Page 4A
OPINION
East Oregonian
Thursday, August 27, 2015
OTHER VIEWS
Founded October 16, 1875
KATHRYN B. BROWN
Publisher
JENNINE PERKINSON
Advertising Director
DANIEL WATTENBURGER
Managing Editor
TIM TRAINOR
Opinion Page Editor
OUR VIEW
Trump-ward, Christian soldiers?
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Contributed photo
The Speth family survey the aftermath of the Canyon Creek Complex fire
that destroyed their home south of Canyon City.
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The stories around John Day will
remain long after the destructive fires
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Coast and Eastern Oregon,
Canyon Creek and over
however, is that the Cascadia
the hills just south of John
earthquake happens every
Day, those who were ordered
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to evacuate recall details they
possibility here every 300 days.
probably never will forget.
We are constantly in the
Dean Elliott, who lost his
emergency planning mode on
home of 53 years, remembers the
the coast. We worry about where
sound of the wind. It was like a
we would evacuate to escape the
Nancy
locomotive, he said.
McCarthy wall of water heading toward us
His wife, Betty, recalls how
15 minutes after the earthquake
Comment
the oxygen was sucked out of the
drops the ground out from
air and she could hardly breathe.
under us. We gather “go bags”
Mike Mannell, who was woken by
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a friend, tells how he ran through the
supplies; we test out evacuation routes
smoke to put a sprinkler on his Harley
leading toward ground higher than
Davidson and another sprinkler on his
80 feet; and we organize Community
neighbor’s house.
Emergency Response Teams to help
If his friend hadn’t woken him that
us deal with the immediate crises that
morning, said Mannell, whose cabin that
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he had been building for six years burned pre-established gathering spots.
to the ground, “I probably would have
After observing and reporting on how
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John Day and Canyon City area residents
And with tears in his eyes, the
and emergency crews are responding to
neighbor, Bryan Nelson, whose home
this crisis, I have hope that we will do
Mannell saved, called Mannell a “hero.”
just as well when disaster hits us on the
These stories abound in the canyon.
coast.
They are told and retold to friends,
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relatives, restaurant waitresses, store
Service, Oregon Department of Forestry,
clerks. They are told because people in
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this community know each other, and
Cross all began working together to fend
most importantly, they care about one
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another.
only a day or two, when it was obvious
For two weeks, Blue Mountain
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Carpenter have been keeping a running
the region responded, and two incident
list of all the donations, services, offers
commanders trained to supervise massive
of homes and other resources available
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Meanwhile, local volunteers opened
Response has been pouring into the
their hearts, wallets and homes to those
Eagle’s Facebook page from those both
who needed immediate help.
in the area and throughout the region,
Where I live, they say not to count on
asking how they can help.
outside help being able to reach us for
That’s what you do in a crisis.
several weeks — or even months. We
Where I live — on the North Oregon
will be on our own to cope.
Coast — we are a small community,
This experience, in this small
too. Most all of us have ties to each
community, shows me that it can be
other — through family, work, volunteer
done.
activities, civic duties or friendship.
The details of our potential crisis
We also have emergencies. Usually,
will be different. We will have different
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because it rains so much along the coast,
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where we live on a narrow strip of land
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between forest and ocean.
enormous ocean wave.
Our largest, overriding concern,
But I hope — and expect — the
however, is the potential Cascadia
community response will be the same.
Subduction Zone earthquake that is
We will take care of each other.
expected to occur 50 to 75 miles offshore
Because that’s what communities do
and trigger a tsunami that would wipe
in a crisis.
our communities off the map.
Ŷ
It seems that, no matter where
Nancy McCarthy has been working as
you live, some sort of disaster looms,
interim editor of the Blue Mountain Eagle
threatening to destroy all we hold dear.
in John Day, a sister paper of the East
The difference between the North
Oregonian, for the past four weeks.
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.
et me get this straight. If I want
glutton through and through. That
the admiration and blessings of
leaves envy and sloth. I’m betting that
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he harbors plenty of the former, though
Christians in America, I should marry
I’ll concede that he exhibits none of
three times, do a queasy-making
the latter.
amount of sexual boasting, verbally
In 2012, inexplicably, he was
degrade women, talk trash about pretty
invited to Liberty University, where he
much everyone else while I’m at it,
digressed during his remarks to extol
encourage gamblers to hemorrhage
the prudence of prenuptial agreements.
Frank
their savings in casinos bearing my
But all was forgiven: His host, Jerry
Bruni
name and crow incessantly about how
Falwell, told audience members that
Comment
much money I’ve amassed?
Trump could be credited for “single-
Seems to work for Donald Trump.
handedly” forcing President Barack
Polls show him to be the preferred
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candidate among not just all Republican voters they cheered, as if ugly, groundless partisan
but also the party’s vocal evangelical subset.
rumor-mongering were on a saintly par with
He’s more beloved than Mike Huckabee,
washing lepers’ feet.
a former evangelical pastor, or Ted Cruz, an
Maybe it’s Trump’s jingoism they adore.
evangelical pastor’s son,
They venerated Ronald
or Scott Walker, who said
Reagan though he’d
during the recent Republican
divorced, remarried and
debate: “It’s only by the
spent much of his career
blood of Jesus Christ that
in the godless clutch of
I’ve been redeemed.”
Hollywood.
When Trump mentions
Maybe their fealty to
blood, it’s less biblical, as
Trump is payback for his
Megyn Kelly can well attest.
donations to conservative
No matter. The holy
religious groups.
rollers are smiling upon
Or maybe his pompadour
the high roller. And they’re
has mesmerized them. It
proving, yet again, how
could, in the right wind, be
selective and incoherent the
mistaken for a halo.
religiosity of many in the
I’m grasping at straws,
party’s God squad is.
because there’s no sense
Usually the disconnect
in the fact that many of the
involves stern moralizing,
people who most frequently
especially on matters sexual, by showily
espouse the Christian spirit then proceed to
GHYRXWSXEOLF¿JXUHVZKRDUHWKHQH[SRVHGDV vilify immigrants, demonize minorities and
adulterers or (gasp!) closet homosexuals. I’d
line up behind a candidate who’s a one-man
list all the names, starting with Josh Duggar
master class in such misanthropy.
and working backward, but my column
From Trump’s Twitter account gushes
doesn’t sprawl over an entire page of the
an endless stream of un-Christian rudeness,
newspaper.
and he was at it again on Monday night,
Or the disconnect is between evangelists’
retweeting someone else’s denigration of
panegyrics about Christ’s penury and their
Kelly as a “bimbo.” Shouldn’t he be turning
hustle for funds to support less-than-penurious the other cheek?
lifestyles. John Oliver, the host of HBO’s
For politicians as for voters, devotion
“Last Week Tonight,” has been making
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brilliant satirical fun of this by promoting
Courting the evangelical vote, Cruz used his
his new tax-exempt church, Our Lady
own Twitter account last week to say that
of Perpetual Exemption. Last Sunday he
his “thoughts and prayers are with President
apologized to viewers that his wife, Wanda Jo, Jimmy Carter,” whose struggle with cancer
“cannot be with us this evening.”
was riveting the nation. But then Cruz
“She’s at our summer parsonage in
pressed on with a speech that bemoaned the
Hawaii,” he continued, “for a week of spiritual “misery, stagnation and malaise” of Carter’s
introspection and occasional parasailing.”
presidency. He couldn’t have hit pause on the
What’s different and fascinating about
Carter bashing for a week or two?
the Trump worship is that he doesn’t even
Carter pressed on, too — with his usual
try that hard for a righteous facade — for
weekend routine of teaching Sunday school,
Potemkin piety. Sure, he speaks of enthusiastic which he has long done with little fanfare.
churchgoing, and he’s careful to curse Planned His own Christianity is not a bludgeon but a
Parenthood and to insist that matrimony be
bridge.
reserved for heterosexuals as demonstrably
As for Trump, I must not be watching the
inept at it as he is.
same campaign that his evangelical fans are,
But beyond that? He just about runs the
because I don’t see someone interested in
WDEOHRQWKHVHYHQGHDGO\VLQV+HSHUVRQL¿HV serving God. I see someone interested in being
greed, embodies pride, radiates lust. Wrath is
God.
covered by his anti-immigrant, anti-“losers”
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rants, and if we interpret gluttony to include
Frank Bruni has been an Op-Ed columnist
big buildings and not just Big Macs, he’s a
for The New York Times since June 2011.
They’re proving,
yet again, how
selective and
incoherent the
religiosity of
many in the
party’s God
squad is.
YOUR VIEWS
Cuts to parks, recreation not
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Rex Morehouse takes the easy road for
street repair in his Aug. 17 letter to the East
Oregonian by recommending cuts to the city
park and recreation budget of 25 percent and
eliminating over one-third of the chamber’s
revenue to fund the city streets.
The city budget is developed over several
months by city staff then reviewed and acted
upon by the budget committee (mayor, city
council and nine private citizens). The meetings
are open to the public. Mr. Morehouse attended
many of these meetings and it’s a pity that he
did not make this recommendation where there
was opportunity for discussion and to invite
input from the decision makers.
Mr. Morehouse asserts that cutting the
parks/recreation budget by 25 percent “puts
us in line” with other cities of our size. I say:
Show me. Where is the data to support this
statement? I know of no resource giving
guidelines for how much Oregon cities should
spend on these types of activities. City budgets
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methods and funds to account for income and
expense. Trying to compare one city to another
with differences in geography, history, and
constituent base is like trying to compare one
person to another — we are all different. We
rely on the public to tell us what they want and
I believe Pendletonians value our parks and
recreation programs as they are. No new parks
or programs have been added the past several
years and now Mr. Morehouse is the only one
saying we should reduce them by 25 percent.
What services do you want to cut and what
parks do you want closed?
Established by ordinance, 14 percent of the
city room tax is used to support the chamber.
The city also collects a fee of $1.50 per night
per hotel room and 50 cents per night per RV
space to support tourism (Tourism Promotion
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TPAC fee goes to the chamber as sole support
for Travel Pendleton. The room tax and TPAC
fee accounts for more than a third of the
chamber budget.
Mr. Morehouse recommends these revenues
go to roads and let chamber members make up
the difference. The result? Double the cost of
membership for local businesses and shut down
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hired the “festival director” called for in Loree
McKenna’s Aug. 11 letter to the EO to promote
Pendleton as a tourist destination town.
Tourism is a $1.3 billion industry in Oregon.
Umatilla County sees $134 million of that,
which supports 2,194 jobs. Mr. Morehouse’s
recommendations would devastate our local
business and economy.
LETTERS POLICY
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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. Submitted letters
must be signed by the author and include the city of residence and a daytime phone
number. Unsigned letters will not be published. Send letters to 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pend-
leton, OR 97801 or email editor@eastoregonian.com.