HinesSight

Serena and I slow-mo in Portland's Strut Your Mutt

Two Mutt Struts in a row! Serena and I rule! We got last. Again. Perfect.

Last month our twelve and a half year old Shepherd/Lab mix and me succeeded in our plan to bring up the rear in Salem's WillaMutt Strut. Yesterday, without even trying, we seemingly achieved the same result in Portland's Strut Your Mutt.

Laurel, my wife, signed us up because we adopted our younger dog, Zu Zu, from the Family Dogs New Life Shelter up Portland way, and she wanted to be part of the shelter's fund-raising team.

Here's Laurel with old dog and young dog soon after we arrived at the Laurelhurst Park event. Serena and Zu Zu look like they could be related, but they're distinctly different mutts.

And here's Laurel plus dogs just before the one mile'ish walk started. She took Zu Zu. I took Serena. Laurel likes to walk fast. That doesn't happen with Serena on the other end of a leash. Which is fine with me. I'm happy to go as slow as Serena wants to go.

Yesterday, that ranged from glacial to full-stop, depending on whether Serena was in a meandering or sniffing mood. 

By the time we got close to the end of the Laurelhurst Park loop, few Strut Your Mutt'ers were behind us. Then, so far as I could tell, we got passed by the only mutt that had been challenging Serena for slowness.

A dog with no front legs.

A dog that got around with the aid of a wheelchair-like appliance. When the dog passed us, I said to its owner, "Geez, we're getting passed by a dog with two legs. Could you get your dog to stop and sniff for a while, so my old dog could have a chance of not being last to the finish line?"

Actually, I was kidding. I wanted to be last. Serena and I like to stand out. Last is distinctive. Near the end of the pack, so plebian.

As if we had a choice. The "wheechair dog" could move remarkably well. It did like to sniff almost as much as Serena, but when it stopped sniffing and went back to walking/rolling, we got left in its wheeled wake. This was a non-competitive event, so we didn't get an award. 

In my own mind, though, Serena and I are #1. Counting from the end.

A guy backed into my Mini Cooper today...

So, this afternoon I pull out of the Lifesource Natural Foods parking lot here in Salem, carrot juice ready to be consumed as a healthy mini-lunch, and find myself behind a guy in a car who's also trying to turn onto Commercial Street.

He pulls forward, seemingly having spotted a break in the traffic. I drive forward a bit also, figuring that if he's going to turn onto Commercial, perhaps it'll be possible for me to get onto the street, after he does.

But after pulling forward, he stops, having changed his mind about turning. No problem, I think. I stop too. However, he then backs up, apparently figuring that he's pulled too far forward into the nearest Commercial Street lane.

Which is a problem. Because my Mini Cooper and me are behind him. Bump. His rear bumper and my front one connect at a few miles an hour.

One of those awkward everybody out of the car moments ensues. He says, "I'm sorry." Then, "Doesn't look like the scratches on my bumper are very serious." I look at my Mini's bumper. "Same here," I say, "no big deal."

He looks relieved. Says something about no reason to get insurance companies involved for something so minor. I agree. He extends his hand. I shake it. We get in our cars and drive away.

I wish more problems between people could be resolved like this. Reasonably. Calmly.

We could have argued about the micro-accident. There could have been some accusations exchanged. One of the other of us could have gotten excited about a few blemishes on our car. My car was much newer than his, so I suppose I had more reason to do this. Plus, he backed into me while I was stopped.

However, my attitude was life happens. A little touch-up paint, and both of our cars are going to be essentially back to normal. 

Driving off after our friendly handshake I thought about the two times a deer has run into one of our cars while I was driving it. Once a deer started to run across Liberty Road, hit its head on the right door panel, then stumbled off into a field, seemingly not seriously injured.

Another time, a deer ran into the left rearview mirror, knocking it mostly off -- aside from some wires that held it on. I didn't blame either deer. 

There's a Zen story, or Taoist, can't remember which, about a man in a rowboat paddling along in the fog who suddenly feels a jolt. Damn! Another boat has run into me! He's pissed off. Then he sees that no one is in the other boat. It was just drifting all by itself. His anger fades away.

Being an avid reader of neuroscience books, including Sam Harris' on this subject, I don't believe in free will. As strange as it may sound, we're all driverless boats, just doing what we're doing.

Stuff happens for cause and effect reasons, free will not being one of them. Everything the guy in the other car did made sense to him at the time. There were reasonable reasons for him pulling forward, then stopping, then backing up. Ditto for me doing what I did.

Result: a few blemishes on our bumpers. Also the result of non-freely willed causes and effects.

(Extraneous observation: it sure seems to me like back in the old days, 50's, 60's, 70's, cars had bumpers which actually protected against bumps with no discernible damage; but maybe I'm wrong about this -- could be that the cars I drove back then were so funky, another scratch or dent didn't stand out.)

Anyway, I kind of enjoyed this episode today. It was pleasing to find the other guy and me handling what could have been an unpleasant moment so pleasantly.

Wish this could happen all the time, both in politics and in "real life."

My old guy longboard land paddling is going great

At the risk of sounding like a Viagra ad...

The Big Stick has changed my life!

No, not that Big Stick. This Big Stick -- the Kahuna Big Stick, an adjustable pole for pushing a longboard skateboard without having to put a foot down.

I'm really enjoying it.

Went to Salem's Riverfront Park yesterday. Did about three miles in forty minutes or so. That includes some walking when an uphill section seemed like too damn much work, and also when a downhill section seemed too damn scary.

The reactions of other skateboarders have been interesting. Not surprisingly, so far I haven't run into anybody who looks older than twenty-something. Thus seeing a gray-bearded geezer pushing his way along on a longboard elicits varying reactions.

Most commonly, nothing. Meaning, when I smile and say "Hi," my brother skateboarder (they're almost universally guys) doesn't even look at me as he rides by in the other direction. 

Doesn't bother me.

I recently sold my big Burgman 650 scooter. For three years I regularly gave the motorcycle wave to guys on Harleys and other motorcycles. Mostly they ignored me on my white Japanese scooter. So I'm familiar with being ignored because I don't fit in with a prevailing stereotype.

Yesterday, though, I did get some smiles and a "nice board" comment from some skateboarders.

Along with a "why aren't you on the board?!" from a guy who was bicycling up the ramp leading to Wallace Marine Park and saw me walking down with my longboard in hand. "Because I suck at stopping," I yelled back. Geez, dude, I'm almost 64. Give me some credit for being on a longboard at all.

If I keep this up, I could win a senior citizen "best abs" contest before too long. (In my dreams, at least.) Using the Big Stick to push a longboard is a terrific core workout, especially if a trail has some ups along with downs. 

Today I came across a video which demonstrates the benefits of the Big Stick that's worth watching for several attractive reasons. Observe the female BIg Stick reviewer and you'll easily discern two of them. Both the guy and gal are attractive, though.

(Note: he gets "goofy foot" backwards in the video; right foot forward on the board is "goofy," not left.)

 

I couldn't help but note that the guy is riding on what seems to be a Kahuna Creations Haka Moko longboard. Since giving begins at home, I'm leaning toward getting myself one of these for my birthday, and then surprising myself with it.

More Republican reality-denying. Now, its polls.

The Republican Party has a problem with reality: it denies it. I'm not saying that all Republicans do this. But G.O.P. leaders sure do, along with a much higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats.

Evolution and global warming are prime examples of G.O.P. head-in-the-sand'ness. Now political polls can be added to the reality-denying list. 

Nearly every national poll shows President Obama leading Mitt Romney. Gallup, Ipsos and Bloomberg all have the president up by six points. The RAND Corporation puts Mr. Obama up by seven and a half. Only Rasmussen has Mr. Romney up nationally among likely voters, by two points. Swing state surveys also give Mr. Obama the advantage, with new polls from The New York Times, CBS and Quinnipiac showing Mr. Obama up between 9 and 11 points in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

There’s still more than a month until the election. Mr. Obama could lose. Mr. Romney could win. Hanging chads could leave the result up to the Supreme Court. But at the moment it’s rational to conclude that Mr. Obama has a better chance of winning. Unless you’re on the Romney campaign, or you’re a right-wing pundit, in which case it’s only natural—in a stages of grief sort of way—to conclude that the polls are all wrong.

The good news for Democrats, and Obama, is that the more Republicans refuse to accept how poorly Romney is doing, the more likely it is that his campaign will continue on its current course.

So keep on engaging in your conspiracy theories, G.O.P. faithful.

Don't stop dreaming that purposeful sampling errors are the reason Romney is behind in both national and swing state polls. There will be time enough to wake up on the morning after election day.

When a man goes to the dermatologist

A few days ago I went to the dermatologist for a six-month checkup on some benign skin growths that had been frozen off.

Here's how the conversation went after the physician's assistant (PA) who had done the cryotherapy walked into the exam room.

PA: Hey, good to see you again. How are the growths looking that we froze off last time?

ME: I don't know. I try not to look at myself very closely. When I'm in the bathroom, I stand as far back from the mirror as I can, and then I blur my eyes when I have to look at my aging face.

PA: (after a pause, when she seems to be trying to decide whether I'm kidding or serious; in fact, I'm serious) OK, let's take a look...Excellent, you're looking good! They've healed up nicely.

ME: Thanks, that's nice to know.

Now, likely some women would have the same attitude toward their frozen-off skin growths as I did. But I suspect a typical conversation at the dermatologist's office with a female patient would start off more like this.

PA: Hey, good to see you again. How are the growths looking that we froze off last time?

WOMAN: Well, they're better. I'm glad you're taking a look at them, though. For the first week after you froze them off they were red and scaly. I had to use quite a bit of makeup to cover them up. After that, they steadily became less obvious. Yet I still had to put on some extra makeup over them. When I look closely at the spot on my right cheek, it seems slightly darker than the other one. What do you think? I've been worried about it.

Married Kama Sutra: loading the dishwasher

Some The New Yorker cartoonists, Simon Rich and Farley Katz, must have been spying on my wife and me. This is exactly what happens almost every time I load the dishwasher. 

Caption (for those who don't click the image to enlarge):

When the man is loading the dishwasher, and the woman must come over, because he is loading it wrong, it is called the "dishwasher position."

Great two-page spread, Simon and Farley.

Humor like this and intelligent articles are why I've been a long time The New Yorker subscriber (and the lack thereof are why I recently cancelled my Newsweek subscription).

Yes, the new Apple Maps sucks. It led me astray.

I'm glad I still have Navigon on my iPhone 5, because I can't trust Apple Maps after what happened yesterday. 

I've been playing around with Apple Maps since I got my new iPhone last Friday. Some reviewers have called it the worst Apple product ever. Don't know if I'd go that far, since when it works, Apple Maps handles turn by turn directions well.

But when it doesn't... you're not going to get to where you want to go.

Fortunately, I knew where Silver Falls Dermatology is in south Salem. I had a 1:45 pm appointment for a check-up and left home with just enough time to get there. I used Siri on the way to test out Apple Maps again.

"Where is Silver Falls Dermatology in Salem, Oregon?" Siri came up with an answer that looked correct when I glanced at the screen. Commercial Street. Yeah, that's right. I clicked on the link to get turn by turn directions.

Only problem was, when I got close to the clinic Apple Maps was telling me to head north for another 1.9 miles. I ignored the instruction. Sitting in the waiting room I took a closer look at the Apple Maps info for Silver Falls Dermatology.

First, it had the clinic at Commercial Street NE, rather than SE. Second, it had the wrong street number. I asked the receptionist if the clinic had any other offices in Salem. "No," she said. "This is it." 

Apple Maps indicated the info came from Yelp.

Oh, great. Google Maps never has led me astray. Google Maps is tried and true (though I'm sure it isn't 100% accurate, just almost so). Now Apple has dumped Google Maps so it can offer its own in-house map system with turn by turn spoken directions.

Good intention. Bad execution. (Great for Navigon and other purveyors of GPS apps for the iPhone, though.)

I hope a Google Maps app returns to the iPhone. Until then, I'll use Navigon for navigating to places I've never been to before and only use Apple Maps for playing around purposes in familiar territory.

Election seems to be slipping away from Romney

As of today...

Gallup says Obama's job approval is 51% positive, 43% negative.

Gallup says Obama is favored over Romney among registered voters by 50% to 44%.

Five Thirty Eight says Obama has an 82% chance of winning the presidency, Romney 18%.

Obama doesn't have a lock on the election. Romney could make a comeback. It's just increasingly difficult to see what could markedly change in Romney's favor between now and November.

The debates? Good luck with that, Romney and Ryan. Obama and Biden are much more likely to extend their lead after the first few debates, in my decidedly optimistic progressive opinion. 

If Obama loses the election, my Republican friends can point to this post and say, "look how wrong you were." OK, that's fair. But I'm putting it up today so I can gloat, "look how right I was."

Killing fewer cougars means less livestock losses. Surprising but true.

There goes another cougar management myth, the mistaken notion that the more cougars are killed, the fewer livestock are lost, and fewer encounters between cougars and humans occur. 

A study conducted by Washington State University's Large Carnivore Conservation Lab brought some welcome facts to counter the often-hysterical kill them! cries from fearful ranchers and homeowners (who frequently mistake a large kitty cat for a cougar).

Here's some quotes from a press release about the study.

Overharvest of cougars can increase negative encounters between the predator and humans, livestock and game, according to a 13-year Washington State University research project. Based on this, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is implementing a new cougar management plan.

Starting in January, Washington will employ equilibrium management – hunters will remove no more than the surplus of animals that would be generated through natural reproduction.

This means that each of the state’s game management units will have a limit allowing for harvest of no more than 14 percent of that area’s cougars. Once the limit is filled, cougar hunting will be suspended for the year in that unit. Hunters will be allowed to take their tags to other units that haven’t reached the limit.

...Data showed that adult males, “toms,” are intolerant of adolescent males and will kill them to maintain their territory and breeding rights. Juvenile males can only survive by avoiding adult males. When hunting removes most adult males, the adolescent males survive and cause all sorts of trouble.

While adult cougars tend to avoid humans and livestock, juveniles are less cautious: “They’re teenagers,” explained Wielgus. “They’re sexually mature, but mentally they’re not all there.”

...Without adult male protection of females and their litters, infanticide becomes a problem, as the young toms kill kits to bring the mother into heat and improve their breeding chances. The females try to protect their litters by moving higher in elevation, away from dangerous adolescent males, but also away from plentiful whitetail deer and into terrain occupied by less abundant prey such as mule deer, bighorn sheep and woodland caribou. Thus marginal game populations suffer.

Congratulations to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife for changing its cougar management plan after learning about this research.

Oregon needs to do the same. As I've noted for quite a few years, the Oregon cougar plan is based on fictions, not facts.

Killing fewer cougars will mean fewer livestock losses, and less encounters of cougars with humans. That's now a fact, based on WSU's thirteen year study. Time to get rid of the fictions, Oregon Department of FIsh and Wildlife.

Good reasons to support Measure 80, Oregon marijuana legalization

If you're an Oregonian who is unsure about how to vote on Measure 80, which would regulate, tax, and manage marijuana sales/use for adults 21 and over in our state, have a listen to this segment of OPB's "Think Out Loud." (click on the MP3 file link below) 

Oregon Marijuana Legalization

Yesterday Roy Kaufmann (spokesman for Measure 80) and John Trumbo (Umatilla County Sheriff) had an intelligent, respectful, thoughtful discussion about marijuana legalization. Kudos also to the moderator, Dave Miller.

Great job educating the public by all three, plus those who phoned in with cogent comments.

I support Measure 80. Yet I understand why some people don't. Listening to arguments pro and con, though, I think the "pro" side comes out considerably ahead. For example...

Effect on young people. I learned that youths under 21 currently find it much easier to get ahold of marijuana than alcohol. So legalizing marijuana likely would make it tougher for young people to obtain pot. There are stiff penalities for providing alchohol to minors. If they get in an accident, the provider is legally responsible. Marijuana can be treated the same way, if legalized.

Abuse of medical marijuana law. The Oregonian recently ran stories about how medical marijuana is finding its way into general consumption. Well, imagine that red wine was illegal, except for those who could get a doctor's prescription for vino, because they need it for a heart problem. Would it be surprising if some red wine ending up being sold to people without heart problems, to people who just like red wine but can't buy it in a store? Pointing out problems with the current system, where marijuana is illegal for most Oregonians, is a crazy argument for keeping that system.

Still prohibited under federal law. Kaufmann pointed out that drinking alcohol was legalized in Oregon a year before prohibition ended in the United States as a whole. So this shows that states can blaze the trail the nation later follows. There's a strong libertarian/states rights argument for Measure 80: why shouldn't people be free to consume an herb that makes them feel good and is much less harmful than already-legal alcohol? And why shouldn't Oregonians be able to make up their own minds on this subject?

Marijuana tourism coming to Washington state?

There's a good chance Washington state will legalize the sale and use of marijuana this November. A few weeks ago a poll showed Initiative I-502 with 57% "yes" and 34% "no" among likely voters.

Measure 80 here in Oregon looks less likely to pass. 

It takes a more liberal approach to marijuana legalization, which seems to be one reason large donors haven't chipped in money to support the measure as they have in Washington and Colorado.

This November, voters in Oregon and Washington will decide whether to legalize marijuana. The Washington effort is backed by some deep-pocketed national donors. But Oregon's campaign is struggling to raise even a bare minimum of cash.

Washington’s Initiative 502 would allow adults to buy marijuana at state-licensed stores. Oregon's Measure 80 would do that too, and would allow people to grow their own pot. The Washington backers have rung up more than $3 million in donations, allowing them to hit the TV airwaves.

But campaign organizers in Oregon have reported just $13,000 in donations since their more permissive measure made the ballot in July.

I hope Measure 80 becomes law.

The only poll released so far had 37% of Oregon voters in favor, 41% opposed, and 22% undecided. So basically it's a toss-up, even with extremely minimal advertising. Hey, Bill Maher, how about throwing a few hundred thousand bucks Measure 80's way?

I've been wondering, though, what will happen if Washington legalizes marijuana and Oregon doesn't. There's a heck of lot of Oregonians who live within a few hours drive time of the Washington border. And I've heard rumors that quite a few of them use marijuana. 

Yes, marijuana reportedly is common in Portland and Eugene. Shocking! How is it possible that the U of O football team currently is ranked #2 in the country with marijuana use so rampant in Eugene?

(That's an ironic question... pot essentially has zero effect on coordination, based on the countless experiments on this subject I conducted during my own college years by tossing a frisbee, playing pool, driving a motorcycle, and performing other physical feats while high.)

So far as I can tell -- and my research, of course, has been purely for journalistic blogging purposes -- I-502 legalizes the sale of marijuana to anyone 21 or older who buys it at licensed retail outlets. Not just Washingtonians. Anyone.

I-502 says:

There may be licensed, in no greater number in each of the counties of the state than as the state liquor control board shall deem advisable, retail outlets established for the purpose of making useable marijuana and marijuana-infused products available for sale to adults aged twenty-one and over. Retail sale of useable marijuana and marijuana-infused products in accordance with the provisions of this act and the rules adopted to implement and enforce it, by a validly licensed marijuana retailer or retail outlet employee, shall not be a criminal or civil offense under Washington state law.

Sure sounds like marijuana tourism could be coming to Washington.

The DUI aspects of I-502 are a bummer to hemp advocates who want to pot-party in the state, but I doubt this would discourage Oregonians from driving up to Washington to purchase an ounce of weed, then driving home to consume it.

This depends on market forces, though. The legal price of marijuana would have to be close to what it can be bought for now, and the quality as good or better. But given these assumptions, why wouldn't Oregonians help out the Washington state budget with some extra tax receipts?

Money that would be leaving Oregon if this state doesn't pass Measure 80, while Washington passes I-502.

Many Oregonians still would be able to buy marijuana legally, just not here. Much of the revenue that would have gone to Oregon state government, $60 million or more according to Measure 80 proponents, would flow to Washington.

Something to think about, Oregon voters. Vote "yes" on Measure 80. Keep Oregon green -- with money that should stay in the state, rather than head into Washington state coffers.

Oregonians are going to keep using marijuana whether or not Measure 80 passes. The only question is whether this state joins Washington in ending the crazy, expensive, irrational prohibition of an herb that is hugely more beneficial than already-legal alcohol.

After some awkwardness, iPhone 5 and me become friends

Being a long-time user of Apple'ish things (iPods, MacBooks, iPhones), I have reasonable expectations of a new product: It will work perfectly and make me ecstatically happy! 

Most of the time this happens, more or less. Getting my iPhone 5 order via FedEx yesterday and firing up this long-awaited replacement for my iPhone 4 was right in line with previous Apple experience. After a few glitches, bliss.

What threw me off at first was iTunes, which strikes me as disturbingly un-Apple. iTunes looks and acts like something a Microsoft programmer would produce. Functional, yet rather difficult to use and understand.

Firing up my black 32 GB Verizon iPhone 5 started off smoothly.

I was easily able to enter my home's wi-fi network password, and tell the iPhone that I spoke English and lived in the United States. But then, after informing the iPhone that I wanted to restore from an iTunes backup of my old phone, problems started to pop up.

Earlier that day I'd backed up my iPhone 4 to make sure all my apps, photos, and such were transferred to the iPhone 5. However, when I connected the iPhone 5 to my laptop, iTunes told me it couldn't do the sync because I didn't have the most recent version of iTunes, 10.7 as I recall.

OK, no big deal. On the iTunes menu bar I found "update," clicked on it, and was met with a "you have the most recent software" message. Hmmmm....

My wife often says to me, "Given that you know so much about computers, and still have problems with them, what do grandmothers who are clueless about technology do?" (That's a sexist, ageist remark, but since my wife is a woman almost as old as me, she's entitled to say it.)

Good point.

I knew enough to check the App Store on my MacBook Pro, which indeed was offering me an OS X update that included iTunes. After downloading the update, iTunes started to "restore" my iPhone 5 with iPhone 4 content.

Except... I got worried when I saw how fast the transfer was going.

I've got lots of apps. I've got almost 1,000 photos. I've got Navigon, which has large map files. When the iTunes sync was completed in just a few minutes I was pretty sure something had gone wrong. When the iPhone 5 had restarted and I checked to see what was on it, I knew something had gone wrong.

No music of mine. No apps of mine. No photos of mine. 

Fortunately, I did the right thing while I thought what should I do now? Which was, nothing. The iPhone 5 was still connected to my MacBook and iTunes. On its own iTunes started to transfer my backed-up iPhone 4 files.

(When I later fired up my wife's iPhone 5, the apps and such transferred smoothly right away; don't know why my phone's sync experience was so different.)

After that, my remaining problem was with Navigon. I'd heard that the new Maps feature sucked, since Apple had ditched Google Maps, so I wanted to be sure that Navigon was working in case I needed turn by turn directions.

The Navigon app, though, wasn't functioning on the iPhone 5. Navigon's web site was distinctly uninformative about how to fix the problem. Phoning customer support, I reached a helpful guy who spoke perfect American English (thanks for that, Navigon!). He told me to delete the Navigon app, then download it again from the App Store at no cost -- since Apple knew I'd already paid for it.

Bingo. I then was able to reinstall the Oregon database. Navigon was back in action.

I've played around a bit with the native Maps app on the iPhone 5 and found it accurate for the simple task I gave it when I went to exercise yesterday. I'd told Siri "Where is the Courthouse Athletic Club in Salem, Oregon?"

Siri promptly gave me a list of the various Courthouse clubs in town and asked me to pick the one I wanted. After choosing the River Road club, the Maps app led me there with clearly audible turn by turn instructions. Cool. I'll stick with Navigon for serious GPS navigating, though.

I'm enjoying my iPhone 5, two days into our relationship. Siri is a kick. She's fun to play around with. I got ideas for some intimate questions to ask her from this post. Siri alone is reason enough to upgrade from an iPhone 4.

Moving from AT&T to Verizon is another reason. AT&T just announced higher-speed LTE service in Portland, but so far there's zilch LTE anywhere else in Oregon. Verizon, though, has an extensive LTE network, which even reaches our house in rural south Salem. 

Here's what's impressive about LTE: I've found that usually we only have one LTE bar showing. Sometimes two, but not more than that. Yet before writing this post, with that one LTE bar showing, I installed the free Speed Test app, turned off wi-fi, and tested our Verizon download/upload speeds.

Wow.

Verizon LTE showed 4.82 mbps down (a measly .08 mbps up, but who cares about up?) By contrast, our Qwest DSL wi-fi showed 3.69 mbps down and .29 mbps up on a SpeedTest.net test. Verizon LTE with one bar on my iPhone 5 is faster than Qwest DSL!

Nice. Not surprisingly, I'm finding that checking my email and such goes way faster than it did with AT&T. All in all, I've got zero regrets about upgrading to an iPhone 5. And it looks like we'll get as much as $250 for our iPhone 4's if they're sold to Amazon. 

Since the iPhone 5 cost us $299 (with a two year Verizon contract), we could end up paying just $49 extra for each new iPhone. Love it!

Romney gets a "pants on fire" for his redistribution lie

Mitt Romney's chance of being elected president is steadily declining. Couldn't happen to a more deserving guy. Not only do Romney's policies make no sense (insofar as they've been explained), but he's a habitual shader of the truth.

More bluntly put, a liar.

So says PolitiFact about his newest falsehood: a claim that "redistribution" has "never been a characteristic of America." That lie gets him a Pants on Fire ruling.

We wondered whether Romney was correct to say that "redistribution" has "never been a characteristic of America." So we checked with historians and economists. Most agreed that Romney was ignoring the fundamental structure of the nation's progressive tax system, which has been redistributing wealth for a century, as well as a host of other policies, some of which predate the nation’s founding.

A progressive tax system is one that takes a larger share of the income of high-income earners than it does from low-income individuals. Since this revenue is spent on government programs -- which benefit people other than just the taxpayer whose income is taken -- a progressive tax system is essentially by definition redistributive.

...on Romney’s specific claim that "redistribution" has "never been a characteristic of America," experts agreed that he ignores longstanding fundamentals of our system of taxing and spending.

"Not to sound intemperate here, but the claim is completely ridiculous and false," said Shaviro, the NYU tax professor. "This goes way beyond hyperbole. Romney is trying to rewrite and falsify U.S. history."

Our ruling

Romney said that "redistribution" has "never been a characteristic of America."

Reasonable people can disagree about the wisdom of it, but redistribution has been a basic principle of the U.S. tax system and many federal programs, including some such as veterans benefits that have long attracted support from Republicans. Pants on Fire!

Romney also misleadingly edited Obama's actual 1998 remarks where redistribution was mentioned. Obama said he favors competition and the marketplace, along with redistribution "at a certain level to make sure that everybody's got a shot."

That's the American way: using our progressive tax system to provide student loans and other assistance to help people move up the economic ladder. Most voters favor this sort of redistribution, which is one reason why Romney is doing so badly in the polls.

Global warming makes me buy "snow tires"

I'm not kidding, despite the title of this blog post. This year I really am strongly leaning toward getting snow tires for my 2011 Mini Cooper S, and part of the reason is global warming. 

Yes, the world is getting warmer. But this doesn't mean that winter weather everywhere is going to be milder. Actually, it's going to be weirder. 

Does it seem as though your weather has become increasingly “stuck” lately? Day after day of cold, rain, heat, or blue skies may not be a figment of your imagination. While various oceanic and atmospheric patterns such as El Niño, La Niña, and the North Atlantic Oscillation have been blamed for the spate of unusual weather recently, there’s now a new culprit in the wind: Arctic amplification. Directly related to sea-ice loss and earlier snowmelt in the Far North, it is affecting the jet stream around the Northern Hemisphere, with potentially far-reaching effects on the weather.

...There have been many examples of “stuck” weather patterns during the past few years. Deep troughs in the jet stream hung over the U.S. east coast and Western Europe during the winters of 2009/2010 and 2010/2011, bringing a seemingly endless string of snow storms and teeth-chattering cold. In the early winter of 2011/2012, in contrast, these same areas were under ridges, or northward bulges of the jet stream, which brought unusually warm and snowless conditions over much of North America.

...While it’s difficult to point the finger at Arctic amplification in causing any of these weather events, they are the types of phenomena that are expected to occur more frequently as the world continues to warm and the Arctic continues to lose its ice. Further research may find ways to predict which regions will experience which conditions. But in the meantime, it’s increasingly likely that the weather you have today will stick around awhile. 

So likely the Pacific Northwest is going to see more weather extremes as the jet stream gets stuck in a certain pattern. This includes lasting cold in the winter, as well as snow.

I've owned several sets of snow tires over the years. Actually, they're better termed "winter tires" nowadays, because they're made out of materials which remain pliable under 45 degrees F., making for much safer handling in cold weather even when it isn't snowy or icy. 

(See here, here, and here for benefits of winter tires.)

Last year I put Bridgestone Blizzaks on our Hybrid Highlander SUV, which previously had all season tires. Even though the Highlander is all wheel drive, usually we couldn't get up our fairly steep driveway when it snowed. But with the Blizzaks, no problem. 

The Tire Rack is a quality online source of tires and wheels. That's where I bought a steel-wheel Blizzaks package for the Highlander. The tires arrived by UPS all mounted and balanced. Les Schwab then put them on the car at no cost, because we bought our all season Toyos for the Highlander there.

I'm leaning toward the Bridgetone Blizzak LM-60 Performance Winter Tire, which Tire Rack recommends for the Mini Cooper.

Maybe our Oregon winters will be milder than usual, thanks to global warming. There's a good chance, though, that we'll see some unusual cold and/or snow spells. If that happens, I'll be glad I have the Blizzaks on the Mini, since my wife will be using the winter-tire equipped Highlander to get around.

And now that I've learned more about the benefits of winter tires in our normal cold weather, getting Blizzaks for both cars seems like the thing to do even if we have a normal winter.

Romney video reveals his heartlessness

For a supposedly religious guy, Mitt Romney is remarkably uncaring and uncompassionate.

This has been evident throughout his public campaigning, but it became super obvious when remarks to a bunch of rich donors he thought would be private popped up on You Tube.

 

This is the heart of Romney's heartlessness:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.

What leaps out at me is a multimillionaire's shock that ordinary people "believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing." Romney never has had to go without these things. But lots of people in the United States do, which is shameful give how rich our country is.

Imagine that your child or your spouse or your parent was seriously sick and needed health care; was achingly hungry and needed food; was homeless and needed a roof over his/her head. 

Wouldn't you want government to help them out? I sure do.

And in fact, this is what our government does -- under both Democratic and Republican administrations, until now with little controversy and much bipartisan agreement. Medicare and Medicaid. Social Security. Food stamps. Low income housing. 

Government comes to the aid of both those who pay income taxes, and those who don't.

Medicare and Social Security aren't given only to poor people. Yet Romney denigrates those getting government assistance who don't pay federal income taxes, while giving a free pass to all the seniors, plus many others (such as retired military personnel), who get government assistance and do pay income taxes.

Romney doesn't believe that health care, food, and housing are entitlements. Apparently he doesn't feel that government should help people who lack these necessities of life. So who should? Nobody? That's the most reasonable conclusion I can draw from Romney's remarks.

Because I haven't seen any mention that elsewhere in his remarks to the rich donor group Romney spoke about the need for private charities to ensure that health care, food, and housing are available to people who need, but can't afford, them.

Instead, Romney simply dismisses the idea that people in need are entitled to anything. Especially people who don't pay federal income taxes -- which, of course, includes many of our nation's largest corporations. And remember what Romney famously said, "Corporations are people too."

Aside from Romney's heartlessness, I also was irked by his implication that there's something wrong with those who don't pay federal income tax. A New Yorker piece, along with many other analyses, lays out who the 47% non-payers are, and why they don't pay. For example:

Over the past twenty years, governments of both parties have adopted policies that raised the income threshold at which households start paying income tax. Thanks to the child tax credit (enacted by Gerald Ford and expanded by George W. Bush) and the Earned Income Tax Credit (also enacted by Ford and expanded significantly by George H. W. Bush), a typical family of four can now make about forty-five thousand dollars a year before being subject to income tax. In New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, an annual income of forty-five thousand dollars isn’t much, but on a national basis it isn’t much below the median household income, which in 2011 was about fifty thousand dollars.

So Republican administrations have been trying to kick people off of the federal income tax roll. Now Romney criticizes people for taking advantage of the tax breaks that G.O.P. presidents wanted them to have. 

Even more irritatingly, Romney has proudly revealed that he doesn't pay much himself in federal income tax, given his very high income, because he takes advantage of the intricacies of the tax code.

Well, that's what other people do too. But since they're poorer than him, somehow it is wrong for them to pay no federal income tax while it is fine for rich individuals and corporations to avoid paying that tax. 

Lastly, eight of the ten states with the highest percentage of people who don't pay any federal income tax are solidly Republican. So Romney got that wrong too. The biggest feeders at the federal trough live in the Tea Party-friendly south, where they talk big about freedom from government while sucking up government benefits at a high rate.

Ruth Marcus asks some good questions of Romney:

(1) Under the federal tax code, a couple with two children earning less than $26,400 will pay no federal income tax because the standard deduction and exemptions reduce their taxable income to zero. The Tax Policy Center has explained that this reflects components of “the basic progressive income tax structure that intend to exempt subsistence levels of income from tax and to adjust for differences in ability to pay based on family size. “

Do you disagree with that approach? Do you believe that this family’s tax burden is too low? If so, how would you raise it?  Eliminate the deduction for children?  Raise marginal rates? Make the tax code less progressive?

(2) Of the 47 percent of households that do not owe federal income taxes, two thirds pay payroll taxes that amount to 7.6 percent of income.  Indeed, under standard economic theory, the employer’s side of those payroll taxes also comes from their income — meaning that their 15 percent tax rate compares roughly to your 13.9 percent effective rate in 2010, the year for which you’ve released returns.  And, of course, these households pay state and local sales and property taxes, plus federal gasoline and other excise taxes.

In what way do you believe these households are failing to “take personal responsibility and care for their lives”?

 (3) Of the 18 percent of households that pay neither income nor payroll taxes, most are elderly (10 percent of households).  

What do you believe these elderly households should do to “take personal responsibility and care for their lives?” Do you support repealing special tax benefits for the elderly, such as the extra standard deduction, the tax credit for low-income seniors and the exclusion of a portion of Social Security benefits from taxation?

(4) Another 7 percent are households earning less than $20,000 a year.  That seems like a far cry from the 47 percent  you describe as “dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.”

But I’m confused about where you stand, because you have also said, "I'm concerned about the poor in this country. We have to make sure the safety net is strong and able to help those who can't help themselves."

Do you believe in a safety net or not?

Senior citizen skateboarding: I get a Kahuna Big Stick. Love it!

Have you thought about longboarding (riding on a longer, more stable skateboard suitable for geezers like me), but are turned off by the difficulty of balancing on one foot while you push the damn thing to get it going, and then to stop it?

Turn off that turned off.

This senior citizen longboarder has found the solution to your worry. And also mine, because after starting longboarding I realized that pushing and stopping were what I enjoyed the least. 

Until the Kahuna Big Stick entered my life. It basically makes longboarding on land a lot like stand up paddling on a modified surfboard. You keep both feet on the board and use the Big Stick to push and come to a stop (on mild slopes, at least).

Have a look. If it looks pretty easy to do, that's because it is.

 

I got the collapsible version of the Big Stick (so it'd fit in my Mini Cooper) and also the Sk8pole (different brand, for comparison) after I seriously tweaked my right calf while practicing my longboarding on a paved path with a steady slight incline at Salem's Minto Brown Island park. 

I'd longboarded a different path the day before. I was feeling OK until suddenly -- ouch! -- my right leg, which was doing all the pushing, said no more, dude! Also, you're old! (almost 64). True. Often I can't do what I did when I was younger without my body complaining.

So that led me to search for a better pushing technique. Hardly ever using my legs at all, except on the board... yeah, that immediately struck me as an excellent way to not get hurt again. (My calf is still a bit sore.)

I've longboarded with the Kahuna Big Stick four times now, and with the Sk8pole once.

In general I prefer the Big Stick because it has a solid rubber pusher which works well for dragging/stopping. The Sk8pole comes with a "not for stopping" warning because its pusher is more flexible and less substantial. Works great though for pushing.

Now I have a whole different attitude toward longboarding. Using a stick is definitely the way to go for anyone, like me, who is older and/or adverse to balancing on one foot to push and stop. I feel much more secure and confident with the Big Stick.

It's helpful even when not pushing or stopping because it gives me a better sense of balance just cruising along, probably for the same reason a tightrope walker uses a "stick." I'm still learning how to use the Kahuna Big Stick to best advantage. Here's some tips from my experience so far:

(1) If you're new to longboarding, begin by practicing with your board without a stick, as well as with it. If you can push, turn, and stop unaided, you'll be a lot better off when you start doing those things with a stick.

(2) Watch You Tube videos about "stand up paddling" on a longboard before you set out yourself. Learning basic do's and dont's will save you some grief.

(3) Like making the mistake of getting the stick in front of a wheel. I've done this twice when my mind wasn't minding what I was doing. As several videos I've watched demonstrate, what happens is that your longboard stops but you don't. Both times I "ran" off the board forward without falling down. Still, this is something to avoid.

(4) Last practice session, I found that leaning forward on my toes while starting to push on my right side (I ride left foot forward, regular style, so my toes point toward the right) helped me to put the stick down safely to the right of the board, and also to get some rhythmic back and forth pumping action going. When I switched to pushing on my left side, I leaned backward on my heels at the start of each push.

Using a Kahuna Big Stick, or whatever, is great exercise. It makes longboarding into a full body workout if you're doing anything but coasting downhill.

Again, its changed my whole attitude toward longboarding. I feel a lot more confident now trying out new paths/roads. The fear of falling is much reduced since I've got both feet on the board almost all of the time.

Here's a few more Big Stick videos. The first shows basic tips and riding techniques. The second shows what longboarding with a Big Stick is like if you're skilled. (Both videos show the original "wheel" version of the Big Stick; I have the new version of the pusher, which is replaceable, like the first one was.)

 

 

I'm one of the first to order the iPhone 5. Am I gloating?

Night owls that we are, my wife and I were watching a recorded The Daily Show episode as midnight approached yesterday. Her attention was on the TV. Mine was on my watch, as I waited for the hour to strike twelve, when preorders for the iPhone 5 were scheduled to begin.

I'd already decided that Verizon would replace AT&T, now that our two-year iPhone 4 contract had expired. The remaining challenge was to get my ordering underway as soon as possible given the obvious pent-up demand for an updated iPhone with a new digit after its name.

The iPhone 4S didn't appeal very strongly to me, being merely a 4 plus an added letter. But a 5, a freaking 5, now that was something to lust for -- especially since I could get new customer pricing from Verizon. 

Everything went smoothly with the ordering... up to a point. Gizmodo's advice to get a black 32 GB iPhone 5 from Verizon made sense. So I didn't have to hesitate over the phone choices (white or black? 16, 32, or 64 GB?) Verizon was offering to me.

But at about 12:15 am I hit a glitch. I hadn't thought through the implications of wanting to keep our current cell phone numbers. I'd pictured myself being asked by the Verizon web site if I wanted to have the same numbers my wife and I have now, then typing in the numbers.

Done! 

In reality, not. Because Verizon, reasonably enough, also wanted to know our AT&T account number. Since we have paperless autopay I didn't have a statement on hand. So I presciently had a sinking feeling: I need to log into our AT&T account; this isn't going to go well.

I guess my unconscious had recollected a memory of ordering an iPhone 4, also on "opening day," several years ago. AT&T's web site had frozen up under the pressure of a frenzied mass of Apple addicts, all wanting to be one of the first to get the new gadget.

Same thing happened last night. I got error messages when I first tried to open a page. Eventually I'd succeed in getting the AT&T web site's attention, but it was working glacially slow.

Over on another Chrome tab my half-completed Verizon order was waiting away. I wasn't sure how long Verizon would put up with the inactivity. Visions of iPhone 5's dancing away from increasingly empty Verizon warehouse shelves while I fussed around trying to get my AT&T account number danced through my head.

After about fifteen minutes AT&T's overloaded web site finally coughed up the information I needed. I then quickly clicked my way back to the Verizon order page, pleased to find both that my order was still intact and Verizon's own web site was operating absolutely normally. 

Which, from what I've heard, pretty much sums up the difference between AT&T and Verizon: suckiness versus works-goodness.

Here's the result of my late night online labors. Expected ship date: 9/21/2012. Sweet! A week away. If the date is accurate.

Regardless, two iPhone 5's soon will be in the hands of me and my wife. Gloating by successful early orderers like me reportedly is commonplace. 

Apple's website was down occasionally after midnight, as were the sites of some of its wireless carriers. Fans flooded Twitter and other social media sites with ordering advice, and also to gloat when they were able to successfully purchase the phone.

"iPhone 5 has been pre-ordered...boiling with excitement!" tweeted David Christensen, a Web designer in Los Angeles.

"Got my & the wife's iPhone 5's pre-ordered. Haters, you may proceed with your hating," wrote Shahin Ourian, a digital content creative strategist in L.A.

Dustin Pagliughi, a television producer who lives in the Miracle Mile district, said he woke up at midnight to pre-order a black 32GB iPhone 5. He used his iPhone 4 to make the purchase.

"It's one of those items that I've been waiting for them to announce, so I figured, why not?" the 32-year-old said. "I wanted to get it as fast as possible."

Being a mature 63-year old who has achieved an enlightened compassionate Buddha-nature (in his own mind at least, where it counts), there is not an iota of gloating in this blog post.

I'm merely sharing purely factual information about how I have two black 32 GB iPhone 5's on the way from Verizon, while other new iPhone fanciers are facing dwindling supplies due to the astoundingly high demand for Apple's newest must-have.

Time to relax. Briefly. Because now I've got to keep my eye out for the release of a 13 inch retina MacBook Pro. Rumor has it that it's shipping to retailers. I want one!

(That's how Apple operates: the addiction never ends; the dealer always has a new high for sale.)

Goodbye AT&T. Hello Verizon and my new iPhone 5.

Since I have an ancient iPhone 4 (a hundred years old in smartphone years), and my two-year AT&T contract is up, I knew that I'd be getting an iPhone 5 once it was released.

Which it was, today!

I watched the unveiling via Engadget's liveblog. The main info I was waiting for: when an iPhone 5 could be ordered. This coming Friday, September 14, apparently.

I've been going back and forth about whether to stick with AT&T or jump to Verizon. We have shitty AT&T reception at our house, but last year AT&T sent me a free 3G Microcell device that uses wi-fi to boost my iPhone's bars dramatically.

That solved the problem of making and receiving calls at home.

But my wife and I also have been bothered by how bad AT&T's cellular coverage is generally. Driving into Salem we hit dead spots. And when the electricity goes off, the Microcell thingie stops working, making our whole house into a dead (or nearly dead, one-bar) spot.

So I've decided to dump AT&T and get an iPhone 5 through Verizon, probably via a 4GB shared data plan contract. Cost for a two-year deal is the same for both AT&T and Verizon, so the choice came down to coverage.

Here's what sold me on Verizon:

-- Verizon's 4G LTE coverage is much more extensive than AT&Ts. Now, I don't really know what LTE is. I just know the iPhone 5 uses it and it's faster than 3G. So I want it! According to a Verizon map, AT&T currently has no 4G LTE coverage in Oregon. Zero. Nada. Zilch.

-- Today a friend handed me his Verizon Android phone when he came to our house. I took a look at the bars. Four. Sometimes five. Out of five. In the same locations where we get zero or one AT&T bar without the Microcell device. A relative who has Verizon on his iPhone echoed that experience last year. 

-- I got a haircut today. Betsy, my long-time haircutter, and I talked almost entirely about iPhones. She's thinking of getting one after being a Verizon Android user, like the guy mentioned above. Betsy has been talking with her other male customers about whether AT&T or Verizon has the best iPhone service. Universally, she's hearing "Go with Verizon." 

After my haircut I checked out what Betsy had said: "Right here close to downtown Salem, my customers can barely make a call on an AT&T phone." I had two bars on my iPhone 4. That's pathetic. I was about eight blocks from downtown. AT&T coverage sucks.

I've heard quite a few other stories about how people with Verizon phones are happily chatting away while AT&T customers are searching for a place to get a connection. It's time to say goodbye, AT&T. When you were the sole cellular service for iPhones obviously there was a good reason to sign up with you.

Now it's Verizon time.

Romney lies about Obama's Libya response. Unfit to be president.

If there ever was any doubt that Mitt Romney is unfit to lead this nation, his ham-handed, lying, insensitive attempt to discredit Obama's response to the attacks on our consulates in Libya and Egypt proves it. 

The gunfire at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, had barely ceased when Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney seriously mischaracterized what had happened in a statement accusing President Barack Obama of "disgraceful" handling of violence there and at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.

"The Obama administration's first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks," Romney said in a statement first emailed to reporters at 10:09 p.m. Eastern time, under the condition it not be published until midnight.

In fact, neither a statement by the U.S. Embassy in Cairo earlier in the day nor a later statement from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton offered sympathy for attackers. The statement from the Cairo Embassy had condemned anti-Muslim religious incitement before the embassy walls were breached. In her statement, issued minutes before Romney's, Clinton had offered the administration's first response to the violence in Libya, explicitly condemning the attack there and confirming the death of a State Department official.

"I condemn in the strongest terms the attack on our mission in Benghazi today," Clinton said in a written statement received by The Associated Press at 10:08 p.m. "As we work to secure our personnel and facilities, we have confirmed that one of our State Department officers was killed. We are heartbroken by this terrible loss."

Republican Peggy Noonan said:

When you step forward in the midst of a political environment and start giving statements on something dramatic and violent that has happened, you're always leaving yourself open to accusations that you are trying to exploit things politically.

For sure. It's a fact, not an accusation, that Romney shot his mouth off without aiming first in an attempt to resurrect his faltering presidential campaign.

He criticized Obama for his "disgraceful" handling of violence at the consulates even though Obama hadn't done anything by the time Romney issued his statement, and, as noted above, the statement from the Cairo Embassy also was issued before protesters entered the grounds.

Romney has shown why he would be a horrible commander-in-chief.

He doesn't care about facts; he makes judgments impulsively without understanding the situation "on the ground"; he is focused on trying to score political points rather than doing what is best for the country and those who serve it.

Romney just dug himself an even deeper campaign hole and threw himself headfirst into it. TIME's Mark Halperin pithily wrote: 

Unless the Romney campaign has gamed this crisis out in some manner completely invisible to the Gang of 500, his doubling down on criticism of the President for the statement coming out of Cairo is likely to be seen as one of the most craven and ill-advised tactical moves in this entire campaign.

Romney misleads about his pre-existing conditions policy

Another day, another Mitt Romney falsehood.

It turns out that, contrary to what he said on yesterday's Meet the Press interview, Romney doesn't want to preserve the Obamacare prohibition on denying people health insurance coverage for pre-existing conditions. 

This is what Romney said:

“Well, I’m not getting rid of all of health care reform,” Romney said on NBC’s  ”Meet the Press.”  ”Of course, there are a number of things that I like in health care reform that I’m going to put in place.  One is to make sure that those with pre-existing conditions can get coverage. 

But this isn't true. His campaign staff has told reporters that Romney's position on pre-existing conditions hasn't changed. He only is in favor of assuring protection for people who have continuous health insurance coverage.

Which is what the law basically already requires. 

BuzzFeed passes along yet another clarification. According to an aide, "Gov. Romney will ensure that discrimination against individuals with preexisting conditions who maintain continuous coverage is prohibited."

This has long been Romney's position, and it's not clear if it's meaningful or not. This kind of protection has been the law of the land since 1996 for people with group coverage. And people who lose group coverage already qualify for individual COBRA coverage for 18 months. So the only way Romney's statement means anything is if he's saying he would pass a law that requires insurance companies to offer permanent individual coverage at a reasonable price to people who lose their group coverage. Needless to say, Romney has never actually committed to that particular detail.

Romney gets more laughable every day, even as his electability sinks like a stone post-convention. He won't tell voters how he plans to reduce the deficit by cutting taxes. Supposedly the rich won't get as many deductions, but like Bill Clinton said, Romney lacks basic arithmetic skills.

Mr. Romney has pledged to cut individual income tax rates for everyone, and to do it without increasing the federal budget deficit or putting new tax burdens on middle-income people to make up for the lost revenues from the rate cuts. But he has provided no further specifics, confounding analysts and leaving himself open to attack from Democrats.

Asked on the NBC program “Meet the Press” on Sunday which tax deductions he would eliminate, he said only that he would target “some of the loopholes and deductions at the high end” while lowering the “burden on middle-income people.”

Democrats — as well as a broad range of economists from the left, right and center — say that the consequence of ending tax breaks substantial enough to offset the lost revenue from income tax rate cuts would be to hurt middle-class Americans.

Many independent analysts contend that the only way to raise the revenue Mr. Romney is talking about would be to eliminate breaks like the preferential treatment of investment income or the mortgage-interest deduction.

Their position is central to the Democrats’ argument that eliminating tax breaks — called tax expenditures because they often function like government spending programs — would hit the middle class the hardest.

...The problem, tax analysts say, is that it is mathematically impossible do all three of those things. High-income earners would pay far less as tax rates fell. Even if the Romney campaign eliminated every one of their noninvestment tax breaks and credits, rich families would still not pay what they do today.

That raises the question of whether the plan would increase taxes on the middle class, add to the deficit or require less-steep rate reductions.

“The combination of stuff they’ve specified is not only impossible — it is impossible several times over,” said William G. Gale, the director of economic studies for the center-left Brookings Institution and a co-author of a definitive Tax Policy Center study on Mr. Romney’s plan, whose arithmetic the Obama campaign is citing.

Romney's entire campaign is founded on smoke and mirrors. I can hardly wait for his debates with President Obama. The more voters learn about Romney, the less they like him. And the more dissembling he does on issues like coverage of pre-existing conditions, the less they trust him.

Romney doubles down on wrecking the environment

Mitt Romney had an opportunity to reverse course on a crazy policy position: let the Earth get sicker and allow the oceans to keep rising (from global warming). 

But yesterday he repeated his mocking of Obama's goal to do the opposite: heal the planet and slow the oceans' rise.

Environmental activists condemned Romney's remarks on "Meet the Press." Climate scientist Michael Mann, author of "The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars," wrote in an e-mail to The Huffington Post, "It is disconcerting that a major party presidential candidate would show such wanton disregard for the health of our environment. Mr. Romney says he wants to 'help the American people.' Yet he mocks concern over human-caused climate change, arguably the greatest threat humanity has ever faced."

Daniel Kessler, spokesperson for climate campaign 350.org, said it was ironic that Romney wants to help Americans, but not the planet Americans inhabit.

"Mr. Romney can crack all the jokes that he wants to, but his cynicism won't solve the problem," Kessler wrote to HuffPost. "Half of the country is in drought, and NASA says it's linked to climate change. If Mr. Romney finds that funny, then I think it's appropriate for people to question his leadership and commitment to truly helping the American people."

Further, Romney hasn't been telling the whole story about what Obama said. Here's the truth, something Romney and Ryan have a lot of problems with.

And for the record, what Obama actually said back in 2008 was:

If we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal….

Obama wasn’t making some narrow eco-pledge. He was saying he was in the race to help the American people in the short term and the long term. You can accuse Obama of  failing to fight hard enough for the climate goal — and I often do — but not for making the pledge in the first place. Romney’s remark should be enshrined in the anti-science hall of shame.

For sure. 

GM doesn't lose $49,000 on each Chevy Volt

Falsehoods about the Chevy Volt just keep on coming. Earlier this year Fox News and Charles Krauthamer lied about non-existent fires in Volts.

Now renewable energy haters, global warming deniers, and the anti-Obama crowd are crowing about a Reuters story that claims GM loses as much as $49,000 on each Chevy Volt it builds.

Problem is, this isn't true.

Reuters admits that it divided the billion dollars or so in development costs by the number of Volts sold through August. That's crazy. After someone sent me an email about this supposedly shocking news, I replied to him with:

Somebody makes a widget that cost $100,000 to get into production. They sell 10 of them in the first week for a profit of $100 each. Then someone claims, "They're losing $9,900 on each widget!" (because they've made $1,000 and they put $100,000 into development: $99,000 divided by 10 equals $9,900.) That claim is absurd, because they've just starting selling the widget. Whoever says that doesn't know how business works.

As GM says, and I've read, there will be a Volt 2 in a few years. The Volt technology almost certainly will be used in other cars. The Volt has won North American and European Car of the Year awards. It's a success. This is more disinformation from people who don't want to admit that the United States auto industry is alive and well, while Osama Bin Laden is dead. Very unpatriotic, in my opinion.

Aside from my political asides, this is pretty much how GM responded to the misleading Reuters story. 

Reuters’ estimate of the current loss per unit for each Volt sold is grossly wrong, in part because the reporters allocated product development costs across the number of Volts sold instead of allocating across the lifetime volume of the program, which is how business operates. The Reuters’ numbers become more wrong with each Volt sold.

In addition, our core research into battery cells, battery packs, controls, electric motors, regenerative braking and other technologies has applications across multiple current and future products, which will help spread costs over a much higher volume, thereby reducing manufacturing and purchasing costs.  This will eventually lead to profitability for the Volt and future electrified vehicles.

Every investment in technology that GM makes is designed to have a payoff for our customers, to meet future regulatory requirements and add to the bottom line.  The Volt is no different, even if it takes longer to become profitable.  

GM is at the forefront of the electrification of the automobile because we are developing innovative technologies and building an enthusiastic – and growing – customer base for vehicles like the Volt.

My wife and I own a Volt. We love it. (Here's the reasons why.)

When our three-year lease is up in June 2015 we're looking forward to getting a second generation "Volt," whose technology probably will be available in other GM models by then. According to Consumer Reports, the Volt had the highest customer satisfaction of any car sold in America. It's a huge success story.

The Obama administration, of course, had nothing to do with development of the Chevy Volt. The production design model was unveiled in September 2008, before Obama was even elected. Yet somehow right-wingers believe that disparaging the Volt, an all-American car, will reflect poorly on Obama.

That's bad politics.

Ohio, where the Volt is built, is vital to Romney's election chances. But Ohio is trending in favor of Obama, in no small part because of Romney's willingness to let GM go under. Bad-mouthing the Volt isn't going to help the G.O.P. cause in Ohio and other states where lots of jobs have been preserved by saving the auto industry.

I also don't understand how anyone can expect GM to make money from the Volt in the first year or two of production. The Volt is part of a long-term GM automotive strategy. In the same way as Amazon loses money on each Kindle tablet that it sells, but is happy to do so, so is GM planning to make money on the Volt. It'll just take a while longer.

GM acknowledges the Volt continues to lose money, and suggests it might not reach break even until the next-generation model is launched in about three years.

"It's true, we're not making money yet" on the Volt, said Doug Parks, GM's vice president of global product programs and the former Volt development chief, in an interview. The car "eventually will make money. As the volume comes up and we get into the Gen 2 car, we're going to turn (the losses) around," Parks said.

Lastly, so what if some of the government's auto bailout money is considered to be supporting GM's Volt losses? We're talking hundreds of millions of dollars, at most, given that the entire cost of Volt development was around a billion dollars.

New energy-related technologies always have gotten government aid.

The oil and gas industry has fed at the taxpayer trough for many, many years, eating up many more billions than electric car subsidies have. Thus the outrage of conservatives who decry federal support for renewable energy and alternatives to conventional car technology is misguided. 

To lose weight, eat enough to keep your willpower strong

Willpower, I read in a January 2012 New Scientist article by psychologist Roy Baumeister ("Weak will comes from tired mental muscles"), is more like a muscle than an ethical attribute. 

So rather than seeing willpower as a moral quality, the scientific view is that it is like a muscle that tires. After you exert self-control, you have less willpower so you are less able to resist a new demand. Self-control is only temporarily weakened and can recharge after a rest. Willpower resembles a muscle also in that it can be strengthened by exercise.

Thus just as muscles need rejuvenation after being used, so does willpower. Researchers have found that after exercising one's willpower, there isn't as much power to resist temptation next time around.

Even a few minutes of exerting self-control is enough to cause a decline in performance on a subsequent, seemingly unrelated test. That might suggest human willpower is scarce, but, again, no: willpower is like a muscle, and when a muscle gets tired, an athlete may cut back effort to conserve what remains. In fact, willpower looks as if it is indeed a kind of energy, tied to levels of the chemical glucose used to carry energy from the digestive system and fat stores to muscles and other organs. Neurotransmitters, that enable brain cells to fire, are made of glucose.

When it comes to using willpower in a weight loss effort, it turns out that eating is the key to maintaining resolve.

This glucose research also suggests why dieting is so fiendishly difficult. In order to resist tempting foods, we need willpower but to have willpower, we must eat. The essence of dieting (restricting food intake) robs us of the psychological strength needed to succeed. Perhaps dieters should concentrate on filling up with healthy food so they have the willpower to resist fattening stuff.

My wife used to be a psychotherapist in private practice. She had quite a few clients with eating disorders. When I told her about this article, it wasn't new news to her. Laurel said that she recommended eating frequent small meals to those clients, which keeps the glucose level (and hence willpower) up.

Interesting stuff.

I've lost about ten pounds this year using a somewhat similar approach. I eat when I'm hungry, but only when I'm hungry (mostly; I succumb to cravings sometimes). Losing weight and feeling better as a result encourages me to keep up my low-key diet.

Obama generated a post-convention bounce... in my mood

Oh, yeah, my progressive psyche is feeling much better now -- after watching the Republicans stumble through their convention while the Democrats soared in theirs. 

Beforehand I'd worried that the G.O.P. could pull off a miracle: make Romney-Ryan appear both likable and sensible. Didn't happen.

On Friday, a day after the Dem convention closed, a poll was released showing Obama crushing Romney on likability.

Asked who was the more likable candidate, 52 percent of registered voters surveyed favored Obama compared to 29 percent for Romney. Among independents, Obama enjoyed a likability advantage of 50 percent to 22 percent for Romney.

Obama also widened his lead over Romney in categories of "represents America" (Obama 44 percent, Romney 37 percent), "tough enough for the job" (Obama 42 percent, Romney 37 percent) and "will protect American jobs" (Obama 40 percent, Romney 37 percent).

Being an avid reader of neuroscience books, my political optimism about the November election is strengthened by the oft-cited fact that emotion rules the roost when it comes to decision-making. People intuitively feel that such-and-such is preferable, then they come up with reasons to justify that decision. 

So likability is important. It's an over-arching emotional attitude toward a candidate which frames particular pro and con arguments. 

Romney hopes that this month's unemployment report will turn voters his way. Doubtful.

For one thing, the unemployment rate dropped from 8.3% to 8.1%. The reason has a lot to do with fewer people in the labor force looking for jobs, but that's a detail which won't matter much to most voters. For another, Nate Silver of Five Thirty Eight, my favorite electoral analyst, points out that the effect of jobs numbers on the presidential race is uncertain.

Politically, however, it is less certain that the report is going to matter that much. The unemployment rate declined for superficial reasons, which makes for a gentler headline for President Obama.

Perhaps more important, the report did not change the basic story of an economy that is experiencing subpar growth but is in recovery rather than recession.

In previous elections Silver was highly accurate in predicting outcomes. Currently he shows Obama as having an 80% chance of beating Romney. That percentage has gone up 6.7% since September 1. So it sure looks like the recent conventions put Democrats in a much better light than Republicans.

I really liked Michelle Obama's, Joe Biden's, and Barack Obama's speeches. I loved Bill Clinton's.

His was a masterpiece of wonkery mixed with humor, passion, solid reasoning, and Clinton's inimitable personal touch. Like commentators said, he makes a large convention hall speech feel like a kitchen table conversation.

The Obama campaign should take Clinton's speech and use it as the template for the political arguments they'll be making over the next two months. Obama's likability plus solid facts will be devastating to Romney-Ryan.

My favorite fact (which is absolutely true): 

"Since 1961, the Republicans have held the White House 28 years, the Democrats 24. In those 52 years, our private economy produced 66 million private sector jobs. What's the jobs score? Republicans 24 million, Democrats 42."

Republicans talk the job creation game, but they don't play it very well.

That's mostly because they live in an economic fantasy world where tax cuts produce more revenue, trickle-down economics helps the middle class, and government intervention in the economy is always harmful.

Paul Krugman tells it like it is: Obama's policies have done a lot to help the American economy bounce back from the near-depression that resulted from eight years of Republican mismanagement. Come November I'm confident that voters won't put the reins of power back in the hands of the same people who got us into this mess.

Bill Clinton’s speech at the Democratic National Convention was a remarkable combination of pretty serious wonkishness — has there ever been a convention speech with that much policy detail? — and memorable zingers. Perhaps the best of those zingers was his sarcastic summary of the Republican case for denying President Obama re-election: “We left him a total mess. He hasn’t cleaned it up fast enough. So fire him and put us back in.”

Great line. But is the mess really getting cleaned up?

The answer, I would argue, is yes. The next four years are likely to be much better than the last four years — unless misguided policies create another mess.

...The policies we actually got were far from adequate. Debt relief, in particular, has been a bust — and you can argue that this was, in large part, because the Obama administration never took it seriously.

But, that said, Mr. Obama did push through policies — the auto bailout and the Recovery Act — that made the slump a lot less awful than it might have been. And despite Mitt Romney’s attempt to rewrite history on the bailout, the fact is that Republicans bitterly opposed both measures, as well as everything else the president has proposed.

So Bill Clinton basically had it right: For all the pain America has suffered on his watch, Mr. Obama can fairly claim to have helped the country get through a very bad patch, from which it is starting to emerge.

Four more years!

Neuroscience agrees with Obama: "You didn't build that"

This won't change many (if any) Republican minds, because mistrust of science has become a foundational G.O.P. position. Facts, after all, are inconvenient when unsupported assertions are the central presidential campaign strategy.

Nonetheless, here's a passage that I came across this morning in Iain McGilchrist's fascinating book, "The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World." McGilchrist is a psychiatrist, philosopher, and expert in how the human brain functions.

Here he alludes to the impossibility of any man or woman being an island sufficient to him/herself. Or of building anything unaided, including a business. "You didn't build that" is absolutely true, regardless of what Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan say.

One way of putting this is to say that we neither discover an objective reality nor invent a subjective reality, but that there is a process of responsive evocation, the world 'calling forth' something in me that in turn 'calls forth' something in the world.

That is true of perceptual qualities, not just of values. If there is no 'real' mountain, for example, separate from one created by the hopes, aspirations, reverence, or greed of those who approach it, it is equally true that its greenness, or greyness, or stoniness lies not in the mountain or in my mind, but comes from between us, called forth from both and equally dependent on both; as music arises from neither the piano nor the pianist's hands, the sculpture neither from hand nor stone, but from their coming together.

And then the hands are part of the lived body -- or, put more conventionally, are the vehicle of the mind, which is in turn the product of all the other minds that have interacted with it, from Beethoven and Michelangelo down to every encounter of our daily lives. We are transmitters, not originators. 

A dozen pages further on I read another passage that supports the progressive/Democratic emphasis on empathy and caring unselfishly for our fellow human beings, even if this means raising taxes or otherwise sacrificing something of our own for the good of others.

Altruism in humans extends far beyond anything in the animal world, and also beyond what is called 'reciprocal altruism' in which we behave 'altruistically' in calculated expectation of the favour being reciprocated. 

It is not a matter of the genes looking after themselves at the expense of the individual, either; human beings co-operate with people with whom they are not genetically related. It is also far more than merely co-operation based on the importance of maintaining one's reputation; we co-operate with, and put ourselves out to help, those we may barely know, those we know we may never meet again, and those who can in no way reward us.

...It is mutuality, not reciprocity, fellow-feeling, not calculation, which is both the motive and the reward for successful co-operation. And the outcome, in utilitarian terms, is not the important point; it is the process, the relationship, that matters.

Romney wants our planet to get sicker and oceans to rise

There are countless reasons to vote for Barack Obama rather than Mitt Romney this November. Here's one of the great reasons:

Romney wants our planet to get sicker and for the world's oceans to rise -- inundating highly populated areas, including Florida. 

That's insane, but it's what he said when he mocked President Obama:

President Obama promised to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet. My promise is to help you and your family.

How anybody could be for a diseased planet and coastal flooding is beyond me. Also, beyond Stephen Colbert, who had a great rejoinder on a recent show (at about the two minute mark of the video).

Yeah, f__k the planet! Quick show of hands: how many of your families live on the planet?

Republicans have a crazy belief that the well-being of humans somehow isn't intimately connected with the well-being of the earth's environment, which obviously makes it possible for people to survive and prosper.

Until recently Romney used to accept the reality of global warming. Now he's drunk the right-wing crazy juice and is in favor of a sick planet. 

That's sick! Vote for Obama if you want to heal the planet AND help families.

DirecTV Pac-12 Network excuses are annoying

The sports page informs me that next Saturday's Oregon-Fresno State game only will be televised on the new Pac-12 Network. I want to watch the game. But paternalistic DirecTV doesn't feel that I should. 

Today, once again, I contacted DirecTV, saying that one of their Important Subscribers, namely, me, wanted the pissing match between them and the Pac-12 Network to be resolved. Pronto! Before Saturday. 

I got an annoying email response from a customer service rep. My reactions to the annoyances are in italics.

Dear Mr. Hines, 

Thank you for writing about the Pac 12 Sports Network. I see you are one of our loyal customers, and we would like you to know that we appreciate your business.

Believe me, I don't feel very loyal at the moment. I switched to DirecTV from Dish after Dish dropped CBS shows, such as our must-see Survivor, over a contract dispute. So I'd drop DirecTV in an instant if we had a viable cable alternative. But since we live in the boonies, I'm stuck with satellite.

I know that this channel is important to you.

Wow, very astute. Must be the frequent complaining I've been doing via email and Twitter ever since I realized that DirecTV wasn't going to carry the Pac-12 Network at the start of football season.

We have been in discussions with the Pac 12 Conference Commissioner and Pac-12 Networks representatives for several months and hope to reach an agreement that will be fair for both those customers who want to receive Pac 12 programming and those who do not. For the latest information on channel additions, please visit our web site at www.directv.com/pr.

Pardon my self-centeredness, but I don't give a rip about DirecTV customers who don't want to get the PAC-12 Network. I'm forced to pay for lots of channels that I never watch, but other subscribers do, so why can't those other subscribers pay for a channel that I will watch? 

In addition, the vast majority of games, and those with the most conference or national title implications, will instead be televised by the ESPN family of networks and ABC Sports, FOX Sports and FSN, FX, CBS Sports and CBS Sports Network, NBC Sport and NBC Sports Network, and several other regional services, all of which are available on DIRECTV.

First, I don't believe this "vast majority" stuff. But maybe you're right. What's annoying is your assumption that I should only be interested in games with "conference or national title implications." I guess this means DirecTV won't have any OSU games, since likely the Beavers will suck this year and have no chance at the Pac-12 title. Still, I'd like to watch them when I want to. So don't tell me which football games I should be interested in, when the Pac-12 Network will be televising all of them, to my understanding.

Our goal is to always strive to provide our customers the very best TV experience at the most reasonable cost, and so we would hope to provide Pac-12 Networks to the fans whom most want it without burdening non-sports fans with an unreasonable additional expense.  

OK. So do it. I'd be happy to pay 80 cents a month more for the Pac-12 Network. I leave that much in the tip jar at a coffee house when I buy a 16 ounce caffeine fix and a whole grain bagel. Just cut the crap with all that talk about "goal" and "hope." Simply do it! Sign a deal with the Pac-12 Network.

I appreciate the opportunity to assist you. 

And I appreciate the opportunity to sarcastically criticize you.

Whatever happened to the adage "the customer is always right"? I know that DirecTV is getting lots of pressure from subscribers to add the Pac-12 Network. Yet nothing has happened so far. 

Aside from subscribers jumping ship to another TV provider. Keep it up, DirecTV, and you'll learn how loyal to you your avid Pac-12 sports fans are. My prediction: not much.

Note: if DirecTV still doesn't have the Pac-12 Network by this weekend, check out a Washington State fan's humorous suggestions for what else you can do other than watch football. Such as Go to Michael's with your wife to get scrapbooking materials.

Yikes! Scary! Hope I don't have a nightmare about that tonight.

Speaking of nightmares, the Pac-12 Network is encouraging DirecTV subscribers to give their satellite service a fright by signing up with a competitor who does carry the network. Good for them. I suspect the Pac-12 Network is just as greedy as DirecTV, but my sympathies are with the Network, since I want to be able to watch every Pac-12 game, not just the ones DirecTV thinks I should want to watch.

Another "cougar" sighting turns out to be a house cat

Cougarphobic people, of which there are quite a few here in Oregon, have an irrational fear of cougars, a.k.a. mountain lions.

I wish they'd get some therapy. This would be healthy both for them and the environment, since cougars are a valuable part of the natural ecosystem.

One of the symptoms of cougarphobia is seeing cougars everywhere. I enjoy the periodic news stories about someone who SAW A COUGAR!!! Which turns out to be a house cat. Recently this happened again in Lynden, Washington.

A "cougar" sighted four times near the Lynden fairgrounds turned out to be a very muscular orange housecat.

A woman snapped photos of the alleged cougar Monday, Aug. 27, near the 1800 block of Front Street. She saw the cat two times, and another person reported seeing a cougar in a different part of town, said Lynden Police Chief Jack Foster. The sightings were first relayed to police Tuesday.

This shows how ridiculous it is to base cougar mangement policy on reported sightings.

Not only are cougar attacks very rare -- much rarer than attacks on humans by dogs and other people -- but the instances of house cats being mistaken for a cougar show that the number of reported sightings is likely highly exaggerated.

Here's some other cougar-cat mistaken identity stories:
Salem "cougar" is almost certainly a cat

Oregon cougar sighting really a kitty cat 

From India comes a story about tigers which has a lot of relevance for handling cougars in the United States. "Tigers, men can live in harmony, says study." This is exactly our experience with cougars, living as we do in a rural area where they regularly prowl and kill deer. 

Tigers are not only capable of peacefully co-existing with man in the reserve forests but also, over the years, they have learnt how to thrive by lying low in day-time dominated by noisy human activities and being more active in the night, a new study has claimed.

 Even though the research was conducted among tigers in Chitwan Reserve Forest in Nepal, the researchers claimed that the methods and conclusion of the study are applicable to Indian forests in which both people and tigers live. 

So there's no need to fear cougars. Or tigers. Respect them. Be careful around them. Don't be afraid of them.

Same advice applies to the really dangerous species which attacks and kills humans with deadly regularity: Homo sapiens.

Salem Weekly exposes City Council's trashing of Sustainable Fairview

Excellent job, Salem Weekly editors.

Your reporting in "Master Plan? What Master Plan? The Lesson of Sustainable Fairview" was hugely better than the superficial articles published in the Salem Statesman Journal on this subject. You exposed the sad truth:

Salem's opportunity to have a world-class mixed-use sustainable development now almost certainly has been frittered away through the City Council's short-sighted kissing up to Simpson Hills, LLC -- which gets to build barely-green (if even that) conventional apartments on a site that could have featured cutting edge environment-friendly design.

My wife and I were investors in Sustainable Fairview Associates, LLC, the group which bought the property on which the Fairview Training Center was located.

We were involved in many meetings where plans for Sustainable Fairview were laid, ending in a Master Plan for the several hundred beautiful acres that seemed to guarantee that very high Green standards would have to be met by whoever developed the property.

Pringle Creek Community did just that after thirty-some acres were purchased from Sustainable Fairview Associates (SFA). By that time my wife and I were getting frustrated with the management of SFA, and I'd become a gadfly who annoyed many of the other investors. So after the Pringle Creek Community sale we sold our shares back to SFA for a decent profit.

I've remained interested in Sustainable Fairview though and continue to blog about the development. Just as I am now. 

Ah, what could have been... And now, won't be. Read the Salem Weekly piece and learn how Simpson HIlls was able to get permission from the City Council to modify the Sustainable Fairview Master Plan into a pathetic pale shadow of it's former vivid Greenness.

Deeply irritating.

One of our reasons for investing in Sustainable Fairview Associates was a realization that -- news flash! -- we're getting older. Someday, hopefully quite a few years off, our non-easy-care house is going to be too much for us to happily handle. My wife and I had envisioned living in either a smaller Sustainable Fairview detached home, or a condo of some sort. 

We liked the idea of living in a community of environmentally-minded people, with cars and roads downgraded in importance, being able to walk and bike around the development and surrounding neighborhoods, enjoying on-site amenities like a healthy restaurant, social center, coffee house, and such.

Now that dream seemingly has disappeared.

Simpson HIlls, LLC controls about half of the remaining Sustainable Fairview property, I believe. It now has free rein to build essentially conventional housing, with essentially conventional roads and parking lots, likely camoflaged by a thin veneer of minimalist "Earth Advantage" double-speak.

Salem Weekly reported what transpired at the City Council meeting where Simpson HIlls got its way:

Mayor Peterson:  “For us to sit here and say, ‘you’re going to have to build that to a gold standard’ is to say to that developer, ‘forget your bottom line, forget your funding, you’re going to have to do it this way.’”

And so Nanke’s second bid was dismissed.

Then, over Nanke’s and Bennett’s objections, the Council approved Simpson Hills’ plan.

The result?  A development that’s standard in an area that was supposed to be outstanding.   Because the city – from Planning Commission to planning staff to City Council – sold Fairview out.

True. The City of Salem sold out the dream of Sustainable Fairview.

But the way I see it, blame for the mediocrity that Sustainable Fairview will become (aside from Pringle Creek Community, which is doing things right) needs to be more broadly spread around to include...

-- Sustainable Fairview Associates, which had opportunities to sell the property to a genuinely Green developer back in the days when the housing market was booming and interest was pretty strong in the former Fairview site. SFA also failed to insure that Simpson Hills would have to abide by the Sustainable Fairview Master Plan when it developed the acreage that it bought from SFA. Why wasn't a clause to this effect included in the sales agreement?

-- Morningside Neighborhood Association, which represents the area adjacent to Sustainable Fairview. The board of the association initially strongly fought against the Simpson HIlls conventional apartments plan, but ended up voting narrowly (5-4, if I remember correctly from a news story) to endorse the mildly green'ified Simpson Hills proposal. Likely this encouraged the City Council to approve the so-called "refinements" to the Master Plan, which actually were "dismemberments."

-- Everyone who lives in and near Salem, including me, who passively puts up with never-ending mediocrity in our city. I've tried to point out a fresh path forward through my Strange Up Salem effort. However, by and large I sit on my butt and complain about Salem's lameness rather than doing something about it. 

I've theorized that a curse sits upon Salem, dooming us to be forever average while Portland, Corvallis, and Eugene (among other cooler, greener, more thriving Oregon cities) soar beyond us. This, though, is defeatist thinking. 

The Sustainable Fairview debacle, though, is just that: a defeat for Salem. There was an opportunity to make this property highly special. Now it'll become like almost everything is in Salem: acceptably OK. Nothing more.