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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 8, 2016)
Page 6A OPINION East Oregonian Thursday, December 8, 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 Voters must make sure Pendleton gives marijuana a chance The majority of Pendleton voters included. And the zoning rules themselves that went to the polls in November supported the operation and taxation go beyond the state regulations and limit possible business locations to a of both medical and recreational dozen or fewer commercial spaces. marijuana within city limits. Perhaps most head-scratchingly, They expected the city would take steps, once the votes were tallied, to Pendleton proposes charging put that democratic voice into law. marijuana shop owners an additional Yet the proposed fee to process the set of rules drafted 3 percent local tax by the city attorney Only government that the city is owed. and put before Only government can, with a Pendleton council can, with a straight for the first time face, charge you a straight face, Tuesday are not for giving them charge you a fee fee business-friendly, money. and they would unnecessary, for giving them too. It’s According make it exceedingly money. difficult to operate to the Oregon in the city. Department of Revenue, they are The rules are prohibitively expensive, duplicitous happy to collect that tax and pass with state regulations, and leave the it along to the city. Sure, Pendleton city vulnerable to lawsuit — thus can do it themselves, but why set putting local tax dollars on the line. up that structure when only one or two such businesses will be A quick rundown of the located here? Hood River will use proposed rules include an $850 the Department of Revenue, via non-refundable license application a policy created by the League of fee. Who would hand that check Oregon Cities. The city would get over to a city that has not shown 96 percent of the local tax under it is open to such a business? If an applicant is approved, the city would that arrangement. And that’s the other thing: then charge the business owner $550 for a recreational business and $300 lawyers for the Oregon Cannabis Association are eyeing restrictions for medical. that are too onerous — which they Such operations costs vary will target with suits. It’s underway throughout Oregon. in Eugene right now. If no business In heavily regulated Portland can operate here, Pendleton would (the city that, ahem, works) it costs be vulnerable to an expensive $975 to apply for a medical and lawsuit. recreational retail license. Once The city of Pendleton, which can that license is approved, a medical retailer pays $3,500 a year to operate now tap into statewide marijuana dollars, gets a bigger slice of that pie and a recreational retailer pays for every business that operates here. $4,975 annually. But in Hood River, where there is It’s better for the city’s bottom line to have safe, successful operations no business license, retailers pay no right here. We bring in local tax fee to apply and no fee to operate. dollars and get a bigger share from It’s the same in Grant County and the state. in the city of Huntington — and The city has until Jan. 3 to put we’ll leave it up to you to determine their regulations in place. The which municipality Pendleton proposal that was read for the first resembles more. time Tuesday will go before the city Pendleton also plans to require council twice more, including at a mandatory owner and employee background checks, which is already Dec. 20 hearing. Pendleton voters, if they want the city to enact their will, a state requirement. It is unclear should call their councilor or show if the city plans to charge for and up at a meeting in order to make sure then pay for their own duplicitous Pendleton benefits from marijuana checks, which would raise costs for everyone involved — city taxpayers businesses. 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. 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. OTHER VIEWS Senate Democrats plan to ‘Ashcroft’ their good friend Jeff Sessions T here’s been talk among some than Attorney General Ashcroft ... His conservatives and Republicans nomination will present a voluminous that Democrats are plotting to record spanning tens of thousands, if “Bork” the nomination of Sen. Jeff not hundreds of thousands of pages.” Sessions to be attorney general. That’s The Democrats — Patrick Leahy, not right. What Democrats really hope Dianne Feinstein, Richard Durbin, to do is to “Ashcroft” the man soon- Sheldon Whitehouse, Amy Klobuchar, to-be Minority Leader Charles Schumer Al Franken, Chris Coons and Richard likes to call “my good friend from Blumenthal — demanded that the Byron Alabama.” Sessions’ supporters have committee hear from witnesses York expected it from the moment President- who will discuss Sessions’ views Comment elect Trump made the Alabama senator on “immigration; violence against his first Cabinet pick. women; civil rights, including LGBT Sixteen years ago, John Ashcroft was a protections; racial justice and hate crimes; Republican senator nominated by a Republican workers’ rights; national security and civil president who lost the popular vote but won liberties; voting rights; criminal justice; and the Electoral College after a particularly government conflicts of interest, transparency contentious election. and oversight.” The 2000 race also left the Senate split Sessions will receive a “tough vetting,” 50-50, with Republican Vice President Dick promised Schumer, Sessions’ good friend from Cheney breaking ties. In a New York who has taken power-sharing arrangement, part in many confirmation the Judiciary Committee hearings on the Judiciary was evenly split, 9-to-9, Committee but will leave with a Republican chairman. the panel when he becomes If Democrats could stick minority leader in January. together, they could hold Grassley is not ready to Ashcroft to a 9-9 tie in go along. “The confirmation committee, which would have allowed the process of John Ashcroft to be attorney general nomination to go on to the full Senate, but turned into a reckless campaign that snowballed would also have allowed Democrats to portray into an avalanche of innuendo, rumor and spin,” it as a vote of no confidence in a top George W. the chairman said in a statement after meeting Bush appointee. Sessions on Tuesday. “That will not happen In Judiciary Committee hearings, Democrats here.” attacked Ashcroft furiously. They extended “The hearings for the four most recent the hearings to four days, called a long slate attorneys general lasted one to two days of outside witnesses, and attempted to portray each,” Grassley continued. “And at each of Ashcroft as a kind of neo-Confederate, those hearings, three to nine outside witnesses hyper-religious abortion fanatic who was, in the testified. Nine witnesses testified at the hearing perennial favorite formulation of Democratic for Attorney General Lynch, seven witnesses attacks on Republican nominees, “insensitive” testified at the hearings for Attorneys General on issues of race. Holder and Mukasey, and three witnesses In the end, Ashcroft won the committee vote, testified at the hearing for Attorney General 10 to 8, only because Democratic Sen. Russ Gonzales.” Feingold, a friend of Ashcroft’s, voted to move The bottom line from Republicans: No the nomination to the floor as an “olive branch” Ashcrofting. to the new administration. Democrats hated Sessions has, of course, seen it all, from Feingold’s apostasy, while Ashcroft, damaged both sides. He was famously rejected by the but alive, eventually won confirmation. committee in 1986 when he was nominated to Now, Republicans have a 52-48 advantage a seat on the U.S. District Court in Alabama. in the Senate and will likely have a one-vote (Many Republicans believe that Sessions’ advantage when the Judiciary Committee is confirmation fight was a Democratic trial run formally organized in January. A party-line vote for attacking the Supreme Court nomination of would win for Sessions. But that hasn’t stopped Robert Bork the next year, meaning Sessions Democrats from looking back to the Ashcroft was borked before Bork.) precedent when, without a majority, they Sessions went on to win a Senate seat in managed to beat up one of the new president’s 1996, took a place on the Judiciary Committee, nominees. and was a vocal advocate for Ashcroft in In a letter Monday to Sen. Chuck Grassley, the committee in 2001. He knows what is the Republican chairman of the Judiciary coming. But he also knows votes, and this time Committee, eight Democrats currently on Republicans on the committee will have more the committee argued that Sessions’ hearings votes than Democrats. The GOP can exercise should be at least as long and involved as more control over the hearing and witnesses Ashcroft’s. than they could in the 9-to-9 days of the “John Ashcroft was a senator for only Ashcroft nomination. If Sessions can keep the six years, serving on this committee until support of all the Republicans on the committee just before he was nominated to be attorney — and there is no indication so far that any will general,” the Democrats wrote. “His defect — he won’t face a repeat of the Ashcroft confirmation hearings required four days, and experience. included testimony from four members of ■ Congress and 19 additional outside witnesses. Byron York is the White House correspondent Senator Sessions has served nearly 20 years for National Review and the author of “The Vast in the Senate, more than three times longer Left Wing Conspiracy.” Sessions has seen it all — from both sides. OTHER VIEWS Say what, Al Gore, Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump? G ood for Al Gore for meeting with Donald Trump on Monday. Good for Ivanka Trump for inviting Gore to come in for a talk on climate change, and good for President-elect Trump for embracing the encounter. Alas, though, a single meeting does not an environmental policy make; skepticism is in order. The ultimate proof will only come from the appointments Trump makes for his key environmental and energy jobs and the direction he gives them — whether to press ahead with U.S. leadership on mitigating climate change and introducing clean energy and efficiency standards, or abandon that role, as Trump previously indicated he might, and try to revive the U.S. coal industry and unleash more drilling for fossil fuels from sea to shining sea. Ivanka clearly has an influence on her father’s thinking, and the fact that she went out of her way to set up a meeting with Gore, who has done more to alert the world to the perils of climate change than anyone else on the planet, and the fact that Thomas Gore described Friedman the meeting as “a sincere search for Comment areas of common ground … to be continued,” offer a glimmer of hope. When my publisher had Trump in to The Times recently, it became clear to me that very few people had thought he would win the election, and so the people who were gathered around him for the last year and a half were not exactly America’s best and brightest. Extreme, long-shot campaigns often attract a Star Wars bar collection of extreme opportunists and conspiracy theorists — and the Trump campaign was the Good Ship Lollipop for many such types. For a man who seems to learn mostly from those in his friendship circle, or from TV news shows, such an unbalanced team made many of Trump’s bad instincts worse. Some of those characters were from the coal and oil industries, and they saw in Trump their last chance to kill the renewable energy revolution at a time when many other Republicans were already moving on. One hopes that Ivanka is telling her father that nothing would force his critics — in America and abroad — to give him a second look more than if he names serious scientists to the key environmental jobs. And I suspect that Trump himself discovered during the campaign that outside of the U.S.’ coal- mining regions, a vast majority of Americans understand not only that human-generated climate change is real — but also that when residents of both Beijing and New Delhi can’t breathe, clean energy systems will become the next great global industry. They represent a huge manufacturing export market. It would be flat-out crazy for America to give up its leadership in this field by turning back to burning dirty lumps of coal when wind and solar are beginning to beat fossil fuels in price without subsidies. I don’t expect Trump to abandon his effort to increase oil drilling or to ban coal. But I laud Gore for trying to work with him on this issue, because if Trump was to embrace the science of climate change, it would be game over for the fossilized climate deniers who remain in his own party. (Many Republican lawmakers would be relieved.) It’s also probably his single best peacetime possibility to unite Americans. A fantasy? Maybe. But it is worth remembering how the last Republican administration evolved. Texas oilman George W. Bush went from shocking the world by announcing a U.S. withdrawal from the Kyoto climate treaty to embracing “wind and solar” and calling for Americans “to address the serious challenge of climate change” in his 2007 State of the Union address. Bush also appointed experts in environmental law and practitioners and directed them to promote clean energy through bipartisan legislation and regulation that remain the basis of a lot of policy today. Bush decried the fact that America was “addicted to oil” and ended up creating a “major emitters” conference that helped pave the way for the Paris climate agreement. In short, I am not sure Trump realizes all this — that impugning climate science and just unleashing coal and oil would be a departure from the last two Republican administrations.
