Wednesday, August 1, 2018 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
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By Jim Cornelius
Editor in Chief
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CURTIS SALGADO PHOTO BY BOB HAKINS
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 Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned.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:
Our home in Sun Mountain burned on
Thursday, July 26. We want to thank the fire-
fighters from all the districts who worked
so hard in the fight. Thanks to the Sheriff’s
Department personnel, and to those neigh-
bors who were so supportive in offering their
homes, food, water and friendship. Thanks
also to the Red Cross who arrived to help.
Carolyn and Hurshel Russell
s
s
s
To the Editor:
This past Saturday, July 28, Naomi Smith
was laid to rest in her family plot at Camp
Polk Cemetery.
She was a true Oregon Pioneer.
As a young girl, Naomi came to Sisters as
a Carroll. She went to school and graduated
from Sisters High School and soon married
Raymond Smith, a good-looking man, hus-
band and provider. Together, they raised three
boys and three girls. Michael, Jan, Sonny,
Laurie, Jeffery and Cecil. And they helped
many young men in their lives, all from a
small home on Larch Street. Ray died in an
auto accident in his early 40s, leaving Naomi
with his strength and courage. She transformed
that courage into her children. So we wonder,
what makes Naomi someone who is special,
who stands out above the crowd. Someone
who makes the news and catches the eye. She
doesn’t. If you look at Naomi Smith at 98
years old, you may ask, “How can this frail,
small woman have done so much in her life?”
Simply put, Naomi Smith had the spirit of a
giant, the will of Hannibal, and the strength of
Sampson. Her kindness and pleasant manner
were her attractive quality. She made you feel
welcome and right at home. God was looking
after her when her daughter Jan and family
took her in for care and attention in her elder
years.
So you may ask, “What does Naomi’s life
have to do with me?” Just to let you know,
See LETTERS on page 32
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The French philosopher
Voltaire noted that “common
sense is not so common” in
the 18th century. He found
agreement from American
philosophers from Mark
Twain to Will Rogers. And
his observation seems to be
confirmed and reconfirmed
every day in America culture
and politics.
More and more, it seems,
we dash for the margins on
any issue and throw good
sense, common or otherwise,
into the ditch. The result is
ever-greater cultural churn
and polarization.
The now-defunct Oregon
Initiative Petition 43 pur-
ported to be a “common
sense” effort to curb violence
— by criminalizing thousands
of law-abiding gun owners
through a ban on “assault
rifles” and “high-capacity
magazines.” The initiative
served only to further polar-
ize and intensify an already
intensely polarizing issue.
Last week, the City of
Santa Barbara, California,
set off a firestorm with a
proposed ordinance banning
plastic straws, to which the
city council in its wisdom
attached a potential jail sen-
tence for violators. The ensu-
ing kerfuffle got so heated
that Visit Santa Barbara hired
a crisis consultant to help deal
with the fallout.
Reducing our society’s
obscene use of plastic is a
laudable goal, but a ham-
fisted top-down approach is
likely to do more harm than
good. Many companies are
— due to increased consumer
awareness — already enact-
ing voluntary reductions,
including alternatives to plas-
tic straws. Consumers can —
and should — eschew the use
of plastic bags and straws and
packaging, and retailers and
manufacturers would do well
to stop using plastic to the
degree possible. Voluntarily.
Cultural and market forces
can reduce the impact of
plastic — but that would rob
politicians of an opportunity
to flamboyantly display their
virtue.
Immigration is an inher-
ently challenging issue made
more intractable by cleaving
to extreme “solutions” that
aren’t. If your choices are
“Build The Wall!” or “Abol-
ish ICE!” you’re not really
working the problem.
San Francisco — Cali-
fornia again — has decided
to allow illegal immigrants
to vote in school board elec-
tions. Seriously. Even for San
Francisco, the notion that the
vote should belong to any-
body other than a citizen is
nutty and pernicious. The
vote is an honor, privilege
and responsibility of citizen-
ship — see the commentary
on page 16 to understand how
significant that is.
It’s hard to solve a prob-
lem as big and complex as
illegal immigration along a
2,000-mile border. It’s impos-
sible when nobody wants to
be honest about the myriad
impacts of generations-long
migration across that border.
President Donald Trump
hinged his improbable cam-
paign on the issue, kicking
it off with a flamethrower:
“When Mexico sends its
people, they’re not sending
their best… They’re send-
ing people that have lots of
problems, and they’re bring-
ing those problems with us
(sic). They’re bringing drugs.
They’re bringing crime.
They’re rapists. And some, I
assume, are good people.”
The specter face-tattooed
MS-13 gangbangers flooding
across an open border is red
meat for the activist base on
the political right. The moral
panic is impervious to chal-
lenge on the data — which
doesn’t correlate increased
crime with immigration, legal
or illegal. It is also impervi-
ous to the cruel impact on
children of a “zero-tolerance”
policy.
The right also tends to for-
get that it is the business com-
munity in the U.S. that creates
the demand for cheap labor
that drives most (but not all)
of the migration.
Meanwhile, the political
left tends to ignore or down-
play the very real negative
impacts of illegal immigra-
tion. Trump painted with a
broad brush dipped in nativist
bile, but one doesn’t have to
be “anti-immigrant” or racist
to acknowledge that there are
people coming to this country
illegally it would be better to
keep out.
The “good people” who
surely make up the vast
majority of those coming
here from Mexico and Central
America seeking life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness
create a significant burden on
the social safety net in high-
immigration states. There are
impacts in emergency rooms,
in schools, and on highways
where uninsured illegal
immigrants create a cost bur-
den on the rest of us. Those
impacts are real, and they are
significant.
But fixing the problem
— inevitably imperfectly —
would cost both sides a wedge
issue, and that just isn’t good
politics these days.