• Following the pathetic Helsinki summit, at which President Trump played tame lapdog to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, our own Sen. Ron Wyden made a wildly optimistic statement about the GOP. “Republicans can no longer ignore the facts: Russia used @NRA to infiltrate & influence US politics,” he tweeted on July 16. Does Wyden, who is on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, know something we don’t about the GOP? Why does he think Republicans are going to stop ignoring facts about Trump’s creepy association with Russia?
• Speaking of Russia, we again suggest that you read Russian Roulette by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, a fine investigative job by two journalists who are now on all the nightly talk shows. This is “the inside story of Putin’s war on America and the election of Donald Trump.” It helps explain what is happening to our fragile democracy.
• Makes us proud that Miguel McKelvey, who grew up in Eugene and is the co-founder of WeWork, a global real estate company, just announced to his 6,000 employees that WeWork will not serve meat at company events or even reimburse for meals that include red meat, poultry or pork. That’s quite a nod to the environment. McKelvey, who recently spoke at UO graduation, is the son of Lucia McKelvey, one of the founders of Eugene Weekly.
• “PERS Snatchers” was the right title for the City Club of Eugene meeting July 13. Bill Gary, lead counsel for Oregon local governments in connection with reform of PERS, and Melissa Unger, executive director of the Oregon chapter of the Service Employees International Union, demonstrated in their talks the profound problems in solving the gap between expected revenue and anticipated pension payments in Oregon. Gary urged that all sides work together for solutions, suggesting that this has not happened before. If that ‘s true, it sounds like a good starting point.
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