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
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Lyndon A. Zaitz, Editor & Publisher
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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.)
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