This Friday, October 12, marks the final deadline for Portland’s fluoridation opponents to submit 19,868 voter signatures and put a fluoride project unanimously approved by Portland City Council on hold until a special election in 2014. Last Thursday, October 4, advocates for Clean Water Portland announced they were just about in reach of that goal. The group said it collected more than 20,000 signatures after only three weeks of trying, with plans to collect 10,000 more by the deadline. The group wants a little bit of a cushion just in case some of the signatures they’ve collected aren’t valid. DENIS C. THERIAULT
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A police report and other documents providing even more details on mayoral candidate Jefferson Smith’s dropped assault citation—including the firsthand account of the woman Smith injured—were released Monday, October 8, by the Oregonian and Willamette Week. The documents back up some of what Smith has said about the incident at an off-campus college party in Eugene, namely that he was trying to fend off the woman after someone tipped or shook the couch she was sleeping on. But the woman said Smith used his fist, contrary to Smith’s recollections, and that Smith had tried to persuade her to sleep with him at an earlier party that day. DCT
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The rest of the country is starting to think a little more like Oregon, at least when it comes to religion. A new study from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that nearly 20 percent of Americans don’t identify with any specific religion—up from 15 percent five years ago. Oregon and Washington are the least traditionally religious states in the country, with 25 percent of us not identifying as a member of any religious group. SARAH MIRK
An Inconvenient Tooth is a documentary film about fluoride.
It was released September 6th, 2012 at the city hall in Portland, Oregon.
http://AnInconvenientTooth.org
http://youtube.com/watch?v=sh-oeu2L8yM
I hope that something really significant happens because the funds to prevent it were diverted to the costs of funding the fluoridation issue. People are blindly up in arms over not having a vote in the matter as if the government has done something despicable instead of moving towards a standard that no rightful or sane mind has ever been able to present any reliable evidence against. I hope it gets humiliatingly defeated so those who worked so hard against it will feel like idiots. And as much as I hate to say it, it nearly makes me cry to even think it, but I hope that Amanda Fritz loses her seat largely as a result of the smears against her by the fluoridation people and her opponent using it as a wedge issue. Amanda Fritz is a better politician than Portland even deserves, and she will likely be defeated because of idiot moves like this and her steadfast unwillingness to accept the money she would need to fight against her opponent when issues like this are used against her in big money advertising campaigns.