census Bureau reports that the number of uninsured in the U.S. jumped 10 percent to 51 million people in 2009. About 5.8 million were able to go on public programs, but a third of our population under the age of 65 was uninsured for some portion of 2009. The National Health Insurance Survey estimates that we now have 58 or 59 million uninsured. And the trend is toward underinsurance. These faulty insurance products leave people financially vulnerable if they have a serious accident or illness. They also have financial barriers to care. Co-pays and deductibles cause people to delay or avoid getting the care they need. And all these trends will worsen.” . . .

Even when the buildings don't actually fall down, LEED is questionable

Turns out that, like so many other things in America since R. Reagan told Americans that the only thing they needed was a sunny optimism, LEED is a lot more about marketing than engineering.

As the proud owners of a $34 million "LEED-Certified" disaster, people in Salem and Marion County should probably be open to the message that it's time to rethink our certifications. Unless builders and architects are willing to offer performance guarantees for how the building will work in practice, any money spent on certifications might just as well be spent on building a corral for the Magic Unicorn that they promised you too.

(I think of this video every day when I see the "LEED" plaque on Courthouse Square -- no doubt the LEED salesmen are insisting that it's a chance in a million for gravity to pull down a building.)

As we contemplate our diminished circumstances

This makes more sense than ethanol does. Image via WikipediaWe should never forget that Oregon and the US Government continue to shovel billions of dollars into a Rube-Goldberg scam called ethanol -- which is, at bottom, nothing but a way to launder fossil fuels into a so-called "renewable" fuel.

Littering: It's OK if you bully City Hall enough

The Gannett chain, owners of the Salem Statesman-Journal, are really throwing their weight around and doing their best to intimidate Salem's City Council by threatening legal action against the city if it takes any action against the weekly dumping of tons of unwanted waste paper and plastic bags on Salem's streets -- with costs of cleanup all billed to us, with all profits from the unwanted junk going to Gannett.

The photo shows just one of countless examples of Gannett's narcissistic, socially destructive behavior -- that's 15th St. NE, not too far from the Statesman-Journal presses. Four, count 'em four dumped advertising junk bags left foul the streets and block proper drainage.

The legal issues are interesting, because it shows bullying at its finest. Gannett has no legal leg to stand on if Salem passes a content-neutral ordinance that requires anyone who distributes unrequested commercial materials to collect any remaining outside a day or two after they are first dumped. That would simply be an ordinance for the public health and safety, what the legal types call an exercise of the city's police powers.

But after learning that Gannett has been threatening to throw its weight around over the issue, I realized that we can even do it better with an even more untouchable ordinance that Gannett would like even less: Require anyone distributing unrequested commercial flyers or other dropoff materials to register the dropoff with the city, provide a toll-free collection number, and to post a bond to ensure proper collection of unwanted copies -- say, a nickel for each copy to be distributed. There'd be no opportunity for censorship or government meddling: the city could not stop or hinder the dropoff. The only thing the registration would do is establish the dates where the dropoff was going to occur and the number of copies (to set the bond amount). Then, after each dropoff, anyone who didn't want the junk would call the toll-free number provided by the distributor, give their address, and the distributor would have to collect the material within 24 hours.

Any copies that remain on the street 48 hours after distribution are charged against the distributor's deposit at the rate of 50 cents each. City Neighborhood Enhancement Services staff collect the dumped-and-forgotten copies and keep the 50 cents to improve Neighborhood Services throughout the city.

Or, I suppose, Gannett could stop dumping garbage on Salem streets and making us pay for cleaning it up.

WORD: America just going through the motions on reforms

Fake ice is just as real as our commitment to dealing with reality. Image by Kyle May via FlickrSad but true.

Spotted: An extremely sane Republican . . . lost in a primary of course . . .

Amazing - a Republican from South Carolina no less.

http://www.samefacts.com/2010/11/watching-conservatives/so-much-for-consensus-climate-solutions/

Local Heroes: Salem's coolest new nonprofit's cool new newsletter

Local Harvest, which is about a year old right about now, having just gotten started last year, is still in the lead for Salem's coolest nonprofit for 2010. Now they've gone and got a newsletter even (pdf), so you can see some of what you missed if you didn't sign up to help out.

Thanks so much for your support of Neighborhood Harvest. Almost 800 community volunteers picked more than 50,000 pounds of fruit and vegetables this season, with half donated to the Marion-Polk Food Share. We wanted to send a link to our first newsletter, and invite you to join us again next year.

Best wishes!

Steering Committee Members
Neighborhood Harvest of Salem

And don't forget to thank these local heroes for supporting Local Harvest:
Thanks to our supporters!

OVER THE TOP
$1,000 or above

Shannon Blake
Renato and Maria Labate
Lake Labish Farms
The Marble Center
Molly Pearmine McCargar
Norman and Kay McDonald of McDonald Family Farms
Karen and Steve Weiss
Dick Yates and Nadene LeCheminant
Mike and Lisa Zwart

TOP OF THE TREE
$500−999
Nathan and Alicia Bay

BRIMMING BARREL
$250−499
John Savage

BOUNTIFUL BUSHEL
$100−249
Matthew and Kimberly Boles
Lisa Clark-Burnell and Kelly Burnell
Jeffrey Egan, in memory of Diana Egan
Roz Shirack

NEIGHBORHOOD HARVEST OF SALEM was established in January 2010. The 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization is a project of Friends of Salem Saturday Market and supports Marion-Polk Food Share through donations of produce. Our mission is to build community, alleviate hunger, preserve our heritage and promote simple, sustainable lifestyles.

The Best Short YouTube of the Year, 2010 Winner

Double-click for full-screen version.