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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 6, 2016)
Page 6A OPINION East Oregonian Tuesday, December 6, 2016 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 Office Manager MIKE JENSEN Production Manager OUR VIEW A legacy of statesmanship Hardy Myers was a gentleman. That is a too-rare quality in today’s political climate, but it was more of the norm during Myers’ long tenure as a legislator, speaker of the Oregon House and attorney general. Myers, who died Tuesday at 77, will be remembered as one of the last of his breed, as well as a statesman in his own right. For generations, “The Oregon Way” — innovation and collaboration despite partisan Hardy Myers differences — governed state politics. Remnants of that time, when the common good often trumped party affiliation and political ego, still remain. For example, Oregon candidates rarely indicate their party affiliation on their lawn signs and in their fliers, whereas in neighboring Washington state, political party is featured prominently in campaign materials. And in contrast with other states, Oregon officials don’t plaster their names all over “Welcome to Oregon” signs; they usually drive their own cars instead of being chauffeured; and they commonly are on a first-name basis with constituents, as was “Hardy.” In that spirit of commonality a decade ago, Democratic state Senate President Peter Courtney and Republican House Speaker Karen Minnis worked together to improve the antiquated conditions at the Oregon State Hospital, where “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” was filmed, and to lay the groundwork for new psychiatric hospitals in Salem and Junction City. It’s no surprise that Courtney reacted to word of Myers’ death by saying that the news broke his heart: “He taught me everything. … He taught me to respect other people and other viewpoints. … He was a genuinely nice human being.” Myers was raised in central Oregon, and following his conscience was more important than his ideology as a Democrat. As a state representative, he succeeded — for a short time — in blocking reinstatement of the Oregon death penalty. His conscience stood up to intense political pressure inside and outside the Capitol. Republican U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith would later take a similar stand of conscience at the federal level, refusing to support physician- assisted suicide even though Oregon voters twice approved the process. Myers was on the other side, fighting to uphold the Oregon law. In the days since Myers’ death, he has been lauded for his national work on school safety after the Thurston High School shooting in 1998, his legal fight against tobacco companies and his tenacity in strengthening Oregon laws against domestic and sexual violence. But above all, Hardy Myers should be remembered as a true Oregonian. A man who kept his word. A statesman. A gentleman. 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 Monuments and presidents The Oregonian, Dec. 3 wo separate fights to protect two extraordinary patches of Oregon have in recent months escalated as President Barack Obama’s term comes to a close. That’s because he could, by the authority Congress granted to him in a far less populous time, singularly issue sweeping protections to the Owyhee Canyonlands in southeastern Oregon and the Cascade- Siskiyou Mountains in southwestern Oregon and northern California. The drive to limit development and resource use in both areas makes sense but for different reasons. Oregonians will never get back the lightless skies at night or the lonely beauty of ancient, eroded terrain cut through by wild rivers in the Owyhee if given over to mining or highway-building. Separately, Oregonians risk losing some of the site-specific, mind-bending biodiversity that makes the forested Cascade-Siskiyou realm a delicate universe requiring limits on use. But Obama should say no to desig- nating national monument status to the 2.5-million acre Owyhee Canyonlands. And he should say yes to doubling the already successful Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument. Selective wilderness designations, river protections and broad prohibitions on mining would be strategic, consequential steps Congress could take to protect the Owyhee Canyonlands, the largest undeveloped expanse of land in the lower 48 states. Significantly, doing so would ensure that an economically vital and long-established ranching culture goes unthreatened by monument designation. By contrast, in the more populated realm anchored by Ashland and Medford, the fish-bearing waterways and exotic flora that make the Siskyous distinct face potential threat from fragmented lands and warmer temperatures from climate change. Immediate monument expansion would connect fragmented lands within and outside the monument, T offering lifelines to potentially marooned species, and help preserve what the 2000 presidential decree called an “ecological wonder ... of rare and beautiful species of plants and animals, whose continued survival ... depends upon its continued ecological integrity.” Few dispute that President-elect Donald Trump might bring to the nation a different ethic about development and land use, and it remains true that roughly half of Oregon is owned by the federal government and run by agencies such as the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service. While most folks in rural Harney County and surrounding areas objected to the armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, simmering resentments across the American West about public lands management came to the fore. So Oregon must have a voice in deciding what’s right for the extraordinary landscape that Oregonians call home. That means the Owyhee and the Siskyous warrant bolstered protections only by actions that honor on-the-ground sentiment, essential to declaring shared destiny and preserving democracy. Years ago Idaho withstood fears that its Owyhee lands would win monument designation and dodged it by creating 518,000 acres of protected wilderness. It has worked well, among other things limiting mechanized uses of sensitive lands. But Oregon Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley in June proposed legislation that would shield more than 2 million acres of the Owyhee Canyonlands from mineral exploitation, including oil and gas drilling. It was a clear call to leave the ground the way it is and do so in such a way that supports farmers and ranchers who work in an environmentally sustainable fashion. They should press Congress to approve the legislation while citing a report released just last month from the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries showing plenty of untapped riches beneath the surface in southeastern Oregon. Roughly half of Oregon is owned by the federal government. OTHER VIEWS Trump’s agents of idiocracy L opportunity. ast week when Donald Trump Resistance is not about some sort began his so-called Thank of clairvoyant condemnation of acts You Tour in Cincinnati, he yet uncommitted, but rather about the had yet another opportunity to be resilience of memory, the rigidity of magnanimous and conciliatory, to step morality and the depth of wounds. beyond the division and acrimony of The truest measure of a leader is his campaign and into the unity and as much about how he or she attains healing necessary to be president of a strained nation. Charles power as how he or she wields it; As is his wont, he declined, instead while the latter is yet to be determined, Blow gloating and boasting, playing to the the former has been revealed in Comment minority of U.S. voters who chose devastating clarity. him, relishing his own impenitence. A Pew Research Poll released last He is choosing to push the United States month found that “voters’ ‘grades’ for the further apart rather than bring it closer way Trump conducted himself during the together. campaign are the lowest for any victorious And be clear: It is not the job of the defiant candidate in 28 years.” The report continued: to conform to a future president who makes “For the first time in Pew Research Center them completely uncomfortable. The burden postelection surveys, voters give the losing of unity lies with Trump, not his detractors. candidate higher grades than the winner.” “Just wait and see.” “Give him a chance.” Furthermore, Nate Silver responded to But what if what you’ve already seen is so one of Conway’s tweets: “Trump will soon beyond the pale that it’s irrevocable? What if become the first president who failed to win Trump has already squandered more chances a majority of the vote either in the general than most of us will ever have? election or in his primary,” meaning the What if Trump has shown himself beyond Republican primaries. He added, “That is to doubt and with absolute certainty to be a say, since 1972. Primaries weren’t widespread demagogue and bigot and xenophobe and before that. 45/46% of the vote can go a long given space and voice to concordant voices way under the right circumstances.” in the country and in his emerging Legion And there are disturbing signs about how a of Doom Cabinet? In that reality, resistance Trump administration will conduct itself, from isn’t about mindless obstruction by people the early diplomatic blunders that signal a blinded by the pain of ideological defeat worrisome break in the continuity of protocol, or people gorging on sour grapes. To the to his team nursing vendettas and continuing contrary, resistance is an act of radical, even to dangle the threat of jail in front of his revolutionary, patriotism. Resistance isn’t opponents. Last week Conway appeared to about damaging the country, but protecting it. waffle on whether Trump or a federal agency There is no Electoral College clause that during his term might still pursue prosecution blunts ferocious opposition to the demeaning of Clinton; Trump lackey Corey Lewandowski of women and racial, ethnic and religious forthrightly said of the executive editor of The minorities in this country; there is no Election New York Times: “He should be in jail.” Day reset on the coddling of white supremacy. And to add insult to injury, Trump Furthermore, the emergence of Trump as surrogate Scottie Nell Hughes uttered this a political figure has threatened to kill many jaw-dropping line last week on The Diane of the ideals that we hold dear: decency and Rehm Show: decorum, inclusion and empathy, truth and “One thing that has been interesting this facts. entire campaign season to watch is that Trump and his agents of idiocracy are now people that say facts are facts; they’re not engaged in an all-out crusade to exaggerate really facts. Everybody has a way, it’s kind the scope of his victory, rewrite racial history, of like looking at ratings or looking at a justify their vendettas and hostilities and erase glass of half-full water. Everybody has a the very distinction between true and false. way of interpreting them to be the truth or At a fiery exchange during a panel at not true.” She continued: “There’s no such Harvard, Hillary Clinton’s communications thing, unfortunately, anymore of facts.” Folks, director, Jennifer Palmieri, rightly accused Dimwit-ism is a disease easily spread and the Trump campaign of emboldening “white denigrators of the absolutism of truth are its supremacists and white nationalists.” vectors. The Trump campaign manager, Kellyanne This is why resistance isn’t only principled, Conway, barked back: “Do you think I ran but essential and even existential. a campaign where white supremacists had a We are not in an ordinary postelection platform? You’re going to look me in the face period of national unity and rapprochement. and tell me that?” We are facing the potential abrogation of “It did. Kellyanne, it did,” said Palmieri. fundamental U.S. ideals. We stand at the Yes Kellyanne, that is exactly what you did precipice, staring into an abyss that grows and no amount of personal outrage about darker by the day. being called out on it is going to rewrite that ■ history. Furthermore, everyone who sees Charles M. Blow is The New York Times’s you should say that to your face at every visual Op-Ed columist. YOUR VIEWS No more half-baked plans It’s decision time at Pendleton City Hall. Had an ADA-compliant sidewalk been included in the rebuild of the 15th to 13th Street project, the waste of time and money discussing the 13th Street stairway would never have occurred. Now, rather than admitting a mistake and proposing a permanent solution, the public works director is suggesting a temporary fix, a gravel path that is not ADA-compliant, without lights or hand rail, and may be paved at a later date. Wouldn’t it be nice to get a project done right the first time rather than a half-baked plan that is not a permanent solution? An issue like this is what’s important to taxpayers, rather than how many trees are needed in the Crabby’s parking lot to replace dead or dying crabapple trees — trees that seem so important to one council member, yet whose maintenance has been ignored by the city. Take a look next time you pass that lot. Unfortunately this is all too common on city trees throughout city property. Will the city council make the right decision or kick the can down the road for a future generation to deal with? Tune into the next city council meeting and see if the right choice is made. Rick Rohde Pendleton The tale of two cities The front page of a recent East Oregonian repeated the narrative of where two cities are going. One article described a new business coming to Hermiston (Ranch & Home), purchasing land, building a new facility, increasing the city’s tax base and employing people. The other article was another meandering diatribe regarding Pendleton’s UAS range up by the Road to Nowhere, and its new, highly experienced range manager. After all the glowing suppositions about the future, the proverbial bottom line comes when our range manager states his “GOAL” is to make the range “self-sustaining, and he believes it’s well on its way.” It’s well on its way to being self-sustaining, even with a skeleton crew? “Self-sustaining” means you generate just enough income to cover your expenses. How about generating enough income to provide for a couple dozen family-wage jobs at the UAS range, plus turning a profit for the city? If that’s not possible, I’d suggest our part-time economic development director broaden his search for economic growth for our city. Also this week the EO reported Hermiston is considering a bond election to build more school facilities. It stated they are bursting at their seams. And for the last several years the number of students in Pendleton’s schools has been declining. That is another sign of the health of your community. Do you have more families moving to your community, or moving away from your community? Bill Bridges Pendleton LETTERS POLICY The East Oregonian welcomes original let- ters of 400 words or less on public issues and public policies for publication in the newspaper and on our website. The news- paper reserves the right to withhold letters that address concerns about individual ser- vices 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.
