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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 5, 2015)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Thursday, November 5, 2015 Founded October 16, 1875 KATHRYN B. BROWN DANIEL WATTENBURGER Publisher Managing Editor JENNINE PERKINSON TIM TRAINOR Advertising Director Opinion Page Editor OUR VIEW What do we WDNHDZD\IURP gas tax defeat? Predictably, the Pendleton gas tax imagine voters deciding that giving failed. this council more money can only do A hurried, disjointed campaign more damage. came up well short in the Sisyphean Yet people can change their task of convincing tax-burdened minds. A gas tax is not always Pendleton voters to voluntarily destined to fail. Sisyphus can get to saddle themselves with another one. the top of that hill. It is unknown how city council We see it already with marijuana. will choose to move forward from Just months ago, 55 percent of the defeat. Pendletonians voted Councilor Al against its legality. Perhaps Plute, who was most Yet now that it’s vocal in support of voters took the the law of the land, the measure, said he and the apocalyptic opportunity still feels a gas tax is warnings of police the best way to dig chief Stuart Roberts to voice their out of a gargantuan and mayor Phillip displeasure and growing Houk have been hole of deferred about a number unsubstantiated, maintenance. And he the tide has of recent council turned. Would city is right about that. A local gas tax would councilors do the decisions. go mostly unnoticed simplest and most democratic thing by consumers who and put a marijuana are already used business ban on the ballot in 2016, it WRZLOGÀXFWXDWLRQVLQWKHSULFHRI would be all but guaranteed to fail. petroleum. And part of the money Still, council is doing its best to bury would be paid by travelers, who that opportunity and forcing residents surely would be unaware of their noble addition to the Pendleton street to outright defy them in order have their wishes respected on the matter. fund. Politically, the city council has The reason that nearly two out backed themselves into a corner of every three voters were against on this issue. Houk told the larger is not quite clear. Perhaps voters don’t believe that city council would than normal crowd that turned out for Tuesday’s meeting that he accomplish enough with the gas hoped they would come to more tax dollars. Perhaps voters took the opportunity to voice their displeasure city council meetings. Immediately after, city council decided to ignore about a number of recent council the majority of residents who spoke decisions, including trying mightily to banish marijuana business and tax in favor of allowing marijuana businesses. Who, then, would dollars from Pendleton, investing actually go to a city council meeting heavily in our long-forgotten airport when councilors don’t listen to and a heretofore quixotic quest to them? attract UAV manufacturers, as well And that may be the only concrete as substantial outlays on questionable public works projects like the takeaway from this failure of the gas Eighth Street Bridge and bringing tax: Pendleton voters distrust their XWLOLWLHVWRWKHHPSW\¿HOGWKDWLV city council even more than they the airport industrial park. Add in dislike their roads. a recent agreement with a shady Judging by recent decisions, how development company, and you can could we blame them? 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 Expense of monitoring our schools (Medford) Mail Tribune I t’s hard to imagine, given recent events, a sheriff dropping what’s purported to be a safeguard for schoolchildren. But Jackson County Sheriff Corey Falls has done just that — and he was right to do so. Falls decided earlier this year that his department would no longer maintain an elaborate video monitoring and security system installed at Shady Cove 6FKRRODQGWKHVKHULII¶VRI¿FHE\KLV predecessor at a cost of nearly $280,000. His reasoning was that having trained RI¿FHUVLQWKHLPPHGLDWHYLFLQLW\PDGH more sense than having a system that’s PRQLWRUHGIURPWKHVKHULII¶VRI¿FHVRPH 18 miles away. The funds used to purchase the system came from drug forfeiture money, which couldn’t have been used WRKLUHRI¿FHUV%XWWKHUHZHUHRQJRLQJ costs associated with keeping the system and the bigger question of whether it made sense to have such a system in one relatively small school out of the more than 50 schools that exist in the county. School shootings are so random that you might as well try to predict where WKH¿UVWUDLQGURSZLOOIDOOIURPDSDVVLQJ cloud. That is one of the infuriating aspects of these shootings — they come without warning and with no apparent rhyme or reason as to the location. The pattern is distressingly familiar in only one regard — the murderers are typically young men with some mental health issues and access to guns. It would be wonderful to have guaranteed safeguards in all our schools against the violence we’ve seen perpetrated too many times, most recently at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg. But there’s no guarantee that even an expensive system like the Nexar platform installed at Shady Cove would prevent a tragedy. In the minutes LWZRXOGWDNHDQRI¿FHUWRUHVSRQG to a call, even if they are close by, unspeakable tragedy can occur. Efforts to expand the Nexar program to Crater and Eagle Point high schools stalled when a federal grant was not received. In denying the request, the JUDQWUHYLHZHUQRWHGWKH³VLJQL¿FDQW cost” — $3 million for the equipment and a program to work with at-risk youth — and said it would not be feasible for other school districts to adopt it. If schools and sheriffs’ departments had unlimited funding ... but they don’t. The loss of the video monitoring doesn’t mean Shady Cove School has given up all security. In fact the school probably has better than many, with emergency call buttons and remote- controlled door locks. Medford schools and others have similar security systems. Those sorts of common-sense security systems, combined with police RI¿FHUVFORVHDWKDQGSURYLGHWKHEHVW security available, short of fortifying our VFKRROVDWD¿QDQFLDODQGFXOWXUDOFRVW that few would want to take on. Want to help ensure school kids are kept safe? Support your school district and support your local police so they can do just that. 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 resi- dence and a daytime phone number. The phone number will not be published. Unsigned letters will not be published. Send letters to 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@eastoregonian.com. OTHER VIEWS The Catholic Church’s sins are ours I of men of the cloth, or they weren’t t’s fashionable among some eager to get on the bad side of the conservatives to rail that there’s church, with its fearsome authority and LQVXI¿FLHQWUHVSHFWIRUUHOLJLRQLQ America and that religious people are supposed pipeline to God. (After the PDUJLQDOL]HGHYHQYLOL¿HG coverage of the Porter case, Cardinal That’s bunk. In more places and Bernard Law of Boston announced, instances than not, they get special “We call down God’s power on the DFFRPPRGDWLRQDQGWKHEHQH¿WRI media, particularly the Globe.”) Frank the doubt. Because they talk of God, “Spotlight” lays out the many they’re assumed to be good. There’s ways in which deference to religion Bruni Comment a reluctance to besmirch them, an protected abusers and their abettors. unwillingness to cross them. At one point in the movie, a man who The new movie “Spotlight,” based was molested as a boy tells a Globe on real events, illuminates this brilliantly. reporter about a visit his mother got from “Spotlight” — which opens in New York, the bishop, who was asking her not to press Los Angeles and Boston on Friday and charges. nationwide later this month — chronicles “What did your mother do?” the reporter the painstaking manner in asks. which editors and writers “She put out freakin’ at The Boston Globe cookies,” the man says. documented a pattern When the cookies of child sexual abuse by ¿QDOO\ZHQWDZD\PDQ\ Roman Catholic priests and Catholic leaders insisted the concealment of these that the church was being crimes by Catholic leaders. persecuted, and the crimes Because of the movie’s of priests exaggerated, by focus on the digging and spiteful secularists. dot-connecting that go into But if anything, the investigative reporting, it church had been coddled, has invited comparisons to EHQH¿WLQJIURPWKH “All the President’s Men.” American way of giving But it isn’t about religion a free pass journalism. Or, for that and excusing religious matter, Catholicism. institutions not just from It’s about the damage taxes but from rules that GRQHZKHQZHJHQXÀHFW apply to other organizations. too readily before society’s A 2006 series in The temples, be they religious or governmental. Times, “In God’s Name,” noted that since It’s about the danger of faith that’s truly blind. 1989, “more than 200 special arrangements, It takes place in 2001 and 2002, and that protections or exemptions for religious WLPHIUDPHLWVHOILVDUHPDUNDEOHUHÀHFWLRQRI groups or their adherents were tucked into how steadfastly most Americans resist any congressional legislation, covering topics intrusion into religious groups, any indictment ranging from pensions to immigration to land RIUHOLJLRXVRI¿FLDOV use.” Eight years earlier, James Porter was That was before the Supreme Court, in convicted of sexually abusing 28 children its Hobby Lobby decision, allowed some in the 1960s, when he was in the Catholic employers to claim religion as grounds to priesthood. He was believed to have abused disobey certain heath insurance mandates. about 100 boys and girls in all, most of them A story in The Times this week described in Massachusetts. how various religions are permitted to use Major newspapers and television networks internal arbitration procedures to settle covered the Porter story, noting a growing disputes that belong in civil court. It cited number of cases of abuse by priests. Porter’s a federal judge’s ruling that a former sentencing in December 1993 was preceded Scientologist had to take his claim that by two books that traced the staggering Scientology had defrauded him of tens of GLPHQVLRQVRIVXFKEHKDYLRU7KH¿UVWZDV thousands of dollars before a panel of current “Lead Us Not Into Temptation,” by Jason Scientologists. Berry. The second was “A Gospel of Shame,” To cloak sexual abuse and shield abusive with which I’m even more familiar. I’m one of priests, Catholic leaders and their lawyers its two authors. routinely leaned on the church’s privileged But despite all of that attention, Americans status, invoking freedom of religion, the kept being shocked whenever a fresh tally of separation of church and state, and the secrecy abusive priests was done or new predators of the confessional. They thus delayed a were exposed. They clung to disbelief. reckoning. “Spotlight” is admirably blunt on this point, “If it takes a village to raise a child, it suggesting that the Globe staff — which, in takes a village to abuse one,” says a character WKHHQGGLGWKHGH¿QLWLYHUHSRUWLQJRQFKXUFK in “Spotlight.” Indeed it does: a village too leaders’ complicity in the abuse — long cowed, and a village too credulous. ignored an epidemic right before their eyes. Ŷ Why? For some of the same reasons that Frank Bruni, an Op-Ed columnist for The others did. Many journalists, parents, police New York Times since June 2011, joined the RI¿FHUVDQGODZ\HUVGLGQ¶WZDQWWRWKLQNLOO New York Times in 1995. It’s about the damage done when we genuflect too readily before society’s temples, be they religious or governmental. YOUR VIEWS City expenditures at airport putting cart before the horse How many people are tired of hearing about Barnhart Road, or better known as “the road to nowhere.” I assume everyone thinks the gas tax, utility hike, not to mention the master plan hikes are going to just ruin our residential part of our city. Think again! After several talks with our city manager, the city of Pendleton is going full bore with putting in new infrastructure to business that don’t exist “yet” or may never exist on Barnhart Road. I argued that even with the incentive of putting in new sewer, water and gas lines at no cost to attract industries, we should only DGGWKRVHWKLQJVZKHQZHKDYHVROLGL¿HG a contract with a company. The city of Pendleton doesn’t agree and will continue to build on the road to nowhere until it is ¿QLVKHGPLOOLRQVRIGROODUVDZD\ How can we fund Barnhart Road and the city of Pendleton’s infrastructure at the same time? How can we afford both? We cannot. It seems awfully convenient to me that we will have a gas tax, a utility tax for roads, and then they will be implementing the so-called master plan, which is several other taxes to ¿[ZDWHUDQGVHZHUOLQHVDQGDVSHFLDOWD[ just for storm drains that has “never” been implemented before. I am still advocating for seniors, the GLVDEOHGYHWVDQGDQ\RQHRQD¿[HGLQFRPH that these taxes will terrorize them and do harm. The sad thing is the city knows this and yet they continue to spend our money on Barnhart Road with no guarantee of any return. How many industrial businesses have we obtained since the road was built? Zero. Chris Hallos Pendleton State employees need vigilance WRVWRSFKLOGWUDI¿FNLQJ As an act of goodwill towards our area’s disadvantaged children, many kind-hearted people open their homes to youths in state custody. However, I challenge each of you to a higher calling. How many people work with state agencies on a regular basis without actively participating in our government? How many of us even question the way it works? The truth is that some courts ignore statutes. Some attorneys don’t adequately represent their clients. Some radically liberal state-paid social workers and doctors abuse psychiatry to suppress political dissent and reinforce socially disastrous phenomena such as gender oppression, religious discrimination and social control. I challenge you to go above and beyond the state’s calling for you. I challenge you to go beyond your designated role in this EXUHDXFUDF\DQGWR¿JKWIRUZDWFKGRJ commissions that may strive to actually check unchecked powers. I challenge you to ask yourself this question: Am I ignorant to my participation in FKLOGWUDI¿FNLQJ" Carlin Sacco Pendleton