PAGE A4, KEIZERTIMES, JULY 8, 2016
KeizerOpinion
KEIZERTIMES.COM
Put a market at transit center
There have been sev-
eral attempts in the past
to bring a farmers market
to Keizer. The last itera-
tion was at Chalmers Jones
Park—behind the Keizer
Civic Center. That space is
very nice public square but
it is behind the center.
There is a better space to try a
market again, one that would be
highly visible and be accessible to
thousands of vehicles: Salem-Keizer
Transit’s center at Keizer Station. It’s
improbable that weekend service for
the region’s Cherriots buses will be-
gin again anytime soon, leaving the
transit center empty and unused.
There is space enough to plat
many booths selling produce, arts and
crafts. There is room for the market
plus parking for customers. There is
parking in Keizer Station across the
railroad tracks as well.
Every retail business knows that
one key to success is location. A mar-
ket at the transit center would be
visible from every roadway in that
area. With the appropriate signage it
would be diffi cult to ignore and its
location there would almost guaran-
tee that vendors would see the type
of customer traffi c they need.
The center is owned and main-
tained by Salem-Keizer Transit. Any
use other than for its intended pur-
pose will call for intergovernmen-
tal talks and an agreement. There
are farmers markets throughout the
Northwest, many in public spaces
such as closed off streets
or public squares. The
transit district would have
to be compensated and
be assured that a market
would not damage the
infrastructure there. The
comfort station would
not have to be open; por-
table toilets would do just as well.
It is too easy for governments to
get territorial over their assets, but
the transit center is owned by the
taxpayers. There should be no turf
wars, only a desire to see an under
used center have life on the week-
ends.
The city itself should not run the
market, that should be left to a busi-
ness organization, such as the Keizer
Chamber of Commerce. Vendors can
be charged a long-term fee (13 weeks
and more) or a one-time fee, but the
market will work best if consumers
know if they go they will fi nd the
produce or crafts they want. Consis-
tency in vendors is as a major part of
a market as is the location.
Can Keizer have a farmers mar-
ket? Some say that there is already a
good Saturday market in downtown
Salem. That should not be a deter-
rent—there are more than 12,000
households in Keizer and many more
in northeast Salem and north Marion
County. With the right management
and marketing Keizer can turn an
empty transit center lot into a bus-
tling, vibrant market.
—LAZ
Church thanks
community
There is only one per-
son running for governor
that is willing to make
the changes that benefi t
the people of the state
of Oregon. Bud Pierce is
that person. He is smart,
understanding and not
beholden to any special
interest groups. He is not a career
politician, and is willing to listen to
the people of Oregon with an open
door policy.
Bud Pierce is willing to debate
Kate Brown, who seems to be hid-
ing from the people of Oregon. Kate
Brown has turned down debating
with Dr. Bud Pierce, stating she is too
busy. Dr. Pierce is still taking care of
his oncology practice, as well as go-
ing to speak to groups and listening
to people’s concerns. Kate Brown
seems to not be able to make the
tough decisions or multi-task. Bud
Pierce has made these hard decisions
many times in his career. He has been
asked many times to speak on these
matters.
Pierce has been all over the state
talking to Oregonians about their
needs, their concerns and what they
expect from their governor. When
was the last time Kate Brown trav-
eled the state or visited any small
town outside of the Portland metro
area?
Phil Stephens
Salem
editorial
letters
To the Editor:
Truth
Tabernacle
Church and Truth Taber-
nacle Christian Academy
would like to express our
gratitude to the communities of Sa-
lem & Keizer for their donations to
our 18th Annual 30 Kilometer Bike-
A-Thon that was held on June 4th.
It was a tremendous success and we
thank you for your support.
Jessica M. Anderson
Keizer
Support for
Bud Pierce
To the Editor:
As a native Oregonian, I have
become disappointed with my state
government. There was a time when
our state government listened to the
people of Oregon. But in the last
20 plus years those elected (and ap-
pointed) have been controlled by big
money and special interest groups.
The mind-set seems to be if the state
needs money let’s tax the people
even if we have to hide the tax.
No matter what your political
leaning is, you need to take a look
at how our state government is be-
ing run. You will agree it is time for
a change… new ideas… new vision.
Keizertimes
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Confronting both nostalgia and amnesia
By E.J. DIONNE JR.
The haunting U2 lyric, “I still
haven’t found what I’m looking for,”
captures what many Americans seem
to feel about politics in 2016. And a
lot of us are looking backward.
Donald Trump’s pledge to make
our country great again captures the
longing of some of his supporters for
a time when our country was less di-
verse—and when a less open global
market created the circumstances for
a large, well-paid working class.
Trump doesn’t talk about it, but
incomes also rose because of a robust
union movement. The era of labor
power feeds nostalgia on the left for
the glory days that ran from the 1940s
through the 1960s when living wages
underwrote strong families and up-
ward mobility.
The postwar era “was an extraor-
dinarily good time to be a worker,”
says the historian Jefferson Cowie.
“For the very fi rst time in U.S. his-
tory, business, the government, and
workers all accepted unions and col-
lective bargaining as legitimate pillars
of American working life.”
“As a result,” he writes in The
Great Exception: The New Deal and the
Limits of American Politics, one of the
year’s most important political books,
“more income, more equality, more
optimism, more leisure, more con-
sumer goods, more travel, more en-
tertainment, more expansive homes,
and more education were all available
... to regular people than at any other
time in world history.”
But as Cowie’s title suggests, he
sees the New Deal’s arrangements as
the consequence of an exceptional
pushback against our historical ten-
dency to resist collective solutions.
“Moral reform” and “corporate pow-
er,” he says, are more dominant in our
story.
In addition,
the New Deal’s
dependence
on the white
South
made
FDR’s admin-
istration
ex-
tremely timid
on justice for
African-Americans. When the logic
of American liberalism led to civil
rights, the old coalition shattered.
And then there were the effects of
restrictive immigration laws passed
before Roosevelt took offi ce. “The
unintended result of a conservative
racial immigration policy,” Cowie
writes, “was the cohesion necessary
for the most liberal period in Ameri-
can history.”
It’s no wonder that those old ani-
mosities have come roaring back: In
1970, as the New Deal era began its
decline, only 4.7 percent of Ameri-
cans were foreign born; in 2013, the
percentage was 13.1 percent, back up
to levels at the turn of the last century.
Progressives, Cowie argues, should
stop pretending that the New Deal
era is easily replicable. They need to
understand how many stars had to
align to make its breakthroughs pos-
sible. “Our present politics,” he con-
cludes, “ought not be misled by free-
wheeling historical analogies based
on an extraordinarily unique period
in American history.”
The Great Exception is a healthy
splash of cold water in the face of
a nostalgic liberalism. But as Sam
Rosenfeld of Wesleyan University
has noted, the constraints on policies
of a New Deal sort are not uniquely
American: Western European social
democracy faces some of the same
quandaries that confront pro-labor
Democrats.
Moreover, if nostalgia can be prob-
other
views
lematic, two of the country’s shrewd-
est students of politics and social pol-
icy, Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson,
argue that amnesia is a problem, too.
“We are told that the United States
got rich in spite of government,” they
write, “when the truth is closer to the
opposite: The United States got rich
because it got government more or
less right.”
In American Amnesia: How the
War on Government Led Us to Forget
What Made America Prosper, they go
back even before the New Deal to
argue that a mixed economy involv-
ing both a strong government and a
strong private sector “marked Amer-
ica’s long and extraordinary ascent.”
It allowed us to be “the fi rst middle-
class nation, the runaway leader in
high school and then college gradua-
tion rates, the unrivaled champion in
medical innovation and basic scien-
tifi c research.”
Too often, we discuss “gridlock”
and “polarization” as if everybody
and thus nobody is to blame for
them. Hacker and Pierson rightly see
Washington’s stalemate as the prod-
uct of a right-wing ideology that has
moved us away from the tradition of
Alexander Hamilton, Henry Clay and
Abraham Lincoln. This great trium-
virate celebrated “a constructive and
mutually benefi cial tension between
markets and government” rather than
pitting them in a “jealous rivalry.”
It ought to be possible to fi ght
both nostalgia and amnesia. New
Dealism, as Cowie argues, is not the
only model for progressives. And
many who saw themselves as con-
servative once acknowledged the
constructive power of government.
You don’t have to long for some lost
golden era to believe that we Ameri-
cans can do better—again.
(Washington Post Writers Group)
Public offi cials should set standard
Sometimes, a two-word descrip-
tive phrase can communicate equal
to a 100 word paragraph. Consider
the phrase “political hack.” It can be
used in a number of contexts but in
this column it references a political
offi ce holder who may be best de-
scribed as having displayed ethically-
defi cient behavior.
Case in point comes from a news-
paper story out of Salem reporting
that State Rep. Jodi Hack (R-Sa-
lem) very likely overstepped ethical
boundaries for legislators. The mat-
ter’s origin is a Portland police offi -
cer, Laurent Bonczijk, who’s said that
Hack confronted him about traffi c
tickets issued to her 22-year-old son.
We learn that Hack’s son, Reece
Hack, was involved in a crash on I-5
in Portland immediately south of the
Marquam Bridge. He was cited at
that place for careless driving, driving
without a license and failure to carry
proof of insurance and registration.
Further, Reese Hack already had
his license suspended for not paying
fi nes from previous violations.
The offi cer was stopped on
his way to the Multnomah County
Courthouse when Hack and her
son confronted him. The offi cer re-
ports that the conversation did not
go well, saying that Hack was “ex-
tremely rude” and that she was try-
ing to impress upon him the impor-
tance of her offi ce-holding status and
that he “better be dismissing tickets”
because she is a state legislator and
“how dare you ticket my son.”
According to the offi cer there
was more from Hack who refer-
enced the offi cer as “a jerk right
out of the gate,” accusing Bonczijk
of profi ling her son “because he’s
an athlete,” (though, says the offi cer,
he had no way of knowing that her
son was an ath-
lete). Facts in
the matter now
known is that
Reece Hack
is a 6 foot 2
inch tall fresh-
man on a Wil-
lamette Uni-
versity Bearcats team. In the course
of the courthouse conversation,
Hack displayed a letter from the Or-
egon DMV, identifying Hack as a
legislator who displayed a provision-
al driver’s license originally issued
to her 22-year old when he was 18.
Hack says she is totally innocent
and never would have done anything
untoward by trying to use her leg-
islator status to reverse the wheels
of justice. Further, Hack says she
will “come out swinging” if there’s
any attempt to use it against her and
she is “not going to back off.”
An authority contacted regarding
this matter, Hana Callahan, director
of the government ethics program at
Markkula Center for Applied Ethics
at Santa Clara University, is reported
to have said that this “case raises red
fl ags because even the appearance
of impropriety by a public offi cial
is
unethical
on its own.”
Salem’s Gatti
Law Firm at-
torney Chris
Best said that
“if a legislator
acting within
their position
as public offi -
cial compelled
a police offi -
cer to absolve
parking fi nes
then there is
gene h.
mcintyre
‘no doubt’ that would constitute an
abuse of power.”
Due to the gravity of what’s been
reported about Rep. Hack, hope is
that the Oregon Government Ethics
Commission will investigate Bon-
czijk’s report, offi cial complaint or
not. Should the offi cer’s testimony
prove verifi able, at the very least,
Rep. Hack should be sent to an in-
tensive course on public offi cial eth-
ics while it would appear she could
also use some heads-up on what it
means to be a responsible parent.
Further, accuracy prevailing in the
case of Hack’s behavior, this is a rep-
resentative who should fi nd some-
thing else to do.
In closing here, my view of po-
lice work is that it is a tough at best
and, at worst, costs police offi cers
their very lives. That anyone would
use their political position to try to
push an offi cer around for the ben-
efi t of an apparently wayward family
member results in considerable an-
ger here. Then, too, if all’s true, the
Hack example is another example of
what’s gone so very haywire among
so many young people in today’s
American society.
(Gene H. McIntyre’s column ap-
pears weekly in the Keizertimes.)