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Wednesday, April 13, 2016 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
O
P
I N I O
N
Rachel
Marsden
American Voices
Letters to the Editor…
The Nugget welcomes contributions from its readers, which must include the writer’s name, address and phone number. Let-
ters to the Editor is an open forum for the community and contains unsolicited opinions not necessarily shared by the Editor.
The Nugget reserves the right to edit, omit, respond or ask for a response to letters submitted to the Editor. Letters should be
no longer than 300 words. Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned. The deadline for all letters is noon Monday.
To the Editor:
I have been following The Nugget’s articles
about assisted-living settings in Sisters, most
recently Sue Stafford’s in the March 30 issue.
As she so aptly stated, “The saga of
Pinnacle Alliance Group of Yakima versus
McKenzie Meadow Village continues.” The
barriers that Pinnacle Alliance Group has,
and continues, to put forth against McKenzie
Meadows are reminiscent of a 6-year-old bully
in the community park sandbox who kicks and
throws sand at anyone else who attempts to
bring his/her bucket and shovel in. This sort of
behavior is abhorrent to me.
Does Pinnacle Alliance Group not know
that there are over 70-million baby-boomers
out there, many of whom are in their 60s tak-
ing care of aging parents? Call me crazy, but
I believe many of these individuals would
gladly welcome assisted-living options here in
Sisters, either for their parents or themselves
as they continue to age. I’m certainly one of
those individuals. Also, one need only look to
the perpetual wait-lists that Absolute Serenity
Senior Care has at their two adult foster homes
in order to know that there is a huge need
for retirement and assisted-living settings in
Sisters. I have many older adult neighbors and
friends who are aging in place in their homes
and they would happily welcome the afore-
mentioned options. The last thing they want
to do is have to move to Bend or Redmond for
care as they age. Their home is here.
So come on Pinnacle, play nice in the sand-
box and get going on your own construction
and let McKenzie Meadows do the same.
There is ample room for both facilities and
the need for them is only going to continue
to grow.
Kay Payne
s
s
s
To the Editor:
We are writing to express our support for
the upcoming school bond that will be on the
May ballot.
See letteRS on page 30
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The largest data leak in
history — 11.5 million docu-
ments, coined the “Panama
Papers” — is providing a
glimpse into the one-per-
centers’ world of offshore
banking.
So far, data obtained
from Mossack Fonseca, a
Panamanian law firm that
specializes in setting up off-
shore shell companies (more
than 200,000 of them, alleg-
edly), has been linked to
heads of state, celebrities,
business leaders and other
wealthy individuals from all
over the world — all hiding
behind elaborate fronts.
An anonymous source
provided the data to German
newspaper Suddeutsche
Zeitung, which shared every-
thing with the International
Consortium of Investigative
Journalists.
Offshore accounts have
long been used for tax eva-
sion, for stashing kickback
and bribe money from gov-
ernment contracts, and for
making investments that
can’t easily be traced back
to the source. It’s not auto-
matically illegal to store your
cash in a secret account in
a warm place known for its
banking secrecy. As long as
earnings are declared and
taxes paid, it’s all good. But
then why bother going to so
much trouble?
Well, for example, when
you’re King Salman of Saudi
Arabia (whose name appears
in the leaks), taxing the oil
industry in your country at
85 percent and living the
high life on those tax rev-
enues, you have good reason
to use an offshore account.
Back in 2001, a European
Parliament report noted an
interception by the U.S.
National Security Agency
of correspondence between
the massive aerospace firm
Airbus and the Saudi govern-
ment in 1994, with Airbus
offering bribes to Saudi
officials in order to win a
contract to upgrade Saudi
Arabian Airlines’ fleet.
After the bribe offer was
discovered, the U.S. com-
pany McDonnell-Douglas
was awarded the contract. It
would be naive to think that
bribes are rare in billion-
dollar dealings between huge
corporations and govern-
ments around the world. And
it’s highly doubtful that any
such government “enrich-
ment” would be deposited at
the local bank branch down
the street.
So why is offshore bank-
ing such a serious problem?
Because it drastically tilts the
playing field, corrupting the
free-market process. Players
who think they have a fair
chance at doing business
are disqualified before they
even walk in the door, sim-
ply because some sleazier
player paid a bribe to people
confident they could hide the
money.
While running for the
presidency of Ukraine in
2014, Petro Poroshenko
vowed that if elected, he’d
sell Roshen, his confection-
ary empire. Instead, accord-
ing to the Organized Crime
and Corruption Reporting
Project, Poroshenko’s busi-
ness was transferred to an
offshore holding company
in the British Virgin Islands,
providing a tax shelter during
a time of great turmoil in his
country.
That’s what is so alarm-
ing about the Panama Papers
leak: It shows that many
of the one-percenters using
offshore bank accounts are
either heads of state or peo-
ple who have influence with
heads of state, either through
political donations or busi-
ness dealings. While their
fellow citizens are worrying
about the state of their life
savings in the local bank,
these fat cats are using off-
shore accounts to dodge
taxes and hide their vast
wealth.
It’s little wonder that
we’re seeing so much social
unrest over inequality. When
the guys in charge of gov-
ernment and industry are
sending jobs offshore, and
now blatantly sending their
money offshore, too, all
while still seeking to squeeze
even more money out of the
plebeians, it doesn’t go over
well.
Then, special interest
groups exploit this perceived
injustice as a pretext to come
up with all kinds of ridicu-
lous leftist proposals that fur-
ther corrupt the relationship
between work and compen-
sation. When global capital-
ism is perverted by some of
its foremost practitioners, it
just gives those on the left
more ammunition to further
pervert it with their own
agenda. And it’s the average
folks who end up paying for
it all.
© 2016 Tribune Content
Agency, LLC.
Opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer and
are not necessarily shared by the Editor or The Nugget Newspaper.