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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (May 24, 2017)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Wednesday, May 24, 2017 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 Office Manager MIKE JENSEN Production Manager OUR VIEW Building literal bridges across partisan divide There is no reason that a large- on our side of the state, that’s not scale transportation plan cannot be quite the case from a business and a bipartisan project. Republican and recreation standpoint. And another Democrat, urban and rural, bikers way to look at it: The smoother and truckers, 1 percenters and the traffic moves in Portland, the less rest of us — we all benefit from likely those Portlanders are to pick an efficient, safe and affordable up stakes in the big city and head transportation system. our way. Yet for years now, agreement on But the plan is more than just transportation and infrastructure multi-millions for Multnomah work has been lacking on the state County. Highway 97 would become level here in Oregon, and for much a divided, improved highway that longer than that on the federal level. could handle major traffic if, God It’s an example of the partisan forbid, the Cascadia earthquake hits bickering that has come to dominate and renders I-5 unusable for a long our political atmosphere. Politicians period of time. Even if that doesn’t are worried more about who gets the happen, Highway 97 between credit and who gets the blame than Bend and the Columbia Gorge is as solving a problem we all dangerous a stretch of face equally. road as any in the state, The bill and improving it will The Oregon Bend and many Legislature is trying could fund benefit Central Oregon residents. to rise above that, attempting now in salt storage There’s plenty of planned even the latter days of this facilities work farther east. The bill year’s session to come up with the expansive along I-84. could fund salt storage facilities along Interstate transportation plan that 84, from Idaho possibly has recently eluded them. all the way to The Dalles. The state A similar type of bill was rounding experimented with using salt on third base and headed for home in the always dangerous stretch of 2015 when the road was pulled out highway between Pendleton and La from under it and it came crashing Grande last winter, and is willing down. The now much-derided Columbia River Crossing had plenty to make the changeover. It will take millions of dollars, however, to site to do with that bill’s collapse. the storage facilities and make sure But this year may be different. the salt there does not leech into The $8 billion plan remains under the water table, which can cause development, but it has gone environmental degradation. through a much more stringent, There may be other benefits to the public process than its predecessors. area: funding for rural airports such It’s also a heck of a lot bigger than as Pendleton’s, increased dollars for the $343 million proposed in 2015. city and county road budgets, major Those on both sides of the aisle, construction projects in Hermiston and nonpartisans who have been involved, say lessons were learned in and more. And we always have our eye the last go-round and those hurdles on the Interstate 82 bridge across have been hopped. the Columbia River at Umatilla, A key cog of the transportation a quickly deteriorating roadway plan is upgrades in Portland. But built in 1955 that a state report in order to convince a majority of showed would not survive a large legislators — who do not represent earthquake. Portland — they are touting the The political sausage-making city’s huge impact on the statewide factory is operating full tilt right economy. Bob Russell, vice president of the now. And taxpayers will have to pay for whatever compromise is Oregon Trucking Association, told reached — legislators say funding the EO edit board that “transit time through Portland is just not reliable,” for the plan would come from a combination of hikes in the gas tax and that negatively impacts every and registration and license fees, business in the state — and the tolls and new taxes on payroll and region— who need to move goods purchases of new vehicles and through Oregon’s largest city. In our neck of the woods, that includes bicycles. But, if done right, this is one the farmers and food processors, issue that does not just benefit one the ports of Morrow and Umatilla, political party, or one demographic, manufacturers and middlemen. So while solving Portland’s woes nor pushes one group forward while at first seems to have limited impact another falls behind. 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. It’s time to worry about health care in the Senate W hile the rest of the country own email!) has been transfixed by If secrecy is the first part of the Trumpian chaos, members strategy, distraction is the second. of the Senate have spent the past two Eventually, before a vote is taken, the weeks talking about taking health details of the Senate bill will become insurance from millions of Americans. public, as they did in the House. And There is an alarmingly large chance those details will include a long list of that they’ll decide to do so. But if they problems. do, they will almost certainly rely on Here’s where we get to the Upton David a political sleight of hand to disguise Leonhardt maneuver. The House managed to pass their bill’s damage. Understanding its bill only after Fred Upton, R-Mich., Comment that sleight of hand — and calling offered a proposal purporting to fix one attention to it — offers the best hope of the bill’s highest-profile problems, for defeating the bill. related to pre-existing conditions. The effort to take health insurance from the Never mind that the proposal was only a middle class and poor and funnel the savings superficial improvement. Never mind that the into tax cuts for the rich is a little like mold. It full bill was still opposed by conservative, grows best in the dark. moderate and liberal health That’s why Republican care experts. Upton’s leaders in the House handled proposal allowed House their bill as they did. members to claim they had They did not hold a single “fixed” their bill. It gave hearing, because they knew them an excuse to vote yes. that attention would have Watch for similar moving been devastating. of the goal posts in the Just imagine a hearing Senate. There, Republican featuring the leaders of leaders are likely to brag these groups, every one of about the ways they have which opposes the House improved the House bill or bill: the American Medical early versions of their own Association, American bill. They will also point Nurses Association, to problems in insurance American Hospital markets, some of which Association, American President Donald Trump Academy of Pediatrics, is deliberately creating, as American Cancer Society, reason to do something. American Heart Association, American But these are the wrong standards. The Diabetes Association, American Lung right standard is whether the bill improves Association, March of Dimes and AARP. the health care system. A bill that takes away The House also passed its final bill without health insurance from 15 million, 10 million waiting for the Congressional Budget Office or 1 million Americans — rather than the 20 to estimate how many Americans would million or so of the House bill — still deserves lose insurance. The CBO will release that defeat. analysis soon. There is no precedent, outside The final part of the strategy will be of wartime, for passing a bill this important in arm-twisting. If victory is in sight, McConnell such haste. will invoke party loyalty to cajole his After the House did, many observers colleagues, whatever specific concerns some assumed the bill was too flawed to have much may have. Being the Republican who brought chance in the Senate. Republican senators, down Trumpcare wouldn’t be fun. aware of the bill’s unpopularity, were careful So the current period is important. It’s to say publicly that they would start fresh. But a time for all those groups that oppose the the early signs suggest that Mitch McConnell bill, and for the engaged progressive base, and his Republican caucus are actually to put senators on notice. They shouldn’t be mimicking the House approach. tinkering around the edges of a bill that would Think of it as the Upton strategy, and I’ll hurt the middle class and the poor, the sick and explain the name in a minute. elderly, children and the disabled. They won’t It starts with avoiding public discussion. get credit for making it marginally less cruel. As Politico reported: “McConnell’s strategy A small group of Senate Republicans has is to keep the debate within his conference for shown signs of being persuadable, and only as long as possible. There will be no public three are likely needed to stop a bill. The hearings as a bill is drafted, according to group includes Lamar Alexander, Shelley several Republican senators and aides, and Moore Capito, Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, he’s imploring senators not to leak.” Dean Heller, Lisa Murkowski and Rob The Democrats’ process for passing the Portman. Affordable Care Act in 2008-10 was certainly They should hear a loud message that not perfect. But it was radically more open Americans aren’t in favor of taking health than this process, including 44 hearings insurance from their fellow citizens. The and other public events in the Senate alone. senators work for those citizens, not for Mitch Republicans, by contrast, have invited select McConnell, Paul Ryan and Donald Trump. people to send feedback to an email address ■ — HealthReform@finance.senate.gov — no David Leonhardt is an op-ed columnist for later than today. (I encourage you to send your The New York Times. House Republicans did not hold a single hearing, because they knew that attention would have been devastating. YOUR VIEWS Sherman Co. weed problem about to get worse for farms A serious misunderstanding is circulating concerning Azure Farms’ weed problem. It is that they would lose organic status on crops currently growing if the county was to make an application of synthetic pesticides. This is not true. The USDA allows for emergency weed control with synthetic pesticides when the state or county deems it necessary. And unless the fields at Azure Farms are so infested with weeds as to render them un-harvestable, this weed control will only occur outside of the crop-growing areas, in buffers and along fence lines. Should it prove necessary for the county to spray an entire field, including the standing crop, then there would have been little point in harvesting that crop. In either case, the field itself would not lose its certification. As for the plan put forth by the owners of Azure Farms, the only question is, why haven’t they been implementing this plan all along? Organic weed control costs anywhere from 10 to 100 times as expensive as conventional or “chemical” weed control, which is why farmers moved away from the old ways to the new ways, the same way you moved from a manual typewriter to an iPhone. And the single most important factor in determining how much an organic farmer will spend depends on how out-of-control the weeds have become. As such, I predict that the owners of Azure Farms, contrary to their professed Biblical beliefs, will quickly grow tired and broke trying to deal with their runaway weed problem. I could be wrong. But any organic farmer who is so demonstrably delinquent in managing weeds over the years clearly has no ability to deal with them once they’ve become a problem for neighboring farms. Things are about to go from bad to worse for the neighbors of Azure Farms. Mischa Popoff, former USDA contract organic inspector Royse City, Texas Large majority of scientists agree on global warming Do most scientists believe in global warming? I wish I could say no. Nothing would make me happier, and I mean that. Unfortunately, most scientists do believe in global warming. Beyond that, they believe that it’s caused by human activity. We can’t even escape by saying “It isn’t our fault! It’s a natural weather cycle!” A few facts: A scientist named John Cook in Australia led a long list of scientists in reviewing about 12,000 scientific articles on global warming that were published between 1991 and 2011. Many of the authors of these papers expressed an opinion on global warming, although some just presented information. Of those expressing an opinion, over 97 percent agreed that humans are causing the problem. A report on the review of these articles was published in 2013. At that time, about 57 percent of the American public either disagreed or were not aware that scientists overwhelmingly agree that the earth is warming due to human activity. The concept of global warming can be overwhelming and anxiety producing. It feels like a problem without a solution. But there are things we can do. Paul Hawken’s new book explains 80 solutions, some of which are already being implemented around the world. The number one solution cited by Mr. Hawken is “refrigerant management.” Refrigerators, freezers, air conditioners, supermarket cases, etc., release gases that warm the atmosphere. Their capacity to do harm is 1,000 to 9,000 times greater than carbon dioxide. An amendment to the Montreal Protocol will begin phasing out HFCs in 2019.So: A problem was identified and a plan was made to solve it. This is how the world should work. LETTERS POLICY Paula Surmann Sisters 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.
