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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 6, 2016)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Saturday, August 6, 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 A farewell to old fair grounds It’s the most Umatilla time of the And successful, popular ones, too. year. Umatilla County is host of the The county fair kicks off today ifth-most visited fair in Oregon, with a parade, and on Tuesday with despite being just the 14th-most events and activities at the Umatilla populated county. It means we show County Fair Grounds in Hermiston. up and celebrate our county, and the Some events have already started fair board puts on a show that keeps and inished — the people coming back. Umatilla County And we haven’t Umatilla is Fair has grown just gussied it up like too big to it in a in Western Oregon, the 14th-most calendar week. where county fairs populated county have morphed And it will soon be too big for food festivals in Oregon, but into the old location and beer gardens has the ifth-most and carnivals of in downtown Hermiston. Some a more urban, visited fair. would argue it has interchangeable been for years. sort. This is still Although 2016 your classic fair: was intended to be the irst year agriculture, livestock and craft- at the new Eastern Oregon Trade centric. And it’s all kid-centric, too. and Event Center, that project It’s a place the whole family can has been constantly beset with have fun attending, and can ind mismanagement, missed deadlines something to compete in as well. and cost overruns. Next year’s rodeo Hopefully your submissions are is in serious doubt. in, your cows and pigs are fat and But we can worry about next your horses are well-groomed. It’s year’s fair next year. county fair time, for the last time in This is one inal show at the downtown Hermiston. And this time downtown Hermiston location, we mean it. which has hosted fairs for decades. Enjoy. 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 Corporate tax a tax on everything The Bend Bulletin M easure 97 is a bad idea, but there’s clever marketing behind it. The most recent is a study produced by Our Oregon and the Oregon Consumer League that reaches a lawed conclusion. Let’s review. Measure 97 is on the November ballot. Our Oregon helped get it there. The measure would create a 2.5 percent tax on the sales of C-corporations exceeding $25 million, which does not include The Bulletin. It would raise some $3 billion in taxes per year. Raising corporate taxes can be popular. It’s not like a straightforward tax on Oregonians that would be felt directly, such as a sales tax, an income tax or a property tax. It’s a tax on big, impersonal corporations. It’s a sneaky tax. The impact of the corporate tax doesn’t show up on a sales receipt. It’s largely invisible. But who pays? Corporations are made of people. There are the owners, the managers and the employees. When taxes go up, proits go down and there is less money for the owners, managers and employees. It may not mean people lose jobs, though that could happen. It could very well mean that new people are not hired, new equipment is not purchased, or existing employees don’t get raises or improvements in beneits. The corporation could also raise the prices on the goods it sells, passing the cost to the consumer. Our Oregon paid Portland State economists to do a study of the impacts of Measure 97. Guess what the study said? The tax could increase prices to consumers. The Legislative Revenue Ofice, a nonpartisan state agency, was less equivocal. It estimated that the increase would be about $600 more a year in taxes per Oregonian. That’s bad news for the supporters of Measure 97. Our Oregon and the Oregon Consumer League tried put a better spin on it. They looked at prices of goods sold by national chains in different states. Their study points out that the prices are remarkably similar, despite the differences in tax policy in different states. “Our study shows that, despite what corporations may say, an increase in state corporate taxes will not translate into higher prices for common, consumer goods,” the report concludes. “Measure 97 affects national companies, and national companies use national pricing.” That’s a lawed conclusion. You can’t take $3 billion in taxes and not expect a price will be paid. First of all, Measure 97 does not only affect national companies. It will affect C-Corporations in Oregon with sales of $25 million or more. Second and more importantly, some national companies may have national pricing strategies. That doesn’t mean that their national or Oregon prices would not be lower if their tax burden were lower or that prices won’t increase if Measure 97 passes. And don’t forget all of Measure 97’s other laws — some pointed out by the study that Our Oregon paid for and others by the Legislative Revenue Ofice’s analysis. Measure 97 socks it to the poor. It’s going to have a regressive impact on consumers, meaning it is going to hit the poor the hardest. It could tax some goods over and over again as they move through the production process. It forces businesses to pay whether or not they are making a proit. Measure 97 is so rich in faults it deserves to fail. OTHER VIEWS Trump’s enablers will inally have to take a stand U p through the convention there impossible for him to make empathetic were all sorts of Republican connection. Fear is his only bond. oficeholders who weren’t Some people compare Trump to really for Trump, but they weren’t the great authoritarians of history, but really against him. They sort of that’s wrong. They were generally endorsed him implicitly, while trying disciplined men with grandiose to change the subject. plans. Trump is underdeveloped and Their bodies squirmed when they unregulated. were asked about their nominee. They He is a slave to his own pride, David refused to look you straight in the eye. compelled by a childlike impulse to Brooks They made little apologetic comments lash out at anything that threatens his Comment so you would still like them even fragile identity. He appears to have no though they were doing this shameful ability to experience reverence, which thing. is the foundation for any capacity to admire They had all sorts of squirrelly or serve anything bigger than self, to want to formulations about why it was OK to ride the learn about anything beyond self, to want to Trump train: He can be tamed or surrounded know and deeply honor the people around and improved. Sure, he’s got some real you. weaknesses, but he’s more or less a normal Republicans are not going to be able to candidate who is at least better than Hillary. help the 70-year-old man-child grow up over Over the past few days, the next few months. Nor Trump has destroyed are they going to be able to this middle ground. He’s get him to withdraw from exposed the wet noodle the race. A guy who can Republicans as suckers, or raise $82 million mostly worse. Trump has shown in small donations has a that he is not a normal passionate niche following. candidate. He is a political But they can at least get rampage charging ever more out of the enabling business. wildly out of control. And First, they can acknowledge no, he cannot be changed. that they are being He cannot be sucked down a nihilistic contained because he is whirlpool. Second, they can psychologically off the acknowledge the long-term chain. With each passing damage being done to the week he displays the classic country and to themselves. symptoms of medium-grade Amid the chaos, all sorts mania in more disturbing of ugliness is surfacing. forms: inlated self-esteem, See the video of the horriic sleeplessness, impulsivity, things shouted at Trump aggression and a compulsion to offer advice rallies compiled by Times reporters. Moreover, on subjects he knows nothing about. Trump is permanently tainting the names of His speech patterns are like something conservatism and the Republican Party and straight out of a psychiatric textbook. Manics the many good men and women who have display something called “light of ideas.” built and served it. As Ben Shapiro writes in It’s a formal thought disorder in which ideas National Review, “Trump asks something tumble forth through a disordered chain of more — your political soul.” associations. One word sparks another, which Events are going to force Republicans sparks another, and they’re off to the races. As off the fence. For the past many months one trained psychiatrist said to me, compare Republican leaders have been condemning Donald Trump’s speaking patterns to a Robin Trump’s acts while sticking with Trump the Williams monologue, but with insults instead man. Trump is making that position ridiculous of jokes. and shameful. You either stand with a man Trump insults Paul Ryan, undermines whose very essence is an insult to basic NATO and raises the specter of nuclear war. decency, or you don’t. Advisers can’t control Trump’s brain because Those who don’t will have to start building Trump can’t control it himself. a Republican Party in Exile. They will have He also cannot be contained because he to tell the country what they honestly think lacks the inner equipment that makes decent of Donald Trump. They will have to build a behavior possible. So many of our daily social parallel campaign structure that will survive if interactions depend on a basic capacity for Trump implodes, a structure of congressional empathy. But Trump displays an absence of and local candidates. They will have to this quality. jointly propose a clear manifesto — ive or 10 He looks at the grieving mother of a war policies the party in exile ardently supports. hero and is unable to recognize her pain. There comes a time when neutrality and He hears a crying baby and is unable to laying low become dishonorable. If you’re not recognize the infant’s emotion or the mother’s in revolt, you’re in cahoots. When this period discomfort. He is told of women being and your name are mentioned, decades hence, sexually harassed at Fox News and is unable your grandkids will look away in shame. to recognize their trauma. ■ The same blindness that makes him David Brooks became a New York Times impervious to global outrage makes it Op-Ed columnist in September 2003. Over the past few days, Trump has destroyed the middle group. He’s exposed the wet noodle Republicans as suckers, or worse. YOUR VIEWS Round-Up Court should look like ‘real women’ I was born in Pendleton and lived there throughout my childhood and I still read the local news at times, especially during the Round-Up season. I am dismayed that professional pictures of the queen and her court have become so “photoshopped” over the past few seasons. They resemble actors in the “Stepford Wives” movie! Please don’t do that to them; let their individuality show — freckles, smiles, short and/or curly hair show, uneven teeth, if accurate, dimples, light/darker skin, etc. TV has enough “Botoxed beauties” on screen for everyone to see. Look at the daily female anchors — they all look the same, same hair style and color (blonde and long!). I know the Pendleton real cowgirls aren’t Botoxed, but their expressions have been “scrubbed” to look like that. Bring back our real women, as I remember them. Judi Carlisle, San Diego, Calif. LETTERS POLICY The East Oregonian welcomes original letters of 400 words or less on public issues and policies for publication. Submitted letters must be signed by the author and include the city of residence and a daytime phone number. Send letters to 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@eastoregonian.com.