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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (July 16, 2016)
VIEWPOINTS Saturday, July 16, 2016 Quick takes Pokémon Go takes hold At least it gets them off the couch. But when I was that age I walked all over town because I was checking on job applications. — Scott Hernandez They will need jobs when their parents get the bill for the data next month. — Jason Primmer I think it’s fabulous! I live in Colorado and went out with my 19-year-old daughter today to the Riverwalk. There were people and families of all ages out playing this. — Kristy Sandidge-Fargher I’m waiting for someone to get shot — it can be dangerous I’ve seen people going through others yards and trying to get into back yards. You never know if it’s going to be a tweaker or game player. — Jason Edward Gruening Loose animals cause havoc We need legit animal control. This issue is bad in Umatilla, too. I see the same dogs running around town every day for months on end. You can’t catch them because they’re afraid of you. You’re afraid they will bite if you feed them. Then they wind up getting hit by cars or worse because people just don’t care. — OJ Rumilus This has been a problem in this area for years. About time to take care of it. They are running in packs north of town. — Lysa Watkins Conversation is wrong. Yes police are there to help but whether it is predators or “predators” you need to be aware of your surrounding and have a way to protect you and your kids. — Eric Meakins Pendleton downtown Let’s concentrate on getting business to ill empty storefronts irst and have business employees park and walk so customers can shop. — Patty DeGrofft One of the great lessons of the Twitter age is that much can be summed up in just a few words. Here are some of this week’s takes. Tweet yours @Tim_Trainor or email editor@eastoregonian. com, and keep them to 140 characters. East Oregonian Page 5A Gun safety is our responsibility W By Gun Owners for Responsible Ownership e are Oregonians. We are life-long gun owners, hunters and military veterans. Recently we came together around a common belief that there are sensible ways to reduce gun violence and protect the rights of law-abiding gun owners. We grew up using guns for hunting, personal protection, recreation and as part of our military service. And like many Oregonians, we have been wounded by the blast of gun violence in our families and communities. We enter the conversation about gun violence and gun safety knowing that we don’t have all the answers. Yet, we know we need to help lead the conversation about how best to balance responsible gun ownership with rational, legal protections from gun violence. Without this critical balance, the policy debate will again be deined by the extremes of “more guns everywhere” against “no guns anywhere.” In Oregon we’ve seen what happens when the “pendulum swing” is allowed to deine the outcome: two diametrically opposed factions lead to irrational decisions. That’s where we come in and that’s why we write this column. We want your help. It is our belief that if responsible gun owners and veterans don’t lead the way, our family members will not be safe in shopping malls, theaters and bars. And our loved ones, many of them our most honored veterans of war, will continue to take their own lives. We want to create solutions outside the polarized extremes of the gun debate. Again, we don’t have all the answers. But we know we want a new American sense of individual and community responsibility. I am responsible for my guns and for the safety of my family and my community. I must take responsibility to report and stop the radicalized or the mentally ill before they kill. I am responsible for the gun left on the table or under the car seat before a child picks it up. Contributed photo Authors Tom O’Conner, Jenna Yuille, Lou Jaffe, Robert Yuille and Paul Kemp We want a new America where gun owners demonstrate personal responsibility and respect for our fellow citizens And new rational laws like Oregon’s requirement of background checks for every gun purchase. We don’t support the current politics of giving the beneit of the doubt for gun ownership to people on a terrorist watch list. We do support responsible gun ownership and use. As hunters and gun owners we believe that the continued stance of “no new gun laws ever and more guns everywhere and anywhere” is the wrong answer and is a crumbling defense. It does not make sense. It is not supported by the American public. We believe that holding that position threatens the rights of responsible gun ownership. As one mass killing follows another, and politicians are frozen in the headlights of politics of the past, the pendulum will swing far outside of rational and effective actions. Our rights to responsible gun ownership are threatened by the polarization and inaction. Gun violence is an every-day reality in Oregon. Our Board of Directors includes men and women that lost family members in the 2012 Clackamas Town Center shooting. That gun, a Stag-15, was stolen If responsible gun owners and veterans don’t lead the way, our family members will not be safe in shopping malls, theaters and bars. by the gunman from a friend who left it unlocked and loaded with a full 30 round ammunition magazine. Most gun owners are responsible and safe. Oregon is leading the way to ilter out those that aren’t by requiring a background check each time a gun is sold. Oregon gun owners, hunters and veterans now can help break the logjam of the gun debate with informed and responsible leadership. Being responsible and safe requires that we all securely and safely store every irearm when not in use. Gun safes, cabinets and locks all help to ensure that children and others don’t create another tragedy. Using trigger and cable locks and storing ammunition separately are important and responsible safety steps. We support the dealers and manufacturers that promote these safety requirements. Our organization is providing free gun locks as part of our discussions around the state. It’s up to us to create and demonstrate a new standard of individual vigilance and responsibility. We believe that with commitment and dedication we can chart a new conversation about protecting our ability to use our irearms and protecting our people in America. It’s not one or the other. We hope you will join us. Please visit our website, www.responsibleownership. org, to learn more or contact us at info@ responsibleownership.org to get involved. ■ This op-ed was written by Tom O’Conner, Jenna Yuille, Lou Jaffe, Robert Yuille and Paul Kemp. They are gun owners, veterans, and victims of gun violence, or all of the above in many cases. It’s long past time to free a man unjustly imprisoned By MIKE BAUGHMAN Writers on the Range S o much time has passed that many Americans have forgotten, if they ever knew, what happened to an American Indian named Leonard Peltier, who has spent more than 40 years conined in various federal penitentiaries. This summer, a group of his family members and friends are traveling the country in an attempt to salvage what remains of his life, and to remind us all that no statute of limitations pertains to the application of justice. Peltier’s ordeal began when two FBI agents, Ron Williams and Jack Coler, were shot to death on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation in 1975. No one familiar with the details of the case believes that Leonard committed the murders, and Peter Matthiessen explored this miscarriage of justice in his 1983 book “In the Spirit of Crazy Horse.” Dee Brown, author of “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,” called Matthiessen’s book “the irst solidly documented account of the U.S. government’s renewed assault upon American Indians that began in the 1970s.” The plain truth is that with two FBI agents shot dead on an Indian reservation, the government needed a conviction. At Peltier’s trial before an all-white jury, prosecutors used false testimony against him, some of it obtained through torture. One particularly repugnant example: The FBI produced afidavits by a woman named Mabel Poor Bear, who said she was Leonard’s girlfriend and claimed to have seen him shoot Williams and Coler at close range. But Poor Bear had never met Leonard, didn’t even know what he looked like, and was proved to have been nowhere near the scene of the murders. When she tried to recant her testimony, claiming that the FBI had threatened to take her child away if she didn’t sign the afidavit, the judge refused to hear her testimony. Amnesty International classiies Leonard as a political prisoner. Some of his other defenders include Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Robert Cantuar, a former archbishop of Canterbury. Michael Apted produced an acclaimed documentary ilm exploring the case, Incident at Oglala, which was narrated by Robert Redford. Despite the FBI’s fraudulent evidence and perjured testimony, Peltier remains in federal prison. He went in as a 31-year-old and is now 71. He has been transferred often, from Leavenworth, Kansas, to Terre Haute, Indiana, to Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, to Canaan, Pennsylvania, back to Lewisburg, and inally to Florida. Everywhere he’s been, inmates have jumped and beaten him, likely with the collusion of guards. Now he is going blind from diabetes, suffers from kidney failure and is susceptible to strokes. Ed Little Crow, a Lakota living in Oregon, says that all Peltier wants “is a chance to see his family and work on old cars. If that digniied black man who’s president doesn’t pardon him, he’ll die in prison. This is his last chance.” When Peltier was sentenced, the applicable law stated that an inmate with a good record should, after 30 years, be released. His record was good, but, instead of freedom, his parole board gave him another 15-year sentence. His next hearing is scheduled for 2024. Before his second term ended, President Bill Clinton, under pressure from Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye and billionaire philanthropist David Geffen, among others, was expected to grant executive clemency. But after several hundred FBI agents, along with the dead agents’ family members, demonstrated outside the White House, Clinton on his last day in ofice pardoned a inancier named Marc Rich instead. Rich had been indicted for tax evasion and illegal oil deals, including a purchase of $200 million worth of oil from Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran while 53 Americans were being held hostage there, and selling oil to the apartheid regime in South Africa despite a U.N. embargo. Geffen called Rich’s pardon “a sign of corrupted values.” On my last trip to South Dakota, I visited the Pine Ridge Reservation. In the town of Pine Ridge, I talked to the man I’d come to see and then drove north to Wounded Knee, where I spent the long afternoon alone. There was a pleasantly cool north wind and a clear blue sky. I walked and thought. This quiet place was where, in 1890, the U.S. 7th Cavalry surrounded an encampment of Lakotas, and for no justiiable reason opened ire. By some estimates, as many as 300 Indian men, women and children were slaughtered by the time the iring inally stopped. To make a foul deed even worse, at least 20 of the soldiers who participated in this senseless massacre were awarded the Medal of Honor. There’s nothing anyone can ever do about what happened at Wounded Knee. But, though very belatedly, something can still be done about Leonard Peltier. I hope President Obama sets this man free. ■ Mike Baughman is a contributor to Writers on the Range, the opinion service of High Country News. He is a writer in Ashland. The plain truth is that with two FBI agents shot dead on an Indian reservation, the government needed a conviction. Many Republicans steer clear of convention Lancaster (Pa.) Newspapers F ree food. Slapping backs and kissing babies. Open bar. What politician would miss that, on purpose, no less? That’s what political conventions are, or at least what they have been, in modern history. They tend to generate very little actual news, beyond who is speaking and anything controversial or bizarre that might be said. Conventions are an opportunity to see and be seen. Usually. But Republicans will soon convene in Cleveland for their national convention, and many members of the GOP will avoid the Quicken Loans Arena as if it’s under quarantine for measles. Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee for president, promises a “celebrity- heavy” convention. Former basketball coach Bob Knight is a “maybe.” OK. Boxing promoter Don King and his hair, both of whom live in Cleveland, plan to attend. It looked for a while like New England Patriots’ quarterback Tom Brady would show, but now it looks like he’s not coming. You can guess what might have happened. Someone in Tom’s inner circle, maybe a wise old uncle, pulled him aside. The uncle put a hand irmly on Tom’s shoulder, looked Tom in the eye, and whispered, “Tommy, my boy, you might want to sit this one out.” “Why?” “Do I really need to spell it out?” “But I like him.” “Yeah, well, let me put it this way. Letting the air out of a few footballs versus the Hindenburg. Capeesh?” In addition to Brady, a quick glance at the RSVPs shows that among those who checked “I decline” or “I’m sorting my sock drawer that week” are Ohio’s Republican Gov. John Kasich; Mitt Romney, the GOP’s last nominee for president; former Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush; and U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, among others. House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will, it appears, be at the convention. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who has been mentioned as a possible running mate for Trump, will also be there. There’s no doubt this is unusual but political scientists seem to think it’s because no one wants to be spotted at the scene if the convention turns into a disaster. Following your nominee around, with broom and dustpan in hand, trying to clean up mess after mess, gets old. First you clean up, then you sidestep the mess, then you avoid the area altogether. It should also be noted that only one of three local delegates has committed to voting for Trump at the convention. When you have people like Matt Borges, the Ohio Republican Party chairman, saying things about his nominee and the convention such as, “He’s going to have to bring all his skills to bear to make this work,” as he told The Associated Press, there’s a disconnect somewhere. That’s not the kind of the thing party leaders typically say about their own candidate at a convention. Clearly, many Republicans are trying to distance themselves from Trump. The mind does boggle at what Trump can or will do to make this convention work for him and the GOP without it turning into the total protest-illed freak show that some have predicted. Delegates are split. Demonstrations are planned. Corporate sponsors have bailed. There’s one person and one person only who has the opportunity to turn potential chaos into something productive, and that is the nominee himself. If Trump has one last chance to galvanize the party and, at the same time, look like the president of the United States, this is it. Trump has been urged by GOP leaders to transition, which is political-speak for “start acting presidential, or we’ll lose big.” But, in Trump’s mind, he must be thinking, “I’ve gotten this far being myself. I’ve won the nomination for president for crying out loud. Why should I change now?” Perhaps, when the presumptive nominee stands on the stage in Cleveland and sees who’s not in the audience, he’ll have his answer.