PAGE A4, KEIZERTIMES, NOVEMBER 18, 2016
KeizerOpinion
KEIZERTIMES.COM
Malheur Refuge standoff
taught us about a few things
Ammon Bundy, quoted
on his acquittal of charges
in the Malheur National
Wildlife Refuge armed oc-
cupation, expressed amaze-
ment that anyone could
fail to take the side of the
“people” instead of the gov-
ernment. Ideally, government is of
the people, by the people, and for the
people. I am both people and part of
the government.
I also own a share of the Malheur
NWR equal to Ammon Bundy’s. I
spend a lot of time at wildlife ref-
uges and have traveled to spend
time at Malheur. Teddy Roosevelt’s
generation understood the value of
protecting habitat for wildlife and
bird migration. We owe them a debt
of gratitude and a sense of responsi-
bility in leaving it be. We ought to
share the same commitment to our
children.
Much of the land in the West was
either purchased or taken by the
United States for expansion and then
turned over to states and individuals
in land grants and homesteading pro-
visions. Free use of much of the un-
claimed land was allowed by the U.S.
government. Much of the Bureau
of Land Management (BLM) land is
now leased for cattle grazing, mineral
and oil extraction. A fair portion of
the revenue gained from these leases
is returned to the states involved. It is
estimated that granting local control
to the states encompassing these fed-
eral lands would increase administra-
tive costs without solving the ques-
tions of usage.
The Ashanti Tribe of Ghana has a
saying: “Land belongs to a vast fam-
ily of whom many are dead, a few
are living and a countless host are still
unborn.” That seems a nice recogni-
tion that Earth is a common heritage.
It looks like a road to ruin to see
land as only a vehicle for increasing
revenue or territorial
domain. Personal own-
ership of land is actually
a fairly recent concept in
human history and even
then has enough restric-
tions so that it is more
accurate to say that I
have rights to the land on which I
live than to say I own it. I don’t have
absolute freedom to use my small
piece as I see fi t. I am subject to zon-
ing law, must pay taxes, am liable for
lawsuits brought against the property
and must abide by restrictions agreed
on by the community in which I
live, not to mention the state’s right
of eminent domain.
I had nothing to do with the cre-
ation of the land on which I live, no
say in what happened here 50 years
ago, and 50 years from now no one
will remember my claim to owner-
ship. Wildlife conservation pioneer
Aldo Leopold said, “We abuse land
because we regard it as a commodity
belonging to us. When we see land
as a community to which we belong,
we may begin to use it with love and
respect”
At our current rate of setting aside
about 10 percent of land for wild-
life habitat we stand to lose about
half of all species in the near future.
Still, that 10 percent is in jeopardy
from the Ammon Bundy mindset. If
control of federal lands is handed to
those who live nearest to it will they
decide in favor of reducing operating
costs over giving migratory birds a
place to feed and rest? Your answer is
found in the ongoing decline of spe-
cies. Author Paul Brooks was more
blunt: “In America today you can
murder land for private profi t. You
can leave the corpse for all to see, and
nobody calls the cops.”
If only that were an exaggeration.
a box
of
soap
A needed
inspirational
message
(Don Vowell gets on his soapbox
regularly in the Keizertimes.)
letters
To the Editor:
I am sharing this message
from a friend, Bret Oldham,
with all my Facebook friends. This is
precisely what I had in mind to inform
to the citizens of America.
I used to coach basketball and was
very successful at it. One of the reasons
for that success was due to the abso-
lute team mindset that I instigated. Ev-
erything was accomplished as a team
with each individual doing their part.
There was no fi ghting between the
team members. Everyone wanted the
same thing; they wanted the team to
be successful. This simple analogy is a
small example of what is needed now
in this country.
We are all Americans. Like it or not
we must all be on the same team. Not
any political team; the American team.
We must stop antagonizing the divi-
sion that is rampant across this great
nation. Stop boasting if your side
won in the election. Stop being bit-
ter if your side didn’t win. Stop bash-
ing each other. Stop the hate. We need
unity among all citizens at this delicate
time in our country’s history. No mat-
ter what your political beliefs are, your
religious beliefs are, your race, your
sexuality, or your fi nancial status, at the
end of the day we are all still Ameri-
cans. Our diversity is what has made
this country the most powerful nation
on earth. Please remember, united we
stand, divided we fall. It’s not always
easy but let’s all try a little harder to ac-
cept each other’s differences. Let’s get
back on the right path and start mak-
ing a concerted effort to be kind to
each other. It all starts with you.
Bret Oldham
Keizer
Veterans
Day
2016
To the Editor:
I sit here looking
out the window at the
American fl ag, with tremendous
pride. It is impossible not to have
a heavy heart over watching rioters
burn that same fl ag. Watching pro-
testers vandalize buildings, cars, and
blocking traffi c, preventing work-
ing people from getting to or from
home, to work, to pick up the kids.
All under the guise of “their rights.”
In 1944, 18-year-olds stormed
Normandy. Many gave their lives
to protect a free world, to give us
the freedoms we have today. Today
we have 18-year-olds staging “cry-
ins” on colleges campuses because
they didn’t get their way. Therapy
dogs being brought in to help them
grieve, college professors weeping
over a lost election, making exams
“optional” while students grieve.
Should it be any surprise that
high school students walk out in
protest given the brain washing
they have experienced from teach-
ers like this?
Some parents have been com-
plaining for years, about a leftist
agenda that has been in control of
our public schools. No surprise at
the increases in enrollment in pri-
vate schools. Look at the prolifera-
tion of private/church schools in
the valley.
Have we become a society that
teaches our youth “you have the
right to have anything you want
whether earned it or not?”
G.I. Wilson
Keizer
Keizertimes
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A triumphant GOP, mired in crisis
By MICHAEL GERSON
The Republican Party is every-
where triumphant—House and Sen-
ate, executive and legislative, national
and state—and yet faces a series of
crises.
There is a crisis of identity. Trump
now leads a coalition including the
Republican establishment—and peo-
ple who despise the Republican es-
tablishment. The insurgent president-
elect—lacking relevant experience,
adequate personnel and actual policy
proposals—cannot exercise power
without the help of those he ridiculed.
Trump has chosen to incorporate
this confl ict into the structure of the
West Wing. His chief of staff, Reince
Priebus, was the sponsor of the 2013
Republican autopsy report, which
called on the party to accommo-
date America’s multicultural future.
Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon,
has made a career out of resisting that
future. This is less a team of rivals than
an ideological cage fi ght.
Every good presidential transition
should involve betraying a few of your
friends. Not everyone who helps a
president to become president is fi t
to help him govern. Bannon—whose
Breitbart News invited the alt-right
into the conservative mainstream and
who has made a business model out
of spreading conspiratorial nonsense
—belongs in this category, along with
Sarah Palin, Rudy Giuliani, Corey
Lewandowski and the rest of the dis-
tracting campaign sideshow.
For the Republican Party, this is
also a governing crisis. Trump won
offi ce promising to undo globaliza-
tion, bring back manufacturing jobs
and fulfi ll “every dream you ever
dreamed.” So expectations are pretty
high. But Trumpism, for the most part,
consists of cul-
tural
signals
and symbolic
goals, not a set
of developed
proposals.
M a n y
Republican
members
of
Congress are frankly confused. Are
they supposed to follow Trump’s lead
or supply his agenda? He has em-
braced massive infrastructure invest-
ment, but there is no favored bill or
detailed plan. Obamacare must go,
but what approach to “replace” does
Trump prefer? Speaker Paul Ryan
is pushing for tax reform. Does the
president-elect have any interest in
the topic at all? The biggest frustra-
tion reported by Republicans who
have met with Trump is his inability
to focus for any period of time. He
is impatient with facts and charts and
he changes the subject every few min-
utes. Republican leaders need policy
leadership, or permission to provide it
themselves.
One area where the agenda is uni-
fying and well developed concerns
the reversal of Obama-era execu-
tive orders. Republican lawyers have
spent the last year and a half working
in study groups on reversal language,
in order to be ready on the fi rst day
of a GOP presidency. The action most
likely to cause controversy would
overturn President Obama’s limited
amnesty for students brought illegally
to America as children. Most Repub-
licans think that executive order was
illegal; but most Americans will prob-
ably fi nd the victims of reversing the
order to be sympathetic.
This hints at the long-term po-
litical crisis faced by the triumphant
other
views
GOP. Trump won the presidency in a
manner that undermines the GOP’s
electoral future. He demonstrated that
the “coalition of the ascendant”—in-
cluding minorities, millennials, and
the college-educated—is not yet as-
cendant. But in a nation where over
half of babies under 5 years old are
racial and ethnic minorities, it eventu-
ally will be. Trump was elected by a
70 percent white electorate. But that
was about 2 percentage points lower
than in the 2012 election—and that
number has been dropping by about
2 points each presidential election for
decades. Trump’s white turnout strat-
egy is not the wave of the future; it is
the last gasp of an old and disturbing
electoral approach.
The fi nal crisis faced by the GOP,
and just about everyone else, relates
to the quality of our political culture.
Trump won offi ce in a way that dam-
aged our democracy. He fed resent-
ment against minorities, promised to
jail his opponent and turned shallow
invective into an art form. If he gov-
erns as he campaigned, Trump will
smash the unity of our country into a
thousand shards of bitterness.
We should hope that the president-
elect will be sobered by the respon-
sibilities of high offi ce and discovers
hidden resources of charity (even
though malice has been the habit of a
lifetime). He deserves the space at least
to try. But Republicans may end up
depending on a younger generation of
leaders —Paul Ryan, Ben Sasse, Nikki
Haley, Tim Scott, Jeff Flake, Marco
Rubio—to demonstrate the possi-
bility of unifying aspiration and civil
disagreement. And that would lay the
foundation for a lasting and honorable
victory.
(Washington Post Writers Group)
No to corporate taxes, yes to big salaries
Consider incongruous. It’s a fancy
word meaning something is not
consistent with what is logical.
Further, consider the follow-
ing information that was made
available in the media a few days
ago. The University of Oregon’s
trustees last week approved a con-
tract extension for men’s basketball
coach Dana Altman that will pay
him $18.45 million through April,
2023. Altman will earn a base sal-
ary of $1.8 million this season and is
due a retention $850,000 bonus this
spring at the end of the contract’s
fi rst year. Altman’s the fi fth highest
paid coach in the Pac-12 while his
new deal places him among the na-
tion’s top 20 highest paid coaches.
The work he does manages a sports
event named basketball, there’s no
life or death involved.
Altman has taken Ducks basket-
ball to play in the national tourna-
ment but did not fi nish as national
champions.
Meanwhile, Ducks
football head coach, Mark Helfrich
was a winner for a couple of years
but this year has been the coach of
a team that has lost more than half
of its games. He’s already been paid
millions of dollars for his coaching
work; however, should he be fi red
due to lack of support for him due
to this year’s dismal record, he nev-
ertheless will receive $11.6 million.
Altman and Helfrich are not un-
usual for the amounts of remunera-
tion they receive along with perks
that add up to tens of thousands
of dollars every year. All sports at
UO, OSU, Portland State and other
public institutions in the state are
paid huge amounts for coaching
games that are
simply
pro-
vided for en-
tertainment’s
sake. Yet, these
coaches sala-
ries and perks,
while adver-
tised as being
paid by generous alums and game
revenues, student fees and tax dol-
lars get manipulated to help with
the huge coach salaries paid.
Then there’s the voting down of
Measure 97. Measure 97 would have
required the many national corpo-
rations that do business in Oregon
to pay a higher tax on the profi ts
they make in our state. When you
think of what the revenue estimat-
ed to have been $6 billion over the
next biennium, you begin to realize
that since all that money would not
have gone to life and death actions,
much of it would as it was intend-
ed to help
those with-
out health
insurance
and the wel-
fare of Or-
egon’s senior
citizens and
helped many
more kids
in
school
to graduate
and provide
much more
vo c a t i o n a l
and techni-
cal courses
of study and
learning.
gene h.
mcintyre
So, getting to the bottom line on
this issue, collectively, we Orego-
nians are willing to pay coaches lav-
ish salaries and perks only known
to CEOs and executives in major
corporations but we’re not willing
to require those corporations that
make the big bucks in our state
to pay their fair share in taxes that
mean so much more than watching
young men and women get broken
bones, concussions and life-long in-
juries. It’s all very incongruous.
(Gene H. McIntyre’s column ap-
pears weekly in the Keizertimes.)
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