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PAGE A4, KEIZERTIMES, OCTOBER 9, 2015 KeizerOpinion KEIZERTIMES.COM After the UCC shootings The tragic shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg has whipped up the gun con- trol discussion in America. Again. The discussion gets heated after every mass shooting. Some want to enact gun control laws that outline who can pur- chase a gun and how a gun is sold. Some say that any effort to slap more controls on guns is an enfringement of an individual’s rights they cite is in the Bill of Rights. Research has shown that an over- whelming majority of Americans—in- cluding guns owners—are in favor of more stringent background checks be- fore a gun is sold. The recent effort to add gun shows and internet sales failed as does every other legislative proposal. After Sept. 11, 2001 many Ameri- cans were comfortable giving up some rights in the war against terror. Today we live with the reactions to failed successive terrorists attacks, as anyone who has traveled by plane in the 14 years can attest. We comply with the regulations that require we take shoes and belts off at security gates, we think twice when we are packing our lug- gage or carry-on bags. The National Rifl e Association (NRA) is portrayed in some quarters as the Evil Empire that disregards life and limb. Yes, it is a powerful group which lobbies for its point of view. That’s democracy. The NRA is not evil, its members can be found across the geographic, economic and social spectrums. The system we have allows groups and individuals to espouse their opinions and work to shape legislation. Those who want to see legislation editorial Payroll transit tax To the Editor: I am co-owner of Home Instead Senior Care, serving the area’s seniors. The proposed employer payroll tax will add to the fi nancial burden we are facing in upcoming years. This is an unfair tax to levy on private businesses, and it targets an already vulnerable part of the community. The Transit District does not need to fund their program at the expense of private businesses. Most of our clientele are on fi xed incomes and higher rates mean fewer services for them. Looking ahead: • In-Home-Care minimum wage will be $14/hour in 2016, with an- other increase in 2017. • ACA’s effect on businesses has raised costs. • Mandatory Sick Pay legislation will cause the discontinuation of cur- rent benefi ts, such as paid vacation, be- cause we can’t do both. • These do not include the cost of doing business: worker’s comp fees, franchise fees, business loans, liability insurance rates, to name a few. It is a constant struggle to keep our wages above minimum wage for our caregivers, to keep our fees affordable for the senior population we serve and to maintain a business that provides services and jobs for the community. Please vote no on the employer pay- roll tax. Bobbi Boles Salem KFD bond measure To the Editor: In November we will be voting on Measure 24-389 to fund the re- placement of aging equipment for that changes background checks for any gun pur- chase anywhere have just as much right as any other or- ganized group. The people are not powerless. But, they are powerless when they are silent and don’t vote. It all comes down to the ballot box. As President Obama said with barely concealed anger last week, if people want change they have to be- come single-issue voters for several cycles. The arguement can be made that a very small percentage of the American population would like to see all guns banned forever. That’s never going to happen. There is not one person in elected offi ce at any level in this country who is seeking to take anyone’s guns away. That’s the kneejerk reaction to any suggestion of tightening and enhanc- ing things like background checks. We don’t advocate the government under- take an effort to take guns away. We are in favor of rational, common sense action. After the shooting in Roseburg the national debate turned to mental health disease—which has been ap- plied to a myriad of sym¡ptoms, from feeling blue to bi-polar disease and be- yond. Just as victims of mass shoot- ings need action rather than heartfelt thoughts and prayers, those who suffer from mental health issues need under- standing and, most of all, a willingness of the people to say something when they see something. Sometimes pri- vacy is trumped by the good of society. —LAZ the Keizer Fire District (KFD). This is primarily to keep ambu- lances and emer- gency equipment on the road for Keizer citizens. You may recently have noticed a disabled ambulance or two being towed in for repairs—which is a constant worry for the fi re district as the number of emergency response calls increases yearly. The newest engine is 11 years old and the newest ambulance is seven years old. This is an exceptionally long time in service for emergency response equipment to be reliable for response. The safety of the emergency response professionals is also a serious issue. This bond measure is a 20-year plan to meet the increasing needs of the Keizer community. I have served on the Keizer Fire District Budget Committee for four years and can tell you the KFD Board and Administration are very frugal with taxpayer money. The professional fi re fi ghters union has also voluntarily taken pay cuts to help manage the bud- get during diffi cult times. They have consistently provided a well-managed, cost-effective budget with no extrava- gance. But they can no longer safely manage the deteriorating equipment which must be replaced. A citizens advisory committee has reviewed the proposal and found the need to be substantiated and necessary. We have an aging population with many new health and senior care fa- cilities in Keizer. This plan meets the future needs of all Keizer citizens. John P. Rizzo Keizer letters 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 Tantrums won’t end gun violence By MICHAEL GERSON Following the mass shooting at Umpqua Community College, a “smoldering” (as one commenta- tor put it) President Obama gave a revealing speech—a clarifi cation, a culmination, of much that had come before. “What has become routine,” he said, “of course, is the response of those who oppose any kind of com- monsense gun legislation. Right now, I can imagine the press releases being cranked out. ‘We need more guns,’ they’ll argue. ... Does anybody believe that?” “This is a political choice we make,” he claimed, “to allow this to happen every few months in America.” The president’s frustration, after de- livering a sad series of similar speeches, is understandable. But his argument is still indefensible. Even if you support “common- sense gun legislation” (as I do), there was nothing in Obama’s speech that effectively argued for it. No policy proposals or serious justifi cations. No one listening to the speech would be persuaded to take a position he or she did not already hold. Obama was say- ing, in essence, that it is obvious what we should do about mass gun vio- lence, that evil people are blocking it, and that they have innocent blood on their hands. This is apparently what some lib- eral people think when anger releas- es them from civility and rationality. Obama speaks as if the gun laws he wants passed would put an end to these killings—a position for which there is no evidence. I believe that more thor- ough background checks and further restrictions on the type and fi repower of weapons, along with im- proved health services for the severely men- tally ill, would be good for our society, apart from mass killings. I hope that, in the long term, this system might, just might, intervene before a prospective mass killer strikes (though such cau- sality would be very hard to demon- strate). But I have no basis for the cal- umny that people who disagree with me are choosing to allow mass murder. This is the politics of moral postur- ing, not an argument rooted in social science. With his last election behind him, Obama is free to be Obama. And it appears that he is, deep down, a lib- eral commentator of the MSNBC va- riety—perhaps providing a preview of his post-presidency. The only apparent purpose of his gun speech was to in- cite the faithful by expressing a seeth- ing arrogance. Obama would surely blame the other side for the sorry state of our politics. Didn’t Mitch McConnell have it out for him from the begin- ning? Hasn’t every attempted com- promise been slapped away? But it matters when the president of the United States decides that dem- ocratic persuasion is a fool’s game. It encourages the kind of will-to-power politics we see on the left and right. In this view, opponents are evil—en- tirely beyond the normal instruments of reason and good faith. So the only option is the collection and exercise of power. When the main players in our poli- other views tics give up on deliberative democracy, it feels like some Rubicon is being crossed. Our system is designed for leaders who make arguments for their views, seek compromise and try dif- ferent policy angles to break logjams. And when they lose, their proper re- course is ... to make more arguments, seek other compromises and try dif- ferent policy angles. At this time, gun control legisla- tion would probably not pass. Because such a law would not directly prevent mass murders (even if the law had use- ful purposes). Because Obama doesn’t know how to work with Congress. Because the National Rifl e Associa- tion would oppose it. Because the po- litical environment is not right. But someone who supports gun control should still argue for it, because that is what we do in a democracy. The spirit of our democracy is very much at issue. Donald Trump says we have a corrupt system run by stupid people. Obama says we have a corrupt system run by evil people. Both of them are part of the same problem. I really don’t give a damn if they are dis- illusioned and fed up with democratic processes or not. If they are tired of the game, they should stop playing it, not engage in ideological commentary or entertain fantasies of personal rule. The best way to restore faith in our democratic structures is to spend a lifetime trying to make them work, like Hubert Humphrey did, or Jack Kemp did, or Henry Jackson did, or Ronald Reagan did, or Ted Kennedy did. But it is easier, and surely satisfy- ing in its own way, to throw a tantrum when democracy disappoints you. (Washington Post Writers Group) The disaster that was Carly at H-P Those who like to watch ava- lanches should be careful about start- ing them as instigators can get swept away along with their mischief. In this case, that would be presidential candidate Carly Fiorina. I feel confi dent that it’s appropri- ate to take Donald Trump to task over his business dealings even though he has bragged excessively that every- thing he has ever touched has turned to gold. It is, nevertheless general knowledge that The Donald has gone bankrupt on several occasions and, further, we’re told, he has hurt a lot of people when he used that dire measure to save himself. However, Fiorina should proceed with caution when she sends an ava- lanche Trump’s way, as her biggest business achievement as CEO of Hewlett-Packard is generally con- sidered an unmitigated disaster. In a USA Today article that appeared in 2005 about the worst CEOs, Yale business Professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld reported that he considered Fiorina “the worst among CEOs because of her ruthless attack on the essence of a great company (HP).” Thereby, she destroyed half the wealth of those persons who invested in HP while she walked away with $100 million in personal gain. More recently, in a piece by Julie Bort in Business Insider reached Son- nenfeld who continues at Yale where he’s now a senior associate dean. Bort reports that Sonnenfeld stands by his 2005 opinion of Firoina as the worst CEO. He adds now that the board’s wisdom in the fi ring of Fio- rina, which was a unanimous deci- sion, was vindicated by the fact that there has been no exoneration or contrition while Fiorina has mainly lived on the fortune she got out of HP by her ruthless measures. Also, she has never been offered another CEO position in the ten years since she was given the boot. Hewlett- Packard stock plunged between the time she started and the time she de- parted. At her entry to the company, HP stock sold at $55. When she was shown the exit, HP stock was around $20. The steep drop was due to the company’s missed earnings. Fairness in a review of that time warrants a reminder that Fiorina’s tenure overlapped the end of the dot-com bubble. However, HP’s stock performance was a lot worse than other big tech companies like Cisco, Intel, Microsoft and Oracle. A contributing factor in HP’s stock de- mise was that Fiorina bought Com- paq over strong objections from HP board members as she wanted HP to become the biggest PC maker. Fiori- na fought company founder William R. Hewlett’s son, William, who was opposed to the purchase, by launch- ing a proxy fi ght which she won and thereby bought Compaq for around $19 billion in 2002. The acquisition became a huge problem when things like integra- tion of Compaq went down a very rough road where key Compaq ex- ecutives reporting to Fiorina left or were shown the door. The massive layoffs she brought about cut as many as 30,000 HP jobs. Her reports of revenue growth then are now viewed as exaggerations. The workers let go were further angered when their fi nal respon- sibility with HP under Fiorina was to train their overseas replacements. This sort of management was seen gene h. mcintyre as contrary to the HP way, a culture widely characterized as egalitarian in a decentralized system that resulted in high morale and love of job but that, under Fiorina, was changed by her authoritarian interventions on every matter, leaving employees to feel un- important and mindless. End result: Fiorina was hated by HP employees. Since she became known by the end of her stay at HP as a CEO who could not be trusted, that reputation has followed her elsewhere, too. Fur- ther, she underscored her apparent ability to exaggerate and tell big fi bs at the most recent CNN GOP de- bate. Her story about viewing a baby on a table, heart beating, legs kicking, about to have its brain tissue har- vested by Planned Parenthood folks is a fabrication of the highest order and the dirtiest of lies. The truth is that the privately-made fi lm she ref- erenced was produced by Planned Parenthood haters who fi lmed a baby that was a miscarriage, one that did not even take place in a Planned Parenthood offi ce.When Fiorina was recently questioned about the matter on Meet the Press she was unable to provide an understandable answer. It is the opinion here that there should be more women vying to be president of the United States. Un- fortunately, with her record and reputation, Fiorina in the job is ill- advised. There are some outstanding women in the GOP ranks; it’d be most encouraging if those among them would give the presidential sweepstakes a try. That ideal per- son from either gender would offer experience in foreign relations and have succeeded in working effective- ly with others from both sides of the aisle. (Gene H. McIntyre’s column ap- pears weekly in the Keizertimes.)