Page 4A
OPINION
East Oregonian
Wednesday, April 8, 2015
Founded October 16, 1875
KATHRYN B. BROWN
Publisher
JENNINE PERKINSON
Advertising Director
DANIEL WATTENBURGER
Managing Editor
TIM TRAINOR
Opinion Page Editor
OUR VIEW
Upside-down
on education
Oregon’s education budget has
passed the Democratic-dominated
state Senate and House. It now
travels to Democratic governor Kate
Brown, who is likely to sign it.
When one party dominates all
three seats of power, it has the
ability to craft such legislation
exactly how it pleases. And
Democrats have. Every single
Democratic vote in the state Senate
backed this budget, but not one
Republican did. It was a party-line
vote in the House, too.
None of that should be surprising.
People with power tend to use that
power. People of another political
party tend to vote against its
opposition’s plans.
But here is what may surprise
you: the Republican education
proposal would have put more
money in the education budget than
the Democratic one. Yes, you read
that right. The stance of both parties
would have surprised national
political observers.
Granted, there was some political
grandstanding in those GOP votes.
The Oregonian reported that
Sen. Alan Olsen, R-Canby, said in
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day after the resurrection of Christ,
we will witness the death knell of
our education system.” Olsen then
paused for a moment of silence.
So yes, there was a little bit of
hyperbole involved. And plenty of
attempts to tar the other side.
But many of those votes weren’t
grandstanding at all. Many were
based on the needs of their districts,
needs that would not be met by the
Democratic-backed budget.
That’s because most Oregon
Republicans with seats in the
Senate and House are from rural
areas. Most of those places are not
growing at the pace of the state’s
urban core, and most are not seeing
steady economic gain. That means a
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harm their districts.
Take an Eastern Oregon example:
smaller Pendleton School District,
with declining enrollment, will
probably have to cut employees
under the new budget if the governor
signs it as is. Larger Hermiston
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expanding enrollment, will be able
to keep all of their employees and
their current programming.
That’s what the big city
Democrats see in the budget: enough
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work to remake the system from
preschool on up. And this is what
rural Republicans see: not enough
dollars to keep what is already one
of the worst K-12 education systems
in the nation from taking another
step backward.
We know money isn’t the sole
answer to anything, and that just
throwing dollars at a problem is no
way to solve it.
But when those dollars translate
to reduced class sizes, more
classroom instruction time and
more teachers — you better believe
they would be good for Oregon
students, especially rural ones in
economically-depressed areas.
The governor will sign this
budget and school districts around
the state will make do with the
dollars they get. But we have to say,
it’s good to know that sometimes
politicians are able to rise off the
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what is best for their constituents.
Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East Oregonian editorial board of Publisher
Kathryn Brown, Managing Editor Daniel Wattenburger, and Opinion Page Editor Tim Trainor.
Other columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions of the authors and not
necessarily that of the East Oregonian.
OTHER VIEWS
What should Oregon’s state book be?
The Oregonian
Maybe it’s the way in which Ken
Kesey’s writing elevates Oregon’s
rivers and rain into primal characters
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a Great Notion” resonate with so many
readers. Maybe it’s the similarity
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mantra and the heroic stubbornness
hardwired into the state’s culture.
The reasons are as varied as the
popular book’s fans. But based on
comments to an Oregonian/OregonLive
editorial last week, most readers
appeared to agree that Kesey’s novel
about a logging family bucking a union
strike in a coastal Oregon town would
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Not that anyone is actually pushing
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legislators have anointed, for instance, an
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nominations stemmed from a recent
discussion after Mississippi legislators
introduced a bill to make the Bible their
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According to many readers, the idea
was a bad one — how can you pick just
one book from a state that has produced
dozens of worthy contenders?
A commenter under the name
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different than birds and rocks. So I say
no to designating a state book. Just enjoy
them all.”
At the very least, readers’
contributions make for an impressive
anthology of recommended reading on a
wide range of topics. The titles and their
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and personalities of a state that cannot be
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Readers highlighted the familiar and
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Clark Expedition,” and Ursula K.
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The list includes Terence O’Donnell’s
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Palmer and the Indians of Oregon,”
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There were, of course, less-than-
serious suggestions that commented
more on the state of Oregon politics
than on its literary tradition, such as
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of Dunces” and Marx and Engels’
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single book that conveyed something
universal about Oregon. And commenter
Christopher Lord, a native Oregonian
from Astoria who is a local author as
well, rose to the challenge with this bit of
introspective lit crit:
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impressionistic tour de force of its
time with our prejudices, faults, and
human limitations all on display. But
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opening lines that beckon ‘come look:’
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Of course it is, in the same way that
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novel, still read widely and discussed
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certainly destined to be read a hundred
years from now. Every great book shows
its age and the limitations of its time
but I will defend this great crazy novel,
and I’m apparently one of the horrible
gay tree-hugging progressives described
below that leans so far to the left that it’s
a wonder I can stand at all.
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that has changed is in itself enough of
a reason to read, debate, and fulminate
at the horrors of Oregon’s past; that
serves as a jumping off point for how we
sustain the beauty of Oregon that no one
has captured better than Kesey in this
novel.”
We would add one other reason
to Lord’s compelling argument. The
book apparently possesses a unifying
force that draws impassioned fans from
across the political spectrum and bridges
the urban-rural divide often apparent
in comments on news and opinion
sites. When else would some of these
commenters — who can’t even agree on
their criticism of the editorial board as
ultraconservative or hopelessly liberal —
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And that is really what the humble
goal of a state book — or state anything
for that matter — should be: The ability
to shine a light on the similarities that
bind us, for a time, before our entrenched
divisions and rivalries set in again.
OTHER VIEWS
What candidates need
I have two presidential election
personality that we need in all our
traditions. I begin covering each
leaders. He was involved in a bloody
campaign by reading a book about
civil war, but he was an exceptionally
Abraham Lincoln, and I end each
poor hater. He was deeply engaged,
election night, usually after midnight,
but also able to step back; a passionate
at the statue of the Lincoln Memorial.
advocate, but also able to see his
I begin by reading a book about
enemy’s point of view; aware of his
Lincoln not because it’s fair to hold
own power, but aware of when he
any of the candidates to the Lincoln
was helpless in the hands of fate;
David
standard, but because he gets you
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thinking about what sorts of things we
humble. Candidates who don’t have
Comment
should be looking for in a presidential
a contradictory temperament have no
candidate. Any candidate worthy of
way to check themselves and are thus
support should at least have in rudiments what dangerous.
Lincoln had in fullness: a fundamental vision,
Lincoln’s skills as a political tactician seem
a golden temperament and a shrewd strategy
like the least of his gifts, but are among his
for how to cope with the political realities of
greatest. It’s easy to be a true believer, or to
the moment.
govern or campaign with your pedal to the
Lincoln developed his
metal all the time. It’s much
fundamental vision in a
harder to know when to tap
way that seems to refute our
on the brake and when to
contemporary educational
step on the gas.
practices. Today we pile
We study Lincoln’s
on years of education. We
tactical phase shifts in the
assign hundreds of books
Grand Strategy class I help
over the years. We cluster
with at Yale. There’s never
our students on campuses
enough time to cover them
with people with similar
all.
grades and test scores.
Most of Lincoln’s efforts
Lincoln had very little
were designed to tamp
formal education. He was
down passion for the sake
not cloistered on a campus
of sustainable, incremental
but spent his formative
progress. Others would
years in daily contact with
have delivered a heroic
an astounding array of
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characters. If his social
but Lincoln made his a dry
experience was wide, his
legal brief. Others would
literary experience was narrow. He read fewer have stuffed the Emancipation Proclamation
books over his entire formative life than many with ringing exclamations, but Lincoln’s
contemporary students do in a single year. In
draft is as dull as possible. Others wanted an
literary terms, he preferred depth to breadth;
immediate end to slavery. Lincoln tried to
grasp to reach. He intensely read Shakespeare, end it through unromantic, gradual economic
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means. He hoped that if he limited the demand
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for slaves (by halting the spread of slavery and
Washington.”
by paying people not to keep them) he could
This education gave him a moral vision
drive down the price and render the whole
that emerged from life, not from reading.
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He saw America as a land where ambitious
This year, Lincoln’s strategic restraint is
poor boys and girls like himself could
the most necessary of his traits. We live in
transform themselves through hard, morally
a partisan time, with movements who treat
improving work. He believed in a government trimmers, compromisers and incrementalists
that built canals and railroads and banks to
harshly. But, to pass legislation, the next
VWRNHWKH¿UHVRILQGXVWU\+HEHOLHYHGVODYHU\ president will have to perpetually disappoint
was wrong in part because people should be
the fervent and devise a legislative strategy
free to control their own labor. He believed in
that can consistently get a House majority and
a providence that was active but unknowable.
60 Senate votes.
This Whiggish vision was his north
We will not get a Lincoln. A person with
star. He could bob and weave as politics
his face could not survive the TV age. A
demanded, but his incremental means always
person with his capacity for introspection
pointed to the same transformational end.
could not survive the 24/7 self-branding
Any presidential candidate needs that sort of
campaign environment. But we do need
consistent animating vision — an image of
someone with a portion of his gifts —
an Ideal America baked so deeply into his or
someone who is philosophically grounded,
her bones as to be unconscious, useful as a
emotionally mature and tactically cunning.
compass when the distractions of Washington
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possible approximation.
Lincoln’s temperament surpasses
Ŷ
all explanation. His early experience of
David Brooks became a New York Times
depression and suffering gave him a radical
Op-Ed columnist in September 2003. He has
self-honesty. He had the double-minded
been a senior editor at The Weekly Standard.
We live in a
partisan time,
with movements
who treat
trimmers,
compromisers
and
incrementalists
harshly.
YOUR VIEWS
Gun background check bill
manipulated the process
Senate Bill 941 was passed out of
committee Monday. If you are not familiar
with this bill, it calls for increased background
checks on private party gun sales, similar to
Washington’s I594. No matter how you feel
about guns, you should be disgusted at the
way the sponsors of this bill have manipulated
the legislative process to ram this through.
Similar measures have been rejected in the
past when put to a vote, so the sponsors have
declared it an emergency. By declaring an
emergency, it prevents a vote of the people or
changes through the initiative process. Oregon
already has one of the lowest gun murder rates
in the USA ranking at 41st, so I fail to see how
this is an emergency.
Amendments proposed by Senator Kim
Thatcher were rejected, even though they
would have accomplished the stated goal of
the bill sponsors, but would have been much
less intrusive to the law abiding. It doesn’t
take much analysis to realize that felons will
not obey this law, just like they ignore the
laws against murder, theft, etc. They will get
their weapons they way they always have,
through theft or the black market.
Many law enforcement agencies have
publicly come out against this bill and the
county commissioners in several counties
have come out with statements supporting
the Second Amendment. Unfortunately, our
county sheriff and county commission have
been notably silent.
It is hard for me to see how this passes a
smell test when legislative tricks have to be
used to enact this bill, especially with so many
law enforcement agencies opposed to it. It
is being driven by money from misguided
outside interests like Michael Bloomberg.
I reject the idea that someone from a state
with one of the highest violent crime rates
is relevant in Oregon with our already low
and dropping rate. I urge you to email every
senator (especially the Democrats, one or two
swing votes will make a difference) in the
Oregon Senate urging them to reject this bill.
Before you say you don’t like guns so you
are in favor of this bill, remember the same
manipulation of the legislative process could
be used on something you are passionate
about next.
LETTERS POLICY
Mike Navratil
Pendleton
The East Oregonian welcomes original letters of 400 words or less on public issues
and public policies for publication in the newspaper and on our website. The newspaper
reserves the right to withhold letters that address concerns about individual services and
products or letters that infringe on the rights of private citizens. Submitted letters must
be signed by the author and include the city of residence and a daytime phone number.
The phone number will not be published. Unsigned letters will not be published. Send
letters to Managing Editor Daniel Wattenburger, 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801
or email editor@eastoregonian.com.