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
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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.)