Page 4A
OPINION
East Oregonian
Saturday, December 31, 2016
Founded October 16, 1875
KATHRYN B. BROWN
Publisher
DANIEL WATTENBURGER
Managing Editor
TIM TRAINOR
Opinion Page Editor
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OUR VIEW
The promise of
another new year
As we limp toward the end of
president is among the top causes
of worldwide heartburn, because he
2016, the promise of a new year
has shown himself to be a man not
awaits.
The holiday is always a mix of
prone to respecting political or social
nostalgia and optimism, as we look
mores. Perhaps there is a benefit to a
back on another year of getting
new kind of politician, but there are
older and look ahead to a fresh new
real concerns about the continuity of
beginning. Hanging a new calendar
the world order that have not been
offers us the pleasing opportunity
present since the Cold War. The first
to start again with a
year of a Donald
blank slate.
Trump presidency
2016 will not
is bound to bring
Let’s make a
go down as the
change,
resolution to be significant
best of slates. It
and change is scary.
was marred by the
better than we Lord knows it was
most exhausting
for those who had to
were.
and debased
get used to Barack
presidential election
Obama.
in recent memory. It
Good things
included the denouement of Syria’s
can happen in 2017. Growth and
Civil War — which showed us that
stability, promotions and awards
inconceivable suffering can and does and marriages and births. Yet sadly
exist in the 21st century. That war and we know we will see another war
others in the Middle East contributed somewhere in the world, another
to a refugee crisis that spread across
genocide and another terrorist attack.
much of the world, which has tested
There will be blood. There will be
governments, international charities
layoffs and divorces and deaths.
and our own hearts. The year was
So much will be out of your
also scarred by an almost continuous hands in the next year, but much
parade of dying cultural figures, from will be in them. Nothing is going to
David Bowie to Carrie Fisher. Each
change on January 1 unless you do.
one seemed to slam the national
So let’s make this a year of personal
bummer button harder than the last.
responsibility, of personal charity
And the U.S. government was a
and kindness. Let’s do our best. Let’s
mess throughout — the Supreme
hold our leaders responsible for
Court spent a whole session with an
their actions, and to the same code
even number of judges and Congress of decency we teach at home. Let’s
could barely be persuaded to pay the
make a resolution to be better than
nation’s bills.
we were.
2017 will be here soon. And
Many of us are excited to see
perhaps the most painful and most
2016 take its place in the rear view
comforting thought is that in the
mirror.
blink of an eye it will be over, and
But this New Year’s Day is
we’ll be right back here talking
different than most recent ones.
about the coming of another new
For some, their optimism is mixed
year.
with plenty of anxiety. A new U.S.
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.
Rent control cure can be
worse than disease
The (Bend) Bulletin, Dec. 24
O
regon’s housing shortage cuts
across economic lines in many
ways, but it can be those at the
lower end of the economic scale who
suffer most when there’s not enough
housing to go around.
That reality helps explain why
state Rep. Tina
Kotek, D-Portland
and speaker of
the state House of
Representatives, is
pushing to have the
Legislature enact a
“rent stabilization”
— rent control — bill
when it meets next
year.
Yet if Kotek and others who think
rent control will actually improve the
state’s housing problems did even the
most rudimentary homework, they’d
discover how destructive the policy
could be. It’s so bad, in fact, that many
economists say it’s worse than the
disease it seeks to cure.
Among rent control’s problems: It
tends to drive money out of the rental
housing market. If a builder cannot
charge what he believes his building is
worth, he’ll put his money elsewhere.
That’s true for even expensive buildings
that are not subject to rent control
laws. There, economists note, potential
landlords worry that someday controls
will apply to them, too, and so go
elsewhere.
Owners of existing buildings,
meanwhile, can find themselves with
repairs and maintenance needs they
cannot afford to pay for, meaning the
quality of rent-controlled housing
declines. Rent controls have proven
themselves an effective way to lower the
quality of the housing to which they’re
applied.
Rent control
also holds landlords
responsible for
Oregon’s affordable
housing challenges.
That’s just not
fair. Depending on
how rent control is
structured, it can also
help people who don’t
need help.
Meanwhile, Kotek and her cohorts
fail to understand or selectively forget
that Oregon’s housing shortages and
high costs also have to do with the
availability of buildable land, not just
with “greedy” developers and landlords.
With plenty of land available, the price
of land does not face as much upward
pressure. That helps hold down the price
of housing.
Rent control does not increase
the supply of housing. It’s likely to
discourage new housing to correct the
housing problem.
It’s simple, really, so much so that
everyone in the Legislature should be
able to understand it.
Rent control does
not increase
the supply of
housing.
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
Reynolds and Fisher:
A mother-daughter fable
S
ome years ago I had the privilege
these fans. Fisher didn’t much care for
of a long evening with Carrie
that. What adoring child would?
Fisher, starting at her house in
“Walking down the street with her
Beverly Hills and proceeding to a
was like being in a parade,” she said
nearby restaurant, and she talked so
at one point. “I had to share her. She
expansively — about her memories of
belonged to everybody.”
“Star Wars,” about her electric shock
Fisher tried to live up to her,
treatments, about Diet Coke, about
following her into show business and,
Frank
everything — that I didn’t come away
with the “Star Wars” movies, making
Bruni
with just a few impressions of her. I
an early, indelible mark there. Then
Comment
came away with a few hundred.
she spurned her, refusing to see her for
Still, one stood out: She was
10 years.
obsessed with the subject of
A sort of explanation came in
mothering. While giving me a tour of the
“Postcards from the Edge,” a 1987 novel by
house, she mentioned again and again that her Fisher that became a 1990 movie noteworthy
mother, Debbie Reynolds, lived next door.
not only for its blunt description of drug
Did I know that they shared a driveway? And
addiction but for the way the irrepressible
that they saw each other daily? This proximity mother and exasperated daughter at its center
clearly rattled her, but it reassured her, too. It
resemble Reynolds and her. They’re merciless
was equal parts intimidation and consolation
together, but neither can shake the obligation
— in other words, motherhood itself.
or resist the inspiration of the other. They’re
At dinner, Fisher volunteered that she was
a screaming, sobbing love story of the most
in the middle of a spat with the father of her
complicated and honest kind.
own daughter about some childrearing issue. I
Reynolds actually put her hand up to
don’t recall the details, but I do remember how appear as the mother in “Postcards,” reasoning
agitated she became, even handing me her
that everyone would think that the character
phone and insisting that I read the emails that
was her anyway. But the assignment went
she and her estranged partner had exchanged.
to an actress whose currency onscreen far
I also remember thinking that if anything
surpassed hers by then. Shirley MacLaine
could wound this seemingly bulletproof
played Reynolds to Meryl Streep’s Fisher.
survivor, it was the suggestion that she was an
With “Postcards,” Fisher switched her
irresponsible, inattentive mom.
focus from acting to writing, and she found
Fisher died on Tuesday and then, on
particular distinction in trashing the very
Wednesday, so did Reynolds, reportedly
rites of celebrity that her mother so gleefully
while helping to plan her daughter’s funeral.
relished and dutifully executed, to diminishing
Was it grief that did Reynolds in? A story in
returns. Reynolds weathered that long movie
The Times by my colleague Benedict Carey
drought by performing in a Las Vegas casino
presented that as a definite possibility, and an
bearing her name, and she began her cabaret
interview that Fisher’s brother, Todd, gave to
act there by introducing herself as “Carrie
“Good Morning America” also suggested as
Fisher’s mother.”
much. He said that Reynolds was utterly lost
Despite a turbulent domestic life, she
“without having Carrie to look after.”
honed an image of utter purity. Not Fisher. She
Whatever the truth, it’s impossible not
presented herself without apology as a cyclone
to regard the head-turning coincidence as a
of sin.
heartbreaking confirmation of the singular
But they struck me as more alike than
embrace in which Fisher and Reynolds held,
different, both of them exhibitionists to the
and sometimes smothered, each other.
core. During one of my interviews with
It’s also hard not to reflect on the
Reynolds, I asked about an odd-looking
relationship between these two movie-industry contraption in the corner of her hotel room.
legends as a case study — upsized for
“That’s my ab cruncher,” she said, then
Hollywood, sensationalized accordingly
commenced a demonstration, and suddenly I
and on display to the entire world — of
was watching a 64-year-old with a bouffant
the currents between almost every parent
thrust and jiggle on the carpet in front of me.
and child: the pride and the shame; the
During my evening with Fisher, which was
protectiveness and the destructiveness; the
social rather than professional, I listened to
gratitude and the resentment.
an almost nonstop monologue of wordplay,
As it happens I spent some time with
secrets, provocations: whatever she needed to
Reynolds, too, though in 1996, more than a
hold the audience’s interest.
decade before I met Fisher. I was writing a
They were the very definition of game,
profile of her because, after a long drought of
this inimitable mother-daughter duo. They
no movies, she was starring in a new one. Its
recognized and respected that shared D.N.A.
title: “Mother.” Its theme: the emotional havoc
The words with which she paid tribute
that a parent can unintentionally wreak on a
to her mother in a 2010 interview with The
child.
Times’s Brooks Barnes had that same double
It was Fisher who pestered Reynolds to
edge. “She should be put on that thing with the
pursue the part. She knew that Reynolds
four presidents — Mount Rushmore,” Fisher
yearned for a comeback. And she sensed that
said, praising Reynolds’s unflagging work
Reynolds was right for the role.
ethic and inextinguishable cheer. “Right after
What a fascinating tandem of
Teddy Roosevelt, but have his eyes looking
accomplishment they were, and what a
down at her cleavage.”
glorious mess. On the one hand, Fisher
Cleave the cleavage from the comment
idolized her mother. Look at Lawrence
and it captures how so many of us view our
Schiller’s amazing photograph, from 1963,
parents. They’re larger than life. Monumental.
of Fisher at the age of 6, watching Reynolds
But our desire to acknowledge that is barely
perform onstage. Schiller later reminisced that stronger than our determination to cut them
the little girl “was really mesmerized by her
down to size.
mother, always.”
■
But so were tens of millions of other
Frank Bruni is a columnist for the New
people, and Reynolds diverted her attention to York Times.
YOUR VIEWS
Federal government best
suited to care for public lands
After reading the letter of John D. George
in the Dec. 28, 2016, East Oregonian, I am not
sure I understand his comments. I do believe
the Forest Service does try to bring people
together.
My concern is that the people planning
to turn over public land to the states may
not realize they could bankrupt their state
governments. Oregon is already in debt
with PERS. Having to assume the expense,
management, employment and insurance
of the public land the federal government
presently manages would put a burden on the
states’ taxpayers. Where else would they get
the funds? The federal government spends
billions to manage the public lands.
It also concerns me that we do not seem to
realize the resources available to our fathers
and grandfathers are no longer as abundant
as they were in their time. Forests are being
depleted, mining is less profitable, and other
resources such as water show signs of overuse.
Unless the federal government steps in to
save these resources mankind will continue
to overuse them. Look about you in the
world. We are the only nation with abundant
natural resource wealth. We need to preserve
these resources and if it takes the federal
government to do it, they must, whether we
like it or not. It’s that simple.
I know I do not have the full information,
but I do know there is something wrong with
the nation’s public land policies.
Dr. Dorys C. Grover
Pendleton