Public Square welcomes all points of view. Published submissions do not necessarily reflect the views of the Keizertimes.
Support for Virginia Stapleton
To the Editor:
Virginia Stapleton is a proven leader. In May 2020, Virginia Stapleton was elected to Salem City Council for Ward 1, and then in in November 2022, she was elected President of Salem City Council. Even before she was elected to Salem City Council, she worked tirelessly to make her neighborhood, community, city and State safe.
She is a life-long Oregonian, growing up in the Salem area and she is proud of that fact.
Virginia is not running for re-election when her second term ends December 31, 2024, she is running for Oregon State Representative in HD 21 to focus her experience and leadership on educational opportunities so that all students thrive in the classroom, quality and affordable healthcare for all, affordable housing , and a safe and healthy environment. She is committed to addressing gun violence in Salem and across the state, safer neighborhoods, protecting the environment, and much needed services for homeless people.
She knows that Oregon has a statewide mental and behavioral health crisis and that many families and individuals are not able to access care because they cannot afford the services, do not have transportation to access those service and there are not enough providers for those services across the state.
I urge you to vote for Virginia, she has the experience, skills and capability to help cities provide the services that residents demand and deserve. She will always plan, think and act mindfully for the improvement of all.
Barbara Fuller/Salem
To the Editor:
I am writing to endorse Virginia Stapleton for State Representative to the Oregon State House for District 21.
I have had the pleasure of knowing Virginia for several years as I have served as the chairperson for the Northeast Salem Community Association (NESCA). I can confidently say that Virginia possesses the necessary qualities and skills to excel as our next State Representative.
Virginia is a tireless advocate for the Salem and Keizer communities. In her work on the Salem City Council, she has been consistent in creating solutions to fund essential city services. In her work as a neighbor, Virginia has been a champion for safer roads and sidewalks, affordable housing, and fully funding our public schools. In her tenure on the City
Council since 2021, Virginia has attended 111 of 119 meetings. She never misses our monthly NESCA meetings, and always acts imme- diately to respond to our needs and requests. Her commitment to this volunteer position reflects her dedication to our community.
Virginia speaks and lives a message and agenda of, “A Community That Cares.” She is a listener and supporter of her constituents and leads with vulnerability. Her ideas for our state are wonderful. She is a pillar of our neighborhood, our community, and our city and she will be an advocate for each and everyone of us.
Mike Beringer/ Salem
To the Editor:
The city of Salem/Keizer came together this past spring to advocate to the city council about keeping the Salem Public Library funded for another year, I was grateful they agreed. This was the moment I knew it was important I start to participate in the issues around me.
Virginia Stapleton is a representative I quickly came to admire as I started becoming more actively engaged in our local politics. She is a leader who speaks from a place of compassion and accountability, Virginia asks insightful questions, stays educated and engages valuable discussion amongst our city leaders.
As a working parent, it’s important I know my local representatives are actively working towards safer neighborhoods. I saw this during a recent community conversation to reduce gun violence. Virginia listened, participated and added to the discussion. I believe Stapleton when she says she wants our kids and families to be safe!
Virginia supports families in other ways by advocating for equitable and sustainable funding for our school district, partners with Salem Housing Authority to increase accessible homes for our residents, and supports increasing mental health services for vets and unhoused Salemites. Her significant contributions as Ward 1 Representative will undoubtedly make her a strong Representative for the Oregon House.
I’m voting Virginia Stapleton for House District 21 because I know she’ll fight me and my family!
Jane Titchenal/ Keizer
Where are the electric Vette’s?
BY GENE H. McINTYRE
If I were any more masochistic than already, I’d run for political office and buy a new Chevrolet Corvette, maybe even an EV version when one’s built by General Motors. As the world has turned, the “Vette” sports car has been tempting me into a purchase since it first appeared (although I was too young to drive it) and ever since.
Considering my financial station as a young classroom teacher in the 1960s, the closest to purchasing a Corvette was a Chevy Corvair. Nowadays, I could purchase a Vette but am too rickety to exit one by anything resembling grace and style. Nevertheless, that condition has not stopped others my age from imagining they’re 19 again!
We Americans know icons like the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building. and Marilyn Monroe to which the Chevy Corvette, built since 1953, should, in my humble opinion, be added to the list. It is, after all, the world’s longest-running, continuously produced passenger car in the world, while also admired and loved. Incidentally, the Corvette name was borrowed from a type of small, fast and maneuverable warship of sailboat times.
Whatever the background, the latest word on sports cars is that they have been steadily declining in number and popularity for at least the last 30 years. Meanwhile, the Chevrolet Corvette has recently sped back to heightened popularity. The latest challenge for General Motors, however, is whether to transition into full electrification.
Data report that G.M. sold nearly 54,000 of the 8th generation Corvettes (C8s) last year, just a few less than its banner year of 1979. Then, too, we’re informed, that the latest Vette success results from copying the $250,000 Ferrari and Lamborghini models to produce the new exotic C8 design, but with a relatively affordable price tag.
This happening during a trend of American automobiles where the move has been away from cars, especially sports cars and coupes, toward sport utility vehicles (SUVs). At the same time, among the more expensive alternatives, Audi TT and Mercedes SLK, are no longer built and the average Joe and Jane choices, such as the Ford Mustang, the Chevy Camaro and Dodge Challenger, are not doing well by sales or scheduled for reduced production, even extinction. Corvette
attributes its current success to relocating the engine from front to center and copycatting those famous Italian designs. Of late, the Vette offers the hybrid version with its press the driver back in his seat for a get-up-and-go experience behind the wheel ever “launched.”
At present no automaker offers a mass-produced electric two-seat sports car for U.S./Europe markets, although Porsche intends to replace its Boxster and Cayman with fully electric versions in 2025. Chevy reports it will continue the Vette hybrid with no EV choice in the immediate future. As competition among the automakers usually becomes today’s news, it’s highly predictable that the next success will depend on what brought the original Vette to life in 1953: fleet-footedness, attractive design, maneuverability and “got to have it” appeal.
(Gene H. McIntyre shares his opinion regularly in the Keizertimes.)
A market hiccup with a message about Fed meddling
By GEORGE F. WILL
Which came first, last week’s volatility in equities markets, or volatility in the minds of people who think government has the duty and competence to fine tune those markets? Whatever the answer, the more pressing question is: How high will be the cost of interest rates having been too low for too long? Events might be teaching a tutorial on the steep price of cheap money. Call this Thomas Hoenig’s vindication.
Such money has been intermittent for decades: The real (inflation-adjusted) federal funds rate was negative about 40% of the time in the 1970s and in the first decade of this century. One purpose of the low rates was to send a flood of money into the increasingly frothy stock market in search of higher returns. This would, the thinking was, produce a “wealth effect,” making a fortunate minority feel even more flush, and more inclined to increase their consuming and investing, with benefits for all.
For 20 years, from 1991 to 2011, Hoenig, an Iowa native, was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, in which role he said: Interest rates are the prices of money, so, “Tell me one product, one service, that trades well at a price of zero.” By “trades well” he meant “is put to efficient use.”
Today, Hoenig, who is now with George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, notes this: The Fed’s balance sheet of government and government-guaranteed assets, by which it nudges down interest rates, grew from $900 billion in 2007 to nearly $9 trillion in March 2022. Since 2010, after the Great Recession of 2008, whenever the
Fed has tried to “normalize its bal- ance sheet and interest rates, the market has become unstable.”
Last week’s events, Hoenig suggests, “began last fall” when the Fed “signaled” that rates “would soon be lowered,” a signal it has repeated. “It slowed its planned reduction of its balance sheet, which remains above $7 trillion.” The question now, Hoenig says, is will the Fed properly allow rates to come down only as inflation falls to the Fed’s 2% target, or will it aggressively try to fend off unwanted, but necessary, corrections—necessary for “better long-run outcomes?”
A disappointing report, on the previous Friday, on just one month of hiring seems to have triggered last week’s stock sell-off. This ignited worried chatter about whether the Fed should have cut rates the week before, or might have to do so as an “emergency” measure before its scheduled meeting next month. This is not what panicky markets need: yet another government entity declaring yet another emergency to justify violating a prudential maxim: “Don’t just do something, stand there.”
In election years, or in years before such (these are the only kinds of years there are), the Fed is in an awkward position of its own making. In 2010, Fed Chair Ben Bernanke spoke of the Fed’s tasks of “economic management” and “economic engineering.” Fed chairs before and since have seemed to embrace similar thinking. Bernanke, said Hoenig at the time, was speaking “the language of a central planner.”
Such planning is a political project—attempting to shape society’s allocation of wealth and opportunity. Such talk guarantees that any action the Fed takes, or does not take, will be skeptically examined for political motives or impacts.
Last year, the government went into a swivet when the nation’s 17th largest bank, Silicon Valley Bank, made some bad bets on interest rates and faced possible failure. So, what is not“too big to fail?” Perhaps the biggest “systemic risk” is the propensity to discern such risk hither and yon.
Accurately reporting the over-caffeinated response in financial and other circles to last week’s market events, the lead story in Tuesday’s Post began: “U.S. stock markets fell sharply Monday, with two major indexes racking up their worst day of trading in almost two years.” So, to find a comparable earthquake we must peer through the mists of history all the way back to … 2022.
A year before this week’s market blip, on the first Monday of August 2023, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 35,473.13. This was 3,230 points (8.3%) belowlast week’s close of 38,703.27.
When experiencing unsettling turbulence, some people pray, “Hail Mary, full of grace,” etc. When markets have erratic episodes, Americans should say to themselves (and their government), “Markets go up, markets go down, get over it.”
(Washington Post)
Contact Keizertimes Staff:
[email protected] or 503-390-1051
SUBSCRIBE TO GET KEIZER NEWS — We report on your community with care, depth, fairness, and accuracy. Get local news that matters to you. Subscribe today to get our daily newsletters and more.
