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
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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.)