PAGE A4, KEIZERTIMES, MAY 5, 2017
KeizerOpinion
KEIZERTIMES.COM
Sidewalks for
Cummings
letterb
To the Editor:
Hooray for Cummings
Elementary School Prin-
cipal Martina Mangan and
school crossing guard Carol
Doerfl er for advocating for sidewalks
adjacent to Cummings School. A
sidewalk is more than a decade over-
due. Cummings Elementary, built in
1953, replaced the original wooden
Keizer School. When constructed,
Cummings was the only function-
ing school in the Keizer area. Since
then, McNary High School, the two
middle schools and fi ve elementary
schools have been added within the
city. Keizer became a city in 1982. A
year later the population was 19,650
and by 2016 had increased to 37,505
residents.
The sidewalk near Cummings is
the city’s responsibility not the school
district’s. The Salem-Keizer School
District is challenged to make ends
meet with increasing student enroll-
ment and growing societal demands
for services beyond the classroom.
Statewide budget shortfalls are caus-
ing school districts to make cuts to
their 2017-2018 budgets. The Sa-
lem-Keizer District estimates a deep
cut of about $6 million smaller than
the current school year. Traffi c Safe-
ty Committee member Kathy Lin-
coln’s statement: “If we can get some
cooperation and investment from the
school district it might help the pro-
cess along,” is completely unrealistic.
Times have changed and the city
must be responsive to the safety
needs of students and their families.
Continuing with an outdated bud-
get is not responsible for meeting an
expanding city’s needs. Keizer City
Council and the Traffi c Safety Com-
mittee should plan for and write a
budget that includes sidewalks near
schools. Verda Lane is another ex-
ample of a heavily traffi cked road
near two schools used by elemen-
tary and middle school students. As
Keizer grows investment improving
infrastructure in residential areas im-
pacted by that growth needs to be a
top priority.
Cathey Philbrick
Keizer
The conduct of
Rep. Bill Post
To the Editor:
I happen to agree with Mr. Mc-
Call (Letter to the Editor, April 21) to
a degree with his remarks regarding
the conduct of Rep. Bill Post when
it comes to him representing House
District 25. Bill Post, despite his good
intentions, does not fully campaign
for issues that don’t benefi t his vision
of what House District 25 would be
like.
A particular issue that I think was
never going to work with him is and
remains true to this day is the issue of
public transportation. It remains my
opinion that Post campaigned against
the payroll ballot measure last fall de-
spite needing support to win reelec-
tion it all comes down to money...
the power of money is ever apparent
in the world of politics. He claims to
have supported this campaign against
this measure solely as a private citi-
zen—he supports other issues such as
the water crisis in St. Paul during the
last storm period always wearing his
“private/public” hat. To me you can-
not have it both ways. Even after this
“dirty” campaign he put forth a half-
hearted bill to supplement his partic-
ipation in the campaign itself—that,
too, failed. All he could say was “Well
I tried, you could give me credit at
least.”
To me this is 100 percent both
disappointing and shameful. I do
continue to support Bill Post despite
his lack of effort on bills that are con-
sidered by most Tea Party-styled Re-
publicans to be dead issues.
You can do anything and every-
thing you want that you think is
good, Bill Post, but the people don’t
forget and the people who put you
where you are now will continue
to watch and listen to what you say.
Please be mindful of the fact that the
upper 10 percent who have hundreds
of thousands of dollars weren’t the
only ones who put you into offi ce;
we all put you into offi ce
Dakota Saunders
Keizer
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A lesson for
Rep. Bill Post
To the Editor:
I wish to thank Repre-
sentative Bill Post for his
article of April 28th. He
presented a lesson on how
to miss the point. Even though the
bills he sponsored help low income
families are admirable, would it not
be helpful to build up our econo-
my? Why has Mr. Post not worked
to help working people earn a liv-
ing wage instead of giving a public
handout? Or, as Ronald Reagan said,
“There are no great limits to growth
because there are no limits of human
intelligence, imagination, and won-
der.”
Mr. Post has forgotten the les-
sons of Ronald Reagan. Those les-
sons were to do your job and build
consensus to pass legislation. Any
member of the legislature can sub-
mit legislation, but true leadership of
a representative is working to build
consensus to get it passed. Instead Mr.
Post spends his time blaming others.
Mr. Post should be mindful that 2018
is not that far away instead of sitting
on his incumbency and making ex-
cuses.
David McCall
Keizer
Convenience
parking lot for
McNary High
To the Editor:
The City puts forth a false repre-
sentation in word of supporting the
Newberg Drive residents but they
show a huge difference in their ac-
tions.
They are supporting making this
neighborhood into a parking lot for
only the convenience of the students.
I say this because two years ago and
many years previously this problem
of students overtaking and using our
streets as a parking lot and drop-off
point for the school and they parked
and dropped off the students in other
places without problems.
Now each morning the students
fi ll our neighborhood and so its no
longer “public parking” it is now a
“free parking lot” for the school. The
city is telling us one thing and doing
another by trying to upgrade McAr-
thur St. to accommodate the student
parking and even going to the ex-
treme to send over two uniformed
motorcycle police offi cers to “con-
vince” the neighbors to allow the
city to make changes to McArthur
St. for a student parking lot.
I came to Keizer 19 years ago and
made improvements to the city only
to have my improvements and prop-
erty degraded by turning it into a
“Student Convenience Parking Lot”
At the May 1 council meeting
City Manager Chris Eppley told me
to go to the school district to fi le my
complaints, but I already did that last
year with no results and the school
district suggested that I go to the
City of Keizer with my complaint.
I feel that we are being taken ad-
vantage of and jacked around by the
school and the City of Keizer.
In addition to the “Convenience
Parking Lot” for the students they
have created a traffi c hazard by all
the students being dropped off and
picked up where there are no side-
walks, crosswalks, or traffi c control.
When one of them gets hit by a car
then who gets the blame? I would say
the city should get the blame for not
using the authority they have to stop
this madness. Get a backbone Keizer
and stand up for your residents and
safety of the students and tell Mc-
Nary High School that the city of
Keizer demands they lock the gate or
you will block it (which you can do).
This would solve all of the problems
that exist purely for the convenience
of the students.
Charles Anderson
Keizer
Read more to parse ‘fake news’
By DON VOWELL
Believe me, vocabulary in Amer-
ica is a total disaster. Many, many of
us don’t know how really, really bad
this is. We’ve got to get very, very
tough in order to stop this Ameri-
can carnage.
We are grateful that we were
able to raise our children in Keiz-
er, home of average
schools for our bless-
edly average children.
From this decent and
humble platform they
have taken off to ac-
complish things that
leave us slack-jawed
in amazement. The
credit is theirs, same
as it would be if they were both
imprisoned for stealing hubcaps. If
I were to immodestly take credit
for any small advantage we pro-
vided to our children it would be
our interest in words. Every time
an unfamiliar word came up at the
table, or in their homework, or in
the newspaper, or anywhere else, we
immediately looked it up to learn
exact meaning and pronunciation.
We thought it was important. We
still do.
“The limits of my language are
the limits of my mind. All I know
is what I have words for.” Thus say-
eth Ludwig Wittgenstein, renowned
philosopher interested in math-
ematics, the mind, and linguistics.
That is a frightening concept when
a box
of
boap
probably the result of the modern
necessity for reporting news thirty
seconds after it takes place. It may
also be the result of media under-
standing the modern American at-
tention span. Media sources can
hear the clickers clicking when they
dare to cover a story for more than
ninety seconds.
“Sound is the vocabulary of nature”
– Pierre Schaeffer.
Because I don’t understand any-
thing happening in national affairs
anymore I have been spending a lot
of time slowly wandering around
wildlife refuges. It is a comfort.
Birds and critters communication
always seems constructive. Not
much of the petty, shrill, and hurt-
ful. It is in some way restorative and
peaceful.
The studies about vocabulary
also discovered that the best method
of increasing your vocabulary is to
read fi ction. Authors of novels and
stories are freed of time constraints
and able to lovingly and painstak-
ingly seek out the word they really
want. That is good for all of us in
the age of “fake news.” Everything
is fi ction. I would also add that
some of you with truly expansive
vocabularies might email some of
your extra, little-used words to the
White House. We would all win
and winning is very, very tremen-
dous.
(Don Vowell getb on hib boapbox
regularly in the Keizertimeb.)
President Trump hits a milestone
By DEBRA SAUNDERS
There are two ways to look at
President Donald Trump, observed
Lee Edwards, distinguished fellow of
conservative thought at The Heritage
Foundation. One is that Trump is “a
feckless idiot” who is “almost dysfunc-
tional.” The other is
that “this man actually
knows what he’s do-
ing.”
Which is the real
Trump? At a Heritage
symposium on Trump’s
fi rst 100 days in offi ce,
Edwards went with
the second option. He said he believes
Trump “very cleverly” does what many
politicians do—get the opposition to
underestimate them.
“This is more work than in my
previous life,” Trump told Reuters on
Thursday. “I thought it would be eas-
ier.”
Was this an attempt at get Demo-
crats to underestimate him? More
likely these remarks are just another
example of Trump being Trump—a
supremely confi dent and perennially
impulsive billionaire who just admitted
that he underestimated how diffi cult it
is to actually be the leader of the free
world.
People often forget that presidents
are human beings, with great strengths
that carry with them corresponding
weaknesses. Trump voters went with
the brash billionaire because he was a
non-politician who promised to shake
the Washington power elite to its core.
The fl ip side of that coin is that, as
an outsider, Trump doesn’t have any
experience navigating Congress. And
as a true outsider, he hasn’t tried par-
ticularly hard to hire top staffers who
know how. It is no surprise then that
Trump’s fi rst foray into the sausage
making of legislation—his bid to repeal
and replace Obamacare—fell fl at, even
though his party controls the House
and Senate.
Trump’s behavior in his fi rst six
weeks in offi ce handed his critics am-
munition to fi re back at him. As he
took the oath of offi ce, Trump did not
use the occasion to reach across the
aisle, as he did during his election night
acceptance speech.
The next day, as anti-Trump march-
ers fi lled the streets of Washington and
other cities, Trump sent out Press Sec-
retary Sean Spicer to launch his fi rst
press conference haranguing the news
media for its “shameful” reporting on
the size of the new president’s inaugu-
ration crowd on the Capitol Mall.
To the Editor:
During a bipartisan meeting with
Strange, I didn’t see Gene Mc-
Intyre criticizing former President congressional leaders Trump groused
Obama when he fl ew his wife and that millions of “illegal” voters de-
daughters to South Africa, Hawaii, prived him of the raw vote victory he
etc. (Change how colleges do business, otherwise would have won. To this day,
Keizertimes, April 21). And, by the Trump has provided no proof of such
way, after whose watch do we have massive voter fraud, and the sort of
all these homeless, hungry people? bluster that worked for the unorthodox
How many times do we have to candidate during the 2016 primary has
elect the same people before we real- backfi red.
And that was just his fi rst week.
ize they are the problem? The same is
Former
Congresswoman
and
true, by the way, in our state.
The Democrats have been in Obama State Department Under Sec-
charge for decades. How much have retary Ellen Tauscher said she would
conditions improved? Time to think. give Trump a grade of D or F for his
fi rst 100 days, “because a lot of the mis-
C. Kent McCurdy
takes are self-infl icted.”
Keizer
On day seven, the Trump ad-
ministration botched its rollout of a
travel ban on individuals from seven
Same results after
state elections
applied to a whole generation be-
ing raised on Tweets and Facebook
memes.
In what seem like imprecise es-
timates, I was able to fi nd studies
that show average American adults
to have a vocabulary of 20–35,000
words. A college educated speaker
may have 80,000 words to choose
from. The same stud-
ies held that vocabulary
growth stops at middle
age. Middle age was also
left undefi ned, though I
am certain it’s not in my
own future.
A word I have always
loved is curmudgeon. Af-
ter reading some of the
pieces I had submitted in this space
many years ago my mom thought
I sounded curmudgeonly. I plead
guilty. But that doesn’t mean I be-
lieve knowing more words makes
you smarter or better. Words are
the tools of communication. Com-
munication is what can make you
smarter or better. Understanding of
everything you hear or read is dic-
tated by your vocabulary. If there
is a complete set of tools in your
vocabulary toolbox you can analyze
the work of all the brightest authors
and speakers.
It has been a little off-putting to
read the news lately. Even stories
from national wire sources have
what seem to be clumsy and poorly
chosen words and phrases. That is
Muslim majority countries. It was a
poorly drafted document that need-
lessly alienated allies in America’s war
on terrorism. Trump’s attacks on the
“so-called judge” forced his Supreme
Court nominee Neil Gorsuch to dis-
tance himself from the presi-
dent’s rhetoric.
A second more carefully
crafted travel ban released
weeks later also was blocked
by federal judges.
The specter of Russia
haunted Trump’s fi rst days in
offi ce as Democrats argued
for a bipartisan investiga-
tion into Russia’s attempts to inter-
fere in the 2016 election. Although he
provided no proof, Adam Schiff, the
ranking Democrat on the House In-
telligence Committee, told the media
there was more than circumstantial ev-
idence that the Trump team colluded
with Russia.
It didn’t help when The Washing-
ton Post reported that National Secu-
rity Adviser Michael Flynn had lied
to Vice President Mike Pence about
his relationship with Russia. After the
story went public, Trump fi red Flynn.
Then on March 4, Trump tweeted
that “Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in
Trump Tower.” Trump’s failure to pro-
duce any corroborating evidence en-
other
viewb
raged the left.
Thereafter Trump exercised more
discipline on Twitter. About this time,
the Trump White House hit a turning
point. Trump’s Feb. 28 joint address to
Congress received rave reviews. The
president seemed to move away from
his more bellicose advisers and toward
the people whose advice, when heed-
ed, resulted in praise.
With Flynn gone, Trump found
a savvy foreign-policy triumvirate in
Flynn’s replacement, H.R. McMas-
ter, along with Secretary of State Rex
Tillerson and Secretary of Defense
Jim Mattis that lifted his standing on
the world stage, and guided Trump
to enforce former President Barack
Obama’s red line against the use of
chemical weapons in Syria.
In the last few weeks, Trump has
been talking about how much he likes
Angela Merkel. They talked on the
phone twice in April.
“He likes to talk to people who
take him seriously,” James Carafano, a
Heritage senior fellow and member of
the Trump transition team, explained.
It was that motivation that won
Trump the GOP nomination and the
White House last year. Trump wants
history to take him seriously as well.
He has come to understand that it
won’t be easy. (Creatorb Syndicate)
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