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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (June 1, 2017)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Thursday, June 1, 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 As summer arrives, think sunshine Oregon lawmakers are in danger The Society of Professional of missing an important opportunity Journalists spearheaded the concept of the Oregon Sunshine Committee to make state government more and earned bipartisan support for it, transparent, democratic and — we believe — better. including from Secretary of State As the legislative session draws Dennis Richardson and Gov. Kate to its July 10 close, House Bill 2101 Brown. The bill is also supported remains stuck in by such wide- the House Rules ranging interests Committee. former Deputy Transparency is as This bill would Attorney General provide for extra good for good Pete Shepherd, analysis and notice the statewide government. of legislation transparency group that could affect Open Oregon, government Oregon State Public transparency. It also sets up a Interest Research Group (OSPIRG), balanced, nonpartisan committee the Oregon Environmental Council and more than 10 other nonprofit to update and simplify Oregon’s public interest groups. confusing thicket of more than 550 The Sunshine Committee would records-law exemptions that gets give the public a seat at the table larger each year. during exemption review as already “The overwhelming majority of happens in Washington, Virginia, Oregonians want their government to be open and accountable. There New York, Maine and Tennessee. has been very little opposition to The bill also would also create Open Government Impact this bill, but it has not received a hearing,” said Shasta Kearns Moore, Statements for bills moving through Oregon Territory Chapter of the the legislature. This means that Society of Professional Journalists’ every piece of legislation that has sunshine chair. the potential to close public access And we understand why some to information would get a statement are happy to keep the public in the on the arguments for and against dark about controversial issues. creating more secrecy. Journalists are the key providers Oregon has an opportunity of information to the public — with this bill to make a major leap information that often makes life forward for transparency in the more difficult for those in power. state at negligible cost. We think And the steady accumulation of state the legislature should take it, or at government data that is off-limits to the very least argue the bill on its public eyes consolidates that power merits in open session. Secrecy is in the hands of a few and makes us easier, but it doesn’t make for better all less-informed voters. government. 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 Is national popular vote more fair than electoral college? The Medford Mail Tribune T he 73 million Americans who voted for someone other than Donald Trump for president — outnumbering Trump voters by more than 10 million — might understandably support the national movement to sidestep the Electoral College and award the top job in future elections to the winner of the popular vote. Oregon is on its way to joining that movement after the state House voted to do so along party lines. To abolish the Electoral College would require amending the U.S. Constitution — a daunting task. But it could be circumvented if enough states agree. Here’s how: Individual states enact legislation pledging their Electoral College votes to the candidate who wins the national popular vote, regardless of how their state’s electorate voted. If enough states sign on to what’s called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact to total the magic number of 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House, those states would determine the winner. That sounds good in theory, but it raises some interesting issues. In the 2016 election, for instance, Donald Trump lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes, but won just enough votes in three key states to give him the electoral votes he needed. If Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin had signed on to the Interstate Compact, those states would have awarded their Electoral College votes to Hillary Clinton, even though their voters narrowly picked Trump. Other states where Trump won handily also would have been forced to deliver their electoral votes to Clinton, if their state had joined the compact. Then there is the likelihood that just enough states sign on to reach the 270 number, but the rest don’t. Are their electoral votes irrelevant? In Oregon, where Clinton won easily, Democratic voters would have been happy to have the Interstate Compact in place. But in some future election, the result could conceivably be reversed, and the candidate chosen by Oregon voters could narrowly lose the popular vote but still get all seven of Oregon’s electoral votes. Supporters of the Interstate Compact argue that the current system prompts candi- dates to concentrate their campaigning in swing states, ignoring states they consider safe and those where they have little support. But there is no guarantee that would change appreciably under the Compact system. In fact, candidates would be more likely to spend most of their time and money in big cities and urban states with large concentrations of voters. It was Clinton’s overwhelming wins in the urban parts of California and New York that gave her the bulk of her popular vote margin. The Oregon House has approved the Interstate Compact three times before, only to have it blocked by Senate President Peter Courtney. This year, he says he will allow a Senate vote if the matter is referred to the voters. That still would leave the national effort little more than 60 percent of the way toward its goal. If Oregon voters are given a say, they should be sure it’s what they want before voting yes. To abolish the Electoral College would require amending the U.S. Constitution — a daunting task. 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 On a Portland train, the battlefield of American values A scapegoating of refugees, Muslims and merica may seem leaderless, immigrants. To me, Trump “values” with nastiness and bullying are primarily narcissism, nepotism and ascendant, but the best of our nihilism. nation materialized during a moral crisis on a commuter train in Portland. And this is infectious: Cass Sunstein A white man riding on that train on of Harvard cites psychology research Friday began screaming anti-Muslim indicating that Trump has made it more insults at a black 16-year-old girl and acceptable for Americans to embrace her 17-year-old Muslim friend wearing Nicholas xenophobia. I wrote last year that a hijab. One can imagine people Kristof “Donald Trump is making America pretending not to hear and staring meaner,” prompting bigotry in rural Comment fiercely down at their phones; instead, Oregon where I grew up, and around three brave passengers stepped forward the country. We don’t know whether the murderer on the to protect the girls. The three were as different as could be. One Portland train felt empowered to scream at a was a 23-year-old recent Reed College graduate Muslim girl because of Trump’s own previous who had a mane of long hair and was working Islamophobic rants, any more than we can be as a consultant. Another was a 53-year-old sure that Trump’s denunciation of reporters led Army veteran with the trimmest of haircuts a Montana candidate to body slam a journalist. and a record of service in Iraq and Afghanistan. But when a president incites hatred, civilization The third was a 21-year-old poet and Portland winces. State University student on his way to a job at If all that is one thread of America, another a pizzeria. What united the three is represented by those three was decency. men who stepped forward on When they intervened, the that train. It’s also represented man harassing the girls pulled by the good Samaritans who a knife and slashed the three helped them when they were men before fleeing. Rick Best, stabbed, by the countless people the veteran, died at the scene. who joined vigils to honor the Taliesin Namkai-Meche, the victims and who donated more recent Reed graduate, was than $1 million in a few days for conscious as he waited for an ambulance. the families of those killed and for the survivor. A good Samaritan took off her shirt to cover It’s terrific that the White House eventually him; she recounted that some of his last words acknowledged these heroes in a tweet. But were: “I want everybody on the train to know, it would have been more convincing if the I love them.” He died soon after arriving at the tweet came sooner and from Trump’s own @ hospital. realDonaldTrump account rather than the @ Another passer-by stanched the bleeding of Potus account mostly managed by his staff. the student poet, Micah Fletcher, and called his What the three men in Oregon understood, mother to tell her to go to the hospital — but but the White House doesn’t, is that in a healthy played down the injuries to avoid terrifying society, Islamophobia doesn’t disparage just her. Fletcher underwent two hours of surgery to Muslims, racism doesn’t demean blacks alone, remove bone fragments from his throat and is misogyny hurts more than women, xenophobia recovering. insults more than immigrants. Rather, we Police arrested Jeremy Christian, 35, a are all diminished, so we all have a stake in white supremacist, and charged him with the confronting bigotry. murders. The train attack doesn’t fit America’s Best, the veteran, had three teenage children internal narrative of terrorism, but it’s a and a 12-year-old daughter, and I hope his kids reminder that terrorism takes many forms. understand that their dad died challenging a Last year Americans were less likely to be venomous intolerance that threatens our social killed by a Muslim terrorist (odds of 1 in 6 fabric. He fell on the battlefield of American million) than for being Muslim (odds of 1 in 1 values. He deserves the chance to be buried at million), according to Charles Kurzman of the Arlington National Cemetery. University of North Carolina. One thing I’ve learned in my reporting In tragedy, we can sometimes find career is that side by side with the worst of inspiration. In that train car, we saw that humanity, you find the best. The test for all courage and leadership are alive — if of us is whether we can similarly respond to not always in Washington, then among hatred and nihilism with courage and, in the ordinary Americans converging from varied dying words of Namkai-Meche, with “love.” backgrounds on a commuter train, standing After coming out of surgery, weak but together against a threat to our shared humanity. indomitable, Fletcher wrote a poem that offers I’d been dispirited by recent events. us guidance. According to the Oregonian, it President Donald Trump’s overseas trip marked read in part: an abdication of American leadership, with “I, am alive. German Chancellor Angela Merkel concluding I spat in the eye of hate and lived. that Europe can no longer rely on the United This is what we must do for one another States. The Trump budget was intellectually We must live for one another.” dishonest and morally repugnant, with cuts ■ in global AIDS funding alone that may cost 1 Nicholas Kristof grew up on a sheep and million lives. cherry farm in Yamhill. A columnist for The Today’s White House seems to stand for New York Times since 2001, he won the Pulitzer nothing loftier than crony capitalism and the Prize twice. What united the three was decency. YOUR VIEWS No respect for authority Aretha Franklin was always one of my favorites. “R-E-S-P-E-C-T” was the song I always loved to hear over and over. It seems respect is much harder to find now, however, and it is a sad thing. It seems everywhere you look now you see evidence of the lack of respect. Take Beyoncé at the Super Bowl halftime show where she showed a gross lack of respect for police; take Black Lives Matter, who promote violence against police. Look at the looting and rioting — even here in our own Portland — where “protesters” break windows and burn cars and stores with no respect for property or the public. Look at our colleges, who used to be strong defenders of the right of free speech. Berkley students rioted and caused a great deal of damage, all because they didn’t happen to agree with a speaker invited to the campus. Look at the Berkley police when they didn’t even show up at these riots to uphold the laws they swore to enforce. Look at some of our governors and mayors who have no respect for our Constitution and federal laws by creating sanctuary cities (such as Portland and Seattle). These cities now harbor many illegal criminals across the country — some who have been deported up to 15 times. Look at the privileged athlete Colin Kaepernick, who disrespected our country and our flag by not standing for the national anthem. Now the Seahawks are interested in him playing in Seattle? If they take him that will be the last Seahawk game I will watch. Look at the parade of rich celebrities who have uttered such violent statements and threats to our president (Madonna said she wanted to blow up the White House). Look at the students who have shown little respect for the vice president as he gave a graduation speech at Notre Dame. It seems like we used to be able to disagree — or play against a rival team — and still end up shaking hands and having respect for one another. If you don’t like the President, at least have some respect for the office of President. That attitude seems to be gradually giving way to violence and hatred everywhere you look. I expect it from ISIS but not from our own citizens here is the USA. I used to love Rodney Dangerfield with his “I get no respect.” It isn’t so funny now. Maybe it’s time to remind ourselves of Lee Greenwood’s great song. And I’d gladly stand up (so stand up Kaepernick) next to you and defend her still today. David Burns Pendleton