HinesSight

Keep independent bookstores alive! They can't die.

I'm a long-lapsed Catholic, but it still felt right to call my purchasing of a book in the wonderful Paulina Springs Books a penance.

That's what I said to my wife after we met up again in charming Sisters, Oregon. Laurel had returned from her clothes shopping safari, and me from a bookstore exploration. (We do this a lot, having different material desires.)

I showed her my big, thick, intellectually meaty/tofuy copy of David Deutsch's "The Beginning of Infinity." I knew I was going to buy this book almost as soon as I read the subtitle: Explanations That Transform the World

I love reading about modern science. I love scientific explanations. I love being transformed. So for the relatively small sum of $30 (the book is hard cover), I'd brought home a lover! Conveniently, one which my wife had no problem driving home with.

Leaving Sisters, I told Laurel how much I liked going into a physical bookstore filled with old-fashioned paper books, where the staff had affixed cards containing personal reviews to some of their favorite titles, appealingly printed out in a typewriter'ish font.

Handing over my credit card, the Paulina Springs Books woman behind the counter added another "like" when I mentioned the cards. "Every book in our store is here because one of us chose to order it; we don't have a central buying service in New York City."

No, they wouldn't. Because Paulina Springs Books only has one other store, in nearby Redmond.

I buy lots of books from Amazon. Lots. In my home town, Salem, there aren't any genuine independent bookstores. Jackson's Books, sadly, went out of business quite a few years ago. People like me are responsible for that.

Hence, my penance.

Every time we pass through Sisters I go into Paulina Springs Books. Almost always I buy something. I find books there that I never would have known about without being able to see them, touch them, hold them, leaf through them.

Yes, I appreciate how skillful Amazon is at saying, "Since you liked X, may we suggest Y?" Quite often their introduction results in a book marriage, me falling in love with another literary object of desire.

But I'm old-fashioned. Not to mention, old. (Though sixty-two no longer strikes me as the Super Geezer age that it used to denote to my younger mind.)

I told the Paulina Springs Books woman that I never want my four year old granddaughter to say, "What was a bookstore like, Grandpa?" And for the moment I'm deeply attached to being able to hold paper pages in my hand, highlight the words on those pages with a marker, and stick scraps of paper in pages where I want to remember where an important thought is.

That's my hand, holding my new book. Also, that's my computer.

Paulina Springs Books is wisely attempting to marry the two -- books and electronic devices. For the first time, I noticed on the bookmark that was stuck in the book: "Think Local when shopping online! www.paulinasprings.com for your eBooks and online ordering."

Excellent idea. The bookstore has partnered with Google to sell Google eBooks. I don't know much about Google eBooks, as I don't have an electronic book reader other than my computer and iPhone, and they aren't pleasant ways to read a book.

But if I ever get an iPad, or whatever, for ebook reading, I'll do my best to send my business to Paulina Springs Books. I searched for an electronic version of the book I just bought and found that it was half the cost of the $30 hardcover I've started to read.

If I learned to highlight via an eReader, I could buy twice as many books!

Anyway, be sure to visit Paulina Springs Books if you're in Sisters or Redmond. Sisters is one of our favorite places, as friendly as its name.

Richard Dawkins calls Rick Perry an "uneducated ignoramus"

I wonder if Rick Perry, Republican presidential candidate and Texas governor, knows what "ignoramus" means. Probably not.

I'll help Perry out in case he stumbles across this blog. Here's the definition, Rick:

Utterly ignorant person.

Such is how noted evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins describes not only Rick Perry but also the entire leadership of today's Republican party. He's right on.

Anyone who doesn't believe in evolution or other unarguable scientific facts indeed is an ignoramus. How is it that they even could be considered for high public office, especially the presidency of the United States?

Here's how Dawkins starts off his response to a question posed to him:

This week's Washington Post question to the On Faith panel:
Texas governor and GOP candidate Rick Perry, at a campaign event this week, told a boy that evolution is ”just a theory” with “gaps” and that in Texas they teach “both creationism and evolution.” Perry later added “God is how we got here.”

According to a 2009 Gallup study , only 38 percent of Americans say they believe in evolution. If a majority of Americans are skeptical or unsure about evolution, should schools teach it as a mere “theory”? Why is evolution so threatening to religion?

Richard's response:

There is nothing unusual about Governor Rick Perry. Uneducated fools can be found in every country and every period of history, and they are not unknown in high office.

What is unusual about today’s Republican party (I disavow the ridiculous ‘GOP’ nickname, because the party of Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt has lately forfeited all claim to be considered ‘grand’) is this: In any other party and in any other country, an individual may occasionally rise to the top in spite of being an uneducated ignoramus.

In today’s Republican Party ‘in spite of’ is not the phrase we need. Ignorance and lack of education are positive qualifications, bordering on obligatory. Intellect, knowledge and linguistic mastery are mistrusted by Republican voters, who, when choosing a president, would apparently prefer someone like themselves over someone actually qualified for the job.

Dawkins goes on to say, entirely accurately:

Evolution is a fact, as securely established as any in science, and he who denies it betrays woeful ignorance and lack of education, which likely extends to other fields as well. Evolution is not some recondite backwater of science, ignorance of which would be pardonable.

It is the stunningly simple but elegant explanation of our very existence and the existence of every living creature on the planet. Thanks to Darwin, we now understand why we are here and why we are the way we are. You cannot be ignorant of evolution and be a cultivated and adequate citizen of today.

For sure. Yet there Perry is, leading the polls among Republican voters.

That's scary, because of what it says about a good chunk of our electorate. Even scarier: the thought that an ignoramus could become our next president.

A 2011 Nissan Leaf could be sprouting in our garage soon

We've changed our minds about changing our minds... about getting an electric car. In early May I put down reservation deposits on both a Nissan Leaf and a Mitsubishi i MIEV. A few weeks later, we'd decided to take a pass on going electric automotively.

And today?

I gave Russ at Jack Scoville Nissan in Corvallis a $500 credit card deposit to hold a soon-to-arrive blue 2011 Leaf for us. Obviously, something changed to make us change our minds again, after we initially changed our minds about getting a Nissan Leaf.

Well, a few weeks ago The EV Project notified me that my application to get a free 240 volt Level 2 charging station installed in our garage had been approved. This could be up to a $1,200 value. Plus, the cost of a Level 2 charging port on the Leaf would be paid for, which I think saves us another $750 or so.

This was good news, but I'd still said "no thanks" when someone from Cherry City Electric phoned and wanted to schedule an appointment to make sure that our garage was ready for a charging station.

I told the woman that we'd decided to pass on buying a Leaf. However, a few days later I decided to take another look at the Nissan Leaf web site. I was curious about whether the 2012 model was much different from the 2011.

It is, but not hugely.

I learned that the 2012 Leaf has more standard equipment: a cold weather package (battery heater, heated seats and steering wheel, and other stuff) plus the Level 2 rapid charger. This reviewer was unexcited about Nissan charging more for this new standard equipment on the SL (high end) Leaf than the equipment cost as options on the 2011 model.

Still, my first thought was that the battery heater would extend the 2012 Leaf's range, since batteries work more efficiently when they're warm.

Russ corrected me about this when we talked today. He told me that the battery heater only kicks on when the temperature reaches 15 degrees F, which is essentially never here in western Oregon. The battery heater is just for making sure the car starts in really cold weather.

But researching the 2012 Leaf had gotten me interested again in an electric car. So I decided to phone the first buyers of a Leaf in Salem, Richard and Pauline Mather, green pioneers who were profiled in this SolarFlareBlog post.

Pauline returned my call, leaving such a wonderfully enthusiastic message about how much they love their Leaf her voice mail time on our Qwest service ran out. So she called again to finish her thoughts. This time my wife could answer the phone and got more positive information.

Assuaging much of my "range anxiety," Pauline said they sometimes return to their home with a greater charge in their Leaf than when they left by using regenerative breaking and other techniques.

This sounds sort of like perpetual motion to me, which defies the laws of physics, but I'm open to the possibility that such can happen. More importantly, Pauline responded to a concern I'd expressed in my own voice mail by saying, "You shouldn't worry at all about living six miles from the Salem city limits."

Today I asked Russ, the Corvallis Nissan salesman, how often he had been stranded in his own Leaf.

"Never," he said, though he admitted that he'd purposely drained the battery a few times to see what happened to the car. Russ also told me that none of the 30 or so people who have bought Leafs from his dealership have run out of electricity.

After I'd requested a quote on a 2012 Leaf, I'd gotten an email from Jack Scoville Nissan saying that a blue 2011 Leaf might be available for quick delivery. When I phoned Russ to ask about the car, he said we'd save about $3,000 if we got a 2011 Leaf rather than a 2012.

That's a lot to pay for heated seats. And a battery warmer we'd likely never use.

So we decided to put down a deposit on the 2011 Leaf which is due to arrive in a week or so. Before then we'll probably head down to Corvallis and take a test drive, either in Russ' own car or a demo vehicle at the dealership.

Who knows? We might change our minds again. But getting a Leaf feels right this time around. Avid environmentalists that we are, we want to support the emerging electric vehicle industry.

Oregon is a leader in the construction of public charging stations. Fairly soon it will be possible to do a Level 3 charge of an electric vehicle every 50 miles, or thereabouts, all along I-5 between the Canadian and California borders. Stations also will be on routes leading to, and along, the Oregon coast.

My wife and I don't like to drive long distances at a stretch. We, well, like to get out of our car and stretch. So stopping for 30 minutes to get a Leaf 80% charged, providing another 70 miles or more of traveling, isn't worrisome for us.

Stay tuned to this blog for more electric car news. The times, they are a-changin'. And, probably, charging.

Lars Larson's unnatural view of the world

I enjoy listening to right-wing talk radio because I believe in "know your enemy."

Reality- based progressives like me who respect science and truth, unlike many Republicans, find it hard to understand how so-called conservatives are willing to embrace obvious falsehoods.

I say so-called, because my interest in politics began in the 60's, fueled by my mother's rabid Republicanism. Yet she also loved science, nature, preserving the environment. She was a conservationist, which used to have something to do with "conservative."

No more. Not in the Tea Party crazed Republican Party of today, where scientific truths have become dirty words.

(Not in China, though, where clean energy and other high tech industries are being massively supported by the government -- which threatens American supremacy in applied science.)

This afternoon I tuned into the local Lars Larson show on KXL to get additional insights into the often weirdly-functioning right-wing mind. Larson took a call from a guy who cogently argued why top predators like wolves are an important part of the natural Oregon ecosystem.

The caller also thought that runs of wild salmon needed to be preserved. Larson couldn't grasp what he was saying. Notions of ecology, balances of nature, feedback loops, sustainability and such apparently couldn't penetrate Larson's simplistic view of reality.

"If something is good for humans," Larson said, "then we should do it."

The caller tried to explain that we human beings are dependent on the natural world for our survival. If we screw up the oceans, forests, agricultural land, water supplies, energy sources, and so on, then what is "good" today (strip mining, over fishing, deforestation, overdrawing of aquifers, etc.) is going to be "bad" for us tomorrow.

This is so obvious. Yet a dismayingly large number of right-wingers fail to recognize an undeniable truth: we humans are animals, albeit intelligent ones, who are as dependent on the natural world for our survival as any other animal is.

Our actions have consequences.

If we mindlessly kill off other species; if we pollute the air, water, or earth; if we rapidly warm the planet in a fashion that no other animal has ever done before; if we exhaust the world's fossil fuel energy supplies without developing renewable sources; then...

We're screwed. Which means: ignore Lars Larson'ish right-wing wrong-headedness. Be a genuine conservative and work to conserve Earth's habitability for human life.

Republican presidential candidates disrespect reality

Whenever the current crop of Republican presidential candidates make a public utterance, I think, Reality is a terrible thing to waste.

WIth a single exception, Jon Huntsman, they don't care whether what they're saying is fact-based, scientifically-defensible, or otherwise firmly rooted in demonstrable consensual reality.

They just spout off about whatever is politically expedient. If Republican primary voters demand crazy talk from a candidate, that's what they're given.

This is dangerous.

What if one of these reality-deniers somehow becomes President of the United States? Who wants the leader of our country to be out of touch with what is really happening in the world? How could this person make sound decisions if he or she capable of understanding the difference between truth and illusion?

Recently one of the leading candidates, Texas governor Rick Perry, opined that evolution is "a theory that's out there." Yeah, just like there's a theory out there that the Earth wasn't created fully formed by God ten thousand years ago. And that our planet isn't flat, but round.

Perry also doesn't believe in global warming, another sign of his reality deficiency. This caused his rival, Jon Huntsman, to warn about the consequences of the Republican Party becoming ridiculously anti-science.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s denial of global warming poses a “serious problem” for Republicans trying to take back the White House in 2012, presidential rival Jon Huntsman says.

“The minute that the Republican Party becomes the party – the anti-science party, we have a huge problem. We lose a whole lot of people who would otherwise allow us to win the election in 2012,” the former Utah governor said in an interview that aired Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”

“When we take a position that isn't willing to embrace evolution, when we take a position that basically runs counter to what 98 of 100 climate scientists have said, what the National Academy of Sciences has said about what is causing climate change and man's contribution to it,” he said, “I think we find ourselves on the wrong side of science, and, therefore, in a losing position.”

Perry's talking points on global warming are, simply put, lies. He said, “I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their — to their projects.”

Not true. Every investigation of climate scientists has cleared them of charges that data has been manipulated in some nefarious fashion. Here's the truth:

While the anti-science extremists who rule the Tea Party and the right-wing bunkosphere keep shouting lies about the Hockey Stick and Mann — and urging their followers to “shout down” science-based commenters on independent websites — the vindications of the science and the man are reported as quietly as if they came from the Whos of Whoville.

And so after countless investigations — 3 in the U.K., 2 by Penn State, the EPA, the NOAA IG — that have all unanimously found the allegations against climate scientists and their research conclusions based on the hacked “ClimateGate” emails to be wholly unsubstantiated, a top GOP presidential candidate backed by the fossil fuel industry still gives voice to the Texas-sized lie (see “Denier Rick Perry Takes $11 Million from Big Oil, Then Claims Climate Scientists ‘Manipulated Data’ For Money“).

We reality-lovers have to keep fighting back.

I don't want my four year old granddaughter to grow up in a country led by politicians who ignore the truth about what is happening in the world. If I got on a bus and saw that the driver was blind, I'd change my mind about trusting that means of transportation.

Hopefully voters will realize that the Republican Party is similarly deficient in the clear vision needed to guide the path of the United States. When leading politicans aren't willing to look reality in the face, citizens should ignore them in the voting booth.

Warning: corn is more dangerous than it looks

Ears of corn. They seem so natural, so innocent, all wrapped up in their tight green leafy kimonos, begging to be stripped naked and devoured with lustful buttery zeal.

(Guess I've been watching too much Stephen Colbert "cornography.")

But when you get them home... watch out.

Yesterday I found out how dangerous corn can be. I don't want anyone else to suffer needlessly like I did, so I'm getting my story out onto the Internet in hopes of saving other innocent victims from what I've gone through.

I stopped at a farm stand where I've been buying fruit all summer. After getting a box of berries, I noticed that corn now was available. Unthinkingly, not recognizing the danger I was putting myself in, I bought six ears.

They looked so fresh, I decided to eat one for an energy boost before heading off on my late afternoon dog walk. Not wanting to delay the family pet's Big Joy in Life, sticking an ear in the microwave seemed the fastest cooking option.

I chose four minutes. On high. In a covered glass bowl with some water inside. Good choice. When I took the cover off and felt the kernels they seemed just right: firmly soft, taut yet yielding.

After adding some butter and salt I took my first bite. Which was almost instantly followed by my first profanity. Goddamn hot! So hot, I couldn't believe it, because I'd let the ear of corn cool for, oh, I don't know, can't remember exactly, but it was at least 30 seconds.

Plenty of time for a large ear of corn to reach a comfortable eating temperature after only being in a microwave on high for four minutes. Plenty.

So, scientifically minded guy that I am, I repeated the experiment to see if my initial results were a statistical anomaly. Maybe just a few corn molecules had bucked the thermodynamic entropic odds, ending up in a hotter state rather than cooler after being removed from the microwave, and I'd had the bad luck of eating them.

I had a second bite. And uttered a second profanity. Goddamn hot! Now I could feel some burned spots inside my mouth even though by this time the corn had cooled for well over a minute.

It just didn't seem possible that an ear of corn could stay so hot for so long. Given the unlikelihood that it could, I continued to eat the corn, ritualistically uttering Goddamn hot! after each bite.

This morning, when I brushed my teeth, I could feel how tender the inside of my mouth was. The damn corn had seriously burned me!

The first person I warned about corn today was my wife. When I told her how dangerous corn could be, describing in detail how I carefully prepared an ear of corn yet still was burned by it, she said:

"This is why women live longer than men."

Why she came up with this uncompassionate response is beyond me. There was no warning sign at the farm stand -- or better, attached to each ear of corn -- alerting consumers to the risks of cooking corn in a microwave and then eating it.

What the hell is the Food and Drug Adminstration doing? Why hasn't the Product Safety Commission stepped in? I can't believe that I'm the first overly-trusting purchaser of corn who thought he was buying a safe vegetable.

How many more people are going to needlessly suffer after biting into a microwaved ear of corn? How many more innocent people will have their pain amplified by repeated mouth-burnings, as happened to me?

Even one more is too many. So forward this blog post to friends, relatives, co-workers, and loved ones -- especially those at greatest risk.

On the off chance my wife is correct, focus on the men you know.

Tai Chi shows how to handle aggression

I love how Tai Chi demonstrates a hugely practical philosophy of life through physical movement. Other activities do this also -- ballroom dancing comes to mind -- but Tai Chi is unique in that it explicitly embodies philosophical Taoist principles.

Tonight, I was paired up with my Tai Chi instructor, Warren, as his class practiced the self-defense application of the Fair Lady movements (with a follow step).

Warren and I have a lot of marital arts experience -- he more than me, naturally. And his Tai Chi background is much deeper than mine. Yet both of us were surprised at what we learned after only a few practice punches that were countered by Fair Lady deflections.

At first I handled Warren's straight right jab with excessive force. My technique was very gentle by traditional karate standards, yet considerably more "yang" (energetic, blunt, rigid) than Tai Chi expects.

"Try being softer," Warren said. "Don't use so much force." I did. And was amazed.

The less effort I put into deflecting a punch, and then controlling Warren's follow-up left cross, the more impressive the result. I'd learned this many times before during other Tai Chi classes, but somehow this evening the lesson came through with unusual clarity.

Meeting force with force is counterproductive. Flowingly redirecting someone's aggressive energy is the best first move. Control follows, as their attack falters by being met with an absorbing response, not a brittle one.

Warren and I played around with various attacking and defending styles. If he punched hard, and I blocked in a similar fashion, we ended up face-to-face. Neither of us had much of an advantage, but since Warren was moving forward with aggressive energy, he was better suited to follow up on the initial punch/block standoff.

This is how fight scenes in Kung Fu movies often look: bam! pow! oof! aiyeeah! Punches and blocks follow each other in rapid fashion. He who moves fastest and strongest wins.

That isn't the Tai Chi way. And by and large, it isn't the best way to handle aggression -- physical, mental, verbal, emotional -- in everyday life.

We found that a hard, brittle, rigid, strong response to an initial attack slowed down the defender. Rather strangely, the faster I moved to handle Warren's first punch, the slower I was able to handle his succeeding punches.

Softness, relaxation, calmness: moving with these "yin" qualities resulted in Warren being controlled to a much greater degree than when I tried to respond to him with the same "yang" energy he aimed at me.

Most of us have a natural inclination to strike back hard when we feel we're being attacked. However, Tai Chi practice demonstrates that this usually is counter-productive. It's better to respond with an inner "OK... no big deal" as you deflect the aggression with a fingertip's worth of effort rather than a strong bunch of muscle.

It isn't always possible to flow with life. Sometimes we need to forcefully interject ourselves into a situation without caring what gets broken. But much of the time we overdo, overtry, overstress.

Before I wrote this post, I checked my Twitter feed and saw that our dance instructor, Lora, had shared a waltz video. These marvelous professional dancers aren't doing Tai Chi, and yet they are.

This is flow. This is Tai Chi. This is life.

 

 

Marion County clips wings of anti-govt "Gathering of the Eagles"

Ah, I so love it when a right-wing, self-righteous, anti-government group gets caught doing something illegal and has to bow down before the rule of law.

Earlier this month Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, conservative Portland talk show hosts Lars Larson and Victoria Taft, plus a bunch of other Tea Party types assembled for a "Gathering of the Eagles" at the Ames Ranch in normally sleepy Jefferson, Oregon -- between Salem and Albany, just off I-5.

However, the organizers somehow ignored the fact that the crowd of more than a thousand people needed a permit from Marion County in order to legally assemble.

Of course, this inconvenient truth likely would irritate the don't tread on me sensibilities of Gathering of the Eagles, who say on their web site:

Dear Ladies, Gentlemen, and Patriots.

Again, we gather as patriots for a common cause because of over taxation and the oppression of government.

I say to you, silence in the face of evil is evil. Our God will hold us guilty. Not to speak is to speak for evil. Not to act means the destruction of our nation and our very freedoms which men died for. We are the beneficiaries of that righteous sacrifice. We are the trustees of their ultimate gift.

...Together we have picked up the gauntlet and we gather together for the battle to take back what is rightfully ours. Freedom, God, and the principles that we believe in, principles that the government has lost. Our Enemies are socialism, liberals, excessive taxes, and more taxes after taxes until we have nothing for our businesses or ourselves.

Who prospers? Socialism and government employees. But while the government prospers, people suffer, businesses leave or die, and employment dies. Socialism always fails.

OK. But you still need a permit.

The "oppressive government" of Marion County Code Enforcement sprang into action when the number of people attending this year's Gathering of the Eagles was brought to their attention (not by me).

Acoording to a Marion County staffer, a letter was sent to the organizers telling them to obey the law next time.

The letter advised them of the need to get a mass gathering permit if they intend to hold another event next year.  We sent the letter to the property owner as our enforcement ordinance "holds"  the property owner responsible for an event that occurs on his/her property.
 
We will certainly keep an eye on this for next year.  The letter also advised them of the need to begin the permit process several months in advance.  That should "do the trick".

Good work. Nobody is above the law, especially people who seem to believe that they are beyond the law.

The Gathering of the Eagles needs to realize that patriots come in a marvelously diverse variety of forms.

Public officials are patriots. Private citizens are patriots. Gays are patriots. Heterosexuals are patriots. Liberals are patriots. Conservatives are patriots. Atheists are patriots. Religious believers are patriots.

There's a whole lot that isn't right with The Gathering of the Eagles. Here's a few examples of wrong-headed thinking from their statement of "what we believe."

We believe in a Godly nation and a Christian nation. We believe that God exists and He has made himself known. We believe that certain spiritual truths exist in all free governments and that these pillars of faith must be maintained in our government to guarantee our freedoms.

...We believe that Liberalism and Socialism is the enemy of our people.

...We believe that government administrators should not have more power than any one man.

...We believe People have the right to bear arms and the duty to overthrow their Government when it fails to perform and when resolution and legislation fail to correct it.

...We believe administrations who violate our constitutional rights and lawmakers who pass laws they do not read should be held accountable and not only sent home for their wrong doings but punished to the full extent of the law.

OK. Thanks for sharing. But you still need a permit.

Rick Perry acts like an idiot (no big surprise)

Well, it didn't take long for Texas governor Rick Perry to demonstrate why he is utterly, completely, 100% unsuited to be president of the United States.

Even supporters of George Bush like Karl Rove are outraged by Perry using "treasonous" to describe the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, and threatening Bernanke with "ugly" treatment in Texas.

Does this guy look presidential to you? Twenty-five other states have lower unemployement than Texas, and it is tied with Mississippi for the most minimium wage workers. Not exactly a model for our country.

 

Patti Milne oversaw the failure of Salem's Courthouse Square

Today's front page story in the Salem Statesman Journal is headlined, "Courthouse Square's Red Flags." Subtitle: Project's failures extend beyond bad engineering

Yeah, no kidding.

The county commissioners in office when construction problems first started to become apparent looked the other way, even though the project manager recommended taking action.

When cracks appeared at the tops of columns during construction of Courthouse Square in 2000, the defects were taken seriously by Melvin Mark Development Co., a Portland firm hired as a project manager.

The cracks were in critical locations beneath the bus mall at Courthouse Square. Melvin Mark wanted to be "absolutely certain the structural integrity of the bus mall has not been, and will not be, compromised," the company stated in a Feb. 18, 2000, letter to the project's architect.

Melvin Mark recommended getting a second engineering opinion about the cracks. Marion County and transit district officials agreed, according to a February letter from Melvin Mark to Arbuckle Costic Architects.

That second opinion was never received. In fact, it was never even sought.

Instead, Mike Hayford, the structural engineer who designed Courthouse Square, was summoned by county and transit officials. He proclaimed in a July 11, 2000, letter that the cracks were "cosmetic in nature and need only be patched and or epoxy-injected."

Ten years after Hayford's assurances, city building and safety officials ordered the evacuation of the Courthouse Square office building and the closure of the adjoining bus mall. Engineers now say the cracks were a symptom of structural problems that a shot of epoxy didn't cure.

How could this happen? How could Courthouse Square, a modern structure built by professionals, simply begin to collapse?

Excellent questions by the reporter who wrote the story, Michael Rose. Unfortunately, apparently he didn't ask them of Patti Milne, a Republican Marion County Commissioner who is still in office.

Milne became a county commissioner in January 1999, so she was one of the decision-makers who decided to ignore the warning signs pointed out by the Melvin Mark firm.

Now the $34 million building might not be repairable, and about $20 million still is owed on it, with only a comparative pittance ($1.8 million) likely recoverable from insurance.

It's a debacle.

Yet Milne and others directly involved at the time are running away from their responsibility for letting Courthouse Square problems get more and more serious, while turning a blind eye to them.

Reporter Rose should have asked Milne why, after she had been in office for more than a year, as county commissioner she didn't follow up on the Melvin Mark recommendation to get a second engineering opinion about the concrete cracks.

Instead, Milne trusted the guy who designed Courthouse Square. Not surprisingly, he didn't find any big problems with his work. Milne believed him. Eleven years later, we now learn this was a $34 million mistake.

Taxpayers and voters should expect elected officials to be honest, straightforward, and accountable. Commissioner Milne possesses none of these qualities, as shown by a quote in today's story.

Marion County Commissioner Patti Milne, who first took office in January 1999, said decisions on contracts and the final go-ahead on Courthouse Square were made prior to her taking a seat on the commission."I don't believe I was responsible for what happened because there could have been decisions made I was not aware of," Milne said.

What a cop out. Yes, Ms. Milne, you are responsible for what happened.

What happened is that serious problems with concrete problems became apparent in February 2000. You were a county commissioner then. These problems were ignored by you and other county officials, even though Marion County was the owner of Courthouse Square, along with the transit district.

Nobody expects public officials to be perfect. It'd be fine for Milne to say, "I screwed up. I should have done my job better. I'm sorry."

That'd be courageous, forthright, truthful. Instead, we get ridiculous excuses: "I didn't approve the construction plans, so I'm not responsible for what might be a total loss on Courthouse Square."

Yes, you are.

You ignored obvious early warning signs that the building hadn't been constructed properly. Those problems continued to be ignored by you and your fellow Republican commissioners. They grew worse.

Patti Milne made a $34 million mistake. She should acknowledge it.

"Salemia" intro looks more interesting than Salem

Ever since I heard about this video production I've been excited about "Salemia," our capital city's response to "Portlandia," a television series about Oregon's metropolitian centerpiece of hip, sustainable, cutting-edge coolness.

Which doesn't describe Salem in the slightest.

Our convention center attracts groups like Center for the Enthusiastic Appreciation of Paint Drying. The most frequent diagnosis at the Salem Hospital E.R. is acute episode of Chronic Boredom Syndrome.

But we do have some talented film makers in the personages of Mike Perron and David Jenkins, who recently teased our Salemia-starved appetite with a one minute intro to the production.

 

I like it.

And I'm not saying that because I appear for a whole three seconds, from 0:19 to 0:21, though this fact admittedly does have some bearing on me being responsible for a healthy share of the current crop of You Tube views (most of the rest likely coming from the computers of Perron and Jenkins).

Way back in the '60s, Andy Warhol talked about how everybody would be entitled to fifteen minutes of fame. Given how things have speeded up, three seconds seems closer to the truth.

So this could be mine. Guess I need to milk it as much as possible.

If "Salemia" ever becomes the huge cinematic success that it deserves (though probably the history of artistic expression will look more kindly upon the production if it becomes longer than one minute and one second), students of this genre will discuss every moment of the Salemia Intro in excruciating detail.

Thus for posterity I shall offer up some revealing insights into my actor frame of mind after I was given a brilliant directorial instruction by Mike Perron, "why don't you go rummage through that trash can?"

In my middle-class life I haven't done much rummaging through public trash cans. So for inspiration I had to draw upon the times my wife has said, "I hope you didn't throw away that piece of paper that's been sitting around for a long time. It's really important."

However, upon lifting the lid I immediately realized that this receptacle on the Capitol Mall contained different stuff from our home trash can. Most obviously, a lot of McDonald's debris.

The photo above captured a moment of hesitation which likely is an accurate reflection of choices faced daily by actual transients. There's quite a bit left in this milkshake container; should I suck it out through the straw?

Art intersected with reality. I was torn between an impetus for Cinéma vérité and a desire to not get a nasty stomach bug. In the end I foreswore the straw, in part because I only like vanilla milkshakes and wasn't sure what flavor was in the container.

There's much more I could say about those three seconds. But too much explication of fine art detracts from the je ne sais quoi which is just about all the French I know, and so feels great to squeeze into a blog post whenever I can.

Here's another Salemia-related video from Perron and Jenkins. These guys have a great sense of humor.

 

Rick Perry is off to a rocky start with God

Here's a terrific piece about Rick Perry's reliance on religious fundamentalism rather than facts when it comes to governing, "Rick Perry's Unanswered Prayers." Doesn't seem to be working for him.

A few months ago, with Texas aflame from more than 8,000 wildfires brought on by extreme drought, a man who hopes to the next president took pen in hand and went to work:

“Now, therefore, I, Rick Perry, Governor of Texas, under the authority vested in me by the Constitution and Statutes of the State of Texas, do hereby proclaim the three-day period from Friday, April 22, 2011, to Sunday, April 24, 2011, as Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of Texas.”

Then the governor prayed, publicly and often.  Alas, a rainless spring was followed by a rainless summer. July was the hottest month in recorded Texas history. Day after pitiless day, from Amarillo to Laredo, from Toadsuck to Twitty, folks  were greeted by a hot, white bowl overhead, triple-digit temperatures, and a slow death on the land.

In the four months since Perry’s request for divine intervention, his state has taken a dramatic turn for the worse.  Nearly all of Texas  is now in “extreme or exceptional” drought, as classified by federal meteorologists, the worst in Texas history.

Fortunately, I don't see how American voters ever would choose him over President Obama, even if he gets the Republican nomination. If Republicans weren't so hooked on batshit crazy candidates, Obama could be in trouble.

God also has responded to Rick Perry's prayer rally. And not positively, not at all. God is pissed at Perry, which helps explain the continued drought.

Obama should be willing to crash and burn

I want to see President Obama jet high into the political skies with his afterburner on full blast. Then, he needs to dive bomb the warring factions in Congress with every weapon at his disposal.

Like I said before, Obama has got to become more extreme, crazier, committed, dangerous.

If he crashes and burns, fine. I'll strongly support him up to and through his 2012 electoral destruction -- so long as he starts to fight hard for what most of the American people want: balance, moderation, centrism.

Polls show that a majority of the public favors raising taxes on the wealthiest people and corporations to help reduce the deficit. They also don't want domestic programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Secuirty slashed to the bone, preferring cuts in unnecessary military spending.

Our country needs Obama to stand up and start acting like a president.

He has to start leading rather than following Congress' footsteps. He has to lay out a vision for America that will make citizens stand up and cheer rather than thinking "just more empty words." He has to plant himself firmly on the political mid-field stripe rather than edging toward the right whenever Republicans push him in that direction.

In short, Obama should become wildly moderate, the craziest sane guy in Washington, an extreme warrior for the political middle.

Today the Republican party is controlled by its most rabid conservatives. But the same isn't true of the Democratic party. Fervent progressives aren't given as loud a voice from the left as the Tea Party gets from the right.

So up to now, Obama has negotiated with Republican leaders from a shaky position in the political middle.

Then when they drag him toward the right, he goes along. Understandably this irritates the Democratic base, which wonders why compromise always ends up with a rightward tilt instead of splitting the difference between the extreme left and extreme right -- which leads to genuine middle ground.

Unless Obama is willing to stake his presidency on defending the political center, his first term will feel frustratingly flat to once-enthusiastic supporters like me. Obama's re-election chances also will be lessened considerably if he continues to show so little backbone.

Voters don't want a weenie as their president. Firm principled stands are admired, especially when the country's leader straddles the middle ground and fends off attacks from the far left and right.

As Barry Goldwater didn't say, "Extremism in the defense of moderation is no vice." Obama can start by declaring (and meaning it, this time) that tax increases on wealthy individuals and corporations have to be an integral part of any further deficit reduction plans.

That's balanced, moderate, centrist, a position favored by a clear majority of the American people. Obama has to say that he will veto any legislation passed by Congress that doesn't find common ground between the extremes of left ("no entitlement cuts!") and right ("no new taxes!").

I'd rather see him be a one-term president who crashed and burned, than someone who never got his Centrist Jet very far off the ground.

What's most irksome about the S&P downgrade

Today I invested 18 minutes of my life in watching a self-serving video on Standard & Poor's "CreditMatters" multimedia web page. I was curious to see how two high-ranking executives defended their downgrade of the U.S. credit rating.

As I watched David Beers, Standard & Poor's Global Head of Sovereign Ratings, and John Chambers, Chairman of the Sovereign Ratings Committee, I got increasingly irritated at them.

They struck me as detached, rich, overly self-confident Wall Street types who enjoyed being fed canned questions by another S&P employee. I'd already read the S&P report that described the downgrade, so didn't learn much new.

In fact, Beers and Chambers ignored some key facts in their report that I blogged about previously.

Notably, that new federal revenues (a.k.a. tax increases, such as on high earners) would make S&P look more favorably on an improved U.S. fiscal situation -- they liked to say "fiscal consolidation" for some reason, and said "sovereigns" instead of "nations."

Their key points weren't exactly news from out of the blue. The U.S. government deficits are too large (duh...) and political paralysis is the order of the day in Washington, D.C. (double duh...).

So it's difficult to understand what the point of the downgrade from AAA to AA+ was. Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman challenges S&P's credibility, which helps explain why an incompetent organization came out with a report that essentially restates the obvious.

To understand the furor over the decision by Standard & Poor’s, the rating agency, to downgrade U.S. government debt, you have to hold in your mind two seemingly (but not actually) contradictory ideas. The first is that America is indeed no longer the stable, reliable country it once was. The second is that S.& P. itself has even lower credibility; it’s the last place anyone should turn for judgments about our nation’s prospects.

True. But here's what really irks me about the S&P downgrade.

I've heard that Wall Street now is filled with mathematical genius types who graduated from M.I.T. or CalTech with a Ph.D. in physics and have chosen to rake in big bucks on Wall Street.

Well, you'd think that some of these guys would have let Standard & Poor's know about a basic principle in quantum physics: the observer is part of an experimental situation. There's no such thing as a totally detached perspective.

Watching the S&P executives talk, I didn't get any sense that they understood how their downgrade would affect stock and bond markets. And hence, virtually every American in some way or another.

Downgrading the national (oops, "sovereign") credit rating isn't like alerting bond investors that General Electric might have some upcoming earnings difficulties. Analyzing a corporation's financial situation is much different from what S&P did in its report on the federal budget outlook.

S&P is an integral part of the national financial system.

What it did is much more akin to a physicist deciding to perform a "two slit" experiment on light and thereby finding that photons behave like waves rather than particles, than like a biologist sitting on a mountaintop far removed from the plains below, charting migration patterns of wildebeest.

Standard & Poors surely realized that its federal credit downgrade would have a large effect on already spooked stock markets. Today American stock exchanges lost 6-7% of their value. That's more than large, it's huge for a one-day drop.

Now a double-dip recession appears a lot more likely. This will reduce federal revenues markedly, and increase federal expenditures for unemployment insurance, low-income health programs, job training, and such.

So S&P's warning that the U.S. government faces serious fiscal problems -- which already was obvious -- will help produce what the report warned about. To me, this is highly irresponsible.

Stephen Colbert likes to say, "the market has spoken." Today, it sure did. Investors flocked to U.S. Treasury bonds, driving the price up and the yield down, while selling stocks like crazy -- fearing an economic downturn.

This should cause S&P to engage in some serious self-reflection. Investors aren't buying the notion that federal debt is a risky proposition. What they're afraid of is another recession, a scary proposition given that this country was just crawling its way out of the last one.

What Standard & Poors did with its downgrade was akin to someone leaving a bunch of baseball bats lying around a biker bar, then predicting, after paying for a long night of hard drinking, "guys are going to get hit on the head."

Again: duh....

S&P is worried that the federal government's budget deficits will continue to be unduly large. Well, as noted above it looks like S&P's report expressing this worry is going to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The other big concern of S&P is a lack of common ground and consensus between Republicans and Democrats. Yet the downgrade has spurred even more finger-pointing. "It's a Tea Party downgrade!" "Obama is responsible for losing our AAA rating!"

Thanks a lot, Standard & Poors. So far, for nothing.

A Daily Kos post has a theory about who benefits from the S&P downgrade: S&P. I hate to think that this could be true, that a Wall Street firm could be so willing to feather it's own nest at the expense of the national interest.

But I suppose I shouldn't be. Here's an excerpt:

S&P's history of making superficial, self-serving ratings designed to do nothing more than pad their own pockets had left their reputation in such tatters that they had only one choice. They made another superficial, self-serving rating designed to do nothing more than pad their own pockets.

The purpose of the downgrade isn't to warn against U.S. policy or generate any change. Its only point is to generate publicity for S&P and to try and restore some of the importance and respectability to the company's reputation that decades of careless, lax, regulation-free operation have eroded.

It's an ad campaign designed to fight the real downgrade, the one that S&P applied to their own value by the simply awful quality of their work. So far, it seems to be a pretty good effort. Certainly people are paying a lot more attention to S&P than they have in years and citing them as if they have biblical authority.

Unvarnished truth about the S&P downgrade

There's nothing like going to the source. Politicians are trying to spin the S&P downgrade of the federal government's credit rating in all sorts of self-serving ways.

I recommend taking a few minutes to read the short (eight pages) report for yourself. You might be as surprised as I was to see how the unvarnished truth about how this corner of Wall Street views our nation's finances.

Here's a link to a PDF file of the Standard & Poors Research Update, "United States of America Long-Term Rating Lowered To 'AA+' On Political Risks And Rising Debt Burden; Outlook Negative." (Or download it yourself from the S&P web site.)
Download US_Downgraded_AA+

I agree with the report's pessimism about the ability of Congress to competently deal with our fiscal problems. The wrangling over the debt limit increase was horrifying -- both to Amercian citizens and the rest of the world.

Republican intransigence, fueled by Tea Party rigidity over the size and role of government ("No Tax Increases! Ever!"), appears to be the main reason the federal credit rating got it's first-ever downgrade.

The S&P report clearly is looking for moderation, balance, compromise. Here's some excerpts about tax/revenue increases which haven't gotten as much press as they deserve. (I've boldfaced some pertinent points.)

We lowered our long-term rating on the U.S. because we believe that the prolonged controversy over raising the statutory debt ceiling and the related fiscal policy debate indicate that further near-term progress containing the growth in public spending, especially on entitlements, or on reaching an agreement on raising revenues is less likely than we previously assumed and will remain a contentious and fitful process.

...Republicans and Democrats have only been able to agree to relatively modest savings on discretionary spending while delegating to the Select Committee decisions on more comprehensive measures. It appears that for now, new revenues have dropped down on the menu of policy options.

...Compared with previous projections, our revised base case scenario now assumes that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, due to expire by the end of 2012, remain in place. We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues, a position we believe Congress reinforced by passing the act. Key macroeconomic assumptions in the base case scenario include trend real GDP growth of 3% and consumer price inflation near 2% annually over the decade.

Our revised upside scenario--which, other things being equal, we view as
consistent with the outlook on the 'AA+' long-term rating being revised to stable--retains these same macroeconomic assumptions. In addition, it incorporates $950 billion of new revenues on the assumption that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for high earners lapse from 2013 onwards, as the Administration is advocating.

...The outlook on the long-term rating is negative. As our downside alternate fiscal scenario illustrates, a higher public debt trajectory than we currently assume could lead us to lower the long-term rating again. On the other hand, as our upside scenario highlights, if the recommendations of the Congressional Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction--independently or coupled with other initiatives, such as the lapsing of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for high earners--lead to fiscal consolidation measures beyond the minimum mandated, and we believe they are likely to slow the deterioration of the government's debt dynamics, the long-term rating could stabilize at 'AA+'.

Get the picture? It's damn clear. Ending the Bush tax cuts for high income people would be good news to Standard & Poors. Tax increases would help stabilize our country's credit rating at the dowrgraded AA+ level.

However, the baseline scenario is that the Bush tax cuts will stay in place. If this happens, the lack of increased federal revenue will contribute to a likely further downgrading by Standard & Poors.

This is exactly what President Obama and Congressional Democrats have been saying. Hopefully the S&P report will knock some sense into Republican brains. Spending cuts and revenue increases are both needed to get our fiscal problems under control.

This is what American voters want. This is what Wall Street wants. If the Republican Party persists in its crazy No revenue increases! pledge, it's 2012 election prospects are going to be found wanting as well.

People with American flags are terrorists

My wife and I get a lot of emails from conservatives and other right-minded folks who want to alert us to threats against America.

It's amazing what we've learned from these messages. I had no idea how far along Obama, Congressional Democrats, and other progressives are in their plans to destroy the United States.

Did you know that the health care reform bill allows Obama to form a private army? Oh, its true. It must be, because I heard about this through the Internet.

Well, we're grateful for these alerts. Now we want to do our part to keep America strong by passing along some IMPORTANT INFORMATION that we've become privy to.

Be sure to share this blog post with your friends, family, co-workers, complete strangers, everybody in your address book, anybody you've ever communicated with since elementary school, all of your Facebook friends, the people in line with you at the grocery store checkout counter, and anyone else you can think of.

Also, all of the people you can't think of. That's how CRUCIAL IT IS to get out this IMPORTANT INFORMATION.

Which is: Everybody who flies an American flag is a terrorist. Also, anybody who wears an American flag lapel pin.

Watch out for these people.

Once your eyes are open, you'll see the terrorists everywhere, hiding in plain sight. It's so obvious, now that their secret has been revealed -- the more patriotic they appear outwardly, the easier it is for them to hatch their terror plans without anybody suspecting.

UNTIL NOW. Thanks to the IMPORTANT INFORMATION we're sharing here.

You might be wondering, "What proof is there that people with American flags are terrorists?" Don't! Don't wonder! DO NOT fall into their trap! This is what THEY WANT -- uncertainty, thinking, skepticism, fact-checking.

If you want certainty, here's what you can be certain about: Almost certainly, if you look closely into the lives of people who brandish American flags, you won't find ANY evidence that they are terrorists.

That's HOW GOOD they are. That's HOW DEEP they've infiltrated themselves into the fabric of our society. They appear EXACTLY like us actual patriotic Americans. Except, they've gone overboard, a FATAL MISTAKE.

During their terrorist training they were instructed to fly American flags at their homes and businesses, and to wear lapel pins with the Stars and Stripes. So this is how we can IDENTIFY THEM!!!

I can't emphasize too much how important it is to TAKE THIS MESSAGE SERIOUSLY. There's an enemy within, masquerading as normal patriotic citizens. They have an astounding number of tricks that they employ to keep their terrorist nature secret. Flying the American flag is just the tip of an iceberg.

If our campaign to SAVE AMERICA takes off, thanks to YOUR HELP in sharing this blog post with everybody in the country, we can expect that the terrorists will fire up a disinformation campaign.

So if your faith in the TRUTH OF THIS MESSAGE ever falters, and you decide to check out Snopes, FactCheck, PolitiFact, or some other tool of those seeking to undermine the American way of life -- DON"T BELIEVE WHAT YOU FIND THERE.

People with American flags are terrorists. That's all you need to know. The truth is simple. Pass it on.

My favorite stock market crash headline

"Stocks plunge on fears of global turmoil." So says a banner New York TImes headline on its web site.

Um, here's an idea for the world's stock markets. Why don't you hold off on crashing 4-5% in a single day, like you did today, until there really is global turmoil?

Because you're producing the global turmoil that you're afraid of when the S&P 500 drops 4.8%, and other markets act similarly.

So tomorrow investors will be even more afraid of the global turmoil that their fear today helped create, likely leading to more maket declines.

Whatever economist came up with the notion of "rational actors"... please seek another profession.

Obama and the Dems need to get more extreme

President Obama, Senator Reid, Representative Pelosi -- here's what this proud progressive wants you to do from now on:

Get freaking crazy! Become as extreme on the left as Republicans are on the right. Act like you'll never compromise your revenue-raising, social program-preserving principles.

Yes, it was just two days ago that I blogged, "Maybe Obama is the centrist president I long for." I still believe that. But after further reflection I've come to agree with what E.J. Dionne said in a column that I quoted.

Obama’s advisers are said to be obsessed with the political center, but such a focus leads to a reactive politics that won’t motivate the hope crowd that elected him in the first place. Neither will it alter a discourse whose terms were set during most of this debt fight by the right.

There’s nothing wrong with moderation that immoderate doses of conviction and courage won’t cure.

Since the Republican party has veered way off to the right, we can't get back to the middle of the road by splitting the difference between a centrist and wildly conservative approach to deficit cutting.

That will leave us where we are now: with an unworkable rightward tilt. (Wall Street recognizes this, as witnessed by a J.P. Morgan report that notes how the lack of further stimulus measures will depress the economy.)

So the bipartisan Congressional committee established by the debt limit deal of six Democrats and six Republicans, equally divided between the House and Senate, needs to have hardcore progressives appointed by the Dems.

On the House side, I'd like to see Pelosi appoint some Dems who would make steam rise from Republican heads. For starters, how about a liberal gay guy (Barney Frank) and an in-your-face Jewish feminist (Debbie Wasserman Schultz)?

On the Senate side, Oregon's Ron Wyden deserves a seat at the table. He's got some good ideas for reforming the Infernal Revenue Service. Chris Weigant also suggests Wyden, and has some other ideas.

So it might behoove the liberal and progressive groups right about now to start lobbying Reid's office as hard as they know how, in order to get candidates named to the new joint budget committee who can be relied upon to protect Democratic core interests and support the core Democratic agenda in the negotiations to come.

Jon Stewart nailed the debt limit deal debacle in a segment on The Daily Show. I love the end of the clip (embedded below), where Obama says in December 2010, "I take John Boehner at his word" that the Republicans would never hold the nation's economic health hostage in order to reap political advantage.

That was amazingly naive then. It's utterly impossible to believe now.

Obama and the Dems have to become as intransigent on the need for the rich to pay more as the Republicans and the Tea Party have been on demanding that the elderly and poor bear the brunt of the price tag for curing our nation from the fiscal insanity that the Bush presidency brought upon us.

Here's the clip (click on the arrow to play):

The Daily Show
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