Page 4A
OPINION
East Oregonian
Saturday, July 22, 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
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
Elections are
term limits
Oregon voters may have the
opportunity to place term limits on
Oregon legislators when they vote in
2018.
The proposal by former
Republican candidate for governor
Bud Pierce would prohibit state
legislators from serving for more than
eight years in a 12-year period. If
voters give it the go-ahead, it would
immediately prohibit 25 members of
the Oregon Legislature from serving
out their terms.
While that would create a clear
short-term problem, the long-term
drawbacks and benefits of term limits
are less clear.
One thing we know, however,
is that few politicians of any stripe
support them.
“Term limits empower bureaucrats
and lobbyists and professional staff
because ordinary citizens can’t
hope to know how governmental
systems work without experience,
and in some cases, without years of
experience in office,” Republican
State Sen. Ted Ferrioli (R-John
Day) told Ontario’s Argus-Observer
newspaper earlier this week.
Democrats and Republican
lawmakers, both urban and rural,
have made similar claims.
Pierce, however, is in favor. He
thinks the initiative petition, which
is titled the “Maintain a Citizen
Legislature Act,” will do just that —
it will take the professional politician
out of Oregon politics.
“It’s not a panacea, but I think it
is an important step,” Pierce told the
Portland Tribune. “There is just too
much power in the incumbency.”
Nationwide, 15 states have placed
term limits on lawmakers. For an
example on how it works, let’s look
to our southern neighbors in Nevada.
In the 1990s, voters there limited
lawmakers to 12 years (six terms)
in the state assembly and 12 years
(three terms) in the Senate. In the 20
years since, the Nevada Legislature
has become much more diverse,
with younger lawmakers from a
wider variety of backgrounds and
demographics winning seats and
taking their turn at the podium.
But lawmakers there agree that
the youth and inexperience from
the governing side boosts the power
of lobbyists and the importance of
staff, who are the main sources of
institutional knowledge.
But information from the Mercatus
Center — which supports and lobbies
for term limits — notes that states
with term-limited lawmakers are
performing better in key financial
health metrics, on average, than
legislatures that do not. Among the
top 15 legislatures in the best fiscal
position, eight of them have term-
limited lawmakers.
There is much debate to be had on
the merits and efficiency of veteran
lawmakers compared to new ones
with different life experiences, and
we will surely debate that throughout
the next year.
But first we must raise the question
of liberty. If we have a state senator
or representative that we like, who we
think does a good job representing us
and our district, why should we not
have the freedom to elect that person
again and again and again?
We understand there are
drawbacks to that way of thinking.
Entrenched powers have a way of
protecting their own careers and
interests, rather than the interests
of the people they were elected to
serve. But guess what? We have the
power to end that by voting for their
competition.
So why don’t we more often?
Why does Congress have a 9 percent
approval rating, but we continue to
elect the same congressmen?
For one reason, it’s just our
human nature. We’ve been bred
for generations to trust the things
we know and look warily on things
that have not yet been proven.
Confirmation bias is a scientific fact,
and incumbents have a tremendous
statistical advantage in elections of all
kinds.
Yet at the same time, Americans
are clearly dissatisfied with the
political class. We’re content to
continue the status quo we’re
dissatisfied with, in fear of voting in
something worse.
We can blame the system for
those kind of results, but we also
must look inward. Are we giving
newcomers and challengers a fair
shake? Are we letting political parties
dictate who our representatives are?
Are we holding our representatives
responsible for their votes and
actions?
There are all appropriate questions
to ask before enacting a law that will
reduce freedom and kick out some
high-functioning, key lawmakers
(the babies) along with those who we
would benefit from doing without
(the bathwater).
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 the news media an
‘existential’ threat?
D
ear Dennis,
That’s why the intelligent
To err is human. To tweet is
conservative has no time either for
to regret. When I decided last
illiberalism, often of the right, or
month to leave Twitter, it was in part
relativism, typically of the left. And
because I knew that, while I couldn’t
that’s why wise conservatives take the
avoid the former, I could at least escape
threat from Vladimir Putin seriously.
the latter. Not everything that pops into
He is the champion and most insidious
the heads of smart people is smart. Still
exponent of both.
less of it needs to be shared.
Through the development of a
Bret
“Silence is better for the wise, and
Stephens crypto-fascist ideology that combines
how much more so for fools.” I’m sure
ferocious ethnic chauvinism and
Comment
you know the proverb.
revanchism, economic corporatism, a
So it was with a grain of salt that I
dash of religious traditionalism, and a
read your Bastille Day tweet:
personality cult, he is the model for aspiring
“The news media in the West pose a far
autocrats everywhere, from Hungary to Turkey
greater danger to Western civilization than
to the Philippines.
Russia does,” Dennis Prager tweeted.
And through Russia Today and other direct
It sounded, frankly, like the kind of
or indirect arms of Kremlin propaganda, Putin
involuntary mental wet burp many of us have
makes common cause with his old comrades
at moments of peak ideological irritation — for on the far left. In the main, the goal is to
conservatives, often while
undermine the West every
reading the editorial pages of
way they can, from exposing
The New York Times.
military and diplomatic secrets
I didn’t think you could
via WikiLeaks, to intervening
possibly mean it. Turns out,
in and calling into question the
you do.
legitimacy of the democratic
On Tuesday you doubled
process, to raising the bogus
down with an online column
specter of a “deep state” that
for Townhall. “The real threat
suppresses the popular will.
to Western civilization is
No wonder the best book
Western civilization ceasing
yet written about Putin’s
to believe in itself,” you write.
Russia, by Peter Pomerantsev,
“And, in that regard, Russia poses no danger,
is titled “Nothing is True and Everything is
while the left-wing dominated media and
Possible.” I’m sending it to you as a birthday
universities pose an existential threat.”
present, Dennis. Relativism greases the skids
You’re a smart guy, Dennis, and it’s not a
for illiberalism.
dumb column. “Attacking what the media is
That’s why we NeverTrumpers believe
doing is not the same as attacking the existence there is a connection between Donald Trump’s
of the media,” you say. True. “Putin is indeed a compulsive lying and his undisguised personal
murderous quasi-dictator,” you acknowledge.
affinity for Putin that goes beyond the
Delete “quasi”; otherwise correct. “Civilization question of who said what at last year’s Russia
connotes a body of ideas and a value system,”
meeting in Trump Tower. The connection is
you add, making the point that Russia’s nukes
philosophical.
can’t destroy it. Well, OK, that’s one way of
To be indifferent to every claim of truth or
defining civilization.
fact is the ultimate assertion of power. It is to
You end with a list of various things being say: Nothing restrains me, not what I promised
done to Western civilization in the name of
yesterday, not what I am saying to you now,
multiculturalism, anti-DWEMism and so
not what I might do tomorrow. That’s how
on, none of it with the help of Putin. Much
Putin operates in his sphere. That’s how Trump
of it is indeed bad, though I’m not sure that
operates in ours. What’s worse is to see so
Justin Trudeau declaring there is “no core
many conservatives who should know better
identity, no mainstream in Canada” counts as
excuse one president and line up behind the
a Spenglerian moment in the story of Western other.
decline.
Dennis, you got your wish: Hillary Clinton
But, yes, there’s a lot that’s dumb about
isn’t president and never will be. But the
the academy and a lot that’s wrong with
responsibility of a public intellectual like you
journalism. It should be criticized, not
isn’t to spend the next several years justifying
feared. Foolish conservatives often assume
your vote. It’s to see things plain and in their
every instance of institutional malfunction
true perspective. To suggest that Vladimir Putin
is a symptom of civilizational cancer. Wiser
is a distant nuisance but Maggie Haberman
conservatives know, as Adam Smith did, that
or David Sanger is an existential threat to our
“there is a great deal of ruin in a nation.”
civilization isn’t seeing things plain, to put it
Wiser conservatives — and I count you
mildly.
among them, Dennis — also know that when
It used to be that conservatives thought
we speak of “the West,” what we’re talking
liberals were wrong while liberals thought
about is a particular strain within it. Marx and
conservatives were evil. Among the other ways
Lenin, after all, are also part of the Western
in which Trump has degraded the conservative
tradition, as are Heidegger and Hitler.
movement is that he’s turned us into a mirror
For us, on the other hand, “the West” is
image of what we used to accuse liberals of
the liberal-democratic tradition; the one most
being. He’s turned us into haters.
succinctly expressed in the Declaration of
Don’t be a hater, Dennis. Disavow, delete
Independence. “All men are created equal.”
and rethink that stupid tweet.
“The consent of the governed.” “The Laws of
■
Nature and of Nature’s God.” “Life, Liberty
Bret Stephens won a Pulitzer Prize for
and the pursuit of Happiness.” All the rest,
commentary in 2013. He began working as a
from Exodus to Gettysburg, is commentary.
columnist at The New York Times in April.
Wise
conservatives
take the threat
from Vladimir
Putin seriously.
YOUR VIEWS
Senate Bill 517 bad for
cattle and consumers
For the cattle industry, a new
bill in the Senate would create an
utter mess in Oregon. As executive
director of the Oregon Cattlemen’s
Association, an organization
dedicated to supporting and
voicing the needs of our producers,
I need to raise awareness of the
misnamed Senate Bill 517, the
Consumer and Fuel Retailer
Choice Act.
SB517 waives the Clean
Air Act’s Reid Vapor Pressure
restrictions on E15 fuel, allowing
it to be sold year-round. In reality,
the bill is a backroom deal between
the ethanol industry and their Corn
Belt supporters in the Senate, all
at the expense of producers and
consumers.
This bill is the industry’s
shiny object, distracting senators
from reforming the unworkable
renewable fuel standard. Since it
came into existence in 2005, our
country has come to divert nearly
40 percent of the U.S. corn crop
into fuel instead of food or feed for
our cattle and other livestock. Corn
prices have never been under $3
per bushel and have been as high
as almost $8 a bushel due to feed
price volatility.
On top of all the issues cattle
ranchers are facing due to the
standard, E15 is also harmful to
the outdoor power equipment
often used by our producers. Using
ethanol-blended fuels such as E15
in these engines can cause issues
ranging from metal corrosion to
rubber swelling and full-engine
breakdowns.
It’s time that our lawmakers
stand up to the tricks of the ethanol
lobbyists and stand up for our
constituents. This bill is clearly no
good for our state and no good for
our country. The members of the
Environment and Public Works
Committee have the chance to
stop this bill before it becomes a
reality, and before constituents face
the unintended consequences of a
failed policy.
Jerome Rosa, executive director,
Oregon Cattlemen’s Association
Barreto was sent to
Salem to vote against
transportation bill
Your editorial on Representative
Greg Barreto was a good example
of twisting the facts to fit your end
goal and ignoring two glaring ones.
You failed to mention that the
Democratic leadership required
a guaranteed yes vote on the
transportation bill at its very
inception in order to get money for
your district. That is not democracy
— that is tyranny. You do not
understand integrity or principle.
The other fact you missed it
that Greg Barreto did exactly what
those who voted for him sent him
to do.
Larry B. Moore
chair, Umatilla County Republicans
Milton-Freewater
Country just looking
to find fault, outrage
I am beginning to wonder if
the United States is turning into
a country of people looking for
reasons to be outraged and/or
offended.
Someone solicits for charity and
someone else will call it a hoax;
give a speech about progress or
opportunity, someone will find it
misconceived; write a play or a
movie about real life and someone
will call it obscene; suggest a new
food, someone will proclaim it
dangerous or poisonous; develop a
new way to improve farming and
someone will condemn it for not
being natural or organic; suggest an
idea about God and someone will
call it heresy.
The list goes on and on. Not
only are we quick to find flaws
in any product, idea, belief or
action, we go so far as to organize
campaigns, take out ads and
instigate protests against them.
I too am unhappy with the
current political climate. I believe
evil and discrimination must be
opposed by all means available,
but I also believe there was a
time when the public celebrated
progress, welcomed new ideas and
lauded those who thought “outside
the box.”
Today we have made the idea of
perfection the enemy of good. We
expect every action, innovation,
and product to be perfect at its
inception.
I don’t believe we are
basically an impatient, suspicious,
dissatisfied or pessimistic people
at heart.
But reading the letters to the
editor, social media posts, watching
cable news, and listening to people
(including myself sometimes) in
the checkout line of the grocery
store would prove me wrong.
It is time for all of us to start
thinking and acting like we are
living in a wonderful world, at
a wonderful time, filled with
wonderful people. We are making
progress even though we are not
perfect and probably never will be.
In conclusion, I believe we
should stop and smell the roses
and walk on the sunny side of the
street.
Rev. Ken Crysler
Pendleton