Salem Political Snark

City officials deny Salem library will be closed, but that was an option from them

I find it amusing when officials at the City of Salem are shocked that the public thinks they're going to do something bad, when that's exactly what was being suggested prior to the public getting outraged about the bad thing happening.

Which causes the city officials to go, "No, oh my gosh, how could you ever have thought we'd do that?"

Well, in this case the bad thing was completely closing the Salem Public Library. A few days ago the Salem Reporter had a story about the public reaction to this possibility.

Salem’s city councilors overwhelmingly said this week they would not vote for a city budget that closed the Salem Public Library.

They clarified their viewpoints after receiving a flurry of comments from members of the public opposed to deeper cuts.

But most said eliminating some library employees or services remain on the table as city leaders discuss a budget over the coming months. Those cuts would likely mean further hours reductions to the Main branch of the library, which closed on Sundays earlier this year.

Their testimony came after claims that the city planned to close the library circulated widely online over the weekend. Though the city is not planning to close the main branch of the Salem Public Library, deep staffing cuts are among the budget proposals councilors are considering. 

Well, it isn't true that city officials didn't have any plans to close the main branch of the Salem Public Library. Which means the public was justified in raising the alarm that this could happen. On October 24, 2023, the Salem Reporter had a story with the title, "Salem City Council to discuss alternative cuts."

This was one of the four alternatives.

Scenario three: No cuts to police or fire, close the library

The third option would maintain 43 police and fire positions by closing the library and Center 50+ entirely, as well as cutting more administrative, court, and parks positions. This option also includes the reductions and fee increases from the second option.

The library closure would cut $3.9 million and would mean Salem residents wouldn’t have access to its 350,000 collection items or library facilities starting in the next fiscal year. The library’s services include access to the Internet, study rooms, Loucks Auditorium and programs for teens, literacy education and homebound community members.

The library has 35 full-time employees, 3 part-time, 15 on-call, six high school and college interns and 155 volunteers.

So city officials certainly did have a plan to completely close the library. It's option #3 in an October 25, 2023 memo to the City Council from John Eggleston, Chief Financial Officer. 

That date is significant because it was about two weeks before the November 7 election where Salem voters overwhelmingly rejected an employee payroll tax proposal from the City of Salem to raise revenue for city services. 

Not surprisingly, city officials were busily engaged before the election in coming up with scary budget cuts intended to spur voters to vote Yes on the payroll tax. Didn't work, obviously. 

But you can't try to scare voters in late October of 2023, then be surprised in late March of 2024 when the public remembers that only a few months before, there was talk of the drastic budget cuts, including closing the library, if the payroll tax proposal wasn't approved.

Of course, the above-mentioned memo from Eggleston includes an obligatory statement about how city employees can't lobby for passage of the payroll tax. However, they sure could try to scare people with descriptions of budget cuts if the payroll tax wasn't enacted. Which, it wasn't.

* ORS 260.432 prohibits public employees, during work time, from promoting or opposing a ballot measure. The City’s employee payroll tax will be on the November 7, 2023 ballot, and City staff may not advocate for or against the measure. In order to avoid violating state law, the City Attorney, in relation to this discussion of the City’s budget, has advised staff to assume that the payroll tax will not take effect.

This was the strangest part of Supreme Court hearing on abortion drug

Sometimes I think I should have become a lawyer. Not all that often, thankfully, given that I have no regrets about the educational and career paths that I was led down.

But I find legal arguments fascinating. Aside from scientific arguments, they're one of the best ways we humans have of getting closer to the truth. Not perfect, for sure. Just way better than arguing with each other in an unfettered fashion.

Yesterday morning, I saw that the Washington Post app on my iPhone was featuring audio of the arguments being made before the Supreme Court about whether the abortion drug mifepristone should be banned or availability limited. 

I listened while I made my breakfast. I missed the opening arguments, but listened to quite a bit of the second hour of the hearing, which included probing questions from the justices. 

As a CNN story says, one of the central issues was whether members of the conservative anti-abortion group hoping to ban or limit the use of mifepristone had standing to bring the case to the Supreme Court.

Standing requires that someone demonstrate that they've suffered a specific harm, not just that they disagree with a certain policy -- in this case, making a drug available that produces an abortion in a pregnant woman.

If I recall correctly, the argument in this case was that because right-wing Ob-Gyn doctors are opposed to abortion, yet support childbirth, providing mifepristone harms the doctors because it reduces the chance of them being able to deliver a child, while increasing the chance that they might have to perform a D&C (dilation and curettage) where scraping of the uterus occurs.

So that rather lame argument rested on probabilities, not actual harm. Maybe, just maybe, one of those right-wing doctors would find themselves in an Emergency Room where a woman was having a medical problem arising from the use of mifepristone.

(The drug isn't only for inducing an abortion. It also is used in miscarriages.)

What I found really strange was how the anti-abortion attorney seeking to convince the Supreme Court to ban or limit mifepristone kept saying that the drug should be banned, because otherwise one of the doctors they represent might be required to provide life-saving medical care to a woman who is in an Emergency Room due to a complication from taking mifepristone.

I kept thinking, "WTF! That's exactly what doctors are supposed to do: treat seriously ill people."

It's bizarre that an argument was being made before the Supreme Court of the United States that even though federal law contains a conscience clause saying that medical personnel aren't required to provide care that goes against their moral code, mifepristone still should be banned nationwide because maybe, just maybe, in an emergency situation a doctor might need to perform a D&C on a woman who had been taking the drug.

Thankfully, the CNN story says that the justices were skeptical of this argument. 

Conservative and liberal justices demanded to know why access to mifepristone needed to be limited if the small number of doctors involved could simply exercise their own religious and conscientious objections individually.

...If things seemed to be going badly for the abortion pill challengers as Tuesday’s hearing began to unfold in earnest, their prospects of prevailing appeared to grow even dimmer during the second hour of arguments, when Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Neil Gorsuch tore into the challengers’ attorney over the nationwide impact caused by the lawsuit.

“Why can’t the court specify that this relief runs to precisely the parties before the court as opposed to looking to the agency in general and saying agency you can’t do this anywhere?” Roberts asked the attorney, Erin Hawley.

As she began to explain how such a remedy would be “impractical,” Gorsuch interjected to speak to the recent spike in universal injunctions. He said he went back “and looked and there are exactly zero universal injunctions that were issued during Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 12 years in office – pretty consequential ones.”

“And over the last four years or so, the number is something like 60 and maybe more than that,” he continued. “And they’re a relatively new thing. And you’re asking us to extend and pursue this relatively new course, which this court has never adopted itself.”

“This case seems like a prime example of turning what could be a small lawsuit into a nationwide, legislative assembly on an FDA rule or any other government action,” Gorsuch said.

The Biden administration contends that even if some action in favor of the plaintiffs was warranted, it should not have affected the entire country as opposed to just the litigants in the case.

Ronna McDaniel shows what's wrong with the Republican Party

To clarify the title of this blog post, I want to be clear that currently there are lots of things wrong with the Republican Party.

For example, the failure to acknowledge the reality that humans are causing global warming and we've got to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as rapidly as possible to prevent civilization as we know it from being tossed into the garbage can of history.

But there's a common denominator in many, if not most, of the flaws afflicting today's GOP: Donald Trump.

Trump, who sows discord and destruction with every step he takes, like a malevolent Johnny Appleseed,  has infected the minds of the Republican faithful through his never-ending lies. Like other authoritarians, Trump is skilled at manipulating his followers to do his bidding, even when it isn't in their own best interest.

Ronna McDaniel is a great example of this. She was born as Ronna Romney, being a niece of Mitt Romney and a granddaughter of George Romney. So she started life as a member of a noted family of moderate Republicans.

Which was the moral high point of McDaniel's political career. For when Trump came along, she hitched her wagon to Trump's misbehaving horses. That led McDaniel down a path that many other of his acolytes have trod on.

Embracing falsehoods and helping to spread them, even though she knew they weren't true. The subtitle of a Politico story that appeared today speaks the truth: "Ronna McDaniel said the quiet part out loud on NBC: Public loyalty to Trump is at a premium in the GOP, even for those who disagree with him.

For sure.

Getting Democrats to move in the same direction is commonly said to be like herding cats. By contrast, getting Republicans to move in the same direction is like a border collie herding sheep. It just happens naturally, especially in this Age of Trump.

Expressing the courage of your convictions is a huge no-no if this conflicts with Trump's pronouncements. The Politico story says:

When Ronna McDaniel appeared on “Meet the Press,” the focus quickly settled on the outrage at NBC. But for everything her hiring at the network said about the media landscape, it was just as revealing about the state of the GOP.

Freed from former President Donald Trump’s gravitational pull, McDaniel, the former Republican National Committee chair, could now express beliefs that included such bromides as “people who violently attacked Capitol Hill police officers and — and attacked the Capitol” should be held accountable and that in the 2020 presidential election, President Joe Biden won “fair and square.”

It’s unclear whether McDaniel unburdened herself because she had a new benefactor in NBC and not the RNC. “I have no idea whether any answer she gave to you was because she didn’t want to mess up her contract,” said Chuck Todd, Meet the Press’ former host.

But what is clear is that McDaniel seemed to understand those beliefs were unutterable as Trump’s handpicked chair and that speaking them as she did — after his jettisoning of her from the RNC — flouted a large portion of the party. In her NBC appearance, the veil covering the kayfabe of post-2020 election denialism fell, exposing what one of the most prominent party officials thought in private versus what she said in public.

“Sometimes there is a price to be paid for politically expedient bullshit,” said Jason Roe, the Michigan-based GOP strategist whose parents worked for George Romney and who butted heads with McDaniel when he was the state GOP executive director. “It is the unwillingness, the lack of courage to say these things before that matters most, because these things have taken on a life of their own because people who know better didn’t say so, and they gain legitimacy.”

McDaniel didn't possess the moral courage to speak the truth during her time as chair of the Republican National Committee, RNC.

Like so many other Republicans, she was afraid of incurring Trump's wrath if she admitted that the 2020 presidential election was conducted fairly and Biden was the legitimate choice of the American people. Or if she acknowledged that the January 6 insurrection was an attempt to overthrow our democracy and must never be allowed to happen again, in any form.

McDaniel made a lame attempt to excuse herself on Meet the Press yesterday by claiming that as the RNC chair, she had to speak on behalf of the Republican Party even if this conflicted with how she really felt.

That's a bunch of crap.

It's one thing to convey the political positions of the GOP, even if she didn't agree with them. That's the job of a spokesperson. However, it's a whole other thing to contribute to the spreading of Trump's lie that the election was stolen from him and that the January 6 rioters are "hostages" rather than criminals.

Hopefully NBC will realize their error and fire McDaniel from whatever the heck they hired her to do at the network. It's fine to have conservatives as commentators. But it isn't fine to put people on the NBC payroll who bought into Trump's dangerous lies.

As people die of starvation in Gaza, Israel ignores the famine

I'm a moderate progressive Democrat. I've always considered myself evenly balanced between the plight of Palestinians and the need for Israelis to have a secure homeland. 

But given the horrendous way Israel has been carrying out its war with Hamas since the terrorist attacks on October 7 of last year, which has now brought the innocent people in Gaza to the brink of starvation -- more than that, since many already have died from a lack of food -- I never will look upon Israel in the same way again.

Israel has squandered the goodwill that virtually the entire world felt toward it after Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis. Much of the blame belongs to Prime Minister Netanyahu and his extreme right-wing government. 

However, polls show that most Israelis support the scorched earth, don't worry about the slaughter of over 30,000 people in Gaza (mostly women and children) warmaking policy of the Netanyahu government. 

That's entirely in accord with the cruel, malevolent Old Testament God the Jewish religion worships. But it is entirely against modern views of how war should be conducted, which includes the requirement that every effort be made to protect civilians.

It seems clear that both Israel and Hamas are guilty of war crimes. That's to be expected of Hamas. It's a huge disappointment to those, like me, who thought Israel understood that the needless killing of innocent people is a moral disaster. Have Israelis forgotten the lesson of the Holocaust?

Apparently, since Israel is allowing the people of Gaza to suffer mightily from lack of food, water, medicine, and other essentials by blocking sufficient humanitarian aid from entering the country. A story in yesterday's Washington Post, "U.N. chief calls for 'unfettered' aid to Gaza as aid groups report imminent famine," describes what Israel has wrought. Here's how the story starts out: 

Famine may already be happening in northern Gaza, and it risks spreading across the besieged enclave, plunging 2.2 million Palestinians into the broadest and most severe food crisis in the world, the globe’s leading body on food emergencies said Monday.

The new report from a cluster of international organizations and charities known as the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification initiative, or IPC, outlined a devastating situation with up to half the population of Gaza — 1.1 million people — facing catastrophic levels of hunger and starvation between now and July. The most immediately affected areas are in the northern regions, which Israeli forces cut off from the enclave’s southern half and which only a trickle of aid has been able to enter.

Compared with the IPC’s previous analysis in December, acute food insecurity in the Gaza Strip has deepened and widened, with nearly twice as many people projected to suffer those conditions by July. The most dire projection is based on an escalation of the conflict, including a ground offensive in Rafah.

In the IPC’s five-tier classification of food crises, Gaza now has the largest percentage of a population to receive its most severe rating since the body began reporting in 2004, Beth Bechdol, deputy director general at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), told The Washington Post.

By comparison, today in Sudan, Somalia and Afghanistan — where millions are suffering crisis and emergency levels of food insecurity — none of the population falls into the worst tier of catastrophic food shortages, Bechdol said.

People in areas designated at Phase 5 are considered to be “starving” and facing a significantly increased risk of acute malnutrition and death.

“So, for Gaza to have 1.1 million people in IPC 5 is unprecedented,” she said. She added: “This is 100 percent a man-made crisis. There’s no hurricane, there’s no cyclone, there’s no 100-year flood. There’s no protracted year-on-year drought.”

The report is likely to add fuel to the increasingly sharp criticism of Israel from governments in the United States and Europe about the grim dimensions of the escalating humanitarian crisis in Gaza. On Monday, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, repeated his assertion that Israel was using starvation as a “weapon of war.” He noted that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had recently told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that “we cannot stand by and watch Palestinians starve.”

“In Gaza we are no longer on the brink of famine; we are in a state of famine, affecting thousands of people,” Borrell said at the start of a conference on humanitarian aid for Gaza in Brussels. “This is unacceptable. Starvation is used as a weapon of war.”

Moamen al-Harthani, a 29-year-old resident of the northern Gaza town of Jabalya, described how people in the north were eating weeds and other plants to survive.

“There is no rice, no sugar, no beans, no lentils. … No fruit or vegetables,” Harthani said. “People eat the food of animals and livestock,” he said. Unable to find or afford flour, Harthani makes a bread-like substitute out of animal feed.

It's said that Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war. I heartily agree.

Any moral high ground Israel enjoyed after the October 7 attack by Hamas is gone, gone, gone. Israel is acting as cruelly as any terrorist organization. It just has better public relations, as this post on X says. Hassan isn't speaking specifically about using starvation as a weapon of war here, but his point applies to that also.

Here's two other X posts on the subject of famine in Gaza. Murphy is a United States senator.

Lastly, this is the final paragraph of a story in the March 25, 2024 issue of TIME magazine, "Spring won't bring Gaza relief."

The situation continues to "deteriorate day by day," the International Rescue Committee has said, noting that only a swift and lasting cease-fire would allow "the level of aid that the people of Gaza so urgently need to survive." In a recent study, Checchi and his co-authors projected that even in the absence of epidemics, an additional 58,260 Palestinians will be killed over the next six months if things remain unchanged. That figure jumps to 74,290 in the event of an escalation. "The way things are heading right now is consistent with our worst scenario," Checchi says, perhaps "even a little bit worse than that."

Impossible dream? Truly nonpartisan races for Salem Mayor and City Council

I'm either mellowing out politically in my increasingly old age or have a brain tumor that's preventing me from being my usual fanatically pro-Democrat, pro-progressive self when it comes to local races here in Salem for Mayor and City Council. Heck, let's throw in Salem-Keizer school board elections also.

Since I seem to be normal in other regards, leaving aside the difficulty of defining "normal," I'm going to go with the mellowing out option rather than the brain tumor option.

What led me to say this?

Well, it was looking over the Salem Reporter story by Rachel Alexander and Abbey McDonald, "Here's who qualified for the Salem city ballot." The mayor gets elected every two years, and the eight city councilors have four-year terms, so that means five races -- mayor and four councilors -- are on the ballot every two years.

This coming May is when most races are decided on Oregon's primary date. If a candidate gets 50% plus one vote, bingo, they're elected. If no candidate hits that mark, a runoff happens in November. 

This year three city councilors aren't running for election, so a newcomer will fill those seats. Here's the names of those who will be on the ballot.

Mayor: Chris Hoy, incumbent, and Councilor Julie Hoy (unrelated to each other)
Ward 1: Celine Coleman and Paul Tigan (Virginia Stapleton isn't seeking reelection)
Ward 3: Shane Matthews and Nathan Soltz (Trevor Phillips isn't seeking reelection)
Ward 5: Michael Hoselton and Irvin Brown (Jose Gonzalez isn't seeking reelection)
Ward 7: Vanessa Nordyke (seeking reelection and has no opponent)

Now, I'm a member of Progressive Salem, which has endorsed five candidates: Chris Hoy, Paul Tigan, Nathan Soltz, Irvin Brown, and Vanessa Nordyke. I'd like them to win, being part of my political "tribe." They're also well qualified. 

Usually the Salem Chamber of Commerce, through its Build Jobs PAC, endorses candidates other than those supported by Progressive Salem. Given our divisive politics these days, that's the way things usually work: progressives battle conservatives, even though the Mayor and City Council races are nominally nonpartisan. 

What struck me, though, looking through the names and backgrounds of the candidates in the Salem Reporter story, is that I'm not familiar with six of the nine candidates. Chris Hoy, Julie Hoy, and Vanessa Nordyke -- yes, I'm acquainted with them and their politics. 

But the other six are new to me. I've met Nathan Soltz, and he seemed like a great guy. I just don't know much about him. 

That seemed refreshing to me, how I wasn't able to categorize them as conservative or progressive without looking at the Progressive Salem endorsements. This is the way most local races used to be, way back when, before national politics trickled down into every level of elections, even for city councils. 

After all, most of the issues facing the mayor and city councilors aren't inherently political.

They have to do with zoning, land use approvals, funding city programs, and such. Sure, major issues like Salem's Climate Action Plan and the ill-fated employee payroll tax proposal have political overtones, since progressives love reducing greenhouse gas emissions and conservatives love low taxes.

It just would be nice if my possibly impossible dream could come true: we reach a point where what matters isn't whether a candidate for mayor or city council is progressive or conservative, but what their qualifications are. 

Chuck Schumer lays out the obstacles to peace in Hamas-Israel war

Below, thanks to the Times of Israel, you'll find the complete text of the speech Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer gave yesterday, where he describes in an eloquent fashion the contours of the Hamas-Israel war and what stands in the way of achieving lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians. 

Schumer said there are four major obstacles:

Hamas, and the Palestinians who support and tolerate their evil ways.
Radical right-wing Israelis in government and society.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Because the speech is a bit over 6,000 words long, I've boldfaced passages that, when read, provide a pretty good overview of his main points. 

This was an important speech, coming from the highest-ranking Jewish political leader in the United States. It carries more weight after President Biden said “He made a good speech." 

Schumer believes all four of the above obstacles to peace need to be removed from power. He also supports a two-state solution in which both Israelis and Palestinians have independent nations. I heartily agree with both aspirations. 

---------------------------------------------------------

The following is the full text of Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s speech given on March 14, 2024, as released by the senator’s office:

I rise to speak today about what I believe can — and should — be the path forward to secure mutual peace and lasting prosperity for Israelis and Palestinians.

I speak for myself, but I also speak for so many mainstream Jewish Americans — a silent majority — whose nuanced views on the matter have never been well represented in this country’s discussions about the war in Gaza.

My last name is Schumer, which derives from the Hebrew word Shomer, or “guardian.” Of course, my first responsibility is to America and New York. But as the first Jewish Majority Leader of the United States Senate, and the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in America ever, I also feel very keenly my responsibility as Shomer Yisroel — a guardian of the People of Israel.

Throughout Jewish history, there have been many Shomrim, and plenty who were far greater than I claim to be. But nonetheless, this is the position in which I find myself now — at a time of great difficulty for the State of Israel, for the Jewish people, and for non-Jewish friends of Israel.

So I feel an immense obligation to speak and act.

I speak as a member of a community of Jewish Americans that I know very well. They are my family, my friends. Many of them are my constituents, many of them are Democrats and many are deeply concerned about the pursuit of justice, both in New York and around the globe. From the Talmud — Tikkun Olam, the call to “repair the world” — has driven Jews around the globe to do what is right.

We love Israel in our bones. What Israel has meant to my generation, within living memory of the Holocaust, is impossible to measure. The flowering of the Jewish people in the desert from the ashes of the Holocaust, and the fulfillment of the dream of a Jewish homeland — after nearly two thousand years of praying and waiting — represents one of the most heartfelt causes of my life.

And unlike some younger Americans, I remember how hard it was to achieve that dream. I remember clutching my transistor radio to my ear in James Madison High School during the Six Day War wondering if Israel would be pushed into the sea.

If the events of the last few months have made anything clear, it is that Israel is surrounded by vicious enemies, and there are many people around the world who excuse and even support their aims to expel and kill Jews living in their hard-won land of refuge.

I will never underestimate the grave threats Israel faces — and has faced — for the entirety of its existence, nor will I ever underestimate the oppression that the Jewish people have endured for millennia.

It is precisely out of this long-standing connection to, and concern for, the State of Israel and its people that I speak today about what I view are the most pressing existential threats to Israel’s long-term peace and prosperity.

After five months of suffering on both sides of this conflict, our thinking must turn — urgently — to how we can achieve lasting peace, and ensure prosperity and security for both the Jewish people and the Palestinian people in the Middle East.

I believe that to achieve that lasting peace — which we so long for — Israel must make some significant course corrections, which I will outline in this speech.

But first, let’s not forget how we arrived at this critical moment.

What Hamas did on October 7 was brutal beyond imagination. I have sat with the families of those killed in the assault. I have seen the footage and heard the stories of innocents murdered and raped in heartless cruelty. As long as I live, I will never forget these images — this pure and premeditated evil.

Many of my family members were killed by Nazis in the Holocaust. October 7 and the shameless response to support that terrorist attack by some in America and around the globe have awakened the deepest fears of the Jewish people — that our annihilation remains a possibility.

Today, over 130 hostages remain captive in Gaza. I am anguished by the plight of so many hostages still trapped deep inside Hamas’s network of tunnels. I pray for them, and for their families, who have inspired me with their tenacious advocacy to ensure their loved ones are not forgotten.

Many of them are Americans: Jonathan Dekel Chen, Hersch Goldberg Polin; and some are my constituents in New York: Omer Neutra, Keith Siegel and Itay Chen, who we tragically learned this week was brutally killed on October 7 while serving near the Gaza border. Hamas still holds his body, as well as those of Americans Judi Weinstein and Gad Haggai.

I have sat with many of these families and I have wept with them. Each day that their loved ones don’t come home carries enough anguish and grief to last a lifetime.

I am working in every way I can to support the Biden Administration as negotiations continue to free every last one of the hostages. I urge every actor at the table — the Israelis, the Biden Administration, the Qataris, the Egyptians, and anybody else at the table — to continue doing everything possible to get to a deal. Hamas has been given a deal already. They should say yes. There is no time to waste.

My heart also breaks at the loss of so many civilian lives in Gaza. I am anguished that the Israeli war campaign has killed so many innocent Palestinians. I know that my fellow Jewish Americans feel this same anguish when they see the images of dead and starving children and destroyed homes.

Gaza is experiencing a humanitarian catastrophe — entire families wiped out, whole neighborhoods reduced to rubble, mass displacement, children suffering.

We should not let the complexities of this conflict stop us from stating the plain truth: Palestinian civilians do not deserve to suffer for the sins of Hamas, and Israel has a moral obligation to do better. The United States has an obligation to do better.

I believe the United States must provide robust humanitarian aid to Gaza, and pressure the Israelis to let more of it get through to the people who need it.

Jewish people throughout the centuries have empathized with those who are suffering and who are oppressed because we have known so much of that ourselves. As the Torah teaches us, every human life is precious, and every single innocent life lost, whether Israeli or Palestinian, is a tragedy that as Scripture says, “destroys an entire world.”

What horrifies so many Jews especially is our sense that Israel is falling short of upholding these distinctly Jewish values that we hold so dear. We must be better than our enemies, lest we become them.

Israel has a fundamental right to defend itself, but as I have said from the beginning of this war — how it exercises that right matters.

Israel must prioritize the protection of civilian casualties when identifying military targets. I have repeatedly called upon the Israeli government to do so.

But it must also be said that Israel is by no means the only one responsible for the immense civilian toll. To blame only Israel for the deaths of Palestinians is unfair, one-sided and deliberately manipulative — and it ignores Hamas’s role in this conflict.

Hamas has knowingly invited an immense civilian toll during this war. Their goal on October 7 was to provoke a tough response from Israel by killing as many Jews as possible in the most vicious manner possible — by raping women, executing babies, desecrating bodies, brutalizing whole communities.

Since then, Hamas has heartlessly hidden behind their fellow Palestinians by turning hospitals into command centers, and refugee camps into missile-launching sites. It is well documented that Hamas soldiers use innocent Gazans as human shields. The leaders of Hamas, many of whom live lives of luxury in places far away from the poverty and misfortune of Gaza, do not care one iota about the Palestinians for whom they claim to nobly fight.

It bothers me deeply that most media outlets covering this war, and many protesters opposing it, have placed the blame for civilian casualties entirely on Israel. All too often, in the media and at protests, it is never noted that Hamas has gone to great lengths to make themselves inseparable from the civilian population of Gaza by using Palestinians as human shields.

Too many news agencies and newspapers give Hamas a pass by hardly ever discussing this shameful practice that is central to their fighting strategy, and this has led to an inaccurate perception of the harsh realities of this war. I believe stories that justifiably mention the loss of innocent Palestinian life should also note how Hamas uses civilians as human shields. It almost never happens. And I believe that every protest that justifiably decries the loss of innocent Palestinian men, women and children, should also denounce Hamas for their central role in the bloodshed.

When protesters decry the loss of Palestinian life, but never condemn this perfidy or the loss of Israeli lives, it confounds and deeply troubles the vast majority of Jewish and non-Jewish Americans alike who support the State of Israel.

Given that Hamas launched their attack on October 7 to provoke Israel, given that Hamas sought the ensuing civilian toll in Gaza, given that Hamas wanted both Israelis and Arabs to be at each other’s throats… tensions on both sides have dramatically intensified.

And now, as a result of these inflamed tensions in both the Israeli and Palestinian communities, people on all sides of this war are turning away from a two-state solution — including Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who in recent weeks has said out loud repeatedly what many have long suspected by outright rejecting the idea of Palestinian statehood and sovereignty.

As the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in our government, and a staunch defender of Israel, I rise today to say unequivocally: This is a grave mistake. For Israel. For Palestinians. For the region and the world.

The only real and sustainable solution to this decades-old conflict is a negotiated two-state solution — a demilitarized Palestinian state living side-by-side with Israel in equal measures of peace, security, prosperity, dignity and mutual recognition.

Both Jews and Palestinians have long historic claims to this land. Contrary to the unfounded, absurd and offensive claims by some that the Jewish people are “colonizers” in their ancestral homeland, Jewish people have lived in the Holy Land continuously for more than three millennia. For centuries, Jews have made aliyah and gone to the land of Israel to live and settle. For centuries, at Passover, Jews at every corner of the globe have prayed, “Next year in Jerusalem.”

A Jewish homeland in Israel is no twentieth-century contrivance. Israel is our historic home. A home for people oppressed for centuries.

The Palestinians, too, have lived on the land for generations, and in past centuries, they have formed their own distinct culture, identity, cuisine and literature. The idea espoused by some that “There is no such thing as Palestinians” today is inaccurate, offensive and unhelpful.

The only just solution to this predicament is one in which each people can flourish in their own state side-by-side.

But for a two-state solution to work over the long term, it has to include real and meaningful compromises by both sides.

For example, too many Israelis who say they want a two-state solution don’t acknowledge how the amount and extent of expanding settlements render that a virtual impossibility.

And too many Palestinians who say they want a two-state solution don’t acknowledge how their insistence on an unequivocal “right of return” is a fatal impediment to progress.

Both ways of thinking are impeding the peace process.

And there are others on the left who view a two-state solution with skepticism as an ideal that will never happen, a far-off goal that allows for the continuation of the status quo in Gaza and the West Bank, where Palestinians face unique obstacles compared to their Israeli counterparts. As a result, they reject a two-state solution in favor of one state, where Palestinians and Israelis would supposedly live in democratic peace side-by-side.

I can understand the idealism that inspires so many young people in particular to support a one-state solution. Why can’t we all live side-by-side and house-by-house in peace?

I count at least two reasons why this wouldn’t work, and why it is unacceptable to most Jewish people.

First, this combined state could take an extreme turn politically, putting Jewish Israelis in peril. This state would be majority Palestinian, and in the past, some Palestinians have voted to empower groups like Hamas, which seeks to eradicate the Jewish people.

It is longstanding American policy to support democracy overseas, but in this hypothetical single state, democracy could cost Israeli Jews their safety if extremists were to take control of this new state of affairs to ultimately achieve their true aim: the violent expulsion of Jews from the Holy Land.

This is no abstract fear. Thousands of years of Jewish history show that when things go badly, the people of the country in which Jews live — even in a democracy — all too often turn on them as convenient scapegoats. There is no guarantee this wouldn’t happen again in a single Israeli-Palestinian state. To have Palestinian voters be the protectors of Israeli Jews would be a bridge too far to accept.

Second, Jews have a right to their own state. It is troubling to me that many people, especially on the left, seem to acknowledge and even celebrate this right to statehood for every group but the Jews. If a national homeland for all peoples of the world has been the driving goal of the anticolonial movement of the last century, then why are only Jews seemingly penalized for this aspiration? Jews have a human right to their own state just as any other people do, Palestinians included.

As I said, there are also some Israelis who oppose even a two-state solution with a demilitarized Palestinian state because they fear that it might tolerate or be a harbor for further terrorism against a Jewish state.

I understand these fears. But the bitter reality is that a single state controlled by Israel, which they advocate, guarantees certain war forever, and further isolation of the Jewish community in the world to the extent that its future would be jeopardized.

Let me elaborate.

They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. If Israel were to not only maintain the status quo, but go beyond that and tighten its control over Gaza and the West Bank, as some in the current Netanyahu administration have suggested — in effect creating a de facto single state — then what reasonable expectation can we have that Hamas and their allies will lay down their arms? It would mean constant war.

On top of that, Israel moving closer to a single state entirely under its control would further rupture its relationship with the rest of the world, including the United States. Support for Israel has declined worldwide in the last few months, and this trend will only get worse if the Israeli government continues to follow its current path.

I appreciate that so many Israelis cannot contemplate the possibility of two states right now because they remain so traumatized and angry by what Hamas did on October 7. The brutality, the viciousness, the sexual assault, the imprisonment and abuse of hundreds of hostages. I’m of course sympathetic to this point of view. I’m upset and angry, too.

We will never forget what happened on October 7. But even while we carry the anguish in our hearts, we have to think ahead to the future, the medium and long term, and how we can ensure that something like October 7 never happens again. We cannot let anger or trauma determine our actions and cloud our judgment.

A two-state solution may feel daunting, especially now, but I believe it is the only realistic and sustainable solution — on the basis of security, on the basis of prosperity, on the basis of fundamental human rights and dignity.

But in order to achieve a two-state solution, the reality is that things must change.

Right now, there are four major obstacles standing in the way of two states, and until they are removed from the equation, there will never be peace in Israel and Gaza and the West Bank.

Those four major obstacles are:

Hamas, and the Palestinians who support and tolerate their evil ways.

Radical right-wing Israelis in government and society.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

I will explain each in detail.

Killing in Bush Park will spur efforts to reduce gun violence in Salem

After moving to Salem in 1977, I recall the shock after the first instance of gang violence. I recall that it was a non-fatal shooting, but could be wrong about that. Can't remember the year, but my wife and I guess that it was in the early to mid 1980s. 

Before that time we here in Salem looked upon our town as different from Portland, the big city to the north that did have gangs who fought it out with each other. But though we were known as sleepy Salem, the upside was a feeling that gang violence was something that beset other cities, not us.

Things have changed, as a Salem Reporter story says.

One person died and two young men were injured in a shooting Thursday afternoon at Bush’s Pasture Park, Salem police said in a news release.

Officers are still searching for one suspect.

Police responded to the south side of the park, near the intersection of southeast High and Leffelle streets, around 1:45 p.m. They found a male victim dead and two boys injured with gunshot wounds.

The boys were transported to Salem Hospital for medical treatment. Police did not have the age of the dead victim confirmed.

Police released no information about what prompted the shooting. The medical condition of the surviving victims was unknown.

On Friday a 16-year-old boy turned himself in.

Salem police have arrested a teen boy on accusations of of killing another boy and wounding two others in a shooting at Bush’s Pasture Park Thursday afternoon.

Nathaniel S. McCrae Jr., 16, turned himself in at the Salem Police Department station late Friday evening in the company of a parent. He was arrested without incident, police said in a news release Saturday morning.

...The charges allege McCrae shot and killed 16-year-old Jose Vasquez-Valenzuela, a sophomore at South Salem High School, at the south Salem park.

The teen is also accused of shooting Damien Esquivel-Soto, 15, and a 16-year-old boy who police have not identified. They were transported to Salem Hospital for treatment. 

...In a Friday news release, police confirmed the accounts of several witnesses, saying two large groups of juveniles were at the park when gunfire erupted.

It's so sad that Jose Vasquez-Valenzuela is dead and Nathaniel S. McCrae Jr. is charged with his murder. When you're 16, almost your whole life is in front of you. Unless you're dead or likely headed off to be incarcerated for a long time.

Back in the ancient days of my high school years, the 1960's, teenage boys would fight with their fists, or at worst, pull out a knife. Now guns are everywhere, including in the hands of young people who shouldn't have them.

Last Thursday, the day of the shooting/killing, the Statesman Journal had a story about a community effort to reduce this kind of violence. It included some statistics from the Police Department about who is involved in shootings.

The report mapped out homicides and shootings in the city between 2018 and 2023, showing a cluster of three hot spots in northeast Salem that cover about 5 square miles. During the past six years, 65% of homicides and shootings occurred in those hot spots.

A survey of the demographics found that men, as well as Black and Latino residents, were overrepresented among both suspects and victims.

Hispanic people comprise 22.4% of the total city population but accounted for 45.7% of victims and 58.9% of suspects. About 1% of the city's population is Black, but 12.7% of victims and 5.4% of suspects were Black. White people accounted for 32.1% of suspects and 38.3% of victims.

It seems clear that while this is partly a policing problem, the root causes are societal. I can't believe that many young men decide that their goal in life is to become a tough guy who carries a gun and shoots people who offend them for some reason. That is forced upon them by tough circumstances.

Salem's leaders, including Mayor Chris Hoy, are doing the right thing by engaging the entire community in coming up with a plan this year to reduce gun violence that will be implemented in 2025. Getting "tough on crime" is too simplistic. The root causes of gun violence in Salem have to be identified and addressed. 

Biden gives vigorous State of the Union speech, depressing GOP

Wow. No, let's make it a double Wow-Wow. That's how pleasantly surprised I was at President Biden's State of the Union speech tonight. 

Though I'm a proud progressive Democrat, I've been among those Biden supporters who worry that he's too old to run for a second term. Hey, I'm six years younger than Biden is, and I have trouble getting out of bed in the morning (damn sciatica!), much less lead the United States. 

But there Biden was, standing tall at the podium for 68 minutes, giving a highly energetic and captivating speech, jousting with catcalls from Republicans in the chamber, smiling broadly, acting considerably more spry than I expected. 

I didn't hear any gaffes. Biden stumbled over a few sentences, but just about anybody would do that in a speech of that length. To use a well-worn cliche, he knocked it out of the park, thereby depressing Republicans and Trump, who undoubtedly were looking forward to some senior moments they could use in campaign ads.

Likely there are conspiracy theories already brewing about Biden being given some sort of drug that energized him. Well, all I can say is, let me know what it was and I'll beg my doctor for a prescription. 

Naturally I watched the State of the Union address on MSNBC, as I wanted to hear what my favorite commentators -- Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes, Lawrence O'Donnell -- had to say about Biden's performance.

I only listened to part of their analysis, agreeing that it was unusual in how it was a blend of a campaign speech and a usual State of the Union address. Whatever, it simply worked. I usually get kind of bored with the recitation of accomplishments and grandiose plans for the future, even if the president is a Democrat.

Tonight, though, Biden kept my attention throughout his talk.

I loved how he started right off with an allusion to World War II and the need to defend democracy against authoritarians like Hitler and Putin, then moving into a plea for Congress to pass the aid bill for Ukraine that is desperately needed to prevent Russia from winning the war and moving on to invade other countries in the region.

Very aggressive, and very much appreciated, since Democrats often play nice while Republicans are playing nasty. The MSNBC folks said that Biden's blunt unscripted comments directed right at the Supreme Court justices in attendance was a first for a State of the Union speech, since usually presidents are indirect in their criticism of Supreme Court decisions. 

In his third State of the Union address Thursday, Joe Biden did what was once unthinkable: directly challenge Supreme Court justices about one of their opinions, addressing them personally. 

Biden brought up the conservative majority’s landmark reversal of Roe v. Wade. He had begun to read an excerpt of the decision when he began a brief aside, looking right at the justices sitting in the front row.

“With all due respect, justices, women are not without ... electoral or political power," he said.

Then, in what appeared to be an ad-libbed moment, he added, "You’re about to realize just how much …” before Democrats in the chamber jumped to their feet and cheered. 

The justices, dressed in their traditional black robes, sat expressionless but looking forward as the applause and reaction thundered around them. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was among those sitting beside the group, stood to applaud.

That was a great moment. It illustrated how Joe Biden, usually considered a traditionalist, gave a very untraditional State of the Union speech. I also enjoyed his repeated references to his "predecessor," never naming Trump directly, just pointing out some of the many screwups and bad decisions Trump made during his presidency.

Like presiding over a million deaths of Americans from Covid, several hundred thousand, at least, being preventable if Trump hadn't undermined public health efforts aimed at combating the pandemic. Anyone who believes they were better off four years ago than today has forgotten the hell of 2020 when Covid reached the United States with an incompetent president at the helm.

Tonight's speech won't quell the worries over Biden's age and capacity to perform presidential duties. However, it sure helped in that regard. I came away much more enthusiastic about his chances to beat Trump this November.

Heck, I'm even eager to donate to Biden's reelection campaign now, something I was resisting before, in part because I think he's been too soft on Israel's horrendous destruction of Gaza and the needless killing of civilians. He didn't spend a lot of time on the Israel-Hamas war in his speech, but at least he's started on some concrete steps to get more humanitarian aid into Gaza. 

Bill to make standard time permanent is dead this session. Great news.

My day, which wasn't going so well, in part because I'd left my iPhone at home so felt out-of-touch while grocery shopping, brightened up a lot when I returned, checked on what's happening in the world, and saw a notice from the Statesman Journal that the bill to make standard time permanent in Oregon had met a well-deserved death in the short legislative session that is wrapping up soon.

House Speaker Dan Rayfield essentially killed legislation to adopt permanent Pacific Standard Time in most of Oregon, sending the proposal to the Emergency Management, General Government and Veterans Committee with just days left in the 2024 short legislative session.

This is great news for us lovers of Daylight Saving Time, which begins next Sunday. My wife and I much prefer having an extra hour of light in the evening rather than the morning. So do most Americans, since  a recent poll showed that two-thirds said they prefer daylight saving time in some form, permanent or part of the year, with just one-third preferring permanent standard time.

As I said in "Oregon needs permanent daylight saving time, not permanent standard time," this was a screwy idea by State Senator Kim Thatcher of Keizer that never should have seen the light of day.

The reason it passed the Senate on a narrow 16-14 vote is that an amendment was added requiring that the only way Oregon could move to permanent standard time is if both Washington and California do the same thing. Which makes sense, since otherwise a Vancouver resident who works in Portland would have to change their clock twice a day upon crossing the Columbia River.

Big thanks to House Speaker Dan Rayfield for saving Oregon from the nightmare of permanent standard time. I'm so grateful to him, Rayfield already has my endorsement for governor, or any other higher office he might choose to pursue, along with a $100 commitment to his campaign fund.

An Oregonian story by Lizzy Acker has more details about how House Bill 1548 met its end. The only bad news, according to the Statesman Journal story, is that Thatcher plans to reintroduce her bad idea in the 2025 legislative session.

The clock, it seems, has run out on Oregon’s chance to switch to standard time for good.

A bill that have would put Oregon on permanent standard time if Washington and California made the same switch narrowly passed the Senate on Monday. But shortly after its passage, House Speaker Dan Rayfield, a Democrat from Corvallis, consigned the bill to die.

Now, the House will not get a chance to vote on whether to end the twice-yearly time change.

“We received the bill later than we would usually take on Senate policy bills since it got referred back to committee before making it over here,” said Hazel Tylinski, a spokesperson for Rayfield. “Given the shortened timeline and the queue of critical bills we’re still working through, we aren’t able to give enough time to consider the merits of the bill in the time we have left this session.”

Senate Bill 1548 would have ended the practice of switching to daylight saving time and instead kept most of Oregon on standard time year-round.

“I like the concept that was brought forward this session and would be interested in supporting something similar in the future,” Sen. Elizabeth Steiner, a Portland area Democrat and one of the sponsors of the bill, in a statement. “This is an important change that will make a difference for not only the health and safety of Oregonians but also for people like me whose religious practices are tied to sunrise and sunset.”

Oregon passed a bill to switch to permanent daylight saving time in 2019, but that requires an act of Congress which has yet to materialize. After that effort, many groups came out against the idea of a permanent daylight saving time, noting that in the past, switches to permanent daylight saving time caused a variety of problems, including the deaths of children who were hit by vehicles on the way to school in the dark.

A change to permanent standard time requires no congressional involvement.

After Oregon senators evenly split on an earlier version of the bill in late February, changes were made to the proposal to ensure that Oregon would not switch to permanent standard time unless California and Washington also did. That version of the bill passed the Senate on a 16-14 vote Monday before Rayfield referred it to a House committee that is not scheduled to meet before the session’s required end of March 10.

A similar bill in the Washington state legislature also did not move forward this session.

And time marches on. Daylight saving time will begin at 2 a.m. on March 10.

Israel is killing lots of innocent people in Gaza. Biden is letting this happen.

I'm fed up. I'm angry. I'm outraged.

More than 30,000 people have been killed in Gaza since October 7, when Hamas attacked Israel. The real number is almost certainly higher, since thousands are buried under rubble.

Note that I said "people."

That's who they are, people just like you and me. Yes, they're mostly Palestinians. Yes, many are Hamas fighters. But 70% of the dead people in Gaza are estimated to be women and children.

How could this be? Because Israel has been bombing Gaza relentlessly with little concern for deaths of innocent people.

It's Old Testament warfare. Hamas killed 1,200 people in Israel. So Israel feels justified in killing thirty times as many people in Gaza, because, you know. the life of an Israeli is so much more valuable than the life of a Palestinian. At least, that's how Israel has been behaving.

On cable news, if I have to hear one more spokesperson for the Israeli military or government blab on about how, yes, a two thousand pound bomb was dropped in Gaza that killed dozens of innocent people along with a few Hamas fighters, and that's okay because Hamas started the war and hides among civilians, my brain is going to explode with more pent up rage at Israel than it already is filled with.

That's exactly what I heard today on CNN. The CNN anchor kept asking the Israeli why they didn't work harder at minimizing civilian deaths, since so many women and children have been killed in Gaza. He never answered. Because Israel's extreme right-wing government feels entitled.

Entitled to destroy almost all of the buildings and homes in Gaza. Entitled to treat all Palestinians as if they are Hamas fighters, which obviously they're not. Entitled to control Gaza after the war in defiance of international law. Entitled to reject a two-state solution to the Palestinian conflict, since Israel wants to permanently occupy the territory it has claimed since the 1967 war, also in defiance of international law.

People are starving in Gaza. People are being operated on with no anesthesia. People lack a safe place to shelter, given that Israel keeps on bombing locations that Gaza residents were told to relocate to.

There's plenty of food, medical supplies, water, generators, water purification equipment, and other things needed by people in Gaza just a few miles away in Egypt and elsewhere But Israel won't let most of those supplies in, claiming that they might be used by Hamas.

Well, so what? This is an imperfect world. To save lives of innocent people in Gaza, much more humanitarian aid needs to be entering the country. If a small amount goes to Hamas, so be it. That's the price of compassion toward the afflicted: sometimes unworthy people benefit from it.

A large part of my outrage at how things are going in Gaza is directed at President Biden. As a Democrat and proud progressive, I usually agree with him. However, his kowtowing to Prime Minister Netanyahu and the extreme right-wing government in Israel is disgusting.

Over and over, spokespeople for the Biden administration say that they're telling Israel more humanitarian aid needs to enter Gaza, a cease-fire needs to happen, stronger steps at limiting civilian casualties must occur.

Yawn. That's the reaction from Israel. And Biden goes along with it. Israel wants more American weapons to kill more innocent people in Gaza? No problem, the United States is pleased to oblige. This is both morally reprehensible and politically stupid. 

Half of Americans say Israel has gone too far in the Hamas war. And that was more than a month ago, so the percentage likely is higher now, since there's been an increase in this attitude since November. Almost two-thirds of Democrats feel this way, along with a clear majority of independents. The only group that supports Israel's approach to the war is Republicans, who won't vote for Biden.

Today Biden announced that the United States will be air-dropping humanitarian aid into Gaza. This is beyond embarrassing. The most powerful nation in the world, which props up Israel with massive amounts of military assistance, doesn't have the leverage to make Israel allow much-needed humanitarian aid into Gaza.

A Politico story has a right-on headline. I'll share some excerpts from the story.

President Joe Biden’s decision to airdrop humanitarian aid into Gaza will provide temporary relief for Palestinians on the ground — but it also exposes the limits of America’s approach toward Israel.

When the U.S. sends military aircraft to drop food, water, medicine and other assistance for people in need, it typically does so in areas occupied by terrorist groups or hostile regimes, not allies. And yet, months of pushing Israel to allow more aid into Gaza — where around 80 percent of the population is displaced and famine looms — have yielded limited results.

...For close watchers of the Israel-Hamas conflict, which has raged following the militants’ Oct. 7 attack, the move to drop aid from the skies signals Biden can’t persuade Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to do more for suffering Palestinians.

“We look 100 percent weak,” said Dave Harden, a former humanitarian assistance coordinator at the U.S. Agency for International Development. “Administration officials are doing this just to make themselves feel better.”

On Thursday, dozens of Palestinians were killed while scrambling for aid in Gaza, prompting Friday’s announcement. “It was the final impetus,” said a senior administration official, granted anonymity to reveal sensitive internal thinking. Gazan health officials say Israeli troops fired into the crowd, killing more than 100 people and injuring some 700 more. The Israeli military denies attacking the humanitarian convoy.

Harden insisted that, short of convincing Israel to open all the gates into Gaza, the U.S. would be better off pushing Israel to allow 10 more trucks to go through currently open crossings. “Airdrops are a stupid thing to do. They’re expensive, they’re inefficient. It’s more symbolic to make people in the administration feel good that we’ve done something,” he said.

Don't believe Israel when it says it wasn't responsible for the deaths and injuries of the people desperate to get food and other supplies. Israel often twists the truth. A Washington Post story casts doubt on Israel's attempt to make it sound like their military wasn't responsible for most of the deaths.

If you're starving, it makes sense to rush toward aid trucks. Israel shouldn't have killed people who were simply trying to get supplies for themselves and their families. Here's a passage from the story that indicates the heartlessness of Israel. 

The lack of aid is creating starvation conditions in the north, according to small U.N. scouting teams that have managed to enter the area in recent weeks.

Residents living amid the rubble say they have scoured every inch of the area for food.“Without mercy, we have begun to feed on the grass of the ground,” Yousri al-Ghoul, 43, told The Washington Post in a phone interview Thursday.

He was among a swelling crowd of Gazans that began gathering late Wednesday on Gaza City’s al-Rashid Street. They had read reports on Telegram or heard by word of mouth that a convoy was heading for the Nabulsi traffic circle on the street. But no one knew when exactly it was due to arrive or seemed able to say who was sending the aid.