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OPINION
East Oregonian
Tuesday, September 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
Workplaces change,
but labor makes
world go ’round
Labor is what makes the world go
around.
Our grandparents might not
recognize our workplace, because it
has been transformed in the past 50
years.
Many Americans still do work on
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ever-evolving concept.
When Labor Day was born in
1883, the holiday was a big deal for
workers. And that was an America rife
with large factories and their assembly
lines. In ways we can hardly imagine,
industrialists including Henry Ford
and Thomas Edison introduced
innovations and new techniques that
transformed an essentially agrarian
society into an urban one.
Compare old photographs of
workers from a century ago with
people today and it becomes apparent
that Americans ourselves have
changed in amazing ways, growing
both upward and in circumference.
Today, even the poorest among us are
better fed and far more advantaged
than average citizens were at the start
of modern labor movement.
Positive changes don’t occur
spontaneously. Individual men and
women, working with intelligence
and tenacity, deserve our gratitude
for incrementally making the USA a
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wonder of our age.
While all manner of things have
changed, the idea of honoring labor
remains a noble aspect of this nation.
Ultimately, those toiling in anonymity
are far more worthy of our thanks than
the famous captains of industry. Our
families exist because of the labor of
our parents and grandparents.
Our economy has been transformed
in recent decades. Economic recovery
has been uneven, delivering far
more wealth to a few, while most
Americans work within the context
of a globalized labor market that
tends to keep wages down. Even so,
working conditions and job fairness
are a quantum leap better than they
were in our grandparents’ time. All
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from the transformations in labor laws
and attitudes that came to permeate
20th-century society.
Although you don’t have to look
far to uncover derogatory attitudes
toward unions, the fair-employment
initiatives that were led by organized
labor groups are key to everything
from minimum wages, bars on child
labor, safe working conditions,
employer-provided health insurance
and a host of other things we take for
granted.
In good times, some Americans
consider labor rights and
organizations to be sort of expensive
extravagances. But even as the overall
economy continues to improve, it still
behooves Americans and our leaders
to empower labor in ways that ensure
future economic health, and a balance
of power between corporations and
everyday citizens.
Families struggle to pay for the
education children require for the
technologically demanding jobs of
the future. Health care, once one of
the near-certainties of middle-class
employment, remains a source of
worry even after implementation of
the Affordable Care Act. Personal
wealth still is far from recovered
to what it was before the Great
Recession. For all these reasons and
more, it’s important we always pay
attention to the details of working
life. The victories of the past can leak
away when we’re not watching.
The idea of honoring labor remains
an honorable aspect of this nation.
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.
YOUR VIEWS
Forest preservation should
work better than this
One of the many excuses to restrict
use of our public lands by the Wallowa-
Whitman and Malheur National Forests
is that we need to “preserve” our forest
for the next generation. The only problem
is, the Forest Service isn’t doing that.
The Forest Service, with assistance from
their partners in the local environmental
community, allow our forest to degenerate
into fuel dense stands waiting to take our
homes and property with it.
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save from decomposition”; “To keep safe
from injury”; or “To reserve for personal
or special use.”
The only preserving I see is the third,
to reserve for personal or special use,
to which those special uses seem to be
geared only to those that mean to use
public lands for their personal enjoyment
of “recreational use” that comes from
the local environmental groups. That
preservation comes at the expense of our
friends’ and families’ homes and future
generations’ needs of the natural resources
that are now gone forever.
I’m not sure who, or if anyone reads
these letters, but in the West we are well
schooled in preserving our summer fruits
and vegetables. Would anyone that takes
part in canning to preserve those resources
go through that work and then open up the
cupboard doors and bust every jar with a
hammer, and then close the doors and let
the mess sit?
But yet this is the mentality we are
watching unfold in our mountains.
It’s time it ends, and I hope that this
summer brings the people of Eastern
Oregon and the West together to call for
sane, active, vegetative management
to both the Forest Service and elected
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protecting the safety, health, and welfare
of our local rural communities.
John D. George
Bates
Independent party needs
candidates
The Independent Party of Oregon is
now the third “major party” in Oregon.
We want to offer voters more choices on
their ballots.
Anyone possibly interested in
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Independent Party needs to change his
or her voter registration to “Independent
Party” by September 10. It takes about
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register. Or just search “Oregon voter
register” online.
Potential candidates need not decide
whether to run until the primary election
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thanks to the Democrats and Republicans,
current law requires signing up for the
Independent Party by September 10,
PRUHWKDQPRQWKVEHIRUHWKH0D\
primary election.
Dan Meek, co-chairman
Independent Party of Oregon
Portland
Close, but no cigar
I found myself almost agreeing with
something Sarah Palin said. After having
a good cry and then making sure I did
not need an immediate intervention, I
analyzed what you had to say. The words
were, “Immigrants should learn to speak
American.”
First, young lady, most of the people
who have come to us from south of the
border already speak American, only they
do it in Spanish. Second, you did correct
yourself and say English, but that’s not
enough. I believe it was Oscar Wilde who
said England and the United States are
two countries separated by a common
language. One of the things I’ve noticed
about you is that on those few occasions
when you are able to complete a thought,
it usually has an element of uncertainty
and imprecision in it.
But, I agree that if someone wants to
live in the United States, they should learn
English. If I moved to France, I would
be an “Ugly American” if I did not learn
French.
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coin. You and Mr. Trump seem to be
saying there’s something wrong with
Jeb Bush speaking Spanish. I am not
a big fan of his, but I don’t see that his
being bilingual should be the subject of
criticism. In this one thing at least, he’s
ahead of me because I can only speak
English.
Patrick J. Delaney
Hermiston
OTHER VIEWS
Trump is right
on the economy
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good reason to believe that we’re
Donald Trump. Over the past
still a substantial distance from full
couple of weeks the man who
employment, and while the number of
was supposed to be the front-runner
jobs has grown a lot, wages haven’t.
has made a series of attacks on the
But the economy has nonetheless
man who is. Strange to say, however,
done far better than should have been
Bush hasn’t focused on what’s truly
possible if conservative orthodoxy had
vicious and absurd — viciously
any truth to it. And now Trump is being
absurd? — about Trump’s platform, his
accused of heresy for not accepting that
Paul
implicit racism and his insistence that
Krugman failed orthodoxy?
he would somehow round up 11 million
So am I saying that Trump is better
Comment
immigrants in the country illegally and
and more serious than he’s given credit
remove them from our soil.
for being? Not at all — he is exactly the
Instead, Bush has chosen to attack Trump
ignorant blowhard he seems to be. It’s when
as a false conservative, a proposition that is
it comes to his rivals that appearances can be
supposedly demonstrated by his deviations
deceiving. Some of them may come across as
IURPFXUUHQW5HSXEOLFDQHFRQRPLFRUWKRGR[\ reasonable and thoughtful, but in reality they
his willingness to raise taxes
are anything but.
on the rich, his positive
in particular,
Trump, who is may Bush,
words about universal health
pose as a reasonable,
care. And that tells you a lot
self-financing, thoughtful type — credulous
about the dire state of the
reporters even describe him as
didn’t need to a policy wonk — but his actual
GOP. For the issues the Bush
campaign is using to attack
platform, which
genuflect to the economic
its unexpected nemesis are
relies on the magic of tax
precisely the issues on which
to deliver a doubling of
big money, and it cuts
Trump happens to be right, and
America’s growth rate, is pure
the Republican establishment
turns out that the supply-side voodoo.
has been proved utterly wrong.
And here’s what’s
base doesn’t mind LQWHUHVWLQJ$OOLQGLFDWLRQV
To see what I mean,
consider what was at stake in
are that Bush’s attacks on
his heresies.
the last presidential election,
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and how things turned out after
the Republican base doesn’t
Mitt Romney lost.
actually share the Republican establishment’s
During the campaign, Romney accused
economic delusions.
President Barack Obama of favoring
The thing is, we didn’t really know that
redistribution of income from the rich to
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the poor, and the truth is that Obama’s
big-money donors meant that nobody could
UHHOHFWLRQGLGPHDQDVLJQL¿FDQWPRYHLQWKDW make a serious play for the GOP nomination
direction. Taxes on the top 1 percent went up
without pledging allegiance to supply-side
substantially in 2013, both because some of
doctrine, and this allowed the establishment to
the Bush tax cuts were allowed to expire and
imagine that ordinary voters shared its anti-
because new taxes associated with Obamacare
populist creed. Indeed, Bush’s hapless attempt
kicked in. And Obamacare itself, which
at a takedown suggests that his political team
provides a lot of aid to lower-income families,
still doesn’t get it, and thinks that pointing out
went into full effect at the beginning of 2014.
The Donald’s heresies will be enough to doom
Conservatives were very clear about what
his campaign.
would happen as a result. Raising taxes on
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“job creators,” they insisted, would destroy
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incentives. And they were absolutely certain
out that the base doesn’t mind his heresies. This
that the Affordable Care Act would be a “job
is a real revelation, which may have a lasting
killer.”
impact on our politics.
So what actually happened? As of last
Again, I’m not making a case for Trump.
month, the U.S. unemployment rate, which
There are lots of other politicians out there who
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also refuse to buy into right-wing economic
fallen to 5.1 percent. For the record, Romney
nonsense, but who do so without proposing to
promised during the campaign that he would
scour the countryside in search of immigrants
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to deport, or to rip up our international
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economic agreements and start a trade war. The
unemployment rate is lower than it ever got
point, however, is that none of these reasonable
under Ronald Reagan. And the main reason
politicians is seeking the Republican
unemployment has fallen so much is job
presidential nomination.
growth in the private sector, which has added
Ŷ
more than 7 million workers since the end of
Paul Krugman joined The New York Times
2012.
in 1999 as a columnist on the Op-Ed Page
I’m not saying that everything is great in
and continues as professor of Economics and
the U.S. economy, because it isn’t. There’s
International Affairs at Princeton University.
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.