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	May 26, 2014
THIS WEEK
Thomas Piketty hasn't just produced a book. He has produced a phenomenon — and we're devoting this week's entire Too Much to his new Capital in the Twenty-First Century. How could we not? A few short months ago, after all, who would have ever imagined that a tome about inequality would be topping the bestseller lists? Or that an obscure French economist who cheerfully contemplates "confiscatory" taxes on the rich would have an audience with America's highest tax official? We did our first Too Much piece on Capital in the Twenty-First Century a month before the book's official U.S. publication. Since then, a host of commentators have chimed in, some with insight, others with nonsense. We survey below this chattering class chatter. We also offer our own take on Capital in the Twenty-First Century as well as a reader's guide that can help you dig as deep into the Piketty perspective as you have the curiosity — and the time — to go. So welcome to Thomas Piketty's world. May our own come to share his vision.	About Too Much, a project of the Institute for Policy Studies Program on Inequality and the Common Good Subscribe to Too Much Inequality.Org Join us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter
GREED AT A GLANCE
You don't have to turn too many Capital in the Twenty-First Century pages to come across a fascinating instance of greed and grasping, past or present. The past in these pages stretches back to the let-them-eat-cake days before the French Revolution. Years after that Revolution in 1825, author Thomas Piketty relates, officials in Paris incurred a huge public debt to finance what became known as the "émigrés billion," the fortune in francs paid to aristocrats who had fled revolutionary France "to compensate them for the rather limited redistribution of land that took place in their absence." The French government continued borrowing to enrich the rich throughout the rest of the nineteenth century. By the twentieth century, interest on that debt amounted to over 2 percent of national income, more than France was spending on education . . . Capital in the Twenty-First Century also goes exploring the wealth scene in the nineteenth-century United States. Men, women, and children held in slavery, Piketty details, made up 40 percent of the population of America's South in 1860, and the wealth these slaves represented — for slave owners — roughly equaled the entire total value of U.S. farmland. In fact, Piketty adds, the value of Southern capital by 1860 amounted to nearly as much as the then "total value of capital in Britain and France." In the South, observes Piketty, "we find a world where inequalities of ownership took the most extreme and violent form possible, since one half of the population owned the other half." We can choose to track the concentration of our modern world's wealth, points out Capital in the Twenty-First Century, by counting the billionaires among us. We had five billionaires per 100 million adults in 1987, 30 in 2013. But a more helpful yardstick, Thomas Piketty suggests, might be the wealth owned by a fixed percentage of the world's population, "say the richest twenty-millionth of the adult population of the planet," about 150 of 3 billion adults in the late 1980s and 225 of 4.5 billion today. These uber rich averaged $1.5 billion each in 1987 — and nearly $15 billion in 2013. After inflation, these deep pockets have upped their net worth annually by an average 6.4 percent over the last three decades.	Quotable "If you'd like to live in Downton Abbey, the good news is that our economy has entered a second Gilded Age of opulence and elegance. The bad news is that you'll likely end up among the vast majority stuck sweating in the kitchen." Bernard Condon, Josh Boak, and Christopher Rugaber, A French Economist's Grim View of the Wealth Gap, AP "The oligarchs of tomorrow are likely to have names like Walton, Zuckerberg, Soros, Adelson, Trump, and Koch, even if they never work a day in their lives." Chuck Collins, Derailing the Dynasty Train, OtherWords
PETULANT PLUTOCRAT OF THE WEEK
Thomas Piketty's warnings against letting our world sink under the domination of inherited wealth seem to have hit too close to home for Pierre "Pete" du Pont IV. The 79-year-old former governor of Delaware hails from one of America's oldest wealth dynasties, and the hubbub around Capital in the Twenty-First Century has him seriously out of joint. We have too many "smart and talented people," du Pont railed last month, who "spend their time and energy fulminating about things that don't really matter" — like the wealth of the wealthy. Added the former GOP Presidential candidate and leading light of a family worth over $15 billion: "America is a great nation. We should not be surprised or troubled that some of its citizens are wealthy."	Like Too Much? Email this issue to a friend
IMAGES OF INEQUALITY
All the numbers in Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century boil down in the end to a century-long "U." The top 1 and top 10 percent shares of income and wealth waxed high at the beginning of the twentieth century, dropped substantially in the middle, and have come roaring back up over recent decades. Piketty recently traced this distributional "U" at a presentation in London.	Web Gem Paris School of Economics/ The academic home base of Thomas Piketty has thoughtfully devoted a sizable amount of its online real estate to everything Capital in the Twenty-First Century-related. You can find here all the book's figures and tables — and spreadsheets with all Piketty's basic stats.
PROGRESS AND PROMISE
A Global Wealth Tax? Let's Show Some Love The top complaint against Capital in the Twenty-First Century? Author Piketty, critics charge, offers up only a single solution — and an impractical one at that. Piketty's "policy proposal — a global tax on wealth — has no chance of happening," the New Republic opines in a typical comment. "Why describe such a serious problem and then offer such an un-serious solution?" Another analyst deadpans that Piketty's global wealth tax belongs on a "fantasy shelf." But all this dissing of a global tax on wealth does Piketty's thought a distinct disservice — on two counts. The first: Capital in the Twenty-First Century does not advance just one solution. Piketty places his annual global wealth tax in the context of what he sees as a broader rejuvenation of progressive taxation. He urges much higher top marginal rates on income — up to 80 percent on income in the top brackets, about double the current U.S. top rate — and a stronger estate tax to prevent the passing on of immense private fortunes from one generation to another. Capital in the Twenty-First Century also recognizes the equalizing impact of what Piketty calls the "social state," the public policies and institutions "put in place to regulate the relationship between capital and labor." The second reason the dissing of Piketty on the wealth tax rates as piling on: Every major brake on wealth's concentration, down though the years, has come across initially as wildly impractical. In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Piketty acknowledges the utopian feel of his global wealth tax proposal, but then goes on to lay out a step-by-step process for moving a global wealth tax forward in a politically practical fashion. The global wealth tax Piketty proposes would yearly subject net worth over 1 million euros, about $1.37 million, to a set of escalating tax rates that would range from 1 percent on wealth between 1 and 5 million euros to as much as 10 percent on fortunes of "several hundred million or several billion euros." The "global" aspect of the tax, Piketty argues, could grow over time from national and regional arrangements. "International coordination to restrict capital movement is already happening in certain places," This Week analyst Ryan Cooper noted earlier this month. "A similar effort to tax wealth wouldn't be all that different."	Quotable "In the United States, Piketty shows, the incomes of the top 1 percent have grown so high — chiefly due to the linkage of top executive pay to share value, a form of capital — that they soon will create the greatest level of income inequality in the recorded history of any nation." Harold Meyerson, How capitalism enriches the few rather than the many, Washington Post "There are two ways to change a society: from the bottom and from the top. Occupy Wall Street tried it the first way and paved the road with populism. Thomas Piketty is going for the second way. He has roiled the pundit classes." Heidi Moore, Thomas Piketty is a rock-star economist, Guardian "Understanding how the elite become what they are, and how their wealth perpetuates itself, is now a hot topic of scientific inquiry." Mike Konczal, Studying the Rich: Thomas Piketty and his Critics, Boston Review "Piketty has brought to the fore the empirical fact that income inequality calcifies into wealth inequality." Heather Boushey, I Like Jane Austen's Novels, Huffington Post
inequality by the numbers
	Stat of the Week Our planet held about 7 billion people in 2012, notes Capital in the Twenty-First Century, and generated enough economic output to provide a $1,035 monthly income for every person on Earth, had the income from that output been divided equally.
IN FOCUS
All Hail Piketty, But Props for Pickett, Too A bold new egalitarian take on our modern economy from France joins a powerful rendering of inequality's toll — on our daily lives — from the UK. Blend the two into our politics and watch plutocracy start shaking. What makes the new book from French economist Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, so important? A number of commentators have recoiled from that question. They've chosen instead to grumble about the enormous hype around the book — and pound out pieces that trumpet out some variant of "Piketty has got it wrong." These pieces do have their place. Indeed, author Piketty opens and ends his epic tale of wealth's ebb and flow stressing the limits of what he has to say. His sources, he notes, "remain imperfect and incomplete." His conclusions — "by nature tenuous" — "deserve to be questioned and debated." But make no mistake. This book has fundamentally changed our global discourse over inequality. We have been contemplating for years now how deeply unequal we've become. Capital in the Twenty-First Century has shifted our gaze to the future, to how terrifyingly unequal we may soon be.   We have "no natural, spontaneous process," as Piketty notes, that can "prevent destabilizing, inegalitarian forces from prevailing permanently." Yet nothing in our political and economic life, he also reminds us, comes to us "foreordained." We can shape our future. We just have to start soon, or else resign ourselves to the restoration of "patrimonial capitalism," an economic order where inherited wealth dominates, distorts, and destroys any hopes for real democracy — or even basic decency. Capital in the Twenty-First Century actually represents Thomas Piketty's second major contribution to our global inequality discourse.   About a dozen years ago, Piketty and fellow French economist Emmanuel Saez, now at the University of California at Berkeley, began revolutionizing how we track — and think about — income distribution. Up until then, researchers had largely depended on government household surveys for most all of our income stats. These surveys generated an abundance of useful data about the low- and middle-income households that make up the vast bulk of our developed world's populations, but collected next to zilch of statistical value from society's highest-income households. The result: We ended up with analyses of income distribution that typically clumped households into broad "quintiles" or "deciles." Studies based on these stats seldom did more than compare the incomes of the bottom fifth or tenth of a nation's households with the middle and top fifths and tenths. Piketty, Saez, and their colleagues upset this applecart. They dove into tax return data and assembled, first for France and then for the United States and other nations, detailed data series that traced the evolution of incomes at — and even within — the top 1 percent of households. In 2011, the Occupy movement would shove this top 1 percent data onto our political center stage, and pols and pundits would soon be acknowledging the vast gap between the top 1 percent and everyone else. Piketty's pioneering research helped ease all this new awareness out of the public policy shadows. With his blockbuster new book, Piketty is taking us another giant step forward. Capital in the Twenty-First Century places contemporary income concentration in over two centuries worth of historical context, primarily zeroing in on France, Britain, and the United States since the late 18th century. Intense levels of income and wealth concentration, Piketty's broad sweep reveals quite strikingly, have defined our industrial world for generations. The only exception: the decades of the mid twentieth century, a relatively brief interlude when the richest 1 percent's share of society's income and wealth dropped substantially in both Europe and the United States. During these mid-century years, the return on capital — the dividends, rents, interest, and capital gains people of means rake in off the assets they own — did not follow basic historical norms. Economies in the mid twentieth century grew more quickly than the wealth of the rich. Societies became more equal. What explains this equalizing? The twentieth century's incredibly disruptive world wars, Piketty argues, opened a unique window for egalitarian shifts in tax and other public policies.  But the mid-twentieth century, Piketty argues, represents a special case, and he spends a major portion of his Capital in the Twenty-First Century endeavoring to show why. His central theme: The rate of return from capital will generally tend to outpace economic growth, a relationship Piketty reduces to the formula r > g. In plainer terms: "Wealth accumulated in the past grows more rapidly than output and wages." Inevitably, writes Piketty, the entrepreneur "tends to become a rentier, more and more dominant over those who own nothing but their labor." Eventually, "the past devours the future." Serious reviewers have differed over how convincing a case Piketty makes for his "r > g" formula. Much more convincing: Piketty's demolition job on mainstream economics and the political fairy-tales our top politicians tell about our economic system, most notably the notion that the free market, left to its own devices, will distribute "the fruits of economic progress among all people." Piketty, adds economist Paul Krugman, crumbles "that most cherished of conservative myths, the insistence that we're living in a meritocracy in which great wealth is earned and deserved." The historic data Piketty so impressively marshals, the anecdotal evidence he brings to bear from the historical record and even from literature, all make clear that capitalism has a powerful tilt toward the top, an underlying tendency to rather ferociously concentrate income and wealth. And where will this concentration, if we let it continue, lead us? Increasingly inherited wealth, Piketty writes, will confront us with an extreme concentration of capital "potentially incompatible with the meritocratic values and principles of social justice fundamental to modern democratic societies." But we face other threats as well from extreme inequality, threats that sour our daily lives on any number of fronts, from the trust we have in each other to our physical and mental health. Capital in the Twenty-First Century doesn't go into these threats.  Another landmark book on inequality does. That book — The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better — appeared five years ago, first in the UK and then around the world. Spirit Level editions have appeared since then in two dozen nations and sold, in English alone, well over 150,000 copies, a monster total, at least before Capital in the Twenty-First Century, for a serious book in the social sciences. Like Thomas Piketty, Spirit Level co-authors Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett have marshaled vast arrays of data. These two epidemiologists — scientists who study the health of populations — have identified nearly every social problem where reliable statistics let us compare how well or poorly the major nations of the developed world are delivering a decent quality of life. In which developed nations, Wilkinson and Pickett ask, do people live the longest? What nations show the highest levels of obesity? Where do people born at the bottom have the best shot at climbing up? Which nations send the most people to prison? Have the most teenage moms? Tally the most homicides? People in some developed nations, the Spirit Level documents, can be anywhere from three to ten times more likely than people in other developed nations to be obese or get murdered, to mistrust others or have a pregnant teen daughter, to become a drug addict or escape from poverty. And the nations that do the best, on yardstick after yardstick, all turn out to share one basic trait. They all share their wealth. "If you want to know why one country does better or worse than another," as Wilkinson and Pickett note, "the first thing to look at is the extent of inequality." The United States, the developed world's most unequal major nation, ranks at or near the bottom on every quality-of-life indicator that Wilkinson and Pickett examine. Portugal and the UK, nations with levels of inequality that rival the United States, rank near that same bottom. People in more equal societies simply live longer, healthier, and happier lives than people in more unequal societies. And not just poor people in these societies, Wilkinson and Pickett emphasize, but all people. All people, in other words, have a personal vested interest in preventing the frightfully unequal future Thomas Piketty has put before us. Successfully sharing this understanding, widely and broadly in the political arena, may be our best hope at forging a twenty-first century where that future never takes place.	New Wisdom on Wealth A selection that highlights some of the more telling reflections on Capital in the Twenty-First Century From Academe Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, A Tocqueville for Today, American Prospect, March 10, 2014. Two political scientists note that Piketty has little to say about "the kind of political movement necessary for a fairer future." Emily Eakin, Capital Man, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 17, 2014. The best positioning of Piketty and his thinking's evolution. Robert Solow, Thomas Piketty Is Right, New Republic, April 22, 2014. Exploring the "rich-get-richer dynamic." From the Business Press Gillian Tett, Lessons from a rock-star economist, Financial Times, April 25, 2014. Musings on why Piketty's Capital has received such a bountifully positive reception. From Beyond the Beltway Jay Bookman, On Piketty, capitalism, and increasing inequality, Atlanta Journal Constitution, April 28, 2014. The Jefferson connection. From the Left Doug Henwood, The Top of the World, BookForum, March 25, 2014. Piketty helps us see how wealth concentrates in capitalist economies. Mark Weisbrot, Piketty in Washington, Common Dreams, April 16, 2014. Following Piketty — and the debate that surrounds him — around for a day. Robert Kuttner, What Piketty Leaves Out, American Prospect, April 30, 2014. If we want less inequality, we need to understand the institutions and politics that once undergirded our equality. Thomas Frank, Capital destroys right-wing lies, but there's one solution it forgets, Salon, May 11, 2014. Piketty's blind spot? He has virtually nothing to say about labor unions. David Harvey, Taking on 'Capital' without Marx, In These Times, May 20, 2014. An analysis from one of the world's top Marxist thinkers. James Galbraith, Kapital for the Twenty-First Century? Dissent, Spring 2014. An unsparing critique. From the Right Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, The Conservative Case For Thomas Piketty, Forbes, April 24, 2014. Bring on a capital tax. Joshua Hendrickson, Unequal to the Task, National Review, May 5, 2014. This University of Mississippi economist acknowledges "the sheer volume" of the data Piketty has compiled as a "significant contribution." William Watson, What Thomas Piketty gets right, Financial Post, May 16, 2014. A conservative claims Piketty as a fellow crank. Mervyn King, The Tenuous Case Against Capitalism, Business Day, May 18, 2014. A central banker says we should worry that greater income inequality might be transmitted to succeeding generations From Analysts of the Right Kathleen Geier, What Piketty's Conservative Critics Get Wrong, Baffler, April 28, 2014. A sweeping rundown. Jared Bernstein, Piketty's Arguments Still Hold Up, After Taxes, New York Times, May 9, 2014. A look at the conservatives attack on Piketty's statistics. From Abroad David Priestland,  Are we at a Piketty tipping point for the left? Guardian, May 7, 2014. We're not living in 1945 anymore. Saliem Fakir, The Relevance of Thomas Piketty for South Africa, All Africa, May 14, 2014. Piketty is bringing our focus back to how super wealthy elites earn their money and what they do with it. From the Light Side Robert Shrimsley, The nine stages of the Piketty bubble, Financial Times, April 30, 2014.
NEW AND notable
Thomas Piketty's Capital: A Reader's Guide Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014. The thought of tackling a 685-page book a little intimidating for you? Cheer up. Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century actually only runs 577 pages in text. You can skip the footnotes. You can, truth be told, skip the whole book and still dip your toe deep into the Piketty waters. The online world is bustling with resources that can help you get a really solid sense of what Capital in the Twenty-First Century has to offer. And all these online resources also make for a great orientations should you choose to actually read the entire book. So where do you start? Some thoughts. Read an online primer. Matthew Yglesias at Vox has put together one of the best. His Short Guide to Capital in the Twenty-First Century revolves around 14 questions that range from the most elemental ("What is capital?") to the interestingly edgy ("Does this have anything to do with Karl Marx's Das Kapital?"). Steve Pressman at the Boston-based Dollars & Sense has taken a different approach. This progressive economist has been blogging about Piketty's Capital as he makes his way through the book — and the excitement around it. You can start with his intro or skip right into his reading travelogue. Watch a quick video. BBC Newsnight has prepared this sprightly three-minute introduction to Piketty's most basic points. You'll enjoy it, whether or not you ever intend to open the book. Piketty's publisher, the Harvard University Press, offers a more traditional, but equally brief, "talking head" video prologue. Watch Piketty discuss his thesis. In New York last month, Piketty talked about his book on a City University of New York panel that included three of inequality's most honored critics within the economics profession. The video runs over an hour and a half. Don't freak. If you have a free evening, watching this won't waste it. Looking for a bit more manageable time-frame? This Chris Hayes MSNBC one-on-one discussion with Piketty runs only a half-hour. Read interviews with Piketty. PBS economics correspondent Paul Salmon conducted a particularly lucid interview with Piketty earlier this month, and this New York Times write-up of a chat with him offers the most personal background on the French economist. A useful interview with the British journal Juncture has Piketty grappling directly with many of the points his progressive critics raise. For more on the Piketty basics, try this Real News Network dialogue. We've also seen some riveting interviews about Piketty, most notably this Bill Moyers discussion. Check out the reviews. The Century Foundation is hosting one list of major Capital in the Twenty-First Century reflections. Try reading as many as you can before you tackle the book. They won't spoil the ending.	Enjoy Too Much? Email this issue to a friend who might like Too Much, too   How did the grand fortunes of the early 20th century shrink down to democratic size by the middle? Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century doesn't go into the details. Too Much editor Sam Pizzigati's new book does. Learn more about it.
About Too Much
Too Much, an online weekly publication of the Institute for Policy Studies | 1112 16th Street NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC 20036 | (202) 234-9382 | Editor: Sam Pizzigati. | E-mail: editor@toomuchonline.org |	Subscribe to Too Much Forward to a Friend

NEXT WEDS, 4 p.m. NO 3rd Bridge Rally at Courthouse Square

(Not smart enough to work a blog post scheduler I guess -- this just posted on 6/4/14 as
"TODAY, 4 p.m. NO 3rd Bridge Rally at Courthouse Square," which is true for all values of TODAY=6/11/14)

https://www.facebook.com/events/291635261011516/?ref=22

• Wednesday, June 11 at 4:00pm

• Courthouse Square, 555 Court St., Salem

NO 3rd Bridge is holding a rally to coincide with the Salem River Crossing Open House. We will assemble on the sidewalk in front of the Court Street entrance to Courthouse Square beginning at 4 pm. We will have remarks from NO 3rd Bridge activists beginning at 4:30. Then at 5 we will attend the Open House at Courthouse Square en masse. Please come and show your support for NO 3rd Bridge.

Fascinating -- Plato's early advocacy of Full Representation Election Methods

 

An interesting snippet for you all from George Hallett's regular column in the December 1934 National Municipal Review:

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Undernews: How urban gardens can be better than many real fields

http://prorevnews.blogspot.com/2014/06/how-urban-gardens-can-be-better-than.html

How urban gardens can be better than many real fields

Take Part -  [A] study, published in the Journal of Applied Ecology in April, looked at the allotment plots—the U.K.'s version of community gardens—in Leicester, England, and compared the soil quality with what's found on the farms surrounding the city. Both the organic carbon density—a general measure of soil health—and the nitrogen density in the allotment plots were higher than on nearby farms. The most depleted farmland tested had 65 percent lower organic carbon density than the city gardens. Dirt with a higher carbon content is better able to hold water, is more nutrient-rich, maintains an even temperature, and functions as a habitat for beneficial bugs and other organism. It's the dirt you want to grow food in—and the dirt that will readily nourish whatever's planted in it. In another sign of good soil health, the bulk density—a measure of how compact the dirt is—was lower in the urban gardens.

In a survey of the gardeners who work these allotments, some of whom have been growing food on the same plot for as long as 50 years, 95 percent said they practiced composting, and 75 percent said they added manure to their soil. In doing so, they're taking better care of the earth that's supplying their families with tomatoes and greens to serve alongside food from the supermarket or elsewhere than the vast stretches of dirt that are tasked with feeding the world.

The report notes that some 800 million people around the world are growing food in urban areas—many of them are farming out of necessity, not as a hobby. The authors conclude that drawing from the management practiced by the allotment gardeners could help make those gardening for fun and those gardening to survive both reap better harvests and become part of the fabric of more sustainable cities—especially if municipalities can feed urban soil with their own waste. It sounds like traditional farmers can relearn something from these model urban gardeners too.

MORE FOOD NEWS

WORST. IDEA. EVER: Trading farmland for sprawl (American farmland decreasing fast)

http://prorevnews.blogspot.com/2014/05/american-farmland-decrasing-at-rapid.html

American farmland decreasing at rapid rate

Rural Blog - The amount of U.S. farmland is decreasing at a rapid rate, "with the country losing three acres of farmland every minute," at a time when experts say more land will be needed to grow enough food to feed the world, reports Agri-Pulse, a Washington newsletter. The recently released Census of Agriculture reports that American farmland dropped from 987 million acres in 1982 to 914.5 million acres in 2012, and "The U.S. is losing farmland at a fairly rapid pace to strip malls, parking lots, highways and other forms of development."

Some say those numbers don't tell the whole story. Andrew McElwaine, president and CEO of American Farmland Trust, said the Census of Agriculture "doesn't track the changes in land use such as losses to development or highlight the crops most likely to be lost," saying that more than 90 percent of fruits and nearly 80 percent of vegetables "are grown on farmland under pressure from development." McElwaine told Agri-Pulse, "Since 1982, we've converted 24.1 million acres—an area the size of Indiana and Rhode Island combined."

Every state saw rural land developed from 2007 to 2010, regardless of statewide increases or decreases in farmland, according to the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

Agri-Pulse reports, "All 19 states with land-in-farms increases in the 2012 census also developed 'significant acres of rural land,' according to the AFT."Russ Shay, director of public policy at the Land Trust Alliance, told Agri-Pulse, "This is a crisis, but it's a quiet crisis. We lose farmland one farm at a time. We lose primarily smaller farms. People don't see it."

MORE FARM NEWS

Salem, another waterfront city, has bigger problems than how to promote sprawl

One of the best parts of hearing the lapdog UnStatesmanlike Journal's tinny barking of "losers" at people who recognize the Salem River Crossing as a gigantic boondoggle is that the uSJ couldn't help themselves and so they wound up making clear that none of the reasons given as the official cover story for the thing actually have anything to do with it.  

Instead, as the uSJ makes clear, it's just about maintaining the fantasy that suburban pattern, auto-centric growth will continue and that, after a century of autosprawl, it's suddenly urgent to provide other counties with another auto connection to I-5 (one that bypasses Salem).

In other words, it's about land speculation and development, aka money. Members of the Chamber of the 1% smell money, and lots of it, if they can persuade Salem folks to tax and toll themselves to make land to the west more valuable. It has nothing to do with benefitting the people of Salem, that's for sure.

What do you expect from a corporate chain paper that's not even printed in the city that's on the masthead?  The Gannett chain is to journalism what Velveeta on Wonder Bread is to fine dining - a prefab corporate homogenized substitute that seeks only profit by selling a debased product at the same price as the real thing.

That's why you can have the once-unimaginable sight of an in-name-only Salem paper calling for Salem residents to help destroy the town to cater to the Sprawl Lobby.  

The corporate execs that Gannett whizzes through the outposts of its empire have no ties to the towns where they reside briefly while overseeing the process of getting the daily satellite download of "news" from the Gannett wire and putting a tiny few local stories -- many press release rewrites -- into the thing. They care nothing for Salem or for the people who will remain here while they resume their climb up the corporate ladder in the next burg. 

We should care though. Like Norfolk, we face serious challenges, and had best start preparing for them, not keeping our heads in the sand the way the Chamber and its tame pet paper do, as they promote grand real estate schemes and ignore the real challenges of adapting to a world where greed like theirs is fueling climate chaos.
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In Norfolk, evidence of climate change is in the streets at high tide - The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/in-norfolk-evidence-of-climate-change-is-in-the-streets-at-high-tide/2014/05/31/fe3ae860-e71f-11e3-8f90-73e071f3d637_story.html?wprss=rss_homepage
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Come to the NO 3rd Bridge Rally on Wednesday, June 11th from 4-5 PM

The UnStatesmanlike-Journal Editorial Board, peering out from the vest pockets of the Chamber of the 1%, calls Salem citizens who are standing up for fiscal and environmental sanity "Losers."  

Consider that the next time you see one of the soporific SJ droning-ons about the importance of citizen involvement. Apparently the SJ's rule is that, since they get their opinions from above, and accept them with no critical inquiry and give the subjects no meaningful scrutiny once they have been told what their views are to be, citizens in Salem are supposed to do likewise.

YOU'RE INVITED TO THE

NO 3RD BRIDGE RALLY!

To coincide with the Salem River Crossing Open House that is announced below, NO 3rd Bridge is holding a rally on the sidewalk in front of the Senator Hearing Room at Courthouse Square from 4 pm to 5 pm on Wednesday, June 11th. We will begin gathering at 4 pm. Speeches will begin at 4:30 pm. At approximately 5 pm we will attend the Open House en masse to show our united opposition to the 3rd Bridge.

Please mark your calendars and plan to attend this event. It is imperative that everyone opposed to the 3rd Bridge turn out to show that there is strong opposition to  building a bridge that would destroy neighborhoods, raise taxes, and is the wrong way to solve our peak hour congestion problems.

Bring your friends and family. Forward this message to others. We'll look forward to seeing you there!

The passive voice was used

Note how the sender (CH2M Hill*) uses the passive voice:

The City of Salem and the Oregon 
Department of Transportation (ODOT) 
are pleased to announce that a 
Preferred Alternative has been recommended 

When they run their scams, con-men and other swindlers instinctively use the passive voice, known as "the language of non-responsibility," because they scurry away from accountability for their actions the way cockroaches scurry away from the light, and for much the same reason.

*CH2M-Hill is a giant corporation, and only entity who will ever benefit from the millions Salem has wasted -- and appears determined to continue to waste -- on this giant boondoggle.

From: "SalemRiverCrossing@CH2M.com" <SalemRiverCrossing@CH2M.com>
Date: May 30, 2014 at 16:12:25 PDT
Subject: Come to the Salem River Crossing Project open house on June 11, 4:00-6:30 pm
Reply-To: "SalemRiverCrossing@CH2M.com" <SalemRiverCrossing@CH2M.com>

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Oh. My. God. Ironist takes over city website, publishes brilliant satire of autoslave city

Kudos to the Swiftian genius who infiltrated the City of Salem website and posted this razor-sharp satirical attack on the city that lavishes money and attention on people in cars, giving the back of the hand and worse to people who want or must walk, bike, or depend on transit. 

This is the city that put the Kroc Center behind an impenetrable moat of high speed asphalt, and that offers no transit to help kids reach anything, anywhere, on weekends, the same city where no sane adult uses many of the roads for bicycling, much less a kid.

But, hey, great satire on Salem's "playfulness."

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City of Salem Designated 2014 Playful City USA
// City of Salem

KaBOOM! and Humana Foundation Unveil 2014 Playful City USA Communities
Recognized for Prioritizing Play

Salem, Oregon/Washington, D.C. - On May 13, 2014, KaBOOM!, in partnership with the Humana Foundation, announced 212 cities and towns across the United States as 2014 Playful City USA honorees. These communities are leaders in playability - the extent to which a city makes it easy for kids to get balanced and active play - and are making play part of the solution that can move the needle on countless urban challenges.

The City of Salem was honored with a 2014 Playful City USA designation for the first time. The City of Salem has established programs centered on improving park playgrounds by offering matching grants to neighborhood associations wishing to make park improvements at local parks. The City also partners with the Salem Parks Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization whose mission is to promote, develop, facilitate, and sustain stewardship dedicated to the enhancement of parks if the city of Salem. Additionally, the City has many volunteer groups who participate in maintaining parks, building playgrounds, and helping to ensure our parks are safe. All of these combined efforts along with the support of the Salem Parks and Recreation Advisory Board, has resulted in the Playful City USA designation.

"The City of Salem will strive to provide a balance of active play, especially outdoor play in our city parks. We acknowledge that play provides an unlimited opportunity for growth, learning, and healthy lives. I'd like to affirm our commitment, at City of Salem, to provide every child in our community a healthy, safe, and playful childhood."
Mayor Anna Peterson

The KaBOOM! Playful City USA program, sponsored by the Humana Foundation, honors cities, towns, and communities across America that are taking bold steps to ensure all children, especially the 16 million American kids living in poverty, have easy access to balanced and active play in their communities. Cities being recognized span every region of the country, and include Washington, D.C.; Chicago; Nashville; Austin; Providence; San Francisco; New York City; and 205 others.

To advance the national dialogue on playability, KaBOOM! and City of Salem invites interest, expertise, and voices from members of the Salem community to get involved (and get playful!) in thinking about how play can create more family-friendly cities. Join the Twitter conversation and encourage action:

* Participate on Twitter (@kaboom) and provide your point of view and forward-looking insights on playability in cities using the hashtags #playability and #playmatters.

"With the tremendous support of our friends at Humana Foundation, we are thrilled to recognize all of these communities that are working to ensure all kids, particularly the 16 million that live in poverty, get the play they need to thrive," says KaBOOM! CEO and Founder Darell Hammond.

Humana President and CEO Bruce Broussard added, "We're excited about our journey with KaBOOM! and we appreciate the shared values that Humana, the Humana Foundation, and the KaBOOM! organization can rally around. Making it easy for families to play, be healthy and thrive together is a part of Humana's dream, and it's a commitment that all of us at Humana enjoy sharing with KaBOOM!."

The Playful City USA honorees range in size from eight-time honorees such as San Francisco and Shirley, Mass., to first time recipients Washington, D.C. and Plantersville, Miss. (population: 1,174). These Playful City USA communities are making a commitment to transform their communities to become more playable by developing unique local action plans to increase the quantity and quality of play in their community. Other city initiatives include:

* Increasing City Playability for All Kids: Chicago, IL has made a goal for every child living in the city to be within a seven-minute walk of a new park or playground.

* Encouraging Play Everywhere: San Antonio, TX partnered with SA Sports in the SPARK Park program, which turns elementary and middle school properties into playspaces outside school hours, reinforcing that kids want and need play everywhere.

* Creating a Competitive Advantage through Play: Bloomington, IN sees playability as the third piece to complement walkability and bikeability and boost the city's competitive advantage. The city plans to increase accessibility and availability of safe sidewalks, parks and play infrastructure.

* Promoting a Balance of All Types of Play: Orlando, FL is developing The Vision for Play in the City of Orlando initiative that will guide actions and investments over the next 20 years to provide a healthy urban play environment that promotes all types of play for all kids, which is critical to cognitive, creative, social, emotional, and physical development.

* Inspiring Family-Centric Play: Missoula, MT is installing fun, creative programs so children can play in a safe, fun and nurturing family and community-centric environment. To encourage more play opportunities for families and communities to enjoy, the city has designated an annual Play Day, a KidsFest celebration in the fall, as well as youth summer camps to keep kids engaged in active play.

* Using Play to Help Address Toxic Stress: Washington, D.C. recognizes its underserved youth are faced with physical, social, and mental health challenges that directly impact their quality of life and their ability to cope with adversity. Kids growing up in the face of significant adversity are at risk of toxic stress, which hinders healthy brain development. Through the Play DC and Parks and Recreation Master Plan initiatives, the city is redefining playgrounds as community spaces where youth can find release from everyday stress and build resilience.

* Fostering 21st Century Skills through Play: Pittsburgh, PA realizes play is critical to developing kids into healthy and successful adults, including preparing kids to be innovators, collaborators, and problem-solvers. The city plans to consider play in every educational and community decision that is made to ensure all Pittsburgh kids are prepared to succeed.

To see the full list of the 212 communities named 2014 Playful City USA honorees, or for more information on the Playful City USA program, visit www.playfulcityusa.org.

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KaBOOM!
KaBOOM! is the national non-profit dedicated to the bold goal of ensuring that all children, particularly the 16 million American children living in poverty, get the active play they need to become healthy and successful adults. KaBOOM! has been a powerful champion for play since its founding in 1996, working with partners to build, improve, and open more than 15,000 playgrounds, engage more than 1,000,000 volunteers and serve more than 6,600,00 children nationwide. KaBOOM! creates and promotes great places to play; inspires, empowers and leads play advocates; and elevates the societal conversation about the importance of play in children's lives. For more information, visit www.kaboom.org/act or follow the conversation on why #playmatters at www.twitter.com/kaboom or www.facebook.com/kaboom.

About the Humana Foundation
The Humana Foundation was established in 1981 as the philanthropic arm of Humana Inc., one of the nation's leading health care companies. Located in Louisville, Ky., the site of Humana's corporate headquarters, the Foundation promotes healthy behaviors and healthy relationships. The Foundation's key funding priorities are childhood health, intergenerational health, and active lifestyles. For more information, visit www.humanafoundation.org.

Humana and the Humana Foundation are dedicated to Corporate Social Responsibility. Our goal is to ensure that every business decision we make reflects our commitment to improving the health and well-being of our members, our associates, the communities we serve, and our planet.
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