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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (July 16, 2015)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Thursday, July 16, 2015 Founded October 16, 1875 KATHRYN B. BROWN Publisher JENNINE PERKINSON Advertising Director DANIEL WATTENBURGER Managing Editor TIM TRAINOR Opinion Page Editor OUR VIEW It’s about time Buying contraception from pharmacists is a logical move Safe and accessible birth control grow up to lead successful lives is key to a host of gains in maternal themselves. and child well-being, economic Birth control drugs and advancement for families and devices aren’t 100 percent safe nations, and may even lower the and effective. Efforts to relax the crime rate. degree of physician Starting early involvement in next year, laws managing them Being able to signed by Oregon have long been obtain a year’s fought off because Gov. Kate Brown last week will of a sincere belief worth of oral allow pharmacists that direct contact to prescribe oral contraceptives between healthcare contraceptives providers and from a and hormonal patients will help contraceptive neighborhood avoid contraception- patches for a year related problems. pharmacy at a time. Coming In addition, the 55 years after “the necessity to visit a without a SLOO´¿UVWEHFDPH provider in order to prescription available in the obtain a prescription U.S., this step is an opportunity represents a ¿QDOO\QRUPDOL]HV to keep tabs on something that reproductive and substantial should always wellness. savings in time, general be a woman’s But on balance, choice: whether WKHFRVWEHQH¿W hassle and to go through ratio has clearly money. the life-altering shifted in favor of and sometimes moving this service KD]DUGRXVSURFHVV to pharmacists, of pregnancy and motherhood. who are themselves highly trained Living in this time in one of the professionals capable of counseling world’s most advanced nations, we women and directing them to can scarcely imagine what it was specialists if more complicated like here before 1960 — and how issues arise. Being able to obtain a it still is in many less-developed year’s worth of oral contraceptives nations — with women endlessly from a neighborhood pharmacy pregnant, many dying prematurely, without a prescription represents a and families with far too many substantial savings in terms of time, PRXWKVWRIHHG:HURPDQWLFL]H hassle and money. This will reduce childhood and motherhood — in the odds of unplanned pregnancies many ways rightly so — but there during gaps between prescriptions. isn’t much that can be said in favor (Women will be required to start of having eight children and losing with a three-month supply to see several of them to illness and whether there are any adverse poverty. reactions before being able to buy Smaller families and an ability pills for a year.) for women to integrate pregnancies California already has a similar with their working lives have greatly but somewhat less comprehensive improved living standards in the law. Our Washington neighbors, U.S. and other advanced nations. who are considering doing the same, The children who are planned are should certainly follow Oregon’s cherished and are more likely to lead. 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 Cost of body cameras too much for Bend-area police The Bend Bulletin The Legislature’s new law on body cameras has Bend and Prineville police thinking they may have to give them up. It’s a reasonable decision. Bend police don’t use body cameras now, though the department has been experimenting with them and considering adding them. Prineville police have been using them. The new law adds requirements. Police must turn on the cameras when encountering any suspect. The recordings must be stored. When recordings are released to the public, the faces of individuals must be digitally scrambled. There are arguments to be made for all those requirements. For instance, police should not be able to pick and choose when cameras are turned on. It makes them vulnerable to claims that they were purposefully left off to conceal what happened. But those new requirements could be expensive for departments to manage. Bend Police Chief Jim Porter told us during the legislative session he was worried about how many hours it would take to redact all the faces involved in a recording. He’d likely have to add a staff member along with the expense of the equipment. He wasn’t sure that expense made sense. Body cameras can provide valuable information about incidents. They may encourage better behavior from suspects and police. And they can show a perspective of an incident that will almost instantly clear up some questions. But we don’t see them as absolutely necessary in Bend, Prineville or elsewhere in Central Oregon. Their value must be weighed against their cost. It would of course be helpful to know how much it would cost taxpayers in Bend or Prineville to have the cameras and comply with the law. We haven’t seen estimates of those additional costs. Does it make sense to add the cameras and the staff person in Bend to blur faces, or would it make sense to add DQRWKHUSDWURORI¿FHUGHGLFDWHGWRWKH downtown? If there were incident after incident in Central Oregon in which there were serious questions raised about the behavior of police and suspects, that’s a much different decision than law enforcement and the public face now. OTHER VIEWS Haste, hustle and Scott Walker I n the formal announcement of his Walker’s cart has a way of getting presidential campaign on Monday, ahead of Walker’s horse. Only after Scott Walker mentioned God VHYHUDOÀXEEHGLQWHUYLHZVHDUOLHUWKLV right away, introduced himself as a year were there reports that he was preacher’s son and invoked religion taking extra time to bone up on world repeatedly, as he has throughout a affairs. This was supposed to be a perpetual candidacy that stretches back comfort to us, but what would really to his college days, when he told the be reassuring is a candidate who had Marquette University yearbook: “I pursued that mastery already, out of Frank really think there’s a reason why God honest curiosity rather than last-minute Bruni put all these political thoughts in my need. Comment head.” When allies and opponents talk But what I see in him is the kind about his strengths, they seem to of soullessness too common in American focus not on his passion for governing but politicians and the kind of careerism that on his cunning at getting elected. “He’s a makes American politics such a dreary sneaky-smart campaigner, they say, a polished spectacle. and levelheaded tactician, a master at reading I see an ambition even more pronounced crowds,” wrote Kyle Cheney and Daniel than any ideology. I see an interest in personal Strauss in Politico. “He learned the value of advancement that eclipses any investment in ignoring uncomfortable questions, rather than personal growth. answering them.” These are hardly unusual traits in our halls What an inspiring lesson, and what a of government. But they’re window into political distilled in Walker, the success today. governor of Wisconsin. He tailors his persona to He’s styling himself the race at hand. To win his as a political outsider, but second term as governor WKDW¶VDÀXNHRIJHRJUDSK\ of Wisconsin and thus be not professional history. able to crow, as he’s doing While it’s true that he hasn’t now, about the triumph of a worked in Washington, conservative politician “in a he’s a political lifer, with blue state,” he played down a résumé and worldview his opposition to abortion, that are almost nothing but signaled resignation to politics. same-sex marriage and He’s been on one explicitly supported a Wisconsin ballot or SDWKWRFLWL]HQVKLSIRU another almost every two years over the last undocumented immigrants. quarter-century, and he’s only 47. Before the But with his current focus on the Iowa governorship, he was a state assemblyman and caucuses, he no longer supports a path then a county executive. WRFLWL]HQVKLSÀDXQWVKLVDQWLDERUWLRQ We know from the biographies of him credentials and has called for a constitutional so far that he has been absorbed in those amendment permitting states to outlaw “political thoughts” since at least the start same-sex marriage. He even has a newfound of college, before he could have possibly affection for ethanol. developed any fully considered, deeply His advisers, meanwhile, trumpet his informed set of beliefs or plan for what to do authenticity. Authenticity? That’s in tragically with power. short supply in the presidential race, a quality I suspect that we’ll learn, with just a bit that candidates assert less through coherent more digging, that he was mulling campaign records, steadfast positions or self-effacing VORJDQVLQWKHZRPEDQGUDQKLV¿UVWUDFHLQ commitments than through what they wear the neighborhood wading pool, pledging to (look, Ma, no jacket or necktie!) and even ease restrictions on squirt guns and usher in a how they motor around. Walker is scheduled ban on two-piece bathing suits. to trundle through Iowa later this week in a He has drawn barbs for the fact that he left Winnebago, and of course Hillary Clinton Marquette before graduating and was many traveled there from New York in that Scooby credits shy of a degree. But I know plenty of van. people whose intellectual agility and erudition “I love America,” Walker said in Monday’s aren’t rooted in the classroom, and his lack of big speech. That was his opening line and an a diploma isn’t what’s troubling. echo of what so many contenders say. The priorities that conspired in it are. I trust that they all do love this country. But He was apparently consumed during his from the way they pander, shift shapes and sophomore year by a (failed) bid for student scheme, I wonder if they love themselves just body president. According to a story by David a little more. Ŷ Fahrenthold in The Washington Post, he was Frank Bruni, an Op-Ed columnist for The disengaged from, and cavalier about, the acquisition of knowledge. And he dropped out New York Times since June 2011, joined the right around the time he commenced a (failed) New York Times in 1995. Over his years, he candidacy for the Wisconsin state Senate — in has worn a wide variety of hats, including chief restaurant critic and Rome bureau chief. his early 20s. Walker is a political lifer, with a résumé and worldview that are almost nothing but politics. New laws enacted by the legislature add requirements. Those requirements could be very expensive. Be heard! Comment online at eastoregonian.com LETTERS POLICY 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.
