Wednesday, March 29, 2017 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
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Jonah
Goldberg
Letters to the Editor…
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ters to the Editor is an open forum for the community and contains unsolicited opinions not necessarily shared by the Editor.
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To the Editor:
I am writing in response to an article in the
March 15 Nugget in which Julie Benson, co-
owner of the Sisters Eagle Airport, stated that
the airport lacks authority to limit or deny sky-
dive activities because, as a public use airport,
it is “obliged not to discriminate against types
of uses.”
I believe the discrimination argument is
erroneous.
Rules issued by the Oregon Department
of Aviation (ODA) state that “Aeronautic
Recreational and Sporting Activities on airport
property shall be subject to the approval of the
airport sponsor.” (OAR 660-013-0100(8)).
Aeronautic Recreational and Sporting
Activities expressly includes “all forms of sky-
diving.” The authority to approve skydiving
operations necessarily includes the authority
to disapprove. Consistent with this provision,
the director of the ODA has stated verbally
that the airport has the requisite authority to
restrict or deny skydive operations.
In addition, discrimination only exists
when similarly situated entities or individuals
are treated differently for reasons that are arbi-
trary or otherwise not legitimate. Skydiving is
not similarly situated to any other use at the
airport. On the contrary, it is unique: skydiv-
ing at the airport is a commercial/recreational
activity that uses the airport property from
early morning until sunset, with as many as 30
take-off and landing events in a single day, up
to seven days per week, three seasons per year.
See LETTERS on page 20
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Every society has its ritu-
als. Indeed, while the details
vary from place to place and
time to time, ritual itself is a
human universal, according
to anthropologist Donald
Brown.
The Roman Empire was
full of rituals and rites.
These customs helped the
Romans organize into the
most formidable social orga-
nization the world had ever
seen, ruling a vast swath of
the globe. But over time, the
rituals of the empire drifted
away from the demands of
governing.
This is how empires
fall: when the facts on the
ground do not fit the rules
and expectations of those
who govern.
The 1987 film “The Last
Emperor” chronicles the life
of Puyi, the last emperor
of China. It offers a poi-
gnant taste of the disconnect
between the rituals of an
antiquated ruling class and
the society that has moved
on. Puyi is holed up in the
Forbidden City, surrounded
by guards, court eunuchs
and other servants who cater
to his every whim, even as
the revolutionary armies
marched on the walls to
take China in a different
direction.
This is how all regimes
— monarchies and democ-
racies included — ultimately
perish. The rituals that
once helped enforce order
become distractions from
the demands of reality.
This thought occurred to
me recently while watch-
ing the spectacle of the lat-
est White House budget
proposal.
The unveiling of the
presidential budget is an
odd ritual in Washington.
It is greeted as a docu-
ment of great significance,
even though its unveiling
is almost never anything
more than an act of pure
symbolism. Activists with
vested interests in the force
and direction of the money
spigot pretend not to know
this and ritualistically gnash
their teeth and rend the cloth
of their figurative togas in
outrage if the president does
not offer more money than
was offered the year before.
The game is discon-
nected from reality. It is the
budgetary equivalent of a
gladiatorial contest — a dis-
tracting spectacle that has
little bearing on the funda-
mental problems we face.
We argue about whether or
not Cookie Monster should
be fed to the lions. We
beseech the crowd to answer
whether NPR should get the
thumbs up or the thumbs
down.
To strain the metaphor
a bit, the real threat to the
Republic isn’t inside the
gladiatorial arenas of talk
radio and cable television;
it’s the barbarian horde of
debt and entitlement.
Non-defense discretion-
ary spending amounts to
roughly 16 percent of the
budget. You could cut all
of it to zero and you would
only slightly delay the fis-
cal reckoning that would
come from the metastasizing
growth of the national debt
and the entitlement spend-
ing that fuels it. In 2008,
the federal debt was 39 per-
cent of GDP. According to
the Congressional Budget
Office, if we stay on our
current course, it will be 86
percent by 2026. By 2046, it
will hit 141 percent of GDP.
With regard to the presi-
dent’s rumored plan to cut
$10.5 trillion over the next
10 years, the Cato Institute’s
M i k e Ta n n e r w r i t e s :
“Without making changes
to our insolvent entitlement
programs — Social Security
and Medicare alone face
some $80 trillion in future
red ink — there is simply
no way to get anywhere near
$10.5 trillion in spending
cuts.”
Trump’s budget simply
moves the money around,
and he has yet to unveil the
costs of his additional spend-
ing for his big infrastructure
push.
The causes of Rome’s
fall are the subject of end-
less debate, but nearly all
historians agree that one of
the major factors was the
endless accumulation of
debt driven by entitlements
to more and more segments
of Roman society.
The Caesars and the
senators simply found it too
difficult a problem to fix, so
they played their ritualistic
games until reality had its
say.
© 2017 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.