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About Keizertimes. (Salem, Or.) 1979-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 13, 2019)
PAGE A6, KEIZERTIMES, DECEMBER 13, 2019 Opinion Cupboards are bare During the holidays organizations in the area kick into high gear with their food basket delivery programs to households in need. That includes the Keizer Chamber of Com- merce’s Keizer Network of Women (KNOW), the Keizer Elks Club and Marion County Fire Dis- trict #1. The names of house- holds receiving KNOW’s program are provided by the Salem-Keizer School District. That is wonderful for those houses that will receive baskets of food and gifts for children in those homes. What about other food-insecure households that are not identifi ed by the school district? Many of these households rely on a food bank— including Keizer Community Food Bank—to augment what they are able to afford. The operators of the Keizer Com- munity Food Bank are desperate to fi ll their food shelves and look to the public for help. Marion Polk Food Share does provide food but it is not enough to keep the bank’s pantry full to serve the hundreds of people who need their help. While planning and preparing for holiday parties and feasts we should remember those who can not enjoy the holidays while their stomachs are unfulfi lled. While grocery shopping, the public can purchase the items most needed by food banks: canned goods like vegetables, canned chick- en, tuna, salmon, fruit, soup, pasta, rice, beans, oatmeal, grits, cream of wheat, crackers, macaroni and cheese, peanut butter and powdered milk. Food insecurity affects too many area households and it changes how people live their daily lives. No one should be hungry any time of the year. A child’s empty stomach is detrimental to their education. While donations of food are gladly accepted by food banks, money does the most good. One dollar can feed two familes of four. That is astonish- ing. Those who want to help more can sign up to be a monthly sustainer with deductions from checking or card ac- counts. Hunger comes into clear focus during the holidays because of the mulitple food basket deliveries, but we all know that hunger is not sea- sonal. Those who are food insecure are food insecure as much in the spring, summer and fall as they are during the holidays. It is said that giving is better than receiving. Let us make that so this hol- iday season for those who need a hand and continue that philosophy into the new year. —LAZ our opinion In-N-Out traffi c Readers responded to the Keiz- ertimes article about how In-N-Out and the city will deal with expected traffi c when the restaurant opens in Keizer Station (‘Double-Double’ traffi c will snake through stadium lot, Dec. 6). Here are some of the selected com- ments: Defi nitely not worth the wait for hours for a burger and fries! I feel bad for employees and patients that need to get to work or their doctors appts at Keizer Station. —Roseanne Dettwyler So there won’t be a dedicated lane for in and out customers and then one for those, say, just trying to get to Target or Ross? —Jennifer Harmony That is ridiculous. Who waits in line for an hour for a burger? I do almost all of my shopping at Keizer Station and am not looking forward to the traffi c being even worse than it already is. —Erin O’Shea Is there a plan in place for those people on the same roads trying to legitimately get to one of the oth- er businesses? Not to mention the potential road rage from persons thinking they are cutting or people who are stuck in this planned crazy loop to loop and they just want to get to their destination that does not include In-N-Out? I’m sorry I am hoping for the best but personally, as a resident if Keizer for the last 15 years, I’m just going to stay out of the way; unfortunately that means I will be taking my business to Salem. —Gillian Gelfand Herndon Hopefully the long lines will en- courage people to eat at the other spots in Keizer Station. Otherwise those places are going to take a huge hit during the holidays. —Erin Crauder It would be faster to drive to Grants Pass to the In & Out there. —Bev Everett Landgren I plan to avoid Keizer Station like the plague from the moment they open until things die down. My cousin lives near the Medford store and she said it was impossible to get anywhere near it for at least a month. —Deanne Gregory A January opening would be easier on Christmas shoppers and doubtful that it would change their grand opening profi ts. Seems like that would have been the friendly neighbor option. —Kristen Tesch Negative comments versus those excited and the growth Keizer gains from one business adds to the suc- cess of all business in Keizer. —Scott White All these people who are com- plaining must not want Keizer business to thrive. This is a win for Keizer.The traffi c will be slow for a month or so, but come on, that’s not very long and will be over before you know it. Then, Keizer Station will be a shopping destination for Portland and other towns that want In-N-Out. If you don’t like it, don’t go out to Keizer Station, you would never survive in LA or other con- gested towns so feel lucky it’s only for a short time. —Rob Orahood I may be in the minority but I am actually thrilled that this busi- ness is coming to our town. Believe it or not, people coming for just “a burger” will end up servicing a lot of the businesses in the Keizer Station. Keizer Station has a good layout and the traffi c should fl ow pretty smoothly. Our Keizer com- munity needs this boost. It will draw the crowd from Portland down to Salem and let them spend some of their money in our community. I am wishing them success. —Amber Johnson Unbelievable how so many have jumped to the conclusion that traf- fi c will be so horrible due to In- N-Out coming to Keizer Station. I don’t understand why people feel they must talk so negatively about it. There are a lot of people that do like the burgers and fries. I, for one, miss their Double Doubles and fries. It has been a little over 25 years since I have had In-N-Out. Because their meat and potatoes are fresh and nev- er frozen I am hoping it still tastes the same. I guess I will fi nd out after Christmas when I will have money again to buy dinner. —LoAnn Brandenberger 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 SUBSCRIPTIONS One year: $35 in Marion County, $43 outside Marion County, $55 outside Oregon ASSOCIATE EDITOR Matt Rawlings news@keizertimes.com COMMUNITY REPORTER PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY Lauren Murphy reporter@keizertimes.com Publication No: USPS 679-430 ADVERTISING POSTMASTER Paula Moseley advertising@keizertimes.com Send address changes to: PRODUCTION MANAGER & GRAPHIC DESIGNER Andrew Jackson graphics@keizertimes.com LEGAL NOTICES legals@keizertimes.com BUSINESS MANAGER EDITOR & PUBLISHER Lyndon Zaitz publisher@keizertimes.com 2019-2020 President Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association Keizertimes Circulation 142 Chemawa Road N. Keizer, OR 97303 Periodical postage paid at Salem, Oregon Leah Stevens billing@keizertimes.com RECEPTION Lori Beyeler INTERN Brooklyn Flint facebook.com/keizertimes twitter.com/keizertimes Democrat’s diversity—in the back By PATRICK J. BUCHANAN The “Our diversity is our strength!” Party is starting to look rather monochromatic in its upper echelons these days. The four leading candidates for its presidential nomination —Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg—are all white. The six candidates who have qualifi ed for the Dec. 19 debate— the front four, plus Amy Klobuchar and Tom Steyer—are all white. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer are both white, as are Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Whip Dick Durbin. The chairs of the House Intel- ligence and Judiciary Committees managing impeachment, Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler, are both white. And as Congressman Al Green railed Wednesday, all three experts Nadler invited to make the Democrats’ case for impeachment were white law professors. How come? Absent affi rmative action by the DNC, neither Cory Booker, the leading black candidate for the nom- ination, nor Julian Castro, the leading Hispanic, will be on the stage Dec. 19. But though there is zero racial di- versity among the top six Democrats in the presidential fi eld, there is gen- der, ethnic and ideological diversity. Warren would be the fi rst wom- an president; Sanders, the fi rst Jewish nominee; and Buttigieg would be the fi rst gay nominee. Yet the lack of racial diversity across the party hierarchy is going to put immense pressure on Joe Biden, should he win the nomination. If he hopes to reunite the Obama coali- tion, a woman and/or person of col- or as his running mate would seem an absolute imperative. And before Biden gets there, he has other problems. His “No Malarkey” bus tour across Iowa is all about his fear that, if he loses Iowa on Feb. 3 and New Hamp- shire on Feb. 11, he may not survive to reach his South Car- olina fi rewall on Feb. 25. Though he leads in the national polls, Iowa and New Hampshire polls have Biden run- ning as low as fourth. Never has a candidate contested and lost both those states and then gone on to win the nomination. Nor are these Joe’s only problems. Call them what you will—gaffes, mental lapses—his repeated verbal miscues, some of which have caused debate rivals to laugh out loud at Joe, are a cause of alarm among Demo- crats who fear a Biden-Trump TV debate could produce a debacle for their man. Nor are the other front-runners without racial-ethnic problems. African Americans are a bedrock constituency of the Democratic Par- ty. In recent presidential elections, they have voted 90 percent for the party’s nominee, and even higher for Barack Obama. How is Mayor Pete doing with this constituency? While running fi rst in some polls in Iowa, his share of the African American vote in South Carolina, in a recent poll, was zero. Buttigieg had no black support in a state where African Americans constitute more than 60 percent of the Democratic vote. Bernie Sanders, an unapologet- ic socialist who went to the Soviet Union, Reagan’s “Evil Empire,” for his honeymoon, is holding on to half of the loyal base from his impressive 2016 race against Hillary Clinton. The other half of Bernie’s base, however, has been captured by War- other opinions ren. In October, she took the lead in national polls, only to lose that lead when she could not explain how, without major new taxes on the middle class, she could abolish private health insurance and put the entire country on the Medicare rolls. And, like Bernie, she is weak with black Democrats, who will decide South Carolina one week before Super Tuesday, when 40 percentof all the Democratic delegates will be chosen. How did Democrats arrive at this pass? As the 2019-2020 campaign be- gan, the party divided into two camps. There is fi rst the moderate-cen- trist-pragmatic wing, whose goal is the removal of Trump, and who will go with the Democrat who is the most certain to deliver that. Biden, who spent four decades in the Sen- ate and as vice president, was liked by many and offended few, and was fi rst in the polls, was their natural choice. Then there is the ideological left of the party that wants not only to win but also to remake America. It was to this huge slice of the party that Warren and Bernie have made their radical appeals. The promise of victory offered by Biden and the ideological agen- da offered by Sanders and Warren trumped the ethnic appeal of Booker, Castro and Kamala Harris. Now, with the arrival of money- bags Mike Bloomberg and his tens of millions of dollars in ads, almost cer- tain to reach hundreds of millions be- fore Super Tuesday, there is the possi- bility that four or fi ve candidates will survive to the convention, with no one having a majority of delegates. And the horse-trading will begin. My view: Super Tuesday will cut the fi eld to two or three. And the nominee will be one of the six pale- faces on the stage Dec. 19. (Creators Syndicate) Compassion needed for homeless Many among us get together with relatives for the holidays. My wife and I are no exception. It usually means that during and between food courses we delve into current events. One of our recent guests, during a conversation about home- lessness, commented that those tents full of people near the ARCHES building in downtown Salem should just get a job because there are plenty of jobs available. I doubt that what he believes is generally true or true even in a few cas- es. However, I’ve not gone there to interview the people camping out in the cold to fi nd out whether what he said is true so I did poorly at argu- ing a case for the possible causes and conditions that may have taken them to that place. For me, the thought of even one night in the street, sleeping without a roof overhead, seems in- conceivable. What I’m inclined to believe is that the majority of these homeless folks actually have arrived by loss of a job or inability to pay the rent which have turned individual lives, and the lives of whole families, upside down. A recent issue of the Keizertimes not- ed that individuals and families in our community are paying a huge per- centage of their incomes to rent an apartment, resulting, presumably, in placing them close to, or into, joining the homeless ranks. Our country has a homeless pop- ulation that’s easily in the many mil- lions and growing, exponentially, even though we hear reports—loudly spo- ken almost daily by the president— where he tries to lead us to believe that all’s well in America. Neverthe- less, we should recognize how serious things have gotten and how close to events of civil disorder things could quickly go. Meanwhile, anyone tak- ing a long and hard look at the homeless problem here knows we could do a lot better and that we should now and hereafter stop plac- ing all the blame for homelessness on the homeless themselves. Other nations are doing consider- ably better at dealing with their citi- zens in homelessness. A great deal of it has to do with the American atti- tude that views each individual as an independent entity. One who is free and strong enough to make his own way in America, succeeding if he tries and triumphing over adversity when anything gets in his way. This kind of thinking has its origins in Horatio Al- ger, Daniel Boone and other folk he- roes where the American stands tall, wrestles bears and can, by hard work, determination, courage and honesty, succeed his way through the slings and arrows of life. gene h. mcintyre Real life presents a lot of obstacles to the otherwise idealized Ameri- can. Fact is, some of us are born to someone who didn’t want a child or couldn’t afford a child, or take no in- terest in the child, or leave the child to raise himself, or never provide guidance beyond corporal punish- ment. Then there are those who suf- fer chronic illness or who are com- promised through sight, hearing and other physical limitations. The range of possible negatives go on and on and on. We desperately need to develop attitudes of compassion and under- standing along with plans of action to deal directly and effectively with the millions of Americans who need a lot more than a curse and condemnation when they’re down. They who need help to overcome barriers to success or they simply don’t make it in mod- ern day America. We could make inroads toward success at improving the plight of the many in suffering bad times if, for one means of deal- ing with the problem, we’d require of our legislators that they reform our tax structure so that the one percent of our citizens with more than 95 percent of the nation’s wealth, share it. It would seem high time that we demand of our leadership that they act now, and act decisively. (Gene H. McIntyre lives in Keizer. He shares his opinion frequently in the Keizertimes.)
