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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 18, 1996)
i MONDAY: Opinion TUESDAY: Politics WEDNESDAY: Opinion THURSDAY: Politics FRIDAY: Opinion editorials, letters, commentary and perspective BY MAIL P.O. Box 3159, Eugene, OR 97403 BY PHONE: (541)346-5511 BY E-MAIL: ode@oregon. uoregon. edu IN PERSON: Suite 300, EMU Democracy is alive and well.. .barely No matter how abused it may be, the Oregon initiative process is the epitome of voter power According to the Sept. 16 edition of The Register Guard, it’s just too costly and “reaches beyond just ballot overload” to allow peo ple a direct say in how they will be governed. They point to the re cent two-volume Voters’ Pam phlet as a perfect example of self government gone ridiculous. “Volume One will contain mea sures only and will ‘feature’ 248 pages, making it the largest pam phlet in state history. What’s to be done about this overload?” The Register-Guard’s editorial is just one in a series of similar com plaints from all over the state. Op ponents of the Oregon initiative process point to the current batch EH TT oi z j Danot measures as proof that the process doesn’t work, that it is often used to enact frivolous and foolish laws and that it is simply too costly to con tinue. What tnese opponents seem to forget or deliberately ignore is that the ini tiative process is the closest thing we have to the exercise of pure democracy. It allows people to put political proposals directly before the voting public, and it allows that voting public to decide for or against those proposals. Opponents urge that the initia tive process be severely limited or even eliminated because many of the ballot measures are ill con ceived, poorly worded and may do more harm than good. But, if the creation of foolish, frivolous and some times fraudu lent laws can be used as a basis for eliminating a part of our governing process, then our forms of government on local, state and federal levels would have been trashed years ago. Is it a chore to wade through the 248-page pamphlet trying to make sense of the 23 ballot measures? Sure is. Each measure not only has the text of the measure and a neu tral explanation of its possible ef fect, but also one or more argu ments for and against it. Anyone with $500 to spare or the time to gather 2500 signatures can get his or her argument in the pamphlet. The Register Guard finds this unnec essary and excessive, and pro poses that in the future, the arguments be limited to one each per ballot measure. So who gets to make those arguments? The process of becoming an informed voter requires gathering all the in formation possible, pro and con, about each measure. If arguments in the pamphlet are limited, where do voters turn to get more informa tion? Apparently, The Register Guard hopes they will turn to its editorial pages for the “right” stuff. Do some of the ballot measures CHRIS HUTCHINSON/Emerald seem to border on the absurd? Sure do. My personal favorite act of lunacy is Measure 46. ft would require a majority of regis tered voters, not a majority of actu al voters, to approve new taxes. When was the last time a majority of registered voters even voted, let alone voted the same way for any thing? In a country so proud of its democratic traditions, voter turnout has often been less than half of the total registered to vote. And the total registered to vote never comes remotely close to the number who could vote if they simply quit complaining, got off their lazy asses and participated. Is the initiative process open to abuse? No doubt about it. Salem J eye surgeon Gordon Miller demonstrates that fact. He person ally put up the money needed to push his personal agenda and get measures 35,41 and 42 on the bal lot. He hired the signature gather ers, paid for arguments in the Vot ers’ Pamphlet, and for all I know personally crafted the words in the measure. All of Miller’s measures would enact foolish, needless and, in the case of Measure 41, bizarre legislation. But Miller also demon strates an inherent strength of the initiative process. The process al lows any citizen who feels the , need for change in the way govern ment conducts its business to ask the rest of the voters to validate those feelings by actually forcing that change. Is the process cumbersome? Yes. Does it require voters to do more homework, to become more in volved in governing? Yes. But with all its flaws, the ballot measures represent a process that allows Oregonians to make decisions about how they will be governed. It provides a mechanism in which every citizen can become a direct player in the system of checks and balances that keeps our govern ment from becoming too abusive and unresponsive to the people who are governed. Instead of complaining about the size of the Voters’ Pamphlet or about the foolishness of some of the measures voters are asked to decide about, we should be prais ing the Oregon initiative process as the purest form of democracy available to us. It should be held up as an important and perhaps vi tal part of our system of self-gov ernment, and Oregonians should be glad they live in a state where such participation is possible. Larry Haftl, a senior majoring in journalism, is a columnist for the Emerald. His views do not necessarily represent those of the newspaper. The Oregon Daily Emerald is published daily Monday through Fri day during the school year and Tuesday and Thursday during the sum mer by the Oregon Daily Emerald Publishing Co. Inc., at the University ot Oregon. Eugene. Oregon. A member ot the Associated Press, the Emerald operates independently ot the University with offices at Suite 300 of the Erb Memorial Union. The Emerald is private property. The unlawful removal or use of pa pers is prosecutable by law. Editor-in-Chlef: Steven Asbury Managing Editor: Jennifer Carter Night Editor. Jennifer Schmitt Community. Jennifer Schmitt, editor Jean Bond Entertainment Nicole Kreuger, editor. Jesse Stephenson Higher Education: Kristine Sohnrey. editor. Tamyra Howser, in depth. Benjamin Kwasney Opinion: Ashley Bach, editor. Chris Hutchinson, illustrator. Brian Diamond. Larry Haftl, Sonja Sherwood Politics: Shana Cohn, editor. Doug Irving Special Projects: Tiffany Smith Student Activities: Kristin Bailey, editor Angie Suchy, Tom Potter Sports: Mark McTyre, editor. Andrea DeYoung, assistant editor. Chris Hansen. Ryan Frank. Ryan Halvorsen Copy Desk: Thom Schoenborn. copy chief. Sarah Kickler. Mike Schmierbach, Kendra Smith Presentation: Dennis Bolt, editor. Cosmos Corbin, Matt Garton Photography: Mathew Stiffler, editor. Andrew Brackensick, Joe Bunik, Amanda Erickson. Shannon Kilduff, Chad Patteson Freelance: Lara Pittman, editor. On-Une: Nicholas Stiffler. director. General Manager Judy Riedi Advertising: Becky Merchant, director. Anne Amador, Lee Yen Beh, Marco Ching. Yujin Chi. Matt Johnson, Anne Miller, Trina Shanaman, Rose Soli, Matt Solomon, Greg Walsh Classified: Tara Sloan, manager. Natasha Lumpkin, Debbie Levy, Heather Moye Production: Michele Ross, manager. Ingrid White, coordinator. Shawna Abele, Laura Daniel, Tara Knight, Melissa Lebahn, Molly Mc Canta. Allison Stormo, Mike Young Business: Kathy Carbone, supervisor Judy Connolly Distribution: John Long, Jeff Johnson, Ferenc Rakoczi Newsroom.(541)346-5511 Display Advertising.(541)346-3712 Business Office.(541) 346-5512 Classified Advertising.(541) 346-4343 LETTERS Raise minimum wage I’m no economist. When I hear complaints that raising Oregon’s minimum wage would hamper some business es, leading to inflation, my re tort is born of a simple lower class logic. If the business person feels a pinch in his or her pocketbook, perhaps his or her vacation to a tropical isle could be cut short a day or two. Or the next time they buy a piece of art, opt for one that is a few hundred dol lars less than the last one. And for some, a little less caviar might be in order. When I cast my yes vote for Measure 36,1 do so to the tune of a bumper sticker I saved from the 80s: “Inflation isn’t a natural disaster. It’s caused by people who profit from it.” Star Holmberg Eugene Drugs commonplace Don’t get wrong! I’m a pot smoker who enjoys the wide variety of pipes and parapher nalia that can be found at each ASUO Street Faire. I’m just cu rious how the conservative community can condone this. Are students’ parents aware that the University chooses to make room for vendors who exist to assist their kids in get ting high? The war on drugs re ally is a joke. John Exline Eugene No fences The election is just around the corner, and I would like to clear up the terrible mess that Measure 38 would cause be cause of the use of the wrong title in the measure. It is not about clean water but wants to ruin the way ranchers have lived for over a hundred years. We have lived here on this century farm all our married lives, and my husband, Melvin’s, grandfather home steaded it, and he was born here. We have been planting the draws and the steep hills to grass to keep the sediment, our soil, from getting into the stream. We have a small creek that runs through our place, but it goes dry in May or June, and we would not like to put two fences along it. Measure 38 is such that we and other ranchers would be forced to fence any creeks in our proper ty' This bill will force all live stock out of Oregon as very few ranchers can afford to either fence their streams (the defini tion of a stream is any location where water runs two weeks a year) or sell their livelihood — the livestock. This measure is for lawyers, for if someone sees an animal drinking out of a pond or stream on your land, they can sue you. You would then have to hire a lawyer to defend you and then pay your attorney as well as your opponent’s if you lose. Farmers are not so rich that they can afford to pay lawyers at their high fees. Therefore, fences are the only solution. Farmers already have fences along the road to keep their stock off and boundary fences to keep up, so these fences will fall down and be a tangled mess. Oregon will have to fence their rivers, with the ex ception of the Willamette and Columbia. At $10,000 a mile, that will take a huge chunk of money from taxpayers’ pock ets. Also, there will have to be more employees to pay to keep these fences repaired especial ly when deer and elk get hung up in them. Everyone wants clean water, but this is a bad measure. Our rivers are clean and the live stock drink out of them, but they want to say that the tem perature of the water when it gets warm makes the water polluted. But it is the sun and hot weather that make the wa ter warm and only God can change this. There are sensible ways to make the water in our state cleaner, but this measure is not one of them. Please go to the polls and vote no on this bad bill as we don’t need Oregon fenced. Thank you for voting no on 38. Joan Lathrop Wallowa
