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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 29, 2015)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Thursday, October 29, 2015 Founded October 16, 1875 KATHRYN B. BROWN DANIEL WATTENBURGER Publisher Managing Editor JENNINE PERKINSON TIM TRAINOR Advertising Director Opinion Page Editor OUR VIEW Justice not served in Hammond case By any measure, the ¿ve-year Court of Appeals, which agreed sentence given to Eastern Oregon with him that a mandatory sentence rancher Dwight Hammond and his can’t be ignored. son Steven was excessive. Two weeks ago, U.S. District That’s probably the one point Judge Ann Aiken resentenced the on which all sides of the case can Hammonds to ¿ve years in prison. agree. Though legally correct, the Beyond that, opinions vary on sentence is patently unfair. what level of punishment would The Hammonds were charged have been fair in a case that with violating a federal law that illustrates the shortcomings of a carried with it a minimum sentence skewed legal system of ¿ve years in and a federal agency prison. The law is The Pendleton aimed at crimes whose employees — at least one of them terrorists jury acquitted in or which — use government others destroy the father and federal property resources to reveal their biases through bomb son of setting and criticize the blasts or arson. Hammonds. Though two other The case grew exercising fires and the out of an ongoing extraordinarily poor dispute between the judgment in starting government Hammonds and the burns on dismissed those ¿eld U.S. Bureau of Land federal land without Management. permission, the charges. Let’s back up Hammonds are not a few years, to terrorists. 2001, to be exact. That’s when Other federal laws that carry the 139-acre blaze called the ¿ve-year minimum sentences Hardie-Hammond Fire was set on address treason, child pornography, the Steens Mountain Cooperative using a gun while committing a Management and Protection Area, violent crime or importing drugs. according to court documents. Burning 140 acres does not In 2006, the Krumbo Butte Fire compare with any of those crimes. was set, burning 1 acre of public That’s the danger when Congress land, according to court documents. decides to tell judges how to In each case, the Hammonds had do their jobs. Judges must have leased the land to graze their cattle. latitude to use their judgment in Fire is an oft-used tool to clear land deciding sentences that ¿t the of weeds, juniper and other invasive crimes. That’s the whole point of having judges. plants, but the Hammonds had no permission to set ¿res on public When he originally sentenced the Hammonds, Hogan described ¿ve land. In 2012, the Hammonds were years in prison as cruel and unusual taken to court. After a two-week and said such sentences would trial, Dwight Hammond was “shock the conscience.” convicted of setting the ¿rst ¿re He was correct. and sentenced to three months When people such as the in prison. His son Steven was Hammonds are caught in a net that convicted of setting the second ¿re was set for terrorists, justice is not and sentenced to one year in prison. well-served. Both also received three years of In hindsight, this case should supervised release. have been settled before trial. It The Pendleton jury acquitted the would have saved the public the father and son of setting two other enormous expense of a trial, appeal, ¿res and the government dismissed resentencing and providing the those charges. Hammonds with room and board At the sentencing, U.S. District for ¿ve years at a federal prison. Judge Michael Hogan opted for the And the Hammonds would now lighter sentences, but the prosecutor permanently be at home, where they appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit belong. Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East Oregonian editorial board of Publisher Kathryn Brown, Managing Editor Daniel Wattenburger, and Opinion Page Editor Tim Trainor. Other columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions of the authors and not necessarily that of the East Oregonian. OTHER VIEWS Government should not decide executive compensation The Bend Bulletin The anti-coal crusaders at Renew Oregon have ballot measures in the works to make Oregon’s large utility power coal-free by 2030. Drives to make Oregon more green aren’t new. But beyond coal, Renew Oregon sweetens one version of its initiatives for those longing to take a swipe at executive pay. If the CEOs and CFOs of large electric utilities fail to meet the new standards, their total compensation gets scalped down to ¿ve times the annual Oregon median household income. Renew Oregon told us they chose this new method of punishment because “it mirrors a common practice in business in which executives are paid according to performance.” Renew Oregon must be using a broken mirror. The common practice is that businesses, not the government, set performance standards for executives. If the executives failed to meet the targets, they would indeed face dramatic cuts in salary. Oregon’s median household income has been about 50,000, so ¿ve times that would be $250,000. Patrick Reiten, president and CEO of Paci¿c Power in 2014, received $1,513,927 in total compensation that year, according to documents ¿led with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Who wouldn’t like to swap compensation with someone making stratospheric money? But is resentment or jealousy a reason to allow new, unprecedented government interference in the salary structure of a private company? Nope. Oregon’s utilities already face ¿nes and other punishment for failing to obey the law and the direction of the Oregon Public Utility Commission. Why is that insuf¿cient? Paci¿c Power and Portland General Electric have not been frequent lawbreakers. The commission told us it has not had to issue a penalty against either Paci¿c Power or PGE in the last 10 years. Star talent gets rewarded in private industry. Is the talent always worth it? Maybe not. But the government should not be the one deciding. If the CEOs and CFOs of large electric utilities fail to meet new standards, their total compensation gets scalped down. OTHER VIEWS A sensible version of Trump T he voters, especially on the improve conditions for the working Republican side, seem to be class it’s necessary to both create despising experience this year jobs and improve culture. Every time and are looking for outsiders. Hence conservatives say culture plays a large we have the rise of Donald Trump role in limiting mobility, progressives and Ben Carson. People like me keep accuse them of blaming the victim. predicting that these implausibles But this research shows the will collapse, but so far, as someone importance of environment. The tweeted, they keep collapsing upward. younger the children were when David But imagine if we had a sensible Brooks they moved to these middle-class Trump in the race. Suppose there was environments, the more their outcomes Comment some former general or business leader improved. It’s likely they bene¿ted with impeccable outsider status but from being in environments with also a steady temperament, deep knowledge different norms, with more information about and good sense. how to thrive, with few traumatic events down What would that person sound like? Maybe the block. something like this: I know the professional politicians are Ladies and gentlemen, I’m no politician. going to want to continue their wars, but I’m just a boring guy who knows how to run I see an opportunity: We launch a series things. But I’ve been paying close attention of initiatives to create environments of and it seems to me that of all the problems opportunity in middle-, working- and lower- that face the nation, two stand out. The ¿rst class neighborhoods. is that we have a polarized, This will mean doing dysfunctional, semi-corrupt some things Republicans political culture that like. We’ve got to devolve prevents us from getting a lot of power from anything done. To reverse Washington back to local that gridlock we’ve got to communities. These ¿nd some policy area where neighborhoods can’t thrive if there’s a basis for bipartisan they are not responsible for action. themselves. Then we’ve got The second big problem to expand charter schools. is that things are going badly The best charter schools for those in the lower half radiate diverse but strong of the income distribution. cultures of achievement. People with less education Locally administered social are seeing their wages entrepreneurship funds fall, their men drop out of the labor force, could help churches and other groups expand their marriage rates plummet and their social their inÀuence. networks dissolve. This will mean doing some things The ¿rst piece of good news is that Democrats like. We’ve got to reform and conservative and progressive writers see this expand early childhood education programs, reality similarly, which is a rare thing these complete with wraparound programs for parents. They would turn into community days. The second piece of good news is that we have new research that suggests fresh ways hubs. Infrastructure programs could increase to address this problem, ways that may appeal employment. Basically we’ve got to get socialist. No, to both Democrats and Republicans. I don’t mean the way Bernie Sanders is a The studies I’m talking about were done socialist. He’s a statist, not a socialist. I mean at Harvard by Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren and Lawrence Katz. They looked at the results we have to put the quality of the social fabric at the center of our politics. And we’ve got to of a Clinton-era program called Moving to get personalist: to treat people as full human Opportunity, which took poor families and beings, not just economic units you ¿x by moved them to middle-class neighborhoods. writing checks. At ¿rst the results were disappointing. The Then we’ve got to get integrationist, to families who moved didn’t see their earnings integrate different races and classes through rise. Their kids didn’t do much better in national service and school and relocation school. vouchers. And ¿nally, we have to get a But as years went by and newer data little moralistic. There are certain patterns accumulated, different and more promising of behavior, like marrying before you have results came in. Children who were raised kids and sticking around to parent the kids in better environments had remarkable you conceive, that contribute to better earnings gains. The girls raised in the better communities. neighborhoods were more likely to marry and Look, I don’t know if I’m red or blue. raise their own children in two-parent homes. If you want a true outsider, don’t just pick The ¿rst implication of this research is that someone outside the political system. Pick neighborhood matters a lot. When we think someone outside the rigid partisan mentalities about ways to improve the lot of the working that are the real problem here. class, it’s insuf¿cient to just help individuals Ŷ and families. We have to improve entire David Brooks became a New York Times neighborhoods. Op-Ed columnist in September 2003. Second, the research reminds us that to I know the professional politicians are going to want to continue their wars, but I see an opportunity. YOUR VIEWS Refugee crisis has many questions and few answers When German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke on CNN last week pleading with European nations to help with the immigration crisis, it was sad to learn of the conditions under which thousands of refugees are living. She revealed Germany is short of daily living resources for these refugees, including food, sanitation and, incredibly, water. Some refugee camps have more than 7,000 persons and every day Syrian refugees can be seen begging. A CNN blog pictured 330,000 Somali living in tents and shacks in the desert of sand and heat with half-starved children, and young men committing rape and violence against women. The tent city stretched for miles. Where do they get food? What future do they have? The United States has agreed to take thousands of these migrants. In this regard, people have asked, “How can we do this when we already have millions of illegal Mexicans in our nation?” Where is the justice in this matter? What can we do? I can think of one thing: There are a lot of young men in the refugee camps. Maybe we can send them back and help them ¿ght for their country. In fact, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin proposed the creation of an international coalition that would help the forces of the Syrian regime defeat ISIS; then he said, “There would be no need for setting up more refugee camps” (Time, October 26, 2015,p. 30). But his gambit failed because the U.S. refuses to “bend on Syrian President Bashar Assad’s role in Syria.” Putin believes the West (United States) cannot defeat ISIS without help from Russia. But there is more to the political situation and Putin’s foreign policy. The United States has no intent of accepting Russia’s terms for a Syrian coalition. Meanwhile, the war that has killed more than 200,000 people and caused some 800,000 refugees to be homeless continues. Nobel laureate for Literature Orban Pamuk, of Istanbul, says it is a good sign Europe is taking in so many Muslims as it is learning multiculturalism. Think about that! Finally, the question is, how many refugees has Russia taken in? Dorys C. Grover Pendleton LETTERS POLICY The East Oregonian welcomes original letters of 400 words or less on public issues and public policies for publication in the newspaper and on our website. Submitted letters must be signed by the author and include the city of residence and a daytime phone number. The phone number will not be published. Unsigned letters will not be published. Send letters to Daniel Wattenburger, 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@eastoregonian.com.