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OPINION
East Oregonian
Wednesday, March 22, 2017
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
Drug court closure
hurts entire county
The shuttering of the Umatilla
cell and thinking about what you’ve
County Drug Court is a major hit
done — is not nearly as effective. As
for the health and well-being of this
we learned at last year’s drug court
county.
graduation, the recidivism rate at
The program is operated by the
the county jail was 20.35 percent, a
Community Justice Department
decrease of about 10 percent since
but funded by a state grant. Those
the drug court program started.
dollars have been cut by more than
That’s significant, as a vast majority
a third since 2010 and the county
of jail inmates at any given time
said it can’t keep
are behind bars for
backfilling to make
offenses stemming
The alternative — from drug and
up the difference.
According to
abuse.
sitting in a jail cell alcohol
Dale Primmer,
The program
the department’s
and thinking about isn’t perfect. There
director, the Umatilla
are some who don’t
what you’ve done complete it because
County would have
to pay $516,000 in
are unwilling
— is not nearly they
the next biennium to
or unmotivated.
as effective.
keep the court open.
There are others who
Rather than axing
graduate, celebrate
elsewhere, like the
with friends and
day treatment program or the county family, then later return to their
jail, commissioners opted to cut their addictions and habits and land on the
losses and end the court. That’s a
wrong side of the law.
shame, though we can’t say we have
There are times criminal offenders
a better solution.
need to be behind bars, and those
unwilling to making changes in their
The decade-old program is an
intense drug and alcohol treatment
lives for the safety of those around
program for those who have landed
them should serve the full sentence
on the wrong side of the law. It
prescribed by the law. But a better
replaces incarceration with group
investment is to work on the root
sessions and individual counseling,
problem that leads to crime, and in
requiring regular drug tests and
many cases that’s found in addiction.
community service. If those terms
The next step is unclear. There is
are met, graduates of the program
still state money available for such
are eligible to have criminal charges a program and the county could
dismissed.
regroup and find a way to put it to
The outcry about the program’s
use in a responsible way.
Oregon voters have said they
termination said a lot. People shared
would rather see spending cuts than
testimonials about the court saving
tax increases, and this is what that
their life, teaching them how to
looks like. Unfortunately, it will
move past the burden of addiction
likely lead to the higher costs for
and poor decisions and give back to
jails and prisons while diminishing
the community.
the quality of life for many families.
The alternative — sitting in a jail
OTHER VIEWS
The unifying American story
ne of the things we’ve lost in
Niebuhr applied Puritan thinking to
this country is our story. It is the
America’s mission and warned of the
narrative that unites us around a
taint of national pride.
common multigenerational project, that
The Exodus story has many virtues
gives an overarching sense of meaning
as an organizing national myth. It
and purpose to our history.
welcomes in each new group and
For most of the past 400 years,
gives it a template for how it fits into
Americans did have an overarching
the common move from oppression
story. It was the Exodus story. The
to dignity. The book of Exodus is
David
Puritans came to this continent and
Brooks full of social justice — care for the
felt they were escaping the bondage
vulnerable, the equality of all souls. It
Comment
of their Egypt and building a new
emphasizes that the moral and material
Jerusalem.
journeys are intertwined and that for a
The Exodus story has six acts: first, a life of nation to succeed materially, there has to be an
slavery and oppression, then the revolt against
invisible moral constitution and a fervent effort
tyranny, then the difficult flight through the
toward character education.
howling wilderness, then the infighting and
It suggests that history is in the shape
misbehavior amid the stresses of that ordeal,
of an upward spiral. People who see their
then the handing down of a new covenant, a
lives defined by Exodus move, innovate and
new law, and then finally the
organize their lives around
arrival into a new promised
a common eschatological
land and the project of building American history destiny. As Langston Hughes
a new Jerusalem.
put it, “America
is taught less as famously
The Puritans could survive
never was America to me /
a progressively And yet I swear this oath — /
hardship because they knew
what kind of cosmic drama
will be!”
realized grand America
they were involved in. Being
The Exodus narrative has
a chosen people with a sacred
pretty much been dropped
narrative and
mission didn’t make them
from our civic culture. Schools
more as a
arrogant, it gave their task
cast off the Puritans as a bunch
dignity and consequence.
of religious fundamentalists.
series
of
power
It made them self-critical.
Gorski shows how a social-
When John Winthrop used the
conflicts between science, technocratic mindset
phrase “shining city on a hill”
triumphed, treating politics
oppressor and has
he didn’t mean it as self-
as just a competition of
congratulation. He meant that
self-interested utilitarians.
oppressed.
the whole world was watching
Today’s students get steeped
and by their selfishness and
in American tales of genocide,
failings the colonists were screwing it up.
slavery, oppression and segregation. American
As Philip Gorski writes in his new book,
history is taught less as a progressively realized
“American Covenant,” which is essential
grand narrative and more as a series of power
reading for this moment, the Puritans
conflicts between oppressor and oppressed.
understood they were part of one covenant and
The academic left pushed this
had ferocious debates about what that covenant reinterpretation, but as usual the extreme
meant.
right ended up claiming the spoils. The
During the revolution, the founding fathers
people Gorski calls radical secularists
had that fierce urgency too and drew just as
expunged biblical categories and patriotic
heavily on the Exodus story. Some wanted to
celebrations from schools. The voters
depict Moses on the Great Seal of the United
revolted and elected the people Gorski calls
States. Like Moses, America too was rebinding the religious nationalists to the White House
itself with a new covenant and a new law.
— the jingoistic chauvinists who measure
Frederick Douglass embraced the Exodus
Americanness by blood and want to create a
too. African-Americans, he pointed out, have
Fortress America keeping the enemy out.
been part of this journey too. “We came
We have a lot of crises in this country, but
when it was a wilderness …. We leveled your
maybe the foundational one is the Telos Crisis,
forests; our hands removed the stumps from
a crisis of purpose. Many people don’t know
the field …. We have been with you … in
what this country is here for, and what we are
adversity, and by the help of God will be with
here for. If you don’t know what your goal is,
you in prosperity.”
then every setback sends you into cynicism
The successive immigrant groups saw
and selfishness.
themselves performing an exodus to a
It should be possible to revive the Exodus
promised land. The waves of mobility — from template, to see Americans as a single people
east to west, from south to north — were also
trekking through a landscape of broken
seen as Exodus journeys. These people could
institutions. What’s needed is an act of
endure every hardship because they were
imagination, somebody who can tell us what
serving in a spiritual drama and not just a
our goal is, and offer an ideal vision of what
financial one.
the country and the world should be.
In the 20th century, Martin Luther King Jr.
■
and other civil rights leaders drew on Exodus
David Brooks has been a senior editor at
more than any other source. Our 20th-century
The Weekly Standard, a contributing editor at
presidents made the story global. America
Newsweek and the Atlantic Monthly, and he is
would lead a global exodus toward democracy currently a commentator on “The Newshour
— God was a God of all peoples. Reinhold
with Jim Lehrer.”
O
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
State needs to focus on
the big problems first
At what point do we require more from
our elected representatives? Oregon is in a
dire fix financially with serious issues at hand
including the budget deficit, out-of-control
spending and an education model that
everyone has an excuse for and no one can
accept any of the blame.
Maybe the statewide leadership could
consider a policy that no new bills will make
it to the floor for a vote until the obvious big
problems above have been addressed. For
instance, it would be nice if the Senate and
House leadership along with the governor
would mandate that any new bill proposed
would have to accomplish a verifiable
spending reduction and be presented for a
vote before any of the “feel good” laws can
even be presented.
To illustrate my point, you need look no
further than Sen. Bill Hansell. He has been
actively championing bills that involve
driving in the left lane of the freeway,
keeping roadkill, warning posters at rest
areas, and naming state symbols. What a
productive use of state time and resources!
He is reminding me of the band director
in the movie “Titanic.” He will make sure
the band plays on so the passengers are
sufficiently distracted from the fact they
will shortly be residing at the bottom of
the ocean.
Is this really the best we can do? What a
disappointment!
Russ Henslee
Pendleton
School district should better
manage its budget
Who wants more taxes? Only the ones
who can afford it.
What about the ones trying to live on
their Social Security money? We don’t get a
raise to help pay for things. My taxes raise
about $200 each year. Because of these kinds
of bonds that pass, if this continues we will
need to sell our homes, because we can’t
afford these things.
Let the school districts live on their
budget like we are forced to do. They need to
take money out of their sports program. Can
you imagine what is spent on this?
Wait and see — they will be asking for
more next year.
Jerry Hoffman
Hermiston
‘People Power’ really just
anti-Trump
I have attended both, so far, town hall
meetings sponsored by the American Civil
Liberties Union. These two meetings are part
of a newly birthed ACLU program called
“People Power.” (How could we, people
of the Sixties, not like that naming?) The
subject on the floor was the cause of the
illegal aliens who had come to the attention
of law enforcement. A nine-paragraph
handout speaks to ACLU’s interpretation of
the handling of those persons.
A major thrust speaks to the separation of
funded agencies: city, county and state, and
how they must not be allowed to co-mingle
information or actions. ACLU’s People
Power advocates agencies not spend even
the cost of a phone call of their budget to
inform another agency of the situation. This
is the creation of the “sanctuary city,” the
shutting down of “intel” one agency might
share with another. I thought this was part
of the criticism of 9/11, the failure of one
intel-gathering body to share with another.
In this budget challenging time I guess
it’s nice to have someone watching the
cash register. But that’s not what “people
power” is about. It is about obstruction of
the Trump administration. Believe it is part
of an orchestrated plan by the losing party to
obstruct our government — their tantrum is
scripted and long-reaching.
Our current administration doesn’t
like “sanctuary cities?” So, strengthen
the support of and increase the number of
“sanctuary cities!” Can you believe a judge
in Portland directed, or led, an illegal alien
to a service-only side door so he could avoid
immigration officers waiting for him at the
public doorway?
On my personal note: Our attention
should be on the criminal illegal alien, those
persons who do us harm and are a safety
concern to our citizens. We have bigger fish
to fry than the hard-working, family-oriented
immigrant. I want them to get legal and
join our village — to make the realizing of
the American dream commonplace. I want
people’s well being and comfort to be as
common as horse turds at Round-Up.
Ron Linn
Stanfield
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 newspa-
per 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.