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
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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
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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.