Salem Political Snark

Why I'm worried about Putin invading Ukraine

Most Americans don't seem to be very worried about the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, invading Ukraine, even though Putin has massed over a hundred thousand troops on the Ukraine border, along with everything needed to invade the country that used to be part of the Soviet Union.

But I'm deeply concerned. Here's some reasons.

First, being 73, I grew up during the height of the Cold War. Above-ground nuclear tests were being conducted in Nevada on the other side of the Sierra Nevada mountains where I lived in California. People were building bomb shelters and stockpiling supplies in case the United and Soviet Union started firing nuclear weapons at each other.

In 1962 an eighth-grade friend and I conducted a "Hines-Hart" poll asking our classmates if they thought a nuclear war would happen soon. I recall that most of them did. Fortunately, they were wrong.

But war with the Soviet Union was a lingering source of anxiety in the 1950's and 60's. I'd look around our concrete block house, trying to figure out where the safest place would be if radioactivity drifted over us following a nuclear exchange. 

So when I watched Bill Maher's HBO show last Friday, it was irritating to hear Maher say that he didn't think NATO was needed any more, since NATO was established to prevent the Soviet Union from attacking Europe, and the Soviet Union no longer existed. 

I yelled at the TV, "Bill, you idiot, Putin is trying to re-establish the Soviet Union by expanding Russia's sphere of influence in the countries that used to be part of the Soviet Union! That's why NATO is needed now as much as it ever was."

Since Putin is making such a serious threat against Ukraine, which doesn't belong to NATO but has a halfway decent military, there seems little doubt that if NATO didn't exist, the small former Soviet block countries like Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania would be part of a reconstituted Soviet Union before too long.

Last night my wife and I finished watching Munich: The Edge of War on Netflix. It's a timely movie, having cogent lessons for the Ukraine crisis. 

In 1938 Hitler convinced Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister, that all Germany wanted was some additional room for the German people to live in. So if Hitler could just take over a part of Czechoslovakia, the Sudetenland, that's all he wanted, and peace would reign.

Of course, the peace only lasted a year. Then World War II broke out after Hitler invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia in 1939. 

Putin has already taken over part of eastern Ukraine via thinly-disguised "militia" backed by Russia. He also was able to annex the Crimean Peninsula area of Ukraine in 2014. So far Putin hasn't suffered serious consequences from either move, which gives him confidence he could get away with taking over all of Ukraine.

Biden is doing fairly well in managing the current Ukraine crisis.

However, it bothers me that the Biden administration seems overly concerned about provoking Putin by taking steps to admit Ukraine into NATO, which should have happened after 2014, and imposing tough sanctions on Russia now, rather than after he invades Ukraine. 

Neither the United States, nor the world, wants to see the Soviet Union come back to life under Putin. Well, let's make that most of the world. No doubt China and North Korea would like to see Putin take over Ukraine, as this would weaken U.S. influence and hurt Biden's already shaky presidency.

If Putin is able to invade Ukraine without Russia suffering truly horrible consequences, this will embolden other countries to try the same thing with weaker nearby nations. China already is making noises about taking Taiwan by force. 

If Putin gets away with invading Ukraine, China will be more likely to do the same with Taiwan. The world will be a much more dangerous place if national borders can be erased by whoever has a large enough military to do the erasing.

Hopefully my worrying about Ukraine is misplaced.

It just seems increasingly unlikely that Putin has gone through such a massive military buildup on Ukraine's border and now will simply walk away from that confrontation without getting major concessions in return -- which the United States correctly doesn't want to give Putin.

Mayor Bennett accused of Climate Action Plan shenanigans

It's rare that I get to use "shenanigans," since that's an old-fashioned word. But it came to mind when I read what Salem Mayor Chuck Bennett is being accused of by our local 350.org affiliate, 350 Salem OR.

As you can read below, it does seem like Mayor Bennett is engaged in a devious, underhanded trick -- trying to undermine the Salem Climate Action Plan so NW Natural can continue polluting the atmosphere with dangerous greenhouse gases.

I've got more to say after the 350 Salem OR news release.

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January 26, 2022
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

Contact: 
Phil Carver, Co-Coordinator (503) 562-9878 [email protected]

350 Salem OR Calls on Mayor Bennett to Stop
Blocking Approval of the Climate Action Plan

Salem, Oregon – 350 Salem OR calls on Mayor Chuck Bennett to allow the City Council to consider the draft Salem Climate Action Plan. 350 Salem OR has learned that instead of allowing the City Council to approve or reject the draft Salem Climate Action Plan, the Mayor has directed the City Manager to recommend non-objectionable strategies from the plan to the Council for consideration in February.

Without Council approval, the draft plan won’t have official status in future City discussions. Also, Council needs to reevaluate the plan every few years to assess progress on the Council’s emission reduction goals. The draft plan is far more than just a list of short-term suggestions.

A report to City Council at their meeting on December 6th stated that “the final draft CAP will come to Council for consideration after the beginning of 2022”, but no action has been scheduled.

The final draft of the Salem Climate Action Plan, released in November, was the result of a year of work by a 42-person Task Force appointed by the Mayor. The Task Force was led by the Verdis Group consultants who were paid approximately $170,000 for their work on the plan.

350 Salem believes that the holdup is due to objections from Northwest Natural against elements of the plan that would reduce or eliminate the use of natural gas (fossil methane) in new developments. Houses built now will stand for 100 years and lock in decades of methane and carbon dioxide pollution. The greenhouse gas inventory completed in 2019 as part of the Climate Action Plan process showed that “stationary emissions,” (mostly from natural gas) comprised 16% of total emissions in Salem.

“We object to Mayor Bennett holding up final approval of the Salem Climate Action Plan because of objections from the fossil fuel industry,” said 350 Salem OR Co-Coordinator Phil Carver. “Northwest Natural has no right to veto Salem’s plan so that they can forever contribute to the climate-related harms that we are already experiencing in Salem.”

350 Salem OR began advocating for Salem to have a Climate Action Plan five years ago. Salem is the only major city in Oregon that does not already have an adopted Climate Action Plan.

Prof. Janet Lorenzen, an environmental sociologist at Willamette University explains, “I spent months volunteering my time on the Salem Climate Action Plan Task Force, we worked hard to prioritize both climate and equity, and now the Mayor seems to be caving to special interests who have a business model of unlimited growth and pollution. Residents on the side of clean air, climate resiliency, and racial justice don’t even get a hearing.”

“The Mayor’s approach will never get us to the Council’s adopted goal of cutting our emissions in half by 2035, just 13 short years away,” said Phil Carver. “He should consider his legacy in his last year in office. We ask: Will he stand on the side of the fossil fuel industry or on the side of our children and grandchildren?”

350 Salem OR is the local affiliate of international climate action organization 350.org. The mission of 350 Salem OR is to build an inclusive grassroots movement that targets keeping fossil fuels in the ground, advocates for a just transition to a renewable energy economy, and supports community-based resilience in response to the climate crisis. “350” refers to the safe level of carbon dioxide (ppm) in the air, a level that the world passed in 1988. Today the level is 417 ppm, the highest level in the last 3 million years.

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Note that the Climate Action Plan doesn't call for a ban on the current use of natural gas in Salem, just new hookups. That seems entirely reasonable. Natural gas is mostly methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

Don't be fooled by the appealing term natural. Methane is a fossil fuel, just like oil and coal. But people prefer "natural gas" to "methane," even though they basically mean the same thing. 

So it might just be luck that gas came to be seen as “natural.” Some 76 percent of Americans view natural gas favorably, substantially more than for oil (51 percent) or coal (39 percent). While conventional wisdom once held that natural gas is a “bridge fuel” to a renewable-powered future, some now argue burning existing gas reserves would lock in dangerous levels of carbon dioxide emissions and endanger international goals to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels. That’s not to mention the health effects of burning natural gas: Gas stoves, for instance, pollute homes and increase the risk of respiratory problems, cardiovascular disease, and premature death.

Take it as a sign that natural doesn’t necessarily mean “good for you,” no matter how nice it sounds. Americans love “natural” potato chips, but they’re still just deep-fried potatoes.

Hopefully Mayor Bennett's attempt to undermine the impact of the Climate Action Plan is limited to himself, and doesn't reflect a broader "revolt" among City of Salem staff.

Regardless, the City Council should make sure that the Climate Action Plan is officially approved at an upcoming city council meeting to ensure that the plan doesn't become a document that sits on a shelf and fails to achieve the goal of Salem doing its part to preserve the habitability of our planet for both ourselves and future generations. 

"I'm done with Covid" is a selfish ignorant attitude

Last Friday, Bill Maher had Bari Weiss, a writer and podcaster, on his HBO Real Time show. Weiss said that she was "done with Covid," which led to she and Maher engaging in an irritating diatribe against Covid restrictions aimed at slowing the spread of the virus.

If you have a high tolerance for largely fact-free ranting, here's a You Tube video of that part of the show. The Democratic congressman from New York is a breath of fresh air, but he wasn't able to correct all of the misstatements made by Weiss and Maher.

Joe Berkowitz provides a counterpoint in his "You may be done with the pandemic but the pandemic isn't done with you."

“I’m done with COVID!” Bari Weiss declared right away on Bill Maher’s show this past weekend, with all the privilege of Paris Hilton’s apocryphal “Stop Being Poor” t-shirt.

 

The writer and podcaster, who once famously declared that she was done with the New York Times in similarly grand fashion, next enumerates all the phases of the pandemic she willingly participated in before deciding that enough was enough. (Yes, there is a Tiger King reference.

 

What precipitated this emancipation from the shackles of caring about COVID? For starters, both Weiss and Maher feel betrayed by the promise of vaccines.

 

“We were told that you get the vaccine, and you get back to normal,” Weiss says, before adding, with the tone of someone asking to speak to the manager, “We haven’t gone back to normal.”

No, we haven't gone back to normal. Nor should we, not when several thousand people a day are dying from Covid-19 in the United States and hospitals are filled with Covid patients. Here's a chart from an Oregonian story. 

But Weiss is overstating the degree to which things haven't gotten back to normal. There's no shutdowns. Almost all schools are open. Sure, in states like Oregon where public health science is respected, masks are required in indoor public spaces, which isn't a big burden.

Regarding masks, Weiss said this.

In addition to feeling duped by vaccines, Weiss feels hemmed in by restrictions. Speaking with Maher and gobsmacked New York Rep. Ritchie Torres, she lists three science-based reasons why public-safety precautions in 2022 are an utter farce. They are as follows: that cloth masks aren’t effective against omicron, that an asymptomatic COVID-carrier can get into a bar with a vaccine passport, and finally, that the current state of restrictions is going to be remembered by younger generations as a “catastrophic moral crime.” (Yes, that third point is presented as the product of “science.”)

Well, Weiss is correct that cloth masks aren't effective against Omicron. They also weren't effective against the Delta variant, or the original Covid strain. A Wall Street Journal graphic shows this.

A cloth mask is barely better than wearing nothing at all. However, if an infected person wears a surgical mask or N95 mask, this provides substantial protection for non-infected people, especially if they're also wearing a high quality mask.

Regarding a comment by Bill Maher that vaccinations only protect the person who's gotten vaccinated, not other people, this isn't true. 

People who are vaccinated for SARS-CoV-2 but get breakthrough infections may be less likely to spread the virus because they shed it for a shorter period than unvaccinated people who are infected, according a new study led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Of course, the Omicron variant is much more contagious than the Delta variant and original Covid, so both the effectiveness of vaccines and of masks is lower with Omicron. But vaccines still prevent serious illness in most people if they've gotten a booster shot.

And masks offer protection against all variants, according to the CDC. 

So the idea that Bari Weiss, or anyone, should "be done with Covid" makes no sense.  It's akin to someone in England saying "I'm done with the war" while the fight against Hitler was still raging. Pandemics, like war, have to be fought with an all-hands-on-deck attitude.

Every American has to do their part to combat Covid-19. Getting fully vaccinated and wearing a high-quality mask in public indoor spaces is the patriotic thing to do. You're not only protecting yourself, you're protecting other people.

Doing anything else is both selfish and ignorant.

Here's my plan about how Biden can bounce back

Ten days ago I wrote about how bothered I am by how poorly Biden has been performing as president. Today I watched Meet the Press and saw that I'm not alone in being disappointed by Biden.

But after sharing some of the bad news on Meet the Press, I'm gong to light a Biden candle instead of cursing the darkness of his dismal poll results at this point in his presidency.

So scroll past the depressing (unless you're a Republican) photos I took of some survey results, and you'll find my prescription for how Biden can restore the mojo that progressives like me want him to possess.

OK, that's definitely ghastly. The groups that produced Biden's win over Trump now are souring on him.

It's possible to debate whether that's justified, since Republican obstructionism, along with Manchin and Sinema holding back voting rights legislation and the Build Back Better bill from within the Democratic Party, are a big part of the reason Biden hasn't had a political win for a while.

But politics isn't about fairness. It's about winning, while doing what's best for the country. So here's my plan for getting Biden out of the popularity black hole he's currently trapped in.

(1) Be much more forceful about tooting your own horn. It looks like Biden has started to do this. His recent press conference was a decent start. But Biden and the rest of his team need to shamelessly plug what's been accomplished through the Covid relief bills passed last year and the benefits the bipartisan infrastructure bill will bring, along with other administration actions.

(2) Go all out on combatting Covid. As the coronavirus goes, so will Biden's presidency and Democratic hopes in the November midterm election. It's good to see that Covid tests are becoming more available at no or little cost to people. This should have happened earlier, but better late than never. Call out Republican governors and judges who stand in the way of public health measures needed to get the coronavirus under control.

(3) Let Manchin write a scaled-down Build Back Better bill. Biden should forget about fulfilling every Democratic wish list. Whatever Joe Manchin wants in the Build Back Better bill, let him have it. The key thing is to preserve the half trillion dollars to fight climate change. Getting that done will go a long way toward pleasing progressives, independents, and young people concerned about global warming. Anything else is a bonus: lowering prescription drug prices, universal pre-kindergarten, etc.

(4) Get tough with Putin over Ukraine. After the not-so-good pullout from Afghanistan, it's important for Biden to look like a strong competent leader when it comes to foreign affairs. Today I saw reports that the United States is planning to back an insurgency in Ukraine if Russia invades the country, and will send troops to the Baltic nations that used to be part of the USSR. Good moves. Even better would be preventing an invasion through very tough specific threats to Putin about what will happen if he invades Ukraine. 

(5) Showcase Kamala Harris with voting rights. Biden picked a woman of color to be his vice-president. His approval rating is sinking with women and Blacks. Biden needs to elevate Harris to a much more prominent role in his administration. She's supposed to be working on voting rights, but Harris isn't very visible on this crucial issue.

Harris should have a press conference every couple of weeks where she lays out what the Biden administration is doing to counter Republican efforts at voter suppression and manipulation of election results. Not as good as a voting rights bill, but no bill is going to pass so long as Sinema and Manchin refuse to do away with or modify the Senate filibuster. 

Salem Police Department involved with controversial PowerPoint slide

Recently a highly controversial slide was found at the end of a PowerPoint presentation used to train police officers in crowd control methods.

A January 14 Willamette Week story, "Portland Police Included 'Prayer of the Alt Knight' Meme in Protest Training Presentation," contains an image of the slide, along with what it said, since the image is kind of hard to read.

“And the Lord said...
Woe be unto you, dirty hippy;
For thou stinketh of patchouli and BO;
For thou talk of Marx, yet know him not;
For thous hast bills, yet have not paid;
For thou hast dreadlocks and white skin.
And so I shall send among you,
My humble servants with hat, and with bat;
That they may christen your heads with hickory,
And anoint your faces with pepper spray.
And once thou hast been cuffed and stuffed;
Once thou has been stitched and bandaged;
Perhaps thou shall learn,
I’m tired of your shit.
Amen.”

Nasty stuff. This meme is connected with the Fraternal Order of Alt-Knights (FOAK), a group described in some detail by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Excerpt:

Formed as the “tactical defense arm” of the Proud Boys, the Fraternal Order of Alt-Knights (FOAK) has become an accelerant for violence at right-wing rallies.

The group’s founder, repeat-felon Kyle Chapman, organized FOAK after a melee with counter-protestors in Berkeley, California, to “protect and defend our right-wing brethren” through “street activism, preparation, defense and confrontation.” The Proud Boys argue that FOAK is the next “logical step” in the growth of their “pro-Western” movement.

At first it was believed the PowerPoint presentation that included the slide was just part of Portland Police Bureau training.

But yesterday a follow-up Willamette Week story came out, "Controversial Protest PowerPoint May Have Been Presented During Training by Four Oregon Law Enforcement Agencies." 

A recent deposition of a commander of the Portland Police Bureau’s now-dissolved Rapid Response Team suggests that the controversial PowerPoint presentation released by city officials last week may have been presented during training jointly taught by four Oregon law enforcement agencies: PPB, the Oregon State Police, the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office and the Salem Police Department.

...The additional law enforcement agencies’ potential involvement or access to the training presentation is significant in part because Oregon State Police and Multnomah County Sheriff’s deputies assisted PPB during several protests in the summer of 2020.

OSP, MCSO and SPD could not be reached immediately for comment.

Well, the Salem Police Department definitely needs to comment on whether anyone from the department was involved in training presentations that included the disgusting slide. 

If they were, the next question should be, "What, if anything, did that person, or people, do after viewing the slide?" Did they make an effort to have it removed? Or did they think it was just fine, being a reflection of the hard-nosed attitude police officers should have toward dirty hippies and other protesters?

Those sorts of questions need to be asked and answered, because an Oregonian story is titled "Feds furious that Portland police, city kept them in dark about training slide advocating violence against protesters." 

Lawyers from the U.S. Department of Justice on Monday told Portland’s police chief and city attorney to hand over all “original, unredacted” training materials for the Rapid Response Team, furious that the city didn’t make them aware months ago of a team training presentation that included a derogatory slide advocating violence against protesters.

The letter comes just days after the city released a PowerPoint training slide showing a “Prayer of the Alt Knight” -- a meme that uses biblical terms to urge the beating and pepper-spraying of demonstrators derided as “dirty” hippies, and advocates leaving them “cuffed and stuffed” and “stitched and bandaged” to teach them a lesson.

The attorneys wrote that the city of Portland should have reported the crowd-control team’s training presentation to the Justice Department when it was developed, as required by the city’s eight-year-old use-of-force settlement with the federal agency.

Justice Department attorneys Jared D. Hager and R. Jonas Geissler said they were told of the inappropriate material for the first time Thursday night and that the city shared the slideshow with them only hours before the mayor’s office released it to the media Friday afternoon.

They described the training slides -- not just the offensive slide that was inserted at the end -- as having “varying degrees of offensive content, incorrect guidance and false or misleading information.”

So this is a bigger deal than just the single offensive slide.

It appears likely that the Salem Police Department has been involved in crowd control training that, in the words of the Justice Department attorneys, gave incorrect guidance and contained false or misleading information. 

At least, that's how it looks given what is known now. Hopefully Salem Police Chief Trevor Womack will be issuing a statement soon about whether any of his officers used the flawed PowerPoint presentation in training. 

If they did, why didn't those training officers recognize that the presentation didn't represent best practices for crowd control at protests?

I'm a loyal Democrat who's already tired of Joe Biden

Joe Biden was really appealing when the alternative was Donald Trump. But after a year of Biden's presidency, my attitude toward him ranges from grudging acceptance to outright irritation.

Today I'm at the bottom of my personal Joe Biden approval rating. And there's a good chance my mood is going to darken further.

I've got this theory -- not exactly original to me -- that a person's good qualities also are their bad qualities. It just depends on how those qualities are expressed, and their context.

Along with lots of other people, I relished having a calm, competent, low-key president in the White House after four years of Trumpian chaos. Now, though, those qualities are looking more like liabilities, especially since competent is fading away as a Biden descriptor.

My current gripe with Biden, and it's a significant one, is that he pretty much ignored voting rights legislation until very recently, when he gave a speech in Georgia about the urgent need for Congress to pass two voting rights bills.

Too late and too little, Joe. 

Today Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin both announced that they aren't willing to do away with the Senate filibuster even if that's necessary to pass voting rights legislation, which it definitely is. 

Also today, Sinema and Manchin met with Biden at the White House to discuss their position on the filibuster. So far there hasn't been any word that Biden changed their mind, probably because he didn't.

I get it that Sinema and Manchin are really difficult to deal with, being full of themselves, refusing to negotiate in an honest fashion, and uncaring of whether they're acting in the best interest of their constituents in Arizona and West Virginia.

Still, it sure seems like Biden has been weak in how he's interacted with them, choosing to play the role of Mr. Nice Guy rather than President Who Should Be Feared. 

Lyndon Johnson played that latter role well. So did Trump. Again, I don't want Biden to be Trump-lite, just that he display some of the aggression and passion that makes Trump beloved by his base.

Early on in January 2021, congressional Democrats said that voting rights bills would be a top priority. As Republicans in state after state passed their own legislation to make it harder to vote, especially for  black and brown people, voting rights should have risen to the top of Biden's agenda.

But it didn't. 

Covid relief bills did. Then the bipartisan infrastructure bill did. After that, the Build Back Better bill was pushed by Biden.

It made sense to focus on Covid given how the pandemic was ravaging our country. However, Biden botched the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which was supposed to go hand-in-hand with the Build Back Better bill -- social/climate change infrastrucure as opposed to physical infrastructure. 

Manchin and Sinema were heavily invested in the bipartisan infrastructure bill. That should have given Biden leverage for him to use in pressing for them to do a carve-out of the filibuster on voting rights legislation.

And leverage to get them to commit to supporting the Build Back Better bill. Now that bill is stuck, going nowhere fast. Biden seems to have given up on it after Manchin said he's done talking about it. 

Yet last year Biden cajoled progressive House Democrats to pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which already had been approved by the Senate, when he assured them that Manchin had bought off on a framework for Build Back Better, so now the two bills could be decoupled.

Build Back Better contains half a billion dollars or so of vitally needed support for our country's efforts to combat global warming. 

So Biden is batting .000 on the two legislative areas that mean the most to me, and many other Democrats: voting rights and climate change. I've read that Manchin was willing to go along with a $1.8 trillion Build Back Better bill that included all that money to fight global warming.

Biden reportedly walked away from that agreement for some reason. Unforgivable. 

Since I'm 73, not a whole lot younger than Biden, it pains me to say that Biden is looking more and more to me like a kindly grandfather whose best days are behind him.

Sadly, he hasn't given Vice-President Harris much of a viable role in his administration, because while Harris has her own weaknesses, she's more energetic and a much better speaker.

My mood toward Biden definitely would perk up if somehow he could pull off a win on either voting rights or Build Back Better.

Right now, though, it looks like neither legislation is going to pass. Since Republicans are favored to take back the House in November of this year, this means Biden has little time left to get his first term agenda through Congress.

And I haven't even mentioned the failure of Biden and his fellow Democrats to do anything about police reform and immigration reform. No wonder Biden's approval rating is so low. When he's losing many members of his own party, there's no way to go but down.

Councilor Nordyke makes progress on mobile crisis unit

Thanks to Councilor Vanessa Nordyke, last night the Salem City Council approved a motion to have city staff prepare a report about a mobile crisis unit pilot project.

She was happy in a Facebook post. And humble, because the staff report that was approved was written by her.

Here's Nordyke's approved proposal.

The pilot project would be a civilian-led mobile crisis unit similar to CAHOOTS in Eugene to respond to calls for service involving persons experiencing homelessness or behavioral health crisis and would likely be for one year.

Staff is directed to consult with CAHOOTS of Eugene regarding what this pilot project could look like in our city.

Specifics to include in the staff report:

•  Identify potential community partners (such as local non-profits, medical service providers, behavior health providers, local governmental entities)

•  Identify potential funding sources (such as the $10.5 million grant we recently received from the state of Oregon)

•  Identify estimated cost of pilot project (depending type of staff chosen and other factors)

•  Identify potential service providers

•   Identify who could hire and train mobile crisis unit personnel (The city? A local nonprofit? Someone else?)

•   Identify potential types of staff (Peer support specialist, social worker, EMT, QMHP, etc.

•   Identify how a civilian-led mobile crisis unit would fit alongside existing public safety programs (such as SPD BHU, Marion County LEAD, etc)

In making this motion, I am specifically directing staff to consult with CAHOOTS of Eugene what this pilot project could look like in our city.

I understand that depending on the type of staff hired, the cost of the pilot project may vary considerably. So in creating the staff report, my expectation is that staff will propose multiple scenarios with their own price tag.  For example, I would expect having peer support specialist would be a lot cheaper than having an EMT or a registered nurse on the team.

The United Way submitted a proposal for a pilot project in the budget committee meetings earlier this year. That document estimated the pilot project costing $540,000. The United Way’s proposal may be an appropriate starting point for this proposal.

As I noted in a previous post about the mobile crisis unit pilot project, so far a stumbling block has been the decidedly lukewarm (bordering on cold) response of Police Chief Trevor Womack to this idea, which probably explains why even though the project is part of the City of Salem budget, no progress has made on it until now.

Jim Scheppke spoke about this in a public comment he submitted on Nordyke's motion.

Dear Mayor and City Council

I support the motion for a staff report on a mobile crisis unit pilot project because this will hopefully get this issue off the back burner and back on to the front burner.

I thought when the Budget Committee and the Council voted last year to budget funds in the 2021-22 budget for a mobile crisis unit that the policy was set to pursue this. Since that time nothing has happened. Grant funds that could have been added to City funds have been left on the table. Our police chief has spoken openly in the Salem Statesman Journal about his opposition to mobile response units so I can only take from that that the policy that was adopted by the appropriate policy-makers is being subverted by City staff. That’s not right.

Civilian mobile crisis units are the proven solution to serving people in crisis. They are less expensive and more effective. People in crisis don’t need to be confronted by officers with tasers and guns. We need to learn from the death of Natzeryt Viertel just last year at the hands of the police. How might that have ended differently with trained mental health specialists responding to the call about a suicidal young man? Mr. Viertel might be alive today.

Thanks to Councilor Nordyke for her leadership on this issue and for her persistence in attempting to do the right thing for Salem.

Jim Scheppke, Ward 2

Yes, this is indeed the right thing to do. I looked through some of the other public comments, which all seemed to be in support of the Nordyke motion. They can be read via attachments to the staff report. These caught my eye.

I would like to comment to the Council that I want Salem to have a CAHOOTS-style program. Many times people call 911 because there's no other realistic option to get a rapid response to a crisis... but they don't necessarily want an aggressive man with a gun to come in and start yelling and threatening people with arrest. They can't necessarily afford an ambulance ride or feel like being locked in a psych ward will be beneficial. Given the option, they might have a strong preference between police, fire, ambulance and mental crisis response: they're the ones observing the situation, the dispatcher only has the caller's words to go on.

We have police because the Executive Branch needs a way to physically enforce laws -- usually felonies that are actually arrest-worthy, since traffic, parking, health, labor and other civil penalties are rarely worth a gun on your hip -- by detaining and referring people to prosecution. The idea that police are also dogcatchers and domestic abuse prevention and a force for serving and protecting is mostly PR, and distracts from the very real work of finding and detaining murderers and thieves, or responding to active shootings.

Just as we have firefighters for fire emergencies, ambulances for medical emergencies, and National Guard or FEMA for widespread environmental emergencies, we need mental/social crisis responders who can respond to psychological or small-scale environmental emergencies.

I once watched a crying young child forcibly chased down and ripped from his mother's arms by multiple armed men because Family Court decided that his absentee father was a better provider, despite allegations of abuse. Were guns and physical violence really the best way to accomplish that? It scarred me just seeing it happen, let alone if I were that child being ripped from my only loving parent by the armed government. It seems to me a better system is possible and necessary. The presence of a gun is in itself an escalation of a situation, even if police are supposedly trained in de-escalation.

Some emergencies need response in the form of water, others in the form of morphine, or Humvees, or sometimes even guns. The giant missing gap in our system is emergencies that need response in the form of a sympathetic ear and a safe place to stay. It used to be that the town pastor would fill such roles, but with large populations a more formal, coordinated system is needed. Police can try to fill this gap, but it's not actually their core mission, and many police chiefs nationwide have said that their departments are overworked, filling in too many roles outside their training. We wouldn't dream of using the National Guard as long- term hospital staff, so why are we as a society so eager to use police as social workers? A separate, independent, care-oriented department should be on 911 speed dial so that the right response is possible, separate from the Police Chief's responsibility to enforcing laws and prosecuting crim

Will Bradley, District 1

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I am writing in support of the motion for a staff report on a mobile crisis unit pilot project. I hope that the outcome of the staff report will result in the creation of a mobile crisis unit support team, similar to Cahoots in Eugene, Oregon.

I lived in Eugene for over 30 years, and saw the good that the Cahoots team accomplished, time and time again. Their teams of medical and behavioral professionals were able to attend to the needs of clients in the community, freeing the Eugene Police Department to deal with other more critical and violent issues. The Cahoots teams had a solid reputation in Eugene, and city officials, as well as law enforcement officials, were gratified that the Cahoots team was on call when needed, year in and year out. Money was saved as were lives.

I don't think you will be disappointed in exploring this issue further. Thank you for considering this agenda item.

Claudia Carmichael

Brad Witt jumps into Salem's HD 19 race, all the way from Clatskanie

Currently Brad Witt is a member of the Oregon House, representing HD 31 -- which consists of most of Columbia County and parts of Washington and Multnomah counties.

But recently Witt formed a campaign committee to be elected in HD 19 -- which is in Salem.

Here's a map of HD 19, which definitely doesn't include Clatskanie, where Witt says he lives.

So how is it that Witt appears ready to challenge two Salem city councilors, Tom Andersen and Jackie Leung, in the May HD 19 Democratic primary? Currently he isn't shown as having filed for this race, but as noted above, his current campaign committee is for election to HD 19 rather than HD 31.

Well, I've heard that fellow Democrats in the state legislature redistricted Clatskanie out of HD 31 so Witt couldn't run again in his old district. The map below shows that now Clatskanie (near the top) is just outside of the HD 31 boundary.

This could have happened because in June 2021 Witt was found to have violated a legislative sexual harassment rule, according to an OPB story. 

State Rep. Brad Witt violated workplace rules against sexual harassment and creating a hostile work environment with a series of texts to a fellow lawmaker in April, a House committee found Tuesday evening.

But the House Conduct Committee found that, contrary to an allegation against him, Witt did not intend to create a quid pro quo arrangement with Rep. Vikki Breese Iverson in which he would exchange his vote on a bill for a date or sexual favors.

So it's possible that Democrats viewed Witt as sufficiently politically damaged by this episode to make it unlikely that he could win re-election against a Republican challenger, hence the boundary change that took his home out of HD 31.

Regardless, I've been told that Witt owns a residence in Salem which he hopes makes him eligible to run in HD 19.

That's fine.

I just think it's unlikely that Witt could waltz into Salem from Clatskanie and defeat two Salem city councilors in the May primary who have vastly more local name recognition. However, Witt might be betting that in a three-way race with Andersen and Leung, he has a chance to win as an outsider.

Which his opponents probably would term "carpetbagger."

I'll end by saying that when I told my wife what I was writing about tonight, Laurel said she had positive experiences with Witt when she advocated ending coyote killing contests during a recent legislative session, something Witt supported.

Brad Witt probably holds policy positions that are close to those held by Tom Andersen and Jackie Leung. Unfortunately for Witt, they have to be viewed as front-runners in the HD 19 race given their connections in Salem.

Nicholas Kristof's Governor run stumbles before it starts

When I heard that Nicholas Kristof, a former columnist for the New York Times, was running to be Oregon's Governor, I was enthused. 

Wow, a non-politician who, unlike Trump, was intelligent, knowledgeable about the world, and obviously a sophisticated communicator.

I started following Kristof on Twitter. I enjoyed his cogent well-written tweets, along with appealing photos of his family at their Yamhill County farm.

But now I've soured on Kristof.

Yesterday the Oregon Secretary of State, Shemia Fagan, ruled that Kristof didn't meet the residency requirement to run for Governor. The Oregon Capital Chronicle, a great news source, said in its story:

Oregon Secretary of State Shemia Fagan said Thursday that deciding former New York Times columnist Nick Kristof didn’t qualify to run for governor “wasn’t even a close call.”

Fagan’s staff notified Kristof’s campaign on Thursday morning that he didn’t meet a constitutional requirement to be a “resident within this state” for three years prior to the November 2022 election.

Fagan outlined findings by the state Elections Division in a Thursday morning news conference, citing the Democrat’s ties to New York and his failure to produce documents he said made his case.

Hours later at his own news conference in Portland, a defiant Kristof vowed to fight the ruling, calling it an act of self-protection by a “failing political establishment.”

If Kristof had simply said he disagreed with the ruling and would appeal it, that would have been fine by me. But when I saw this tweet by Kristof, I had to reply to it.

Note: It seemed obvious to me that "My candidacy was stolen by the Deep State" was my made-up quote to sound like something Trump would say, but a few people who can't appreciate literary subtlety somehow thought I was quoting Kristof. 

It's unlikely that a Republican will be elected Governor next November. But Betsy Johnson, a moderate Democrat, is running as an independent. It's unclear whether she'd pull more votes from the Democratic or Republican gubernatorial candidate. Regardless, I want to see a Democrat win.

If Kristof somehow were to win both his appeal of Fagan's ruling and the Democratic primary, he'd be saddled with carpetbagger "not really an Oregonian" epithets throughout the general election campaign.

So that's another reason I no longer support Kristof. Plus, the Capital Chronicle tried to get the documents that Kristof claims show that he truly has been an Oregon resident for the past three years, but he refused to share them.

With legal opinions by private attorneys and in a 15-page sworn affidavit, Kristof defended his right to run on two prongs. One is an analysis by his lawyers and others that concludes that Kristof meets the constitutional requirement to run for governor. The second is referring to a string of documents ranging from tax returns to incorporation papers he maintains show he has been an Oregon resident.

A long-time journalist, Kristof didn’t submit these records to the Secretary of State’s Office and rejected a request for them from the Capital Chronicle. Kristof also didn’t answer questions about other public documents obtained by the Capital Chronicle or about his sworn statements regarding his farming operation outside the rural community of Yamhill. He also didn’t respond to an email sharing elements of this story to check for accuracy.

On Dec. 23, the Capital Chronicle requested redacted copies of his New York and Oregon driver’s licenses, his 2018 and 2019 New York and Oregon personal income tax returns, the Yamhill County property tax bill for Kristof Farms for the past three years and the farm’s 2019 corporate tax return and workers’ compensation insurance policy. 

Kristof’s campaign didn’t respond with any documents or an explanation for why they weren’t being provided.

Instead, Kristof and his campaign basically say that because he feels like he's always been an Oregonian, that means he's a long-time Oregon resident. Which is absurd. I've grown accustomed to Trump elevating his feelings over facts, but I expected a lot more from Kristof.

He's appealing to the state Supreme Court. That Capital Insider story includes the 185 page brief his attorneys have filed. Which is really quick work, given that Fagan issued her ineligible-to-run ruling only yesterday. Sure seems like Kristof expected that to happen.

Glancing through the brief, it looks like some solid arguments are being made, along with, I'm sure, some dubious arguments. 

Like I said, even if Kristof wins the appeal, the way he handled the Secretary of State ruling leaves a bad taste in my political mouth. Sure, Kristof isn't a member of Oregon's Democratic establishment. But I find it hard to believe that Fagan was out to tank Kristof's candidacy when she made her ruling.

If the Oregon Supreme Court issues a scathing reversal order of Fagan's decision, that would help to rejuvenate Kristof's campaign. But I still think he's too wounded to win the Democratic primary.

Councilor Nordyke pushing hard for mobile crisis unit

I'm tempted to call this a cage fight between Vanessa Nordyke, Salem City Councilor, and Trevor Womack, Salem Police Chief, over the establishment of a civilian-run mobile crisis unit.

Oops. Looks like I gave in to that temptation. Nordyke looks sweet and gentle. But my advice to Womack is to throw in the towel now before you get thrashed by her.

A few days ago Nordyke announced in a Facebook post that she wants City of Salem staff to prepare a report on the feasibility of a mobile crisis unit.

Note the language: "civilian-led mobile crisis unit." Those are fighting words for Womack, who largely dismissed that notion in a December 27 Statesman Journal story about Womack's first year as police chief.

How do you see the Police Department approaching calls about community members in mental health crisis and individuals who are homeless?

I do think there is room on this continuum for a non-law enforcement response. I don't think it can come at the expense of law enforcement because there's also room for a national best practice, which already exists here: our Mobile Crisis Response Team, where we have a law enforcement officer partnered with a qualified mental health professional. We handle hundreds of calls this way successfully. 

When we talk about removing law enforcement from the situation, that removes a critical component for safety. You never want to insert a non-sworn professional staff, like a mental health provider or a medic, into a situation where there may be somebody who is a physical threat.

Across all of that, also making sure that everybody is trained with the right skills and equipment abilities to do those roles effectively. So, crisis intervention training is one thing I'm proud of, too. We've been committed to providing additional CIT training to all of our officers.

What I am concerned about is, are there other gaps in the system? So let's say that the team existed right now and it consisted of a paramedic or a medic and a social worker. There wouldn't be a lot of calls that they would relieve from police because we already screen calls; we don't necessarily go to calls where that model would respond to because we don't have time to go to those calls, anyway.  

Let's say they go and there's a person right out here that's obviously in crisis that needs some help. What are the resources I could connect them with? There are gaps in the system. Let's not create the cart before the horse. Let's make sure that if there is a team like that, that there are actually resources that they can use to improve the situation.

My answers to these questions are going to change over time as the gaps are filled. But what's optimistic is we did open some more hotel bed space. We have a navigation center the city is going to open. So we're starting to invest and fill in these gaps that are out there. And then maybe at that point, a non-law enforcement response makes more sense.

Jim Scheppke wrote a Facebook comment about what Womack said which points out that Womack is choosing to ignore a clear City Council priority -- which Nordyke is now calling him out on.

Another interesting wrinkle is that Trevor Womack has endorsed for re-election the incumbent Marion County District Attorney, Paige Clarkson, while Vanessa Nordyke applauded the effort of Spencer Todd, who is running against Clarkson, to form a mobile crisis unit.

Here's a link to the Statesman Journal opinion piece Nordyke referenced: "Look to CAHOOTS for inspiration for nonviolent emergencies."

My bet is that Nordyke will succeed with her motion at the January 10 City Council meeting, since a mobile crisis unit appears to have the support of a majority of councilors. Then it will be up to Chief Womack to decide whether to get on board the mobile crisis unit train.

I think he'd be wise to support that proposal, given that it seems to be gathering a full head of steam.