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PAGE A4, KEIZERTIMES, JUNE 26, 2015 KeizerOpinion KEIZERTIMES.COM A way to give that is right for you driver? Make some calls By KRIS ADAMS and inquire. My family moved to Next, be sure you Keizer in 1964. I was 5 years old and I vividly re- understand the com- member that it rained for mitment. You need to months leading up to a show up or you could fl ood that year. leave the organization I grew up going to in an uncomfortable Keizer schools and later moved position. Find a role that fi ts your back to the same Keizer house and schedule. worked retail until my retirement Finally, be patient and take your fi ve years ago. Once I hit that point volunteering seriously. Sometimes in my life, I knew I couldn’t sit and you have to jump through a few watch TV all day. I needed stimula- hoops to be a volunteer. Then, the tion. I needed to work with people rewarding part begins. and wanted to make a difference in Limitless opportunities some way. I also joined the Salem Hospi- With fond memories of visiting tal Auxiliary and had a blast eating my mom and sister working at Sa- pizza and stuffi ng Awesome 3000 lem Hospital, I became a volunteer. packets with a fantastic group. I am It was a perfect fi t for me. I helped exploring how we can accept credit patients in the hospital get to and cards at the craft sale. The money from group therapy. Sometimes they we raise goes toward student schol- didn’t have a support person, so I arships. I also help out a few friends chatted with them and helped out. with errands and chores. The nursing staff appreciated me My latest endeavor is being and treated me well. I loved going part of the Keizer Points of Inter- and just felt invigorated being able est Committee working on a kiosk to help people. project that highlights the history of I now help in the volunteer of- Keizer fl oods. Can you guess which fi ce. I take calls and one I’m working on? answer questions I love the research and from potential vol- even found a book my unteers. In the offi ce parents kept about the two days a week for 1964 fl ood. four to fi ve hours There is a part of each day, I feel like everyone that can give I accomplish some- in some way. Find a thing every time. It is passion, hobby, skill or pure joy to know that interest you can parlay my time isn’t wasted, in giving back to this maybe even a little wonderful community. selfi sh that I love feel- (Kris Adams averages Kris Adams ing thanked, appreci- about 25 hours a week ated, and rewarded volunteering. Friendly, for giving back. customer-oriented community vol- Getting started unteers are needed at Salem Hospi- First, fi nd a place that fi ts your tal in the volunteer program. Please skills and background. The Red call 503-561-5277 to reserve a seat Cross, the food bank, the hospital, at the next information session or the Humane Society—there are so visit salemhealth.org/volunteers to many places that have a need. Are learn more. Volunteers must be 14 you a people person? A pet person? years of age or older.) Someone who likes offi ce work? A (Kris Adams lives in Keizer.) Submitted Photo guest column CERT thanks supporters To the Editor: Keizer Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) would like to thank V2 Dentistry, the McNary High School football team, and Keizer Young Life for helping us set up June 19 for our annual garage sale June 20-21. We couldn’t have done it without them. They helped by putting up 20 x 20 tents, cano- pies, load and unload our storage units. They went above and beyond. Bonnie Dunn Keizer Gun regulation debate continues To the Editor: (I’m) pretty sure that Don Vow- ell expected some push back from the right when he penned his piece (Why is a gun different than a car?, June 12) on gun regs. Vowell is per- fectly capable of defending his po- sition on his own, he’s much more articulate than I. That said, it seems to me that Wayne More- land’s snarky rebuttal (Rights versus privileges, June 19) de- serves a reply. He is correct that rights and privileges are differ- ent, but here’s the thing, both are subject to restrictions. Gun own- ership—the right—has limitations. The debate is over the extent of those limitations, not whether they exist. Further, what Wayne should read slowly and carefully is the fi rst part of the second amendment which reads: “A well regulated mi- litia being necessary to the security of a free state.” How does free-for- all gun ownership square with that? Until the second amendment is considered in its entirety by reason- able people, guns in the hands of the fearful, the foolish and the fi endish will remain an American problem and I for one applaud the Oregon legislature for taking whatever very small steps are possible to make the problem less deadly. Martin Doerfl er Keizer letters The Keizertimes welcomes all points of view. E-mail a Letter to the Editor to: publisher@keizertimes.com by noon each Tuesday Keizertimes Wheatland Publishing Corp. • 142 Chemawa Road N. • Keizer, Oregon 97303 phone: 503.390.1051 • web: www.keizertimes.com • email: kt@keizertimes.com Lyndon A. Zaitz, Editor & Publisher SUBSCRIPTIONS One year: $25 in Marion County, $33 outside Marion County, $45 outside Oregon PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY Publication No: USPS 679-430 POSTMASTER Send address changes to: Keizertimes Circulation 142 Chemawa Road N. Keizer, OR 97303 Periodical postage paid at Salem, Oregon Jeb is right about 4 percent growth By LAWRENCE KUDLOW “There is not a reason in the world why we cannot grow at a rate of 4 percent a year.” That’s what Jeb Bush said when he offi cially announced his presidential run in Miami last week. And right off the bat, most economists trashed the idea. “It can’t happen and it’s never hap- pened.” “Productivity is too low.” “The labor force is growing too slowly.” “Secular stagnation.” They don’t call it the gloomy sci- ence for nothing. We have experienced relatively long periods of 4 percent or more eco- nomic growth. Following the Kenne- dy tax cuts, the economy averaged 5.2 percent yearly growth between 1963 and 1969. After the Reagan tax rates fully went into effect, alongside Paul Volcker’s conquering of infl ation, the economy grew at 4.5 percent annually between 1982 and 1989. These were the “seven fat years.” And between 1994 and 1999, the Bill Clinton/Newt Gingrich economy increased 4.3 per- cent annually, after welfare reform, NAFTA trade and cap-gains tax relief. So we’ve got six-year, seven-year and fi ve-year periods—all in recent memory—when the American econ- omy beat 4 percent. And for nearly all the post-World War II period, dating from 1947 to 2007 (before the melt- down), the U.S. economy actually grew at 3.4 percent annually. So Jeb Bush’s 4 percent target is both aspirational and doable. It sets an important policy marker for the coming election. The GOP should adopt the target. Let the skeptics scoff. Positive solutions are grounds for opti- mism. And Americans will respond fa- vorably to this kind of optimistic lead- ership—which is sorely lacking today. The story of the Jeb Bush 4 percent target starts in Dal- las in 2010 at the George W. Bush Institute. Executive di- rector James Glassman was casting about for an economic agenda. One of his board members, Jeb Bush, tossed out a cen- terpiece goal of 4 percent growth. It stuck. Columnist and author Amity Sh- laes was brought in by the institute to oversee a book called, naturally, The 4 Percent Solution: Unleashing the Economic Growth America Needs. It was published in 2012. “That term unleash is very impor- tant,” Jim Glassman told me, “because it simply means unleash the economy from government constraints.” Ironi- cally, this past spring, a group of sup- ply-siders—including Art Laffer, Steve Forbes, Steve Moore and myself— founded the Committee to Unleash Prosperity. But the key theme here is our des- perate need of a new batch of eco- nomic-growth policies. For nearly two decades we have grown at 2 percent yearly. That’s unacceptable. Put supply-side tax reform at the center of a new growth agenda. Start with slashing the corporate tax, which falls most heavily on middle-class wage earners. Go to full cash expensing and a territorial system that would repatri- ate overseas profi ts. On the personal side, fl atten the rates, broaden the base and simplify the code. Make sure it pays more after-tax to work, invest and take risks. Instead of raising taxes on capital, reduce or abolish invest- ment taxes (which would contribute to a rebound in the soft productivity numbers). But tax reform is not enough. We need pro-growth immigration reform to boost the lagging growth of the la- bor force. We need entitlement reform for welfare, food stamps and disability, so that instead of paying people not to work, we incentivize people to rejoin the labor force. Trade tariff reduction, now front and center in Washington, would also be important to a pro-growth agenda. Tariff cuts are tax cuts. They make businesses more competitive and pro- vide more export markets. Meanwhile, consumers get the best-quality goods at the lowest prices anywhere. Improving education with choice, charters and vouchers is another much-needed pro-growth reform. So is ending Obamacare and replacing it with a privately driven, free-choice health-care system. Finally, a better, more consistent and more transparent monetary policy from the Fed that creates a reliable dollar would be a huge pro-growth reform. Is 4 percent growth really possible? Sure it is. And it would help solve a lot of problems, including poverty, mid- dle-class take-home pay, jobs, budget defi cits and on and on. I’m not endorsing Mr. Bush at this point. But I am endorsing his 4 per- cent solution. If decisive policies can unleash innovation and entrepreneur- ship, get the economy out from under the government’s shackles and provide a spirit of optimism, then all things are possible. The whole history of America tells me so. Don’t tell me it can’t be done. A joy in the life of my wife’s and my own is our 4-year-old granddaughter. She, grandma and I play a lot of games that allow us to enter her world of fantasy where magical thinking and denial of reality are the places we go in the make-believe of a child’s mind. However, when adults in positions of trust and power play denial and re- fuse to see reality, things get danger- ous instead of fun. America’s leaders in Washington, D.C. should be aware and thinking serious thoughts of pos- sible correction about the empty- ing reservoirs of California, the ex- treme rain and fl ooding in parts of Texas and Oklahoma, the winter that wouldn’t end in the Northeast, the drought that’s taking over all of Ore- gon and Washington, the news that last year was a global heat record for the planet and this year promises to equal or exceed it, that Alaska just passed through the hottest month of May ever and the prospects for our planet returning to normal patterns appear slim and none. Meanwhile, behind the denial of reality, conservative forces and Big Energy (Psst.That’s oil and gas inter- ests) have invested fantastic amounts of money into a collection of think tanks and activist groups to promote climate change denial. Thereby, some of the most profi table and power- ful self-interests on the planet are dead set to continue with every dollar they can throw at it to put a damper on any means or moves to save a planetary en- vironment that has nurtured humanity into a present form that required mil- lions of years to develop. Backed by those who pay their campaign expenses and provide a lot of high-priced perks and retire- ment pluses for them, they are the Republi- can Party that now rules the U.S. House and Senate. A full 72 percent of the Republican U.S. Senate caucus are climate deniers. This means that since three of them are candidates for the presidency in the 2016 election, that they will repeat time and again that they are not scientists but have doubts about any negative planetary chang- es. In the meantime, the years to come promise a speed up of greenhouse- inducing gases and more fi erce and destructive killer weather aberrations. Are we mere citizens victims of the plutocrats running our Con- gress, doomed to a frightening future that in many places and almost ev- erywhere is already here? Well maybe, except for the power of infl uence by one world leader, and a religious one at that, Pope Francis. He pretty much says he’s mad as hell and will not take it any more. So, he’s demanding swift action to save the planet from environ- mental ruin, urging world leaders to hear “the cry of the earth.” In his encyclical, On the Care of our Common Home, Francis advocates for a change of lifestyle in rich countries that practice a “throwaway” consumer culture. Then, too, he seeks an end to an “obstructionist attitude” that too often puts profi t before the common good. Further, he dismisses the argu- ment that technology will solve all en- vironmental problems and that global hunger and poverty can be solved sim- ply by market growth. Time is running out to save our planet, says he, one that’s “beginning to look more and more like an im- mense pile of fi lth.” Polluting the planet’s ecosystems to make money is taking place at an unprecedented rate. In his 200-page encyclical, he says that doomsday predictions “can no longer be met with irony or disdain.” At the rate we’re going, this generation will leave the planet to a future overcome with “debris, desolation and fi lth.” Unlike U.S. leaders, Francis does not depend upon the billionaires like Shel- don Adelson and the Koch brothers to keep his job. In several passages of the six-chapter encyclical, he butts heads with the climate change doubt- ers and those who say the changes are not man-made. A chemist himself by early education and training, Francis says there’s “very solid scientifi c con- sensus” that the planet is warming and that we must combat this warming by drastically reducing polluting gases generated by fossil fuels that must be replaced without delay by renewable energy sources. While Francis and I share our Christian faith, he a Catholic and I a Protestant, I have been one over the years and until now to view with objection many of the Vatican’s pro- nouncements. Even though Francis could reform the Catholic Church in many policy matters, he’s made several moves so far in his role as pope that have encouraged me to look with fa- vor toward Rome. In fact, this latest encyclical has me mentally jumping up and down with joy through new- born hope that we may yet provide a livable world for my granddaughter. other views (Creators Syndicate) Pope did the right thing on global warming gene h. mcintyre (Gene H. McIntyre’s column ap- pears weekly in the Keizertimes.)