PAGE A4, KEIZERTIMES, MAY 27, 2016
KeizerOpinion
KEIZERTIMES.COM
Keizer, practice new routes now
After years of delay the
traffi c snarl that is the inter-
section of Chemawa Road
and Verda Lane will be
fi xed, starting on June 15.
The
fi x—a
traffi c
round-about—is one that
many people deem unnec-
essary or dangerous. In fact,
it is neither. A round-about is neces-
sary to keep Keizer’s increasing traffi c
moving.It is a fact that there are fewer
accidents at round-abouts than an in-
tersection with signals.
It is human nature to be anxious
about new things, but round-abouts
are not new. Once drivers who fre-
quent that intersection have traveled
the round-about, navigating it will
become second nature, much like
driving on a freeway—scary the very
fi rst time.
Before drivers get the chance to
experience the round-about they
will have to fi gure out new routes
once construction begins. The Che-
mawa-Verda intersection is slated
to be closed to all traffi c (including
pedestrians and bicycles) through
early September. This won’t be the
fi rst time Chemawa was closed off—
that road was impassable during the
construction of the new bridge over
Claggett Creek a few years ago.
Keizer drivers can
get a jump on the two
and a half month clo-
sure by utilizing alternate
routes now. The public
shouldn’t wait until June
15 to think about how
to get around that area.
The construction closure
is not coming as a surprise; it’s been
on the planning table for years. The
Public Works Department promises
there will be plenty of signage for
unsuspecting motorists; drivers who
live in Keizer should not be surprised.
Drivers who drive east on Che-
mawa Road need to switch to Lock-
haven Drive. For those who need to
get to east central Keizer, Dearborn
Avenue will be the best route.
Though road closures are frustrat-
ing, being forewarned and prepared
should greatly lessen road rage. This
round-about project calls for The
Golden Rule—drivers should be
mindful of which alternate routes
they use so as to minimize using qui-
et residential streets as an aterial.
The round-about is coming
whether motorists want it or not;
those who prepare for its construc-
tion closures now will fi nd their
commute much less stressful this
summer.
—LAZ
Wanted: Keizer’s
spirit of volunteerism
der why you
didn’t do this be-
fore…
“I was hungry
and you gave me
food…” Mat-
thew 25
Blessings.
Curt McCormack, Director
Keizer Community Food Bank
(KCFB is located at Faith Lutheran
Church, 4505 River Rd. N)
editorial
To theEditor:
The life-blood of most nonprofi ts
is found in the worker bees, the vol-
unteers.
Keizer Community Food Bank
is an all-volunteer community food
ministry sponsored by fi ve churches:
Faith Lutheran, John Knox Presby-
terian, St. Edward Catholic, Keizer
Christian and Keizer Clearlake Unit-
ed Methodist.
It takes over 100 volunteers to
manage the two openings on Mon-
day evening, Thursday morning and
Wednesday afternoon when the
Marion Polk Food Share truck comes
with our weekly food delivery. Three
to four pallets of food are dropped
off and need to be unpacked and put
away. Each church is responsible for an
opening and providing enough vol-
unteers to effi ciently serve the clients.
As is the case with many nonprofi ts,
many of the volunteers are senior
adults, since they are retired and avail-
able during the day.
The Keizer Community Food
Bank has an incredible bank of volun-
teers, many have served since the food
bank’s beginnings 25 years ago. Also,
these seniors are aging out and need
to be replaced by younger bodies with
renewed energy. Others are having
medical issues and will be in recovery
for several weeks.
Our greatest need is on Wednesday
when the delivery truck comes. We
need abled bodies that can lift 25-35
pounds. Time would be 1:30 p.m. to
about 3, depending on when the truck
arrives. We can also use cart drivers on
Monday evening (6-7:30p.m.) and
Thursday morning (9:30 a.m.-11a.m.)
to help clients out to their cars and
unload the food.
Looking for a volunteer activity?
Give us a try. It may not suit your
needs, but then again, it may touch
your soul in a way that you will won-
letters
Executive decisions
out of control
To the Editor:
On May 13, King Obama issued a
decree that every public school in the
nation is to accommodate transgender
students.
Boys who identify as girls and vice
versa must be allowed to use the bath-
rooms, locker rooms and shower stalls
of their choosing. And they must also
be allowed to play on the sports teams
of their choosing.
This is one more example where
King Obama bypasses Congress to
make a sweeping decree that takes
away the rights of privacy and safety
of our citizens. In this case, it puts our
teenage girls at risk in the name of
“political correctness.”
And this is not all. School districts
that dare to defy the administration’s
directive will face lawsuits and lose
millions of dollars in federal funding.
In the case of North Carolina stand-
ing up to King Obama, the Obama
administration responded by giving
them only three days to conform to
their decree or face losing federal
funding for education and threatening
the potential of withholding federal
transportation funding as well.
Where is the outrage about a fed-
eral government that believes it can
bully states into doing anything they
want without congressional approval?
John Russell
Salem
Keizertimes
Wheatland Publishing Corp. • 142 Chemawa Road N. • Keizer, Oregon 97303
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Lyndon A. Zaitz, Editor & Publisher
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Where there’s smoke, there’s fi re
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW
Mark Zuckerberg and his massive
social-media site Facebook have come
under strong criticism for allegedly
suppressing stories of interest for con-
servative readers from its infl uential
“trending” news section. Facebook
has roughly 1.6 billion users world-
wide, 167 million of whom are in the
United States. Its “trending” section
is therefore a powerful political infl u-
ence.
Zuckerberg has denied the charg-
es, and he will meet this week with
a handful of conservatives to discuss
allegations that Facebook’s “news cu-
rators” have manipulated its list of sto-
ries. The way it works at Facebook is
that this powerful group of curators,
or editors, who have access to a ranked
list of trending topics generated by the
company’s algorithms, control the
content of the trending-news sec-
tion. In effect, these curators exercise
gatekeeping powers, which amount
to political news-making powers that
are transmitted to Facebook’s massive
audience. Even The New York Times
published an article this week titled
“Social media fi nds new role as news
and entertainment curator.”
The anti-conservative curating
bias was fi rst reported by the tech
blog Gizmodo. After that, a number
of conservative outlets chimed in that
the social-media giant has suppressed
conservative views and related sto-
ries. This triggered news reports by
the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian,
The New York
Times,
and
websites The
Hill and Breit-
bart.
Among the
conser vatives
slated to attend
the Zuckerberg
meeting are Glenn Beck, Dana Perino
of Fox News, Arthur Brooks of the
American Enterprise Institute, senior
Donald Trump campaign aide Barry
Bennett and former Romney digital
director Zac Moffatt.
How these folks were picked for
the meeting is anyone’s guess. And
what exactly is expected to come out
of this meeting is unclear. It seems
more like a public-relations gambit
by Zuckerberg, who previously said
Facebook will investigate all the con-
servative charges.
Curiously, last March, Zuckerberg
gave a speech at a Facebook confer-
ence where he blasted Donald Trump
and his policies. Also curious, Hillary
Clinton, by a wide margin, has re-
ceived the bulk of political donations
from Facebook employees in this
election cycle.
According to Breitbart, data
from the Federal Election Commis-
sion show that Facebook staff gave
$114,000 to Hillary Clinton. The
next-closest recipient of political
money was former Republican presi-
dential candidate Marco Rubio. He
only got $16,604.
other
views
Tom Stocky, the head of the trend-
ing-topics section at Facebook, maxed
out with an individual donation of
$2,700 to Hillary Clinton. The Hill
website found that roughly 78 Face-
book employees -- from engineering,
communications, public policy, strat-
egy, marketing, human resources and
other areas -- donated to Clinton.
Meanwhile, Republican National
Committee chairman Reince Priebus
has tweeted, “Facebook must answer
for conservative censorship.” Sen. John
Thune (R-S.D.), who is chairman
of the Senate Committee on Com-
merce, warned Facebook of the need
for consumer protection and an open
Internet, and according to The Wall
Street Journal Thune has sent a letter
to Zuckerberg asking how the com-
pany chooses its trending topics and
who is ultimately responsible. There
are also a number of academics who
have called for full transparency in the
Facebook news process.
Of course, Facebook is a private
company, and therefore is entitled to
whatever political biases it holds. But
given its gigantic scope and its power
over so many people, and consider-
ing the mounting infl uence of all the
social-media outlets, this is a very seri-
ous story.
We’ll see what comes out of this
week’s meeting. But as the American
proverb goes: Where there’s smoke,
there’s fi re.
(Creators Syndicate)
The lessons still resound about D-Day
During my high school years,
reading U.S. history, I got lessons
in what it means to control one’s
fear enough to proceed with an act
of bravery. That instance of insight
occurred when I read and got in
touch with what it must have been
like to reach the shore on a landing
craft off northwest France and face
the fi re power of the greatest of the
world’s war machines at that time—
the Nazi war machine—waiting
for Allied troops to set foot on land.
The Battle of Dunkirk had
failed miserably in the spring of
1940, and that fact must have add-
ed to the consternation of the Al-
lied troops. Nevertheless, on June
6, 1944, more than 160,000 Al-
lied troops landed along a 50-mile
stretch of heavily fortifi ed French
coastline to fi ght Nazi Germany
on the beaches of Normandy. Gen-
eral Dwight D. Eisenhower named
it Operation Overlord and referred
to the action as a crusade in which
“we will accept nothing less than
full victory.”
In the early hours of that fate-
ful day, more than 5,000 ships and
13,000 aircraft supported the D-Day
invasion. Somewhat of a surprise
due to past failures, by day’s end the
Allies had established a foot-hold
on continental Europe. However,
what was hoped to be avoided by
those waiting to go ashore that day,
9,000 Allied soldiers were killed or
wounded. Their sacrifi ce enabled
100,000 soldiers to begin the pain-
fully slow slog across Europe to de-
feat Adolf Hitler’s well-trained and
impressively armed troops.
More Americans went to church
back then than is true today, mak-
ing it possible for those brave young
men to jump into the English
Channel and wade ashore or para-
chute out of planes into a blister-
ing onslaught of machine guns and
mortar blasts. Besides prayer and the
belief that, if killed, one would go to
Heaven, there was by that point in
the war considerable hatred of Hit-
ler and Nazi Germany that might
have helped those to proceed who,
under normal conditions, would
gene h.
mcintyre
have refused to
wade into the
abyss although
training and the
consequence of
a court mar-
tial were prob-
ably in the mix
of motivations.
While the weather on June 6
waxed and waned between storm
and tempered calm, Eisenhower,
with cautious optimism, at 9:45 p.m.
on June 5, told his staff, “Let’s go.”
Every soldier, sailor and airman
received a letter from Eisenhow-
er and also listened to his radio ad-
dress, both of which reminded the
men that the eyes of the world were
upon them and that their opponents
would fi ght savagely, exhorted them
to be brave, show their devotion to
duty, and accept nothing but victory.
At the time, the American people
were later informed, Eisenhower
had written a note in which he ac-
cepted full blame should the mission
fail. The note remained crumpled
up in his pocket as the events of
June 6, while costly for sure, secured
a tenuous hold on Normandy but
succeeded enough to begin the long
and bloody push to Berlin.
Later Eisenhower asked the Amer-
ican people to join him in prayer.
Personally, with the stakes so high,
it probably would have surprised no
one to learn that Eisenhower spent
considerable time that night and the
next on his knees imploring the Al-
mighty’s help for the greatest expe-
ditionary
military ef-
fort known
in world
history.
Eisen-
hower was
a supreme-
ly grateful
petitioner
to God as
he dem-
onstrated
during his
presidency
from 1953
to 1961. It was under the Eisen-
hower administration that the words
“Under God” were added to the
pledge of allegiance, while, during
his second term, that the words “In
God We Trust” were added to U.S.
paper currency. Another indicator
of his strong religious feelings was
his inauguration where he invited
his cabinet nominees to a special re-
ligious service at the National Pres-
byterian Church the morning of the
inauguration: Every previous presi-
dent had privately attended religious
services on the day of his inaugura-
tion. He became the fi rst president
to be baptized while in offi ce; he
also instituted the fi rst-ever prayer-
at-start of his cabinet meetings.
What’s gone before has made us
what we are today. When thinking
about World War II the Allies fi nal-
ly won in August, 1945, I give thanks
to God Almighty and an American
people proceeding me who loved
their country enough to risk their
lives to save it.
Let us recognize and give thanks
on June 6, 2016, for what our
brave troops achieved in Europe,
saving us from a horrible fate. Then,
too, we also must remember those
heroically brave American troops
who waded ashore onto heavily for-
tifi ed, nearly impregnable Japanese-
held Pacifi c Islands between Pearl
Harbor in December, 1941 and
Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August,
1945.
(Gene H. McIntyre’s column ap-
pears weekly in the Keizertimes.)