This Saturday: Walking Tour of Salem (starts @ Tea Party Bookshop 10 a.m.)

Nice. A guided tour of Salem and a stop at the Salem Saturday Market for lunch and to pick up groceries . . . a good day! Tea Party Bookshop owner Joanne Kohler writes:

One morning, Tyler Burgess walked into the store with her book, Oregon Townscape Walks, and I was instantly charmed. Hand written and illustrated, the book guides you through 22 different townships in the Willamette Valley, pointing out historical facts and walking you past cute houses and other points of interest. What better way to get to know Tyler and her book than by going on one of the walks? Plus, you get a different perspective on our fair city.

The walk is free - meet at the store at 10am on Saturday the 19th, and be sure to pick up a copy of Oregon Townscapes Walks to keep going on your own!

In case you're wondering why we're in this handbasket and where we're going . . .

GREAT book. Clear, down-to-earth explanation of what stopped the musical chairs game of high finance and sensible prescriptions for fixing the problem.

To S-K Schools: An example to follow

It would be nice if, when not busy mindlessly planning to build even more big box schools that will require huge investments in ever-more-costly and polluting buses and fuel to ferry kids about (and ignoring the reality that we are not going to "grow" at anything like the rates projected by planners and the pro-growth industry), S-K Schools could do some good by following this example of bringing fresh local foods into the lunchrooms.

Salem's own "Organic Fresh Fingers" (nice company, name is a little strange though -- they don't actually offer fingers for consumption) would seem to fit the bill . . .

Opposing Corporate Domination of Elections

From OSPIRG:

A corporation is not a person. Bank of America does not come over for dinner; Countrywide isn't a regular at Thanksgiving. Neither has ever been included in "We the People."

But, just last week, in a shocking burst of radical judicial activism, a slim majority on the U.S. Supreme Court showed they are on the cusp of granting corporations the right to spend unlimited money on ads in our elections under the guise that corporations are "citizens" with rights no different than yours and mine. [1]

As the justices consider overturning almost 100 years of precedent, we can't sit idly by and watch them write corporations a blank check to overwhelm our democratic elections with their loud and expensive speech. Justices are often hesitant to overturn long-standing precedent, especially if the public is strongly opposed to change.

So, right now, before they get too far down the wrong path, please write a letter to the editor of your local paper. And ask three friends to write letters as well. Click here to see a sample letter.

If the justices decide to tear down decades of established law, Senators from Maine to California will begin to look more like Senators from ExxonMobil and Citicorp. In 2008, ExxonMobil's Political Action Committee solicited employees for donations to a campaign war chest on behalf of federal candidates. The PAC raised less than $1 million in voluntary individual contributions.

During this same election cycle, ExxonMobil's corporate profits were $85 billion, more than 8,000 times as much!

Now imagine if ExxonMobil's CEO could freely write checks from the corporate treasury account to run advertisements for or against candidates. If they only spent 1% -- $850 million -- this would have been FIVE TIMES what all corporate PACs in America raised to spend on congressional campaigns in 2008.

We have already joined with our coalition partners and filed a brief in the Citizen's United case arguing against such a radical restructuring of our political process. [2]

Now you can help by writing a letter to your local paper.

Click below if you'd like help writing a letter to the editor of your local paper. Make it known that the oil and gas industry, the insurance industry, and Wall Street firms are not people and that saying so mocks our democracy.

[See also here.]

Facepalm of the day

Image by Potoman via Flickr

Advice to Statesman-Journal: Consider hiring copyeditors. Or reporters who know how to use The Google or the Wikipedia thingie:

The display at the library includes copies of the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. The Constitution Week dates reportedly [????] recognize the signing of the U.S. Constitution 222 years ago.

As Casey Stengel is said to have said, "You could look it up."

Word: Waiting for Rosemary's Baby

An apt metaphor for the kind of spawn we'll be facing if we keep this denial up much longer. Image via Wikipedia

Waiting for "conclusive proof" that human activity is permanently [a]ffecting the environment before acting is like waiting to see the baby come out before you'll agree with your wife that she's pregnant and take her to the hospital. I mean, she could just be gaining weight, right? - Ecohuman (PDX-area blogger/commenter)

Update: Earth's oceans (the acidifying pools of water upon which all life depends) reach their hottest temperatures ever. Which means they will be able to maintain less CO2 in solution, by the way. And so it goes . . .

Forget 9/11, the real attack on America will be remembered as 9-9-9

One of the execrable five who betrayed their oaths and all Americans to deliver the White House to George W Bush, precipitating the Cheney Misadministration and causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Currently appears poised to turn elections into outright corporate auctions. Image via Wikipedia

As in Sept. 9, 2009, the day the Supreme Court heard more argument on whether the legal fictions of property known as corporations have a right to buy politicians outright, instead of having to tiptoe -- okay, waltz -- around the few and mainly toothless election laws we do have.

Note especially Justice (5th Vote for the Judicial Coup that installed GW Bush) Kennedy's fawning admiration for corporations . . . disgusting.

Read it and weep for the vast chasm between the justice and the rule of law and for the future of the country once known non-ironically as the Land of the Free.

UPDATE: Another great TomDispatch on the hugec -- nay, tidal -- river of corporate money flowing into Washington to defeat any public interests and to preserve corporate rule.

Word: Open letter to Amtrak

A nation of 300 million in a vast country served by "a railroad system that would make Bulgaria ashamed." Image via Wikipedia

An American conservative living in Ireland recounts a recent (mis)adventure on Amtrak:

Rail worked for us for decades, and today Third-World peasants can count on transportation freedoms that most Americans cannot. Public debate about Amtrak tends to focus on whether you will ever turn a profit, but we don’t ask when our asphalt will turn a profit, or our sewers, or our bridges -- they are infrastructure, necessary for an advanced society to function. Every surge in the price of fuel, every dire warning about the climate's transformation, every new plunge in the economy makes Americans’ constant driving more difficult and rails more necessary.

UPDATE: Great piece on why, despite the abundant and fast-mounting tidal wave of evidence that the age of automobility -- carburbia -- is over, our elected "leaders" and the opinion elites cling to the fantasy that it can be sustained:

September 25, 2009
Guest Speaker: David Withnell
The Auto Industry and the Great Recession:
How are we rolling in Salem?

What has it been like to be an auto dealer in today’s economic crisis? Our speaker, David Withnell, President of Withnell Motor Company, will give us a local perspective on doing business in an era of high fuel prices, foreign competition, bailouts, “cash for clunkers”, and rapidly evolving automotive technology.

A must-read by Flannery, author of "The Weather Makers"

Image via Wikipedia

Flannery wrote one of the top three books on climate change, "The Weather Makers." This excerpt from his latest work warns that "we're between a tipping point and the point of no return."

UPDATE: a nice piece helping to explain why, even as we test the living shift out of students, we're seeing more and more who are unable to reason and who are therefore prone to thinking that fears of runaway climate change are part of some sort of liberal conspiracy.

UPDATE 2: For anyone who thinks fears of runaway climate chaos are simply fantasies driven by computer models. Watch.

A worthy cause: Open Up Oregon

Image via Wikipedia

Not that many people have occasion to need information from local or state government -- but those that do often find themselves in a weird Alice-in-Wonderland type world where the laws that are supposed to provide open government have been so twisted, constrained, and riddled with exceptions that even the simplest request for the most mundane information is treated as an attempt by foreign terrorists to spy on government rather than an opportunity for a public employee to provide fast and helpful service to a member of the public.

One of the weirdest and most costly results of the present, sad and overly-formalized state of affairs is that information that you once could have gotten with a phone call now is invariably greeted with "You'll need to submit a public records request for that," which is just the first step down the rabbit hole.

The comic strip "Dilbert," about an engineer in a tech company, occasionally features an IT guy who is actually a demon and who is called "Mordac, Preventer of Information Services." Salem seems to have adopted some of this attitude as well, judging by some very non-responsive responses to requests for public information during the recent snafu concerning the hurry-up-quick-before-anyone-notices sale of easements in Minto Brown Park.

Luckily, there's a UO prof who has made opening Oregon public records to the public his cause.
Consider LOVESalem a spiritual comrade site to Open Up Oregon and post a comment here if you've had any problems getting public information or public records requests filled by any branch of government around here. This is something that really needs constant public emphasis.