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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 20, 2016)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Saturday, February 20, 2016 Founded October 16, 1875 KATHRYN B. BROWN DANIEL WATTENBURGER Publisher Managing Editor JENNINE PERKINSON TIM TRAINOR Advertising Director Opinion Page Editor EO MEDIA GROUP East Oregonian • The Daily Astorian • Capital Press • Hermiston Herald Blue Mountain Eagle • Wallowa County Chieftain • Chinook Observer • Coast River Business Journal Oregon Coast Today • Coast Weekend • Seaside Signal • Cannon Beach Gazette Eastern Oregon Real Estate Guide • Eastern Oregon Marketplace • Coast Marketplace OnlyAg.com • FarmSeller.com • Seaside-Sun.com • NorthwestOpinions.com • DiscoverOurCoast.com MIKE FORRESTER STEVE FORRESTER KATHRYN B. BROWN Pendleton Chairman of the Board Astoria President Pendleton Secretary/Treasurer CORY BOLLINGER JEFF ROGERS Aberdeen, S.D. Director Indianapolis, Ind. Director OUR VIEW Measures affect legislation long before the ballot America’s stacked deck OTHER VIEWS Chicken and egg? Jailbird and warden? Dog wagging its tail, or vice versa? We’re struggling for a metaphor that describes the relationship between the Legislature and Oregon’s powerful ballot measure system. Perhaps it’s the classic yin and yang. Take, for example, this year’s short session. Both the Senate and the House pushed through a hurried, imperfect minimum wage bill. The governor has pledged to sign it. Even Republicans, who voted against the bill in large numbers, seemed willing to support some kind of wage hike this legislative session. Why this fast action from a body known for being deliberative, partisan and at times obstructionist? Well, it is because the specter of a minimum wage ballot measure is hovering on the horizon. If the Legislature didn’t do something, goes the thinking, who knows what the voters would do? Perhaps the ballot measure would peg statewide wages at a hard $15 an hour, everywhere from a downtown Portland skyscraper to the lonesome pastures outside Condon. 7KHLQÀH[LELOLW\RIEDOORW measure-induced legislation scares legislators and, to some extent, it scares us too. Don’t get us wrong — a newspaper would be crazy not to believe citizens and taxpayers deserve the loudest voice in government. If we didn’t believe in democracy and an informed electorate, we’d have looked for a different career. There are some issues that should be decided no other way than a majority vote. Gay marriage, for instance. Marijuana legalization. Those are simple, straightforward questions that most Oregonians are reasonably informed about and have an opinion on. %RWKLVVXHVIDLOHGWKHLU¿UVWWLPH on a statewide ballot, but as culture changed so too did the opinion of a majority of voters. While gay marriage was made federally legal before Oregon voters had their say on the matter, we’d argue that both became legal at the right time for this state, in step with the people’s wishes. But where the ballot measure system can have negative, unintended consequences is with more complex issues, especially regarding the economy and criminal justice. Tight local budgets are due in part to the compression put into law in 1990 by Measure 5 — something most voters could not have foreseen or understood. Compression has LWVEHQH¿WVLQVRPHLQVWDQFHV² keeping a cap on the steady rise of increasing taxes. But in other examples, especially in poor and rural areas, the compression law has had a detrimental effect on basic city services and public safety. %XWWKHLQÀH[LEOHODQJXDJHLQWKH measure means completely different circumstances are forced to play by the same set of rules. Measure 11, passed in 1994, established mandatory minimum sentencing for several crimes. It proved that Oregon would be tough on crime, but it also contributed to an ever-expanding prison population. Within six years the number of Oregon prisoners had increased by 41 percent, and it has continued to climb since then. It took away the ability of judges to adjust a sentence based on the VSHFL¿FFLUFXPVWDQFHVRIDFDVH which some could argue was the point of the measure. But look toward the Hammonds and other UHFHQWKLJKSUR¿OHFDVHVDQG\RX FDQVHHZKHUHVRPHÀH[LELOLW\FDQ EHEHQH¿FLDO You don’t get that with a ballot measure. And while enacting law that way is part of our culture here in Oregon, we must realize the effects of that are both positive and negative. Which leaves many legislators feeling they have no choice but to respond to the rising yang with their own yin. Doesn’t always work. 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 Oregon students the worst at just showing up The (Bend) Bulletin O regon is a national education leader in one of the most awful ways: absenteeism. Some 94,000 students miss at least 10 percent of the school year. Wonder why Oregon students don’t do better when measured against their peers in other states? The school absenteeism epidemic is one reason. The Oregonian reported that one study in Oregon found that students who miss 10 percent of kindergarten can lag on average “almost a year behind in reading by third grade and are unlikely to ever catch up.” Students who miss so much school are also unlikely to graduate. The Legislature has recently taken up the question of what to do about it. House Bill 4002 directs the Oregon Department of Education to come up with a plan by December. The bill would require a process for disclosing absenteeism at each school, best practices for schools to implement and track, a way to identify schools that need more help and what that help would be, and an estimate of the costs involved. The bill is not without controversy. The key point of debate is: Can the Department of Education really make a difference? The answer is: Let’s hope so. So many of the reasons children don’t get to school are outside of school. They are in the home or lack a stable home. School districts in Oregon and other states have found ways to make a difference. They don’t let repeated absences go unnoticed. They talk to the students about it. They check in with them. They encourage them. They contact parents. And when all else fails, schools can even take families to court. Other states do a much better job than Oregon of controlling absenteeism. Surely Oregon can do it, too. VKRXOGEHWRUHGXFHWKHLQÀXHQFHRI t’s a little bizarre this political money in politics. season to see wealthy candidates in The pharmaceutical industry, both parties denouncing our political for example, has used its lobbying system for representing mostly the heft — it spent $272,000 in campaign interests of, well, wealthy people. donations per member of Congress last Bizarre, perhaps, and sometimes year, and it has more lobbyists than a tad hypocritical, but also accurate. there are members of Congress — to America’s political system is rigged. The deck is stacked against ordinary Nicholas bar the government from bargaining people. That’s the frustration that Kristof for drug prices in Medicare. That amounts to a $50 billion annual gift to has fueled, in very different ways, Comment pharmaceutical companies. the anti-establishment campaigns of The rise of inequality has complex Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Bernie roots, and some aren’t easily solved. For Sanders in particular, and that is leading other example, the empowerment of women, candidates, like Hillary Clinton, to grab their coupled with the tendency of people to marry pitchforks as well. those like themselves, means that high-earning “Yes, the economy is rigged in favor of men increasingly pair with those at the top,” Clinton declared high-earning women to form in the Democratic debate last super-high-earning families. week. Likewise, many Americans One glimpse of the structural are wealthy in part because they unfairness in America is this: A worked hard, saved constantly and dumb rich kid is now more likely to graduate from college than a invested brilliantly. That’s to be smart poor kid, according to Robert celebrated, but all this plays out Putnam of Harvard University. RQDWLOWHG¿HOGWKDWDOVRDIIHFWV Another: The 20 wealthiest outcomes, and social values. $PHULFDQVDJURXSWKDWZRXOG¿W Paul Piff, a social psychologist, comfortably inside a luxury private has conducted experiments in jet bound for a private Caribbean which Monopoly games are island, are worth more than the rigged so that one player has more poorer half of the American money to start with and is almost population, according to a recent predestined to win. It turns out that report from the Institute for Policy the wealthy player lords it over Studies. Forbes’ wealthiest 100 are worth as others and even grabs more pretzels from the much as all 42 million African-Americans, the communal bowl. report says. In this election season, many Americans “Correctly, we suspect that the system feel that they are living that rigged Monopoly is rigged, our government has become game. coin-operated and that we’ve been sidelined,” Two business school professors, Michael Wendell Potter and Nick Penniman write in Norton and Dan Ariely, showed people charts their eye-opening new book about money in of the distribution of wealth in egalitarian politics, “Nation on the Take.” They call for Sweden and in highly unequal America and a “profound course correction,” like those asked them which kind of society they would the United States has periodically undertaken prefer to live in, without saying which country before. each chart represented. Some 92 percent of So it’s healthy for American voters to Americans chose Sweden’s distribution. be demanding change. But when societies Likewise, the great philosopher John Rawls face economic pain, they sometimes turn to developed a thought experiment to judge the reforms, and other times to scapegoats (like fairness of a society: Imagine that you will be refugees this year). So the historic question placed in a society but don’t know your station for 2016 is which direction the popular revolt there. You’re unsure if you’ll be rich or poor, among American voters will ultimately take. A smart or dumb, black or white, male or female. President Trump or President Cruz would build In that case, many of us might choose Sweden walls and waterboard suspected terrorists, a as well, rather than risk ending up in the wrong President Clinton or President Sanders would ZIP code in the United States today. raise the minimum wage and invest in at-risk So American voters are right to feel angry. children. Yet the challenge is not just to diagnose the It seems to me to make more sense to SUREOHPEXWDOVRWRSUHVFULEHWKHULJKW¿[HV target solutions than scapegoats, but sense and achieve them in this political environment. is often in short supply in politics. After a So may the insurrection gain ground but be characteristically brilliant speech by Adlai channeled not by punishing scapegoats, but by Stevenson, the Democratic nominee for pursuing reforms that make the system work president in 1952 and 1956, a supporter is said better for ordinary Americans. to have bellowed, “Every thinking American Ŷ will vote for you!” Nicholas Kristof grew up on a sheep and Legend has it that Stevenson shouted back: cherry farm in Yamhill, Oregon. A columnist “That’s not enough. I need a majority!” for The New York Times since 2001, he won the In the solutions domain, a starting point Pulitzer Prize two times. I Many Americans feel that they are living in a rigged Monopoly game. YOUR VIEWS Liberal spirit has replaced independent spirit in Oregon As a native Oregonian born here in this state in the 1930s I personally had to make many adjustments politically to run a business in this state. Agriculture has been my primary profession, running two businesses in the western part of the state, and I have been a Republican for 45 years. In 1998 I left the Republican Party, as I saw it dwindling into an empty shell of what it once was as I saw LW,WRRNXSWKHQRQDI¿OLDWHGSDUW\XQWLO two months ago and registered back to the Republican Party again. From 2000 my wife and I ran the Windyhill Sheep Ranch in the Burnt River area in the town of Unity. That side of the state is all agriculture and mostly Republican, and at times I felt we were a white dot in a red sea. After totally retiring from ranching and selling the ranch we relocated to Ione, a nice, quiet and clean town. Retiring gave me some time to think about an article I wrote for The Oregonian in 2010: “Why does Oregon come out so badly?” 7RGD\¶VVWDWHRI¿FLDOVVHHPWRKDYHJRWWHQ a lot worse in their thinking on how to solve issues that require understanding of how the west side of the state thinks as to what the east side has to do to make a living from the land. Looking back to that article I can see no changes, but blockage of ideas to try to get this state back on the right track to prosperity. The state seems to make the case by wasting millions of dollars from state employee funds to failed health care programs and liberalized programs that people seem to think they don’t have to work as hard to get what they want. All of the people in Oregon have an independent spirit, but if you live on the eastern side of the state you are on your own. And when it comes to voting on a VWDWHZLGHLVVXHWKDWZRXOGEHQH¿WWKHHDVWHUQ side, the majority of the vote come from the populated areas. The tax structure in Oregon is one of the highest and does not encourage new development, but drives away the businesses that are already here and the ones that are entrenched have been made secure by such massive tax giveaways they could not even consider leaving. Oregon is now a state with three parties — red, white, and blue. In the coming years it will be a test of time to see if liberalism works. Ronald Blaine Folck Ione 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 phone number. Send letters to 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@eastoregonian.com.
