FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2015
4 — THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS
Opinion
— Editorial —
Turning a
mouse-sized
problem into
a mountain
We were introduced to both the
Eltrym Theater’s “Movie Rat” and the
City’s graffiti ordinance on September
15—the day we were tipped off about
a Facebook post from the day before,
penned by that business’s owners com-
plaining about a $250 citation they’d
received.
As the story went, the owners enjoy
the picture of the mouse, and unlike
other graffiti, wanted to have it remain
on their building. Therefore, they be-
lieved they should not have been cited.
Frankly, we couldn’t care less if the
owners want to keep the graffiti for
which they were cited, or if they want
to paint it over.
Not our circus. Not our monkeys.
Not our building, for that matter.
But we do care about how the issue
was handled, in that our City Police
Department was publicly accused of
“harassment,” setting off a fire storm of
police bashing on social media—all for
issuing a citation to this business in the
same way a citation would likely be is-
sued to any business in violation of that
particular ordinance.
It’s apparent in that post, that local
law enforcement attempted to com-
municate several times about the issue,
finally only writing up a citation after
being told by the owners that they
wouldn’t comply.
We call that being backed into a
corner.
The code enforcement officer didn’t
write the ordinance. He may agree or
disagree with it—we have no clue.
But it’s his job to follow the law and
enforce it equally, and it appears that’s
what he did.
From that point, the situation seemed
to escalate quickly, and discussion of
the ordinance and the “Movie Rat” was
nearly immediately sensationalized fur-
ther via other local media, and placed
on the agendas for the next Public Arts
Commission and City Council meet-
ings.
At those meetings, one personal
friend of the theater’s owners stood and
expressed concern over the “vindic-
tiveness” of a complaint-based graffiti
ordinance.
We still aren’t entirely clear if local
authorities simply witnessed the graffiti
themselves or if a complaint had ever
been registered at some prior date, but
we do note the word “vindictiveness.”
Unfortunately, over this past month,
being the small community it is, we re-
ceived additional tips from a multitude
of sources who heard rumor-mongering
and false accusations being thrown, not
just at the police, but at another busi-
ness owner with claims they had used
that complaint-driven ordinance to
yes, “harass” the theater for whatever
imagined reason.
That’s an awful lot of harassment
going on over a bit a paint that most
people in the community haven’t seen
and probably didn’t even know about—
and nothing but malicious, adolescent
behavior on the part of the gossips.
And now to top it off, taxpayers are
looking at a bare minimum of several
hundred dollars worth of legal fees on
this issue as the City attempts to alter
the existing ordinance to insert more
“flexibility” into it in the form of an
appeals system.
We’ll be the first to stand up and ad-
vocate for property owners’ rights.
We can get behind the idea of chang-
ing the ordinance in such a way as to
give police a little more discretion in
its enforcement, and property owners
more leeway.
And we do like the idea of an “art
alley” or “freak alley” being identi-
fied where local artists can go to get
creative. If that art alley winds up being
located behind the theater, great!
However, as far as the expense of
changing the ordinance as suggested,
we were of the understanding that an
appeals system is already in place.
When issued a citation, any individual
or business can refuse to pay it, and
instead request time in court—where
a judge will review and rule on the
matter, choosing to enforce a citation,
reduce or dismiss it.
The drama that has ensued, surround-
ing the fate of the “Movie Rat,” comes
across so very divisive and unnecessary
to us—a true case of turning a mouse-
sized problem into a mountain.
—The Baker County Press Editorial Board
— Letters to the Editor —
Taxes need increased to fight
global warming
To the Editor:
This year’s catastrophic wildfires in
Baker County and surrounding areas
provide ample justification and motivation
to take bold action against global warming
by all levels of government.
Unless we curtail and replace carbon
dioxide (CO2) emissions and until we find
the money to properly treat overgrown
forests, we almost certainly face ever-
increasing danger and destruction.
But, when it comes to creating a safe and
sustainable future for our county and our
state and our country, there are a couple of
“elephants in the living room” that must
be addressed and overcome:
1) Deception, confusion, and denial
about the growing concentration of CO2
and other greenhouse gasses in our atmo-
sphere which cause global warming, and
2) Deception, confusion, and denial
about the growing concentration of ex-
treme wealth in the hands of a very few
that deprives us from making needed
infrastructure investments, like alterna-
tive energy sources and forest treatment
to minimize wildfires and protect our
watersheds.
It is essential that we overcome these
Letter to the Editor Policy: The
Baker County Press reserves the right
not to publish letters containing factual
falsehoods or incoherent narrative.
Letters promoting or detracting from
specific for-profit businesses will not be
published. Word limit is 375 words per
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Advertising and Opinion Page
Disclaimer: Opinions submitted as
roadblocks and get needed political action
at the federal level, and we should all
press for it.
For example, we need to price fossil fu-
els out of the market. CO2 concentrations
for hundreds of thousands of years have
been around 285 parts per million (ppm).
Starting in 1800, they grew to 399 ppm
today—a 40 percent increase during those
215 years, mainly due to human activ-
ity. A revenue-neutral carbon tax would
promote consumer decisions based on the
true total cost of oil, gas, and coal.
We also need much higher taxes on ex-
treme wealth. With increased revenue, we
can pay for not only forest treatment and
restoration, but also for increased wage
supplements to combat needless poverty,
and for other infrastructure needs, such
a free college tuition, road and highway
maintenance, and so much more.
Pope Francis pointed the way during
his recent visit when he told us, “Climate
change is a problem which can no longer
be left to our future generations.”
Let us all work together to press for
increased governmental intervention for
the common good.
Marshall McComb
Chair of the Baker County Democrats
Baker City
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— Guest Opinion —
My thoughts
on mandatory
vaccines
By Leo Castillo
Special to The Baker County Press
This year, more than 100 bills were
introduced in multiple states to add more
vaccine mandates and restrict or eliminate
non-medical vaccine exemptions. Many
of these would have been declared an
“emergency” upon passage. Oregon’s
defeated Senate Bill 442 is an example.
For those choosing vaccine exemp-
tion, the school attendance requirement
to watch an Oregon Health “Authority,”
or OHA approved, propaganda vaccine
module is still in effect.
Here are some hard facts you won’t find
in the vaccine module:
• Some of the potential adverse reac-
tions to the OHA required DPT, Polio,
Varicella, MMR, Hepatitis A&B, and Hib
shots, via the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg
School of Public Health webpage include:
convulsions, apnea, vertigo, diarrhea,
vomiting, atypical measles, fever, dia-
betes, arthritis, measles, Guillain-Barré
Syndrome (polio), fatigue, myalgia, al-
lergic rash, anaphylactic shock, encepha-
litis; warnings to avoid close association
with “high risk” individuals for up to six
weeks, to prevent transmission of vaccine
virus.
The National Vaccine Injury Compen-
sation Program website has a “Vaccine
Injury Table” that openly lists all the
severe injuries and conditions that can
occur from vaccinations, including brain
damage, paralytic polio and death.
A little history:
Dr. Jennifer Craig, (no, not the famous
weight loss personality), details in her
extensively researched book “Jabs, Jenner
& Juggernauts,” that the smallpox vaccine
actually exacerbated cases of smallpox,
multifold.
In 1992, the CDC published an ad-
mission that the live-virus vaccine had
become the dominant cause of polio in
the United States, and in fact, according
to CDC figures, every case of polio in
the U.S. since 1979 was caused by the
oral polio vaccine—Strebel PM, Clinical
Infectious Diseases CDC, February 1992
Dr. William Thompson from the CDC,
was granted immunity by the Obama
administration (yeah, I know, I couldn’t
believe it either) in February, 2015 against
prosecution from said CDC for falsifying
a report he conducted with others in 2004,
in which omitted evidence shows a direct
link between vaccines and autism.
On July 29th, Congressman Bill Posey
from Florida entered a statement by Dr
Thompson regarding fraud and the CDC’s
MMR vaccine studies into the Congres-
sional Record, and plead for a Congressio-
nal investigation into the matter. Health
Impact News 8-9-2015.
There’s much, much, more.
Back to mandated vaccines.
According to Barbara Loe Fisher from
Submitted Photo
Leo Castillo is the host of World
Gone Crazy, Sunday evenings on
KBKR 1490 AM.
the National Vaccine Information Center,
while the States were busy with a myriad
of mandatory vaccine legislation earlier
this year, the lobbies of the pharmaceuti-
cal industry and medical trade associa-
tions, funded by industry and government,
pushed through the 21st Century Cures
Act, which passed in the US House of
Representatives on July 10th. Reuters
July 10, 2015
“The bill allows the FDA to lower
licensing standards for testing of ex-
perimental drugs, medical devices and
“biological products”—a category that
includes vaccines, so companies will no
longer be required to conduct large, case
controlled clinical trials to evaluate safety
and effectiveness.
This bill (H.R. 6) also fast-tracks
experimental vaccines to licensure that
the government will then legally require
healthy children and adults to buy and use.
Think about that.
To continue to quote Ms. Fisher in
her article “Here Comes the 21st Cen-
tury Cures Act: Say Goodbye to Vaccine
Safety Science” July 21st, 2015.
The financial public-private partnership
that Congress has directed government
to forge with industry through a series
of federal laws created over the past 30
years ... is using the “greater good” club
to violate the human and civil rights of the
American people in the name of a highly
politicized “War on Disease,” has the po-
tential to destroy more lives than any war
our nation has ever fought.
The 21st Century Cures Act is a pre-
scription for disaster. Vaccine research,
development and fast- tracking should not
be a part of it.
Good thing they named it the “Cures
Act,” huh?
Will we allow substances with highly
dubious benefits to our health, which ad-
mit on the package from the labs they’re
manufactured at to potentially cause harm
and even kill us, to forcibly be injected
into our bloodstreem?
I’ll leave you with a quote from JFK:
“The great enemy of the truth is very
often not the lie—deliberate, contrived,
and dishonest, but the myth—persistent,
persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in
myths allows the comfort of opinion with-
out the discomfort of thought.”
Visit nvicadvocacy.org for State-specific
legislation information.
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