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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.