PAGE A4, KEIZERTIMES, NOVEMBER 4, 2016
KeizerOpinion
KEIZERTIMES.COM
What’s a political
junkie to think?
By LYNDON ZAITZ
Thanks to my dad, Clar-
ence, who owned the Keiz-
er News in the 1960s and
was then the United Press
International bureau chief
at the capitol building, I’ve
been a political junkie since
I was a young lad.
The politics of campaigns, elec-
tions, operations and governance. My
little cup runneth over during presi-
dential election years, especially if it
was a tight race where the outcome
would not be sure until late election
night.
The presidential election of 2016
has got me all verklempt. The elec-
tion campaign really began the day
after the 2012 race. At that time Jeb
Bush was the frontrunner who would
use his name, connections and mil-
lions of dollars to grab the Republican
nomination and follow his father and
brother into the Oval Offi ce.
Hillary Clinton would sail to the
Democratic nomination and would be
elected handily.
The voters in both parties had dif-
ferent ideas. Bush was out of the race
early, that’s $100 million down the
drain. Donald J. Trump tapped into
the anger and anxiety of the Repub-
lican primary and caucus voters. He
was discounted as a viable candidate
for months by the media, even after
many missteps, offensive remarks and
no set agenda. At the outset he faced
16 other candidates and bested them
all. The pundits and media dismissed
them at their own peril and now re-
port every word he utters.
Clinton faced a Socialist senator
from a small New England state (it has
only 4 electoral votes) and a former
governor of Maryland. The expected
easy run to the Democratic nomi-
nation ran into a wall called Bernie
Sanders.
In the end we get one expected
nominee and one nobody thought
could get anywhere near the White
House.
As if the primaries weren’t ex-
hausting enough, the general election
campaign—which has been going
on since early summer—is beyond
the pale. The ceaseless polling num-
bers puts Hillary up one day, then it’s
Trump in the lead. Of course the elec-
tion is 51 elections; it doesn’t matter
who is ahead in national polls.
Oregon is a not a battleground
state so we have be spared the end-
less onslaught of television ads, mail-
ers, robocalls and volunteers knocking
on our doors. Those poor people in
Ohio, Florida and other states where
the election will be decided.
Thankfully there are
only a few days before
Election Day, because I
think I’m overdosing on
politics. I’ve been horrifi ed
by some of the things that
have come to pass. What
happened to the great ex-
periment that is the Unit-
ed States of America that citizens are
threatening revolution if their candi-
date doesn’t win. America doesn’t do
that, and it wouldn’t do that if it wasn’t
being given permission to do that by
one of the candidates and some of the
media news entertainers.
Talk of a rigged election has gone
mainstream; it used to be inside po-
liticos who’d talk like that. Experts say
that rigging an election with more
than 100 million votes would be a nif-
ty trick worthy of a McGyver or the
Mission Impossible Force. But when
the Republican candidate tells his ra-
bid supporters that if he doesn’t win it
will only be because the election was
rigged.
Politics was, at one time, a gentle-
man’s game. Now it has devolved into
a morass of tit-for-tat charges, accusa-
tions and fl at-out untruths.
It is very frightening when mem-
bers of Congress declare that if the
Democrat wins the presidency, her
choices for the Supreme Court and
other federal courts will get no hear-
ing at all. President Obama‘s nomina-
tion for the high court has been twist-
ing in limbo for months.
A president has to be the leader of
all Americans, not just their supporters.
With the country dangerously divid-
ed, there doesn’t seem to be a path to
cooperation and a coming together as
one nation. Whoever wins on Tuesday,
we will see years of investigation by
Congress or we’ll see how the world
and the economy, especially the stock
markets respond to a president who is
not ready for prime time governance.
O for the days when candidates ac-
tually discussed policies and agendas.
Elections usually come down to who
a voter trusts and the candidate’s char-
acter. This year we have two candidates
who cancel out each other on the
trustworthiness and character issues.
It’s enough to make me go cold
turkey and withdrawal from politics.
That will never happen. After the elec-
tion comes the fun of watching the
winner fl esh out their political ap-
pointments. For me, it’s a sequel to a
horrid election campaign, but I’ll be
paying attention just like every other
junkie.
Halloween
party thanks
and especially all her
help), McDonald’s, Pizza
Hut, Town & Country
Lanes (bowling ball for
pumpkin seed guessing
contest), Olive Garden,
Fandango (movie passes),
Thank you to the
coaches and parents
helping chaperone: Dan Kaplan,
Aaron Littau, Christina Secco, Tri-
sha Lunsford, Joe Campbell, Bonnie
Dunn and Amanda.
Kathy Kaplan
Youth Director, Town & Coun-
try Lanes
on
my
mind
(Lyndon Zaitz is publisher of the
Keizertimes.)
letters
To the Editor:
Thank you so much to
Christy from JC’s Pizza for
helping make the youth
All Night Halloween Party
a success. Your help in get-
ting the donations was extremely
helpful.
I would also like to thank: Keizer
Florist, Safeway, Schreiner’s Iris Gar-
dens, Costco, Mommy & Maddi’s,
Java Crew, Warpaint lnt’I, Christina
Secco (for her many, many donations,
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The costs of Comey’s appeasement
By E.J. DIONNE JR.
The evidence suggests that FBI
Director James Comey is a decent
man. The evidence also suggests that
he has been intimidated by pressure
from Republicans in Congress whose
interest is not in justice but in de-
stroying Hillary Clinton.
On Friday, a whipsawed Comey
gave in. Breaking with FBI precedent
and Justice Department practice, he
weighed in on one side of a presiden-
tial campaign.
I don’t believe this was his inten-
tion. But his vaguely worded letter to
Congress announcing that the FBI
was examining emails on a computer
used by Clinton aide Huma Abedin
accomplished the central goals of the
right-wing critics Comey has been
trying to get off his back.
Especially disturbing is that some
of those critics are inside the FBI. As
The Washington Post’s Sari Horwitz
reported on Saturday, “a largely con-
servative investigative corps” in the
bureau was “complaining privately
that Comey should have tried harder
to make a case” against Clinton.
For a major law-enforcement in-
stitution to be so politicized and
biased against one party would be a
genuine scandal. If Comey acted in
part out of fear that his agents would
leak against him, it would refl ect pro-
found dysfunction within the FBI.
One measure of the damage
Comey has done to his reputation is
the praise Donald Trump showered
upon him after months of trashing
the director for not recommending
Clinton’s indictment. Winning favor
from a politician who has described
how he would use the government’s
instruments to punish his enemies
is not something a professional like
Comey will ever be proud of.
Far from cowering, Clinton and
her campaign went on the offensive,
demanding
more clarity
from the FBI
director.
In
light of reports
that no one in
the bureau has
even viewed
the messages,
Tim Kaine, Clinton’s vice presiden-
tial running mate, said on ABC’s This
Week Sunday: “If he hasn’t seen the
emails, they need to make that plain.”
Clinton called Comey’s intervention
“unprecedented and deeply trou-
bling.” Indeed.
Comey’s murky letter opened the
way for Trump to level wild charges
against Clinton and for congressional
Republicans to engage in their own
initiatives to twist the truth.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, chair
of the Oversight Committee, quickly
tweeted news of Comey’s letter Fri-
day and stated: “Case reopened.”
This is not what Comey said (and
technically the Clinton case was nev-
er closed). But many in the media
bought Chaffetz’s hype, especially in
early accounts. That’s what happens
when an FBI director hands an ex-
plosive but muddled letter to a Re-
publican-led Congress.
In fact, Chaffetz had already made
clear that if Clinton wins, the GOP’s
top priority will be to keep the Clin-
ton investigative machine rolling.
“It’s a target-rich environment,”
Chaffetz cheerfully told The Wash-
ington Post’s David Weigel last week.
“Even before we get to Day One,
we’ve got two years’ worth of ma-
terial already lined up. She has four
years of history at the State Depart-
ment, and it ain’t good.”
And on ABC Sunday, Rep. Bob
Goodlatte, R-Va., chair of the Judi-
ciary Committee, gave the Republi-
cans’ game away when he spoke of
other
views
Clinton’s “potential impeachment”
before correcting himself. Note to
reader: Inauguration Day isn’t until
January 20, 2017.
These are the people Comey has
been trying to mollify ever since he
decided that there was no way the
evidence justifi ed prosecuting Clin-
ton. His fi rst act of appeasement was
his July news conference in which he
announced his decision but also criti-
cized Clinton and her aides for being
“extremely careless in their handling
of very sensitive, highly classifi ed in-
formation.”
Comey may have thought he had
arrived at the Solomonic middle
ground that would make every-
one happy. But as Matthew Miller,
a former Justice Department offi cial
wrote in The Washington Post, when
“the government decides it will not
submit its assertions to ... rigorous
scrutiny by bringing charges, it has
the responsibility to not besmirch
someone’s reputation by lobbing ac-
cusations publicly instead.”
Comey had entered the political
fray, and there was no turning back
—especially since his Republican
tormentors would not be satisfi ed
until Clinton was brought down. As
The Post editorialized, Comey had
already gone “too far” in “providing
raw FBI material to Congress.” He
allowed himself to be sucked into a
dangerous and dysfunctional rela-
tionship with one political party that
set him on the hazardous course to
Friday’s letter.
History shows that appeasing bul-
lies never works. Maybe Comey has
learned this lesson and will try to
make amends in coming days.
As for the voters, my hope is that
they reject this perversion of justice
all the way down the ballot.
(Washington Post Writers Group)
Was Malheur the start of do-it-yourself government?
In U.S. history, there is no specifi c
documentation of just when the con-
cept of protecting wildlife through
habitat preservation began. Never-
theless, as long ago as the mid-1800s,
diaries of early western explorers, pic-
torial records and reports from jour-
nalists and speakers knowledgeable
about the West referenced the unre-
stricted slaughter of wildlife for food,
fashion and commerce, destroying a
remarkable and irreplaceable national
treasure.
Over the subsequent years of the
19th and 20th centuries, Ameri-
can presidents and Congresses have
passed acts that preserved ever more
sites in the West. These have become
our wildlife refuges, providing the
protections we cherish: Protections
against the wanton destruction of the
fi sh and game found within those ref-
uges and against their capture and de-
struction for purposes of merchandise
or profi t.
Now we fi nd that modern day
business and industrial interests, along
with smaller groups of persons bent
on self-aggrandizement by exploit-
ing our refuges, among them log-
ging, ranching and mining interests,
will not use the courts or the permit
process to use federal lands intended
to be enjoyed by all forever. The
Bundy family and their gang mem-
bers have come to our consciousness
most recently by their Malheur Wild-
life Refuge invasion. Unfortunate for
law-abiding Americans, who do not
want our refuges destroyed, they want
to take them by use of weapons for
their personal monetary gain.
The seven offenders in federal
court in Port-
land have in-
tentions
to
use refuge loca-
tions through-
out the West,
as they’ve al-
ready proven
in Nevada and
Oregon, at the expense of that which
has been protected by federal laws for
well over a century. Their convictions
should have been a slam dunk as their
cohorts had already confessed to being
guilty on the federal charges against
them. Now, it looks an awful lot like
they’ll strike again while the law may
stand by, wringing its hands in helpless
resignation.
The federal jury that acquitted the
Bundys et al were obviously unable
to foresee the consequences of their
decision as they now have been giv-
en that bunch a virtual license to steal
our wild-
life refuges.
The federal
jury system
has failed
all Orego-
nians who
care
and
all others
in the West
who value
and want
our wild-
life refuges
p ro t e c t e d
in perpe-
tuity. One
chance at
saving these
gene h.
mcintyre
revered places is by our U.S. Senators,
Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley. They
have the power to take the issue of
preservation to the halls of Congress
whereby laws on the books since 1864
can be enforced by federal marshals,
with backup by the U.S. military.
Finally, here, the “overreaching
government” argument, it’s predicted
very possible, will lead to the second
American Civil War as in nullifi cation
of the federal authority used by the
Confederacy in 1861. How so? Be-
cause if all Americans take what they
want by force from our long-standing
refuges and most likely next, our na-
tional parks, too, avoiding our tradition
of settling matters of federal property
ownership in American courts of law,
then the only way law-abiders have to
protect what they value is to take up
arms, using the last resort vigilante ap-
proach.
(Gene H. McIntyre’s column ap-
pears weekly in the Keizertimes.)