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About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 31, 2018)
2 Wednesday, January 31, 2018 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon O P I N I O N Jonah Goldberg 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 Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned.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 was confused when I read Jim Cornelius’s article, “Sisters explores regulated marijuana commerce,” in the January 17, 2018 edition. When I went into the Deschutes County Clerk’s website and looked up the election archives, in fact, I didn’t see any election related to marijuana in 2015 AT ALL, as was quoted, “In 2014, voters in Sisters rejected a measure that would have allowed medical marijuana in Sisters. However, in 2015, voters in the City precinct showed a 51 percent approval of the state measure legalizing medical marijuana, according to City Manager Brant Kucera.” But we need to look at all of Sisters Country. The precinct for Sisters City proper is #30, and in the general election of November of 2014, Measure 9-101, 57.62 percent of the city opposed medical marijuana within City limits, and 42.38 percent were in favor. In the state-wide measure for recreational marijuana, Measure 91, also in 2014, Sisters precinct #30 voted in favor 521 to 498 opposed; a very small margin. But that is only a part of the story. If one takes into account all of The Nugget’s cir- culation, or Sisters School District, places like Cloverdale, Plainview, Highway 126, Black Butte Ranch, Tollgate, Crossroads and even Camp Sherman, the numbers are 2,907 in favor and 3,548 opposed. That is 641 more no votes than yes, for rec- reational marijuana. Please remember that Sisters is our town, too. Our officials have the duty — I’d say responsibility — to do the will of the people. Jayne Simmons s s s To the Editor: The “In Our America” signs seem to be very popular here in Sisters, and, I assume, across the state. In an effort to better understand the sign’s message, I’d like to break down some of the sign’s statements, ask some questions and perhaps get more clarity. Black Lives Matter: I think this speaks to a perspective that black Americans have been mistreated by law enforcement. Does race- based rhetoric really empower people or does it merely foster/nurture racial divisiveness and a crippling sense of victimization? See KLETTERSK on page 20 Sisters Weather Forecast Courtesy of the National Weather Service, Pendleton, Oregon Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Monday Sunday Partly Sunny Chance Rain Chance Rain Partly Sunny Partly Sunny Partly Sunny 42/30 49/36 52/34 54/34 53/33 51/40 The Nugget Newspaper, LLC Website: www.nuggetnews.com 442 E. Main Ave., P.O. Box 698, Sisters, Oregon 97759 Tel: 541-549-9941 | Fax: 541-549-9940 | editor@nuggetnews.com Editor In Chief: Jim Cornelius Production Manager: Leith Easterling Classifieds & Circulation: Teresa Mahnken Graphic Design: Jess Draper Postmaster: Send address changes to The Nugget Newspaper, P.O. Box 698, Sisters, OR 97759. Third Class Postage Paid at Sisters, Oregon. Accounting: Erin Bordonaro Proofreader: Pete Rathbun Owner: J. Louis Mullen The Nugget is mailed to residents within the Sisters School District; subscriptions are available outside delivery area. Third-class postage: one year, $45; six months (or less), $25. First-class postage: one year, $85; six months, $55. Published Weekly. ©2018 The Nugget Newspaper, LLC. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. All advertising which appears in The Nugget is the property of The Nugget and may not be used without explicit permission. The Nugget Newspaper, Inc. assumes no liability or responsibility for information contained in advertisements, articles, stories, lists, calendar etc. within this publication. All submissions to The Nugget Newspaper will be treated as uncondition- ally assigned for publication and copyrighting purposes and subject to The Nugget Newspaper’s unrestricted right to edit and comment editorially, that all rights are currently available, and that the material in no way infringes upon the rights of any person. The publisher assumes no responsibility for return or safety of artwork, photos, or manuscripts. The Trump administration is now moving to put some teeth on its promise to punish “unfair” trade from China and other countries. Last week it imposed punitive tariffs on Chinese and South Korean manufacturers of washing machines and solar panels. The move is ill advised on its own, but you can be sure this is just the beginning of renewed debate over the ben- efits of free trade, with any number of once-passionate opponents of the government “picking winners and losers” rushing to defend the sagacity of “America first” economics. One of the most difficult distinctions for people in gen- eral and politicians in particu- lar to grasp is the difference between being pro-free mar- ket and pro-business. There are many reasons for this confusion. For politi- cians, the key reason is that businesspeople are constitu- ents and donors, while the free market is an abstraction. Also, because capitalists tend to lionize successful people, we assume they share our philosophical commitments. But it is a rare corporate titan who favors a free market if doing so is bad for his or her bottom line. Adam Smith recog- nized this in his canonical 1776 work, “The Wealth of Nations.” “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion,” he wrote, without the conversation end- ing “in a conspiracy against the public, or in some con- trivance to raise prices.” This doesn’t mean that capitalists are evil; it means they’re human beings. Virtually every profession you can think of has a ten- dency to dig a moat around itself to protect its interests and defend against com- petition. A few years ago, the American Academy of Pediatrics came out against affordable health care for children. Retail chains like Walmart and CVS started opening in-store clinics to provide affordable basic health care like vaccinations. The pediatricians rightly saw this as a threat to their monopoly over kids’ medical care. Similarly, most teachers like kids, but that doesn’t stop teachers unions from doing everything they can to protect themselves from competition or accountability. Indeed, unions, by design, are con- spiracies against the public to defend the wages and perks of their members. NIMBYism (Not in My Backyard) is another manifestation of this phenomenon. As I argue in my forth- coming book, “The Suicide of the West,” this tendency to form coalitions, aristocracies or guilds to protect common interests is simply an evolved fact of human nature, existing in every society through all of history. The founding fathers understood this — they called it the threat of “faction”— which is why the Constitution was designed to prevent any one group of interests or institutions from being able to attain concentrated power. Smith understood this too. After noting how people of the same trade conspire to raise prices, he added: “It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be exe- cuted, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hin- der people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do noth- ing to facilitate such assem- blies; much less to render them necessary.” What both Smith and the founders understood is that such conspiracies can only last with the help of gov- ernment. As the economist Joseph Schumpeter argued, in a system of free competi- tion, monopolies cannot long endure without government protection. If the government prom- ises cheap, below-cost bread for all, the bakeries will go bust unless they are subsi- dized. Those subsidies would come from taxpayers, so we’d be paying the real price any- way. If the government taxes cheap washing machines from abroad, the price of washing machines will go up, hurting consumers. Every form of statism — from absolute monar- chy to socialism to fascism — involves the state form- ing an alliance with some faction or another and giv- ing it preferential treatment. Protectionism is simply stat- ism applied to trade. It is a conspiracy against the public to raise prices, and nothing more. ©2018 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.
