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Wednesday, September 16, 2015 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
O
P
I N I O
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Robert B.
Reich
American Voices
Letters to the Editor…
The Nugget welcomes contributions from its readers, which must include the writer’s name, address and phone
number. Letters to the Editor is an open forum for the community and contains unsolicited opinions not neces-
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To the Editor:
I am writing this to The Nugget on behalf
of VFW Post 8138.
It has come to my attention that many citi-
zens of Sisters are very upset by a statement
at a recent SPRD meeting during which Mr.
Chuck Humphreys stated that local veterans
groups, including VFW Post 8138, support the
so-called Sisters to Black Butte Trail.
I will be perfectly clear. VFW Post 8138 is
an “apolitical group.” We assist veterans. To
the 50 or so people who called and left mes-
sages on my home phone while I was away
regarding their disapproval of VFW’s “alleged
support” of the trail, we are not authorizing,
nor have we been authorized by National
Headquarters in Washington, D.C. to have any
official position regarding the Sisters to Black
Butte Trail.
I would ask Mr. Humphreys to retract his
SPRD verbal statement, in writing, to The
Nugget. I would ask Mr. Humphreys to refrain
from making statements concerning VFW
without submitting these requests in writing to
the local Post at VFW Post 8138, PO Box 682,
Sisters, Oregon, 97759.
Bill Anttila
Commander
VFW Post 8138
s
s
s
To the Editor:
First let me thank K. Campbell for sending
me the complete statistics she got from ODOT.
Just for accuracy’s sake I will list them
here: Accidents 2004-2014 at the intersection
break down as follows: fatalities — 0; Severe
injury — 4 (this was the serious accidents
quoted, and she apologized for miscounting);
moderate injury — 5; minor injury — 6; and
property damage only —10, for a total of 25
accidents at the intersection.
This is a dangerous intersection! Again
I plead the case to use the traffic control
See leTTeRS on page 16
Sisters Weather Forecast
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An economy depends fun-
damentally on public moral-
ity — shared standards about
what sorts of activities are
impermissible because they
so fundamentally violate trust
that they threaten to under-
mine the social fabric.
At a time when many
Republican presidential candi-
dates and state legislators are
furiously focusing on private
morality — contraception,
abortion, gay marriage and
what people do in their bed-
rooms — America is experi-
encing a far more significant
crisis in public morality.
CEOs of large corpora-
tions now earn 300 times the
wages of average workers.
Insider trading is endemic on
Wall Street, where hedge-fund
and private-equity moguls
are taking home hundreds of
millions.
A handful of extraordi-
narily wealthy people are
investing unprecedented sums
in the upcoming election,
seeking to rig the economy for
their benefit even more than
it’s already rigged.
Yet the wages of average
working people continue to
languish as jobs are offshored
or offloaded onto “indepen-
dent contractors.”
All this is in sharp contrast
to the first three decades after
World War II.
Then, the typical CEO
earned no more than 40
times what the typical worker
earned, and Wall Street was
boring. Then, the wealthy
didn’t try to control elections.
And in that era, the wages of
most Americans rose.
Profitable firms didn’t lay
off their workers. They didn’t
replace full-time employees
with independent contractors,
or bust unions. They gave
their workers a significant
share of the gains.
Consumers, workers, and
the community were consid-
ered stakeholders of almost
equal entitlement.
We invested in education
and highways and social ser-
vices. We financed all of this
with our taxes.
We had a shared sense
of public morality because
we knew we were all in it
together. We had been through
a Great Depression and a
war, and we understood our
interdependence.
But over time, we forgot.
The change began when
Wall Street convinced the
Reagan administration and
subsequent administrations to
repeal regulations put in place
after the crash of 1929 to pre-
vent a repeat of the excesses
that had led to the Great
Depression. This, in turn,
moved the American economy
from stakeholder capitalism to
shareholder capitalism, whose
sole objective is to maximize
shareholder returns.
Shareholder capitalism
ushered in an era of excess.
In the 1990s it brought a
speculative binge culminating
in the bursting of the dotcom
bubble. At the urging of Wall
Street, Bill Clinton repealed
the Glass-Steagall Act, which
had separated investment
from commercial banking.
In 2001 and 2002 it pro-
duced Enron and the corporate
looting scandals.
The Street’s gambling in
derivatives and risky mort-
gages resulted in the crash of
2008, and a massive taxpayer-
financed bailout.
The Dodd-Frank Act
attempted to rein in the Street,
but Wall Street lobbyists have
done everything possible to
eviscerate Dodd-Frank.
The final blow to public
morality came when a major-
ity of the Supreme Court
decided that corporations and
wealthy individuals have a
right under the First Amend-
ment to spend whatever they
wish on elections.
Public morality can’t
be legislated, but it can be
encouraged.
Glass-Steagall must be res-
urrected. Big banks have to be
broken up.
CEO pay must be bridled.
Pay in excess of $1 million
shouldn’t be deductible from
corporate income taxes. Cor-
porations with high ratios
of executive pay to typical
worker pay should face higher
tax rates than those with lower
ratios.
People earning tens if not
hundreds of millions of dol-
lars a year should pay the
same 70 percent tax rate top
earners paid before 1981.
And we must get big
money out of politics —
reversing those Supreme
Court rulings, providing
public financing of elections
and getting full disclosure of
the sources of all campaign
contributions.
None of this is possible
without a broadly based
citizen movement to rescue
our democracy, take back
our economy and restore a
minimal standard of public
morality.
Opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer and
are not necessarily shared by the Editor or The Nugget Newspaper.