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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 14, 2015)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Saturday, November 14, 2015 Founded October 16, 1875 KATHRYN B. BROWN DANIEL WATTENBURGER Publisher Managing Editor JENNINE PERKINSON TIM TRAINOR Advertising Director Opinion Page Editor EO MEDIA GROUP East Oregonian • The Daily Astorian • Capital Press • Hermiston Herald Blue Mountain Eagle • Wallowa County Chieftain • Chinook Observer • Coast River Business Journal Oregon Coast Today • Coast Weekend • Seaside Signal • Cannon Beach Gazette Eastern Oregon Real Estate Guide • Eastern Oregon Marketplace • Coast Marketplace OnlyAg.com • FarmSeller.com • Seaside-Sun.com • NorthwestOpinions.com • DiscoverOurCoast.com MIKE FORRESTER STEVE FORRESTER KATHRYN B. BROWN Pendleton Chairman of the Board Astoria President Pendleton Secretary/Treasurer CORY BOLLINGER JEFF ROGERS Aberdeen, S.D. Director Indianapolis, Ind. Director OUR VIEW Immigration reform snared in D.C. politics Anyone who still has illusions that a legislative solution to immigration — both legal and illegal — is possible before the next election wasn’t paying attention last week. Paul Ryan, the newly installed speaker of the House, ruled out any comprehensive reform of the immigration system as long as President Obama is in of¿ce. “I don’t think we can trust the president on this issue,” Ryan said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and other programs. “I do not believe we should advance comprehensive immigration legislation with a president who has proven himself untrustworthy on this issue.” Ryan was referring to Obama’s attempt to give temporary legal status and work permits to as many as 4 million illegal immigrants by executive action, bypassing Congress. We concede that the president’s action, creative as he found it, was an egregious overreach of executive authority. And the courts agree. A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last summer upheld a lower court’s order blocking implementation of the order. The appeals court said the action goes beyond reasonable prosecutorial discretion allowed the executive branch by taking the affirmative action of conferring “lawful presence.” The president does not have the authority to grant work permits and temporary legal status to immigrants. The Constitution (Article 1, Section 8) gives Congress sole power to “establish a uniform rule of naturalization.” Only Congress can change the law. That it has consistently refused to take action does not change the Constitution and allow the president to do so by ¿at. Still, the law needs to be changed and the fate of the 12 million immigrants living in this country illegally — and the industries that depend upon their labor — must be decided. Republican leaders must rise above their pique and either in small bites or comprehensive fashion begin to address the issue. Not to chastise without providing a solution, here are some tangible points to a plan that should be considered • Congress should offer illegal immigrants willing to register temporary legal status and a path to permanent residency after 10 years if they meet strict requirements — no prior felony convictions, no violations while awaiting residency, learn to speak English and pay a ¿ne and back taxes. Those not meeting the requirement should be deported. • As penalty for entering illegally, those made permanent residents should not be eligible for citizenship. • We think the border must be secured. A viable guestworker program must be established, and employers must verify the work status of their employees. It seems to us both parties are happy to use immigration as a wedge issue for the 2016 presidential campaign. To that end, a resolution now probably wouldn’t serve their interests. But this situation has dragged on long enough and won’t be improved with the passing of yet another election. We repeat ourselves in stating that the choice is simple Make them go, or let them stay. One way or the other, do it now. 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. YOUR VIEWS Privatization of public lands serves no one I’m becoming increasingly concerned we are going to end up visitors to areas our families have freely accessed since settling in Eastern Oregon, regulated at every turn we choose to take. Coming away from the public meeting in Adrian, on the latest threat of over 2 million acres being signed into a monument, I’ve switched my attention to a coalition between the green machine Oregon Natural Desert Association, Pew Charitable Trust and Sierra Club joining with recreation-based businesses such as Keen Footwear. These are some of the principles, but not all, pushing the Owyhee monument. Is it about saving the canyonlands or selling more sandals to ¿ll the coffers of private companies self-serving coalitions with no interests to the negative impacts imposed on the local population, resulting in families being displaced. No recreationists are being held back from enjoying the Owyhee Canyonlands at the present time. Monument designation serves to protect the environment from more people, yet the term monument itself makes it seem grandeur and generates more interest. If you were to believe the 30-minute presentation from Oregon Natural Desert Association, everyone comes out a winner. Access would remain, but they failed to mention closing the scores of spur roads locals have historically used for sustenance; failed to mention grazing will be negatively affected; economic values from the mineral resources would be lost. Urbanites all decked out in their subtle “look-at-me attire” could breeze in, spend a few days and dollars, and be gone just as they are free to do presently. Is it hard to understand that our histor- ical, cultural access is not for sale? We are doing just ¿ne without your money. A week after the meeting in Adrian, out comes the Presidential Memorandum, “mitigating impacts on natural resources from development and encouraging related private investment,” encouraging related private investment. What in the world does this mean? The term “invest” means putting money in business, etc., in order to get a pro¿t. It sounds like our public lands are for sale. One of the claims in the document is to “protect the health of our economy and environment.” This is a general term that can and will be used to implement more redundant regulations from out-of-con- trol bureaucratic agencies. Nothing has worked to stop the landgrabs swirling around us. We desperately need representatives to serve the people they represent, be our voice at the table. Playing politics has not been a winning hand. It’s time to quit bargaining away the very items you are entrusted to protect. Wanda Ballard Baker City Does Pendleton need money or not? Okay the election is over, it was a landslide. Please, Pendleton City Council, no more gas tax. The state will raise the gas tax soon. Let us poor folk enjoy the low prices while we can. I guess the city does not need any more money. The city council could let us vote on retail and medical marijuana. By outlawing the sale of pot, no one will stop using it. The only result of not allowing a vote is the outlaws will collect the tax, not the city. Prohibition did not work for alcohol; a ban on retail sale of pot will not work either. Rex J. Morehouse Pendleton OTHER VIEWS Mizzou, Yale and free speech O n university campuses across of diversity, including the presence of the country, from Mizzou to conservatives to infuriate us liberals Yale, we have two noble forces and make us uncomfortable. Education colliding with explosive force. is about stretching muscles, and that’s One is a concern for minority painful in the gym and in the lecture or marginalized students and hall. faculty members, who are often left One of the wrenching upheavals feeling as outsiders in ways that lately has unfolded at Yale. Longtime damage everyone’s education. At Nichilas frustrations among minority students the University of Missouri, a black over after administrators seemed Kristif boiled professor, Cynthia Frisby, wrote, to them insuf¿ciently concerned about Comment “I have been called the N-word too offensive costumes for Halloween. many times to count.” A widely circulated video showed The problem is not just racists who use a furious student shouting down one epithets but also administrators who seem to administrator, professor Nicholas Christakis. acquiesce. That’s why Mizzou students — “Be quiet!” she screams at him. “It is not especially football players — used their clout about creating an intellectual space!” to oust the university system’s president. They A student wrote an op-ed about “the very showed leadership in trying to rectify a failure real hurt” that minority students feel, adding of leadership. “I don’t want to debate. I want to talk about But moral voices can also become my pain.” That prompted savage commentary sanctimonious bullies. online. “Is Yale letting in 8-year-olds?” one “Go, go, go,” some Mizzou protesters person asked on Twitter. yelled as they The Wall Street jostled a student Journal editorial page photographer, Tim denounced “Yale’s Tai, who was trying to Little Robespierres.” It document the protests followed up Wednesday unfolding in a public with another editorial, space. And Melissa warning that the PC Click, an assistant mindset “threatens to professor who joined undermine or destroy the protests, is heard universities as a place on a video calling of learning.” Mark Schierbecker via AP for “muscle” to I suggest we all take In this frame from video, Melissa Click, oust another student right, an assistant professor in Missouri’s a deep breath. journalist (she later The protesters communications department, confronts apologized). a photographer and later calls for at Mizzou and Yale Tai represented “muscle” to help remove him from the and elsewhere make the other noble force protest area in Columbia, Mo. a legitimate point in these upheavals Universities should — free expression. He tried to make the point, work harder to make all students feel they telling the crowd “The First Amendment are safe and belong. Members of minorities protects your right to be here — and mine.” — whether black or transgender or (on many We like to caricature great moral debates campuses) evangelical conservatives — as right confronting wrong. But often, to some should be able to feel a part of campus, not degree, it’s right colliding with right. feel mocked in their own community. Yes, universities should work harder to be The problems at Mizzou were underscored inclusive. And, yes, campuses must assure free on Tuesday when there were death threats expression, which means protecting dissonant against black students. What’s unfolding at and unwelcome voices that sometimes leave universities is not just about free expression other people feeling aggrieved or wounded. but also about a safe and nurturing On both counts we fall far short. environment. We’ve also seen Wesleyan students cut Consider an of¿ce where bosses shrug funding for the student newspaper after it as some men hang nude centerfolds ran an op-ed criticizing the Black Lives and leeringly speculate about the sexual Matter movement. At Mount Holyoke, proclivities of female colleagues. Free speech students canceled a production of “The issue? No! That’s a hostile work environment. Vagina Monologues” because they felt it And imagine if you’re an 18-year-old for excluded transgender women. Protests led whom this is your 24/7 home — named, to the withdrawal of Condoleezza Rice as say, for a 19th-century pro-slavery white commencement speaker at Rutgers and supremacist. Christine Lagarde at Smith. My favorite philosopher, the late Sir This is sensitivity but also intolerance, and Isaiah Berlin, argued that there was a deep it is disproportionately an instinct on the left. human yearning to ¿nd the One Great Truth. I’m a pro-choice liberal who has been In fact, he said, that’s a dead end Our fate is invited to infect evangelical Christian to struggle with a “plurality of values,” with universities with progressive thoughts, and competing truths, with trying to reconcile to address Catholic universities where I’ve what may well be irreconcilable. praised condoms and birth control programs. That’s unsatisfying. It’s complicated. It’s I’m sure I discom¿ted many students on these also life. conservative campuses, but it’s a tribute to Ŷ them that they were willing to be challenged. Nicholas Kristof grew up on a sheep and In the same spirit, liberal universities should cherry farm in Yamhill. Kristof, a columnist seek out pro-life social conservatives to speak. for The New York Times since 2001, writes More broadly, academia — especially op-ed columns that appear twice a week. He the social sciences — undermines itself by won the Pulitzer Prize two times, in 1990 and a tilt to the left. We should cherish all kinds 2006. Oregon scraping bottom in state government integrity rankings By JOHN A. CHARLES JR. This week the Center for Public Integrity released a report grading the 50 states on governance. The metrics used to measure integrity included the categories of “Public Access to Information,” “Lobbying Disclosure,” and “Ethics Agency Enforcement.” Oregon was ranked 44th among the states, with a grade of “F.” Oregon’s poor ranking was not a surprise given the nationwide coverage of the Kitzhaber-Hayes inÀuence-peddling scandal. By any standard, the behavior of our former governor was unacceptable. But this was only the headliner issue. Beneath the surface are many less-glamorous problems that will be dif¿cult to address. For instance, there is virtually no meaningful oversight of state expenditures. Legislators spend tax money to promote their own agendas, and the budgeting process is deliberately opaque in order to keep citizens in the dark. Also, the law allowing us access to public records is constantly abused. Agencies frequently play games of “20 questions” in order to drag out the process; and when they do offer up the requested documents, they impose massive fees that most citizens cannot afford. Unfortunately, no amount of “oversight” will solve the problem. Government is unable to police itself. Once a taxpayer sends money to the state, it’s too late. The best solution is to dramatically prune the weed patch of regulations and programs. A smaller government, focusing on a few core functions, will have more integrity than a larger one. Ŷ John A. Charles Jr. is president and CEO of Cascade Policy Institute in Portland