PAGE A4, KEIZERTIMES, APRIL 10, 2015
KeizerOpinion
KEIZERTIMES.COM
Tomorrow’s volunteers
Pride, spirit and volunteerism. It
is the Keizer city motto and it is in
evidence every day in our commu-
nity. The mayor, the city council, all
of the city’s boards, commissions and
task forces are manned by residents
volunteering their time forwarding
proposals and advice to the council.
Those volunteers are important
to the operation of the city. There
are other volunteers who are more
hands on, doing the heavy lifting
on projects the city does not have
money for. What will the future
hold for projects led by volunteers
who are getting older and ready to
retire from their community service
duties?
That issue was in the spotlight on
Monday at the city council meet-
ing regarding Keizer Rapids Park in
general and the Keizer Rotary Am-
phitheatre in particular.
A small core of Keizer residents
and businesspeople, working with
the acquiescence of the Public
Works Department, have fertil-
ized, watered, dug trenches, power
washed, mowed, pruned and con-
structed at the amphitheatre. There
was also much work at the Keizer
Rapids Park Dog Park.
Clint Holland, Rick Day and
Randy Miller, some of Keizer’s pre-
mier community volunteers and
philanthropists, will not be able to
continue do the work they’ve been
doing indefi nitely. Time and work
do take their toll. Currently all
three men (and the others in their
core group of selfl ess community
activists) are still vibrant and vital,
but thought must be given to who
will take their place in maintaining
the amphitheatre and other Keizer
Rapids Park amenities, especially
new ones that are planned: big play-
ground, sports fi elds, etc.
Can we expect this small group
of dedicated citizens to take on the
additional task of overseeing the
playground toy? Softball fi elds? Soc-
cer fi elds? Volleyball courts? The
generous people of Keizer will open
their wallets and free up their time
to build such amenities. Maintain-
ing them is a different story. Giv-
ing money to build a soccer fi eld
is more fun than hauling irrigation
hoses and mowers out to a three-
acre fi eld.
The city cannot take for granted
that the future will be taken care of
by successors to the current super-
volunteers who have seen that the
promise of Keizer Rapids Park not
only came to fruition but is thriving.
Aside from identifying successors
to Holland, Day et al, the city needs
to fi nd a way to pay for the parks
and structures it approves.
The Parks and Recreation Ad-
visory Board has been discussing
how to create sustainable funding
for Keizer’s parks. With an eye to
the future, especially at Keizer Rap-
ids Park and its many elements, the
city council needs to address the is-
sue this year. Parks and green spaces
undeniably add quality of life to a
community. Aside from privatizing
its parks the city has to fi nd a way to
assure that the parks it brings on line
are taken care of so they will have
a long shelf life and be enjoyed by
many future generations of Keizeri-
tes.
—LAZ
Colleen Busch for
transit
generous men
and
women,
who through
countless acts
of
kindness,
generosity and
service, assure
these organiza-
tions’ services will continue to serve
the community. One person can
make a difference, and these volun-
teers assure the doors are kept open
so that:
The Keizer Community Library
can continue to provide classic li-
brary services for patrons including
children’s programs and a small com-
puter center with Wi-Fi that are free
to the public;
The Keizer Heritage Museum can
continue to be a critical link in keep-
ing the community connected to the
past;
The Keizer Art Association can
continue to provide art education as
well as promote local artists at the Enid
Joy Mount gallery monthly art shows.
Our volunteers are the heart and soul
of our organizations, and each one
makes a big difference in our com-
munity. Our services depend on vol-
unteers, and we thank them from the
bottom of our hearts.
Gayle McMurria-Bachik
Keizer Community Library
To the Editor:
I support Colleen Busch, for Sa-
lem Keizer Transit District, Position
#2. What a great opportunity to
jump on board the Colleen Busch
for Salem Keizer Transit District
campaign. She knows a great deal
about families and their needs, since
she and her husband Bob Busch have
raised a large and loving family in
Keizer.
While she is God-centered, she
is actively others-minded and has
invested countless hours for health-
related campaigns, such as cancer
awareness and fundraising. She con-
sistently supports the early childhood,
youth/student and adult ministries at
her church, which have positively
impacted our community.
Colleen Busch has a fi rm grasp of
what it’s like not to have viable trans-
portation, which has caused her to
have an appreciative attitude towards
those who’ve provided it. She knows
the transportation struggles of our
residents. Colleen Busch has been in-
volved with the Keizer Chamber of
Commerce and has effectively com-
municated with the businesses that
serve a wide variety of age group
within our community. Therefore,
due to her high level of commitment,
dedication for community service,
knowledge, positive attitude, fl exibil-
ity and her ability to work well with
others, I strongly support Colleen
Busch for Salem Keizer Transit Dis-
trict, Position #2, to ensure that our
community’s transportation needs
will be met in a cost-effective and
realistic way.
Gary B. Steiner
Keizer
Celebrate service
focus next week
To the Editor:
“Celebrate Service,” the theme
for National Volunteer Week (April
12-18), honors the people who dedi-
cate themselves to supporting, taking
action and solving problems in their
communities. The Keizer Heritage
Center joins in this celebration to
recognize the hundreds of volunteers
who use their personal and collective
talents to make a difference at the
Keizer Community Library, Keizer
Art Association and the Heritage
Center Museum.
Without volunteers these organi-
zations would not exist. Hundreds of
letters
Betty Hart for
fi re board
To the Editor:
I support Betty Hart, who is run-
ning for Keizer Fire District, posi-
tion #5. I have known Betty and her
husband, Mike, for over 30 years. As
long as I have known them, they
have both been involved in our
community. In recent years, Betty has
been a strong supporter of the fi re
district and worked on their cam-
paigns and attended many of their
meetings. She has a background
in local government budgeting and
non-profi t fi nance. She has also
worked at engaging people in the
local government process. Betty has
always been knowledgeable about is-
sues and researches those things she
doesn’t know. She is a good listener
and has helped me understand some
complex issues. She will be a real as-
set to the Keizer Fire District.
I really care about the Keizer com-
munity and I want the best people to
serve as our elected offi cials. That is
why I am supporting Betty. Please
join me in voting for Betty Hart.
Roland Herrera
Keizer
Keizertimes
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Salem, Oregon
If heroism is hopeless
By MICHAEL GERSON
The apocalypse has been much on
my mind.
This is not only because Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei is now more or less of-
fi cially in charge of a nuclear threshold
state, or because a dictator with the
mentality of a spiteful teenager con-
trols North Korea’s dozen or so atom
bombs, or because a nuclear Pakistan
was recently named the world’s 10th
most fragile state (right above Zimba-
bwe).
Contrary to expectation, the pro-
liferation of nuclear weapons since
World War II has been relatively slow.
And the current global balance of
power makes a world-ending, ozone-
layer-destroying, nuclear-winter-in-
ducing exchange unlikely.
But it doesn’t take much histori-
cal imagination to spin a scenario in
which, at some point over the next
century, a different balance obtains.
There could be a new and deadly
global standoff, involving even more
powerful weapons, with one side
holding an ideology with a streak of
suicide. The Bomb may still be “the
destroyer of worlds.”
Future existential threats to hu-
manity might involve the spread of
destructive knowledge not only to
governments but to individuals. The
splicing of genes could eventually
become a do-it-yourself technology,
allowing the creation of some deliber-
ately species-ending virus. Or the fears
of Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking
could be realized with the emergence
of artifi cial intelligence that becomes
superior to human intelligence and
annoyed by human existence.
These dark thoughts brought to
mind an essay by C.S. Lewis, writ-
ten not long
after the dawn
of the atomic
age. Lewis pro-
vided a brac-
ing warning
against exag-
gerating the
novelty of the
situation: “Believe me, dear sir or
madam, you and all whom you love
were already sentenced to death be-
fore the atomic bomb was invented;
and quite a high percentage of us
were going to die in unpleasant ways.
... It is perfectly ridiculous to go about
whimpering and drawing long faces
because the scientists have added one
more chance of painful and premature
death to a world which already bris-
tled with such chances and in which
death itself was not a chance at all, but
a certainty.”
For all of us who perceive reality
through the functions of a biological
organism, the problem of the apoca-
lypse is the problem of mortality. The
fact that we may or may not hang to-
gether does not change the inevitabil-
ity of the noose. We can all look for-
ward to our own private apocalypse.
And the prognosis for humanity
was never particularly good. The fos-
sil record reveals a disturbing history
of large asteroids and mass extinctions.
Our sun, now vigorously middle-
aged, will eventually fl are and die. All
of which is admittedly hard to con-
template on a cool spring morning.
Ultimately, the problem of the
apocalypse is the problem of time.
Blame the second law of thermody-
namics. There is nothing about the
other fundamental laws of physics
that would keep them from running
other
views
backward. But entropy marches in
one direction, from more order to less.
Eggs can be made into omelets, not
omelets into eggs. It is possible to col-
lect a puddle of organization in a spe-
cifi c place—in a body, a planet, a solar
system, a galaxy or galaxy cluster—but
only for a time. The universe, like the
individual, tends toward sagging decay.
Cosmologists struggle to explain
why the initial condition at the Big
Bang was a high level of order (con-
fusingly defi ned as a low level of en-
tropy). But this is what set the arrow
of time forward. And we should prob-
ably be grateful. Without the inevita-
bility of decay there is no possibility of
change, of growth, of evolution, of life,
and of all the good, temporary things
that life brings.
These things are worth defending
from dictators, terrorists and the po-
tential demon residing in our laptop.
But it matters if our heroism is ulti-
mately hopeless, like in some ancient,
Greek play. Or if the winter of decay
and disorder gives way to another sea-
son.
Just about every culture has cer-
emonies of fertility and renewal this
time of year, celebrating the green
shoots of hope within nature. Chris-
tianity, for its part, claims to reverse
the natural order of decay and time, so
that the end for human beings is not
the darkness and silence of the uni-
verse as a tomb. Perhaps, it has been
said, we are not human beings having
a spiritual experience, but spiritual be-
ings having a human experience. It is
an unlikely, even outlandish, hope. But
it reaches, on good authority, “even
unto the end of the world.”
(Washington Post Writers Group)
Taxes and IRS targeted as 2016 nears
There was a time in this country
when Americans supported the gov-
ernment through taxes on distilled
spirits, carriage making, refi ned sugar,
tobacco and snuff sold at auction, cor-
porate bonds and slaves. Limited as it
was, it didn’t last, of course, as the War
of 1812 brought sales taxes on gold,
silverware, jewelry, and watches and, in
the next war, the American Civil War,
Congress enacted the nation’s fi rst
income tax law. Further, the Act of
1862 established the offi ce of Com-
missioner of Internal Revenue.
Regular taxation waxed and waned
until 1913 when the 16th Amend-
ment made the income tax a perma-
nent fi xture in the U.S. tax system.
The amendment gave Congress the
legal authority to tax income and re-
sulted in a revenue law that taxed in-
comes of both individuals and corpo-
rations. The withholding tax on wages
was introduced in 1943 and brought a
whole lot of money into the national
coffer to fi ght a world war in Asia and
Europe.
Americans were never ecstat-
ic about paying their taxes but there
was a certain amount of public res-
ignation to them as a necessary evil.
That mentality changed after Ameri-
can politicians noticed that elections
can be won by dwelling on mat-
ters about which the general popula-
tion, especially the anti-government
crowd that want no part of organized
government unless they want personal
help. Then there are the so-called en-
titlement programs that are perenni-
ally on the chopping block because
Americans in too many numbers don’t
want to help anyone but themselves
no matter how dire the consequences
to those denied assistance of any kind.
Putting the
gloves on early
to get out there
in fi ghting form
for the 2016
presidential
competition,
Senator
Ted
Cruz (R-Texas) wants to eliminate
the IRS altogether. It’s a good talking
point for a political candidate who’s
got frontrunner status for now with
the most conservative American vot-
ers. While it’s unlikely to ever hap-
pen, folks such as Cruz make it sound
as easy as eating a piece of cake.
Cruz has all but promised the votes
of Tea Party Republicans but abolish-
ing the IRS is a very tall order of the
probably impossible kind. The IRS
collects more than two and one-half
trillion dollars every year that funds
the military (you want to give ISIS
free reign?), social security and Medi-
care (you want to see older Americans
living, if at all, on the streets of Ameri-
ca?) and the many projects that mem-
bers of Congress deliver to constitu-
ents (by way of money through IRS
collections that satisfy voters and help
to keep the tenured ones in offi ce).
Whatever your complaint, the IRS
collects around $2.4 trillion every year.
There are something like 90,000 IRS
employees to accept and process your
taxes while the Treasury Department
also enforces the tax code for all who
are required to pay. The bottom line
on this matter is that if the U.S. is go-
ing to collect taxes, an agency must be
there to do the work.
As president, Cruz says he’ll make
it easy as he’ll have Americans fi le
their taxes on the back of a postcard-
size form. This way, the Treasury De-
gene h.
mcintyre
partment would collect taxes and not
need the IRS. However, keep in mind
that with every simple answer there
are always related questions such as
that the government would still need
something in the order of 20 thousand
workers (call them something other
than IRS workers if that makes you
feel better) to process the postcards
coming into the Treasury.
Cruz also wants a fl at tax that
would use the postcard approach. Yet,
a fl at tax means no deductions. Is that
a new condition of taxation in the
U.S. that will be readily acceptable to
those for whom this and that deduc-
tion mean savings of hundreds, even
thousands of dollars, every year? But
it also means the wealthy would pay
the same percentage as those of lesser
means.
Meanwhile, there are those orga-
nized groups that manage to avoid
taxes. Religious orders and churches
are so relieved. Scientologists were at
one time ordered to pay the govern-
ment taxes because there was a ques-
tion about their political actions but
used their bully pulpit, and alleged
“dirty tricks,” so to speak, to beat
down the IRS through U.S. courts and
avoid any taxes. Whatever the case, it
takes a lot of money and power to be
able to thumb your nose at the tax
man so there are few among us, save
for offshore U.S. corporations, who’ve
succeeded.
For we mere mortals, April 15
is only fi ve days from your reading this
column. Yes, you can use the extension
clause but they cost more because of
interest charges. So, to delay to pay
only costs you more.
(Gene H. McIntyre’s column ap-
pears weekly in the Keizertimes.)