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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (July 18, 2017)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Tuesday, July 18, 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 EO MEDIA GROUP East Oregonian • The Daily Astorian • Capital Press • Hermiston Herald Blue Mountain Eagle • Wallowa County Chieftain • Chinook Observer • Coast River Business Journal Oregon Coast Today • Coast Weekend • Seaside Signal • Cannon Beach Gazette Eastern Oregon Real Estate Guide • Eastern Oregon Marketplace • Coast Marketplace OnlyAg.com • FarmSeller.com • Seaside-Sun.com • NorthwestOpinions.com • DiscoverOurCoast.com OUR VIEW WOTUS rejection a victory for landowners You can add our voice to email to EPA officials prior to the release of the final draft. Among those cheering a decision by the its complaints was a claim that in Environmental Protection Agency extending regulation to isolated and the Army Corps of Engineers bodies of water that have a to propose a rule to rescind the “significant nexus” with navigable 2015 Clean Water Rule meant to define waters of the United States waters of the United States, but defining such that are regulated bodies as having under the Clean Water Act. WOTUS is on “no hydrological with WOTUS is his way out — connection on its way out. navigable waters,” It’s a victory for made it unlikely it’s a victory landowners against agencies for landowners the the power of the could establish a administrative nexus that would against the state. withstand a court power of challenge. EPA and the When the rule Corps worked EPA and the was released in on the rule for a administrative 2015, a number couple of years states and in the hopes of state as a whole. of industry groups reconciling two sued. Notably, one separate Supreme lawsuit was filed Court decisions in by Scott Pruitt — then attorney cases involving the Clean Water general of Oklahoma and now Act. The object was to better the Trump administration’s EPA define what constitutes “waters director. of the United States,” which the Jurisdictional disputes arising act gives the federal government from those lawsuits resulted in a authority to regulate. stay of the rule’s implementation The language of the rule by the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court extended regulation to isolated of Appeals in October 2015. bodies of water that have a “significant nexus” with navigable The Supreme Court will take up the case later this year, but will waters of the United States. The decide only the jurisdictional rule left it to the bureaucrats to issues, not the merits of the rule’s determine that nexus, and that rightly made farmers and ranchers interpretation of what constitutes “waters of the United States.” nervous. Fulfilling a campaign promise, Despite their attempt, the final President Trump in February regulation brought little of the issued an executive order for a clarity it purported to provide. Farm and ranch groups worried, review of the rule. Getting rid of the rule as written despite the government’s protest is a good first step in reducing to the contrary, the feds would the reach of the administrative use the opportunity to expand state. But that’s not enough, their authority over “waters,” because it will leave unresolved and therefore adjacent lands, not the ambiguity created by the previously subject to regulation disparate Supreme Court rulings. under the Clean Water Act. Such a designation could have profound Farmers, ranchers and regulators need clear, unambiguous guidance and expensive consequences for on the true extent and limit of the landowners. government’s authority. Even the Corps had its doubts. On that point the next rule must Unhappy with the way EPA wrote be quite clear. the document, it wrote a scathing 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 Barreto votes for own good, not good of district I am still seething that our honorable representative Greg Barreto decided to vote no on the state transportation package. I have no idea what he was thinking when he did that, but Eastern Oregon gets so little in the way of highway funds that had I been the representative from this district I would have voted yes and made sure that my district had funding for all their projects like the full cloverleaf interchange at exit 209 and paving or repaving of any and all city streets, etc. If something isn’t done to improve exit 209 there will be a major wreck there with many casualties and a large lawsuit, thanks to the fact that there wasn’t the money to do it right in the first place. I’m sure that La Grande and Cove have highway projects that they need funding for that, had he lobbied for funding, would have gotten done. But no, he thought more of his conservative Republican values than he did the good of the district. I believe that it is time that he get voted out of office and that the district get someone in there who will think more about the district than they do themselves. He has been in office for two terms and the only thing that I’ve seen he did was to get the speeds Liu Xiaobo and China’s decline L iu Xiaobo, the dissident writer dictatorship confers advantages in who became China’s first Nobel efficiency and decisiveness that Peace laureate when he won the fractious democracies can only dream prize in 2010, died in state custody about. Thursday, having spent almost the last It’s an odd argument. Autocracies nine years of his life in prison. His are sometimes rich but never modern. death is a tragedy and an outrage. It’s Efficiency can mean doing dumb also a warning to his jailers. things quickly. Political control over To wit: No nation that defames and economic resources is a recipe for Bret imprisons its best people is going to Stephens corruption and capital misallocation. become great. No country that is afraid To this day Beijing treats its economy Comment to let a man such as Liu speak freely as an extension of state propaganda, can possibly be described as strong. manufacturing statistics and mistaking Regimes that are fearsome are brittle, too. trophyism for development. That’s a thought that ought to vex those The core mistake is to assume that values China enthusiasts who for years have been aren’t inputs. “The process of abandoning predicting that the country’s rise to global the ‘philosophy of struggle’ was also a primacy is merely a matter of time. This is process of gradual weakening of the enemy geopolitical analysis by way mentality and elimination of of grade-school math: If the the psychology of hatred,” United States, with a gross Liu wrote in a courtroom domestic product of $18.6 statement that would become trillion, continues to grow his Nobel lecture (delivered in at its current sub-2 percent absentia). rate a year, and China, with a “It was this process,” GDP of $11.2 trillion, grows he added, “that provided at its plus-6 percent rate, then a relaxed climate, at home China will overtake us in and abroad, for Reform about a decade. and Opening Up, gentle Tick-tick-tick. and humane grounds for Then again, there’s a restoring mutual affection difference between trend and among people and peaceful truth. The economist Paul coexistence among those Samuelson predicted in 1961 with different interests and that the Soviet economy values, thereby providing would surpass the United encouragement in keeping States’ sometime between 1984 and 1997. with humanity for the bursting forth of Japan’s GDP was expected to overtake the creativity.” United States’ by the year 2000. The European Creativity requires freedom. Ideas Union was another supposed contender for need room to compete and collide, free of dominance. social and legal penalties. As economies Should China be any different from these approach the creative frontier, the need for also-rans? China’s official growth rate has freedom expands commensurately. The gap slowed every year this decade; it’s now at its between available information and necessary lowest point since the era of the Tiananmen information needs to be as narrow as possible. Square massacre. Bad loans at Chinese banks Much of what is economically necessary are at a 12-year high, while productivity information is also political information, growth is at a 16-year low, according to making censorship and repression Bloomberg. China’s working-age population incompatible with the requirements of a is shrinking and lost nearly 5 million people dynamic economy. in 2015 alone. Capital outflows from China Liu understood that the Chinese model of hit $640 billion last year; China’s upper and economic modernization without political middle classes are voting with their real-estate reform was destined to fail: The insight is choices. at the heart of the Charter 08 manifesto that All this could mean nothing more than that landed him in prison. “The decline of the China, like an athlete growing old, is tracing current system has reached the point where the same arc of most other economies that change is no longer optional,” it warned. emerge quickly from poverty only to stall out As if to prove it really didn’t get the point thanks to rent-seeking elites, rising factory of Liu’s teachings, Beijing moved quickly wages, demographic imbalances and so on. to censor stories about him and expressions This is called the middle-income trap, and as of sympathy on the internet. But at least one the World Bank noted a few years ago, “of pointed anonymous message got out to Wall 101 middle-income economies in 1960, only Street Journal reporter Nicole Hong. China 13 became high-income by 2008.” boosters, take note: For China, however, things are likely to be You want to bury him worse. Why? Liu Xiaobo knew the answer. bury into the dirt Westerners besotted by the “rising China” but you forget hypothesis often make the case that while the he is a seed. country’s human-rights record is lamentable, ■ it has no bearing on its economic future. Bret Stephens won a Pulitzer Prize for Economies, they say, run on inputs, not commentary in 2013. He began working as a values. If anything, they believe that China’s columnist at The New York Times in April. No country that is afraid to let a man such as Liu speak freely can possibly be described as strong. on Interstate 84 and Highway 395 increased. Isn’t it time that we elect someone to that seat that will fight for Eastern Oregon’s share of state money so that Eastern Oregon can grow like the valley has? I think so, and I am willing to fight to get him out of office and elect someone in who cares about the good of the district, not his own pocketbook. Barbara A. Wright Pendleton No matter who’s asking, vote against new taxes It seems that the lust for more property taxes just never ends. Now I read in the East Oregonian that Oregon State University wants to tax property owners in Umatilla and Morrow counties for some education programs. The early information on this is that it would tax property at 33 cents per $1,000 or $577.50 annually on a $175,000 property. This, of course, is preliminary as we all know things change and always go up. These folks say that the return on investment is “high-value operations that require a high level of sophistication.” If you believe that poor information, then I have a bridge to sell you. Just vote no on more taxes. Jim Tiede Hermiston 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 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@eastoregonian.com.
