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PAGE A4, KEIZERTIMES, JUNE 30, 2017 KeizerOpinion KEIZERTIMES.COM Expensive week in Salem This has been an expensive couple House also passed another con- weeks for you in the Oregon legisla- troversial bill last week—HB3464. ture. Despite record amounts of rev- This bill seeks to restrict the ability enue, the majority party has focused of state and local agencies, including on getting more money. First from law enforcement, to inquire about an individual’s immigra- large corporations and hav- tion status. The bill spe- ing failed at that, turned to cifi cally prohibits public those who do not have the agencies from disclosing means to defend them- information to the fed- selves: small businesses. eral government except The Oregon Constitution in certain circumstances. clearly states that any law As someone who was that would raise revenue elected by you to repre- must be passed by a 3/5 sent House District 25 majority of the legislature. and who swore an oath This session, that would uphold both the Or- mean that at least one Re- from the to egon and United States publican in both the House and the Senate would have capitol Constitutions, I fi nd this bill very offensive—our to vote with all of the nation is one of laws, not Democrats to raise revenue. By BILL POST lawlessness. Instead of following the I fi rmly believe that Constitution, the major- ity party moved forward with House America is and will continue to be Bill 2060, a bill to raise revenue from a nation of immigrants—but we small businesses—and they chose to have clear laws and procedures for pass it without any Republican votes our immigration process and those because they said it only “removed need to be followed by those who tax breaks” instead of raising revenue. would come to build a new life in This was based on the opinion of one our amazing nation. Passing laws like HB3464 is a cheap way to score po- attorney in the Capitol. For small businesses with less than litical points, not the way to thought- 10 employees—which, across the fully create laws for our state and na- state, that size makes up over 80 per- tion. On a more positive note, one of cent of our businesses, and in New- berg it’s 91 percent—this is a huge the bills I was happy to cosponsor, HB2732, recently went into effect. deal. HB2060 combined with HB This bill allows a passerby to break a 2391, the health insurance premium window to free a child or pet left in tax on small business would make a a hot vehicle. During the heat wave total of $341 million raised in new last weekend, at least one dog was al- small business taxes in the past two ready rescued from a hot car because weeks. At some point, government this bill was passed. As we go into the must learn to live within its means, summer, remember if you see a kid not keep squeezing money out of or pet trapped in a hot car, you can Oregonians who are just trying to do something about it. ( Bill Post represents House Dis- pursue their dreams and who create the majority of the jobs in our state. trict 25. He can be reached at 503- In addition to passing taxes the 986-1425 or via email at rep.bill- post@state.or.us.) Anyone can run for council To the Editor: This is in response to Lyndon Zaitz’s editorial of June 23 (You can’t force people). I agree with most of his comments and opin- ions in regard to the issue of “inclusivity.” One of the themes in the edito- rial is you can’t legislate what people think or who they like. I totally agree with that. There are standards, however, that the city must follow. They are called the law. To my knowledge the city has followed the law in its charter, ordinances, and resolutions. Where I take issue with the edi- tor is where he laments that while one fi fth of the population of Keizer may be Hispanic only one Hispanic in 35 years has ever been elected to the City Council. He says that is “sad.” The reason only one Hispanic has ever been elected is because only one Hispanic has ever run for election. That is the “sad” element here. There may be various reasons why Hispanics do not seek election and that would be an interesting discussion. However, assuming a Hispanic meets the re- quirements of offi ce like every other candidate must do, there would be no reason they could not be elected. Jerry McGee Keizer letters Share your opinion Email a guest opinion or a letter to the editor by noon Tuesday. Email to: publisher@keizertimes.com The big lies about health care By E.J. DIONNE JR. To succeed in gutting health cover- age for millions of Americans, Senate Republican leaders need to get a series of lies accepted as truth. Journalists and other neutral arbiters must resist the temptation to report these lies as just a point of view. A lie is a lie. Lie One: Democrats and progressives are unwilling to work with Republicans and conservatives on this issue. “If we went and got the single greatest health care plan in the history of the world, we would not get one Democrat vote,” President Trump told an Iowa crowd recently. In fact, Democrats, including Presi- dent Obama when he was in offi ce, have said repeatedly they would like to work with Republicans to improve the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer’s offi ce put out a list of such offers, in- cluding a June 15 letter from Schumer to Senate Majority Leader Mitch Mc- Connell calling for a cross-party meet- ing to “fi nd a way to make health care more affordable and accessible.” But Democrats can never be com- plicit in a wholesale repeal of Obam- acare that would take health coverage away from millions of Americans. This fi rst lie is important because it rationalizes the Republican claim that the bill has to be draconian because it can’t pass without support from the party’s most right-wing legislators. “This is not the best possible bill,” said Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan. “It is the best bill possible under very diffi cult circumstances.” But those “circumstances” have been created by the GOP itself. A completely different coalition is avail- able, but Republicans don’t want to activate it because they are hell-bent on repealing Obamacare. Why? This brings us to Lie Two: This bill is primarily about improving health care for American families. No, this effort is pri- marily about cutting taxes. When it comes to health care, the main thing the bill does is take money away from pro- viding it to pay for the tax reductions it con- tains and for future bo- nanzas the Republicans have promised. The tax cuts in this legislation alone would amount to some $700 billion over a decade, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. About $33 billion of this would go to tax cuts conservatively averaging $7 million every year to each of the 400 highest- income families in the country. What could $33 billion buy? The CBPP re- ports it would be enough to pay for the expansion of Medicaid in Nevada, West Virginia, Arkansas and Alaska. Talk about income redistribution. A telltale: One of the main Repub- lican complaints about Obamacare has been that the deductibles and co-pays under ACA policies are too high. But the Republican bill only makes this problem worse. As The New York Times’ Margot Sanger-Katz wrote: “Many middle- income Americans would be expected to pay a larger share of their income to purchase health insurance that covers a smaller share of their care.” If this bill were truly about health care, Republicans would take all the tax cuts out and use that money to other views ease the pain their bill would cause. But they won’t, because the tax cuts are the thing that matters to them. Lie Three: The Senate bill is a “com- promise.” Really? Between whom? The House wants to destroy Obamacare quickly, the Senate a bit more slowly while also cutting Medicaid more steeply over time. This is only a “com- promise” between two very right- wing policies. Imagine you are negotiating with two creditors who say you owe them $1,000 and you insist you owe noth- ing. The fi rst creditor wants the money quickly. The second says you can take a bit little longer, but you have to pay $1,200—and he has the nerve to call this a “compromise.” Nowhere in this deal is your position taken into ac- count. Welcome to the logic of the Senate health care bill. I hope I never have to write about Lie Four, which would be Republican senators who surely know better—in- cluding Susan Collins, Dean Heller, Lisa Murkowski, Jeff Flake, Shelley Moore Capito and Rob Portman— ajustifying their votes for this mon- strosity by claiming that it’s the best they could do. Actually, only by killing this bill would these senators open the way for reasonable fi xes to the ACA. Do they really want to say someday that one of their most important votes in the Sen- ate involved taking health care away from millions of Americans? I would like to believe they are too decent for that (and Heller, for one, criticized the bill on Friday). I hope I’m not lying to myself. (Washington Post Writers Group) Sugar still makes up much of our diet By GENE H. McINTYRE Appropriately, summer begins with an “S” as do words we associate with it, such as staycation, saddle sore, shorts, sunglasses, shells, sand and sandals. Of course, this list may be expanded by you. Also, there’s soda, which is also associated with summer stuff. Sodas contain sugar and lots of it, contributing to the average American’s con- sumption of it at 130 pounds per year. Which reminds one of a historical fact regarding sugar use in the U.S., as ra- tioning was imposed by our government during World War II, starting in 1942. Supplies of it were cut or burned off in Pacifi c cane fi elds, denying it to the enemy while the war effort itself required sugar to make many things from anti- septics to explosives. Sugar for war was exampled in a Smithsonian magazine article where it was reported that fi ring a large fi ve- gun salvo used up the amount of sugar harvested from a full acre of it. Meanwhile, on the home front, cook books urged all chefs to sweeten cakes and pastries with the syrup remaining from canning fruit. Back in time, Douglas Owsley, an anthropologist with the Museum of Natural History, reports on the wife of a colonial Maryland’s governor who passed away 300 years ago and appar- ently was able to use a lot of sugar. You see, when her remains were ex- humed it was found that, since she was a wealthy woman with lead cof- fi n and fi ne burial wearing apparel, she had lost 20 teeth, with those remain- ing down to root stubs. The exhumed bodies of her contemporaries pos- sessed most of their teeth because they couldn’t afford a sugar habit. Fact is, Americans have always taken as much sugar as they could get their mouths on. When George Washington was president in the late 1700s, the average American annu- ally consumed about six pounds of sugar. That number rose as sugar beet growing got underway while later the U.S., in 1876, signed a treaty with the then-sovereign king- dom of Hawaii for sugar cane. Incidentally, sodas increased a lot in popu- larity with or without homemade rum during Prohibition. Nowadays, as we all know, sugar’s in abundance and used (along with plen- ty of salt) in almost all prepared foods Americans eat or drink. There’s prob- ably no exaggeration in stating that an encyclopedia’s entire “S” volume guest column Keizertimes Wheatland Publishing Corp. • 142 Chemawa Road N. • Keizer, Oregon 97303 phone: 503.390.1051 • web: www.keizertimes.com • email: kt@keizertimes.com SUBSCRIPTIONS MANAGING EDITOR Eric A. Howald editor@keizertimes.com ASSOCIATE EDITOR Derek Wiley news@keizertimes.com One year: $25 in Marion County, $33 outside Marion County, $45 outside Oregon PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY ADVERTISING Publication No: USPS 679-430 Paula Moseley advertising@keizertimes.com POSTMASTER Send address changes to: PRODUCTION MANAGER Andrew Jackson Keizertimes Circulation graphics@keizertimes.com 142 Chemawa Road N. LEGAL NOTICES Keizer, OR 97303 legals@keizertimes.com EDITOR & PUBLISHER Lyndon Zaitz publisher@keizertimes.com BUSINESS MANAGER Laurie Painter billing@keizertimes.com Periodical postage paid at Salem, Oregon RECEPTION Lori Beyeler facebook.com/keizertimes twitter.com/keizertimes could be given over to a discussion of sugar uses in modern-day U.S.A. Suffi ce it to comment in educating terms here that Brazil and India grow the most sugar beets with the U.S. in fi fth place, they being grown here and elsewhere as an underground root crop in eleven U.S. states, including Califor- nia, Oregon and Washington. Sugar cane thrives in warm, moist, tropical climates found in the American states of Florida, Hawaii, Louisiana and parts of Texas. In the mean time, never fear: Should we in the U.S. ever run out of drink- able water, sodas can be made with a carbonating agent and fruit juice. Ad- dendum to life: it has always been true in all humankind civilizations that death and taxes were the only abso- lute certainties. Nowadays, at least in our country, with the advent of exces- sive sugar use, we can realistically add dentists and dentures to that list. (Gene H. McIntyre lives in Keizer.)
