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Wednesday, January 17, 2018 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
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Editorial…
A reluctant “yes” on Measure 101
Sisters voters should hold their nose and
vote “yes” on Measure 101.
Measure 101 would approve tempo-
rary assessments — a tax — on insurance
companies, some hospitals and other pro-
viders of insurance and healthcare cover-
age to help cover healthcare for low-income
families and children and people with
disabilities.
This is a lousy way to make policy and a
lousy way to provide health care coverage. It’s
nothing more than using duct tape and binder
twine to patch up a broken and failing system.
It’s tempting to just say “Enough!” and stop
trying to put patches on this worn-out system
and insist upon a real fix. But there are real
people’s lives at stake, and it’s hard to jus-
tify putting the heaviest burden of fixing our
healthcare system on those least equipped
to bear it.
It’s true, as has been famously noted, that
healthcare is “complicated.” Americans used
to be known for figuring out how to do com-
plicated, difficult and challenging things.
Now there are many nations in the world —
democratic nations with market economies
— who have healthcare systems that are much
less expensive than ours and deliver better
outcomes.
At some point, we’re going to have to
decide whether a great nation ought to have a
great healthcare system or if we’re just going
to limp along in Jed Clampett’s jalopy with a
roll of duct tape handy.
For now, vote yes on Measure 101.
Jim Cornelius, Editor
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 Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned.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:
How does this keep happening? In the past
several months, countless healthy ponderosa
pines have been cut down within Sisters city
limits — the most recent on South Pine Street:
nine healthy ponderosas taken down by a pri-
vate resident.
As a previous president of an HOA within
the city limits, I had more than one request
from homeowners to have trees in our com-
mon areas taken down. My first response was
to call an arborist and have the trees evaluated.
If the trees were deemed healthy, no action
was taken. I was also aware that if the trees
in question were on public — or city — prop-
erty, bordering the HOA, nothing would be
done unless the City deemed it appropriate.
The recent removal of countless trees in front
of Sisters’ elementary and middle schools, and
now on South Pine seems unconscionable to
me.
I will play the devil’s advocate here and
lean on the side of property owners who may
simply not know the rules, which is in and of
itself not acceptable. Every resident should
know the rules of their community. But how
is it that the companies called in to harvest the
trees do not know the rules? Unacceptable,
and unbelievable.
I am concerned it comes down to greed;
they cannot not know the rules in our commu-
nity, yet go ahead unheeded and ask for for-
giveness after the fact. I would hope that in
view of the recent travesty on South Pine that
our City Fathers will determine that severe
fines need to be imposed on offending resi-
dents and tree-cutting companies who are will-
fully ignoring the City ordinances.
See LETTERS on page 22
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N
Jonah
Goldberg
In 17th century England,
France and America, the-
aters were widely consid-
ered dens of iniquity, turpi-
tude and crapulence. Under
Oliver Cromwell’s Puritan
dictatorship, the theaters
were forced to close to
improve moral hygiene.
The Puritans of New
England did likewise. A ban
on theaters in Connecticut
imposed in 1800 stayed on
the books until 1952.
Partly out of a desire to
develop a wartime econ-
omy, partly out of disdain
for the grubbiness of the
stage, the first Continental
Congress in 1774 pro-
claimed, “We will, in our
several stations ... discoun-
tenance and discourage
every species of extrava-
gance and dissipation,
especially all horse-racing,
and all kinds of gaming,
cock-fighting, exhibitions
of shews [sic], plays, and
other expensive diversions
and entertainments ...”
Needless to say, times
have changed. And I sup-
pose I have to say they’ve
changed for the better. But
that’s a pretty low bar. I
don’t think acting is a dis-
honorable profession, and
I’m steadfastly opposed to
banning plays, musicals,
movies and TV shows.
But in our collective
effort to correct the social
stigmas of the past, can any-
one deny that we’ve over-
shot the mark?
Watch the TV series
“Inside the Actors Studio”
sometime. It’s an almost
religious spectacle of
ecstatic obsequiousness
and shameless sycophancy.
Host James Lipton acts like
some ancient Greek priest
given an audience with
Zeus, coming up just shy of
washing the feet of actors
with tears of orgiastic joy.
I mean, I like Tom Hanks,
too. But I’m not sure star-
ring in “Turner & Hooch”
(one of my favorite mov-
ies) bestows oracular moral
authority.
Similarly, to watch the
endless stream of award
shows for Hollywood titans
is to subject yourself to a
narcissistic spectacle of
collective self-worship.
In 2006, George Clooney
gave an (undeserved)
Oscar acceptance speech
in which he said, “We are
a little bit out of touch in
Hollywood every once in a
while, I think. It’s probably
a good thing.” He went on
to deliver a semi-fictional
though no doubt sincere
account of how actors are
like a secular priesthood
prodding America to do
better.
The most recent Golden
Globes ceremony has
already been excoriated for
being a veritable geyser of
hypocritical effluvia, as the
same crowd that not long
ago bowed and scraped to
serial harasser and accused
rapist Harvey Weinstein,
admitted child rapist Roman
Polanski and that modern
Caligula, Bill Clinton, con-
gratulated itself for its own
moral superiority.
The interesting ques-
tion is: Why have movie
stars and other celebrities
become an aristocracy of
secular demigods? It seems
to me an objective fact that
virtually any other group
of professionals plucked at
random from the Statistical
Abstract of the United
States — nuclear engineers,
plumbers, grocers, etc. —
are more likely to model
decent moral behavior in
their everyday lives. Indeed,
it is a bizarre inconsistency
in the cartoonishly liberal
ideology of Hollywood
that the only super-rich
people in America reflex-
ively assumed to be morally
superior are people who
pretend to be other people
for a living.
I think part of the answer
has to do with the receding
of religion from public life.
As a culture, we’ve elevated
“authenticity” to a new form
of moral authority. We look
to our feelings for guid-
ance. Actors, as a class, are
feelings merchants. While
they may indeed be “out
of touch” with the rest of
America from time to time,
actors are adept at being in
touch with their feelings.
And for some unfathom-
ably stupid reason, we now
think that puts us beneath
them.
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Opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer and
are not necessarily shared by the Editor or The Nugget Newspaper.