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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (April 5, 2016)
Page 6A OPINION East Oregonian Tuesday, April 5, 2016 OTHER VIEWS Founded October 16, 1875 KATHRYN B. BROWN DANIEL WATTENBURGER Publisher Managing Editor JENNINE PERKINSON TIM TRAINOR Advertising Director Opinion Page Editor OUR VIEW Liquor initiative has dirty little secret If it ain’t broke, don’t ¿x it. Oregon’s burgeoning industries That axiom is apt for the ballot of craft brewers, distillers and winemakers oppose the initiative, initiative that would move liquor sales out of state-operated stores and because of what they see coming. Without the Oregon Liquor Control into grocery stores. The measure Commission stores, is backed by the craft distillers would grocery industry. their access Petitioners will Prices have gone lose to a statewide soon be gathering up and variety retail network. If signatures. is moved When has gone down liquor into supermarkets, Washington voters considered this in Washington, brewers and winemakers will choice in 2011, where liquor see their shelf it became known space diminished. colloquially as the is sold in stores are a Costco Initiative. supermarkets. Grocery zero-sum game. If a That’s because body of new product Costco largely gains shelf space, bankrolled the ballot other products have less. measure campaign. OLCC stores produce revenue Oregon is one of 13 states that in excess of $200 million that’s maintains state-owned stores. They used for state and local government are a considerable moneymaker for services. The grocers’ ballot measure state government. How the state assumes the state Legislature will would replace that revenue is this ¿nd another way to generate that ballot measure’s dirty little secret. amount of revenue. Good luck. On the other side of the Washington’s Costco Initiative Columbia River, there is a measure has demonstrated who really wins of buyers’ remorse. The variety with proposals such as this. The craft Washingtonians once saw in their distillers, brewers and wine makers liquor stores is gone. Restaurateurs ¿nd that particularly vexing. And the have it right. They will lose, big time. So will consumers. products cost more. 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. OUR VIEW A right to work ballot measure The Oregonian P rior to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s death, it was easy for Oregonians to overlook a “right to work” ballot measure proposed by Portland-area attorney Jill Gibson. The court appeared ready during oral arguments in January to prohibit public sector unions from imposing fees on nonmembers, as Gibson seeks to do. A slim majority of justices, in fact, all but invited this challenge to coerced contributions in their resolution of a related case two years earlier. Given the long approach of a seemingly inevitable outcome, Gibson’s initiative appeared to be little more than an insurance policy against the unexpected. The unexpected happened in Texas a month and a half ago, and the consequences are unfolding. The eight remaining justices announced Tuesday that they’d deadlocked on the right to work case argued in January, leaving public sector unions free in many states to continue extracting money from workers who don’t want to join. Public employees in Oregon who object to such coercion will now have to look to the ballot box rather than the court for relief. The right to work ¿ght is largely a debate about the lesser of two evils. One is mooching, and the other is the violation of employees’ First Amendment protections. In many states, including Oregon, public sector unions may collect money from non-members who hold jobs covered by collective bargaining — think public school teachers. Employees in such positions don’t have to belong to the union itself, but they must pay fees in lieu of dues. Such fees are appropriate, the thinking goes, because even nonmembers in covered positions bene¿t from the bargaining and representation of the union they are compelled to support. The alternative would be to allow free-ridership, in which nonmembers enjoy the bene¿ts of bargaining and representation without paying any costs. On the other hand, compelling nonmembers to contribute money to public sector unions creates signi¿cant First Amendment problems. The California teachers who brought the challenge upon which the Supreme Court deadlocked argued that bargaining with a government body is an inherently political act given the issues involved and the effects on ¿nite public dollars. Justice Anthony Kennedy echoed this sentiment, arguing that, “When you are dealing with a governmental agency, many critical points are matters of public concern. And is it not true that many teachers strongly, strongly disagree with the union position on teacher tenure, on merit pay, on merit promotion, on classroom size?” The union, Kennedy argued, “basically is making these teachers ‘compelled riders’ for issues on which they strongly disagree.” Compelling people to support positions with which they disagree is a greater affront than allowing for the possibility of free-ridership. Not only does the former run up against the Constitution’s free speech protections, but the latter does nothing more than require unions to make a case for the contributions they now may compel. Public sector employees are plenty smart enough to understand the consequences attached to their pocketbook decisions. And giving them that choice is not, as some like to claim, “anti-worker.” It’s just the opposite. Nonetheless, the possibility of allowing free-ridership can be a serious problem for anyone seeking reform via the ballot. It’s far easier, and perhaps more effective, for opponents to yell “moochers” repeatedly than it is to explain the First Amendment problems with forced union contributions. For that reason, Gibson’s initiative seeks to eliminate the possibility of free-ridership. Independent employees — those who wished neither to join a public sector union nor contribute to one — would be treated as if they did not belong to a bargaining unit, and their pay and bene¿ts would not be determined by union contracts. They wouldn’t be forced have to make contributions and they wouldn’t bene¿t from the work unions do. Gibson knows of no precedent for such an arrangement to prevent free-ridership, but believes it would work just ¿ne. Not all public employees in Oregon are represented by a union, she says, including those who work for the state Supreme Court, which has yet to rule on a number of challenges to the initiative’s ballot title. (The same goes, in fact, for the rest of the Oregon Judicial Department, which includes the Court of Appeals and circuit courts.) If the measure passes, says Gibson, the compensation of employees who are now compelled to pay fair share dues would be based on merit rather than a contract bargained by a union. Antonin Scalia’s death may have stalled the right to work debate in Washington, D.C., but that makes initiatives like Gibson’s even more crucial. Most people can agree that protecting the rights of public employees is a good thing, as is empowering them to make decisions about the use of their money. If these goals can be accomplished without contributing to free-ridership, so much the better. It’s largely a debate about the lesser of two evils: the violation of First Amendment protection, and mooching The (Un)Democratic Party T here are two prominent features single vote was cast, The Associated of the Democratic Party’s Press found that at least half of all presidential selection process those superdelegates (359) had that are thoroughly undemocratic already committed to supporting and undermine faith in the party: Clinton. Only eight had committed superdelegates (which favor Hillary to supporting Sanders. Clinton’s Clinton) and caucuses (which favor popularity among superdelegates has Bernie Sanders). only continued to rise. This is not to As The New York Times editorial Charles say that superdelegates can’t switch board explained: “Superdelegates allegiances, but the initial, premature Blow are party bigwigs — 712 Democratic declarations are the real problem. Comment leaders, legislators, governors and the Then, there are the caucuses. like. They can vote for any candidate As Zachary Roth wrote for at the nominating convention, regardless MSNBC ahead of the Iowa caucuses: “The of whether that candidate won the popular tightly limited hours are perhaps the most vote. These unpledged delegates make up 30 glaring problem — especially at a time when percent of the 2,382 delegates whose votes are Democrats are emphasizing the importance needed to win the nomination, and could thus of expanding access to voting, and are make all the difference.” responding to the needs of working people.” Let’s start there. He continued: “The Superdelegates, whose restricted hours are votes are not bound by the increasingly out of step not millions of individual voters, only with the direction of make up nearly a third of all the Democratic Party, but delegates. That, on its face, is also with broader economic outrageous. trends. Many of those who It’s no surprise that will be shut out are likely to superdelegates were created be low-wage workers, who by establishment elites to typically have little control increase their own power. over their schedules.” Superdelegates were This says nothing of the invented by a Democratic burden caucuses put on rule change in the early families without child care, 1980s after the nomination of George students and senior citizens. McGovern in 1972 and the devastating loss It’s the height of irony that the caucuses of Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan in 1980, have favored Sanders, the candidate promising precisely to help the establishment prevent the to decrease income inequality and ¿ght for nomination of insurgent candidates of whom higher wages. the establishment disapproved. (Sanders is So far, the Democrats have held 21 nothing if not an insurgent candidate.) primaries, including Democrats abroad, and As The New York Times reported in 14 caucuses in the states and the territories. 1981: “Gov. James B. Hunt Jr. of North Clinton won 16 primaries but just four Carolina, who heads the latest Democratic caucuses, while Sanders won 10 caucuses but rule-changing group, an unwieldy, 29-member just ¿ve primaries. For context, Democrats agglomeration of the innocent and the will have a total of 19 caucuses in the states experienced, describes its task as one of and the territories, while the Republicans writing ‘rules that will help us choose a have only 13. (North Dakota doesn’t hold nominee who can win and who, having won, a caucus or a primary, while Colorado and can govern effectively.’” Wyoming hold only informal caucuses, The article continued: “Much of this year’s where constituents vote for delegates, not deliberations have seemed infused with a candidates.) desire to deny future nominations to political Furthermore, caucuses dispense with the reincarnations of the Jimmy Carter of 1976.” privacy and anonymity of the voting booth So today we have an establishment and have the potential to inject an element structure that equates a single establishment of peer pressure into the democratic process. vote with thousands of citizen votes. People should be free to vote with their conscience — and in private! — and feel no As Tom Foreman wrote for CNN.com in pressure whatsoever to bend to the consensus 2008 when the role of superdelegates was of the community. also being hotly debated: “A few decades Indeed, the Boston Globe editorial page ago, Democratic leaders felt that sometimes, argued for the elimination of caucuses last Democratic voters were choosing poor month, saying: “In a caucus, voters who aren’t presidential candidates: campaigners who physically able to sit in a school gymnasium couldn’t win elections, or even if they could, and debate the merits of their candidate with they didn’t please Democratic kingmakers.” their neighbors get shut out. And obscure This system is unjust, in part because rules that vary from state to state governing those superdelegates are not prohibited from delegate allotment and proxy balloting make declaring their loyalty before voting has ended. At the very least, they should be barred for confusing inconsistencies when tallying results.” from committing before voting is completed For a Democratic Party that prides itself on in their own states. the grand ideals of inclusion and fairness, the Without this prohibition, the establishment nominating process is anything but. puts its thumb on the scale and signals its Ŷ approval and disapproval ahead of Democratic Charles M. Blow is The New York Times’s voters. How can this be defended? visual Op-Ed columnist. This cycle, nearly three months before a Superdelegates make up nearly a third of all delegates. That is outrageous. YOUR VIEWS Colorectal cancer kills hundreds of Oregonians This year, roughly 1,600 Oregonians will be diagnosed with colorectal cancer and approximately 660 Oregon residents will die from it — the second leading cause of cancer death in the country. Colorectal cancer is also preventable with early detection and screening, so this many people shouldn’t die from it. If you have private insurance, you’re not charged copayments for colonoscopies and other screenings. However, senior citizens on Medicare can get a large bill if a polyp is found and removed during their routine colonoscopy. That’s because of a loophole that reclassi¿es this procedure as diagnostic. Congress is considering legislation to remove this loophole and make these cancer screenings more attainable for everyone. In 2009, my dear friend Jim Schweigart, a retired 3endleton police of¿cer, died of a rare form of cancer shortly after retiring. To help myself heal from his death, I got involved with cancer advocacy so others don’t have to lose loved ones from it. As an American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network volunteer for Oregon’s 2nd Congressional District, my goal is to get lawmakers to help eliminate this disease. I’m grateful to Rep. Greg Walden for supporting lifesaving legislation to remove this Medicare barrier. Thanks to his support, we’re closer to making these preventive screenings more accessible for rural Oregonians. Karen Malcolm Pendleton 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.
