Page 4 Portland Observer, January 19,1983
EDITORIAL/OPINION
egin with elementary schools
The State Board o f Higher Education is con­
sidering stiffer requirements for students enter­
ing the state colleges and universities.
This is a commendable idea at first glance but
it could have two purposes—the first to upgrade
the q u a lity o f education tha t can be offe re d
those who qualify, the other to restrict the num­
ber o f students and eliminate those who require
special assistance.
It is logical to expect college graduates to have
a broad education and be able to read and write
e fficien tly. However, the emphasis on q uality
work needs to begin at the primary level. I f this
were a nation where every child had an equal op­
p ortu n ity to learn and attended a comparable
school then it would be reasonable to base all ed­
ucational advancement on examinations. Even
that ignores the physical, emotional and social
factors that influence a ch ild ’ s educational de­
velopment at particular times in his life.
When children are deprived o f the oppoitun-
ity to learn the basic reading, w riting and math
skills at the prim ary level they enter high school,
w ith o u t the a b ility to do high school w o rk .
Many o f those who graduate from high sciiool
do not have the prerequisite skills to do college
work.
The State Board o f Higher Education can no
longer sit idly by and see the qualities o f our col­
leges and universities continue to decline. But is
it fair to deprive those students who never had a
fair chance in elementary school o f the oppor­
tunity to at least try to obtain a college educa­
tion? Is it fa ir to deprive those students who
even now are being in ju re d by decreasing
amounts o f funds available fo r elementary edu­
cation?
It does seem that if the state intends to up ­
grade requirements for entry into college, then
the state should ensure that funds, facilities and
staff are available to provide every child with the
opportunity to meet those requirements.
Throw out 'human rights'
The Reagan Administration is moving rapidly
toward certifying that the human rights picture
in El Salvador has improved. This is essential for
Congressional approval o f the U.S.’ continued
and increased m ilitary support o f the shaky El
Salvador government.
The U.S. is prepared to say that there is a sig­
nificant improvement because last year only an
estimated 6,000 persons have been murdered by
their government in this tiny country.
The situation has actually become worse d ur­
ing the last year. A U.S.-sponsored election
which was adm ittedly rigged put a government
in power that is so bloodthirsty that even Gener­
al Garcia, the madman o f the previous adminis­
tration, is considered too moderate by it.
El S alvador’ s current leaders believe in no
rights for the people and are engaged in a reign
o f te rro r— financed and participated in by the
U.S.
M eanwhile, the guerrillas are w innning the
war in spite o f the U.S. supplied helicopters,
bombs, napalm, etc. U.S. aid can prolong the
war but it cannot save a government that m ur­
ders its people.
U.S. m ilitary aid to El Salvador does not just
k ill the people o f El Salvador. It deprives U.S.
citizens o f food and shelter by spending money
on weapons. It also continues the U.S. role o f
manipulation and conquest.
I f the U.S. government intends to continue its
aid to El Salvador, it should not certify that gov­
ernment as improving in human rights. The U.S.
should just eliminate this rule that makes it so
difficult to justify helping its friends in El Salva­
dor, Guatemala, Chile, etc., and just be honest
with the American people and the world.
Human rights is o f no concern to the U.S.
government, so why be hypocritical?
Reagan says It wa spend enough
money on arms tor enough years.
can close a window ot vulnoratMllty ” '
M St •
Portland Observer
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Salem watch
Salem may be ihc hub ot
O regon’ s economic development
projects, but the spokes radiate
throughout the state in the form of
local programs intended to help end
the suffering and frustration o f
thousands o f ’unemployed O re ­
gonians. Mayors, commissioners,
merchants, and housewives are
struggling to overcome tremendous
economic difficulties, but are hob­
bled by the relatively few resources
at their disposal. W hile industrial
attraction programs seldom suc­
ceed, the illusion of progress thrown
o ff by such activities serves only to
mask the fact that many areas o f
Oregon are slowly starving to death.
As Oregon's rural areas decline,
this accelerating process is not going
uncontested:
•T h e battle in Vale is being
fought by the Cham ber o f C om ­
merce with a target industry p ro ­
gram and full page advertisements
designed to convince business exe­
cutives that Vale is the place to be.
• In Bend, a sign adjacent to a va­
cant industrial park attempts to litil-
ate business decision-makers: " I f
your factory were here, you could
be skiing by now.’ ’
•T h e H ood River area M id -
Columbia Marketing Group is con­
ducting a 600-firm direct mail cam­
paign (sim ilar to one in Clatsop
County) to entice firms to move to
the Columbia gorge.
• In Jefferson C ounty, the local
development corporation's attempts
to promote Madras pale in compari­
son to the Bhagwan’s efforts. San-
nyaiins, however, are probably not
the target group preferred by the
city fathers and mothers.
•R u ra l areas on the coast have
been involved in the struggle for
some time. Seaside’s downtown lo­
cal improvement district may be one
of the most active in the state.
• In St. Helens, Mayor Frank Cor-
siglia remains committed to offering
financial incentives for im prove­
ments undertaken in his downtown
sector.
Oregon's small towns are
strapped for the resources to pro­
mote their capital starved communi­
ties. A few ads here, > billboard there
are mere pebbles against the Goliath
o f economic decline Recognizing
the lack o f resources available to
them, the mayors of Gresham, Fair-
view, Troutdale, and Wood Village
are forming a joint regional indus­
trial development commission. Such
cooperation will reduce the possibil­
ity of each trying to steal firms from
the other, but it probably will in ­
crease the risk for Portland. A re­
cent example o f raiding thy neigh­
bor's industrial resources can be
found in the actions of the Port of
Tillamook Bay, which subsidized at
taxpayer expense the movement of
Exact Electronics from Hillsboro to
the coast.
In Wallowa County, battle plans
{Continued fro m page / column 2)
and to increase the students' course
options.
The current admission require­
ments are: English, 3 years includ­
ing one unit of writing; math, one
year; science, one year; social sci­
ence 2 'i years including one year of
U .S . history; one year o f global
studies and id year of government.
High school graduation require­
ments do not d iffe r significantly:
Language arts, 3 years; one year
each of math, science, U.S. history,
global studies, health education,
physical education, personal finance
and economics; '/j year o f govern­
ment and o f career development;
one year of applied arts, fine arts or
foreign language.
Forty-one percent of the Portland
School District's 1982 graduating
class planned to attend a four-year
college or university. With the wide
Aasociahon - Founded i t t i
Northwest Legislative Services
difference between the high school
graduation requirements and the
new admission requirements, many
graduates would not qualify for col­
lege admission unless they received
proper counselling and made their
college decisions early in their high
school careers.
Only 15 percent of Jefferson High
School's 210 1982 graduates would
meet the new admission re-
quirements; 29 percent o f the 178
Roosevelt graduates would meet the
new standards.
O ther areas o f the "S trateg ic
Plan” include coordination of pro­
grams, faculty salaries, equipment,
libraries, facilities, training in sci­
ence and high technology, etc. Cop­
ies of the plan can be obtained from
the Stale Board o f Higher Educa­
tion, Box 3175, Eugene, OR 97403.
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centrated in urban areas), the state's
economy was losing 114 jobs for
every two jobs gained. In d u strial
mobility means that cities and work­
ers, who are relatively less mobile,
must re-evaluate the consequences
o f programs attem pting to entice
capital to move. Such programs
may subtract rather than add jobs.
In many instances, in d ivid ual
businesses are hardly to blame. In ­
dustrial survival means lowering
production costs. In many cases,
firms translate this competitive fac­
tor into a justification for relocating
to areas where the value o f human
labor, and often o f human life, is
cheap. While wage give-backs may
slow this process somewhat, em ­
ployees currently lack the ability to
stop or reverse such corporate
flight.
The lesson to be learned by those
who wish to become part o f the
solution rather than the problem is
that the pursuit o f short-term local
gains at the expense of another com­
m unity usually generates much
greater long-term costs. Stated in
more direct terms, the message
reads thus: W hile you are out
stealing your neighbor's factories,
stop and consider who is stealing
yours. The process is endless, and
each round increases the ante. As
the bidding goes on. the real losers
are the displaced workers and the
abandoned communities.
Local long-range planning be­
comes another casualty of corporate
instability. Cities can no longer in­
vest millions in sewer and water pro­
jects based on tax revenues gener­
ated by local factories; by the time
such public works are completed,
the factories that required such in­
vestments may be in the next town,
in the next state, or in some Third
World country. Workers must exer­
cise extraordinary caution in p ur­
chasing homes; those houses may
lose most o f their value when the
jobs have gone south. The same
applies to merchants and bankers:
the demand lor local goods and ser­
vices crumbles as the economic base
of the community erodes.
U n fo rtu n ately
for
many
Oregon communities, local boosters
tend to be blind to the costs of (heir
industrial attraction programs. The
vision o f that " p ie in the sky"
blocks out the strong light o f eco­
nomic reality. The economic defini­
tion of "efficiency” and business's
need to obtain short-term pay-offs
condemn many rural and some
central urban areas to an agonizing­
ly slow, capital-induced starvation.
Promoting these same forces with
target industry studies and full-page
advertisement, at best, will merely
accelerate the process these dedi­
cated individuals are attempting to
arrest.
College admission requirements proposed
The Portland O b w v r r was established in 1970 by A I ee Hen
derson founder and President
MEMBER
are being drawn with the help of an
input/output model designed by the
Department o f Agriculture and Re­
source Economics at Oregon State
University. This 116,000 study re­
vealed that Wallowa County has an
annual trade deficit of about S3 mil­
lion, leaving the area vulnerable to
the lots of hundreds of jobs.
Despite these well-intentioned ef­
forts to pull Oregon communities up
by their bootstraps, very real market
barriers lurk in the background,
waiting to trip up these local Hora­
tio Algers. Most communities face
the problems they do for very «1
economic reasons. Market-dep^
dent firm s w ill never locate in
Burns, just as those needing the
•ophisticated urban infrastructure
o f Portland will never concentrate
in La Grande. U n til these market
barriers are altered or the local
economies destroyed, industrial at­
traction efforts will continue to fail.
This struggle is not a new one. In­
dustrial attraction programs have
been in operation in one form or
another for ovr two decades, even in
Oregon. Yet during that time, no
one yet has objectively proven that
local efforts are anything but inci­
dental in a corporation's siting deci­
sions. M ore often than not, local
(and state) economic development
programs received credit for fore­
gone decisions.
As the city of Portland is learning
from the Hyster Co., there is little a
community can do to bribe a firm to
act against their own self-interest.
Hyster C o ., in what amounts to a
b rillia n t public relations gam bit,
shifted the negative image associat­
ed with plant lay-offs from itself to
the city by demanding a bail-out to
avoid a plant closure. When Hyster
does close its fo rk -lift plant, which
it probably would have done any­
way, the City o f Portland will take
the blame.
A lesson for all communities may
lie in the Hyster example. Improved
transportation, technologies, and
corporate organization mean that
even medium-sized firms are
capable of becoming geographically
m obile, of divorcing themselves
from costs and commitments to mu­
nicipalities and workers. While Ore­
gon gained from this trend during
the past decade, only now are we
recognizing the cost which always
was there.
One study conducted by the So­
cial Welfare Regional Research In ­
stitute of Boston College, using data
from Dunn and Bradstrcet and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technol­
ogy, estimates that during the rapid
growth years o f 1969 to 1976 O re­
gon lost 220,387 jobs because of
factory out-migrations and closures,
and 129,968 jobs because of busi­
ness contractios. In essence, while
Oregon was experiencing one o f
its most rapid growth periods in re­
cent history (albeit one mostly con­
283 2486
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