Salem Political Snark

Police acting cruelly in Tyre Nichols videos infuriates me

Here we go again.

One more of many examples where police acted really badly, so much so five officers in the Memphis police department have been charged with second degree murder after they killed Tyre Nichols, a young man, for no reason at all.

None. Absolutely none. 

Now, many people here in Salem, Oregon are going to think, "Thank heavens our police department isn't like that." They're wrong. Our police department is exactly like that. 

Meaning, the Salem Police Department is like almost every large department in the country.

It's organized on a military-style basis. Officers in the department view themselves as protecting the city against "bad guys," rather than as public servants. Leaders of the department, including Chief Womack, are resistant to reforming the way things are done, such as by not having uniformed officers handle calls better served by a mental health specialist and medic.

So when I watched the videos of Nichols being beaten cruelly by five Memphis police officers, which led to his death in a hospital several days later, I was visualizing how easily this could happen anywhere, including Salem, because our country is so screwed-up when it comes to policing.

I saw five police officers taking turns punching and kicking and striking and pepper spraying Nichols even though he posed no threat to them. I saw the familiar sight of police officers all participating in an assault on a citizen whose car was pulled over for no discernible reason. I saw the officers joking around after the assault, ignoring Nichols, who they'd propped up against a car, all proud that one of them had held Nichols with his hands behind his back while another officer punched him in the head.

In short, what I saw was what I see every time I see a police officer: an average human being, many or most of whom have an above-average propensity for violence.

It's time to stop putting police on a pedestal. Bring them down to earth, where they belong.

Police are nothing special. They're normal people who get to carry a gun and enforce our laws. But when they act like jerks, they're worse than normal people, because five normal people don't beat up a young man until he dies from his injuries. It takes abnormally cruel people to do that, people who think they can get away with murder, literally, because they wear a police uniform.

What was released today by the Memphis Police Department were several videos of the Nichols assault. The body cam videos are confusing to watch. A video taken by a camera on a light pole provides the clearest, and most infuriating, view of the assault by the police officers. It can be viewed here.

If you don't want to watch the disturbing video, I completely understand. But I hope you will watch it. It's important to see how police officers act when they think they're above the law, because they are the law. Again, like jerks, strutting around like the cowards that they are, all proud that five large police officers were able to beat up a 140 pound young man.

A Black man. And the five police officers charged with his murder also are Black.

Which goes to show that while racism in police departments is a problem, an even bigger problem is the police culture that allows a group of officers to gang up on brutally beating a citizen without any officer raising an objection.

Nichols was pulled out of his car and thrown to the ground without any explanation. He was complying with police orders, but the asshole Memphis officers kept yelling conflicting demands at him. Like get on the ground when he was already on the ground, and show me your hands when they were holding his arms.

Understandably, Nichols took off running. Almost certainly he was afraid for his life, a totally valid fear, as it turns out. He was just a few hundred yards from his home. He wanted to run home to his mother. He yelled "Mother!" several times while the police were assaulting him. 

A New York Times story describes what happened next. Again, infuriating. 

Roughly eight minutes later, after a pursuit, officers locate Mr. Nichols in a suburban neighborhood, not far from his home, and tackle him to the ground. A severe beating ensues as Mr. Nichols cries out in pain and yells repeatedly for his mother. A body-worn camera and a surveillance camera capture police officers continuing their assault on Mr. Nichols, with one kicking him so hard in the face that the officer nearly falls down.

Throughout the beating, which lasts about three minutes, Mr. Nichols does not appear to ever strike back. Several times, he moves his hands to cover his face, seeming to cower from the officers’ blows.

As an officer hits him from behind with a baton, Mr. Nichols stands up and staggers while officers hang on to his arms. As two officers hold his arms behind his back, a third officer delivers a series of powerful punches. Finally, after that officer hits Mr. Nichols three times in the head while standing behind him, Mr. Nichols collapses to the ground.

Back at the scene of the traffic stop, body camera video from an officer who did not join the chase captures his reaction around the time that he learns that his colleagues have caught up with Mr. Nichols. “I hope they stomp his ass,” he says, twice.

By the end of the pummeling, Mr. Nichols is lying on his back, appearing dizzy. The officers drag him over to a police car and sit him up against it. The video images do not show him receiving any serious medical attention for several minutes.

Mr. Nichols, who worked at a FedEx facility and was the father of a 4-year-old boy, died in a hospital three days later.

Tyre Nichols, another victim of police violence

 

I hate war, but I love tanks going to Ukraine

Being a baby boomer (I was born in 1948), my life as an American liberal has featured several wars that I opposed. 

Notably the Vietnam and Iraq wars, at least the second Iraq war. I was fine with us going into Afghanistan to take down Al Qaeda and the first Iraq war seemed justified. Then there's been U.S. involvement in a bunch of military actions. Can't remember much about them.

So by and large I've been in favor of less military spending. Up to now, my generation, unlike the generation of my mother and father, hasn't experienced a truly just war like World War II. That affects how we view the defense budget, which seems excessive.

But as soon as Russia invaded Ukraine about a year ago, I became much more interested in modern warfare.

Putin's war crimes against the Ukrainian people -- willfully killing many thousands of civilian men, women, and children, along with bombing medical facilities, schools, power generation plants, and other non-military targets -- infuriated me.

I've been following the Ukraine war closely. I read stories in the New York Times and Washington Post. I follow the frequent posts of the English language Kyiv Independent on Twitter. Whenever a story about Ukraine appears on MSNBC or CNN, I perk up my ears.

The Ukraine war is a highly just war. Russia invaded Ukraine for no reason other than a desire to take over the country. There's only one "good guy" in this war: Ukraine. There's nothing positive that can be said about Russia's invasion.

Because Putin is an insufferable authoritarian, the only way the Ukraine war is going to end is by making it so costly for Russia, Putin is forced to give up on his invasion. Ideally Ukraine takes back all of the territory Russia has taken, including Crimea. 

At the very least, Ukraine needs to reclaim most of the Russian-occupied territory in eastern Ukraine. To do that, it's been obvious for some time that the United States and our allies need to send heavier offensive weapons to Ukraine, such as tanks and fighter planes.

Finally, an agreement has been reached for the United States to send 31 M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, and for Germany and other European nations to send around 80 additional tanks, such as the German Leopard. 

Congratulations to President Biden and his national security team for navigating some treacherous political waters to get this done. Germany has been resisting supplying Leopard tanks to Ukraine. Eventually Germany said it would do this if the United States supplied Abrams tanks.

At first our defense department balked, arguing that it wasn't practical to send the Abrams. However, with this issue threatening to create a rift in support for Ukraine among the United States and European Union nations, eventually a deal was reached to get Ukraine tanks from both the U.S. and E.U.

Great news. Ukraine has made excellent use of the weapons that have been supplied to them. There's little doubt that the tanks also will be put to good use in the fight against Russia. Now, how about those fighter jets?

Crime in Salem has been stable from 2008-2022

Last Friday the Salem City Club had a program with the provocative title, Does Salem Have a Crime Problem? Perceptions and Realities. 

It featured Salem Police Chief Trevor Womack, and two neighborhood association chairs: Lynn Takata of Northeast Neighbors and Cory Poole of the Southeast Mill Creek Association.

Womack started things off by sharing slides of some of the 2008-2022 crime statistics that are available for viewing on the City of Salem web site. Below are screenshots from that web page.

This is the most inclusive crime statistic. NIBRS includes homicide, rape, aggravated assault, robbery, burglary, motor vehicle theft, larceny, and arson. The trend line of the rate per 100,000 Salem residents over the past 15 years is flat. So overall the crime rate is very stable. 

Homicides, or murders, get a lot of attention. But they're rare in Salem, ranging from 1 to 9 homicides a year over the past 15 years. This leads to a lot of fluctuations in the homicide rate. Yes, it is trending upward slightly, from 3.0 per 100,000 population to about 3.7. However, that trend line is so dependent on rare homicide events, it isn't very meaningful.

The overall violent crime rate is trending upward, though. This includes homicide, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. The rape rate is declining, while the rates for the other violent offenses are increasing. 

Property crime is the most common category of crime in Salem. It includes burglary, larceny, arson, and motor vehicle theft. The property crime rate has been decreasing somewhat over the past 15 years. Burglary and larceny rates are trending downward, while motor vehicle theft and arson are trending upward.

So the Police Department data show that overall, the rate of crime in Salem has been stable from 2008-2022. A rise in the violent crime rate has been offset by a decline in the property crime rate.

This might explain why Chief Womack said about the question of whether Salem has a crime problem, it depends on someone's tolerance level. He added that different neighborhoods have different crime rates, so perceptions about a crime problem will vary for this reason.

In fact, Takata noted that perceptions can vary among people on different sides of the same city park. Poole also observed that perceptions about crime can differ from the data. One reason for this could be that burglaries and other property crimes sometimes aren't reported, since people feel that police won't do anything about the crime.

Which is a valid feeling, since Womack said that the police department is focusing on violent crime and traffic fatalities. 

Biden's classified documents screwup irritates this Democrat

Even though I'm a proud member of the Democratic "tribe," I also believe that when my political party does something wrong, I should be almost as irritated as when Republicans do that thing.

I said almost because I'm a realist: even though it would be nice if I could be evenhanded when it comes to wrongdoing by Democrats and Republicans, the fact that I'm a Democrat means that I'm going to look somewhat more positively on screwups by my fellow Dems.

Which is how most parents look upon their children.

When your child gets into trouble, you're disturbed, but you know that they're basically a good kid. But if a child you don't know does the same thing, likely you'll be less forgiving.

Even so, I find it difficult to forgive President Biden for the discovery of classified documents both in a private office and in the garage of his Delaware home. Sure, there are important differences between the classified documents found in the possession of Biden and Trump.

Nonetheless, this is a huge gift to Republicans.

Just when the House GOP was looking all disorganized and chaotic following the 15 acrimonious votes needed to elect Kevin McCarthy as Speaker, Biden's classified documents scandal makes the Democratic occupant of the White House look all disorganized and chaotic. 

After the FBI raided Trump's Florida home in search of classified documents he refused to hand over, and Biden criticized Trump for being careless with these documents, it sure seems like people in Biden's orbit should have made sure that he didn't have classified documents squirreled away, either knowingly or unknowingly.

The first discovery of Biden documents in a private office struck me as disturbing, but not all that bad. Maybe a staff member carried a box into the office that Biden never looked into. But when more classified documents were found stored next to his 1967 Corvette, I felt that was inexcusable.

I'm not a highly organized person. But I'm familiar with what's in all of the boxes stored in our garage. It just seems difficult to believe that no one in the Biden family was aware of what was in the classified documents box (assuming it was a box).

I also don't like how Biden responded to a question about this.

There was one further, odd comment in an exchange with Peter Doocy of Fox News. 

Doocy asked Biden what he was “thinking” by having classified documents “next to your Corvette.” 

Biden shot back that he would speak more about the matter soon and added, “By the way, my Corvette is in a locked garage. OK? So it’s not like it’s sitting out in the street.” 

Geez. Trump kept many of his classified documents in a locked storage room, and that came in for well-deserved criticism. So Biden shouldn't have implied that a locked garage is a proper repository for classified documents.

Hopefully Biden will handle this scandal better from now on.

It's great that he's being so cooperative with the Justice Department. I just wish Biden had been more honest and straightforward about how the classified documents came to be where they were found, apologizing for the screwup rather than making light of it in his Corvette comment.

City Council approves $2.4 million for airport in dumb move

Here we go again.

Monday night the City Council approved spending $2.4 million in precious general fund dollars in yet another attempt to lure an airline willing to provide commercial air service at the Salem airport.

I guess Mayor Hoy and the eight city councilors have short memories. Or a penchant to forget the not-very-distant past when airlines came to town, and soon left town.

Because Chamber of Commerce types here keep promising that this time an airline will commit to providing commercial air service if enough public money is spent to show that Salem is serious about making the airport suitable for it.

Time to dust off the Charlie Brown and Lucy football metaphor. (If you aren't familiar with it, every fall Lucy promises that she'll put her finger on the ball so Charlie Brown can kick it, and every fall Lucy pulls the ball away just as Charlie Brown thinks this time she won't do it.)

Now, there's a chance this time will be when commercial air service comes to Salem and stays in Salem. But likely the $2.4 million, which is just the beginning of what the City of Salem needs to spend on airport improvements and subsidies, will be lost and gone forever before too long.

The Salem Reporter has a story about this, "Salem City Council commits $2 million to airport terminal improvements, staffing." Here's some of what should worry taxpayers about what I and many others view as a dumb move.

Tourism and business groups spoke in favor of the spending, while a majority of commenters were opposed, citing climate and budgetary concerns. 

With funds approved, the airport would likely be ready for commercial service by September, months after business leaders have said interested airlines want to begin operations.

...Becktel said the next step after funding approval will be to sign an agreement with the airline, which remains unnamed due to the competitive nature of the airline industry.

The interested airline is a budget airline with ticket prices around $69 and $89 that intends to make Salem its west coast hub, according to Travel Salem President Angie Onyewuchi, who spoke at the meeting. 

...Becktel noted that the improvements would be the bare minimum to meet requirements, and not make for an optimal passenger experience. The airport would likely need more improvements in the future.

...Tom Hoffert, the chief executive officer of the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce, spoke in support of the project and said it would help tourists visit nearby wineries.

Mike Herron of Vips Industries INC., said the airport would put more “heads in beds” at the Grand Hotel in Salem, and allow business travelers to stay in Salem longer.

At the Jan. 9 meeting, more residents submitted public comments opposed to the airport than in favor, including six people against it who spoke at the meeting.

Several members of the local climate group 350 Salem, spoke against the airport and said the funds would be better spent improving shuttle service to existing airports in Portland and Eugene. 

The group asked the city to keep its Climate Action Plan in mind, and called the airport projections overly optimistic. Each wore a sticker with a red cancel mark over “FLY SALEM.”

So the nine City Council members, most of whom are progressives who claim to want Salem to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions as called for by the Climate Action Plan they approved, just agreed to spend $2.4 million to bring large highly polluting commercial passenger planes to the airport.

Why? Because the Chamber of Commerce and Travel Salem want to make it easier for out-of-state people to visit nearby wineries, maybe spending time at a Salem hotel, but probably not -- since there are more attractive lodging options elsewhere in Northwest Oregon's wine country.

But, wow, we might get to be the West Coast hub for a budget airline that's probably destined to go out of business after sucking up the benefits of the $2.4 million the City Council has just bestowed on the unnamed airline.

Few people in Salem appear to want to subsidize another attempt at bringing commercial air service here. Yet City of Salem staff are for this; some in the business community are for this; so every member of the City Council dutifully went along with a project at odds with their own Climate Action Plan, and common sense, because whatever city staff and the Chamber wants, they usually get from the City Council.

When the unnamed airline ceases service in Salem after a year or two, I won't be shy in telling everyone who voted for this, "I told you so." Unfortunately, the homeless people who could have been helped mightily by the $2.4 million in general fund dollars won't be saying that to the City Council.

Because in this town those with the most money have the loudest voice. And that's who the City Council listens to most assiduously. 

GOP chaos is amusing. But GOP debt limit default is scary.

If there was any doubt that I'm a political junkie, I offer as evidence how much I enjoyed watching MSNBC last night as Republicans flamed out on a dramatic 14th attempt to elect Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House, finally succeeding on the 15th try after the last GOP rebels voted "present" rather than for another candidate.

I loved watching a fight nearly break out between two House Republicans. The conflicts in Yellowstone (TV series) are entertaining, but fictional. This was real life, beamed nationwide by CSPAN.

The most dramatic moment by far came near the end — during the 14th round of voting on Friday, in what almost everyone had hoped would be the final round.

Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) had ensured all eyes would be on him, refusing to answer the initial call of the clerk and maneuvering so that he would have a later, deciding vote. He eventually voted “present” — prompting fellow Republicans who believed this would secure McCarthy’s position as speaker to give him a standing ovation.

In fact, his “present” vote left McCarthy still one vote short. As Democrats laughed and Gaetz ignored appeals from McCarthy and his allies to break the stalemate, one member’s temper boiled over: Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) began shouting at Gaetz and had to be physically restrained by another lawmaker, who grabbed Rogers, including across his mouth, and pulled him back.

Gasps could be heard across the House chamber as lawmakers realized how close they had come to a physical altercation.

However, now that McCarthy is speaker, House Republicans can turn their penchant for chaos in other directions. 

Since the Senate and presidency are still in Democratic hands, it will be difficult, if not impossible, for the House to pass any legislation that damages our country -- since those bills won't be able to become law. 

But there will be plenty of investigations into the Biden administration, notwithstanding the inconvenient truth that there really is very little, if any, wrongdoing to investigate. We might even see the House voting to impeach Biden for some absurd reason, which would be a wonderful contribution to his re-election chances.

What really worries me is this: House Republicans refusing to raise the national debt limit, which probably will need to happen around August.

Political pissing matches over raising the debt limit happen with disturbing regularity, though Republicans compliantly raised it when Trump was in office, demonstrating their hypocrisy. The debt limit is an archaic law that shouldn't even exist, since it simply allows the federal government to pay bills that Congress has already authorized.

So failing to raise the debt limit doesn't affect federal spending at all. It just means that some things the federal government has agreed to pay for -- defense, Social Security, Medicare, national parks, etc. -- run the risk of not having borrowed money available to do this.

Thus not raising the debt limit is like someone refusing to pay their credit card bill, or mortgage. If this happened, their credit rating would sink like a stone. Ditto with the federal government if House Republicans were to prevent it from meeting its financial obligations.

Interest rates on government bonds would rise dramatically, since investors would want a risk premium now that the federal government has shown it can't pay all of its bills. The stock market would plummet. Social Security checks might not appear in people's bank accounts. Hospitals and doctors might not be paid for giving care to Medicare and Medicaid patients.

Nasty stuff. All so the extreme right-wing House Freedom Caucus can exercise the power that Kevin McCarthy handed over to them in exchange for them giving him the votes needed for McCarthy to become speaker.

While August may seem a long ways off, time flies and Debt Limit Default Season will be here before summer vacations end. Democrats should have raised the debt limit on their own when they had the chance.

Since they didn't, the next best thing is described in a well-argued 2021 article by Neil Buchanan, an economist and legal scholar, "The Worst Sequel of 2021: Debt Ceiling Zombies Attack!" It's well worth reading in its entirety. 

Here's a few excerpts. Basically it calls for Biden to simply ignore the debt ceiling, if Republicans refuse to raise it.

Last week, Senate Republicans announced that they have decided not to participate in the necessary adjustment of the federal debt ceiling at the end of this month, playing politics once again with the full faith and credit of the United States of America. President Biden must shut down the Republicans’ debt ceiling gambit, and he must do so now.

...The debt ceiling statute should not exist at all, but given that it does, Biden must stop Republicans from using it in this way ever again. But how can he stop them from doing their worst? By announcing, clearly and unequivocally, that he has the power and the responsibility not to allow Republicans to ruin the country. The Constitution, as we know, is not a suicide pact. Fortunately, it gives the President the power to stop this madness now.

...Not all bad policy is unconstitutional, of course, but fortunately, there are incontrovertible legal reasons that the debt ceiling cannot be used as the Republicans plan to use it.

One reason was summarized by Professor Laurence Tribe over the weekend:

Sec. 4 of the 14th Am prohibits any default on Treasury’s obligations. If Congress fails to raise the debt limit, Executive action to avoid default arguably violates Congress’s exclusive power of the purse but is the lesser of two constitutional evils.

This is a notable development, because Professor Tribe had originally expressed some skepticism about this Fourteenth Amendment-based argument when it first arose during the Republicans’ debt ceiling gambits in the Obama years. He now agrees that the relevant constitutional provision—“The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”—requires the President to borrow to prevent a default that would most assuredly bring the validity of the public debt into question.

...All of which means that President Biden should do what Barack Obama never did (and what the Republicans never forced Donald Trump to do), which is to say now, in advance of any drop-dead date, that the debt ceiling cannot be used as Republicans are trying to use it. If the time comes, he must instruct the Treasury Department to pay all bills in full, using exactly as much borrowed money as Congress’s duly enacted laws require. And he should tell everyone, right now, that this is what he will do.

Even in horror movies, there is always a way that zombies can be killed, finally and truly. It is time for President Biden to put this zombie out of our misery.

How could a man twice sexually assault women at Minto Brown Park?

Yesterday I got an email from a woman who was understandably upset at learning that David Belluno, who sexually assaulted a woman at Minto Brown Park last Monday afternoon, had sexually assaulted a different woman at Minto Brown Park back in 2018. 

David Belluno

Her message said:

Hi Brian, as I'm sure you've seen, the same criminal let go in 2018 attempted the same crime (attempted kidnapping, rape, assault, etc.) over the weekend in Minto Brown park. I know from your posts that you revere this park as much as I do. I was shocked to see this and I'm sure your blog readers will be as well.

 

I have already emailed the Marion County DA ([email protected]) as I think others should as well. I was hoping you could persuade your readers to do the same. Obviously the DA won't police itself. And please let me know any other avenues you'd recommend for pressuring the right people to finally put this animal away. I'm new to Salem so not as familiar with the "machine" as you are.

 

I definitely sympathize with anyone who is outraged that Belluno was freed in 2019 after being charged with first-degree kidnapping, first-degree sexual abuse, attempted first-degree rape, attempted unlawful sexual penetration, unlawful use of a weapon and fourth-degree assault. 

A December 2019 Salem Reporter story says that those charges were dropped after it was determined by a Marion County Circuit Court judge that Belluno wasn't fit for trial. He was committed to the Oregon State Hospital, but the story describes in detail why the judge eventually determined after a series of psychological assessments that the law required him to be released.

(This issue is so important, I'm hoping the Salem Reporter is OK with me sharing the story as a PDF file so those who aren't subscribers can learn how Belluno came to be freed.)
Download Judge drops charges against man arrested last year for alleged attack in Minto-Brown Island Park

It seems to me that this case points to the difficult balancing act that has to occur when someone with serious mental problems or limitations commits a serious crime. Belluno appeared to be competent enough to realize that he was better off at the State Hospital than in jail, but not competent enough to be tried for his alleged crimes.

Hopefully Belluno's case is an aberration, rather than commonplace. There's certainly grounds for finger-pointing at everyone involved in his 2019 release, but my reading of the Salem Reporter story led me to feel that by and large, his 2019 release was the fault of a hole in our legal and mental health systems, as noted in a Salem Reporter story about the most recent attack.

A psychologist at the time diagnosed Belluno with a mild intellectual disability and determined that he was unable [to] help in his own defense.

Judge Courtland Geyer determined that because Belluno’s mental health was unlikely to improve to the point that he could stand trial, Oregon law required that the charges be dismissed.

Katie Suver, former Marion County deputy district attorney, told Salem Reporter in 2019 that Belluno’s release magnified what she called a “hole in the process.”

Suver said at the time that an expert hired by her office determined that, with the right treatment, Belluno might improve enough to face the charges, but Geyer ruled that he couldn’t mandate such treatment. 

The judge dismissed Belluno’s charges “without prejudice,” meaning they could be refiled.

Currently Belluno is being held in jail without bail and is facing charges for both the 2018 and 2022 attacks.

Kevin McCarthy's bad day foreshadows worse House chaos

Today was supposed to be when Kevin McCarthy achieved his dream of becoming Speaker of the House, second in line for the presidency (an admittedly scary thought). He'd already had his stuff moved into the Speaker's office.

But McCarthy not only failed to be elected speaker by the new Republican House majority on the first vote, losing 19 members of his own party when he could only afford to lose four, McCarthy went down in flames on the second and third votes also, with 20 defectors on the third vote.

So it was a day of Republican chaos in the House of Representatives today. Naturally avid Democrats like me watched and listened to the proceedings with glee.

Often Democratic politics is described as being akin to herding cats. But at least someone is trying to do the herding. With House Republicans, it'd difficult to tell who is attempting to bring order to the task of choosing a speaker, which hasn't required more than one vote since 1923. 

Tomorrow the House will reconvene and try again to choose a speaker. Knowledgeable political commentators I heard today are split on whether it will be McCarthy. It should be, since McCarthy has been the House minority leader and about 90% of House Republicans backed him in the three votes today.

But that other 10% may dig in their heels, refusing to vote for McCarthy no matter how many votes are taken over many days. While ordinarily I'd view this possibility as entertaining political theatrics, the reasons that a small House Republican minority may topple McCarthy's political ambitions are worrisome.

McCarthy has been doing his best to negotiate with that 10%, attempting to give them juicy committee assignments, modify House rules to their liking, and such. However, the problem for McCarthy is that this group is aptly nicknamed the Chaos Caucus.

Meaning, they aren't interested in achieving more political power so they can enact legislation in accord with their conservative values. That was what the Freedom Caucus wanted, and the even older Tea Party Caucus wanted.

When was the last time you heard House Republicans talk about doing away with Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act, and substituting a conservative alternative? It's been quite a while. These days most House Republicans are only interested in stopping Democrats from achieving their goals, not passing GOP legislation.

McCarthy apparently thought that after he lost the first vote for speaker today, his support would increase when it became apparent that since the vast majority of House Republicans favored him, the 10% who didn't would realize that McCarthy was the only viable GOP candidate to be Speaker of the House.

Not unreasonable to think that, since generally politicians want their party to succeed and are willing to sacrifice some of their own desires to advance the cause of their party.

Yet while McCarthy may well be able to cobble together enough votes tomorrow to become speaker, it's just as likely, if not more so, that the Chaos Caucus opposing him will stand firm -- since they aren't interesting in achieving legislative goals, but rather in demolishing traditional institutions and creating havoc.

Free-floating anger has replaced political strategizing in their social-media-obsessed minds. If the Republican House Chaos Caucus members can grandstand their way to pleasing their extreme right-wing base, they've succeeded, even if what they're doing harms the country and the interests of their constituents.

So even though I'd find it entertaining if the recalcitrant 10% prevents Republicans from electing a House speaker for days, or even longer, along with other political observers I'm worried about what this means for must-pass legislation in 2023.

Notably, the need to increase our nation's debt ceiling, which is basically just a commitment to pay for spending already incurred by Congress. Democrats should have done away with the debt ceiling entirely when they had the chance, since it's akin to the Electoral College: something no other country has, and the United States shouldn't have either.

Long ago, the debt ceiling was raised routinely on a bipartisan basis, the best way to do it. More recently, the debt ceiling has gotten mired in partisan politics, a less good way to do it, since raising the ceiling was held hostage to policy demands.

But as bad as that has been, with stock market crashes and worries about our nation's willingness to pay its bills and make bond interest payments, hostage taking at least involves negotiations: you give me this, and I'll give you that.

The 20 Republican House members who voted against McCarthy are right-wing extremists who would be equally willing to vote against raising the debt limit. They include Paul Gosar, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, and Scott Perry.

If the House Republicans refuse to pass legislation with the aid of Democratic votes, the Chaos Caucus will have an effective veto over must-pass bills such as such as that raising the debt ceiling. This could be disastrous.

So as much as I like to see House Republicans in disarray, they need to get their act together in a semblance of "array" for the good of our country.

Salem needs to get past "blah, blah, blah" about climate change

As 2022 draws to a close, I'm hoping that 2023 is when Salem's city officials get past what climate activist Greta Thunberg calls the "blah, blah, blah" approach to reducing the world's greenhouse gas pollution.

Meaning, lots of talk, very little action.

The Salem City Council has passed a Climate Action Plan. It includes these goals:

• By 2035, GHG Salem emissions shall be reduced to 50 percent of the citywide greenhouse gas emissions for the baseline year of 2016, and
• By 2050, Salem should be carbon neutral.

But the Climate Action Plan isn't being taken seriously by city staff and the City Council. We're still in the "blah, blah, blah" stage. Lots of talk, very little action. 

For example, there's an effort underway to bring commercial air service back to the Salem airport, even though this has been tried several times with no success. 

Since air travel is one of the worst things people can do, greenhouse gas pollution-wise, the notion of bringing commercial air service to Salem should have been rejected by city officials as soon as it was raised.

But no, this bad idea is stumbling onward. Fortunately, our local 350.org chapter has started a petition, Oppose Costly and Polluting Commercial Air Service in Salem. I urge you to sign it. It'll just take a minute or two.

In the November 28, 2022 issue of The New Yorker, Elizabeth Kolbert has a terrific story, "A Vast Experiment: The Climate Crisis from A to Z." The theme of the letter "B" is blah, blah, blah. Here's what Kolbert said:

On September 28, 2021, at the Youth4Climate conference, held in Milan, Greta Thunberg took the stage. Sitting near her was the city’s mayor, Giuseppe Sala, wearing a mask. Thunberg, who is five feet tall, could barely be seen over the lectern. She had removed her mask and was smiling.

“Climate change is not only a threat, it is above all an opportunity to create a healthier, greener, and cleaner planet which will benefit all of us,” she began. “We must seize this opportunity—we can achieve a win-win in both ecological conservation and high-quality development. . . . We need to walk the talk; if we do this together, we can do this.

“When I say ‘climate change,’ what do you think of?” she went on. “I think of jobs—green jobs.” This received a round of applause.

“We must find a smooth transition towards a low-carbon economy,” Thunberg said. “There is no Planet B. There is no Planet Blah—blah, blah, blah; blah, blah, blah.” Her listeners, including Sala, started to realize that they’d been had. The applause died down.

“Build Back Better—blah, blah, blah,” Thunberg continued.

“Green economy—blah, blah, blah.

“Net zero by 2050—blah, blah, blah.

“Net zero—blah, blah, blah.

“Climate neutral—blah, blah, blah.

“This is all we hear from our so-called leaders: words—words that sound great, but so far have led to no action,” Thunberg said. “Of course we need constructive dialogue, but they’ve now had thirty years of blah, blah, blah, and where has that led us?”

It was thirty years ago that the world’s “so-called leaders” gathered in Rio de Janeiro for the so-called Earth Summit. Everyone agreed that radical change was needed. To avert disaster, global CO₂ emissions, which were then running at around twenty-two billion metric tons a year, would have to be reduced, eventually almost to zero. How this would happen, no one really knew. Still, the goal of preventing “dangerous” warming was enshrined in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which President George H. W. Bush cheerfully signed.

“Some find the challenges ahead overwhelming,” Bush said. “I believe that their pessimism is unfounded.”

A follow-up conference of the parties, or cop, took place in Kyoto in 1997. By then, annual global emissions had risen to twenty-four billion tons. After much back-and-forth, it was agreed that something had to be done. The Kyoto Protocol, an addendum to the Framework Convention, laid out specific emissions-reduction targets for countries to meet.

“I am both determined and optimistic that we can succeed,” Vice-President Al Gore told the diplomats gathered in Japan.

After Kyoto, global emissions kept on rising, only faster. By 2009, they’d climbed to thirty-two billion tons a year. That fall, President Barack Obama flew to Copenhagen for yet another conference of the parties—cop15. “I believe that we can act boldly, and decisively, in the face of this common threat,” he declared.

By 2015, emissions had increased to thirty-five billion tons a year. At that year’s cop—No. 21—held in Paris, it was decided that, at last, really and truly, it was time to get serious. “The decisions you make here will reverberate down through the ages,” the United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, told the delegates. Nevertheless, emissions continued to rise. In the past thirty years, humans have added as much CO₂ to the atmosphere as they did in the previous thirty thousand.

At some point during all the “blah, blah, blah”-ing—it’s hard to say when, exactly—climate change ceased to be a prospective problem and became a clear and present one. Since Rio, the Arctic ice cap has shrunk by two-fifths. Greenland has shed some four trillion metric tons of ice, and mountain glaciers have lost six trillion tons. Heat waves are now hotter, droughts deeper, and storms more intense. In some parts of the world, the wildfire season never ends.

One conclusion to draw from this pattern is that the world isn’t going to avoid “dangerous” warming. Global leaders will continue to gather at cops—this year’s, in Sharm el-Sheikh, just concluded—and to speak loftily about “net zero” and “a low-carbon economy.” But nothing will change, and, as a result, everything will change. There will be large-scale crop failures. The Greenland ice sheet will start to collapse—it may already be collapsing—and, owing to sea-level rise in some places and desertification in others, large swaths of the globe will become uninhabitable.

This conclusion is not, however, the one that Thunberg chose to draw when she spoke at the Youth4Climate conference. “Right now we are still very much speeding in the wrong direction,” she told the crowd in Milan. “But, of course, we can still turn this around—it is entirely possible.

“The leaders like to say, ‘We can do this,’ ” she went on. “They obviously don’t mean it, but we do—we can do this. I’m absolutely convinced that we can.”

Or, as Thunberg might put it, Blah, blah, blah.

If a Democratic president acted like Trump, how would liberals react?

Today the January 6 committee held its final meeting to lay out criminal referrals to the Justice Department for potential prosecution. 

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol accused former President Donald J. Trump on Monday of inciting insurrection, conspiracy to defraud the United States, obstruction of an act of Congress and one other federal crime as it referred him to the Justice Department for potential prosecution.

The action, the first time in American history that Congress has referred a former president for criminal prosecution, is the coda to the committee’s 18-month investigation into Mr. Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election that culminated in a violent mob of the former president’s supporters laying siege to the Capitol.

The criminal referrals were a major escalation for a congressional investigation that is the most significant in a generation. The panel named five other Trump allies — Mark Meadows, his final chief of staff, and the lawyers Rudolph W. Giuliani, John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark and Kenneth Chesebro — as potential co-conspirators with Mr. Trump in actions the committee said warranted Justice Department investigation. The charges, including a fourth for Mr. Trump of conspiracy to make a false statement, would carry prison sentences, some of them lengthy, if federal prosecutors chose to pursue them.

The committee’s referrals do not carry legal weight or compel any action by the Justice Department, which is conducting its own investigation into Jan. 6 and the actions of Mr. Trump and his allies leading up to the attack. But the referrals sent a powerful signal that a bipartisan committee of Congress believes the former president committed crimes.

Clearly this is a historic moment. As the above excerpt from a New York Times story says, never before has Congress referred a former president for criminal prosecution. Such didn't happen even with Nixon after his Watergate scandal was revealed. So says a TIME magazine story.

No congressional committee ever issued a criminal referral to the Department of Justice for Nixon. Rather, the reverse occurred, as Leon Jaworski, the special prosecutor tasked with investigating Nixon, sent Congress a “roadmap” laying out evidence of criminal violations Nixon was believed to have committed including bribery, perjury and obstruction of justice.

Because Nixon was a sitting president, Jaworski initially believed it made more sense for Congress to move forward with impeachment proceedings, than trying to prosecute Nixon in a court of law. Facing impeachment in the House, cratering support from his fellow Republicans, and looming criminal charges from a grand jury, Nixon resigned from office before facing prosecution.

So two Republican presidents have come closest to being prosecuted for crimes committed during their time in the White House. Nixon found little support from fellow Republicans, while Trump still enjoys considerable support from his base, though it is steadily slipping.

The question of how Democrats would respond to a Democratic president being credibly accused of crimes as bad as those committed by Trump interests me. 

My wife, a Democrat like me, believes that members of our political party wouldn't stand for the outrageous behavior that Trump engaged in during his four years in office (thank heavens it wasn't eight).

Laurel thinks that Democrats care more about ethics than Republicans, who are more prone to being concerned about maintaining power in the sense of "ends justify the means." In large part I agree with her. 

Republicans do appear to fall in line behind a leader more than Democrats do. This makes them vulnerable to a malevolent leader like Donald Trump who has been able to maintain much of his base in the Republican Party even as evidence of his numerous crimes accumulates.

My own view is a bit less confident in the willingness of Democrats to hold a Democratic president accountable for serious wrongdoing while in office. (Compared to Trump, I don't see what Bill Clinton did to be anywhere near as serious.)

I do believe that a Trumpian candidate wouldn't make it very far in Democratic presidential primaries. Democrats care about ethics. They also care about electability. I suspect that this would prevent a Trump-like Democrat from ever becoming president.

But if he or she did, another factor would come into play, the same one that helped Trump remain popular among Republicans during his time in office: producing results. 

I try to imagine how I'd react if a Democratic president had managed to get several liberal Supreme Court justices confirmed; passed major legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, ban assault weapons, increase taxes on billionaires, make Puerto Rico and the D.C. states, and other Democratic priorities -- then was enmeshed in a major scandal.

Would I be more willing to overlook the scandal because of all the good the Democratic president had ben able to accomplish? Sure, I would. And I think lots of other Democrats would feel the same way.

Thus while I'm fine with being critical of Republicans who stand by Trump no matter what horrible things he does, I have to admit that while I'd never be OK with a Democrat who acted just as badly, I'd overlook some ethical failings if that leader was able to produce significant benefits for the nation. 

Which means I can't be totally holier-than-thou when it comes to Republicans defending Trump, though I am confident that I'd be less willing to go along with a Democrat doing everything Trump did while in office.