Strong Towns in Salem (Redux) on KMUZ's "The Forum" This Week

Please share with any who may have missed Chuck's presentations, and also those who caught it but would like to hear them again.

The Forum on KMUZ 88.5 FM

The Forum: Friday Dec 16 at 1pm and Sunday Dec 18 at 8am:
88.5 or 100.7 FM and streaming at kmuz.org

Strong towns are more than tall buildings. A city planner who came from "Minnesota Nice" to tell Oregonians that we're pretty nice, too, says to have a healthy town full of healthy people, it takes a mix of business and recreational space, transportation and investment, jobs and upkeep...and a successful neighborhood may be the one you never suspected. 

Chuck Marohn is the organizer of Strong Towns, a movement that helps people figure out how to prosper and thrive. He tells how to study the heart of a city and why spending money on upkeep is the way to stay strong, on this week's Forum on KMUZ.

I wanted to let you know that the Chuck Mahron presentation on Strong Towns that he did last October will play on KMUZ's The Forum this Friday at 1pm and repeat Sunday at 8am.  And will be podcast.  Here's a link to the The Forum's FB page: https://www.facebook.com/KMUZForum/

Wonderful site for Opening Minds to Ideas -- Feynman’s Building Blocks of Thermodynamics | The Kid Should See This

http://thekidshouldseethis.com/post/feynmans-building-blocks-of-thermodynamics

Mark your Calendar: See "Where to Invade Next" as it was meant to be seen (In community)

Tuesday, 20 December, 7 p.m.
At the beautifully restored, comfortable -- almost luxurious -- Grand Theatre
191 High St NE, at the corner of Court and High St. 

Probably Moore's best film because it is focused on solutions, often those first conceived in the United States, only to be ignored here and implemented elsewhere.

After-film speakers include Laurie Trieger of "Family Forward Oregon" and some dude who is pretty much a windbag from what I hear.

America’s favorite political provocateur, Michael Moore, is back with his new film, WHERE TO INVADE NEXT. 

Honored by festivals and critics groups alike, WHERE TO INVADE NEXT is an expansive, hilarious, and subversive comedy in which the Academy Award®-winning director confronts the most pressing issues facing America today and finds solutions in the most unlikely places. 

The creator of FAHRENHEIT 9/11 and BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE has returned with an epic movie that’s unlike anything he has done before—an eye-opening call to arms to capture the American Dream and restore it in, of all places, America.


To see the trailer: http://wheretoinvadenext.com/



Guest Speakers:


 
Laurie Trieger, Family Forward Oregon, Regional Outreach Director
Laurie is working with Family Forward Oregon to support a movement for family-friendly policies across Oregon; including paid sick time, affordable childcare, pay equity and retirement security for women, and paid family and medical leave. Laurie grew up in Philadelphia and enjoyed living on the Oregon coast for nearly three years before settling in Eugene in 1987. She has been involved with a variety of initiatives and organizations focused on poverty reduction, food policy, child wellness and healthy communities; including working in a women’s health clinic, serving as an advocate for a regional food bank, founding a public health nonprofit organization, and working in community economic development. She is a parent of two adult children, grandparent of twin boys, and a former foster parent.  Before all this, Laurie worked for many years in the restaurant and retail sectors.

and some dude

The 13 crises we face as a species – and what it would take to avert them | George Monbiot | Opinion | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/25/13-crises-we-face-trump-soil-loss-global-collapse

Trump Nominates 'True Enemy' of Public Schools for Education Secretary

Suddenly, folks on the left are realizing that killing the US Dept. Of Ed IS a great idea, even though it's been a constant hope on the far right for decades. 

What America needs is not a cabinet position with Education in the title. What we actually need is a solid research program into what works when and where, like the National Institutes of Health, or maybe under the National Research Council.

We would be so much better off if we got rid of US Dept. Of Ed and used the money to fund research into new models of education and how to make existing educational institutions work better.

So much of what is considered to be "education" problems is actually poverty problems, and now we are going to find out that, while having a corporatist like Arne Duncan is bad enough, having an out-and-out enemy of public education like DeVos in the job is enough to ruin your whole decade.

Standard GOP playbook -- appoint union-busters to head the Department of Labor, appoint people who hate taxes, unions, and public education to head Department of Education, appoint morons who think climate science is "politicized" to head agencies like EPA and NASA.

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/11/23/trump-nominates-true-enemy-public-schools-education-secretary

Trump’s climate denial is just one of the forces that points towards war | George Monbiot | Opinion | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/23/donald-trump-climate-change-war

Staggeringly relevant to today from 1946 and people who KNEW how fascism works

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eo3hS1fyBkw&sns=em

WORD (Cong. John Lewis)

"I would say to the young people, the young protesters, and those not so young: Accept a way of peace, believe in the way of love, believe in the philosophy and the discipline of nonviolence," Lewis told The Associated Press. 

"Never become bitter. Never become angry. And do whatever you can to speak truth to power, and be hopeful, be optimistic.

"The struggle is not a struggle that lasts one day or a few weeks or a few years. It is a struggle of a lifetime."

Autocracy: Rules for Survival

http://www2.nybooks.com/daily/s3/nov/10/trump-election-autocracy-rules-for-survival.html

Rule #1: Believe the autocrat. 

He means what he says. Whenever you find yourself thinking, or hear others claiming, that he is exaggerating, that is our innate tendency to reach for a rationalization. This will happen often: humans seem to have evolved to practice denial when confronted publicly with the unacceptable. Back in the 1930s, The New York Times assured its readers that Hitler's anti-Semitism was all posture. More recently, the same newspaper made a telling choice between two statements made by Putin's press secretary Dmitry Peskov following a police crackdown on protesters in Moscow: "The police acted mildly—I would have liked them to act more harshly" rather than those protesters' "liver should have been spread all over the pavement." Perhaps the journalists could not believe their ears. But they should—both in the Russian case, and in the American one. For all the admiration Trump has expressed for Putin, the two men are very different; if anything, there is even more reason to listen to everything Trump has said. He has no political establishment into which to fold himself following the campaign, and therefore no reason to shed his campaign rhetoric. On the contrary: it is now the establishment that is rushing to accommodate him—from the president, who met with him at the White House on Thursday, to the leaders of the Republican Party, who are discarding their long-held scruples to embrace his radical positions.

He has received the support he needed to win, and the adulation he craves, precisely because of his outrageous threats. Trump rally crowds have chanted "Lock her up!" They, and he, meant every word. If Trump does not go after Hillary Clinton on his first day in office, if he instead focuses, as his acceptance speech indicated he might, on the unifying project of investing in infrastructure (which, not coincidentally, would provide an instant opportunity to reward his cronies and himself), it will be foolish to breathe a sigh of relief. Trump has made his plans clear, and he has made a compact with his voters to carry them out. These plans include not only dismantling legislation such as Obamacare but also doing away with judicial restraint—and, yes, punishing opponents.

To begin jailing his political opponents, or just one opponent, Trump will begin by trying to capture of the judicial system. Observers and even activists functioning in the normal-election mode are fixated on the Supreme Court as the site of the highest-risk impending Trump appointment. There is little doubt that Trump will appoint someone who will cause the Court to veer to the right; there is also the risk that it might be someone who will wreak havoc with the very culture of the high court. And since Trump plans to use the judicial system to carry out his political vendettas, his pick for attorney general will be no less important. Imagine former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani or New Jersey Governor Chris Christie going after Hillary Clinton on orders from President Trump; quite aside from their approach to issues such as the Geneva Conventions, the use of police powers, criminal justice reforms, and other urgent concerns.

Best plan ever to end the electoral college

I've just signed this crucial petition to stop the election of unpopular Presidents who don't win the popular vote.

Join me here: https://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/national_vote_qd/?kiMcPdb