PAGE A4, KEIZERTIMES, AUGUST 5, 2016
KeizerOpinion
KEIZERTIMES.COM
Who are we planning for?
Commercial develop-
ment in Keizer, especially
along its main thorough-
fare, River Road, is un-
even at best. Undeniably
there is new development:
the new Starbucks with a
drive through; Willamette
Valley Appliance (nee
Mole’s) has remodeled and relocated
to a larger space at River Road and
Sunset Drive.
The new owners of Schoolhouse
Square, at River and Chemawa
Roads, is recruiting new tenants to
the once-fading shopping center.
A new building pad will be con-
structed at the southeast corner of
the property which will house two
businesses new to Keizer—Jersey
Mike’s restaurant and The Human
Bean coffee shop. BFit moved into
Schoolhouse Square earlier this year.
But Keizer’s main commercial
strip still has some big holes to fi ll.
Creekside Center (River Road and
Lockhaven Drive) has slowly been
slipping into irrelavancy with the
loss of an anchor grocery store as
well as other small businesses.
River Road has been a main fo-
cus of the city’s Economic Devel-
opment Commission with Cherry
Avenue also getting some attention.
There are some realities that people
need to remember: Keizer and its
commission can wish all they want
for certain types of retailers, devel-
opments and businesses that will
bring needed jobs into our city lim-
its, however they have few arrows
in their quiver to use to make that
happen.
Unlike cities and counties across
the country, Keizer does not have tax
breaks to offer, no discounts on busi-
ness licenses. All the city has to offer
is some leeway on costs of required
city permits. The tools that need to
be welded are either politically dif-
fi cult or controversial. The politically
diffi cult route is to expand the Ur-
ban Growth Boundary to the north
of city limits. Any expansion requires
the acquiesance of Salem,
Marion County and Polk
County.
The contro-
versial route is to rezone
parts of the city to allow
certain types of construc-
tion and development.
The Economic De-
velopment Commission
and other groups interested in the
growth of Keizer need to change
their focus from what to build to
who and how to attract the types of
businesses that will offer high wage
jobs for Keizer residents. How can
we discuss building when we do not
know who will want them.
We have strongly advocated for
the city, the commission and the
Chamber of Commerce to actively
recruit new business. We call for a
reconcerted effort. The Economic
Development Commission part-
nering with the Keizer Chamber of
Commerce should develop a short
list of the categories of business that
can be persuaded to come to Keizer.
The process starts with asking
businesses what would make them
locate here. What criteria needs to
be met before they will commit to
moving or building here? We must
address the answers to those ques-
tions. Is it a lack of large-scale de-
velopable land? Is it a lack of skilled
labor? Is it a question of shipping
facilities? Keizer needs to get the an-
swers and plan from there.
Could Keizer be home to a large
call center or mega-warehouse if we
had hundreds of acres to develop? If
so, that tells us we need to redouble
efforts to expand the Urban Growth
Boundary and add millions of dol-
lars to the city’s tax base not to men-
tion hunderds of jobs.
Let’s not discuss what to build in
Keizer today. Let us open a dialogue
with the businesses Keizer wants
tomorrow. Attracting light industry,
biotech and medical should be the
focus of any economic development
plans.
—LAZ
Join me,
vote for Gary
Johnson
governor in the country
combined, leaving the
state with new schools,
hospitals,
highways,
bridges, and a billion
dollar surplus. All with-
out raising taxes a penny.
Like Johnson, Bill
Weld also served as a
two-term governor but in the state
of Massachusetts. He was also a Re-
publican in a Democrat state and
was reelected with 70 percent of the
vote - the highest percentage ever
in that state. He cut spending, elimi-
nated borrowing, balanced the state
budget, reformed Medicaid, and cut
taxes - never once raising them.
Please carefully consider the de-
cision we have at hand. Fifty percent
of Americans aren’t in the Republi-
can or Democratic parties. Why are
our only options always one or the
other? Join me, and support Liber-
tarians Gary Johnson and Bill Weld
come November.
Luke Peets
Monmouth
editorial
letters
To the Editor:
To the Republicans,
Democrats, and Indepen-
dents who feel cheated
and do not want to vote for either
of the nominees of the two major
parties, I urge you not to waste your
vote on Donald Trump or Hillary
Clinton, but to turn to a viable third
option: Gary Johnson, the nominee
for the Libertarian Party, and his
running mate, Bill Weld.
Governor Gary Johnson is the
only candidate in this election who
makes sense on the issues impor-
tant for this country. He advocates
an agenda that stands on the prin-
ciple of limited government, in both
economic and social life. Adhering
to the Constitution, he views free-
dom as the guiding principle of his
campaign for the presidency and
beyond.
Johnson served as a two-term
governor of New Mexico—a Re-
publican in a Democrat state—and
oversaw the most successful period
of growth in the state’s history. As
governor he cut spending, balanced
the budget, and vetoed more waste-
ful spending bills than every other
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Will GOP repudiate Trump’s cruelty?
By E.J. DIONNE JR.
Republican
politi-
cians face a choice. They
can accept Hillary Clin-
ton’s invitation to aban-
don Donald Trump and
prevent a redefi nition
of their party as a haven
for bigotry. Or they can
prop Trump up, try to maximize his
vote—and thereby tarnish them-
selves for a generation.
If there were any doubts about
Trump’s disqualifying lack of simple
decency and empathy, he resolved
them in an interview on ABC
News last weekend with a charac-
teristically cruel and self-centered
attack on Khizr and Ghazala Khan,
an American Muslim couple whose
son, Army Capt. Humayun Khan,
was killed in the line of duty in Iraq.
With his wife by his side, Khizr
Khan delivered what was the most
devastating attack on Trump dur-
ing the Democratic National Con-
vention. Khan directly challenged
Trump’s strongman ignorance: “Let
me ask you, have you even read the
United States Constitution? I will
gladly lend you my copy.” And he
said this of Trump: “You have sacri-
fi ced nothing and no one.”
Most politicians—most human
beings—would have humbly de-
clared that no sacrifi ce is compa-
rable to losing a son or daughter
in service to the nation. Instead,
Trump said he had made many
sacrifi ces because (I’m not making
this up) he “created thousands and
thousands of jobs.” He said of Khizr
Khan’s speech: “Who wrote that?
Did Hillary’s scriptwriters write it?”
And then he broke new ground,
even for him, in heartlessness. “His
wife,” Trump said, “if you look at
his wife, she was standing there. She
had nothing to say. She probably,
maybe she wasn’t allowed
to have something to say.”
Every Republican pol-
itician and commentator
who continues to say that
Trump is a superior or
even morally equivalent
choice to Hillary Clinton
will now own their tem-
porary leader’s brutality for the rest
of their political careers.
Many humane Republicans
know this. Ohio Gov. John Kasich
spoke for them when he tweeted
that “there’s only one way to talk
about Gold Star parents: with hon-
or and respect.”
This is a moment of truth for
GOP leaders who passively ac-
cepted and sometimes encouraged
an extremism that traffi cked in
religious and racial prejudice and
painted President Obama as an il-
legitimate, power-hungry leader.
The party’s traditional chief-
tains assumed they could use these
themes to rally an angry, aging base
of white voters while keeping the
forces of right-wing radicalism un-
der control. They did not anticipate
Trump. He spent years courting
the far right with his charges that
Obama was born abroad and set
himself up in contrast to an estab-
lishment that cynically exploited its
feelings.
Now, in Ronald Reagan’s re-
vered phrase, comes a time for
choosing. House Speaker Paul
Ryan and Senate Majority Lead-
er Mitch McConnell look feeble
and vacillating when they try to
distance themselves from Trump
outrages while maintaining their
support for his election. They em-
body a calculating timidity as they
worry about Trump’s impact on
their party while also fearing for
the electoral chances of the rest of
other
views
their candidates if they push away
Trump’s constituency.
Khizr Khan called their bluff in
an interview on Friday with MS-
NBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell: “This
is a moral imperative for both lead-
ers, to say to him, ‘Enough.’” Had
Trump been watching, he would
have known that Ghazala Khan also
spoke out. Her reticence at the con-
vention, she explained, arose from
grief over her lost son that made it
diffi cult even to talk about him. She
powerfully made her point again in
an essay published online Sunday
morning by The Washington Post.
Up to now, it has fallen largely to
conservative intellectuals and for-
mer Republican offi cials to express
their horror over Trump’s amoral
approach to politics, his incoherent,
dictator-friendly foreign policy, and
his racist, exclusionary defi nition of
what it means to be an American.
By contrasting Reagan’s “Morn-
ing in America” to Trump’s “Mid-
night in America,” Clinton invited
such conservatives to abide a term
of her leadership in order to avoid
the damage a self-involved practi-
tioner of a nasty brand of fl imfl am
could do to their cause and their
country.
Clinton Republicans and ex-
Republicans could thus be this
generation’s Reagan Democrats.
In repudiating Trump for Clinton,
they will not be abandoning their
ideology. They will be making a
moral statement that their move-
ment will not tolerate an oppor-
tunist so corrupt and so vile that,
when given a choice, he pandered
to religious intolerance rather than
honoring the sacrifi ce of a brave
young American.
(Washington
Group)
Post
Writers
Both candidates leave one to wonder
The fanciest word I
found to label myself dur-
ing the past two weeks is
masochist or a person who
is gratifi ed by self-imposed
pain. While I did not sit
glued to a TV through-
out every minute of the
two convention’s proceedings, I did
muster the fortitude, by what’s be-
lieved self-denied means, to listen to
almost every word each evening.
The Democratic nominee, Hill-
ary Clinton, came as no real surprise
although it was evident that the
more charismatic, Bernie Sanders,
gave her, literally and fi guratively, a
run for her money. So many of my
fellow citizens hold Hillary in low
regard because she is unfavorably
viewed by them beyond the email
scandal and Benghazi. Personally, I
have no reason to hold that view be-
cause she has never hurt me person-
ally or fi nancially.
What Hillary lacks, in my opin-
ion, is charisma. In a couple of words,
while she’s undoubtedly bright and
by all accounts a hard worker, she
does not possess the presentation
and speaking skills that have claimed
the “high ground” by so many can-
didates who’ve stood for election for
president. Her menu for success in
the Oval Offi ce looks like another
four years of Barack Obama. How-
ever, to grant her full due, Sanders’
message has apparently forced her
to go further “left” than would have
been the case if she’d not had Bernie
snapping at her heels.
Now, to one extent or another,
because she’s a woman, if the U.S.
Senate and House remain under the
control of the GOP, she will predict-
ably have about the same amount of
success with Congress that President
Obama realized. And there will be
those Republicans who,
right up front, will dedi-
cate their political lives
to stopping her every
effort to push a pro-
gressive agenda includ-
ing free college tuition
for those who qualify
and national health in-
surance. It may even
be that some Republi-
cans want life breathed
into free tuition or en-
hanced Obamacare, but
they never want her to
get credit for it or any
other likely vote-getter.
I may be too unfor-
giving of Bill Clinton,
but I was set off again
when his Wednesday
evening fi ctional in-
vention began with “I
met a girl.” His entire
story of a near fairy
tale happy marriage
with Hillary left out the
details that will always
wreck his try to make a
silk purse out of a sow’s
ear. He’s been proven
time and again, while
married to Hillary, to
be a unreformed wom-
anizer who apparently chased ev-
ery member of the opposite sex he
found attractive. He could not even
abstain from his bad habit when as
president he ruined the life of an
intern and came within a stone’s
throw of being impeached. He may
be less amorous with advancing age,
but I would discourage any daugh-
ter of mine from an internship in
the White House should Hillary be
elected.
But this big part of Hillary’s life
leaves me wondering how in the
dickens, if she possesses an ounce of
self-respect and personal integrity,
she has been able to put up with
Bill the cad and his chronic chas-
ing after other women. This issue
is the reason I feel a lack of trust
about Hillary, that is, that she will do
and pretend anything to place her-
self in a position to gain more wealth
and power. Just a sad person inside
who will always act out of base self-
interest rather than national concern.
Then there’s The Donald. What
motivates his behaviors remains for
me the same way Winston Churchill
referred to Russia years ago: A rid-
dle wrapped in a mystery inside an
enigma. Does this guy really want
to be president? His negativity over
the past year regarding almost ev-
eryone and everything, except his
current wife, his children and, above
all, himself, have been wholly de-
rogatory and without even a hint
of redeeming value as he mocked
a person with a disability, his con-
gene h.
mcintyre
tempt for Hispanics, his lack of re-
spect for the U.S. Constitution,
specifi cally when it takes issue with
religious freedom, and, among other
disgusting views, the racism he re-
vealed when he criticized a judge in
a case brought against him as being
unqualifi ed because, although Amer-
ican citizen, his parents came to the
U.S. from Mexico.
Trump’s acceptance speech two
weeks ago as the GOP nominee came
across to me as a very angry tirade
that tells us that everything is cur-
rently wrong in our country and he
is the only one who can repair it and
return us, by his means, to our lost
glory. He seems neither Democrat
nor Republican; rather, an oligarch
who will rule from Trump Tower
not bothering himself to occupy the
White House—for traditional exec-
utive role governing—or respect our
other branches of government. A
short list best describes him: jerk,
liar and want-to-be dictator with
an uncanny resemblance to Benito
Mussolini.
The American political scene is so
bereft of promise and good purpose
now that I fi nd it diffi cult to come up
with a name that might take the
place of a Clinton or a Trump and
save us from our too-many-bam-
boozled selves. All the encouraging,
high-spirited words out of Cleveland
and Philadelphia remind me of the
multitude of balloons and confetti
that fell from the rafters on last night
of each convention: even before the
cheering crowds left their respective
buildings, the over-sized red, white
and blue infl ated objects that fell
from the rafters had been popped
and swept up with the rest of the
trash.
(Gene McIntyre’s column appears
weekly in the Keizertimes.)