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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (March 23, 2016)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Wednesday, March 23, 2016 Founded October 16, 1875 KATHRYN B. BROWN DANIEL WATTENBURGER Publisher Managing Editor JENNINE PERKINSON TIM TRAINOR Advertising Director Opinion Page Editor OUR VIEW Good news on legal marijuana When Oregon voters were debating in 2012 about whether to legalize recreational marijuana, this newspaper’s recommendation was to wait. While Oregon has a tradition of leading on many progressive issues, our editorial board didn’t see much to be gained by becoming the ¿rst state to jump into legal pot. The ballot measure employed both fuzzy math and logic, estimating $140 million in tax revenue while giving oversight of the industry to marijuana insiders. Voters huffed and puffed, but ultimately rejected the idea. That same year, Washington and &olorado became the ¿rst states to legalize the drug in all its uses. Two years passed and we watched as tax dollars rolled in for those two states, and yet the predicted THC-induced bedlam did not ensue. Intoxicated driving did not skyrocket and stoned children were not ¿lling emergency rooms. In 2014, a more conservative ballot measure came to voters. We’d set up our legal marijuana trade under the Oregon Liquor Control Commission, and would make conservative estimates for tax income. Say, $3-$4 million a year. Our editorial board endorsed the measure that time around, though nearly 63 percent of Umatilla County voters did not. After approval, the process clunked along — government was involved, after all — but in January of this year the state was ¿nally seeing some tax revenue from the drug. To the tune of $3.5 million in a single month, more than either Colorado or Washington tallied in their ¿rst month of sales back in 2012. That’s as much in one month as we expected in an entire year. Suf¿ce it to say, early returns are looking good on this state’s investment in the marijuana industry. We realize the cultural and ¿nancial impacts of legal marijuana can’t be projected from one month, or even a year. Lawmakers will continue to tinker with regulations, a give and take among business interests, public health and safety and tax revenue. The tax rate is already set to come down from 25 percent to 17 percent, with a local option to add 3 percent if voters so desire. But we see good news here, ¿rst and foremost that Oregon marijuana users are willing to go through legitimate channels to buy their weed. We don’t expect legalization to be the single knockout blow to the black market, but it certainly gave it a good jab in the ¿rst round. And we hope the next step for lawmakers is to ¿nd a way to move these legal shops away from a cash-only business, which is ripe for fraud. We’re still in wait-and-see mode when it comes to the federal ban on marijuana, which, if loosened, would make the taxation process run much more smoothly. We’re also anxious to see how this tax revenue news resonates with local voters who in November will decide whether to ban retail marijuana sales in our cities and counties. Now that we’re talking about very real dollars, a knee-jerk “no” vote might not be so easy. 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 Ranching rights explained to an urban audience Is the Malheur refuge occupation over? Absolutely not. Although the protesters have been taken away, the divisions between the protesters and the governmental agencies has deepened. LaVoy Finicum has become a martyr. The use of hundreds of FBI, Oregon State Police, county sheriffs and other law enforcement personnel has created an impression of a police state. Arrests of occupiers and associated journalists has added suspicion of civil rights violations. American citizens see the iron¿sted approach the government and court system adopted in the Stephen and Dwight Hammond court cases. Sympathy is spreading for those jailed. For those not raised on a ranch, the issues regarding the ranchers’ eroding property rights are not easily understood. Therefore, I will start with an analogy for those of us raised in more urban environments. Let’s say that you purchase a home that costs $200,000 to build. However, this home has additional property rights because there is additional land use available to the owner in the form of an exclusive golf course, ¿sh pond, and swimming pools. Because of these extra property rights, the price of the home is increased to a million dollars. After a few years, the homeowners association starts changing the rules. First they raise the association fees to cover the cost of more intensive management practices. Then they decide the golf course is being overused so the homeowner is now restricted to playing golf just one day a week and the golfer must pay for each use. Years later they decide the golf course should not be used at all in the winter months because the ground is too wet and the foot traf¿c is damaging the soil. Then the swimming pools are drained and closed because there isn’t enough water for the ¿sh pond. The following year the golf course is closed permanently from the seventh to 11th holes because an endangered tortoise was found on the ninth hole. The membership in the homeowners association expires every 10 years, so it is necessary to ¿le a new application if you want the remaining rights to the golf course complex. If you have caused problems for the association, your application can be rejected. This is the type of bureaucracy the ranchers and farmers are subjected to through BLM, the Forest Service, Fish and Game and an assortment of other agencies. The property value of the home on the golf course would de¿nitely be reduced and the homeowner may very well have the right to sue an out-of- control homeowners association. The impact of government policies that erode property rights of a ranch or farm are harder to ¿ght. The federal government made the laws and policies and owns the courts. OTHER VIEWS The middle-age surge age. What could have been considered The phrase almost completes itself: the beginning of a descent is now a Midlife … crisis. It’s the stage in the potential turning point — the turning middle of the journey when people point you are most equipped to take feel youth vanishing, their prospects full advantage of. narrowing and death approaching. So It is the moment when you can they become undone. The red Corvette look back on your life so far and pops up in the driveway. Stupidity see it with different eyes. Hopefully reigns. you’ve built up some wisdom, There’s only one problem with the David cliché. It isn’t true. Brooks which, as the psychologists de¿ne it, means seeing the world with more “In fact, there is almost no hard Comment compassion, grasping opposing ideas evidence for midlife crisis at all, at the same time, tolerating other than a few small pilot ambiguity and reacting with studies conducted decades equanimity to the small ago,” Barbara Bradley setbacks of life. Hagerty writes in her new By middle age you might book, “Life Reimagined.” begin to see, retrospectively, The vast bulk of the research the dominant motifs that shows that there may be a have been running through pause, or a shifting of gears your various decisions. You in the 40s or 50s, but this might begin to see how all shift “can be exhilarating, your different commitments rather than terrifying.” can be integrated into one Bradley Hagerty looks meaning and purpose. You at some of the features of might see the social problem people who turn midlife your past has made you uniquely equipped to into a rebirth. They break routines, because tackle. You might have enough clarity by now “autopilot is death.” They choose purpose to orient your life around a true north on some over happiness — having a clear sense of ultimate horizon. purpose even reduces the risk of Alzheimer’s. Lincoln, for example, found in midlife that They put relationships at the foreground, as everything so far had prepared him to preserve career often recedes. the Union and end slavery. The rest of us don’t “Life Reimagined” paints a portrait have causes that grand, but plenty of people of middle age that is far from grim and bring their life to a point. They dive fully into decelerating. Midlife begins to seem like the existing commitments, or embrace new ones. second big phase of decision-making. Your Either way, with a little maturity, they’re identity has been formed; you know who less likely by middle age to be blinded by ego, you are; you’ve built up your resources; and more likely to know what it is they actually now you have the chance to take the big risks desire, more likely to get out of their own way, precisely because your foundation is already and maybe a little less likely, given all the secure. The theologian Karl Barth described midlife judgments that have been made, to care about what other people think. in precisely this way. At middle age, he wrote, The people who ¿nd meaning at this stage “the sowing is behind; now is the time to reap. often realize the way up is down. The run has been taken; now is the time to They get off that supervisor’s perch and leap. Preparation has been made; now is the put themselves in direct contact with the time for the venture of the work itself.” people they can help the most. They accept The middle-aged person, Barth continued, that certain glorious youthful dreams won’t be can see death in the distance, but moves with a “measured haste” to get big new things done realized, but other, more relational jobs turn out to be more ful¿lling. while there is still time. They achieve a kind of tranquillity, not What Barth wrote decades ago is even truer today. People are healthy and energetic longer. because they’ve decided to do nothing, but because they’ve achieved focus and purity of We have presidential candidates running for will. They have enough self-con¿dence, and their ¿rst term in of¿ce at age 6, 69 and 74. impatience, to say no to some things so they Greater longevity is changing the narrative can say yes to others. structure of life itself. From this perspective, middle age is kind The elongation of vital life has changed of inspiring. Many of life’s possibilities are the phases of life. The most obvious change now closed, but limitation is often liberating. is the emergence of the odyssey years. People The remaining possibilities can be seized more between age 20 and the early 30s can now bravely, and lived more deeply. take a little more time to try on new career Ŷ options, new cities and new partners. David Brooks’s column in The New York However, another profound but more hidden change is the altered shape of middle Times started in September 2003. It is the moment when you can look back on your life so far and see it with different eyes. Terry Noonkester Myrtle Creek, Ore. Leave Trump alone Good grief! Leave it alone! Every day in this paper there is another indictment of some sort of Donald Trump. Someone already correctly pointed out the unfair slur in an editorial last week blatantly calling him a “vicious racist,” and the national columnists regularly regurgitate and recycle the same liberal perspective in their viewpoint columns. Then, in Tuesday’s paper, there is a reprint of a March 19th Bend Bulletin article publicizing the opportunity that “non-af¿liated” voters have to change their registration to af¿liate with a major party before the primary or general elections this year. The article appears to be mostly a public service announcement until right at the end. At that point, the only example the Bend Bulletin felt compelled to use for registering or changing your party af¿liation was “if casting a vote against Donald Trump is important to you, no matter how many delegates he’s amassed, then change (your party registration).” Really? Was that necessary? How about this for equal time: “If casting a vote against socialism and the continuing erosion of our liberties is important to you, no matter how many delegates Bernie or Hillary have amassed, then change your party af¿liation and cast your vote to make America great again.” Or, you could just give it a rest and let this process play out naturally. Somehow, however, I think that’s probably too much to ask. Gordon Graham Hermiston OTHER VIEWS FBI’s credibility is on the line The Oregonian, March 19 It was not unreasonable to assume the end of an illegal occupation in Harney County meant the end of a public circus in which armed, self-described patriots threatened violence against authorities if challenged. But the circus continues, despite the evacuation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters and jailing of some of its ringleaders. It continues because of a trail of troublesome questions left by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, otherwise credited for bringing the standoff to an end after exercising weeks of restraint. The circumstance plays into the hands of militants and others who argue the federal government runs a rigged game with citizens in deciding best uses of public lands. Oregon investigators, reviewing the roadside shooting of Robert “LaVoy” Finicum, decided two unaccounted-for shots were likely ¿red by an FBI agent at the scene and that four FBI colleagues may have helped him to cover it up. It’s a concerning development. Neither of the bullets hit Finicum — the three fatal strikes were defensibly ¿red by two Oregon State Police troopers, investigators say — and yet empty bullet casings that could account for the two stray shots have not been found. In a source-attributed report last week, Les Zaitz of The Oregonian reported that FBI agents at the scene had, following Finicum’s shooting, “searched the area with Àashlights and then huddled ... and one agent appeared to bend over twice and pick up something near where the two shots likely were taken.” If unaccounted-for shots were ¿red by an agent, and agents are found to have acted collusively to cover it up, the agents should be canned: for altering evidence at the scene (forensics 101), for contravening the ¿rst best purpose of the profession (serve the public by seeking truth), for an ethical lapse so great as to be called connivance (read: corruption). Oregonians now await ¿ndings of a criminal investigation of the agents by the U.S. Justice Department’s inspector general. It should be no surprise that anyone with a bone to pick with the feds now has a promising bone to pick with the feds — fair enough. But conspiracy theorists, meanwhile, feed on the developments as a form of vindication, and any chance of useful discourse about public lands management is set back. May the probe be swift. 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.