PAGE A4, KEIZERTIMES, JUNE 5, 2015
KeizerOpinion
KEIZERTIMES.COM
To the class of 2015
Some say if you do what you love
you’ll never work a day in your life.
Some say there is no substitute for hard
work and passion. There have been
many wise words spoken at graduation
ceremonies for hundreds of years. What
words of advice would work best on
you, member of the class of 2015?
No demographic is monolithic—no
group of people is exactly the same. It
is impossible to describe you and your
peers of the class of 2015 with any one
word, except connected (via social me-
dia), otherwise there are as many views
on life as there are members of your
class. Many can be similar but they are
not exactly alike. You may be part of
a large demographic slice of popula-
tion but each of you is as individual as
a snowfl ake.
That is important to realize—you
are not who people say you are. You
don’t have to fi t neatly into a hole
that someone else drilled. In your
high school career it was vital to fi t in
which meant being like everyone else.
Being like everyone else in your post-
high school years is not as important.
Whether the near future holds for you
employment, military service or col-
lege you will make more of a mark by
being true to yourself.
We are shaped by our backgrounds
but how we grow from there is what
life is all about. Ask any older people
you know and ask if they have changed
since their high school days, almost
universersally the answer will be ‘yes.’
Your high school years are not a pre-
dictor of your future.
Regardless of what your next step
will be, take a piece of advice from the
ancient Greek Hippocrates, one of the
founders of modern Western medicine:
do no harm. It is a simple yet power-
ful pledge and a good code to live by.
Life is competitive and unfair enough,
it won’t be better if you are mean to,
uncaring for or intolerant of others.
You, members of the class of 2015, can
do anything and you’ll go further and
accomplish more by doing no harm to
others and no harm to things (such as
the earth).
Follow your heart, your head and
the world will come with you. Don’t
get a job, do what you love instead. Be
kind and don’t let others defi ne you.
That’s your job.
—LAZ
We get a kick out of Oregon
By DON VOWELL
The Oregon “kicker”
law was forefront in the
news recently. The lead edi-
torial in today’s morning
paper is headed “Don’t let
Democrats steal your kick-
er.” We could talk about
the kicker refund without willful stu-
pidity and name-calling.
Without taking a keep it or a give
it back stance we should stop seeing it
as a result of overtaxing. It is instead
caused only by an inaccurate fore-
cast. These are revenues collected as
required by law at existing tax rates
set by publicly elected legislators and
contested initiatives. The kicker law
puts the Offi ce of Economic Analysis
in the impossible position of forecast-
ing two years into the future what
collection of those revenues will total.
Could you do that? If the collected
revenues exceed those projections by
more than 2 percent then everything
over that forecast is returned to tax-
payers.
This law could only be fair if it
worked both ways. We all step right
up to claim our refund when tax rev-
enues exceed that forecast but are not
much for volunteering to pay a little
extra in years where actual revenues
collected fell short of the estimate by
more than 2 percent. “We were un-
dertaxed” is a letter to the editor you
may never see.
The piece in the morning paper
suggested that even if it’s an awkward
vehicle the kicker law is about the
only method we have for restrain-
ing legislative spending. Not so. We
could reign in spending by expecting
less. The services we provide to Or-
egon’s growing population relentlessly
increase in cost. Once you have cho-
sen what services and functions Or-
egon will provide, the costs are fi xed.
You cannot change them by keeping
the kicker. That is simply welching on
a deal.
Romans 13:7 – “Give everyone
what you owe him: If you
owe taxes, pay taxes; if
revenue, then revenue; if
honor, then honor.” This
is not meant to condemn
any who feel that the
kicker should be returned
to taxpayers, just offers me
a different perspective about civic vir-
tue. America’s personal tax rates are
not particularly onerous by world
standards, especially when consider-
ing the advantages and just plain good
luck to be living here. When we speak
about the “Greatest Generation” as
they lived in the 1950s they accepted
a tax rate that built this nation. We still
ride their coattails, grousing about the
looming cost of repairing and replac-
ing the infrastructure they generously
provided.
Corporations are happy enough
to recognize the privileges and ben-
efi ts of doing business in our free and
wealthy nation while denying that na-
tion the means to support itself. In
reading about questions of morality or
patriotism in regard to shifting cor-
porate headquarters overseas to avoid
taxes the most common defense of
that avoidance is that America’s cor-
porate tax rates are among the highest
in the world. That won’t wash when
you can easily fi nd a list of this coun-
try’s Fortune 500 countries that paid
no taxes at all.
I have always wondered what gov-
ernment, state or federal, would look
like if our tax bill included a form we
fi lled out directing how our payment
would be divided up. We prioritize
as we see fi t, choosing how much of
our payment goes to welfare, fi sh and
game, bicycle lanes, policing, support
for art, pension funds, and on and on.
Until that day, we could just ask the
Offi ce of Economic Analysis to make
their best estimate, add 5 percent and
give it to the governor. Problem
solved.
a box
of
soap
(Don Vowell gets on his soapbox
regularly in the Keizertimes.)
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Our hesitant talk on mobility
By MICHAEL GERSON
For both parties, the emerging
theme of economic mobility is often
a reluctant, second choice.
Deep down, many Democrats
would prefer to focus on economic
inequality. But while Americans have
theoretical concerns about the in-
come gap, they are consistently skepti-
cal about government’s role as leveler.
Explicit talk of redistribution doesn’t
get a politician very far.
Deep down, many Republicans
would prefer to focus on economic
growth. But this abstract goal does not
touch on the economic concerns of
most Americans, including stagnant
wages and diffi culties getting (and af-
fording) education and skills. In recent
presidential elections, Republican talk
of entrepreneurship and risk taking
has been disconnected from working-
class struggles and middle-class fears.
So both parties are led, along differ-
ent routes, to talk about mobility and
equality of opportunity. This embrace
is largely rhetorical. When Democrats
refer to stalled mobility, they are gen-
erally still talking about inequality.
When Republicans embrace mobility,
they often mean cutting taxes and re-
ducing regulations.
But it would be a mistake to use
“rhetorical” in a dismissive manner.
As any speechwriter knows, a change
of language can help drive a shift in
policy. The challenge, as Yuval Levin
of National Affairs puts it, is “to use
the move toward mobility rhetoric to
drive a substantive move.”
The parties have backed into
America’s most urgent domestic pri-
ority: Resisting the development of
a class-based society in which birth
equals destiny. This division runs like
an ugly, concrete wall across the Amer-
ican ideal. On one side are the wealthy
and educated, living in communi-
ties character-
ized by greater
family stability,
economic op-
portunity and
neighborhood
cohesion. On
the other side
is the working
class, living in communities featuring
economic stagnation, family instabil-
ity and neighborhood breakdown.
The best advice for success? Be born
on the right side of the wall. That is
not a very American-sounding answer.
The entry-level commitment for
Republicans in this debate is a recog-
nition that equality of opportunity is
not a natural state; it is a social and po-
litical achievement. Economic growth
is important—but its benefi ts are only
shared if people have the knowledge
and human capital to succeed in a
modern economy. This preparation
requires active, effective, reform-ori-
ented government at every level—and
forbids an ideological appeal that is
merely anti-government.
Democrats lay claim to the mo-
bility issue by arguing that extreme
inequality undermines mobility—an
assertion for which the economic
evidence is mixed. In this view, the
job of helping the poor is inseparable
from cutting the 1 percent down to
size. At a recent economic forum, a
fellow panelist, a prominent liberal
economist, admitted that wage sub-
sidies such as the earned-income tax
credit are the most direct and effi cient
way to help low-income workers. But
she still advocated a raise in the mini-
mum wage, precisely because Walmart
would be punished in the process.
If this attitude is viewed as the
starting point of the mobility debate,
Republicans will sit it out. Demo-
crats who insist on this approach are
other
views
sabotaging the possibility of political
progress. The public goal that liberals
and conservatives might share is not
the equalization of wealth; it is the
equalization of opportunity. And that
is diffi cult enough. After decades of
economic growth and rising produc-
tivity, after decades of social spend-
ing, now about $1 trillion a year (at
all levels of government), mobility in
America remains stalled and lags be-
hind that of France, Canada and much
of Scandinavia.
The presidential fi eld is just begin-
ning to engage these issues. Hillary
Clinton is tacking sharply to the left
—she would “topple” the 1 percent
—with all the disarming authenticity
of Mitt Romney declaring himself an
“extreme” conservative. But she will
surely shift rightward on equal op-
portunity in the general election, and
probably in the most politically obvi-
ous and heavy-handed manner pos-
sible.
On the reform Republican side,
Jeb Bush talks of “the right to rise,”
has promised a “new vision” of ur-
ban renewal and has locked down a
strong team of policy advisers and ex-
perts. But they have yet to be utilized
in any serious, or at least public, way.
Sen. Marco Rubio is the most natural
fi t for a Republican mobility message,
which is illustrated by his family story.
He is easily the most policy-oriented
of the current Republican fi eld, hav-
ing proposed measures on college
affordability, pro-family tax reform,
and welfare reform that consolidates
a number of benefi ts to the working
poor into a more generous wage sub-
sidy.
Perhaps the greatest need in Amer-
ican politics: a presidential candidate
who passionately advances a vision of
mobility instead of settling for it.
(Washington Post Writers Group)
Ethics commission needs bigger teeth
Recent revelations by The Or-
egonian strongly suggest that the state
of Oregon has been mainly wasting
precious tax dollars on the Oregon
Government Ethics Commission. It
takes the commission about a year
to investigate an alleged ethics viola-
tion, the current maximum fi ne for
ethics violators is $5,000, but that in
half the cases violators got off with a
mere warning and when fi nes have
been imposed they’ve been a fraction
of what the law permits. In fact, the
median fi ne in recent years for perpe-
trators misusing their public offi ce has
been $75.
Of the 27 ethics violations the
commission issued last year, that
could have added up to penalties of
$260,000, the commission collected
$7,900. Is that what you expected
from a commission charged by the law
we passed by a huge majority in 1974:
the one that was supposed to create
an ethics watchdog to keep an eye on
Oregon’s public offi cials? After all,
when the commission was created by
voters following the Nixon-Watergate
debacle, it was supposed to do a lot to
shape up any Oregon offi ce holder
who would behave like the former
president.
The commission has largely been
able to fl y below the radar for years.
However, with the public’s atten-
tion riveted on the ethics complaints
against then-Governor John Kitzha-
ber over the business deals manipu-
lated by his fi ancée, Cylvia Hayes,
the commission was, of course, called
upon to investigate. Unfortunately, it
has been found to be true that, over
the last 15 years, the commission has
often done nothing more with ethics
violators than verbally reprimand the
perpetrators.
Kitzhaber
and his at-
torneys
were
well-aware of
the
commis-
sion’s penchant
for making it
easy on ethics’ violators in Oregon.
Publicly Kitzhaber promised that he
and Hayes would help the commis-
sion delve into their case but privately
Kitzhaber and one of his attorneys
knew how weak the commission’s
knees were.
Willamette Week found out through
leaked Kitzhaber emails that he would
convey to the commission that he
and his attorneys were ready to take
them to court and believed they had a
good chance of prevailing. Their end
game via threats was not to have the
complaints dismissed but to negotiate
a settlement in which they’d fess up to
a minor mistake or two and thereby
have the matter white-washed into
obscurity.
In fact, the commission’s leader is
famous for negotiating deals where vi-
olations became pooh-poohed. Most
recent cases have been negotiated
down to small penalties or no penal-
ties, although when the commission
was created in post-Watergate Amer-
ica it was charged to keep Oregon’s
government offi cials in line. This has
not been the case over the past decade
and a half.
Nowadays, reveals the record,
those government offi cials at cross-
purposes with the state’s ethics are
typically assigned to an online educa-
tion video which, as one might sus-
pect, has been a whole lot less than ef-
fective and about which there is little
gene h.
mcintyre
or no knowledge of viewer-assigned
completions. Further, violators in six
of every 10 cases face the horrors of a
warning not to behave that way again.
The guiding direction of the commis-
sion at present is that wrongdoers re-
ceive a tutorial approach rather than
prosecution for their waywardness
that has come about from their law-
breaking activities.
Many Oregonians think that the
state does not get the fi xed atten-
tion of violators unless their conduct
results in a sanction. That’s the way
the ethics commission carried out its
business before the last decade or so;
it was based on the principle that sig-
nifi cant fi nes are the best way to keep
public offi cials honest while media re-
porting helps a whole bunch, too.
It has been reported that Gover-
nor Kate Brown recognizes the value
of reform in the ethics commission
and will get it to operate again like it
formerly did. She proposes doubling
the maximum penalty to $10,000 for
intentional violations and shorten-
ing the time to 35 days to determine
whether an investigation should pro-
ceed. If Brown has her way in this
matter, an additional $500,000 for
staff and computer technology will be
invested in the ethics effort.
This citizen agrees with Brown for
the need to reform the commis-
sion and also appoint a new chair-
man. Otherwise, like the commission
of the last ten years or more, it’ll be
more wrist slaps with the opportunity
to watch a video on how to behave
ethically when that has already proven
to be far less than effective.
(Gene H. McIntyre’s column ap-
pears weekly in the Keizertimes.)