JANUARY 26, 2018, KEIZERTIMES, PAGE A5 KeizerOpinion KEIZERTIMES.COM Honoring multi-taskers The Keizer Chamber of Com- merce held its annual First Citizen banquet last Saturday and they hit it out of the park with the four who won awards. Joe Egli was announced as Keizer’s First Citizen Award to sustained ap- plause. The creators seemed to have Egli in mind when they conceived of the award. Few First Citi- zens have had their fi n- gerprints in so many dif- ferent areas of Keizer life. His resume is dizzying. A life-long Oregonian and a long-time Keizerite Egli has served in pub- lic capacities, committee member; he served one term as a Keizer City Councilor. A born leader, Egli has served as president of both the Keizer Cham- ber of Commerce and the Keizer Rotary Club. But it is in his role as resident he has displayed his most far-reaching infl uence. Every major project in Keizer over the past two decades has had Egli as a cheerlead- er. His gift for rallying support and volunteers for projects as diverse as The Big Toy, the artifi cial turf at Mc- Nary High School, leadership of the Iris Festival and his the Salem-Keizer Education Foundation is legendary. Egli and his wife Shelly comprise one of the most productive teams when it comes to their home. He does what is needed to be done without seeking the spotlight or credit. As he said himself as he accepted his award, it’s all about the people in Keizer. Yes, it certainly is, Mr. Egli. The pattern to the awards seemed to be multi-tasking. The Merchant of the Year award was presented to Larry Jackson of Jackson’s Body Shop. When volunteers are called for, Jackson is one of the fi rst in line. He serves on the board of directors for the Chamber and volunteers as one of the Men of Action in Keizer (MAK). Christmas displays? Does it. Iris Festival? Does it. Big Toy? Did it. Larry Jackson was very deserving of the Merchant of the Year award and he will continue his good civic works and continue to inspire others to pitch in and help in his commu- nity. For that the community thanks you, Larry. Another multi-tasker honored Saturday night was Jason Flores who was presented with the Service to Education Award. Over the years this award has been bestowed on teachers, administrators, coaches and boost- ers—all of whom have had a positive impact on Keizer’s school kids. A residential builder (Celtic Homes, LLC), Flores devotes just as much time to Keizer kid’s sports as he does to his own business. For more than 15 years he has coached baseball, softball and football for youth teams. Along with coach- ing and mentoring he has also been deeply involved with projects such as the Keizer Little League fi elds, the turf, refurbished scoreboard and soft- ball dugout projects at McNary High School. Like all good vol- unteers he puts money where his heart is. He and his wife Keri sponsor stu- dents in their chosen sport through the McNary Athletic Booster Club’s Adopt-an-Athlete pro- gram. Youth sports in Keizer are a success due in part to commu- nity volunteers like Jason Flores. At their discretion, the Chamber of Commerce leaders present their President’s Award. The recipients of this award over the years have been a varied group who have made in- delible impacts on the Chamber and the city. Nathan Bauer, president of the Chamber’s board of directors, made an impassioned speech before an- nouncing he was honoring Matthew Lawyer, who was stunned by the an- nouncement. Matthew Lawyer is the future of Keizer volunteering and leadership. A man who doesn’t know how to say no, can be found involved with community projects as well as proj- ects that are his personal passion—he is a board member of Keizer Home- grown Theatre (he has quite the stage presence). On the public side he serves on the Keizer Parks and Recreation Ad- visory Board where his passion for the city’s parks is evident at every meeting. He has a young family and his concerns mirror those of most Keizer households, which is impor- tant. He is also a member of the Keizer Planning Commission, one of the most important bodies in the city. The commission is the fi rst stop in the process for developers and con- tractors to get green lit by the city council for their projects. His sober, realistic views will be valuable when time comes to seriously discuss fu- ture growth in the guise of an Urban Growth Boundary expansion. What does any of this have to do with the Keizer Chamber of Com- merce? Everything...when you help make the city a great place to live and run a business, that’s the Chamber’s mission. Full stop. Congratulations to all the recipi- ents of this year’s awards. —LAZ our opinion No more soap Don Vowell, a long-time contrib- utor to this page with his A Box of Soap column passed away on Dec. 15. His irreverant writing will be dearly missed. Vowell, who retired as a carrier for the U.S. Postal Service, enjoyed mixing things up and making people think. His frequent columns certainly did that. His writings amused many but some of his writings also rose the ire of others. That’s what writing should do: elicit emotion. In his retirement years he turned to natural photography. He had the patience of a saint, waited for hours to get just the right photograph. He posted many on his Facebook page. You would be hard pressed to tell the difference between a Don Vowell wildlife shot and a wildlife shot in a National Geographic magazine. Don had a whimsical look on life and shared it widely. With tongue fi rmly planted in cheek he consid- ered running for mayor back in the 1990s. He even had a campaign logo: Join the Vowell Movement. Needless to say, his political career never got off the ground. We enjoyed his columns because we never knew what he was going to address. He covered a myrid of sub- jects over the dozens of columns that ran for more than 20 years. Don Vowell’s voice will be missed, but his columns will live on in our archives and our hearts. —LAZ Keizertimes Wheatland Publishing Corp. 142 Chemawa Road N. • Keizer, Oregon 97303 Phone: 503.390.1051 • www.keizertimes.com MANAGING EDITOR Eric A. Howald editor@keizertimes.com ASSOCIATE EDITOR SUBSCRIPTIONS Derek Wiley news@keizertimes.com ADVERTISING Paula Moseley advertising@keizertimes.com PRODUCTION MANAGER & GRAPHIC DESIGNER EDITOR & PUBLISHER Lyndon Zaitz publisher@keizertimes.com One year: $25 in Marion County, $33 outside Marion County, $45 outside Oregon PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY Publication No: USPS 679-430 Andrew Jackson graphics@keizertimes.com POSTMASTER Send address changes to: LEGAL NOTICES legals@keizertimes.com Keizertimes Circulation BUSINESS MANAGER 142 Chemawa Road N. Laurie Painter Keizer, OR 97303 billing@keizertimes.com RECEPTION Lori Beyeler INTERN Periodical postage paid at Salem, Oregon Random Pendragon facebook.com/keizertimes twitter.com/keizertimes Government can work By E.J. DIONNE JR. Episodes of congressional disarray feed an ideologically loaded narrative that government is hopelessly incom- petent and can never be counted on to do much that is useful. Even if President Trump and the Republicans ultimate- ly come to bear the burden for Washington’s disarray, episodes of this sort bolster the standard conservative view of govern- ment as a lumbering beast whose “meddling” only fouls things up. The private sector is cast as virtuously effi cient and best left alone. The power of this anti-government bias is enhanced by our failure to re- visit government’s successes. We don’t often call out those who wrongly pre- dict that activist politicians and bu- reaucrats will bring on nothing but catastrophe. This is why conservatives would rather lock up the government res- cue of General Motors and Chrysler under President Obama in a memory hole. In the end, taxpayers invested some $80 billion in the rescue and recouped all but approximately $10 billion of that. And that fi gure does not take into account the taxes paid by workers who might otherwise have been unemployed. Remember that when this was de- bated, critics insisted that the federal government could not possibly un- derstand a complicated business and that it would turn the auto companies into some kind of patronage dumping ground. If the bailout happened, Mitt Rom- ney famously wrote, “you can kiss the American automotive industry good- bye.” Rush Limbaugh accused Obama of trying to “take over” the American auto companies in order to turn them into “another industry doing his bid- ding.” Former Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said the bailout would amount to throwing good money after bad. “Just giving them $25 billion doesn’t change any- thing,” he said in No- vember 2008, citing the estimated upfront cost at the time of saving the companies. “It just puts off for six months or so the day of reckoning.” In fact, in the most capitalist of terms, the initiative worked spectacularly well. Auto sales rose for seven straight years starting in 2010, before fi nally taking a small dip in 2017. On May 29, 2009, GM stock cratered to 75 cents a share— yes, 75 cents. The restructured com- pany went public again in 2010 at $33 a share, and it was trading at around $43 a share last week. Fiat Chrysler, the merged company that came out of the government-led restructuring, debuted on the New York Stock Ex- change at $9 a share in October 2014 and is now trading in the range of $24 a share. Although Obama organized the details of the rescue and took the heat for it, former President George W. Bush deserves some credit here. While he was initially reluctant to do so, Bush responded to Obama’s desire to keep the future of the companies open. He eventually fronted GM and Chrysler some $25 billion from the funds set aside for the bank bailouts after the economic implosion. Bush said in December 2008, “If we were to allow the free market to take its course now, it would almost cer- tainly lead to disorderly bankruptcy.” For such a staunch capitalist, it was a the opinion of others candid—one might say courageous— admission that the market, operating on its own, would create chaos. And this bedlam would have taken a severe human and social toll, since the job losses from that “disorderly bankruptcy” would have hit not only the auto companies themselves but also their suppliers and other enter- prises, large and small, that served them. Instead, Michigan, along with oth- er parts of the region, has staged an impressive comeback. The state’s sea- sonally adjusted unemployment rate peaked at 14.9 percent in June 2009, fell to 5.1 percent by December 2016, and has continued to drop, to 4.6 per- cent last November. In Detroit itself, unemployment declined from 28.4 percent in June 2009 to 7.8 percent in November 2017. Wages, it should be said, have not fully recovered from the Great Reces- sion. The real median household in- come in Michigan stood at $57,910 in 2006, sank through 2010, when it hit $50,943, and was at $57,091 in 2016. So there’s still work to do. But imag- ine what the trends would look like if government had made the irreversible choice of letting GM and Chrysler go under. The price of our collective amne- sia about the moments when public action kept capitalism from fl ying off the rails is very high. Once a crisis is over, extreme forms of deregulation return to fashion and our political discourse falls lazily back into cheap government bashing. That Trump and Congress sometimes make this easy is no excuse for forgetting why govern- ment is there. (Washington Post Writers Group) Elitism is the stick in the spokes of democracy By GENE H. McINTYRE Elitism. It is a powerful word. Re- cently that word has been brought up in a nationally-syndicated opinion column with dis- paraging comment that it should be drummed out of Americans and all things American. Defi ned, it refers to a group that is considered superior to the remaining members of the group in terms of ability and qualities, and is also used to identify those in the group having the greatest power and infl uence within a society due to their wealth and privilege. My reading of the U.S. Constitu- tion, its companion document, the Bill of Rights, and our nation’s laws and related applications, is that there has been an effort from the beginning to drive a stake through the heart of elitism even though those persons re- sponsible for getting the United States underway in the late 18th century could be viewed as the elites in Co- lonial America, those who led the Revolutionary War and the ultimate break from England’s rule. Inciden- tally, in every person’s inimitable way he’s an elitist: it’s the human nature in all of us that’s inclined to judge other persons as below us or inferior. Recorded history of the world could be described as people—back to the Egyptians—and even earlier, sur- rendering their lives to elites by per- mitting themselves to be ruled by the elites. These would have been the pharaohs, the emperors, the czars, the kings and queens and the rulers back to the birth of civilizations. In fact, world history suggests that the human species has items in its DNA, resulting in surrender of freedom, and the right of every member to protect himself in return for control by the most wealthy and powerful in their midst. In North America and throughout the world of yesteryear, humans struck out on their own to escape control as one can learn by reading about those who ventured away from civilizations east of Poly- nesia and settled the Pa- cifi c Ocean, the tribes that used the once-solid bridge of land between Asia and what is now Alaska, and the pilgrims of Europe, England, and the Netherlands, that sailed away to reli- gious freedom in what became co- lonial America. People, virtually for- ever, have wanted freedom but sooner or later have surrendered to controls by the elites in their societies, those richest in goods and greatest in power. We bring our loss of freedom and self-determination on ourselves be- cause we want a measure of safety and security we are not able to provide for ourselves. If we do as we please and, in doing so, break the law then we face the consequence of fi ne or imprison- ment. If we set out into hinterlands to establish our own little fi efdom, we soon are held responsible for what we do by a force more powerful than our- selves that comes to us because all of America, deep in the woods and out in deserts, is owned or controlled by the most wealthy and powerful among us. We cannot therefore avoid or es- cape elitism. These elitists dictate whether we like it or not because these are the people among us who have managed—by inheritance, hard work, mental ability—to accu- mulate the most wealth and power. guest column Although we argue we are a nation of laws, not men, we end up in daily life by subtle or direct control, or simply surrender, to those, we choose by vot- ing in America, often with the most wealth and power. Reminder: We recognize, too, it is in the nature of most all of us to view virtually every- one else as, by subjective judgment, lesser than ourselves. The average American can do little about his plight of powerlessness ex- cept by pen, voice and vote. If I’d been granted what’s required to stand tall among those with wealth and power, I might have had more power and privilege other than effort at persua- sion by columns. I am not wealthy and thereby not powerful but appreci- ate the fact that I can openly express my ideas in a nation that generally re- spects its Constitution enough to al- low me to do it. Elsewhere, I could be incarcerated or murdered, although the level of intolerance for expressions “too contrary” or “blasphemous” can get a person “in deep trouble” here. Elitism is here and here to stay and has been since the “beginning of time.” There’s no way in modern times to rid ourselves of it because our planet has been “civilized” from stem to stern. And there’s no way to escape, not even by death, as the authorities will do with my body as law dictates. But not to despair! As is true of all Americans, the nationally syndicated writer who disparages those he views as elitists has the freedom to criti- cize “them,” as do we all. Meanwhile and always, the American freedom of speech is preciously powerful and must be protected at all cost from those who would demagogue or dic- tate. (Gene H. McIntyre lives in Keizer.)