A little Thomas Paine for Constitution Day

"When it shall be said in any country in the world, my poor are happy, neither ignorance or 

distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars;

the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive . . .

when these things can be said, then may that country boast its constitution and its government."

Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1797-91).

Nice! Kill-a-Watts coming for checkout @ Salem Public Library

It's often said that you can't manage what you can't measure -- nowhere more true than with electric usage. So, soon you can borrow a Kill-a-Watts meter at the Salem Public Library! Image by INeedCoffee / CoffeeHero via Flickr

Very nice -- a LOVESalem informant tells me that the Salem Public Library has ordered a bunch of these to make them available to patrons for use in finding and fixing your power vampires! BZ.

These devices address one of the biggest failings in our infrastructure, the fact that all the metering is designed to make your usage INvisible (and, thus, encourage you to unknowingly use more and waste more). The pirates at the top of PGE ("Please God, Enough!") and the gas company have long had the ability to provide us with real-time usage data right in the home to help us conserve resources and reduce pollution -- but then, that would reduce profits, so they continue merrily hiding the meters back in the weeds and next to the wasp nests, so that you'll continue using more of their products. Another good argument for kicking their butts out and forming a public consolidated gas and electric utility for Salem, one that puts the public good ahead of shareholder profits.

Why care about reducing electric usage? Because, as the PGE-fuel-mix chart shows, PGE's largest source of electricity is coal. That's right, the coal that is destroying the world's climate balance and is going to cause unfathomable suffering across the globe for centuries. PGE talks green but walks black, and fights like crazy to keep on using coal because it's more profitable for them.

UPDATE: A LOVESalem foreign correspondent writes:

Don't forget to put in a plug (heh. Get it? "Plug." heh) for my Blue Line innovations power cost monitor. Srsly, thing is awesome.

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.