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OPINION
East Oregonian
Wednesday, October 5, 2016
OTHER VIEWS
Founded October 16, 1875
KATHRYN B. BROWN
Publisher
DANIEL WATTENBURGER
Managing Editor
TIM TRAINOR
Opinion Page Editor
MARISSA WILLIAMS
Regional Advertising Director
MARCY ROSENBERG
Circulation Manager
JANNA HEIMGARTNER
Business Ofice Manager
MIKE JENSEN
Production Manager
OUR VIEW
Attorney General race
offers a clear choice
The East Oregonian editorial
board went into our meeting with
the two candidates for attorney
general open to an alternative.
Incumbent Democrat Ellen
Rosenblum has done ine work,
but journalists are deeply invested
in much-needed public records
reforms championed by Rosenblum
and Governor Kate Brown. Those
reforms have yet to be enacted, and
many believe they lack the requisite
teeth to make Oregon government
more transparent.
Yet after the meeting, minds were
quickly made up: Rosenblum is the
only choice for the job.
Her opponent, Republican Daniel
Crowe, is not ready for a statewide
position, and his bluster directed
toward Rosenblum was clearly
misplaced. He tried to saddle her
with mistakes that were made before
she even took ofice, and when
made aware of that fact, was unable
to muster another line of attack.
Rosenblum, on the other hand, is
a quiet hand in a dificult job, doing
her best to avoid the pitfalls that
her predecessor John Kroger fell
into. Kroger was unable to inish
his term, nor get much meaningful
legislation passed. Rosenblum
considers both the legal and political
ramiications and, while that may
make her proposals imperfect, it
does mean they have a better chance
of becoming law.
Rosenblum is the clear choice to
be re-elected.
Read has experience,
expertise for treasurer
People accuse those running for
treasurer of being a boring lot, but
perhaps that is what makes a good
treasurer.
The four people gunning for the
seat do lean toward the soft-spoken
and programmatic: Democrat Tobias
Read, Republican Jeff Gudman,
Independent Chris Telfer and
Working Families/Progressive Chris
Henry.
Only Read, Gudman and Telfer
have actively campaigned for the
seat, and we support Read.
Read has the more complete
résumé, being one of the longest-
serving state representatives (since
2007) who rose to House Speaker
pro tempore. He also has worked for
the U.S. Treasury and has experience
in the private sector, at Nike.
Telfer, a current Oregon Lottery
commissioner, is the most interesting
alternative, who has tossed out
ways the state could improve the
dangerous and ineficient marijuana
banking system.
Still, treasurer is not a position
where you want to take risks. The
growing problem that the next
oficeholder will have to face
down is PERS, a rising menace to
Oregon’s state budget.
As treasurer, Read’s planned
improvements are small but helpful:
modernizing the investment
program, hiring state employees
to manage investments rather than
farming out the job to expensive
consultants, and slashing Wall Street
fees in the process.
It will take an increase in state
employees and their compensation
packages, but the idea makes sense.
If a sizable portion of the state’s
budget is dependent on returns from
our investment portfolio, then we
should have more control over that
investment.
All in all, Read has the right
amount of experience and expertise
and we think he would do a
serviceable job in a very important
position.
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
Oregon East Symphony
starts season with
brilliance
Saturday night at the Vert was a very
fun evening. Oregon East Symphony
chose as their irst offering of the season
“City Girl,” a silent movie from the
1920s.
It was shown with an original modern
score composed by John Paul. This
score enhanced the character motivation
and action of the ilm beautifully. The
musicians played with their usual
brilliance.
Keep your eye on future
performances with the Oregon East
Symphony.
Marva Dawley
Pendleton
Opioid crisis fueled by
drug maker lobbyists
and special interests
Lawmakers get a huge piece of
their campaign cash from donors
with ties to the prescription painkiller
business. As the election approaches,
citizens would like to know what local
politicians running for ofice have ever
accepted donations from pharmaceutical
companies who make painkillers and
lobbyists groups funded by drug makers.
Between 2006 and 2015, the makers
of prescription painkillers have spent
millions in campaign contributions to
help kill or weaken measures aimed at
preserving their status quo of aggressive
prescribing. This explains when one
vet recently broke her hand, she was
stunned to be prescribed 180 OxyContin
pills. She needed eight. In other words,
painkillers are being over-prescribed.
Four of every ive heroin addicts
began their nightmare being prescribed
painkillers, twice as strong, for an injury
or surgery. The makers of painkillers
are reaping enormous proits from this
aggressive prescribing. The drug makers
fund lobbyists to delay and defend
anytime the painkillers’ addictive nature
comes under increasing scrutiny.
The Pain Care Forum, a lobbyist
group, outs prescription opioids as
having a vital role in improving the
quality of life for millions. Remember,
OxyContin was created for fatal cancer,
not broken ankles or carpal tunnel.
Oregon ranks third in the U.S. for
having the largest portion of its total
contributions to politicians come from
Pain Care Forum.
There have been about 19 lobbyists
hired each year for the past decade to
represent members of the Pain Care
Forum. There have been an average of
about 30 lobbyists hired each year for
the past decade to represent members
of the Pain Care Forum in Washington
state. That puts Washington second
in the nation for receiving the largest
portion of its campaign money from the
opioid industry and its allies. Nevada
ranked irst.
Put another way, if the prescriptions
were passed out evenly, two
Washingtonians out of every three
people in the state would have opioids
on hand. While in Oregon, doctors
prescribed painkillers at a rate that nearly
reached one per person last year.
The AP and Center For Public
Integrity found out this information in
September 2016. Please inform your
readers on each candidate’s acceptance
of donations from pharmaceutical
companies before the election.
In 2007, executives at Purdue
Pharma, the maker of OxyContin,
pleaded guilty to misleading the public
about the drug’s addictive nature
and agreed to $600 million in ines.
Since then, it appears the industry has
paid large amounts to Oregon and
Washington lawmakers. Does this
explain why Umatilla County has no
medical opiate detox?
Also, please support Ryan Lehnert
for sheriff. He is up to date on the
devastating opioid crisis.
Sally Sundin
Walla Walla
Trump, taxes and citizenship
Y
ou can be a taxpayer or you can be
glow of love of country. It continues with a
a citizen. If you’re a taxpayer your
sense of sweet gratitude that the founders of
role in the country is deined
the country, for all their laws, were
by your economic and legal status.
able to craft a structure of government
Your primary identity is individual.
that is suppler and more lasting than
You’re perfectly within your rights to
anything we seem to be able to craft
do everything you legally can to look
today.
after your self-interest.
The citizen enjoys a sweet
Within this logic, it’s perfectly ine
reverence for all the gifts that have
for Donald Trump to have potentially
been handed down over time, and a
generous piety about country that is the
paid no income taxes, even over a long
David
period of time. As Trump and his allies
Brooks opposite of arrogance.
Out of this sweet parfait of
have said, he would have broken no
Comment
emotions comes a sense of a common
law. He would have taken advantage
beauty that transcends individual
of the deductions just the way the
beauty. There’s a sense of how a lovely society
rest of us take advantage of the mortgage
is supposed to be. This
deduction or any other;
means that the economic
it’s just that he had more
desire to save money on
deductions to draw upon.
taxes competes with a larger
As Trump and his
desire to be part of a lovely
advisers have argued, it
world.
is normal practice in our
In a lovely society we
society to pay as little in
all pull our fair share. Some
taxes as possible. There
things the government does
are vast industries to help
are uncontroversial goods:
people do this. There is no
protecting us from enemies,
wrong here.
preserving the health and
The problem with the
dignity of the old and inirm.
taxpayer mentality is that
These things have to be paid
you end up serving your
for, and in the societies we
individual interest short
admire, everybody helps.
term but soiling the nest you
In a lovely society
need to be happy in over the
everybody practices a kind
long term.
of social hygiene. There
A healthy nation isn’t
are some things that are
just an atomized mass
legal but distasteful and
of individual economic
corrupt. In a lovely society people shun these
and legal units. A nation is a web of giving
corrupt and corrupting things. The tax code
and getting. You give to your job, and your
is a breeding ground for corruption, so they
employer gives to you. You give to your
don’t take advantage. The lottery system
neighborhood, and your neighborhood gives
to you. You give to your government, and your immiserates the poor so they don’t contribute
to its acceptability by playing.
government gives to you.
In a lovely society everyone feels privilege,
If you orient everything around individual
but the rich feel a special privilege. They
self-interest, you end up ripping the web of
know they have been given more than they
giving and receiving.
deserve, and that it is actually not going to
Neighbors can’t trust neighbors.
hurt all that much to try to be worthy of what
Individuals can’t trust their institutions, and
they’ve received.
they certainly can’t trust their government.
Citizens aren’t just sacriicing out of the
Everything that is not explicitly prohibited is
nobility of their heart. They serve the common
permissible. Everybody winds up suspicious
good for their own enrichment, too. If they
and defensive and competitive. You wind up
practice politics they can learn prudence;
alone at 3 a.m. miserably tweeting out at your
if they serve in the military they can learn
enemies.
courage. Public citizenship is the path to
And this is exactly the atomized mentality
personal growth.
that is corroding America.
You can say that a billionaire paying no
Years ago, David Foster Wallace put it
taxes is ine and legal. But you have to adopt
gently: “It may sound reactionary, I know.
an overall mentality that shuts down a piece of
But we can all feel it. We’ve changed the way
your heart, and most of your moral sentiments.
we think of ourselves as citizens. We don’t
That mentality is entirely divorced from
think of ourselves as citizens in the old sense
the mentality of commonality and citizenship.
of being small parts of something larger and
That mentality has side effects. They may
ininitely more important to which we have
lead toward riches, but they lead away from
serious responsibilities. We do still think of
happiness.
ourselves as citizens in the sense of being
■
beneiciaries — we’re actually conscious
David Brooks became a New York Times
of our rights as American citizens and the
nation’s responsibilities to us and ensuring we Op-Ed columnist in September 2003. He has
been a senior editor at The Weekly Standard,
get our share of the American pie.”
a contributing editor at Newsweek and the
The older citizenship mentality is a
Atlantic Monthly, and a commentator on PBS.
different mentality. It starts with the warm
It is normal
practice in our
society to pay
as little in taxes
as possible.
There are vast
industries to help
people do this.
There is no
wrong here.
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.