PAGE A4, KEIZERTIMES, JUNE 12, 2015
KeizerOpinion
KEIZERTIMES.COM
Kudos to Caillier
As you read this the big playground
project at Keizer Rapids Park will be
nearing, or already, completed. You
and your children will be able to en-
joy all of its elements throughout the
summer.
This was truly a community build,
thousands of man hours from volun-
teers is making the vision of William
Stitt come to fruitition. It does take
a village to raise a playground. Thou-
sands of dollars and supplies were do-
nated by civic-minded businesses and
individuals. The 15,000-square-foot
playground will be another major at-
traction at the park.
The hundreds of volunteers needed
a leader and that is Mark Caillier, the
project coordinator. Caillier, a former
city councilor, is one of the city’s pre-
mier volunteers.
It is not a surprise that Caillier took
on the coordinator position like a fi sh
to water. His fi ngerprints are on a lot
of projects around the city.
Caillier had many parts of the play-
ground project to keep track off, es-
pecially when the proposed site of the
project was relocated within the park.
That process delayed the build for
nearly a year, but he was able to seam-
lessly continue with his duties. He led
an army of dedicated volunteers but
they all looked to him to keep the
project in line and on time.
Kudos to Mark Caillier for his ma-
jor contribution to the playground
project. He led the community in
assuring the project was built as de-
signed. His name should be perma-
nently placed at the site so the com-
munity never forgets the efforts of one
of Keizer’s top selfl ess volunteers.
Keizer’s kids will have a fun time
even if they don’t realize what it took
to make the playground a reality.
—LAZ
Why is a gun different than a car?
Oregon House Bill
3093, with Rep. Bill Post
as chief sponsor, would
allow concealed hand-
gun licensees from many
other states to legally
carry in Oregon. “If you
have a driver’s license
you can drive a 2,000 pound car in
any state without anyone blinking an
eye. What’s the difference between
that and a gun?” he asked on Monday
from the front page of Oregon’s larg-
est daily paper.
The average weight of Ameri-
can cars is now about 4,000 pounds,
which makes them different from
guns by nearly that heft. Nobody yet
has asked for a permit to conceal the
presence of their car.
A car is a far more useful servant in
daily life than a gun. In today’s spread
out existence it would be a hardship
to buy food, get health care, get to
your place of work and even go to
visit your family and friends without
a car. You can do all of that without
using a gun.
A more important difference is that
licensed drivers as a group are much
more like a well regulated militia than
are gun owners. If gun owners were
willing to be registered, tested, and
insured against possible damages then
maybe that concealed carry permit
would already be good in all states.
Licensed drivers are also with-
out any well-funded political groups
screaming about their natural freedom
to drive any vehicle they like without
governmental interference. You don’t
see stories about protesters at the Leg-
islature’s doorstep chanting against the
requirements of vehicle registration.
You must register your VIN. Nor will
you fi nd large scale resistance to man-
dated insurance for all drivers. That’s
one I’ve always hated even though I
see the need.
To get a driver’s license
you must pass a written test
demonstrating some basic
knowledge of traffi c laws
and then pass an actual driv-
ing test. Then you must re-
new that license regularly
and be photographed for that license.
You must have that license, vehicle
registration and proof that you are in-
sured whenever you get in the car to
go somewhere. And yet most people,
like me, don’t feel unduly encum-
bered by all of that. It is accepted as
a reasonable societal means of keeping
some order on the streets. You are free
to choose any car, truck, motorcycle,
RV, or other street legal vehicle you
can afford to buy and maintain. They
must be street legal because cars are
regulated to make sure they are safe
enough for their owners and everyone
else with whom the roads are shared.
“A well regulated militia being nec-
essary to the security of a free state, the
right of the people to keep and bear
arms shall not be infringed.” Why is
the discussion always about the indi-
vidual right to keep and bear arms and
never about what it might take to be
a part of an organized and regulated
militia? Maybe it is my personal bias
that makes me view “they’re coming
to take our guns!” hysteria as hysteria.
Even uncertain about your Constitu-
tional interpretations, I don’t want to
take away your guns. I just want some
independent verifi cation that you are
responsible enough to have them.
One last difference between a gun
and a car—with the CHL you can
carry your gun right into the Capitol
building, but you can’t drive your car
in. I guess nobody thought there was
a need.
a box
of
soap
Failed law cost $2
billion up north
To the Editor:
A recent letter mentioned Canada
spending $10 million on failed gun
laws. In fact, it was over $2 billion.
The decades-long farce ended in
the single greatest defeat for gun con-
trol advocates since the invention of
gun powder. In an almost unbeliev-
able example of irony anti-gun leader
Wendy Cukier has done more than
Sam Colt to arm Canadians for the
future.
Terry Edwards
Islamorda, FL
(Don Vowell gets on his soapbox
regularly in the Keizertimes.)
France
letters School
event a
success
To the Editor:
The France School of Dance would
like to thank the community and the
students for donating 748 pounds of
food and $343 in donations to the
Keizer Community Food Bank.
Our performance/food drive was
held May 26 the at North Salem High
School.
Linda Martin
Keizer
Keizertimes
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Salem, Oregon
The King Dollar/low energy nexus
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW
The strong May jobs report, in-
cluding a 280,000 jump in nonfarm
payrolls, reminds me of the big de-
bate over the harmful effects of a
strong dollar and falling oil prices.
But where’s the harm? King Dollar,
along with the supply benefi ts of the
fracking revolution, may actually be
propping up a subpar economy facing
headwinds from heavy business taxes
and overregulation.
The entire cost structure of Ameri-
can business benefi ts from lower-cost
imports and the cheaper purchase
price of anything when the dollar is
king and energy costs sink.
American fi rms become more
competitive. And consumers benefi t
from rising real incomes in response
to the energy price collapse. And it’s
not only energy. King Dollar strength-
ens consumer purchasing power across
the board.
This whole wage debate around
the Federal Reserve incorrectly fo-
cuses only on average hourly earnings,
which are up 2.3 percent for the year
ending in May. But wait a minute. If
you’re going to use hourly earnings,
you have to add hours worked, which,
in the aggregate, are up more than 2.6
percent over the past year. That yields
a nearly 5 percent increase in worker
wage income.
And because of the disinfl ationary
effects of King Dollar and cheaper
energy (the consumer price defl ator
is fl at), the nearly 5 percent gain in
worker wages is all real. So consumers
have a lot more spending power than
most economists believe. Car sales
jumped by about 18 million in May. A
harbinger of better retail sales?
So don’t be led astray by the pes-
simists. The U.S. economy is absorbing
the strong-dollar/low-energy nexus
with very little diffi culty.
Even in the
fi nancial sector,
where a num-
ber of marginal
energy
com-
panies
issued
junk bonds, we
haven’t seen the
negative system-
ic effects on the banking system that
the hedge fund managers predicted.
Bank stocks have been rallying of late,
including a nearly 3 percent gain last
week despite a 1 percent loss in stocks
overall.
Now, I don’t deny some short-run
negative effects from the high-dollar/
low-energy play. As crude oil dropped
43 percent and King Dollar increased
nearly 20 percent, the economy shed
2,600 jobs from oil and gas extraction
and another 38,000 from total energy
support services. But this is a tiny frac-
tion of the 3.1 million jobs created
over the year.
The dollar-energy pessimists also
point to a negative King Dollar effect
on exports and multinational prof-
its. There may be some impact here.
But let’s not forget the recessions in
Europe and Japan and a weakening
China. So a 2.3 percent increase in
real exports is not a bad amount. And
when the dollar is worth more, every
other export business cost is cheaper.
And yes, there has been a roughly
11 percent loss in international prof-
its. But the story here is that the so-
called currency translation effect is
an accounting fi ction. U.S. dollars are
left overseas where they are taxed at
a much lower rate than if they were
repatriated. (This, of course, is part of
the corporate tax problem we have.)
Meanwhile, over the past year, core
domestic nonfi nancial profi ts from
the gross domestic product accounts
are up 7.5 percent, and overall pretax
profi ts are up nearly 4 percent. Not
fabulous, but not bad.
And when you look at the macro
picture against the backdrop of King
Dollar and low energy, it’s still subpar,
but it’s not getting worse. The four-
quarter change in real GDP is 2.7 per-
cent. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index
over the past year is up 8 percent, with
the Nasdaq gaining 18 percent. The
infl ation rate is nil. And jobs are grow-
ing at a steady 2 percent pace.
And what happens when Wash-
ington policy fi nally delivers tax and
regulatory reform? The King Dollar/
low-energy scenario becomes a great
economic backdrop. The combination
of a strong dollar, light regulation and
lower marginal tax rates sets the stage
for 4 to 5 percent growth, which will
get the U.S. economy back to its long-
term trend.
This brings me to an interesting fi -
nal point. You don’t hear much about
the dollar on the campaign trail. But
Ira Stoll (FutureOfCapitalism) and Seth
Lipsky (The New York Sun) point to a
possible Jeb Bush sound dollar, which
would be the opposite of the crum-
bling greenback and skyrocketing
gold and energy prices that occurred
under his brother’s administration.
In a recent TV interview, the for-
mer Florida governor said: “You can
make a case that in the last few years,
given our monetary policy...we’ve
been manipulating our currency.
We’ve never had a time where our
central bank is just printing money
like nobody’s business. And that de-
preciates our currency.”
Well now. Jeb is certainly on the
right track. Let’s hope the other can-
didates follow along. For a million rea-
sons, sound money is crucial to eco-
nomic growth.
Since the recession has softened, it
has been revealed that there is a need
for people trained in vocational-tech-
nical skills. The number of these jobs
is no small potatoes; in fact, they add
up to hundreds, even thousands, of
opportunities that too often go un-
fi lled by Oregon’s working age youth
and adults because they are not ad-
equately trained for them.
Oregon’s legislators were quick to
respond to the need and the reaction
comes by way of Senate Bill 81. The
bill seeks to greatly increase enroll-
ment in community colleges by high
school graduates that would provide
a close-to-free tuition for those 12th
grade completers who meet certain
requirements.
By such a state-sponsored path
there would be career-training for
those students who didn’t consider
going to college due to the cost. Ca-
reer paths could be established for
them that would provide a means to
obtain better-paying jobs or jobs at
all to help those Oregon employers in
need of appropriately trained youth
and thereby also reduce the often
chronic and ongoing costs of social-
service programs.
How does that idea relate to
the ability of Oregon’s community
colleges to provide what’s needed?
Not so good by way of a recent Or-
egon Secretary of State audit of the
state’s community colleges. The audit
determined that, over a recent seven-
year period, starting in the academic
year of 2007-2008, merely 24 percent
of Oregon community college stu-
dents completed an associate’s degree
or certifi cate, while Oregon’s com-
munity colleges reach fewer than
one-quarter of students in need.
Oregon ranked 32 out of 36
states studied for community college
completion. It was found that fewer
than 24 percent
fi nished as the
completion rate
was 15 percent
for black stu-
dents, 21 per-
cent for Hispan-
ics, 22 percent
for American Indians, 16 percent for
Pacifi c Islanders and 19 percent for
multi-racial students.
There are many reasons given for
failure to serve Oregon’s college age
youth and others who seek to im-
prove their employment prospects.
The argued barriers by those defend-
ing themselves are the dollars avail-
able to support Oregon’s community
colleges that fell sharply during the
recession (but have more recently
rebounded fairly signifi cantly), those
students who do not get adequately
steered to federal funds and loans and
private sector scholarships, and other
failures that may be a grossly inad-
equate ability by community college
organization and design to do the job
successfully.
The Salem-Keizer School Dis-
trict is well underway to establishing
a costly mini-community college on
Portland Road. It’s the much her-
alded Career and Technical Educa-
tion Center (CTEC) which promises
to enable those students who attend
it to pick up enough training and
knowledge in construction know-
how and manufacturing skills (oth-
er skill areas, we’re told, to come later),
enabling them to graduate from high
school into “high demand, high pay-
ing jobs.”
What’s
profoundly
unset-
tling and maddening is this: When
Chemeketa Community College is
among the state’s community col-
leges that’s having huge diffi culties in
helping its attendees complete their
courses of study, even start or stay in
school, how will the CTEC, with its
leadership by former, traditional high
school principals, mainly academi-
cians who’ve not managed much if
any vocational-technical programs,
turn a corner in effectiveness that
has eluded CCC? Further, if the
folks behind the founding and build-
ing of CTEC know so much as to
make a difference not realized at
CCC, why didn’t they get together in
common cause to help those students
wanting to obtain secure employment
and the chance for a solvent life?
So what is it that motivates the
Salem-Keizer School District to du-
plicate education and training ser-
vices that could be provided at CCC
if coordination efforts were practiced?
The answer comes from the im-
portance of Full-Time Equivalence
(FTE): That’s money from the state
that comes to school districts to keep
students in school through gradu-
ation. One way to keep those in-
clined to leave school is to establish
a CTEC and give them something to
do that will interest them enough to
stick around to graduate and preserve
FTEs. So, what wrong with that? I’d
suggest what’s wrong is the priority
of acquiring money versus service to
youth because I do not believe the
CTEC can do what it promises it can
do: prepare students for walking out
of CTEC into a good job, paying a
living wage.
Oregon’s educators and their
cheerleaders tell us over and over
again that they need more money.
It’d be a most welcome relief in this
state if they’d prove they can accom-
plish their law-given missions in our
schools and colleges without ever-
more money to do it.
other
views
(Creators Syndicate)
Will more money create job ready students?
gene h.
mcintyre
(Gene H. McIntyre’s column ap-
pears weekly in the Keizertimes.)