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I'm not a fan of the whole deep state thing when Trump supporters use the term to denigrate career federal employees who are simply trying to do their job as best they can.
But rightly or wrongly, deep state has become a sort of shorthand for government officials hanging on to past policy positions after the political winds of change have begun blowing in a different direction. So that's how I'm using the term.
After quite a few years of progressives being outnumbered by conservatives on the Salem City Council, they now enjoy a 6-3 majority. Tom Andersen, Cara Kaser, Sally Cook, Chris Hoy, Matt Ausec, and Jackie Leung constitute the progressive wing. Jim Lewis, Brad Nanke, and Mayor Chuck Bennett make up the conservative wing.
(Yeah, arguably Bennett is a moderate because he tends to swing left or right depending on shifting political breezes. But I still classify him as a conservative.)
Given the progressive tenor of the City Council, liberals in Salem tend to expect that actions by City of Salem staff should reflect the wishes of the voters that have changed the makeup of the council dramatically leftward in the past few elections.
However, Salem has a strong City Manager and weak City Council form of local government. By and large, City Manager Steve Powers doesn't have to change direction just because the City Council has. A new strategic planning process should change this to some extent, as the City budget should better reflect Council priorities.
But right now we're in an awkward stage where the ponderous City of Salem ship is taking longer to alter course than progressives like me would like. Here's some examples.
Third Bridge. Even though a clear majority of City Council members oppose the billion dollar (with financing costs) Salem River Crossing project, a.k.a. the Third Bridge, City staff have continued to press onward with it. At least, I'm not aware that City Manager Powers has directed his employees to stop spending time and money on the Salem River Crossing -- perhaps because Mayor Bennett remains a staunch supporter of it.
Homelessness. Recently Powers ordered a homeless camp under the Marion Street bridge to be removed, and to prevent volunteers from serving meals to the homeless at that location. While there are defensible reasons for these actions, they didn't exactly make City officials look like caring, compassionate people. I'll let an Angry Owl tweet do the talking about this.
Costco. City of Salem planning staff busily worked away on approving a controversial proposal to relocate Salem's Costco to a site along Kuebler Boulevard immediately adjacent to a residential neighborhood. The proposal was a marked departure from an earlier agreement to build a neighborhood retail shopping center there, rather than a giant regional wholesale Costco big box store.
City staff also thought it was fine to allow Costco to remove mature white oaks that are protected by a City ordinance. But the City Council rejected the Costco plan on a 5-3 vote, with five progressives outnumbering the three conservatives.
Mountain West apartment complex. This issue hasn't reached the City Council yet, but it seems a lot like the Costco situation: City of Salem staff approving a development that threatens the Heritage School and ignores the Fairview Master Plan, and refinements to it, that require construction on the Fairview property to be both environmentally sustainable and in harmony with existing developments. So once again City staff may be operating at odds with Council priorities, and prior planning decisions.
Appointment of Jim Lewis to transportation committee. Councilor Lewis not only is a strong supporter of the billion dollar Salem River Crossing boondoggle, he has zero discernible commitment to bike paths and mass transit/public transportation.
Yet Mayor Bennett has appointed one of the three conservatives on the nine-member City Council to an important committee dealing with transportation funding. Here's how the Salem Breakfast on Bikes blogger described this:
The Mayor will announce assignments to various internal and external committees. But on those Council assignments it is interesting to see that Councilor Lewis will again be assigned to our Metropolitan Planning Organization, SKATS.
Councilor Lewis has been, depending on how charitable you feel, either a personality refreshingly independent of Council policy or outright insubordinate.
On the SRC he has consistently acted contrary to Council direction. There are other areas in which it is possible to say he has not very passionately advocated for Council policy and intent, especially when it concerns greenhouse gases or non-auto travel.
It is not difficult to see the Mayor's calculations, his bias for the SRC and preference at SKATS.
But is this something the rest of Council should embrace? The politics are not easy to discern, and it's very possible there are other battles to fight and that this is simply not worth it.
But at the same time, it is strange to have someone at the MPO, which administers significant pots of federal transportation funding, who does not skillfully and passionately advocate for the interests of the City as Council articulates them. Why the tolerance for an underminer?
Division Street trees. People in Salem love their trees. When City of Salem Public Works director Peter Fernandez made a backroom deal with the U.S. Bank president to cut down five beautiful healthy trees on downtown's State Street in 2013, there was a lot of justified outrage. So now it's 2019. Fernandez remains in his job.
And the City of Salem is still aiming to cut down large beautiful healthy downtown trees for no good reason -- in the case of the Division Street trees, to gain a few parking spaces by changing parallel parking to angled parking, even though the public was told that the new police facility would have public parking, but staff chose to eliminate that parking and cut down the trees instead.
Library book removal. It is decidedly weird that the Salem Public Library director, Sarah Strahl, apparently with the support of City Manager Powers, would choose to embark on a massive book removal project shortly after Salem voters approved a $19 million bond measure to make improvements to the library.
Dumping many thousands of books for no good reason doesn't seem like a wise way to say "thank you" to the many people in Salem who love their library and voted for the bond measure. Fortunately, citizen resistance has put a hold on the book removal effort until February 13, when the issue will be revisited by the Library Advisory Board.
There's a recent letter to the editor about this from Clifford Smith:
Last week, I attended the Salem Public Library Advisory Board meeting and was pleased to see about 80 residents in attendance who, like me, are concerned about what is happening at the library.
The current practice of mass book removal is baffling — the wrong direction for the library and just another step in its degradation.
We are not out of shelving nor floor space. Removal of the Information and Reference Information service desk is both shocking and indefensible.
Elimination of children’s story times, special adult and children’s programs and a Branch Librarian at the West Salem Branch is a total betrayal of that community
I have been a librarian for more than 50 years and have worked in high school, community college, large public university, and several public libraries, 30 of those years at Salem Public Library.
The Salem Public Library was for many years considered by many to be one of the best, if not the best, public libraries in Oregon. Sadly, that is no longer the case.
I sincerely hope the city administration will take a long and hard look at the direction our library is going and take steps to reverse course.
Lastly, City Manager Steve Powers still seems to command the confidence of City councilors. At least, I haven't heard any rumors that his job is in jeopardy. But at some point Powers needs to show that he's acting in accord with what the people of Salem want.
Too often City staff seem to cater to special interests rather than the broad public interest. Powers has been here long enough to now own that problem. How he deals with it could determine how long he's going to remain as City Manager.
Today the Wall Street Journal reported that the Gannett Corporation, which owns the Statesman Journal, is ripe for a takeover.
Since the company that would make a bid for Gannett is notorious for cutting costs at newspapers it owns, I'm sure employees of the Statesman Journal aren't thrilled with this news.
Here's some excerpts from "Hedge-Fund-Backed Media Group Prepares Bid for Gannett." (If you can't access the story via that link, download this PDF file.)
Download Hedge-Fund-Backed Media Group Prepares Bid for Gannett - WSJ
MNG Enterprises Inc., one of the largest newspaper chains in the country, has quietly built a 7.5% position in Gannett’s stock and plans to publicly urge the McLean, Va., publisher to put itself up for sale, the people said.
MNG, better known as Digital First Media, will also offer to buy Gannett for $12 a share, they said, which would represent a 23% premium over Friday’s closing price of $9.75. The shares, which fell steeply last year, have been rising lately.
Closely held Digital First is known for its contentious history with the newspaper industry in part because of its penchant for slashing costs. It has over the past few years made multiple approaches to Gannett about a deal but has been rebuffed, the people said. At least one approach was made in the past month or so. It isn’t clear whether Gannett will be receptive now.
...Digital First Media’s largest shareholder is Alden Global Capital LLC, a New York hedge fund that focuses on investing in distressed companies. It became an investor in the debt of an MNG entity in 2010 after that company’s own bankruptcy and became the biggest shareholder several years ago.
Alden, founded by Randall Smith and Heath Freeman, has more than $1 billion under management. The sometimes-activist investor is known for slashing costs at its media investments through layoffs and the use of zero- based budgeting, an approach that requires operators to justify their expenses each year.
Now it may be that nothing comes of this takeover attempt. And I make no claim to knowing how hedge funds, nor the entities they invest in, operate.
That said, here's some thoughts about this possible takeover based on some of my previous blog posts about Gannett and the Statesman Journal.
It's been curious to me that in a time of decreasing newspaper popularity and declining advertising revenues, Gannett has chosen to increase the monthly Monday-Sunday home delivery subscription rate from $46 to $68 over the past 18 months or so.
That's a 48% increase in roughly a year and a half during a time when overall inflation has been running about 2% a year, so around 3% every 18 months. Thus Gannett has been asking Statesman Journal subscribers to pay 16 times more than the general inflation rate to continue getting the newspaper delivered every day.
In May 2018 I wrote a blog post called "The Statesman Journal seems to be on the track of 'How a newspaper dies.'" It starts out this way:
As previously reported, I've heard from a seemingly reliable source that the Statesman Journal, Salem's daily newspaper that's owned by Gannett, will cease being a print publication in 2019.
This would mark another milestone in the paper's steady journalistic decline, both in quantity (number of reporters and original stories) and quality (investigative reporting is minimal, especially on the local level).
Today I read a Politico Magazine piece, "This is How a Newspaper Dies," that provided some fresh insights into what is happening with the Statesman Journal. The subtitle of Jack Shafer's highly interesting story is It's with a spasm of profits.
Now, I don't know how profitable the Statesman Journal is. But what's been happening with the paper is very much in line with Shafer's analysis of the Denver Post and other newspapers owned by a so-called "vulture capitalist," Randall Smith.
As noted in the excerpt in today's Wall Street Journal story, Smith is a founder of the hedge fund that is involved in the potential Gannett takeover attempt.
I shared the core notion from the Politico piece in this excerpt:
The business-school label for tactics like Alden’s, in which you get fewer customers to pay more for less, as Philip Meyer wrote in his book The Vanishing Newspaper, is “harvesting market position.” By raising prices and lowering quality, a stagnant business can rely on its most loyal customers to continue to buy the product, allowing it to squeeze and squeeze and squeeze its customers as they croak.
That sounds bad. But I argued in the May 2018 post that it's what Gannett already has been doing with the Statesman Journal, and I assume other newspapers owned by Gannett.
So let's see how many of these criteria for "harvesting market position" by getting fewer customers to pay more for less the Statesman Journal checks off.
Raising subscription prices. Check. The Statesman Journal's Sunday-Monday home delivery rate has increased about 50% in a bit over a year. Annoyingly, new subscribers pay about 1/5 of what loyal long-time subscribers are being charged.
Lowering quality. Check. See "Devastating critique of Salem Statesman Journal by experienced journalist" and "Maybe its time for the Statesman Journal to die."
Declining circulation. Check. See "Salem Statesman Journal daily circulation in steep decline." There was a 41% drop in circulation from 2008 to 2014.
Staff layoffs. Check. See "Layoffs at Statesman Journal tied to worrisome Gannett 'newsroom of the future'."
There's probably no way to reverse the impending demise of newspapers such as the Statesman Journal. Young people aren't interested in paying to read yesterday's news, especially when it is printed on paper. And old people like me who are hooked on a daily newspaper are, sad but true, dying off.
Shafer tells it like it is.
Allow yourself to sympathize with Smith for a moment. He’s deeply invested in a stagnant industry whose primary audience is approaching its own expiration date. Think of the Denver Post and most other newspapers as your grandfather who is on dialysis, has a pacemaker and totes an oxygen tank behind him. He looks alive, but he’s overdue. Your grandfather is a pretty good stand-in for the average newspaper subscriber, too. Habituated to his morning newspaper, he’ll resist cancelling his subscription no matter how raggedy the paper gets or how high the owners jack up the price.
So if harvesting market position has been the previous Gannett business model, seemingly this would make Gannett open to being bought out by investors who have a history of doing the same thing,
Time will tell if this actually happens. If it does, likely this will bring the Statesman Journal closer to journalistic demise.
Jim Scheppke, book lover and former Librarian for the State of Oregon, has done a great job at stimulating citizens to speak out about the Salem Public Library's misguided effort to purge tens of thousands of books from its core collection.
Here's Scheppke's report about last night's Library Advisory Board meeting at the library's Anderson Room that he posted on the Save Our Books Facebook page.
BOOKS WIN A REPRIEVE — FOR NOW
Thanks to a standing room only turnout of book lovers and supporters, the Library Advisory Board decided last night to continue the suspension of "the big weed" (as the library staff calls it) until their next meeting on February 13th.
About 90 people packed the Anderson Room and about 30 of them spoke strongly in opposition to the mass book removal project that was ordered by library management in September, but was suspended after concerns were expressed by Salem City Councilors in December.
Most of the attendees speaking in favor of "the big weed" were librarians from other cities defending their professional prerogatives. Many long time Salem citizens including a former City Councilor spoke passionately about what was happening at our library. Some brought books that they had purchased for pennies on the dollar at the Friends bookstore that they believed belong in our library.
So our advocacy won a reprieve, but the controversy continues.
Remarks from library management indicate they have no plans to back off their plan to remove thousands of books from our library. If you want to help us, please mark your calendar for Wednesday, February 13th, when the Library Advisory Board is expected to render a final recommendation on "the big weed."
The Salem Reporter has a story about the Library Advisory Board meeting, "Salem library to pause review another month following lengthy public hearing."
I'm not sure whether Library director Sarah Strahl is a habitually optimistic person, or if she's skilled at putting a positive spin on a negative situation, but this quote from her in the Salem Reporter story is decidedly amusing -- given the amount of opposition to Strahl's book removal policy expressed by citizens last night.
Debate that was sometimes contentious and sometimes poetic lead to the shelving for at least a month of a rigorous review of library books.
...City Librarian Sarah Strahl said she was happy to see so many people asking questions about the library. At least 80 people attended the meeting.
“It’s good to see people so engaged with the library,” she said. “You’re always happy to see that.”
Strahl's comment reminded me of what Trump tweeted about the January 2018 Women's March protests against him and his flawed policies.
Um, no, the women aren't celebrating your supposed accomplishments, narcissist that you are. They're protesting you!
Likewise, most of the people at last night's Library Advisory Board meeting weren't there to merely "engage with the library." Rather, they were protesting Sarah Strahl's book removal efforts.
It would have been nice if Strahl had made more of an effort to understand the concerns of Scheppke and the many others who don't like the notion of the Salem Public Library becoming more like a bookstore and reading room, and less like a place where the collected literary wisdom and creativity of many decades, centuries even, can be found.
I speak as someone who wrote a book about the teachings of Plotinus, a 3rd century Greek Neoplatonist philosopher, called "Return to the One." Not many people are interested in reading about Plotinus. But he was a hugely influential thinker and mystic. Early Christians appropriated his Platonic ideas to flesh out their theology.
So I'm biased toward having books at the Salem Public Library that deserve to be in the core collection for reasons other than how frequently they are checked out.
Hopefully Strahl and her staff will come to see that the arguments of Scheppke and others who testified last night have a lot of merit, and will modify their so-called "big weed" of library books.
In this PDF file you can read seven reasons Scheppke puts forward for why the current book removal policy of the Salem Public Library is seriously flawed.
Download Stop the Book Removal (Rev.)
Here's my previous posts about this subject:
Salem Public Library removing 30% of print book collection. Resistance is mounting.
Library expert criticizes "core book" policy of Salem Public Library
Battle of the Books continues with Salem Public Library on defense
For someone who had a book ghostwritten for him called "The Art of the Deal," Donald Trump is a notably shitty dealmaker.
So far in his presidency he's noted for breaking deals -- Paris climate change agreement, Trans-Pacific Partnership, Iran nuclear agreement -- rather than making them. Which figures. Blowing stuff up is a hell of a lot easier than putting stuff together.
The worst thing I can say about Trump is that I consider myself a better dealmaker than he is. And my credentials aren't exactly sterling.
Once I was negotiating with a guy in our carport about a car I was selling. After some talking, it turned out that the guy was the mirror image of me. I was saying, "I feel like the price I'm asking is a bit high," and the other guy was saying, "This car is in such great shape, it's worth more than you're asking."
After we realized the absurdity of what was happening, we laughed and agreed on a price that both of us were happy with.
Which is the essence of a deal, isn't it? Reaching an agreement that makes both sides pleased, even if in reality, one side is getting more out of the deal.
In negotiating with Democratic Congressional leaders about the partial government shutdown and Trump's obsessive desire for border wall funding, it seems clear that Trump has no idea how to handle talks with people who aren't intimidated by him.
This likely is a first for Trump, since he seems to have gotten by in his previous business life by using threats, lawsuits, lies, broken promises, and bravado to get what he wanted. None of those things are going to work with Pelosi and Schumer. They're way more experienced at political dealmaking than Trump is.
What blows my mind the most about his negotiating incompetence is this: he and his Republican surrogates already have made clear how desperate Trump is to get funding for something he can call a "wall."
News stories have made clear that if Trump can't fulfill this campaign promise (even if Mexico doesn't pay for it), he and his fellow Republicans consider that the chance of him winning reelection in 2020 is low. So unlike a car salesman who tells a customer, "This is my best offer, take it or leave it," Trump has staked out a position of "I'm screwed if I don't get wall funding."
Not surprisingly, Trump's desperation makes Congressional Democrats even more determined not to give him what he so obviously can't live without.
Thus Trump is reduced to making threats about invoking a presidential power to declare a border security emergency, which carries with it a lot of problems of its own. Such as being possibly illegal and decidedly unpopular with everyone but his base, since he'd take money out of the Defense Department budget earmarked for other purposes.
Here's another of Trump's weaknesses that makes him a terrible dealmaker: he lacks empathy.
Now, taken to extremes this isn't a great attribute for dealmakers. In the car-buying/selling anecdote I shared above, the other guy and I were each overly empathetic. I was visualizing how I'd feel about buying my car, even though I was selling it, and the other guy was visualizing how he'd feel if he was selling the car, even though he was buying it.
But if someone can't put themselves in the other person's shoes, or rather, mind, they're going to have a difficult time getting that person to agree to a deal.
I'm pretty sure Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are well aware of how badly Trump wants his wall.
However, I'm deeply doubtful that Donald Trump understands how badly Pelosi and Schumer need to hold the line on wall funding -- given the results of the midterm elections where voters overwhelmingly said no way to Trump's border wall fear-mongering.
A compromise on reopening the government seems eminently possible. Yet this requires Trump to do some empathizing that he doesn't seem capable of. Trump needs to take a Democratic "yes" for an answer.
Yes, the Dems are saying, we agree that border security needs to be stronger. They are open to funding a host of border security to-do's, including fencing, so long as nothing looks like what Trump would call a wall. But given how Trump shamelessly lies about everything, he also could lie about an agreement to reopen the government.
I can picture him saying to his base, "The Democrats want to call it fencing rather than a wall, but we know what they really agreed to: a wall." Likewise, Pelosi and Schumer could say, "Trump wants to call it a wall rather than fencing, but we know what he really agreed to: fencing."
Both sides have to feel like they won in order to strike a deal between equals. Until Trump realizes this, the standoff between him and the Democrats is going to continue -- with 800,000 government workers stuck in the middle without pay.
This is a classic -- and oh, so Salem -- development story with David and Goliath overtones.
On one side we have a charming 35-student private school, the Heritage School, which set up shop on the old Fairview Training Center property in 2004, when the vision for the property's 275 acres hadn't yet been diluted.
So the folks who invested a lot of time, energy, and money into renovating a building on the Fairview property, anticipating that the surrounding acreage would be developed in accord with a Sustainable Fairview Master Plan, now are justifiably irked that Mountain West Investment Corporation plans to build a 180-unit cookie-cutter apartment complex directly across from the Heritage School.
Here's a PDF file of a January 4, 2018 letter from the Heritage School to the Salem Planning Commission that lays out the school's concerns about the Mountain West development. The screenshot below shows the conclusion of this testimony.
Download Heritage School Testimony PDF
Note that the Heritage School isn't opposed to Mountain West building an apartment complex on the Fairview property. The school just wants to have that complex developed in accord with the sustainable principles embodied in the original Fairview Master Plan and 2016 Refinement Plan. Read the school's testimony to the Planning Commission (link above) for details.
Recently I talked by phone with Wendi Warren Binford, a Willamette University Law School professor who co-signed the Heritage School testimony letter. One of her children graduated from the Heritage School, which offers classes in grades 1-8, and she has another child currently in 3rd grade.
Here's how she summarized the Mountain West apartment complex in a written message:
As for the development, it is comprised of 16 buildings, including 15 monolithic three-story apartment blocks on just nine acres. Their “pathways” repeatedly cut through parking lots, alleys, driveways, and streets. It is an extremely hostile concrete and asphalt environment to pedestrians, cyclists, and especially, to children.
Binford wanted to speak with me because I've written extensively about the Sustainable Fairview development. My wife and I owned shares in Sustainable Fairview Associates from 2003-2006, so I have firsthand knowledge of how the original vision for this property has steadily been eroded over the years.
I was told that three three-story apartment buildings are planned to be built directly across from the Heritage School, just 40 feet from the children. People in the apartments would look right into the school's windows.
"The school came to Fairview for the original vision," Binford said. "And the school has stayed true to the vision."
Unfortunately, the City of Salem has allowed repeated diminishing of that vision over the years through incorrectly named "refinement" plans for the Sustainable Fairview property. I say incorrectly, because the changes haven't really been refinements to the original vision, but wholesale alterations.
Back in 2012 Salem Weekly ran a story, "Master Plan. What Master Plan? The Lesson of Fairview Sustainable." It starts off with:
Salem took a leap of faith in 2008. It designated a special plot to have world-class qualities. “Sustainable Fairview” (near Reed and Battle Creek Roads) would be ‘green,’ innovative – energy efficient. The City wrote the recipe down in a Master Plan.
On August 13, 2012 Salem’s City Council chose to piss the Master Plan away. It voted to build 41.1 acres in a manner inconsistent with Plan requirements. The action was the latest in a series by Salem’s Planning Commission, city staff and City Council to rip up the promise of Fairview.
Some blame the developers: after all Simpson Hills LLC and AKS Engineering had a clear look at the Master Plan from the get-go. But we don’t demand developers be ethical, (though we should) because if we did, we’d all still have to construct our own houses with neighborhood “barn raisings.”
But the City of Salem – deserves our scorn. And maybe we too are guilty, for not holding it more accountable.
When, even after critique from “sustainable” quarters, the developer’s second proposal came in badly lacking, (it did not comply with a single of the original requirements, according to Morningside Neighborhood Association) – our city endorsed it. Planning Administrator Glen Gross recommended it; the Planning Commission approved it.
So here we go again. I don't believe the Mountain West apartment complex is part of the Simpson Hills property, but the same process is being followed in the plan review process -- which Binford told me requires 11 variances.
Supporters of Heritage School got a continuance of a Salem Planning Commission hearing until January 8.
Binford believes the Planning Commission will approve the apartment complex plan, but is more optimistic that, upon appeal, the City Council could modify that plan to make it both more in line with the original vision of Sustainable Fairview, and create fewer hardships for the Heritage School.
Earlier this month the Salem Breakfast on Bikes blog had a post about the proposed Mountain West apartment complex. These comments were right-on.
On the 18th the Planning Commission will look at plans for what appears to be a cookie-cutter development of three-story walkup apartments with parking lots in the former Village Center area. It would be called "the Grove."
In 2016 a revision reduced much of the area for the Village Center, but still called it "Adaptive Use" zone (in red below). At this point, however, it sure doesn't look like the plan at hand "adapts" any building at all.
Without more information it's premature to pass much judgement, but on the surface it looks like a substantial dilution, or perhaps even erasure, of several of the key concepts for the Fairview project.
In the "Class 2 Adjustment" part there are 12 separate requests for adjustment. It's surprising a new Refinement Plan is not part of the current round of process, as the adjustments may very well be more than merely fiddling on the edges and constitute more substantial change, especially when they are considered as a totality and not severally. Those "incremental" adjustments add up.
Exactly. The Heritage School bought property at Fairview expecting that City officials would only allow development on the 275 acres that was consistent with the Sustainable Fairview Master Plan.
But there's been a steady reworking of the Master Plan, until now it's difficult to recognize anything truly "sustainable" in the proposed Mountain West apartment complex. A powerful developer such as the Mountain West Investment Corporation shouldn't be allowed to trample on the rights of a small educational institution like the Heritage School.
This is the David vs. Goliath ethical dilemma that the Salem City Council likely will have to wrestle with at some point.
I'm hoping David comes out on top, because this town has a long history of elevating the interests of developers over those of ordinary citizens, and this needs to stop, with a better balance between those competing interests being struck.
Read on to learn why those in Salem who support gay rights and same-sex marriage should join in the boycott of the Broadway Commons and the Broadway Coffee House.
I submitted what follows as a guest opinion in the Statesman Journal about three weeks ago. Recently I inquired about the piece and learned that the newspaper wasn't going to publish it.
So here it is. The only change I've made to what was sent to the Statesman Journal was adding links to other blog posts I've written about the boycott.
Facts About the Broadway Commons Boycott
by Brian Hines
In a December 11 letter to the editor, Scott Rick called for a boycott of the Broadway Commons because Salem Alliance Church, which owns the property, refuses to allow same-sex marriages. Rick said that the church discriminates against LGBT people “in various ways,” including the refusal to marry same-sex couples.
A boycott is a serious action. It should be based on facts.
A year ago I heard about a boycott by 50 neighbors of the Broadway Commons for a similar reason. Here’s what I’ve been able to learn since about this issue. I’m confident that what follows is accurate, since it is based on demonstrable facts.
First, in addition to the Salem Alliance Church not being willing to marry same-sex couples, lead pastor Steve Fowler has preached that same-sex sex is a sin.
I listened to a podcast of a 2016 sermon by Fowler where he says, “And you will never find in the scriptures any positive pictures of a same sex union. It just isn’t there…Any kind of sexual activity outside of a marriage with a male and a female, this is something we should not be engaged in.”
Second, in response to the boycott controversy, the Salem Alliance Church has issued a statement that affirmed an orthodox view of marriage, said that only followers of Jesus are hired to work at the Broadway Coffee House, and noted that sexual orientation questions are not asked during the hiring process.
However, the statement was silent as to whether openly LGBT people would be able to work at the coffeehouse.
Third, a KATU News reporter and I have repeatedly asked representatives of the Salem Alliance Church and Broadway Coffee House whether a LGBT person would be welcome to be a barista.
The only response has been that the above-mentioned statement is their last word on this matter. So it appears almost certain that the Broadway Coffee House does indeed discriminate against those in a same-sex relationship, in accord with the teachings of the Salem Alliance Church.
To my understanding this is legal in Oregon, since religions are not bound by anti-discrimination laws that apply to others. However, this doesn’t make it right.
The Broadway Coffee House shows no outward sign of being church owned and operated. I’ve heard from numerous people that if they had known the coffee house is run by a church that considers same-sex sex to be a sin and won’t hire LGBT people, they wouldn’t patronize it.
Here’s a cogent analogy.
Imagine Planned Parenthood ran a coffee house, but didn’t publicly indicate it was the owner. Those opposed to abortion would be disturbed to learn that the money they spent at the coffee house was going to a cause they found abhorrent, even though abortions are a small part of what Planned Parenthood does.
Likewise, backers of gay rights and same-sex marriage are justifiably concerned about supporting the Broadway Commons for the same sort of reason: not being consistent with their values.
Note: this image isn't of members of the Salem Alliance Church, but it accurately represents how the church looks upon same-sex sex.
Check out Angry Owl's 2019 twitter predictions for Salem. Predictably, I've got to say, "They're a hoot!" I am unbelievably honored to be featured in one of them. Enjoy...
How I feel about my blog posts is a lot like how I'd feel if, instead of only having one child, I had several. They all would be my favorite!
But risking some tears from unchosen posts, I was able to pick just one Salem Political Snark post per month to comprise my favorites list for 2018.
Before sharing them, I want to say that the always-interesting Breakfast on Bikes blogger has put together an absolutely great overview of goings-on in Salem during the past year from the standpoint of land use, livability, and transportation issues.
So be sure to check out "2018 In Review: In Between." Here's how it starts out.
What to say about 2018? I want to think it is a pivot, a transitional year. I'm not sure that there was a whole lot big and new, and maybe even nothing truly decisive, but there were concluding actions, things ending, and also things gathering and starting. Maybe this will be a mistake, and the year will turn out to be very insignificant.
The wish is always to be able to place the year's events in some kind of narrative, to find shape and pattern - and progress. But as we have seen, a Whiggish attachment to Progress is very often just fiction, and history has no such teleology. Maybe 2018 is just a random splatter of events.
As you can see from the following blog posts, progressive/liberal me found a lot to like locally in 2018, along with a lot not to like. On the whole, I agree with the Breakfast on Bikes blogger: progress has been made, but much more remains to be done.
Here's my favorite posts, one from each month, with an excerpt from each.
January
Here's 5 good reasons not to shop at Salem's Hobby Lobby
The biggest reason was given in a Slate podcast interview with Candida Moss, a Professor of Theology who wrote a book about the company's efforts to Christianize this country, "Bible Nation: The United States of Hobby Lobby."
After hearing Moss talk about some Hobby Lobby horror stories that I'll summarize below, at about the 21:14 mark Mike Pesca, the interviewer, says that the engine of all that Hobby Lobby sets out to do is their stores.
So, he said, "When you shop there, you're giving directly to their efforts." Moss agreed, saying that the company's evangelical owners are the religious equivalent of the Koch brothers.
February
Larry Tokarski leaves the public with a $7.5 million development bill
It took me about two seconds to say "Yes" when the publisher of Salem Weekly, A.P. Walther, asked me via an email if I'd be interested in writing a story about the unbuilt section of Lone Oak Road that the City Council is asking the public to pay for, after the developer, Larry Tokarski, walked away from his obligation to make the road improvements.
March
What if Salem was like this...
Today I had an stimulating conversation about Salem, including political goings-on, with a person who had some appealingly fresh ideas about what needs to change in our city to make it a better place to live for everybody -- not just the already well-off.
Our talk got me to thinking about what Salem would be like if... where what follows the "if" is an outcome unconstrained by what exists today, because that would pretty much guarantee more of the same.
April
Leung vs. McCoid City Council race isn't getting attention it deserves
In this Year of the Woman, politically and culturally-speaking, I find it surprising that Jacqueline (Jackie) Leung's Ward 4 City Council race against incumbent Steve McCoid isn't getting more attention.
...Leung and Varney are the most progressive candidates in their races. So as I noted last month in "Jackie Leung should get Progressive Salem support for her City Council campaign," it's strange that Progressive Salem, which works to elect local liberal candidates, hasn't made an endorsement in the Ward 4 race.
May
Five takeaways from Jackie Leung's Salem City Council victory
Like I said last Tuesday on election night, Jackie Leung's 53%-46% victory over Steve McCoid in the Ward 4 City Council race warms my progressive heart.
...There are lessons to be learned from political newcomer Leung's upset victory over an incumbent city councilor, especially when Micki Varney's 48%-52% loss to incumbent Councilor Jim Lewis in the Ward 8 race is considered.
June
Five strange things about Friday's special City Council meeting about water problem
I'm a fan of strangeness. But there's pleasing kinds of strange and disturbing kinds of strange.
Watching yesterday's special City Council meeting about Salem's toxic algae water crisis via a Facebook feed gave me the latter sorts of feelings...disturbing.
July
Poetic goodbye to Old Lindbeck Orchard shows what's wrong with Salem development
I'm sharing a moving opinion piece by Jane Wille in today's Statesman Journal because we need more poetic feeling and less financial greed here in Salem.
As you'll read below, Wille is saddened by the loss of the Old Lindbeck Orchard property in West Salem, which she says is to become high-density retirement housing.
Last year the Salem Breakfast on Bikes blogger reported that it looked like a fenced gated community apartment complex was planned for the property.
This supposedly is progress. I'm not so sure.
August
I report on a talk with a reporter from Salem Reporter
Early on, I assessed Troy for possible mental illness after he told me that he has a journalism degree from the University of Oregon, noting that, given the declining fortunes of newspapers, if he'd been born a lot earlier, probably he would have gotten a degree in Buggy Whip Manufacturing shortly after the Model T became popular.
However, after Troy told me about his reporter experience in Roseburg and Vancouver, Washington, I realized that he's been getting paid for his writing, while I've earned precisely zero from fifteen years of blogging, and very little from the three books I've authored.
So if there was a crazy writer sitting in our Beanery booth, clearly it was me.
September
City of Salem comprehensive planning effort gets some well-deserved criticism
Well, that didn't take long. At 11:30 am yesterday, City of Salem officials sent out an emailabout the start of an effort to update the Salem Area Comprehensive Plan.
A mere 19 minutes later, at 11:49 am, Michael Slater wrote a post on a Facebook page where Salem City Council issues are discussed that critiqued the Our Salem Stakeholder Advisory Committee, which a City of Salem web page describing the planning effort says "will be providing guidance to staff."
October
Eight large white oaks to be killed for a new Costco store in Salem
What's the value of eight lives? Is it greater or less than the desire of Costco to build a new Salem store on the graves of the deceased?
I'm talking about the lives of large white oaks, not humans. But those are important questions to tree-loving people like me, which includes many of the neighbors who live near the Kuebler Gateway Shopping Center where the Salem Costco is planned to be relocated.
November
Salem Public Library removing 30% of print book collection. Resistance is mounting.
Trigger warning: if you love books, and hate to see them mistreated, you might want to partially cover your eyes when viewing the photo below. I'm sorry that this blog post has to be so graphic, but as the saying goes, A picture is worth a thousand words.
(And this post is much longer than that.)
December
Broadway Coffeehouse does discriminate against gay people
It is clear that the Broadway Coffeehouse, which is run by the Salem Alliance Church, does indeed discriminate against LBGTQ people as my previous posts on this subject have laid out.
As you can read below, I've asked representatives of the coffeehouse and church if the coffeehouse would refuse to hire someone otherwise well qualified but who was gay, in a same-sex marriage, or engaging in same-sex sex. The same questions have been asked by a KATU reporter and by another interested person, Johnny Green.
The most amusing quote in a recent Salem Reporter story by Troy Brynelson came from the outgoing CEO of the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce, Nick Williams.
Departing CEO Nick Williams said community debates are more heated than he can recall.
“I’ve been fortunate to be in this work for a little over six years and I’ve never seen it this divided before, which is unfortunate because at the local level we should be able to disagree knowing we’re going to bump into people at the grocery store,” he said. “I think the overarching theme is the way we seem to have lost our civility.”
Gosh, community debates in Salem are heated!?
Hmmmm. I wonder if maybe, just maybe, Nick Williams should have looked in the mirror when he wonders who is to blame for a large share of the red hot rhetoric. Let's count some of the ways the Chamber of Commerce has contributed to a rise in Salem's incivility.
(1) The Chamber has been highly political in recent years, much more so than the Chambers of Commerce in other Oregon cities.
(2) The Chamber set out to take control of the Mayor's office and City Council in 1998, succeeding in kicking out progressive leadership in an electoral coup that lasted until recently.
(3) The Chamber has been a big backer of a controversial new bridge across the Willamette, disregarding plenty of evidence that this would be a Billion Dollar Boondoggle.
(4) The Chamber habitually endorses Republicans running for public office, even though Salem is a decidedly liberal city.
(5) The Chamber does its best to buy City Council seats.
But maybe things are changing with a new Chamber of Commerce CEO coming on board, as discussed in the Salem Reporter story, "Tom Hoffert says he will emphasize partnership as Salem chamber's new CEO." Hoffert is quoted:
Leading the chamber offered the civic involvement he said he has been looking for. He iterated in talks with Salem Reporter that businesses, employees and all else are “interlinked” in local issues.
“For me everything drives back to community partnership. The business segment is your citizenry as well, it’s not a whole different segment of the community,” he said. “They’re your neighbors, your employees or employers.”
True. I just wish it hadn't taken so long for the leader of the Chamber of Commerce to recognize this obvious fact. It seems crazy for the Chamber to have taken such strong hard-right political stances when, as noted above, Salem citizens lean liberal.
Why would a business organization choose to antagonize more than half of the population? When did supporting business become a monopoly of Republicans/conservatives? Plenty of business owners, of both large and small enterprises, are Democrats/liberals.
I think incoming CEO Hoffert would be wise to tone down the political heat at the Salem Chamber of Commerce and focus instead on what a chamber should do: further the interests of businesses.
Which means, arguably, that if the Chamber is going to take a political stand (which I don't think it should), it should set out to elect Democrats, as I discussed in a 2016 blog post.
Democratic leaders tend to be better for the economy. Today the Statesman Journal reported that Oregon unemployment hit a record low in March, 4.5%.
State employment economist Nick Beleiciks said in a release that the jobless rate shows the Oregon labor market is "stronger than it's been in decades." Beleiciks said people are "flocking to Oregon's labor force."
Oregon has a Democratic Governor and Dem majorities in both the state Senate and House. If liberals have been good for the state economy, why does the Salem Chamber of Commerce only favor conservatives for Mayor and City Council?
Likewise, on the national level the economy does much better when a Democrat is president.
“The U.S. economy not only grows faster, according to real GDP and other measures, during Democratic versus Republican presidencies, it also produces more jobs, lowers the unemployment rate, generates higher corporate profits and investment, and turns in higher stock market returns. Indeed, it outperforms under almost all standard macroeconomic metrics.”
So another question is, if liberals have been good for the national economy, why does the Salem Chamber of Commerce favor conservatives for Mayor and City Council?
After enduring today's Trump news, which surpassed in scariness anything our Idiot in Chief has brought us since he became president, I'm reduced to viewing this blog post as akin to a message in the bottle.
Yes, I'm that desperate after:
-- seeing the stock market drop almost 500 points (again)
-- having the (competent) Secretary of Defense resign after Trump ordered him to remove all U.S. troops from Syria, a really bad idea
-- observing Trump go back on a promise (no big surprise) to sign a continuing resolution keeping the government open, so it looks like a Christmas Trump shutdown will happen
-- learning that the acting Attorney General refuses to recuse himself from overseeing the Mueller investigation after handpicking people in the Justice Department to advise him on this issue who (predictably) said it was just fine and dandy for him to be Mueller's overlord
I'm a long-time political junkie.
But I've never been so worried about the future of our country, and the world. Trump is the first president in my lifetime who lacks both any sense of morality or decency and is utterly incompetent to manage his own business affairs, much less serve as the leader of the free world.
Worse, Trump doesn't even want a free world. He prefers dictators to democracy, lies to liberty, hatred to helping others.
Since Republicans seem content to let Trump carry on with his craziness, even if he drags the country down into a pit of economic, cultural, and existential despair, I'm calling out for help to some admittedly unlikely sources.
People of the future, if you've mastered time travel, send someone back to 2016 and prevent Jim Comey from holding forth on Hillary Clinton's damn emails. Plus, stop the Russians from interfering in the election and colluding with the Trump campaign.
Alien beings from an advanced civilization, if you're monitoring blog posts, take this one to heart. Feel free to hover a spaceship over Washington D.C. and beam up all members of the Trump administration to a prison planet in a galaxy far, far away. Then instruct the people of Earth to never let any more narcissistic psychopaths lead a country.
I hope my fears are misguided.
I hope our country survives the last two years of the Trump presidency. I'm just deeply worried that given what happened today, Trump's descent into total meltdown is accelerating. After all, he still commands the nuclear codes.
Hey, I lived through the Cuban missile crisis. I was an elementary school student in California when we couldn't drink milk for a while because of above-ground nuclear tests in Nevada. I remember when home fallout shelters were all the rage, along with "duck and cover" drills in schools (as if these would work in a nuclear holocaust).
But this is different.
I've always felt that the leader of our country was competent, even if I vehemently disagreed with his policies. Trump is hugely more terrifying, because not only is he incompetent, he believes in his own bullshit -- and he refuses to have anybody around him who challenges that crap.
In the short-term, we'll muddle through.
I suspect the government shutdown over the $5 billion Trump wants for his stupid border wall will last just two weeks. Once the Democrats take control of the House in January, Nancy Pelosi will pass a bill that restores back pay for government workers and funds the government, minus money for the wall.
The Senate will go along, ending that problem. Which leaves all the other self-created Trump problems, plus whatever new ones he cooks up between now and then.
So that's why I'm calling out to time travelers and alien beings. Desperate times demand desperate measures. Someone needs to stop Trump from wrecking our country and a large part of the world prior to November 2020, when I'm confident he will be voted out of office.
Maybe Democrats and Republicans in Congress, with the aid of Mueller, are up to the job. I'm just worried that they aren't.
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