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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (July 29, 2017)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Saturday, July 29, 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 Multipronged approach right course on pension reform When it comes to reforming contribution toward PERS died in committee. Oregon’s Public Employees A multipronged approach is the Retirement System, state leaders right course to take. Legislators, for need to avoid taking one step their part, can only make changes forward and two steps back. As the Legislature recently to the system going forward. The task force, though, isn’t addressing sputtered on pension reform, Gov. the benefits issue. Its mission is Kate Brown appointed a seven- member, public-private task force to finding ways the state can pay scrutinize ways to make the most of down a chunk of what it expects to owe. It’s also looking at whether state assets to reduce the system’s dedicating specific $22 billion pension revenue streams liability. Brown gave the The mission is to help reduce the obligation makes task force a goal of reducing the liability finding ways the sense. In its first by $5 billion and state can pay meeting Monday, suggested selling down a chunk of the task force state assets, although not certain to focus its what it expects agreed properties, such as work — expected to prisons and state culminate in a report to owe. parks. Sales could due to the governor include properties by Nov. 1 — on such as “buffer zones” around big-ticket items that can get to the state prisons or youth correctional $5 billion figure. facilities. It’s also possible the Meanwhile, the board overseeing PERS discussed Friday whether to state could enter public-private partnerships or cut costs in other downgrade assumptions about how much return the system will get ways, such as by moving certain on its investments. Changing the state offices to lower-rent areas. assumptions about returns on the Those are good steps and should investments could greatly increase be taken, but many would generate the pension’s unfunded liability, one-time-only savings and none which would mean state agencies address the real root of the PERS and school districts would have problem — the system’s structure to put even more money into the and the benefits themselves. Public system in the coming years. employee unions have vigorously The governor and lawmakers fought any reduction of benefits need to be advocates for system and the unions exert heavy political changes to reduce the financial clout. Brown and other lawmakers threat the liability poses to the state’s acknowledged near the end of future well-being. Until those issues the legislative session that any are addressed, the liability will structural or benefit reform would continue to grow, public employers have to be tackled at the next full session in 2019, thereby kicking the will have to increase the amount they pay into PERS for employee can down the road once again. In benefits and the task force’s work this past session, a bill that would will provide only short-term help. have required a 1 percent salary 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 Poachers should be held responsible for their crime I am writing this letter to thank the East Oregonian for publishing Kathy Aney’s excellent article, “Shooting migratory birds flies in the face of federal law,” in the July 22-23 edition. What a heart-breaking story to read on a Sunday morning when six hummingbirds were drinking from our feeders in our flower garden. Whoever shot and murdered the ferruginous hawk in Coombs Canyon deserves time in jail, a hefty fine of at least $1,000 and needs to learn responsibility for their egregious act by engaging in 200 hours of community service. The person who committed this cowardly act placed the crosshairs of their rifle on the feathered white breast of the largest hawk in North America as it trustingly sat on a rock in Coombs Canyon alongside its nest. What a mighty hunter you were when you took the life of our most regal hawk then left it to rot and decay. With a wingspan of 56 inches (8 inches wider than a sheet of plywood), the gerruginous hawk can soar for hours as it hunts its prey of rabbits, hares, ground squirrels, prairie dogs and pocket gophers. This bird did nothing to any human except trust your presence in its territory — too late, unfortunately. Shame on you for murdering this, our most regal of hawks. What you did was a callous, despicable, cowardly act of murder by an adolescent-minded, uncaring, self-centered fugitive. You are now an outlaw in the eyes of the law and wanted for a federal crime. May the good lord provide for your capture and punishment — sooner rather than later. Jack Simons Pendleton OTHER VIEWS A Trump Tower of absolute folly D onald Trump’s campaign the case. But regardless of whether he against his attorney general, has his facts straight, Trump’s logic Jeff Sessions, in which he is is a straightforward admission that seemingly attempting to insult and he wants to eject his attorney general humiliate and tweet-shame Sessions because Sessions has not adequately into resignation, is an insanely stupid protected him from legal scrutiny exercise. It is a multitiered tower of — an argument that at once reveals political idiocy, a sublime monument Trump’s usual contempt for laws and to the moronic, a gaudy, gleaming, norms and also suggests (not for the Ross Ozymandian folly that leaves many Douthat first time) that he has something so of the president’s prior efforts in its substantial to hide that only omerta- Comment shade. style loyalty will do. Let us walk through the levels of Which, of course — now we’ve stupidity one by one. First there is the policy reached the peak of the tower of folly — he level — generally the lowest, least important probably will not get if Sessions goes, because in Trumpworld, but still worth exploring. no hatchet man will win easy confirmation, To the extent that any figure in the Trump and until Sessions is replaced the acting administration both embodies “Trumpism” attorney general will be Rod Rosenstein, the and seems capable of executing its policy man who appointed Robert Mueller as special ambitions, it is Sessions, who is using his counsel in the first place! office to strictly enforce immigration laws So it’s basically madness all the way to the and pursue an old-school top: bad policy, bad strategy, law-and-order agenda. bad politics, bad legal You may hate his maneuvering, bad optics, agenda (as most liberals a self-defeating venture do) or dislike parts of it (as carried out via deranged- I do), but it is clearly the as-usual tweets and public agenda that Trump ran on, insults. and the attorney general’s And if it were any other office is one of the few president behaving like places where it is being this — well, rather than effectively pursued. So repeat arguments I’ve made cashiering Sessions would before, I’ll quote Bloomberg be a remarkable statement View’s Megan McArdle, (though hardly the first) that writing a few months ago in the president cares almost response to my admittedly nothing for his own alleged extreme suggestion that platform and governing Trump’s behavior might philosophy. justify removal under the Next in our tower of 25th Amendment: folly is the institutional level. Trump has Imagine, if you will, that George W. Bush had difficulty staffing his administration, his had started acting like Donald Trump partway secretary of state is muttering about leaving, into his second term …. Is there any question and his White House is riven by factionalism that people would be talking about invoking and paranoia. Meanwhile, he is both under the 25th Amendment to remove him? Not investigation by Senate Republicans and for political reasons, but because it would be dependent on their good will to keep the obvious that some tragic mental impairment investigations contained to just the Russia had befallen the commander in chief. business. Adults of mature years know not to Trying to defenestrate Sessions, the lone engage in histrionic self-pity in public, not Republican senator in Trump’s corner during necessarily because they avoid self-pity but the primary campaign and a popular figure because, outside of high school parties, this is among his former Senate colleagues, will a singularly ineffective way to make people make things worse for the president on both like and support you. fronts. Competent leaders do not preside over It demonstrates a level of disloyalty staff who are leaking what is essentially that should send sane people running from one long and anguished primal scream Trump’s service, it tells other Cabinet to any reporter they can get to hold still. members to get out while the getting’s Seasoned professionals do not, suddenly good (and to leak and undermine like and for no apparent reason, say things in crazy on their way), and it further alienates public that make them better targets for legal Republican senators whom Trump needs to investigations … confirm appointees (including any Sessions And so the only possible explanation replacement) and to go easy on his scandals. for such a quick succession of stunning Next on our tour is the level of mass lapses in judgment would be a severe stroke, politics, where Trump’s war on Sessions is an aggressive brain tumor or some other one of the few things short of a recession that neurological disaster that had rendered him could hurt him with his base — which he unfit to continue in office, at least until it needs to hold, since he isn’t doing anything to could be treated. I don’t even think this would persuade anyone outside it. be controversial, even among his supporters. Of course many Trump supporters will side “Poor fellow,” they’d murmur, “the strain of with him no matter what and lots don’t care the office has destroyed his health. He has about Sessions one way or another. But the given more than his life for his country.” Time Trumpian core also includes conservatives to let him rest and heal while someone else who like Sessions for ideological reasons, shoulders his Sisyphean burdens. who trust Trump in part because Sessions Trump hasn’t had a stroke or suffered a vouched for him, and who don’t like or trust neurological disaster, and his behavior in the very many other people (the family, the New White House is no different from the behavior Yorkers, the ex-Democrats) in Trump’s inner he manifested consistently while winning circle. Which is why Trump’s campaign enough votes to take the presidency. against Sessions has already brought him But he is nonetheless clearly impaired, negative coverage from Breitbart, Tucker gravely deficient somewhere at the Carlson and various pro-Trump or anti-anti- intersection of reason and judgment and Trump pundits — making it an extraordinary conscience and self-control. Pointing this out act of political malpractice from a White is wearying and repetitive, but still it must be House that lacks a cushion for such follies. pointed out. Next there is the legal level. By his own You can be as loyal as Jeff Sessions and admission, Trump’s beef with Sessions still suffer the consequences of that plain and centers on the attorney general’s recusal from inescapable truth: This president should not the Russia investigation, which from Trump’s be the president, and the sooner he is not, the perspective led to the appointment of a special better. counsel he now obviously yearns to fire. ■ This blame-Sessions perspective is warped, Ross Douthat joined The New York since it was Trump’s decision to fire James Times as an Op-Ed columnist in April 2009. Comey (an earlier monumental folly) that was Previously, he was a senior editor at the actually decisive in putting Robert Mueller on Atlantic and a blogger for theatlantic.com. Trump is gravely deficient somewhere at the intersection of reason and and judgment and conscience and self-control. 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.
