PAGE A4, KEIZERTIMES, JUNE 16, 2017
KeizerOpinion
KEIZERTIMES.COM
There was no
staggering
increase in
coal jobs
fl ects Keizer’s population,
and include representa-
tives from community
groups like Mano a Mano,
NAACP, Causa; the LG-
BTQI+ community; edu-
cation and religious lead-
ers; and members from the
Keizer Police and Fire District. We’d
collaborate to form a resolution and
ongoing future actions related to our
goal.
We feel that an Inclusivity Reso-
lution is essential for Keizer for the
following reasons:
To show Keizer’s values of in-
clusion, equality, and respect for all
residents that call our city home, and
that Keizer embraces, celebrates, and
welcomes all residents of any national
origin, race, ethnicity, language, gen-
der identity, sexual preference, marital
status, disability, income, citizenship
status, or religion, and their contribu-
tions to the collective prosperity of
all residents.
To show Keizer resolves to fi ght
racism, religious discrimination, sex-
ism, homophobia, and violence or
bullying in our schools and neigh-
borhoods.
It is an uncertain time for many
immigrant families, and the treatment
of newcomers has had ripple effects
throughout the immigrant commu-
nity. Many have been afraid of go-
ing to the court house, taking their
children to school, and going to lo-
cal government buildings for fear of
running into Immigration Customs
Enforcement. To ensure the safety of
everyone, we want immigrants to be
able to call the police for help with-
out worrying that their families will
be broken up or that reporting a small
crime will result in a disproportion-
ate punishment. Effective policing
requires trust between law enforce-
ment and community members.
To understand that chronic dis-
crimination leads to community
disengagement, diminished oppor-
tunities for integration, increased
stigmatization, and it negatively
impacts local economic activity.
Many cities in Oregon are working
to get resolutions in place or already
have one. Passing an Inclusivity Res-
olution strengthens the state law by
showing that other cities or counties
support it.
We must unite against any attempts
to separate and treat any members of
our Keizer communities as less than
any other member. No matter where
we come from, we are all Oregonians
and we want all to be safe and wel-
come in Keizer.
We who are listed below, urge the
city council to create a work group
or task force to work together with
us to create an Inclusivity Resolution
for the City of Keizer that embraces,
celebrates, and welcomes all its resi-
dents and their contributions.
Sincerely a group of concerned
friends of Keizer,
Cyndi Swaney
Carol Doerfl er
Paula Doughty
Robert Glasgow
Levi Herrera-Lopez,
Mano a Mano Representative
John Scott
lettews
To the Editor:
It seems timely and fi t-
ting to address “alternative facts” and
“fake news” for which the Trump
administration has become infamous.
This example has to do with jobs in
mining coal and was delivered the
other day by Trump’s Environmen-
tal Protection Agency Administra-
tor, Scott Pruitt, on This Week With
George Stephanopoulos.
Pruitt announced that the Trump
administration has presided over “a
staggering increase in coal-industry
employment.” “Over 50,000 jobs
increase since the fi rst of 2017, coal
jobs, mining jobs created in this
country,” with “almost 7,000 min-
ing and coal jobs created during the
month of May.”
Facts from the U.S. Department
of Labor statistics report that the coal
industry added 400 jobs, not 7,000, in
May, 2017, and has added just 1,700
since last October, 2016. The mining
and coal industry employs currently a
total of 51,000 people and there were
not merely 1,000 people employed
therein before the Trump election.
It would seem ill-advised to plan
America’s future energy policy
around the goal of maximizing jobs
in an industry that’s reputed to offer
fewer jobs than the Arby’s franchise.
Then, too, the solar industry employs
twice as many Americans as the coal
industry. Meanwhile, if one wants to
live in a fantasy where greenhouse gas
emissions do not trap heat in Earth’s
atmosphere, one may as well pretend
a scenario with imaginary jobs.
Gene H. McIntyre
Keizer
Make Keizer an
inclusive ommunity
To the Editor:
This is a letter that was sent to Mayor
Cathy Clark,who read it before the whole
council:
Dear Mayor Cathy Clark,
Previously, we came before the
City Council with a goal to make
sure Keizer is a safe, welcoming, and
inclusive city and for the Council
to consider creating an Inclusivity
Resolution for Keizer. We expressed
concerns and you asked that we think
of some actions that could be taken.
Thank you for your considerations,
listening so far, and for your support
and suggestion in including us in
these discussions and actions.
At this time, we feel that having
an Inclusivity Resolution is a foun-
dational action we need to take in or-
der to ensure our goal. We could help
create a group or task force, so that
we can work together with you and
the city council to create a Resolu-
tion and future actions that embody
inclusivity.
The work group or task force
would ideally include city council
and community members. It would
be a diverse membership that re-
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Does it matter what Bernie Sanders thinks?
By MICHAEL GERSON
It is apparently not enough for
some of the liberal minded to help
those on Medicare and Social Secu-
rity; now people must be guaranteed
eligibility for heaven as
well. Or at least be pro-
tected from those who
believe in the other
place.
At a contentious
confi rmation hearing
last week for Russell
Vought as deputy di-
rector of the Offi ce of Management
and Budget—generally not known
as an institution with theological job
requirements—Sen. Bernie Sanders
took vigorous exception to an online
post Vought had written claiming
that Muslims (and, presumably, oth-
ers) who “have rejected Jesus Christ”
therefore “stand condemned.”
Sanders found this “indefensible”
and “hateful.” But at least when it
comes to a belief in hell, Vought is
hardly a rarity. Universalism is not
universal. According to recent Pew
polling, about 80 percent of evan-
gelical Protestants believe in hell,
along with 76 percent of Muslims
and 63 percent of Catholics. Even
27 percent of those who identify
as “nones”—the religiously unaf-
fi liated—retain a belief in hell. And
then there is that forlorn 1 percent
who don’t believe in God at all but
still believe in hell. Perhaps they are
with Jean-Paul Sartre: “Hell is other
people.”
Not every religious tradition fea-
tures eternal damnation. The He-
brew Scriptures have only the faint-
est hints about an afterlife of any
kind. So it makes sense that Jews
reject the existence of hell by an
80/20 split. In Hinduism and Bud-
dhism, hell is more of a way station
than a fi nal destination. But tradi-
tional interpretations of Christian-
ity and of Islam feature a day of fi nal
judgment, at which some
people don’t make the
grade.
For a lot of people,
hell is little more than a
mental holding place for
Hitler. If you believe in
an afterlife, the question
naturally arises: Can saints
and genocidaires really share the
same eternal fate? But the argument
cuts the other way. As it occurred to
evangelical pastor Rob Bell: “Gan-
dhi’s in hell?” Bell went on to write
a book, Lovex Wins, that embraced
universalism and got him branded
unorthodox and worse.
Bell is not alone in trying to
blunt this particular religious edge.
Christian history is studded with
fi gures who expressed a universally
inclusive notion of grace, such as
17th-century poet and pastor John
Donne: “Christ hath excommuni-
cated no Nation, no shire, no house,
no man.” Even defenders of the idea
of hell such as C.S. Lewis felt com-
pelled to soften the concept. Lewis’
literary depiction of hell is not a lake
of fi re but a gray suburb in which it
is always raining and nothing is satis-
fying and everyone quarrels with the
neighbors. For Lewis, hell is eternal-
ly self-chosen by those consumed by
egotism. “The doors of hell,” he said,
“are locked from the inside.”
In all the complexities of theol-
ogy and metaphysics that this topic
raises, I am utterly confi dent of one
thing: No one has ever asked, “What
is Bernie Sanders’ view on this?”
othew
views
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Russia inquiry a bit of history repeating
By DEBRA SAUNDERS
If you watched the testimony of
former FBI chief James Comey be-
fore the Senate Intelligence Com-
mittee, you heard Democratic sena-
tors refer to Russian attempts to
interfere with the 2016 presidential
election as a “hostile”
act by a “hostile” gov-
ernment, an affront,
their tone suggested,
heretofore unknown in
American politics. Yet
two decades earlier, a
Senate committee in-
vestigated Chinese at-
tempts to interfere with the 1996
presidential election. In his open-
ing statement, Sen. Fred Thompson,
R-Tenn., chairman of the Senate
Governmental Affairs Committee,
warned of a plan “hatched by the
Chinese government” designed to
“pour illegal contributions” into
U.S. election campaigns. A key ben-
efi ciary was President Bill Clinton.
It was a big story that seems
hauntingly familiar to the Rus-
sia probe. In 1997, The Washington
Post’s Bob Woodward reported that
a Justice Department “investigation
has established that the plan was
launched in 1995 as a relatively be-
nign congressional lobbying activity,
but became an effort whose goal
was to illegally funnel money into
political campaigns. Approved at the
highest levels of the Beijing govern-
ment, the plan was placed under the
control of the Chinese Ministry of
State Security, Beijing’s equivalent of
the CIA.
“Thus far, however, federal in-
vestigators have been unable to dis-
cover a direct link between money
from Beijing and the Democratic
National Committee or the Clinton
re-election campaign.”
The Thompson committee held
32 days of hearings, interviewed
72 witnesses and spent $3.5 million
never nailed a defi nitive
connection to the Chinese
government. But a number
of individuals targeted by
the committee were con-
victed of or pleaded guilty
to violating election law.
The Clinton fundrais-
ing scandal produced some
unforgettable images and characters.
Vice President Al Gore attended
what was supposed to be a com-
munity outreach event at a Buddhist
temple in Los Angeles but turned
out to be a fundraiser. A trio of Bud-
dhist nuns testifi ed about the event
and the decision to destroy a list of
donor names.
Los Angeles entrepreneur and
big donor Johnny Chung famously
said, “I see the White House is like a
subway. You have to put in coins to
open the gates.” Chung visited the
White House at least 49 times.
Was the Chinese government
pushing for Clinton to win?
“If they gave them money, which
they did,” Madigan answered, “and
he didn’t get in, then they would
have wasted their money.”
There may be superfi cial simi-
larities between the two commit-
tees, Lanny J. Davis, who was spe-
cial counsel to the president at the
time, opined Friday. Thompson
“never was able to fi nd” evidence
that Beijing was behind the dodgy
guest
column
Keizertimes
But he has offered it. In justifying
his opposition to Vought, Sanders
said: “This country, since its incep-
tion, has struggled, sometimes with
great pain, to overcome discrimi-
nation of all forms. ... We must not
go backwards.” Thus liberal fairness
is applied on a cosmic scale. End-
ing theological bias is the fi nal civil
rights frontier. Equal salvation for all.
Perhaps Sanders was just mean-
ing to deny a government job to
someone whose theology he fi nds
objectionable. Which is not only
presumptuous but unconstitutional
(see Article VI). The same would be
true in the case of a Muslim nomi-
nee or anyone else willing to serve
the country and uphold the Consti-
tution. A pluralism too weak to pro-
tect Christian believers is too weak
to protect Muslim believers, and
vice versa. And both have the right
to think they are right.
A few questions for the senator:
Does he really want to begin ex-
amining Christians, Muslims, Bud-
dhists, Hindus, Zoroastrians and
everyone else for theological beliefs
that offend his ideal of liberalism?
How strongly does a belief need
to be held to be disqualifying for
employment? Would he permit a
Christian colleague to shoot down
a government job seeker if that man
or woman believed that the universe
is an echoing void and that human
beings are merely bags of chemicals?
But, on second thought, never
mind about these questions. Thanks
to the Constitution, we aren’t re-
quired to give a damn what Sanders
thinks about the religious views of
any American.
donations. “He has circumstantial
evidence,” nothing more.
Thompson could never tie China
to Clinton in 1997, Davis contin-
ued, but in an October 2016 state-
ment, the intelligence community
expressed confi dence that Russia
was behind hacking of U.S. politi-
cal institutions. And that settled the
question for Davis. Note that the
intelligence community has been
confi dent but wrong before.
Davis added that Trump’s rhetoric
and actions raised red fl ags: Trump
said, “I love WikiLeaks,” said Davis,
whereas Clinton never said, “Yeah, I
want the Chinese money. Why not?”
So 20 years ago, a Senate com-
mittee saw numerous instances of
inappropriate behavior linked cir-
cumstantially to China, which, like
Russia, is not exactly a U.S. ally. The
investigation produced a number of
stories that put the White House in
a bad light. For their part, Demo-
crats on the Thompson committee
were not eager to pursue allegations
wherever they led.
Madigan believes that with more
resources and time, a solid link
might have been found. It could be
that some things never are going to
become clear in the muted light of a
congressional investigation.
A month later, America learned
about former Clinton White House
intern Monica Lewinsky. To Madi-
gan, that story spelled the end of the
China probe.
“My own view,” he said, “because
of the Monica situation and (the fact
that) they wanted to impeach him, it
just died.”
(Cweatows Syndicate)