DECEMBER 21, 2018, KEIZERTIMES, PAGE A5
Opinion
Keizer should join bag ban
The City of Keizer tends to fol-
low the direction of its municipal
neighbors. When an issue arises in
our city the council invariably asks
“What are other cities doing?”
We think the Keizer city coun-
cil should follow other cities on
the issue of plastic shopping bags.
Ban them.
First consider the
billions upon billions
of plastic bags that have
been used and disposed
of, usually into landfi lls.
Now consider how
many plastic bags the
average Keizer house-
hold uses. Once at home, some
of those bags serve double duty
as garbage liners. But generally
,many are mistakenly put into the
recycling bin (they should go into
a garbage can because they clog up
equipment at recycling centers).
There are those who opt for reus-
able shopping bags.
Economically, plastic bags are
much cheaper to manufacture
than the old-style paper bags.
That’s why every grocer and most
retailers utilize them. Our landfi lls
and our oceans cannot continue to
be the dump for billions of bags
around the world.
Some reasons people
might cite for not ban-
ning plastic bags include:
personal freedom, too
much governmental in-
terference, let the mar-
ket decide the issue, too
costly for the public and
retailers going without.
Society cannot continue to kick
solvable problems down the road
for the next generation to address.
When humanity has the chance to
do what is right for the environ-
ment we should not hesitate to act
today.
Keizer should join Salem, Por-
talnd and Corvallis in banning
our
opinion
plastic shopping bags. Consumers
would have to purchase reusable
shopping bags and remember to
take them to the store. A ban of
plastic shopping bags is not an
ideological or economic issue, it is
a conservative issue, period. Every-
one is a steward of the globe we
inhabit and thus we need to do
what is necessary to care for our
fragile environment.
Our municipal neighbors have
led the brave campaign to rid their
cities of plastic bags—Keizer fol-
lows its neighbors, let’s follow
them on this issue.
Debating this issue should com-
mence, but in the end wouldn’t
everyone like to say they helped
make their home a little neater and
a little healthier?
It’s time now for the city staff
and the city council to do their
part.
—LAZ
Make them sober holidays
Everyone makes mistakes. Get-
ting behind the wheel of a vehicle
after drinking is not a mistake, it
is the willful disregard for the law
and for social norms.
During the holiday season, in-
cidents of drunk driving spike.
People fi nd themselves at offi ce
parties or other celebrations, drink
too much and decide they are fi ne
to get home. Many times they are
not fi ne and if stopped would fi nd
their blood alcohol level past the
legal limit.
All law enforcement organiza-
tions will be on high alert for im-
paired driving this holiday season,
as they should be. We, and hope-
fully everyone, has a very low tol-
erance for those who drink and
then drive. The message has been
sent millions of times over the de-
cades on the dangers of driving af-
ter drinking—the costs of getting
stopped and arrested, not only in
fi nes, but also increased insurance
rates. Employers do not look kind-
ly on their employees who miss
work due to a DUII.
We don’t accept the excuse of “I
made a mistake.” We all know what
alcohol and other stimulents do.
We don’t accept the excuse of “I
had a drink while on medication.”
If one is on medication one should
not drink—no holiday celebration
is worth tossing one’s dignity out
the window.
There are rules about drinking
that are easy to follow: assign a des-
ignated driver, don’t drink to ex-
cess, and do not drive after drink-
ing.
Drinking and driving is not a
mistake—it is a crime that should
be punished to the full extent of
the law, fi rst offense or not.
— LAZ
From your table to their farm
By DEBRA J. SAUNDERS
Forget all the tongue clucking
about Washington being so divided
and nasty that Democrats and Repub-
licans cannot work together. As the
Senate and House proved this week
in passing the $867 billion farm bill,
when it comes to spending money
they don’t have, party leaders really
can reach across the aisle.
With the national fed-
eral debt approaching $22
trillion, President Donald
Trump has praised the
bill, which provides food
stamps for the poor, but
also hands out subsidies
to American farmers,
even though it does not
include needed reforms or even mod-
est spending cuts.
Conservative think tanks dismiss
the farm subsidies as corporate wel-
fare. On the left, environmentalist
groups have opposed them as well.
Fiscal hawks are appalled at the failure
of Congress to do anything to ease the
defi cit.
And yet the farm bill lives.
Chris Edwards of the libertari-
an-leaning Cato Institute has written
that federal farm subsidies “redistrib-
ute wealth upward,” with the bulk of
the money going “to the largest and
wealthiest farm households.”
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the
rare farmer in the Senate, was among
the rump of Republicans to vote
against the bill. Grassley explained that
he could not support a measure that
would not limit subsidies
to the wealthiest farms—
which he says puts young
and beginning farmers at a
disadvantage.
“I know it’s hard to be-
lieve, but I’ve never heard a
single young or beginning
farmer tell me that the way
to help them is to give more money to
the largest farmers,” Grassley offered
in a statement.
Grassley also voiced horror at pro-
visions to expand the defi nition of
farm families to include cousins, niec-
es and nephews, even if they don’t
work on a farm. The bill, he charged,
seems “intentionally written to help
the largest farmers receive unlimited
subsidies from the federal govern-
other
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ment.”
Grassley wanted farm subsidy
reform. House Republicans, on
the other hand, held up the farm
bill in a push to mandate work re-
quirements for some Supplemen-
tal Nutrition Assistance Program
recipients. To Edwards it seems
wrong that the GOP House de-
manded work requirements for the
poor, but not “wealthy farmers or
landowners.”
Then once House Republicans
gave up on that issue, Democrats
apparently were hungry to pass a
bill that would deliver on SNAP.
Be it noted that farm subsidies
account for some 20 percent of the
farm bill’s spending, while 80 per-
cent goes to SNAP, according to
the National Conference of State
Legislatures.
The Environmental Working
Group’s Scott Faber has been a
longtime critic of farm subsidies.
On Wednesday, however, Faber
praised the measure’s drinking wa-
ter reforms and provisions to pro-
mote organic farming.
The next day he released a state-
ment that lit into the farm subsidies
for “millionaires and city slickers.”
Marc Goldwein of the Com-
mittee for a Responsible Feder-
al Budget told the Las Vegas Re-
view-Journal that there is a lot to
like in the 2018 farm bill and farm
bills in general.
Nonetheless, it is hard for
Goldwein to fathom why the
GOP-controlled Congress failed
to fi nd at least $1 billion annual-
ly in savings in a measure that has
been a perennial target of the right.
Federal discretionary spending has
spiked by 16 percent over the last
two years—and the farm bill offers
“low-hanging fruit” ripe for fi scal
discipline.
But in the two years of GOP
control over the White House,
Senate and House, there has been
no zeal to budget responsibly.
House Republicans offered a bill
with work requirements, but no
savings, said Goldwein. Senate Re-
publicans offered a bill with no
work requirements and no savings.
And Trump has signaled his readi-
ness to sign a bill with no savings.
Edwards sees “classic logroll-
ing” at work. The marriage of food
stamps and farm subsidies created
common cause for urban Demo-
crats and rural Republicans. Now
funds for organic farming and sup-
port for industrial hemp mean law-
makers feel no need to economize.
The worst part, to my mind,
is this: House Republicans always
were going to cave on the work
requirements, but they might have
been able to hold out for savings.
Goldwein fi gured cutting $25 bil-
lion to $50 billion would not be
a heavy lift. But these Republicans
cannot be bothered because they
no longer care about the defi cit.
(Creators Syndicate)
and death. He was rumored to have
By LAUREN MURPHY
magical powers and fl y through the
Keizertimes intern
Santa’s Naughty or Nice list has air on a grey eight - legged horse and,
been a tool for parents for years. Ev- sometimes, he wore a red cloak.
That sounds like Santa, but where
ery Christmas some relative will ask,
“Have you been nice this year?” and did his list come from? Other peo-
deep inside, no matter what our age ple believed that Wodan (a variation
of Odin) fl ew
is, we really want to
through the air on
say yes; but, where
a white horse and
did that list come
was accompanied
from anyway?
by two black ravens.
Nordic
reli-
The ravens names
gion has changed
were Huginn and
a lot over the years
Muninn and they
,but it was widely
would listen to
practiced in what
people
through
is now known as
their chimneys and
northern Germa-
report their good
ny or Denmark
and bad behavior.
for several hundred
After Yule, the
years. The religion
Norse
goddess
had many different
Freya would spend
aspects to it. There
12 days going
were multiple gods,
around to the peo-
mythical
beings
ple in the land. She
and wars between
different tribes.
A portrait of Odin – titled Odin gave gifts to the
Before Christ- the Wanderer – by Georg von good and misery
to the corrupt. She
mas was celebrat- Rosen from 1886.
traveled in a chari-
ed in Europe, the
ot pulled by horses.
Germanic people
So, in 280 A.D. , when Santa start-
celebrated a holiday called “yule.”
They would wear furs and a beard ed to do his thing, he looked to the
and go to people’s houses pretend- other legends who came before him.
ing to be “Old Man Winter” or more Combining aspects of the horse-
commonly known as Odin. They be- drawn transportation, giving gifts, vis-
lieved in Odin was king of the Æsir iting homes, and of course the naugh-
tribe. He was the god of several things ty and nice list.
including, wisdom, healing, royalty
What do you get when
you make a vampire
snowman?
Frostbite
crossword
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