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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (April 7, 2015)
OPINION 6A T HE D AILY A STORIAN Founded in 1873 STEPHEN A. FORRESTER, Editor & Publisher LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager CARL EARL, Systems Manager JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager SAMANTHA MCLAREN, Circulation Manager Sen. Merkley offers six more rules changes THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, APRIL 7, 2015 Conscience of a corporation — or not By TIMOTHY EGAN New York Times News Service S o here is Walmart, insisting that “our core basic belief of respect for the individual” is at odds with an Arkansas bill that would allow religious-based discrimination. And here is Marriott, slamming as “idiocy” similar measures in other states. And somewhere in there is the family-run pizzeria, asserting that Indiana’s new law allows them to deny wedding day pies to people whose choice of spouses they don’t approve of. AP Photo/Doug McSchooler Opponents of Indiana Senate Bill 101, the Religious Freedom Resto- ration Act, gather for a demonstration in Indianapolis Saturda to push for a state law that specifically bars discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. These businesses sell Chi- nese-made consumer goods, hotel rooms and rounded dough burdened with pepperoni and extra cheese. ers were also told to look before Since when did they start spouting taking a big leap into spiritual ex- off about the deeply held convic- emptions for business. In a letter in oo many United States senators don’t understand their tions guiding their corporate con- February, legal scholars warned of FRUSRUDWLRQV¶FLWLQJUHOLJLRXVMXVWL¿- own institution. Many times when Ted Cruz of Texas, Tom sciences? You can blame last cation for “taking the law Cotton of Arkansas or other freshmen open their mouths, it’s year’s Supreme Court de- into their own hands.” cision in the Hobby Lob- But, lo, look what like they are at the high school student council, not inside the by case for unleashing a happened on the way to vaunted “world’s greatest deliberative body.” Cruz and Cotton herd of ponies that have forcing religion into the gone off in quite unpre- marketplace: The corpo- are acting like unworthy heirs to the chamber that was built by dicted directions. There, rations — Apple, Nike, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun. in a partisan 5-4 ruling Yelp, Gap, PayPal, Big Pharma companies like There are no campaign con- FRXOG EH GHHPHG FRQ¿UPHG DI- straight from Republi- can fever nests, the court Eli Lilly and the nine tributors interested in mending ter 14 days following committee gave certain corporations largest companies with the Senate’s dysfunction. Trying approval unless 10 senators re- the right to challenge headquarters in Indiana Timothy laws that they claim vi- — have rebelled. They are to improve the place is thankless, TXHVWÀRRUGHEDWH Egan olate their religious be- saying: No, don’t give us but very important work. Oregon Merkley would also remove liefs. In that case, it was the power to discriminate. Sen. Jeff Merkley is having an- one of the most pernicious traps about contraception in the health We’d rather remain soulless purvey- other turn at it. After having some ²WKH¿OLEXVWHUDJDLQVWDPRWLRQ care package. ors of product to the widest possible Let’s pause to consider this new customer base. Which is, I suppose, success in the Congress that ended to proceed with Senate debate on last December, Sen. Merkley has a bill. Debate on that would be entity — a moneymaking organiza- how capitalism is supposed to work. tion no different from a lone human Bless the free market. introduced a new batch of pro- limited to two hours. being who feels conscience-bound to Indiana’s law is “not just pure id- posed Senate rules changes. Merkley has been wise to break live a certain way because of a deep- iocy from a business perspective,” In a nutshell, Merkley’s pro- his package into six parts, in order ly held relationship with God. Let’s said Marriott’s president, Arne So- EHFDXVH ¿YH renson, but “the posals are about delay – when it to attract Republican co-sponsors. SDXVH members of the Su- notion that you should be allowed and when not. “My Republican colleagues preme Court would Exxon is just can tell businesses somehow that they The most consequential of are shy about co-sponsoring rules not. a citizen like One justice, the are free to discrim- his six proposals would move changes,” says Merkley irrepressible Ruth inate against people lower level presidential nomi- But in the wake of the ma- Bader Ginsburg, you and me. based on who they nations forward more promptly. jor rules change made in 2013, warned of the con- are is madness.” sequences of giving Not March Mad- His most striking concept is that Merkley says, “There is virtually corporations a soul: “The court, I ness, but political lunacy, of the type nominees who are lower than no remaining substantial concern IHDUKDVYHQWXUHGLQWRDPLQH¿HOG´ that’s been on display ever since the D FDELQHW RI¿FHU RU MXGJHVKLS (about those changes).” Ginsburg predicted that the Republican Party hitched itself to court’s “expansive notion of corpo- the crazies who dominate its media rate personhood” would invite prof- wing. it-making companies to start using But let’s not get too far ahead of religion as an excuse to ignore laws ourselves. Walmart, which effec- they didn’t like. And indeed, states tively killed the Arkansas bill a few packed with right-wing legislators days ago, remains locked in poverty who see phantom persecution behind wage mode, despite its recent boast every new episode of Modern Fam- of raising pay to at least $9 an hour. ily have clamored to give companies Apple, and most tech companies a spiritual opt-out clause. now strutting across the moral stage, HEDWHVDERXW3DFL¿F1RUWKZHVW study. In other words, even small So it is in Indiana. State lawmak- continues to do business with coun- T Tending the institution in an era of Senate dysfunction 6WXG\¿QGVSD\RII for habitat restoration Ongoing need for effective monitoring D salmon issues easily devolve into the sort of “holier than thou” ¿JKWV WKDW VLPPHU EHWZHHQ VRPH of the feistier Protestant church denominations, but once in a while some actual facts help illuminate the validity — or lack thereof — of restoration strategies. Such is the case concerning the argument over whether it is bet- ter to restore habitat and permit salmon to take reproduction into WKHLURZQ¿QVYHUVXVUXQQLQJWKH process ourselves in hatcheries. Columbia Basin Bulletin reports, “The average cost to produce a ju- venile coho salmon through habi- tat restoration in British Columbia is about the same cost as produc- ing a hatchery salmon, according to a recent study.” It costs an average of about $1 to produce a coho smolt in a hatchery, whereas restored habitat can produce one for as little as 69 cents, even after taking into ac- count the expense of making sure that restoration projects remain vi- able for at least 30 years, the study concluded about work in British Columbia and Washington state. Projects that concentrate on pro- viding specialized spawning habi- tat can cost considerably more, but projects that emphasize providing young salmon places to overwin- ter and grow are particularly cost effective, the study found. Even in situations where salmon don’t reproduce in newly restored side channels, smolts are able to access these newly available areas and overwintering survival was 40 percent. This results in an over- all increase in smolt production of 13.4 percent, according to the projects add up to more salmon in the watershed as a whole. In other circumstances, off-channel habitat projects increased coho production by up to 34 percent. Fishermen are individuals of strongly held opinions and some expressed skepticism about ef- forts designed to relink marshes and creeks to the Columbia River and other salmon-bearing streams. This study should help chip away at these doubts. Though commer- FLDO¿VKHUPHQDQGFKDUWHURSHUD- tors might prefer full-out hatchery production — and even taking out some upriver dams — this isn’t OLNHO\LQWRGD\¶VSROLWLFDOVFLHQWL¿F and economic environment. Advocates of wild-spawning salmon, who have the attention of policymakers in Oregon and Washington, tend to regard hatch- eries as a problem rather than part of the solution. They will embrace this study. But it has to be noted there are far more restrictions on catching unmarked, wild-spawn- ing salmon, so the actual catching and retention of salmon continues to rely upon hatcheries. On a philosophical level, most seafood consumers don’t care one way or the other where a local salmon started life, so long as the ¿QLVKHGSURGXFWWDVWHVJRRG The Bulletin¿JXUHVDERXW billion to $15 billion has been spent since 1990 on freshwater habitat restoration projects in the U.S. alone. Ongoing monitoring is needed to test the effectiveness of restoration projects, both to hone future efforts and to main- tain public support for such an ex- pensive endeavor. tries where a person can be executed for being gay. Their outrage is selective, and calculated: In corporate America, the branding conceit of the moment includes just the right dash of so- cial activism. A little environmental nudge from your cereal, a talk about race from your barista — it’s mostly harmless. &KLFN¿O$ OHDUQHG D OHVVRQ LQ its journey from behind the grease counter and back over gay marriage. After condemning same-sex mar- riage and becoming a culture-war battleground, the corporate leaders of a company that professes to run on biblical principles now say they will stick with chicken talk. Every- one is welcome. Good call. Nothing in the secular ZRUOG NHHSV &KLFN¿O$¶V IRXQGHUV from free worship in private. For that matter, nothing in the secular world deprives any business owner of a law- ful spiritual pursuit outside of the pub- OLFVTXDUH7KHLUSUR¿WVZLOOULVHRUIDOO because of consumer demand, rather than which side of a biblical exhorta- tion the chicken-eater may be on. All of this, the free market in tan- dem with the First Amendment, has worked pretty well in a clamorous de- mocracy such as ours. It’s only when activist judges — thy names are Clar- ence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, Samu- el Alito, Anthony Kennedy and John Roberts — have tried to broaden the intent of the founders that we’ve got- ten into trouble. ,QWKRVH¿YHMXGJHVFUHDWHG the notion of corporate personhood — giving companies the unfettered right to dominate elections. After all, Exxon is just a citizen like you and me. And LQWKRVH¿YHMXGJHVJDYHFRUSR- rations a soul, a further expansion of business entity as a citizen. Well, they tried to. As the saying goes, a corpo- ration will never truly be a citizen until you can execute one in Texas. The trader who donates half his pay within the reach of ordinary people who simply donate a piece of their income.” Hm. Wage may be the only att Wage was a bril- liant, earnest student at ¿QDQFH JX\ ZKR , ZLVK FRXOG EH paid more! Princeton University, a star of Wage is an exemplar of a new the classroom and a deep think- movement called “effective al- er about his own ethical obliga- truism,” aimed at taking a rigor- ous, nonsentimental approach to tions to the world. making the maximum difference His senior thesis won a prize as in the world. Singer has been a the year’s best in the philosophy leader in this movement, and in a department, and he was accepted book scheduled to be released in for postgraduate study at Oxford the coming week he explores what it means to live ethically. University. The book, The Most Good You Can Instead, after graduation in 2012, Do, takes a dim view of convention- he took a job at an arbitrage trading al charitable donations, such as sup- ¿UPRQ:DOO6WUHHW porting art museums or universities, You might think that his profes- churches or dog shelters. Singer asks: sor, Peter Singer, a moral philosopher, Is supporting an art museum really as would disown him as a socially useful as, say, sellout. Instead, Singer helping people avoid I flinch holds him up as a model. blindness? That’s because Wage After all, an Amer- at the reasoned that if he took ican aid group, Helen D KLJKSD\LQJ MRE LQ ¿- Keller International, idea of nance, he could contrib- corrects blindness in ute more to charity. Sure the developing world taking a enough, he says that in for less than $75 per pa- 2013 he donated more job solely WLHQW,W¶VGLI¿FXOWWRVHH than $100,000, roughly how a modest contribu- because half his pretax income. tion to a church, opera Wage told me that university will be as it’s high- or transformative he plans to remain in as help- ¿QDQFH DQG GRQDWH ing the blind see again. paying. half his income. One Even though he’s of the major charities one of the founders of Wage gives to is the Against Malaria WKH ¿HOG RI DQLPDO ULJKWV 6LQJHU LV Foundation, which, by one analyst’s skeptical of support for dog rescue calculation, can save a child’s life on organizations. The real suffering in average for each $3,340 donated. All the animal world, he says, is in indus- this suggests that Wage may save more trial agriculture, for there are about lives with his donations than if he had 50 times as many animals raised and become an aid worker. slaughtered in factory farms in the ³2QH WKRXJKW , ¿QG PRWLYDWLQJ United States each year as there are is to imagine how great you’d feel dogs and cats that are pets in America. if you saved someone’s life,” Wage The way to ease the pain of the great- says. “If you somehow saved a dozen est number of animals, he says, is to people from a burning building, then focus on chickens. you might remember that as one of *LYH:HOODZHEVLWHUHÀHFWLQJWKH the greatest things you ever did. But it ethos of the effective giving move- turns out that saving this many lives is ment, recommends particular charities By NICHOLAS KRISTOF New York Times News Service M for cost-effective- ness. Its top recom- mendations at the moment are Against Malaria Founda- tion, GiveDirectly (transferring money directly to the very poor), Schistosomi- asis Control Initia- tive (inexpensively Nicholas combating a com- Kristof mon parasite), and Deworm the World Initiative (deworming children). Singer himself donates about one- third of his income to charity, he says, and I admire his commitment. Still, I wonder about three points. First, where do we draw the line? If we’re prepared to donate one-third of our incomes to maximize happiness, then why not two-thirds? Why not live in a tent in a park so as to be able to do- nate 99 percent and prevent even more cases of blindness? I want to take my wife to dinner without guilt; I want to be able to watch a movie without worrying that I should instead be buying a bed net. There is PRUHWROLIHWKDQVHOIPRUWL¿FDWLRQDQG REVHVVLYHFRVWEHQH¿WFDOFXOXVLWVHHPV to me, subtracts from the zest of life. Second, humanitarianism is noble, but so is loyalty. So are the arts, and I’m uncomfortable choosing one cause and abandoning all others completely. For my part, I donate mostly to hu- manitarian causes but also to my uni- versities, in part out of loyalty to insti- tutions that once gave me scholarships. 7KLUG,ÀLQFKDWWKHLGHDRIWDNLQJD job solely because it’s high-paying — even if the money is to be given away. Bravo to Matt Wage, who says that he relishes his work as an arbitrage trader (now based in Hong Kong), but I’m not sure this would work for everyone. Still, Singer’s argument is power- ful, provocative and, I think, basical- ly right. The world would be a better place if we were as tough-minded in how we donate money as in how we make it.