Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Keizertimes. (Salem, Or.) 1979-current | View Entire Issue (May 13, 2016)
PAGE A4, KEIZERTIMES, MAY 13, 2016 KeizerOpinion KEIZERTIMES.COM Police? Parks? How about both Parks or police? What should be the focus of Keizer’s city government? At recent complet- ed Budget Committee meetings the call for add- ing at least one cop posi- tion to the Keizer Police Department was loud and clear. Also loud and clear was the call for better funding of the city’s 19 parks. A vast majority of Keizer resi- dents would opt for adding cops over extra funding for parks. Law enforcement and parks are both key to a good quality of life for any community. The cost of em- ployees is more than their wages—it is pensions, health care and PERS. Those three take a larger slice year af- ter year. With Keizer’s tax base frozen at $2.08 per $1,000 there is little wig- gle room when it comes to budget- ing; some things must be funded. The ‘wish to have’ items take a backseat to the ‘need to have’ items. That’s why there is spirited discus- sion on the Parks and Recreation Ad- visory Board about how to fi nd fund- ing outside the city budget to pay for all the projects and maintenance the board identifi es. One of the ideas getting a closer look is adding one dollar per month to every city water bill. That could raise more than $100,000 annually that would be dedicated to city parks. This idea needs to be seriously con- sidered. To remain a livable city we cannot shortchange our parks. In our current national political climate talk is more about tax cuts than establishing new sources of rev- enue. Unlike new funding that benefi ts a subset of the population, everyone will benefi t with parks that are well maintained and adding needed amenities. How a city’s parks and greenspaces and maintained and prized is an important calculation in how potential new residents, new businesses and visitors view a community. Parks and greenspaces enhance the neighborhoods in which they are lo- cated. A family may be more apt to purchase a new home if there is a nice park within walking distance for their children to play and enjoy. Most people who have moved to Keizer in the past 10 or 20 years say they came here, in part, because of the quality of life and the quaint small town feel. Park of that includes having parks throughout our neighborhoods. Once an independent source of funding for the city’s park is estab- lished it will be a short step to start- ing funding additional police offi cers. Government operations is not inex- pensive, it never has been. We have to pay for the amenities we want, whether we want to or not. It is what a society does. The key is to do what the city has been doing for more than 35 years: have as much as possible at the least cost. Once tax revenue starts roll- ing in next year due to all the de- velopment in 2016, funding new offi cers should be a no-brainer, especially when paired with non- general fund revenue for the parks. Let us all choose police and parks. —LAZ editorial Free speech is not up for debate By now I’m sure you are all aware that an election is just from the around the cor- capitol ner. Hopefully you’ve registered By BILL POST to vote and may have received your ballot in the mail already. I have been out putting up a lot of lawn signs and I know I’m not the only one—you can hardly drive a block or two in Keizer with- out running into someone’s cam- paign sign. Personally, I love it. I love seeing people express their opinions like this. I had to laugh, the other day a friend told me that a person had sto- len one of my signs from their yard during the night. The funny thing was, my friend’s home security cam- era caught the guy in action. Appar- ently he had nothing better to do at 9 p.m. than to rip my sign out of the ground and smash it to pieces. In the larger scheme of things, what’s one yard sign, right? But that got me to thinking: It’s an example of how our country is shifting from being able to have honest dialogue about our differences, into a place where people are actually afraid to express themselves for fear of retali- ation. We have a very vocal minority that uses fear and shame to “silence” the majority. We are seeing this all across the country, at political rallies, universities and even in our grocery stores and it’s not exclusive to one party or any “side of the aisle.” As your state representative, one of the issues that is dearest to my heart is ensuring that our right to freely express our deeply held beliefs is pro- tected. I disagree with many of my colleagues but that doesn’t mean I have to demonize them. I am com- mitted to fi nding the areas where we do agree and working collectively to get things done for you, the voters in my district, and ultimately for all of Oregon. So what does all this mean? It means celebrating that your neigh- bor put up a lawn sign for the guy running against the candidate whose sign is in your yard – maybe you can chat about it and agree to disagree, but at least you could speak about your differences and maybe learn a thing or two. Our government may not be per- fect, but ours is the best system the world has ever seen and it functions on the premise that each of us can believe what we choose and have the freedom to respectfully express that belief. Turning in your ballot by May 17 is one way to ensure those freedoms are protected and to participate in this incredible government our founders called “the great experiment.” (Bill Post represents House Dis- trict 25. He can be reached at 503- 986-1425 or via email at rep.bill- post@state.or.us.) 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 The good news; the bad news I slowly study the newspa- per each morning. Here’s what I learned today: • The featured national crisis of the day was worry over who you might meet in a public bathroom. In my fi rst 67 years I’ve been spared a traumatic event in any public re- stroom. Well, actually, there was Japan. I was shocked to fi nd men and women using the same space. I can’t say for sure that it had no ef- fect on my character development. In North Carolina they are nervous enough to risk $4 billion in federal funding for schools. I admire the resolute... something. • We are now discovering that pregnant moms who drink lots of diet soda are twice as likely to have an obese newborn. Isn’t that some- thing? All the effort it takes to pur- chase a different soda is wasted. • Ammon Bundy continues to base his defense on the claim that the federal government doesn’t own federal lands. That continues to get a poor reception in federal court. • “What is the remainder when 999,999,999 is divided by 32?” A 13-year-old Seattle boy won $20,000 in a national math contest by taking only seven seconds to an- swer, “31.” There is still hope. • Republicans, after paving the road and putting up the signs, are now scrambling to disavow the on- coming Trump campaign bus. Who a box of soap knew that an a t m o s p h e re of name- calling, ob- struction, and disregard of facts would produce a candidate like this? • In Chicago there were eight killed and 34 wounded over Moth- er’s Day weekend. It’s hard to divine any kind of meaning in that. We were on the road on Mother’s Day and stopped briefl y at a farmer’s market in Moscow, ID. The fea- tured entertainment was a dozen or so elementary school kids per- forming as a marimba band. They were good beyond reasonable ex- pectation; polyrhythmic, precise and playing with heartfelt musicality. Raise your kids in Moscow instead of Chicago if you are allowed the choice. • Research is showing that com- puter screens change how we think. Reading from a screen promotes tunnel vision—focusing on details of the moment and missing the broad views/ideas. Details stuck in the memories of electronic readers whereas those reading paper copy were more likely to accurately ab- sorb the overall intent/message of the piece. • They are just about to elect the Philippine version of Donald Trump. This candidate has said “if you are into drugs, I will kill you.” He routinely brags about his Viagra- fed sexual triumphs and threatens to dissolve Congress and install a revo- lutionary government if legislators are uncooperative with his adminis- tration. It looks as though a Donald Trump test case will be available for us to study. • Both the published guest opin- ions discussed the near term future of the Trump juggernaut. In March the New York Times said that Donald Trump had received well more than twice the amount of free media (not paid political ads) as Hillary Clin- ton. Bernie Sanders gets measurable coverage. All others were invisible. If this election is most patterned on an American Idol template it seems less impossible that we could get a stu- pendously unqualifi ed billionaire as president. • The next several days will be nearly 15 degrees above average. April broke all temperature records. Carl Sagan said that we have never lived in a world so exquisitely de- pendent on science and technology, nor have we ever made less effort to understand it. That’s what I found out this morning. I hope for a better to- morrow. (Don Vowell gets on his soapbox regularly in the Keizertimes.) Strategy: Speak. Repeat. Repeat again Any Keizerite who watched the GOP debates may remember that Donald Trump quite often used nicknames on his competitors. He referred to Marco Rubio as “Little Marco,” Jeb Bush as “Low Energy Jeb,” “One in 41” for Kasich and, and for his biggest obstacle, “Ly- ing Ted” for Ted Cruz, among other derogatory labels he pinned on those who have stood in his way to becoming the Republican nominee. Now that he’s the presumptive GOP standard bearer, he has turned his at- tention to who he anticipates will be his chief competitor in the race for president, Hillary Clinton, whom he calls “Crooked Hillary.” In all cases, Donald Trump has used the most basic means to per- suade, that is, message repetition. As we all know when we think about the matter, repetition is used every- where as we fi nd it when we read advertisements in newspapers, listen to the radio, and watch television. So, politicians repeat the same mes- sages endlessly. Any 101-level text will inform the student of psychology with this learning. It seems too simplistic that just repeating a message should in- crease its effect, but that’s exactly what psychological research fi nds again and again. Repetition is one of the easiest and most widespread methods of persuasion. In fact, it’s so obvious that we sometimes forget how powerful it is. Further, people typically rate statements that have been repeated just once as more val- id or true than things they’ve heard for the fi rst time. All this is what psychologists call the illusion of truth effect and its arises at least partly because familiar- ity more often breeds liking (as op- posed to contempt). As we are ex- posed to a message again and again, it becomes more familiar. Because the way our minds work, what is fa- miliar is also true. Then, too, familiar things require less effort to process and that feeling of ease uncon- sciously signals truth. We are yet to witness full- blown campaigns between Trump and Clinton but it’s anticipated that on the Trump side, as he’s proven to date, there will be no limits on his use of abusive language. Meanwhile, Hillary is no patsy and will fi ght as hard as she has fought in previous campaigns. It is predicted to get very tiresome as has happened in all pre- vious presidential campaigns but it could turn at times (almost) enter- taining as has been, from the num- ber of followers he’s inspired, the case with Trump to date. It is most likely to be Trump vs. Hillary. She has already suffered the slings and arrows of Trump abuse where he’s repeatedly called her “Crooked Hillary” and a player of the “woman card” to which she has smartly replied in the latter case, “Deal me in.” One personal handi- cap that Hillary suffers from is her preference for a zone of privacy around her and her inclination to be less than transparent. For example, on campaign planes most politicians will interact for the entire fl ight with news people aboard: Hillary is known to keep to herself and not engage with the other passengers. Jill Abramson, a respected jour- nalist, who’s been the executive editor of the New York Times, and now writes for The Guardian while she also teaches part time at her alma mater, Harvard, has followed both Clintons for years and argues that Hillary Clinton’s not crooked; rather, Abramson argues that she’s fundamentally honest and trust- worthy. Abramson argues also that Hillary has not been infl uenced gene h. mcintyre by Wall Street money, infl uenced by any campaign donation, money given to the Clinton Foundation, or by speaking fees for her appear- ances before Wall Street fi rms. Yet, Abramson says that while Hillary ranks way up there on the truth-o- meter she’s accurately criticized for not being willing to practice open- ness and quickly release the tran- scripts from her Wall Street presen- tations. The period following the Civil War (1865-1900) much of the na- tion’s wealth in the U.S. kept get- ting concentrated in fewer and fewer hands with workers becom- ing serfs while government offi cials did the bidding exclusively for rich guys’ benefi t. Those who pay attention to their U.S. history lessons learn that Roo- sevelt’s tough determination, break- ing the trusts, regulating the rail- roads and other monopolies by the rich, saved the our democracy and helped to build an American middle class that’s lasted almost to this day with, more recently, those with great wealth and through Citizens Unit- ed taking over the place again. Donald J. Trump may possess the brains and ability to be an effective president and surprise the doubters but he should drop the showboat routine and sound more like a sea- worthy rescue ship that can navigate rough waters at home and abroad without capsizing. (Gene H. McIntyre’s column ap- pears weekly in the Keizertimes.) Share your opinion Email a letter to the editor (300 words) or a guest column (500 words) by noon Tuesday. Email to: publisher@keizertimes.com
