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.)