MAY 11, 2018, KEIZERTIMES, PAGE A5
KeizerOpinion
KEIZERTIMES.COM
Fostering hope
Six hundred people out of a total
of 333,000 doesn’t seem like a lot—
actually, it seems like a puny amount,
until you realize it is the number of
foster kids in all of Marion County.
That relatively small
number takes on major
importance when we un-
derstand that those 600
or so foster children re-
side in less than 75 foster
homes. Total. That means
some homes have up
to fi ve foster children, a
number that most experts
agree is too high and does
not serve the children well.
May is National Foster Care
Month, which brings the foster sys-
tem to mind. Foster care isn’t just one
month, it is every month, sometimes
for years.
It is unfortunate that the only in-
formation some get about foster care
are the tragic stories of abusive fos-
ter parents or horrifi cally unsanitary
living conditions. The reality is that
for every terrible story there are doz-
ens of untold positive, hopeful, good
stories about caring and committed
foster parents. These are the people
that become foster providers out of a
sense of duty and need.
Another reality is that the system
is in need of foster homes. Many
more. It is a big ask, but foster homes
are needed to serve the many chil-
dren who enter the system each year.
By most measures being a foster
parent is not easy, especially if more
than one child is placed at one home.
Becoming a foster parent is certain-
ly the epitome of unselfi shness. In
a world that constantly heralds the
well-being of our children, it would
seem that those who talk should also
do some of the walk.
What are the reasons one wouldn’t
become a foster parent? Choose one:
too busy, too many children already,
disrupts lifestyle and on and on.
There are some who
should not be foster par-
ents and there are those
who see dollar signs when
they think of foster kids.
The foster care system
should not be an entrepre-
neurial enterprise.
There are many reasons
to become a foster par-
ent. Primarily, the need. It
is unfathomable that up to fi ve kids
are in a single foster home. The daily
quality of life for kids who have been
through too much will be greatly
enhanced when they share a home
with a nuclear family and perhaps
only one other foster child.
How does one become a foster
parent? First, contact the state De-
partment of Human Services, which
oversees foster care in Oregon. The
agency will fully inform any inter-
ested people on the hows and whys
of becoming a foster.
CASA (Court Appointed Special
Advocates) is another avenue to help
children in Marion County. CASA
of Marion County advocates for
abused and neglected children who
need safe and permanent homes. Vol-
unteers are trained to give them the
skills and knowledge necessary to ad-
vocate for an abused child.
Children are our greatest natural
resource and they all need to be nur-
tured, kept safe and allowed to live a
life free from want and pain.
— LAZ
our
opinion
Restore BOLI
with Ogden
letters
To the Editor:
I think we all agree that
we need to restore to the
Bureau of Labor and In-
dustries (BOLI) the sense
of balance between law enforcement
and promotion of a healthy business
climate. That is why I urge voters of all
stripes to vote for Lou Ogden.
Mr. Ogden, unlike his principal op-
ponent, has owned a business subject
to the jurisdiction of BOLI. He knows
fi rst-hand the type of impact regula-
tions passed by the legislature and en-
hanced through administrative rules
promulgated by the Bureau exert on
businesses both small and large. Busi-
nesses forced to focus on compliance
have little time to innovate and grow
to become all they want to be.
Mr. Ogden has also been on the
front line of the effort to make at least
a portion of Oregon a great place to
work and do business. The City of
Tualatin has fl ourished during the 17
years he has been its mayor to become
one of the most desirable communities
in which to live. The city exemplifi es
the great balance between residential
and industrial interests that lure both
to settle there and prosper.
Mr. Ogden is also the only candi-
date who has learned how to think
as a non-partisan. Despite his oppo-
nent’s efforts to show otherwise, she
cannot escape the bonds that tie her
to the partisan leadership roles she has
relished in the legislature. It’s time to
restore balance to BOLI. It’s time for
Lou Ogden.
Davis I. Dyer
Keizer
Iris Festival
2018
To the Editor:
A couple of thoughts
about the Iris Festival:
First, the new signs are
huge improvement over
the confusing “Check it Out” ban-
ners of the past few years. And, the
parade—gaps and all—is a very good
thing. But, the carnival. Must there be
one? And, if there must be one, there
must be a better place for it than the
Cherry Avenue location.
I shed no tears for the pot shops
that are inconvenienced by the carni-
val, but Gonzalo Cervantes has fi nally
reopened Pronto Signs after years of
hard work and does not deserve an-
other giant hassle, even a temporary
one.
Without being privy to the de-
tails of his lease, it seems to me that
Jerry Walker should demonstrate his
civic pride and volunteer the parking
lot at Volcano Stadium for the carni-
val. Baseball season has yet to begin
and surely one less Spa Sale or Motor
Home Liquidation would not break
the bank. Failing the Walker offer, it
seems to me the best solution would
be nixing the carnival and putting
up the beer and entertainment tent
somewhere “downtown” with ad-
equate parking and access to food. Of
course, my opinion counts for very
little and I would welcome push back
from a cotton candy smeared 12-year-
old with a hankering for a dizzy spell.
Martin Doerfl er
Keizer
Spooking the next top spook
By DEBRA J. SAUNDERS
The U.S. Senate faces a clear
choice as it prepares to confi rm—or
reject—acting CIA Director Gina
Haspel as the permanent head spook.
Confi rm Haspel and
get a chief who will en-
courage staff to do their
utmost to uncover what
they need to know to
protect this country. Or,
reject her and prepare to
settle for a cover-your-
behind and keep-your-
head-down bureaucrat
whose chief selling point
is not sticking out.
Of course, Haspel—President
Donald Trump’s pick to replace for-
mer director and current Secretary
of State Mike Pompeo—is in for a
lonely slog in her bid to become the
rare career CIA offi cer to take the
helm and the fi rst female CIA chief.
Trump critics smell blood.
The left has begun to organize an
opposition campaign likely to keep
Democratic senators from support-
ing Haspel. Meanwhile, Kentucky
Sen. Rand Paul, one of 51 GOP sen-
ators, has said he opposes Haspel, and
other GOP senators are on the fence.
And it’s because Haspel put na-
tional security fi rst.
Under President George W. Bush,
Haspel authorized the use of en-
hanced interrogation techniques,
including waterboarding, which was
used on three al-Qaida detainees.
She was acting in accordance with
Department of Justice memos that
found harsh interrogation methods
to be legal.
What critics call “the torture
memos,” the CIA refers to “as the
not-torture memos,” noted former
agency spokesman Bill Harlow.
In 2018, the memos are a distant
memory and critics breezily can dis-
miss CIA staffers who were desperate
to prevent another 9/11
as torturers.
Did the same hu-
man rights activists who
found the harsh meth-
ods inhumane protest
when President Barack
Obama, one of their
own, stepped up the use
of drones? Some did.
Others remained more
indignant about methods autho-
rized under a Republican president
that were painful for detainees than
methods authorized by his Demo-
cratic successor that outright killed
terror suspects.
Haspel’s other big sin is her role
in the destruction of videotapes that
showed the waterboarding of two de-
tainees. In 2005, she drafted a memo
that advocated destroying the tapes.
Her boss, then director of clandestine
services, Jose Rodriguez, issued the
memo and the tapes were destroyed.
Investigators under Bush and Obama
found no laws had been broken.
To the American Civil Liberties
Union, this destruction of tapes that
likely would have become a handy
propaganda tool for al-Qaida is a bad
thing, a denial of “transparency on
torture.”
On an ACLU conference call, na-
tional political director Faiz Shakir
told reporters, “This is an opportu-
nity to demonstrate what the resis-
tance looks like.” The resistance is the
term Democrats use for obstructing
Trump’s agenda.
the
opinions
of
others
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With its fl aws, democracy is best system
Some Americans don’t like our
government, its foundational Consti-
tution, its rule of law, its institutions
nor its norms. They want change no
matter the cost or consequence. When
change has come in other countries it
has often been greeted later with mis-
givings after the new order of things
has settled in, too often by
use of violence and subju-
gation.
The founders of the
United States were well-
educated, knowledgeable
men who realized they
had an opportunity to or-
ganize into a nation the
underpinnings of a de-
mocracy. They knew de-
mocracy meant people would choose
leaders through free and fair elections,
providing for the participation of its
citizens in its politics and civic life,
protecting the human rights of all citi-
zens, and governing by a rule of law as
applied equally to all citizens and the
Constitution was designed according-
ly and been fl exible enough to adjust
to “bumps” along the way down to
the present day.
Indisputably, the U.S. has had its
ups and downs as a nation: the pro-
tests of the 1960s, mainly over the war
in Vietnam, that led to a proverbial
corner-turning by many an American
from that decade down to the present
time. Dissatisfactions, by a whole lot
of Americans, has taken this nation’s
people from a time when Americans
in general—save for the Civil War,
civil rights legislation, and intermit-
tent episodes of fear-mongering—
accepted their plight and somehow
muddled through adversity to arrive
now at a split, fractured society where
hardly anyone is willing to accept his
circumstances. A nation so broken
that the Russian Federation under
Vladimir Putin, a man determined
to terminate democratic nations and
their institutions, is not only infl uenc-
ing U.S. elections but who might also
have a fi rm grip on our president.
What is important to recognize
these days is the drift of the nation to-
wards an autocracy with leaders and
their supportive followers
trying to reshape the gov-
ernment to enable them
full control without the
rule of law.
Hallmarks of a new
order without democracy
are characterized by citi-
zens not allowed to choose
their leaders or hold them
accountable. Protests are
forbidden while the citizens lose their
sovereignty and political authority.
Criticism of the ruling class results
in imprisonment and, depending on
their severity or threat, death.
It is where the citizens do not
know or take part in the formulation
of public issues. Voting is the exclusive
reserve of the leaders. There’s no such
entity as a political party and thereby
no campaigning by candidates for po-
litical offi ce or consideration by the
citizenry-at-large in favor or against
those persons in charge of all the oth-
ers. No debating of public issues is
allowed any more than attending
community meetings, petitioning the
government or, most severely prohib-
ited among the unacceptable behav-
iors, open or even clandestine protests.
No citizen has basic rights such as
those in the Bill of Rights. There are
no private beliefs and citizens may not
write or say what they think. Freedom
of religion is abolished while private
and public gatherings to worship and
practice religion are forbidden. All
news is censored and then organized
and delivered from one approved
gene
h.
mcintyre
Keizertimes
The Haspel resistance is all about
scoring points—and it ignores the
input of a long list of national-securi-
ty luminaries from both parties who
urged the Senate to confi rm Haspel.
The list includes former Sen. Bob
Kerrey, D-Neb., and Obama CIA
Director Leon Panetta.
To be sure, there are senators who
object to the use of waterboarding
and drones and whose fi rst impulse
will be to reject Haspel for those rea-
sons. But it is the fence sitters who
will decide, and not necessarily out
of conscience.
Former CIA spokesman Bill Har-
low warned that if Haspel “goes
down, Lord knows who else they
would nominate for the job. It won’t
be someone as qualifi ed.”
A reporter had an unauthorized
question for Daniel Jones, billed as
the “former chief investigator and
lead author of the torture report”
released by the Senate Intelligence
Committee in 2014.
Recently Jones’ name has been
linked to Fusion GPS, the opposition
research fi rm that commissioned the
so-called “dossier” on Trump’s al-
leged ties with Russia. On Tuesday,
former Trump aide Michael Caputo
accused Jones of hiring Fusion GPS
to continue its opposition research
against Trump after the election.
When a reporter asked Jones,
now president of the Penn Quarter
Group, about those allegations, the
ACLU said the call would address
only questions about Haspel. When
this journalist reached out to the
Penn Quarter Group, no answer ap-
peared. Transparency is a tool they
have no problem discarding.
source established by the ensconced
leadership. Truth and facts vanish
while mendacity and fake news reign
uncontested. Citizens cannot freely
move about the land and, unless spe-
cial permission is approved by the au-
thority, citizens must remain located
where born while kept under con-
tinuous surveillance.
The establishment of laws are not
permitted as regime-supporting rules
of conduct and behavior are identifi ed
and enforced and are constantly tested
for obedience from cradle to grave.
Any citizen can be arrested, impris-
oned and/or executed arbitrarily and
without cause, torture and cruel in-
humane treatment are willed by the
leadership and dependent upon abso-
lute compliance with the rules. The
rulers have total authority and judge
in rule-breaking and punishment.
There is established and maintained a
ruling class that enjoys the wealth and
riches of the state while those citizens
not among the ruling class must ac-
cept their plight and express joy and
happiness at their servile state.
The citizens of the Weimar Repub-
lic of Germany (1919-1933) did not
prevent what became Nazi Germany
until it was far too late. There are na-
tions in the world today that are get-
ting close to or have arrived at a place
very much like or are identical to the
descriptions provided here. The Peo-
ple’s Republic of China is one of them
while others include Cuba, Egypt,
Libya, Myanmar, North Korea, Russia,
Saudi Arabia, The Philippines, Turkey,
and a growing list of others, with their
strongmen in unlimited terms of of-
fi ce. Only we Americans can defeat
ourselves and our way of life; only we
can make certain our future as a de-
mocracy is secured.
(Gene H. McIntyre lives in Keizer.)