AUGUST 17, 2018, KEIZERTIMES, PAGE A3
KeizerOpinion
KEIZERTIMES.COM
Students in need
As summer slowly winds its way
towards September and fall Keizer
households prepare for the upcoming
school year. School supplies and new
clothes are always on the shopping
list in August. Kids look warily at
the calendar while parents
give a silent hooray.
While that scenario
may be reality in many
Keizer
homes
with
school-age children, there
are other households in
which the onset of the
school year is no reason to
be cheerful.
Some kids will go to school with-
out cold-weather coats or well-worn
footwear that has seen better days.
The fastest way to be bullied in school
is to wear what other kids can eas-
ily ridicule: too small, too large, too
dirty...young ones can be very cruel.
What one wears is superfi cial as
opposed to hunger which is anything
but. An empty belly is education’s
nemesis. It is hard to learn lessons—
at any age—when your mind keeps
screaming “I’m hungry!” Fighting
food insecurity is a constant chal-
lenge for too many of our neighbors.
Another impediment to doing well
in school for some of our students is
lack of proper school supplies. Each
grade level in elementary school has
its own suggested/required supplies.
The price of some of those supplies
can be out of reach for a low-income
household.
We would hope that a booming
state and national economy would
rise many families out of the low-
income category, but until (or unless)
that happens we must help our fellow
citizens. Keizer is a generous commu-
nity and now is the time to prove it
again.
One of the most successful philan-
trophic projects in recent years has
been The McNary Kloset which is a
in-school repository of clothing, food
and hygiene products for high school
students. A student in need can enter
and ‘shop’ privately from the closet
only with a school counselor. The
Kloset has since been replicated at
Whiteaker and Claggett Creek mid-
dle schools.
The Keizer Chamber Foundation
oversees the collection of donated and
new items and assures they stock up
the three closets. The public is asked
to donate clean clothes shoes in good
repair; coats and jackets
are especially needed with
fall and winter coming.
The Kloset also has food
and hygiene products stu-
dents in need can take. It is
reported that the students
who utilize The Kloset are
humble and appreciative.
Donations for the
Kloset can be delivered directly to
McNary, Whiteaker or Claggett
Creek schools. The Keizertimes of-
fi ce is a drop off point for McNary
also while Copy Cats print shop on
River Road is a drop off location for
the two middle schools. All of us can
look through our own closests and
fi nd one, if not more, items to donate.
Too many students in Keizer are
eligible for the free lunch project at
their school. One can conclude that
food insecurity is an issue in their
home. The Keizer Network of Wom-
en and other organizations (Marion
County Fire District #1, Keizer
Eagles, to name two) collect food
to be delivered with toys during the
Christmas holiday. But hunger does
not know a season. A child hungry
in December is hungry in September
and May.
The generosity demonstrated in
December should also happen at least
twice during the school year. Full
bellies means our kids will be atten-
tive in class and ready to learn.
The Salem-Keizer Education
Foundation, Assistance League Aux-
illiary and others hold school supply
drives this time of year. The Keizer-
times offi ce is a donation spot for
school supplies for those students in
need.
The things that our most vulern-
able students need can be found in
our own closet, at a discount store or
in an aisle during a regular shopping
trip. By helping make daily school life
better for them, we better our own
community.
—LAZ
KLL board
doing good
work
For the past two years
Keizer Little League has
raised funds through spon-
sorships, grants, volunteers
and out-of-pocket funds.
This amount has been
more than $50,000. Keizer
Little League is working
to improve now and into
the future. A big thank you to the
board serving our kids.
Clint Holland
Keizer
our
opinion
lottors
To the Editor:
The last couple of
months there has been con-
troversy concerning Keizer
Little League.
I have been a supporter, lover of
kids and volunteer in this program on
and off for more than 50 years.
I want you to know that the Keizer
Little League Board of Directors serv-
ing presently are the best. Every story
has two sides. This board was handed
problems from previous boards. They
are doing an awesome job working
together to solve these situations.
Share your opinion
Email a Letter to the Editor or submit
a guest column to the Keizertimes.
Deadline is noon Tuesday.
Email to: publisher@keizertimes.com
Trial highlight’s Trump’s bad choices
By DEBRA SAUNDERS
In June, U.S. District Judge T.S.
Ellis slammed the position of special
counsel as a post too easily “deployed
as a political weapon” to troll for dirt
on targeted adversaries. At the same
time, he ruled that Special Counsel
Robert Mueller’s prosecution of for-
mer Trump campaign chairman Paul
Manafort was legitimate and should
continue.
Ellis, who is presiding over
Manafort’s trial in Alexandria, Vir-
ginia, was acutely aware that the mul-
tiple charges of tax and bank fraud had
nothing to do with the 2016 presiden-
tial election or Russian meddling in
the campaign. But the judge found
grounds for Mueller’s team to pros-
ecute Manafort as its probe uncovered
a fraudulent money trail funded by
backers of former Ukraine President
Viktor Yanukovych. The terms of the
Mueller investigation included look-
ing into the “strongly pro-Russian”
Ukraine leader.
There’s something to be said for
the irascible judge’s focus. Ellis also ap-
pears to have curbed Manafort’s law-
yer, Kevin Downing, after Downing
grilled star witness Rick Gates about
four alleged extramarital affairs.
It’s irrelevant. Gates is Manafort’s
former right-hand man who was in-
dicted along with Manafort in Oc-
tober 2017, but later agreed to plead
guilty and testify against his old boss as
part of a plea deal that should reduce,
and possibly eliminate, a prison sen-
tence that threatened to span decades.
The jury has seen Gates as an ac-
complished liar and professional cheat.
From Monday afternoon through
Wednesday morning of last week,
prosecutor Greg Andres walked Gates
through a series of fraudulent maneu-
vers that he orchestrated to avoid pay-
ing taxes.
Gates also admitted to skimming
money from offshore Manafort ac-
counts—although, as Downing point-
ed out, he claimed to have embezzled
hundreds of thousands from Manafort
after the government had fi gured
Gates skimmed close to $3 million.
But Gates looking shifty doesn’t
make Manafort appear pure—not
when prosecutors produced docu-
ments that gave the impression
Manafort hired Gates because they
share the same low bar on ethics.
In 2015, Manafort emailed Gates
about a higher-than-expected tax tab.
“We need to discuss actions,” Manafort
wrote. After some fancy shuffl ing, no
surprise, his tax bill shrank.
Manafort also consulted Gates
about the method to doctor a PDF as
he applied for a loan.
In the long run, the most damaging
testimony from Gates had to do with
Manafort Inc.’s depleted fi nances after
Yanukovych fell from power.
According to the feds, as Manafort
advised Yanukovych and other
Ukraine entities from 2006 to 2015,
$75 million fl owed into the big-
spending political consultant’s offshore
accounts—and Gates helped launder
more than $30 million of that.
But when Yanukovych fl ed, the
money went away. In 2015, Gates
testifi ed, “We had zero clients.” Rath-
er than sell one of his many homes,
Manafort went on the hunt for big
loans by whatever means it took get
to get them.
Then, like a deus ex machina in an
ancient theater production, Donald
Trump appeared on the political stage.
Manafort agreed to advise Trump
without pay, as he clearly saw an op-
portunity to cash in on his work for
Trump over time.
Through a Kiev staffer, the Atlan-
tic reported, Manafort sent clippings
of stories about his political work for
Trump to a Russian oligarch, to whom
Manafort owed millions. Manafort
asked, “How do we use to get whole?”
Conservative journalists have
chronicled ties between Moscow and
the Democratic National Commit-
tee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign
in 2016. Most notably the DNC and
Clinton campaign bankrolled the un-
verifi ed “dossier” compiled by a for-
mer British intelligence offi cer who
repeated dirt fed by Russian sources.
The opposition research fi rm that
hired the Brit also had worked against
the 2012 Magnitsky Act that pre-
scribed sanctions against corrupt Rus-
sian players.
But if everyone’s hands are dirty,
does that mean no one’s hands are
dirty?
Trump frequently notes that
Manafort served as his campaign chief
for only a brief time, a mere three
months. But given Manafort’s reputa-
tion for advising strongmen who op-
pose U.S. interests, that’s three months
too long.
As a candidate, Trump boasted that
he’d hire “the best” people to run his
government. But fi rst he hired the
worst guy—a politico who made his
fortune advising corrupt strongmen --
to steer his campaign. So even if there
was no collusion, there was colossally
bad judgment. And there is a price to
pay for bad choices.
(Croators Syndicato)
Why are we trashing our only home?
The planet Mars held a special place
in my imagination as a child. An Ital-
ian astronomer, Giovanni Schiaparelli,
observed in 1877 what he believed
to be straight lines on Mars surface
and surmised them the work of in-
telligent life. Later, astronomers with
more powerful telescopes determined
the lines or “canals” to be
an optical illusion. Orson
Welles’ adaptation of H.G.
Wells’ The War of the Worlds
on Oct. 30, 1938, panicked
millions,
announcing
weird monsters swarming
out of a spaceship in New
Jersey were destroying hu-
mans with ray guns.
Our sun and its eight
planets have been spinning through
the Milky Way galaxy for billions of
years: 5 billion for our sun and 4.6
billion for Earth and Mars. Mars has
a thin atmosphere mostly of carbon
dioxide, argon, nitrogen along with
a small amount of oxygen and water
vapor, cannot support life as we know
it, and is called the Red Planet due
to oxidization of iron minerals. It has
dramatically changed over the billions
of its life years as has the Earth. At the
dawn of mammals, 50 million years
ago, crocodiles, palm trees, and tiger
sharks thrived in the Arctic Circle
where the atmosphere was 1,000 ppm
carbon dioxide. A condition of 1,000
ppm carbon dioxide is expected again
by the year 2100.
Knowing what we know now,
could Mars have been like Earth long
ago? That’s very possible. Since our
knowledge of the changes the Earth
has gone through, it is not beyond
fl ights of fancy to think that Mars has
experienced a large number of chang-
es. Is there a chance Mars looked very
much like Earth, perhaps 2 billion
years ago, and was inhabited by beings
not unlike Earthlings, and that those
beings used it up.
Our planet meanwhile is chang-
ing very quickly as the human species
keeps throwing stuff away and have
turned our backs on the oceans and
waterways, turning them
into what more and more
of us see as sludge buckets
for massive accumulations
of toxic materials. We
have a global contamina-
tion issue where our mis-
management of waste is
rapidly adding up to our
demise.
Most of us take an out-
of-sight, out-of-mind approach to
garbage. We throw things away but
don’t think about what “away” really
means. Many of us, this columnist ar-
gues, have this notion about it all that
there are magical people who take
things from us we don’t any long want
and we never have to think about
these things again.
We are currently cursed by exam-
ples like Scott Pruitt, former head of
the Environmental Protection Agency.
He, whose grossly unethical behav-
ior notwithstanding, was on-the-job
in Washington, D.C. for about 18
months during which time he was
committed to making it easier for U.S.
businesses to pollute and allow the
greatest possible damage to Mother
Nature. President Trump has already
appointed Pruitt’s successor, Andrew
Wheeler, a former coal-and chemical-
lobbyist who Trump said “will contin-
ue on with our great and lasting EPA
agenda.”
Meanwhile, the World Economic
Forum estimates that Earth’s oceans
gono
h.
mcintyro
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are now clogged with 150 million
metric tons of plastic with another 8
million tons added every year. Imag-
ine a huge truckload of plastic dumped
into the planet’s waters every minute
and one soon gets at the monumen-
tal size of the problem. Yes, plastic
straws are on the “endangered” list but
what about everything else. And, just
remember, too, modern plastics have
only been in use since 1909 while the
Earth was devoid of them for the 4.6
billion years before their advent.
In concert and cooperation with
the world’s most able scientifi c minds,
American can-do inventiveness could
make signifi cant contributions to
lessen or reduce the anticipated global
warming catastrophe already under-
way in the form of devastating wind
storms, fl ooding rains and out-of-con-
trol forest and wild fi res. Unfortunate
for the immediate future and gen-
erations yet unborn, leadership in the
United States is not willing to address
the storms well underway. Waiting for
the right people in power to try to
turn the current downward trajectory
may wait too long and be too late.
There are measures that offer solu-
tions for air, water and earth. These
include the decarbonization of the
global economy, enhancement of
biosphere carbon sinks, behavioral
changes, technological innovations,
new governance arrangements and
transformed social values. President
Trump and his Cabinet members
have evidenced no interest while they
continue to work against any fi xes for
a seriously ailing environment that
could result ultimately in a Mars-like
Earth.
(Gono H. McIntyro sharos his
opinion wookly in tho Koizortimos.)