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
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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.)