PAGE A6, KEIZERTIMES, JUNE 21, 2019
Opinion
Pull the plug
The last of the meetings for stake-
holders regarding the Keizer Revi-
talization Plan along Keizer’s main
thoroughfare was held this week.
The plan will provide a vision for
revitalization of one of Keizer’s ma-
jor commercial areas: River Road
and Cherry Avenue. The plan, which
will incorporate recommendations
to the city council from a citizens
advisory council, will include sug-
gested updated policies and use,
development, and design
standards for the plan
area. Suggested public
investments to achieve
plan area objectives and
includes strategies to im-
plement the recommen-
dations. The plan is a sup-
porting document to the
city’s Comprehensive Plan and the
city’s development code.
A review of the consultants’
initial report shows that there is
nothing new here. The initial rec-
ommendations are what have been
recommended by several previous
revitalization and beautifi cation
projects—remember River Road
Renaissance? Remember Keizer
Compass and the proposed districts
up and down River Road? It is all
the same. Thank goodness the con-
sultants are being paid with a grant
from the state and not from city cof-
fers.
The process wherein Keizer is
trying to design the future of the
city’s main commercial street is,
once again, missing a major compo-
nent—the property owners whose
support will be needed to achieve
even a portion of some of the early
recommendations.
Perhaps it is time to put this
project on indefi nite hold. Instead
of trying to devise a plan, then get
stakeholders and the public to en-
dorse it, focus on repair and main-
tenance of River Road and Cherry
Avenue and let the free market de-
cide what works best.
The problem is that what is being
recommended is the same as what
has been called for in previous iter-
ations of River Road projects. In
lieu of something new and forward
looking, it is best to just to let it go.
Are Keizer home and business
owners ready to bear the fi nancial
burden of a more beautiful River
Road? Businesses are al-
ready under the gun for
new taxes the Oregon
legislature is seeking.
Wouldn’t Keizer readily
get behind a plan that
more effi ciently moves
traffi c around our city?
That would have more
of an impact on the everyday life of
Keizerites than what’s recommend-
ed in the initial revitalization report.
Some may exclaim, “What about
all the time and money spent on this
project so far?” Put the fi nal report
aside and open it in the future when
Keizer is ready to stomach the cost
and disruption.
We would be open to the city re-
viewing zoning codes along River
Road and Cherry Avenue, in part-
nership with the private sector, to
create an atmosphere that fosters
economic development.
The city will have more than
enough on its plate when the call
for expanding the Urban Growth
Boundary gets louder and louder.
The state decrees that Keizer needs
more space to accomodate expect-
ed growth. That means Keizer must
decide if it will grow vertically or
horizontally.
Let’s pull the plug on these re-
dundant beautifi cation idea projects
and focus on the important question
of Keizer’s future growth overall.
—LAZ
our
opinion
Too many visitors?
There have been reports that
some of the world’s important his-
torical and tourist spots are being
overwhelmed by visitors. The globe’s
burgeoning middle class has discov-
ered its wings and has joined First
World tourists to cram such draws
as Machu Picchu in Peru and Venice,
Italy.
Machu Picchu, the ancient Incan
citadel, high in the Andes Moun-
tains, has been visited by about 5,000
people each day from May to Octo-
ber, the high tourist season. That is
about one million people each year.
Now, Peru is building a world-class
airport that will bring more planes
and more people to the area. Once
completed the airport would allow
visitor traffi c to more than triple to-
day’s counts.
Another mount getting over-
crowded is Everest. Recent photos
show climbers—amateur and profes-
sional—all in a line, one right after
another. The world’s tallest mountain
was once accessible only to the most
prepared and hardy climbers. That’s
not true anymore. The increased
climbing traffi c is resulting in a trail
of waste from base camp to the sum-
mit.
Venice, Italy and its canals are un-
der assault from millions of tourists.
The city was already sinking, add
millions of people plus the affects of
cruise ships on the docks and piers
and you’ve got a disaster in the mak-
ing.
Many nations around the world
have experienced economic growth
in recent years. Never in the histo-
ry of man have there been so many
people with the resources to travel to
other parts of the world. China alone
has hundreds of millions of people
able to be tourists outside their own
country.
The adverse affect of growing
tourism will not abate anytime soon.
Around the world, those entering
the middle class are ready to enjoy
the bounty of their success, and that
means taking to the roads, skies and
seas of other lands.
It seems that the world will love
its historical and tourist spots to
death unless there is a way to limit
the number of people each year that
visit vulnerable sites. Tourism means
economic vitality but the world has
to ask: at what cost?
— LAZ
Can we build a moral economy?
By E.J. DIONNE JR.
Do you build the economy from
the top down or from the bottom
up? And is the main purpose of the
economy the production of things
or the enhancement of life?
I can imagine immediate objec-
tions to both questions. Don’t all
successful economies involve bot-
tom-up and top-down elements?
Doesn’t everybody claim
to be a bottom-up per-
son at heart? And don’t
“things” (such as the lap-
top I am writing on) en-
hance “life”?
Well, sure. Almost all
questions involving bina-
ry choices are fl awed in
some way. But these two concerns
underlie the sometimes explicit, of-
ten subterranean, debates going on
in the country -- and, especially, in
the campaign for the Democratic
presidential nomination.
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth War-
ren has been rising in the polls be-
cause of the sheer, impressive bulk of
her policy proposals, but also because
she is pressing the issue of what it
takes to build a moral economy.
The vision of a lower-tax, light-
ly regulated economy, which gained
ascendancy during the Reagan years,
was always defended by its advocates
as a bottom-up idea because it ex-
tolled the role of the entrepreneur
who bravely started a business. If he
or she worked hard enough and had
something worthy to sell, the busi-
ness would take off, creating jobs
and new opportunities. It’s why Re-
publican politicians argue obsessively
that what’s good for “job creators” is
good for the rest of us.
But this conception of econom-
ic life is not really bottom-up. It has
little concern about concentrated
economic power. Its policies reward
those at the top. That’s where the
term “trickle down” comes from.
Investors and business people are the
heroes of this story. The worker owes
everything to them.
This view of the economy has
gone in and out of style. It loomed
large in the 1920s but was badly dis-
credited by the Great
Depression of the 1930s.
It won a new lease on
life in the Reagan years
but began coming into
question with the ensu-
ing surge of inequality.
It lost its hold entirely
after the crash of 2008.
We thus live in a time when one
narrative is dead but the new one is
yet to be written. We’re on “one of
those blank pages in between chap-
ters,” as Pete Buttigieg put it when
formally announcing his presidential
campaign.
No one is doing more than War-
ren to fi ll in those blanks. Put all
her ideas together and you fi nd two
core themes. One is that, contrary to
myth, government is always shaping
the economy, both by what it does
and what it chooses not to do. The
issue is: Whose side should govern-
ment be on? Whose interests should
it serve?
This leads to her other core prin-
ciple: that the economy starts not
with the investor, but with the work-
er, who had a starring role in the
New Deal era spanning the 1930s
to the 1970s. Enhancing blue-col-
lar purchasing power was the way
we drove prosperity. Bernie Sanders’
speech last week defi ning democrat-
ic socialism highlighted not foreign
models but the need to “take up
other
voices
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The defi cit in media questioning
By DEBRA J. SAUNDERS
Trade secret: We in the news me-
dia often hate the media, too.
I had such a moment Tuesday at
the Peter G. Peterson Foundation’s
annual summit when CNN senior
congressional respondent Manu
Raju interviewed House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi.
The topic was sup-
posed to be “fi scal sus-
tainability”—a Washing-
ton phrase for curbing
spending and slowing
the growth of the $22
trillion debt.
Defi cit spending af-
fects every American
in the pocketbook. The
federal debt is an IOU that amounts
to $49,000 for every man, woman
and child in America. Still, Raju
barely touched on the subject.
The CNN reporter began with
a question about President Donald
Trump’s remarks from Normandy,
where world leaders had gathered
to commemorate the 75th anni-
versary of D-Day. Trump—reacting
to a Politico report that Pelosi told
her caucus she wanted to see Trump
“in prison”—told Fox News’ Laura
Ingraham that Pelosi was a “nasty,
vindictive horrible person” and a
“disgrace.”
“What bothers me is that we’re
talking about that instead of how to
reduce the national debt,” Pelosi re-
sponded, as she criticized Trump for
being overly political while overseas.
Raju followed up with a ques-
tion wondering how Pelosi can
work with someone who insults her.
“I just consider the source,” Pelosi
countered.
Here’s the short version of Ra-
ju’s other questions: Do you think
Trump should be in prison? Why
aren’t you for impeachment? Would
you support impeachment if the
majority of Democrats supported
impeachment? You believe he com-
maitted crimes in offi ce, right? So
isn’t it your obligation to pursue im-
peachment?
When Raju asked
about Trump’s threat to
impose tariffs on Mex-
ico, Pelosi offered that
she would have declined
to come to the event if
she had been invited to
discuss Trump. The au-
dience clapped in ap-
proval.
Around minute 18,
Raju asked: “Right now, the debt is
like $22 trillion. How come dealing
with the national debt in a serious
way is not a bigger priority with this
Congress?”
It was an odd question coming
from someone who didn’t think the
debt was important enough to ad-
dress in the fi rst half of a talk that
was supposed to be about the federal
government’s unsustainable spend-
ing trajectory.
Pelosi faulted the Tax Cuts and
Jobs Act, passed by the GOP Con-
gress and signed by Trump in De-
cember 2017, for adding $2 trillion
to the national debt over the next
10 years. Indeed, the Congressional
Budget Offi ce predicted the mea-
sure would increase the projected
defi cit by $1.9 trillion through 2028.
When Raju asked Pelosi if she
supports “Medicare for All” and the
New Green Deal—the latest fashion
in left-leaning policy—Pelosi re-
sponded, “Everything is on the table
to be reviewed, but what I do sup-
port is pay as you-go.” Pelosi did not
debra j.
saunders
Keizertimes
the unfi nished business of the New
Deal and carry it to completion.” In
defending a very similar objective,
Warren proposes capitalism of a bot-
tom-up sort with antitrust policies
aimed at making the economy more
competitive by busting up economic
behemoths.
Every one of her many plans has
come under criticism from one di-
rection or another, but that’s what
happens when you’re very specifi c.
Her achievement is that she has laid
the groundwork for the debate the
country must have about what the
next economy should look like.
Joe Biden, for one, is hearing the
music. It was striking that during his
visit to Ottumwa, Iowa, last week, he
criticized the legendary conservative
economist Milton Friedman, chal-
lenging the idea that “the only obli-
gation corporations have is to stock-
holders.” Why are investors seen as
“the only job creators”? Of workers,
he asked: “Aren’t they creating jobs?”
“We’ve got to start to reward
not just wealth,” Biden concluded.
“We’ve got to reward work.”
Next week, Democrats will have
their fi rst debate, a sprawling two-
day affair. To rein in the chaos, the
moderators might consider having
the candidates focus on specifi cs
as to what it would take to build a
system that does reward work. Let’s
hear them talk about how we might
organize our economy so it enhanc-
es rather than disrupts our families
and communities. Yes, productivity
and growth matter. Our everyday
lives matter, too.
We don’t usually think of the
word “moral” as attached to the word
“economics.” It’s time we started.
offer exactly how she would pay for
those massively expensive programs.
But at least there were two spending
questions in the half-hour debate.
Otherwise, there were so many
things not to like—the obsession
with Trump, a clear bias against
the president and the usual lack of
self-knowledge about exactly how
off the mark this approach appears
to the news-consuming public.
And there was the cheesy pursuit
of a sound bite to “make news” on
the story of the day, which is always
Trump. And the big revelation? As
CNN hyped it, “Pelosi: Impeach-
ment is ‘not off the table’” —as if
that is news to anybody in America.
It was frustrating to watch because
the summit provided an opportuni-
ty for follow-up questions—an op-
portunity unavailable to reporters
during White House pool sprays
and departure gatherings, where the
best one can do is shout a question
that reaches Trump’s ears and awak-
ens his fancy.
Also at the summit, CNBC’s Ea-
mon Javers managed to squeeze hot
news topics into a meaty half-hour
exchange with acting White House
chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. Since
Trump took the oath of offi ce, the
national debt rose from $19.9 tril-
lion to more than $22 trillion. The
2019 defi cit is on track to exceed $1
trillion.
Prompted by Javers, Mulvaney
admitted he did not know whether
the administration could get the an-
nual defi cit below $1 trillion while
Trump is in offi ce.
It was a chilling admission about
out-of-control spending that will
haunt the taxpaying public for years
to come.
(Creators Syndicate)