JUNE 28, 2019, KEIZERTIMES, PAGE A5
Opinion
One party rule
How one responds to the Re-
publican state senators hightailing it
out of the capital to deny a quorum
during the debate and vote for the
cap and trade bill likely depends on
one’s ideological bent.
The right cheered on the ma-
neuver; the left disparaged the move.
To deny ruling Dem-
ocrats the opportunity to
steam roll their cap and
trade legislation into real-
ity, the Republicans took
a page from other states
and Oregon Democratic
legislators themselves by
skipping town. Without
the minimum number of
legislators in attendance, the cap and
trade bill could not move forward.
Earlier this week Senate President
Peter Courtney admitted that even
his own caucus did not have the
necessary votes to pass the bill.
Some say that the Republicans
should have returned to Salem
and do the job they were elected
to do—even if it means being on
the losing side of a vote. Others
say that the Republicans were only
doing what they had to do to stave
off what some call a disaster for the
state.
The political stand-off resulted
in the no-show Republicans being
fi ned $500 a day for staying away.
Those fi nes can be paid for out of
the legislator’s campaign coffers.
Most of the Republican senators
were in Idaho, out of reach of the
Oregon State Police, who have been
tasked with rounding up the errant
legislators.
There are about 100 pending
bills in the state legislature that will
die for lack of action due to the
walkout. That is one repercussion.
This is not the last time this will
happen, by either party. We are see-
ing in real time the dangers of the
legislature held by su-
permajorities.
There are lessons
here that need to be
heeded. If the Republi-
cans want to have a big
say in governing they
need to chip away at
the Democratic major-
ities by running candi-
dates more palatable to independent
voters in the state’s more progressive
areas.
The Democrats must learn that
just because you can pass some leg-
islation doesn’t mean you should.
It has been shown that real work
for the people gets done when one
or both houses of a state legislature
is evenly divided between the two
parties. True compromise is required
to pass any bills.
It is understandable why the
Republican senators did what they
did—they didn’t have much of a
choice. There is no guarantee that a
passed cap and trade bill could be
revoked via the ballot in 2020.
The GOP has shown they have
as much determination as the Dem-
ocrats. Politics is the art of compro-
mise. Let’s see more compromise
and a lot less drama.
—LAZ
our
opinion
School’s out! Or is it?
Some of the best learning is done
when we don’t think we’re learn-
ing. Kids think that all education
must cease for the summer—June
through August is for fun and frol-
icking. Experienced parents know
the truth.
When a human is in their teenage
years, every day is a time for learn-
ing something. A camping trip is
crammed with learning moments—
how to safely build and extinguish a
fi re; how to clean a freshly-caught
trout; the best way to fold that large
tent to fi t into that itty bitty bag it
came in.
Closer to home kids may learn
how long it does take to weed out
the garden or how to compost the
cuttings from their lawn mow job.
An ambitious parent may teach
their young how to make jam from
the valley’s bounty of summer ber-
ries.
Close to home next week there
will be a fun event that is a won-
derful learning tool: the civil war
reenactment at Heritage Powerland
Park in Brooks (formerly Antique
Powerland). Adults, kids, teenagers,
history buffs and war buffs will fi nd
something to engage them.
The grounds of Heritage Pow-
erland Park are fi lled with both
Union and Confederate encamp-
ments. The reenactors live as if it
was the 1860s, no modern conve-
niences, using only what was used
150 years ago. Food is cooked over
a campfi re. That same fi re heats wa-
ter for bathing. The reenactors wear
what was worn in that period.
Members of the Northwest Civil
War Council are serious about their
hobby. They invite questions about
the lifestyle on Civil War-era battle-
fi elds. Everyone involved is knowl-
edgeable and can answer any ques-
tion about that period.
The highlights of the four-day
event are the two-a-day battles re-
enactments. Spies creep, looking
for the enemy. Soldiers march in
formation. Troops place cannons in
preparation for engagement with
the opposite side.
The thrill of the booming can-
nons is unforgettable; the smoke
from the big guns wafting over the
battlefi elds. The generals and majors
on their horses commanding the
battle atop their steeds. It may not
be the Avengers or the Stormtroop-
ers, but it is just as exciting.
Every battle scene, every en-
campment populated with soldiers
and those in support of the armies is
a master class in how the Civil War
was fought and what it was like to
live in the 1860s. Kids (and adults)
won’t even think about learning
when they attend the civil war re-
enactment, they will be so thrilled
with the sights and sounds, they will
only realize they learned something
when they tell their friends what
they experienced.
—LAZ
Helping hope return
By MICHAEL GERSON
The U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention recently
released a report that is the closest
thing we have to the quantifi cation
of despair. Between 1999 and 2017,
suicide rates in Amer-
ica rose to their high-
est level since World
War II. The increase
can be found among
women and men, and
in every racial and
ethnic group. But the
spike among people
between the ages of 15 and 34 is
particularly disturbing. Hopelessness
among the young seems a more di-
rect assault on hope itself.
Researchers posit that the opioid
epidemic may be partly to blame.
Just as a family can be decimated by
an overdose, a sense of general de-
spair may take root in communities
where overdose deaths are common
and visible.
Another proposed explanation
is social media, which may expose
younger people to bullying while
constricting meaningful human in-
teractions -- increasing the need for
emotional support while narrowing
the sources of emotional support.
Even worse, emotionally fragile
people can fi nd perverse forms of
online community that echo and
encourage their despair.
Weighing and testing such ex-
planations are important to under-
standing the sociology of suicide.
But for people who contemplate or
attempt suicide, the struggle is more
personal and philosophic.
If the most important attribute of
human beings is autonomy, and the
purpose of life is a positive balance
of pleasure over pain, then mental
anguish and physical suffering can
make suicide seem like a rational
choice. It can even be seen as the ul-
timate expression of autonomy and
choice.
But this is deceptive in a variety
of ways. First, autonomy is a lie. Hu-
man beings are fundamentally
social creatures who only fi nd
mental health in the context
of supportive relationships.
In isolation, naturally depres-
sive people are more likely
to enter downward spirals of
despair. The inner voice that
normally whispers worthless-
ness can become a shout of self-con-
demnation. And it is dangerous
when there are no other voices --
no kinder voices -- to contradict it.
Second, in most cases, the ratio-
nal weighing of suicide’s costs and
benefi ts is a lie. Suicidal people with
mood disorders are at a particular-
ly dangerous stage when consider-
ations that seem true to them are
not true at all.
I am not talking here about a ter-
minally ill patient wanting a “do not
resuscitate” order. This strikes me as
determining not the length of liv-
ing, but the length of dying. End-
of-life choices often require rational
thoughts about horrible dilemmas.
But in the case of suicide, the
instrument that determines our
view of reality is malfunctioning.
The computer is wired in favor of
despair. The decision to commit
suicide is generally informed by
lies that seem very, very true in the
moment. That loved ones don’t love
you. That friends secretly have con-
tempt for you. That problems are
permanent. That everyone would be
better off without you.
This is the reason that people with
depression need intrusive family and
friends around them. They need
other
voices
people who will gently but fi rmly
intervene when they withdraw, or
start giving possessions away, or talk
a lot about death, or have a major
loss (of a loved one or job), or begin
saying goodbye to others, or buy a
weapon, or use drugs and alcohol to
dull pain, or act recklessly, or exhibit
other changes in mood or behavior.
In these situations, intervention is
not the violation of privacy -- any
more than using a defi brillator on
a person having a heart attack is a
violation of privacy. Intrusiveness
-- defi ned by pushing a depressed
person toward professional help -- is
the appropriate response to a medi-
cal emergency.
But people who suffer from de-
pression have responsibilities of their
own. In times when their depres-
sion is under control, they need to
cultivate a circle of family members
and friends who are fully informed
about their illness. And this requires
the exact opposite of autonomy. It
requires people with depression to
be vulnerable and willing to receive
help. In this case, secrecy and shame
can lead to death. And since the
children of people who commit sui-
cide are more likely to commit sui-
cide themselves, death spreads like
anthracnose through family trees.
It is not an easy or natural thing
for people to periodically distrust
their own version of truth. But that
is what someone with depression
must learn to do. When things that
are self-condemning and self-de-
structive appear self-evident, that
is the time to trust in some other
person’s more reliable perception of
reality. And then, with patience and
professional help, hope can make its
return.
( Washington Post Writers Group)
Humans shouldn’t speed up climate change
An aching heart is the result of
daily news reports that, while my
government ignores the fact-based
warnings that climate change, glob-
al warming, the greenhouse effect,
no matter its name, means that, if
we continue as we’re going now,
it will not be possible for the hu-
man species to survive within a few
decade’s time. A threat to all living
things, President Trump, with help
from U.S. Senate GOP
members and former
lobbyist cabinet mem-
bers, has made eliminat-
ing federal regulations a
priority with 83 former
air, land and water envi-
ronmental protections
in termination.
Yet, Trump, who has
a reputation for not
reading anything, listening only to
coal barons and those most against
renewable energy, and he who em-
braces the climate deniers, refuses
to protect our planet’s human pop-
ulation. He has taken the U.S. out
of the 2015 Paris Climate Accords
while 173 other United Nations
members signed up to work togeth-
er in a concerted, coordinated effort
to reduce carbon emissions, slow
global temperature risings, and help
all the countries of the world con-
trol the effects of climate change.
In Oregon, the legislature tried
to make headway with carbon emis-
sions controls. However, the survival
in offi ce of GOP politicians by their
absence from the capitol “won” the
day over human survival concerns.
It’s mortuus est fi nis here!
Elsewhere in the world there
are those who seek to help ach-
ing hearts, most recently exam-
pled by Pope Francis. The pope
convened some of the biggest and
most powerful oil and companies in
the world, including Exxon Mobil,
BP, Royal Dutch Shell, and Chev-
ron, to a Vatican climate
summit where he en-
couraged them to focus
on the risks of climate
change to their business-
es and the importance of
switching to cleaner en-
ergy sources.
Pope Francis also em-
phasized the moral im-
perative “to save God’s
creation.” When he spoke he also
pointed out to the gathering of the
oil executives that, if managed well,
the new world design would “gen-
erate new jobs, reduce inequality
and improve the quality of life for
those affected by climate change” (as
would have happened in Oregon by
passage of House Bill 2020). Pledges
to change secured by Pope Francis
were followed up on at the Europe-
an Union summit where these same
leaders discussed efforts to combat
climate change by bringing carbon
emissions to a halt by 2050.
Venture it to say, any Oregonian
who has lived through the last fi ve
decades, and been poignantly con-
gene h.
mcintyre
scious of his surroundings, knows
that our winters are shorter, spring
now comes earlier, summers are
more torrid and fall is a season of
greater length. Oregon’s forests are
dryer and more often afi re as are
the open fi elds and range lands east
of the Cascade Range. For now,
however, we may be considered the
more fortunate in the U.S. compared
to the brutal, devastating tornadoes,
days of rain that result in fl oods that
turn farmlands, towns and cities
into paths of overfl owing rivers and
waist-deep lakes where the water
then stands dirty brown, drowning
people and farm animals, destroying
everything it covers. Meanwhile the
polar ice caps melt and oceans rise.
The new order of life in America
is that it is under a huge strain with
the former occupants of lowlands
and farms wondering if they’ll ever
return to normal conditions. How-
ever, normalcy is unlikely to happen
since humankind continues to add
carbon emissions in tonnages to na-
ture that was formerly friendly to
humans but now a threatening foe.
We should all heed and be agents
of action here and throughout the
planet. We should demand that our
government lead the way to change;
however, unfortunately, making
money remains a stronger motiva-
tor than that which, if implemented,
would save humanity.
(Gene H. McIntyre shares his
opinion regularly in the Keizertimes.)
End of legislative session is in sight
Keizertimes
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Salem, Oregon
In case you missed it, Sine Die long) passed in the House Cham-
has been declared imminent by both ber this week. The bill now goes to
the Senate and House leadership… the Senate Chamber. Currently, the
meaning notice to announce work Senate Republicans are threatening
sessions in order to further legisla- to “walk out” if the bill moves to the
Senate Floor for a vote.
tion is now suspended. In
The Senate Republi-
other words, legislation
cans agreed to vote on
can move very quickly
any budget bill but will
and the 80th Legislative
not be voting on HB
Session is getting closer
2020. The Governor
to adjournment. Con-
has announced if the
stitutionally, the session
Senate Republicans do
needs to adjourn by June
walk out, she will hold
30th. I’ve been asked
a special session the fi rst
many times what’s taking
week in July and order
so long to adjourn with a
Oregon State Po-
supermajority? Especially
from the the
lice to bring the Senate
considering that Wash-
Republicans back to
ington adjourned almost
capitol
the Capitol.
two months ago and with
By BILL POST
So…as of right now,
a $52.4 billion budget…
the legislature has not
double the size of Ore-
adjourned because of
gon’s budget.
the HB 2020 debacle
Most of the conten-
tious bills have already passed this and we still have budget bills to pass.
session…SB 1008 (Measure 11 re- Interestingly enough, HB 5048 has
form), HB 2015 (allowing undoc- already been signed by the Gover-
umented immigrants to obtain a nor, which ensures that any state
driver’s license), HB 3427 (educa- agency with no budget before July
tion funding tax), SB 870 (Nation- 1, 2019, remains at current service
al Popular Vote), etc. Probably the levels. In other words, if no other
most heated discussion this year… budget bill were to pass by the end
cap and trade. HB 2020 (100 pages of session, the legislature would still
meet its obligations of a balanced
budget.
I also believe the other two con-
troversial bills holding up adjourn-
ment are HB 2270 (raising tobacco
taxes by $2.00 per pack) and HB
2005 (extending paid family leave
benefi ts). On a personal note: the
bills that I was most passionate fared
about 50/50. Daylight Saving Time
passed and was signed by the Gov-
ernor this week (but still must pass
California’s Senate and be approved
by Congress to take effect) and the
“Sudafed” bill is dead. To fi nd out
more about this session and specif-
ics on bills, keep an eye out for my
town hall coming soon at a date and
location to be determined.
(Bill Post represents House Dis-
trict 25. He can be reached at 503-
986- 1425 or via email at rep.bill-
post@ oregonlegislature.gov.)
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