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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (June 13, 2017)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Tuesday, June 13, 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 For sake of solution, Gov. Brown must set aside campaign Gov. Kate Brown faces a Oregon Education Association and their allies are continuing their push legacy-defining choice as the 2017 Legislature enters its final weeks: to dramatically increase business taxes. Will she put the good of Oregon The SEIU contends that Oregon ahead of her quest for re-election next year? should increase revenue for schools The answer matters deeply and human services before raising taxes and fees for transportation for Oregonians. For this year’s projects. That is a rational viewpoint. legislative session to succeed, But it would be Brown must stand irrational to fight up to public- At stake are the transportation employee unions package at the ballot and their allies. statewide — as the SEIU The unions and transportation box said it might do — if some Democrats preferred revenue on the left seem so improvements, its plan fails in the insistent on getting taxes and cost Legislature. their own way that The Democratic they would rather savings in PERS. majority in the sink the ship of state Legislature needs than accommodate Republican votes to reasonable, pass any tax package. Republicans meaningful compromise. The want meaningful cost savings, difficulty for Brown is that she including PERS reforms beyond the counts on their money and grass- meager proposal unveiled last week. roots activism for her 2018 election Republicans, especially in the campaign, to which she already is Senate, are steadfast against the devoting considerable time. unions’ preferred gross receipts tax At stake in 2017 are statewide — a commercial activity tax — to transportation improvements, taxes, replace Oregon’s existing corporate and cost savings in the Public income tax. That plan would create Employees Retirement System and such winners and losers that some other areas. companies could see their tax bills As Scappoose Sen. Betsy triple. Johnson, a moderate Democrat, and Centrist legislators are floating other veteran legislators have noted, this year’s big issues appear far more an alternative that deserves consideration: Temporarily raise intertwined than in the past. corporate and personal income taxes That makes it easier for any to deal with the state’s budget hole. interest group or partisan bloc to That is not a long-term solution thwart progress everywhere if they to Oregon’s unstable, unpredictable don’t get their way in one area. tax system. But neither is it a The latest example is the Service wrong-way trip into the unintended Employees International Union’s tax consequences of a new business threat to overturn the Legislature’s tax that, even if it is doable, needs transportation-infrastructure far more work. package, which has been a priority Brown endorsed the for Democrats and Republicans transportation package this week. alike, unless legislators pass a That is a welcome step but by itself suitable tax package to help schools an inadequate one. Oregonians need and human services. her to campaign not for re-election This is last fall’s ballot fight but for a worthwhile transportation being replayed. In the aftermath package, meaningful PERS reforms of its decisive but divisive defeat and pragmatic tax decisions. of Ballot Measure 97, the business Success will require passion, community has been unable to persuasiveness and willingness to coalesce and work with unions on an alternative. As a result, SEIU, the defy her past allies. 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 Bill would make drug prices affordable I’m a pharmacist in Enterprise, Oregon, at one of two places in town where patients can get prescriptions. I enjoy being a pharmacist because I like to help people. But I don’t like seeing how the prices of needed medications gives my patients sticker shock. I see patients in my community often making choices between the basic necessities of life and their medications, and if nothing is done I know it’s likely to get worse. It’s unhealthy for them and frustrating for me, and it impacts the whole community. One of my patients has diabetes, as do one in eight Oregonians. Insulin prices have tripled in just the past decade. In addition, she needs a higher dosage to manage her condition – and a higher dosage also means a higher cost. She is lucky to have health insurance but her out-of-pocket costs are still about $600 per month and that’s after her insurance covers two-thirds of the cost. That means this drug costs almost $22,000 per year. Once, as I could see the will to live draining from her face, she said, “Maybe I should just die.” She tried to turn it into a joke but it didn’t really work. Experiences like this happen every day and are why the Oregon Pharmacy Coalition is part of the broad coalition working to pass the Oregon Affordable Drug Prices Act for affordability, fairness, and transparency in drug pricing. HB 2387, the Oregon Affordable Drug Prices Act, helps patients by capping prescription drug co-pays at between $100 and $250, which will provide immediate relief for hundreds of thousands of Oregonians. This Act will also benefit all Oregonians by bringing transparency to drug pricing and making the market more competitive. Pharma- ceutical manufacturers will be required to justify large price increases to the Depart- ment of Business and Consumer Affairs. If the drug price increase is determined to be unjustified, the pharmaceutical manufacturer must pay a rebate into a Premium Protection Fund, which will ensure that the high prices they charge don’t drive up insurance rates. Learn more about how HB 2387 will help Oregonians and get involved at www.affordablerxnow.org. The powerful pharmaceutical industry has spent a lot of money in Oregon to stop HB 2387 and protect their profits. Please join us today in standing up to Big Pharma to lower prices and bring transparency and accountability to drug pricing. Sean Murray Enterprise 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 Can Democrats save themselves? O n a recent weekend at the elitist optics at odds with the lessons farmers market in Halcottsville, of 2016. Although new research New York, Fred Margulies sat commissioned by Priorities USA, a under a “Vote Where It Counts” sign Democratic super PAC, concluded and beckoned second-home owners to that many Obama-to-Trump voters re-register in this area upstate instead believed that Democrats are out of of wherever their main residences touch with less affluent Americans, were — New York City, most likely. a recent, high-profile Democratic To win the House in 2018 and brainstorming session in Washington Frank buck President Donald Trump’s worst was held at the opulent Four Seasons Bruni impulses, Democrats don’t need more Hotel. Comment votes in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Then there are the candidates, They need them around Halcottsville, who sometimes step forward, or are in the 19th Congressional District, where elevated, independent of any master plan. the party should be able to prevail but keeps Democrats in the 19th haven’t been riding falling short. optimal ones. Its optimism grows with Trump’s woes. Their horse in 2014 was a pampered foal, But will Democrats put forward the right Sean Eldridge, then 28, who is married to candidate for a largely working-class region Facebook multimillionaire Chris Hughes whose barns need paint, whose town centers and qualified for the race by purchasing a $2 want for bustle and whose manufacturing million country house just an hour from the plants are too few and far between? $5 million country house the couple already Margulies told me that a man might fare owned. best, especially someone who doesn’t feed His bid was cast as a tale “of nouveau residents’ fears that they’re “under the thumb riche liberal ambition, real-estate excess and of the city.” But in the Democratic primary carpetbaggery run amok,” Michael Barbaro last year, Margulies spurned a male contender wrote in The New York Times, and, shockingly, with unquestioned local ties in favor of he never captured the hearts of the region’s Zephyr Teachout, a Manhattan law professor dairy farmers. Although the district is almost who’d just moved to the district to run. She evenly divided between Democrats and got the nomination, then lost by about 9 points Republicans, and Barack Obama won it by in the general election. about 8 points in 2008 and 6 in 2012, Eldridge “I liked her mind,” Margulies said. “I guess suffered a 30-point defeat. I’m not practical.” He ran against a popular, deft incumbent Well, the time for romance is past. The who then decided to retire from the House 2018 midterms could hinge on how ruthlessly after 2016, so Democrats nursed renewed pragmatic Democrats are. hopes in last year’s congressional election. From the scandalous look of the last week, Party chieftains in Washington put the Hudson dominated by James Comey’s testimony, Valley high on their wish list of House seats to Democrats are beautifully positioned to turn blue. trounce Republicans wherever Republicans Teachout was the favorite of the local are trounce-able. But the party has done an progressives who held sway in the primary. ace job of sabotaging itself before. The 19th She had been anointed by Sanders. She had District, also known as the Hudson Valley, attained some celebrity by challenging Gov. tells that story well. Andrew Cuomo’s 2014 re-election bid. So Next year, Democrats should pick they passed over Will Yandik, a relative up many seats in Congress, given the moderate whose family farm went back several usual midterm correction and the unusual generations and who had graduated from a melodrama in the Trump administration. local high school before getting bachelor’s and Control of the Senate is probably beyond master’s degrees in the Ivy League. the party’s reach, because Democrats have “I don’t know that I would have won,” to defend two states to every one that Yandik told me. “I would have come closer Republicans do, on turf that’s plenty red. than Zephyr Teachout.” Looking ahead, he Control of the House, though, is entirely said that “in a swing district where every possible, even with all the gerrymandering single percentage point matters, the inability that has occurred. But that presumes that to demonstrate a cultural connection to the Democrats can get their act together. district is a liability.” They’re still not sure how much of Trump’s He’s taking a pass on 2018 but is watching victory had to do with Hillary Clinton’s flaws to see whether Democratic primary voters “are versus the party’s poor grasp of America, and going to be strategic and pick a centrist and the more they focus on the former, tattling for someone with deep roots — someone who can the tell-all book “Shattered” and then tittering beat John Faso — or whether they are going to over its revelations, the less they own up to the adhere to their progressive principles and put a latter. firebrand like Zephyr Teachout up again.” They’re still searching for a concise, ■ coherent message. They’re still feuding: the Frank Bruni, an Op-Ed columnist for Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren wing versus The New York Times since 2011, joined the the moderates. And they’re still indulging in newspaper in 1995. Climate crimes won’t go untried I had a dream. At first I thought I was scientists who warned action was at the Nuremberg trials watching needed to protect future generations?” attorneys for the Allied forces He scoffed but again said nothing. prosecute Nazi leaders who carried out I glanced at the other defendants the Holocaust. awaiting their turn. The former But the defendants didn’t have Speaker of the House looked as cold the look of hardened soldiers. On the and clueless as ever. I recognized a contrary, they looked soft and surly, handful of the congressmen who had offended at being inconvenienced by urged for withdrawal from the Paris Hal the proceedings. McCune climate accord — and not coinciden- As the dream sharpened, I noticed tally had taken millions of dollars in Comment charts on the walls depicting the oil company donations. The prosecutor was now playing an fading of the polar ice caps, the excerpt from another former president about steady temperature rise of the oceans, the relentless increase in carbon dioxide and other his travels around the world. “… you talk to leaders of governments and the opposition, greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The and they are arguing about a whole bunch prosecution was surrounded by tables brim- of things,” he said. “One thing they’re not ming with studies and reports, peer-reviewed journals, clippings, satellite photos and NASA arguing about is whether the science of climate change is real and whether or not research. we’re going to have to do something about it.” This clearly wasn’t Germany or a post-war He then asked the judge to direct the tribunal. I wasn’t dreaming about the past but defendant to answer the question — why his rather the not-so-distant future. political party was the only one in the advanced “Are you aware that NASA first briefed the Senate in 1988 that it was 99-percent certain that world that still denies climate change? The defendant added a half smile to his rising global temperatures were caused by the sneer, and lazily lifted a hand and rubbed his burning of fossil fuels?” the prosecutor barked thumb back and forth over his finger tips. at the defendant slouched on the witness stand. I saw a woman juror mouth the unspoken I couldn’t tell for certain but his familiar “Mr. answer: Greed. Burns” smirk reminded me of Scott Pruitt, the As the dream faded I realized why guy who fought the EPA’s efforts to protect air and water while an Oklahoma politician only to I initially thought of Nuremberg. I was witnessing another trial of crimes against be appointed to lead the agency. He didn’t answer the question, just sneered. humanity. ■ “Did you ever think about your children Hal McCune is a longtime Pendleton resi- and grandchildren when you refused to act on the unprecedented consensus of climate dent and former editor at the East Oregonian.
