PAGE A4, KEIZERTIMES, AUGUST 21, 2015
KeizerOpinion
KEIZERTIMES.COM
How do we replace Haggen?
After a big announcement about
its move into Keizer, then several days
of remodeling, Haggen Food grocery
opened its doors. The store went from
stodgy to brighter and looser. Alas, it
was not to last. Haggen’s Keizer store
will close in October.
It wasn’t anything Keizer shoppers
did or didn’t do—it all has to do with
business in America today. The Keizer
location was one of 146 former Safe-
way or Albertsons stores spun off by
the equity fi rm that owns them.
With a good reputation in it home
territory of northwest Washington
state, Haggen management saw an op-
portunity to join the big guys and own
stores throughout the west. It seems
safe to conclude that Haggen decided
that not all 146 stores it bought were
winners and made the quick decision
to rid itself of 27 stores it did not want.
That’s business.
Shoppers can bemoan Keizer being
a one-store grocery store. In actuallity
a majority of Keizer shoppers head
to discount grocers such as Costco,
Winco and Walmart. Neighborhood
mom-and-pop markets gave way to
grocery stores which gave way to dis-
count mega-grocery stores. Business
will always fi nd a path to the consum-
er’s wallet—the grocery industry is no
different. Food stores operate on thin
margins so maximizing every dollar
in sales is paramount, be it inside the
store or by the whole operation, clos-
ing underperforming stores, locating
stores in high income areas.
Social media was fi lled with com-
ments about the closing of Haggen
and desires for its successor. The stores
people want to see replace Haggen at
Creekside Shopping Center are un-
likely to consider the site due mainly
to its size.
If there is no immediate replace-
ment come October there will be
two major retail holes on River Road
including the former Roth’s Fresh
Market space at Schoolhouse Square.
That’s two too many.
The nearly 40,000 residents of
Keizer will have one grocery store to
shop. This is certainly a perfect op-
portunity for the Keizer Economic
Development Commission and the
Keizer Chamber of Commerce to
show their mettle and work tirelessly
to recruit a grocery store to Creekside
Shopping Center. That may not be
such an easy task.
The consolidation of the industry
has left fewer mid-market grocers.
Unfortunately Keizer does not have
the demographics that is attractive to
a Whole Foods or a Zupan’s Market.
There is a cry for a discount grocer
in Keizer; that’s why some people
were so excited when it was thought
Walmart would build at Keizer Sta-
tion. Yet there is no discount grocery
store on the horizon for Area C.
There are smaller grocery chains
that can be a good fi t for Keizer: Ray’s
Food Place, a 43-store chain based in
southern Oregon (they have a store in
Sisters) or Chuck’s Produce and Street
Market from Vancouver. The local or-
ganizations we look toward to main-
tain and increase Keizer’s economic
vitality should leave no stone under-
turned in recruiting a second grocery
store for Keizer.
It is not good for Keizer or its resi-
dents to have only one grocery store
nor two large holes in our retail land-
scape.
—LAZ
Saturday, Aug. 22, will be a bright
and sunny day. It will be beautiful not
only weather-wise but because Mc-
Nary High School will unveil its new
artifi cal turf at Flesher Field during
Blue Day.
This will be the fourth Blue Day
staged by the McNary High School
Athletic Booster Club. The club has
planned and raised funds for the big
project that will allow 10 times as
many events to be held at the stadium.
The former grass fi eld was not al-
ways user friendly, especially in our
wet weather in the fall and spring.
The marching band could not prac-
tice on it because hundreds of tromp-
ing feet over time turned the fi eld
into a muddy, mushy mess.
Now the band can practice to its
heart’s content on the fi eld. The foot-
ball, soccer and lacrosse teams will
be able to practice and play without
worry.
Blue Day is not only the unveiling
of the new turf. It is an opportunity
for the community to gather and sup-
port the many teams of the school,
enjoy barbecue and celebrate what
makes Keizer a good place to live:
neighbors and friends joining togeth-
er to make a vision become reality.
Blue Day will take place from 10
a.m. to 2 p.m. Attendance is free but
donations will eagerly be accepted by
the Booster Club.
—LAZ
Good feeling
about Rep. Post
do it publicly to
boot.
Last, this met
me on several
levels: “I was the
fi rst Republican
to get a bill signed
by the governor (Kate Brown),” Post
said. “It was a pro-business bill to get
rid of some restrictions. The governor
and I have a unique relationship. She
really likes me for some reason, even
though we are opposites. She showed
us freshmen around and took me by
the arm. She said, ‘I know I can count
on you for the transportation pack-
age, right?’ I said ‘No.’ She said, ‘That’s
why I like you.’”
Genuineness, likeability, and in-
tegrity of both these individuals re-
ally showed through in this comment.
Until I send in my next ballot I wish
Bill Post all the best in his Capitol seat.
Ardith Oakes
Keizer
A beautiful Blue day
To the Editor:
Even though we’re registered in
different parties, I came away with
a good feeling about Rep. Bill Post
(Post talks about fi rst year in Capitol,
Keizertimes, Aug. 14).
A couple of really positive things
stood out. So, let me get one “parti-
san” issue out of the way. He stated:
“Business will always make the right
choice. We don’t need government
to tell us.” Business is always right?
Squinting on that one. We do need
some government, though less of it.
When Rep. Post said, “The ma-
jority party uses Sine Die as a tool. If
there was a Republican majority and
this happened, I’ll still stand up and
say this is wrong,” my response was a
loud yes. Sine Die is bad legislating,
bad politics, and thanks to him for be-
ing willing to make such a pledge, and
letters
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Hunting for a miracle on global warming
By MICHAEL GERSON
In recognition that internet ques-
tionnaires get more eyeballs than ear-
nest columns on energy policy, here
is today’s quiz on obscure presiden-
tial history: When President George
W. Bush met Bill Gates for the fi rst
time, the topic of discussion was (A)
nuclear power, (B) rural internet ac-
cess, (C) global health, or (D) all of
those subjects, in considerable depth,
in that order.
Those who fi nd “D” surprising
don’t get the concept of leading test
questions, and don’t know much
about either participant. As a fl y on
the wall at their lunch, I watched two
men with a wonkish interest in en-
ergy policy talk over my head for 15
or 20 minutes about nuclear power
plant design. (Gates has since become
a major investor in one design that
would utilize depleted uranium, es-
sentially running on its own waste.)
One of Gates’ contributions as a
public-minded billionaire—as op-
posed to turning the Republican
presidential nomination process into
a second-rate reality television show
—is to bring a dose of reality to the
achievement of large humanitarian
goals. The (almost) end of polio. The
vaccination of children on a global
scale.
In the case of energy, rigor re-
quires rethinking. Gates is ruthless
(and not always politically correct) in
pressing the assumptions of the envi-
ronmental movement to their logical
conclusion. If climate scientists are
right about the pace of global warm-
ing, and about the total amount of
CO 2 that humans can emit in the fu-
ture without potentially catastrophic
consequences, then we currently do
not have feasible policy responses
that are adequate to the need, even
if we had far
greater political
will.
By
some
estimates, the
world
must
keep two-thirds
of its carbon-
based energy resources in the ground
—at the same time that vast numbers
of people in China, India, Indonesia,
Mexico, Brazil and elsewhere move
toward middle-class levels of energy
consumption. Gates makes the point
in another way. If the goal, as some
scientists urge, is an 80 percent re-
duction in carbon emissions by 2050,
then it will be necessary “to reduce
emissions from transportation and
electrical production in participating
countries down to zero.”
Behavior change—shutting off
the lights, turning off the air condi-
tioner —is useful, but not even in the
ballpark of responding to this need.
Neither are the subsidies that gov-
ernments provide to renewables such
as solar and wind power. The cost of
meeting future energy requirements
with existing green technologies
would be “beyond astronomical,”
Gates has argued.
There was no way to get to the
moon by stacking ladders. That re-
quired an entirely different technolo-
gy. Current environmental responses
are the stacking of ladders. “We need
breakthroughs,” says Gates.
It is sobering when your only
suffi cient policy response is the pro-
duction of a miracle. But I’ll add a
few more depressing political and
economic factors. Human beings are
fairly good at calculating costs into
their decision-making (saving for
a rainy day, buying car insurance) if
the time horizon is a few months or
other
views
a few years. They are not as good at
assuming burdens, as in environmen-
tal policy, when the time horizon is
a few decades or centuries. And they
are terrible at shouldering burdens
when future costs are paid dispro-
portionately by other people—in
this case by people living in poor
countries that are more vulnerable to
coastal fl ooding or drought.
So how do we get technological
miracles at a realistic social and eco-
nomic cost? Only by dramatically in-
creased investment in basic research
and development. Gates (matching
money to mouth) has pledged to
increase his personal investments in
green technologies by $1 billion over
the next fi ve years. But suffi cient scale
only comes from government. So he
has also recommended that U.S. in-
vestments in basic energy technology
be more than tripled -- from about
$5 billion to $16 billion a year.
Even at this level, energy research
funding would lag well behind de-
fense and health research. But the
increase would allow some impres-
sive scientists to fully explore a va-
riety of speculative options: things
like fl ying wind turbines that collect
energy from the jet stream; or re-
verse engineering photosynthesis to
produce usable energy; or batteries
with dramatically increased storage
capacity; or new nuclear designs that
overcome the problem of radioactive
waste.
This amounts to a series of in-
formed bets. But all can be made at
a relatively affordable cost, partially
recovered by shifting funds from ex-
isting energy subsidies. Collectively,
these kinds of bets may be our best
shot at the miracle we require.
(Washington Post Writers Group)
2016 candidates rattle the war saber
A couple of weeks ago, syndicated
columnist Austin Bay wrote about
World War II in reference to the num-
ber of fanatics in Germany and Japan
who brought about that awful con-
fl ict and whose end in Europe and fi -
nale in Asia came with the detonation
of two atomic bombs. There were ef-
forts all around the planet during the
1930s to prevent it while the U.S. in-
volvement got underway with an Im-
perial Japan attack on Pearl Harbor in
December, 1941.
World War II’s cost in American
lives exceeded 100,000 in the Pa-
cifi c theatre alone. The death count
in Vietnam of U.S. service men and
women is recorded on the Vietnam
War Memorial in Washington. There
are 58,195 names on it. More re-
cently the count of those Americans
who perished in Iraq or died later has
reached a total of 73,846 with many
more every day succumbing to their
wounds or committing suicide. The
number told us by the Bush adminis-
tration is around 4,000 because those
folks lied again by counting only those
Americans who died with their boots
on in Iraq; the real count is the higher
73,846.
Now who are the fanatics that
want more war and thereby the deaths
upon more deaths on the battlefi eld?
These will again be the children of
families from all over America. There
will be, then, tens of thousands of fam-
ilies left to grieve with little or no ben-
efi t to the people of our nation; rather,
those who gain from these deaths
and ill-advised ventures are corpora-
tions like Halliburton that make for-
tunes on war material sales and
manpower in behind-the-front-lines
support posi-
tions.
President
Obama has not
kept his word
on getting our
troops out of
the Middle East.
We fi nd among the Republican can-
didates who seek to replace Obama
that they mainly have morphed into
the party of war with Hillary Clinton
as a hawk competing to outdo them.
Take, for example, Donald Trump. On
entering the race he immediately
trumped the competition that he is
nothing less than a genius in mili-
tary matters who will fi nd a military
leader like George Patton or Douglas
MacArthur to place the U.S. military
into the win column. Regarding ISIS,
he would “bomb the hell out of them
and take back the oil.”
This plan would require a huge
number of American military per-
sonnel whose numbers will have to
be sacrifi ced. As Trump said: “You let
Mobil (Oil) go in and you let our great
oil companies go in. Once you take
that oil, they (ISIS) have nothing
left.” This from a guy who has several
grown children, none of which have
served in uniform. Trump himself has
never served in uniform.
Candidate Rick Santorum calls
for 10,000 Americans to go into Iraq
who was promptly trumped by Sena-
tor Lindsey Graham who saw Santo-
rum’s 10,000 and wants an additional
10,000 sent into Syria. Neither one
has served in the American armed
forces. Jeb Bush comes across as one
who doesn’t know whether the inva-
sion and consequences in Iraq was a
gene h.
mcintyre
bad idea. There are many Bush fam-
ily members but only one has served
with distinction in uniform and that
was George H.W. Bush during World
War II as a Navy pilot.
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker
once compared fi ghting ISIS to fi ght-
ing the labor unions in his state. He
says he would not only tear up the
Iranian nuclear deal his fi rst day in
the White House but would start a
war with Iran between his swearing-
in ceremony and Inaugural ball that
night. In other words, he’s going to
trump Trump. Several others among
the current 17 have made statements
that go far beyond mere thoughts of
glorious leadership as the command-
er-in-chief but have defi ned specifi c
action measures certain to get us into
World War III.
I believe Hillary Clinton is as war-
inclined as most of the Republican
candidates are. I’ve yet to hear such
declarations of certain confl ict ven-
tures overseas by the man who stands
at this time as possibly most popular
among Democratic voters. Where
the others stand, including Lincoln
Chafee, Martin O’Malley, and Jim
Webb, is not known, resulting from
the loss of air by Sen. Bernie Sand-
ers and Trump. I just wonder how
many of these people, the fanatics in
the U.S. like those who got the WWII
underway, who want to lead us into
war by using the youth of the nation
as cannon fodder to accomplish huge
profi ts for the nation’s largest corpo-
rations who’ve become a platoon of
plutocrats.
(Gene McIntyre’s column appears
weekly in the Keizertimes.)