Fantastic! Parks Board unanimously urges Council to reject "stimulus" money to lock up 200 acres of cropland in Minto Brown Park!

Minto Brown Park -- a unique treasure providing wildlife habitat and farmland in an urban growth boundary. Image by JamesCohen via Flickr

Wonderful performance by some dedicated volunteers, the Salem Parks and Recreation Advisory Board. These volunteers met for a long meeting tonight to discuss the staff proposal to sell a permanent easement for nearly 200 acres of Minto Brown Park land to the feds in the name of "stimulus" and "emergency flood control."

The City Council will be holding a public hearing on the issue next Monday night (6:30, Council Chambers). Now the Council will be looking at a unanimous recommendation by the Parks Board to

• Reject the easement proposal
  
  
• Put the currently farmed land in the park out for competitive bidding
  
  
• Revise the Park Master Plan.

This was a perfect motion. It should be a very strong encouragement to the Council to walk away from the hurried proposal to change the land use in the Park with virtually no public awareness or discussion, and locking up that land would be pretty much directly opposed to the current park master plan. (If the Council decides to pursue the sale of the easements, the deadline is August 17.)

The Parks Board not only rightly urges the Council to reject the hurried proposal but it also goes on to hit the nail on the head by calling for the Minto Brown Park Master Plan to be revised -- this plan, which was last revised in 1995 after a lot of hard work by citizens, is not even available on the City's website and there have been signs that some in the City weren't even aware of it, much less looking to implement it. That's the time and the right forum for everyone to deliberate carefully about the future of this unique and treasured resource.

GREAT JOB by the Parks Board members. Now the only thing needed is for citizens to show up Monday night, July 27, at City Hall to make sure the Council knows that the people of Salem don't want to lose control of their beautiful local park in return for a quick hit of borrowed money from the feds.

Special point: One of the parks board members made the excellent point that, while some might hope that the money would be put aside in a fund to pay for future upkeep of the park (which we currently get for free on the farmed acreage from the outfit farming those acres), the whole idea of stimulus money is to spend it, not bank it. So there's yet another way that this whole proposal is a bad fit for Salem.

Prior posts on Minto or the easement here, here, here, here, and here.

Synchronicity: If you really want to prepare your kid for the future

Image by xjyxjy via Flickr

Then don't feel like you've got no alternatives to the factory schools that are busily preparing kids for the early-middle 20th Century and calling it "education." There are good alternatives. Both these linked articles appeared today, as if to reinforce the message.

The Issue that Surrounds Everything

One of the things we're going to need in the future is a lot more entrepreneurial activity. The old economy, based on gigantic and ever-increasing flows of energy and materials (and wastes) is grinding to a halt, and won't be coming back. In the future, there will be a lot fewer massive institutions employing hundreds of thousands of people in big bureaucratic kingdoms, with benefits. People will have to make a lot more of their own livelihood, and they will have to do so much more locally.

One of the big barriers to the kind of innovation and entrepreneurial behavior we need is our weird system of health insurance that's tied to employment rather than citizenship. By tying access to health insurance to working for someone else -- and typically, that means a very big someone else -- we discourage people from creating precisely the kind of ventures that we will need the most of in the future: small, local services that are aimed at meeting each others' basic needs.

People in the health insurance industry are, no doubt, occasionally wonderful people -- just like some of the people who sell guns and drugs in the black market are sometimes wonderful people. But their industry is a parasite, consuming 30% of our sky-high health care costs and producing exactly no health benefit. In fact, our insurance system is one of the root causes of our insanely poor overall rankings on national health indices: we are far and away #1 in spending but about 35th in health results. A good deal of that is due to the fact that we treat health care like a non-essential, and we allow other people do without access to it (so long as we ourselves have access). Thus, people don't follow good health maintenance and illness-prevention strategies and the giant money-sucking leeches in the health insurance biz don't want to pay for prevention because there's no guarantee that the eventual savings will accrue to them instead of their competitor.

Truly an insane system, but one that is so fantastically profitable for a few that it will not die easily, despite the huge amount of suffering and needless waste that it inflicts on us.

Socialist Health Plan? In Norway, Obama's Plan Not Even Close

If Michael Steele and the Republicans really believe that President Obama is proposing a socialist health plan, they need to get out more.

I've just returned from a research trip to Norway, where their universal health system really is socialist. It's also much less expensive than the current U.S. system, so maybe the Republicans would like it if they checked it out. The non-socialists in Norway support it because it works so well, especially compared with "the bad old days" of private medicine, when even the doctors' association advocated for socialized medicine as the only affordable way to make quality care available to all Norwegians.

One reason Norwegians like their system is that it's pro- economic innovation because it's not tied to the employer. Norwegians are free to change jobs for more challenging opportunities, or try their wings as entrepreneurs, because they don't have to worry about insurance - it's with them wherever they go. Economist Jonathan Gruber of MIT is one of many economists who believe that U.S. employer-tied health insurance is a drag on progress. But Obama's plan accepts the status quo even though it might not be affordable.

Norwegians like their system because it cuts red tape. The patient-doctor relationship isn't complicated by multiple insurances; if you need care, you get it as a matter of right. No bills to pay, no plans to juggle, no worry about your dependents, and no worry about your becoming a burden to your children.

Because Norwegians are practical, they enjoy saving money for quality health care. On a per capita basis, Norwegians spend $4,763 per year, and cover everyone, while U.S.'ers spend $7,290. By various standards of health quality, like life expectancy or rate of preventable deaths, Norway does better than the U.S. One key measure is physicians per capita: the U.S. has 2.43 physicians compared with Norway's 4 doctors per 1,000 population, even though Norway spends a third less of its Gross Domestic Product on health care than the U.S. does. (These numbers are from Bruce Bartlett, Forbes magazine columnist who was a former U.S. Treasury Department economist.)

While in Norway I did hear complaints - Norwegians famously believe everything can work better than it does - but I didn't interview anyone, from left wing to right wing, who would change the basic system. Maybe it's time for U.S. politicians to learn from what other countries are doing right.

TONIGHT: Future of Salem's unique treasure under discussion

This isn't the unique treasure -- this is City Hall, where Minto Brown Park's future will be decided. Image by Jason McHuff via Flickr

If you are interested in learning more about the stimulus proposal for Minto-Brown Park, you may wish to attend the Parks Board meeting 5:30 tomorrow (Thursday, July 23) in Room 325 of City Hall.

The City Council is slated to hold a public hearing on this easement proposal on Monday, July 27 and final action by the City Council is scheduled for August 10th.

We will post more information when we know more so you will be prepared for the City Council meeting this Monday July 27.

Serious D & G

For thermal, read "fossil fuels" -- coal and natural gas, the very things that are melting the poles. Image via Wikipedia

900,000 GW Hours

Jeff is using nice round numbers, and siding optimistically more often than not, but his goal is to see what it will take to simply offset the energy lost from the declining availability of oil as we slide down the far side of Hubbert's Peak by converting to renewables. Jeff puts that figure at about 5% attrition as a round number which has historical precedent, and then converts the current Oil use in the world into BTU's for lack of a better unit, and then finally converts that into electricity as that is what renewables are good at. The result of offsetting 5% of our current annual oil use with elecricity? 900,000 GW hours.

Lets put that into a measurement that we are used to seeing on our monthly bills: KWH. 900,000,000,000 KWH. Frankly that is a number too big to even comprehend. So I tried to convert it into how many gasifiers we would need to build to make that much electricity since we can make 40,000 KWH each. Yep LOTS better – we only need to build 2.25 billion gasifiers and cut down 3.5 milllion square miles of willow coppice annually to power them. And that is only to replace what we are losing each year, i.e. we have to build that many EACH YEAR just to maintain our energy status quo. That also means we will need to build 1000% more PV and Wind generators than we did in 2008 (the current record holder) and then do it EVERY year, for the next 40-50 years. Considering the best PV is only getting 15 watts per sq ft that is an amazing amount of area to cover.

Conservation and efficiency gains you ask? We can only pray that it offset the dual demographic pressures of rising population and the desire of the Third World to drive an F-150 to eat a Big Mac for lunch every day, and I didn't even get into EROEI, front loading the carbon emissions to retool our society, or the fact that there simply may not be enough copper left to wire the generators that we will need. Something to think about next time you see that cheery bumper sticker about "The Answer is blowing in the wind…" or "The Answer Comes up Every Morning". PV and especially wind generation will certainly have a huge role to play in our future, likely the same critical role as they did to electrify the farms of great grandparents; I am rapidly becoming convinced that Energy DESCENT is the reality – and that the Status Quo is already living History.

Tour d'Organics

This is what Transition Salem's Community Garden Bike Tour could grow into over time ... 

TOUR D'ORGANICS | August 30 - Portland

OrganicAthlete invites you on a delicious healthy foodie ride to celebrate the rich, thriving natural agriculture that can be found within a bike ride of Portland. The 2009 Tour dÕOrganics route starts in SE Portland and leads riders through several organic farms and the Out To Pasture Animal Sanctuary. There are four different ride lengths to choose from: 35, 65, and 100 mile routes, and new this year is an 18 mile family ride.  Riders of every ability will enjoy rest stops at each of the organic farms where they'll be serving up organic, whole foods and an organic vegan lunch for the 65 and 100 mile riders. The finish line features a fresh, healthy vegan meal. A well-marked route and vehicle support will allow you to focus on enjoying the beauty of bicycling the countryside. This very special one-of-a-kind ride is great for families and friends. ( Register ) ( More info )

For your long-range planning: Misty River Band @ Grand Theatre, Nov. 21

Wonderful voices and original music. Great venue for them.

Saturday, November 21, 2009, 7:30PM
THE HISTORIC GRAND THEATER
191 High Street NE, Salem, OR 97301
Tickets: TBA Info: (503) 362-9185
http://www.grandballroom.info

For all the chicken littles scared of a few hens

Image by Rev. Voodoo via Flickr

For anyone who thinks that food is something that just magically appears in the stores, consider this story below (h/t Sharon Astyk's Casaubon's Book blog).

Now recall the warning that any country is just three missed meals away from revolution, and then consider how precarious our food situation is in the US, with the average forkful having traveled 1500 miles to you, all propelled by fossil fuels and with no reserve capacity or local stores of food squirreled away.

Now consider how frighteningly awful it would be if a lot of homes in Salem had some hens in the yard, turning food scraps and weeds into a few eggs every week.

Paulson reveals US concerns of breakdown in law and order

The Bush administration and Congress discussed the possibility of a breakdown in law and order and the logistics of feeding US citizens if commerce and banking collapsed as a result of last autumn's financial panic, it was disclosed yesterday.

Making his first appearance on Capitol Hill since leaving office, the former Treasury secretary Hank Paulson said it was important at the time not to reveal the extent of officials' concerns, for fear it would "terrify the American people and lead to an even bigger problem".

Mr Paulson testified to the House Oversight Committee on the Bush administration's unpopular $700bn (£426bn) bailout of Wall Street, which was triggered by the failure of Lehman Brothers last September. In the days that followed, a run on some of the safest investment vehicles in the financial markets threatened to make it impossible for people to access their savings.

Paul Kanjorski, a Pennsylvania Democrat, asked Mr Paulson to reveal details of officials' concerns, which were relayed to Congress in hasty conference calls last year. The calls included discussion of law and order and whether it would be possible to feed the American people, and for how long, according to Mr Kanjorski. . . .

A pleasant surprise: A Commerce Secretary speaking the truth on something important

Image by cfarivar via Flickr

U.S. should pay for carbon content of imported goods: Locke

As with all debts, we can pay now or we can pay more later --- lots more.

Conserving Farmland -- Peak Moment TV on Salem's CCTV

Given that the price of oil quadrupled in Summer of 2008, what does it mean that OPEC output did not increase even as prices were skyrocketing? Image via Wikipedia

Did you miss the showing of "Conserving Farmland on Trabucco Ranch" on Salem's cable-access Channel 21 today at 5? You have another chance to see the show on Channel 21 tomorrow (Saturday, July 18 at 4 p.m.) or again on Monday (July 20, 9 a.m.). Or, if you miss all of them, you can watch the show on your computer here.

Sponsored by Transition Salem, this will be the first in a long series of three-times-a-week broadcasts of excellent programs produced by the Peak Moment TV team, dedicated to helping people prepare for the transitions ahead of us.

A new program will premier each Friday at 5 pm and be repeated the following Saturday at 4 pm and then on the following Monday at 9 am.