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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 16, 2017)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Thursday, November 16, 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 Control your gun Perhaps no stories are more every household, especially homes with young children. The locks keep difficult to write and read than a gun from being fired as long as those about young children harmed they are affixed. A key is kept in through no fault of their own. a separate place. It’s unknown if a Sometimes this is due to health issues, other times accidents or gun lock in this specific situation crimes. No matter the cause, it’s was used or would have stopped this excruciating each and every time. tragedy — but in general they are a This week we critical safety tool. reported one such Gun safes are incident, in which a critical, too. Storing It’s your Hermiston toddler ammunition in responsibility a safe place out was shot and injured the reach of by a sibling, just 7 and your lawful of children, and in a years old, who got duty to keep separate place from control of a loaded weapons gun and fired it. your firearms where It’s a devastating are kept, should safe and secure. go without saying. story. The longterm And it’s ridiculous prognosis for the that we even have 2-year-old boy is unknown, the bullet from the Beretta to mention this, but guns should never be left loaded, in the open for handgun having struck him in his anyone to grab. If doing so leads head. No charges have been filed in to serious injury or death, it should the case thus far. be prosecuted as a crime. We must But it reminds us of the value of actual gun control. Not some also add responsible cleaning and maintenance of firearms, as well as government conspiracy to take gun safety at the shooting range and weapons away from American in the field. citizens, but the call for personal At the base level, gun control responsibility over your own is predicated on self control — firearms. In other words: Gun control as controlling your guns and teaching the value and responsibility not letting them get into the hands of of owning and using firearms. “It goes without saying that this children, those you don’t know, or is an incredibly horrible incident those who wish to do others harm. for the involved family, and the Control of your own guns, both officers who responded, the medical in your hand and in your home, is professionals who treated the child, critical to the fight against needless and the community as a whole,” the gun deaths and injuries. Hermiston Police Department stated Centers for Disease Control in its initial press release. “If you estimated 77 children died from own firearms, we urge you to store accidental gun discharges in 2015, them in a safe manner to prevent the latest data on record, but the unauthorized access.” Associated Press counted 141 cases That means you. Do it now. that year reported in the media. Gun locks are available for free at How do we reduce these Hermiston PD and the Umatilla unnecessary, tragic deaths? One County Sheriff’s Office in simple way is via gun locks — simple devices that should be used in Pendleton. 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 Can counties assert local control over federal land? The Eugene Register-Guard P eople who supported the aims but not the tactics of last year’s armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge think they’ve found a way to gain a greater degree of local control over federal lands. Last week the Crook County commissioners adopted a Natural Resources Policy that asserts a doctrine of “coordination” based on federal law. The doctrine would give the counties what amounts to veto power over federal land management decisions. Supporters of this approach are bound to be disappointed. Close to half the land in Crook County is managed by the U.S. Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management — and if some of those agencies’ decisions were put to a local vote they’d be soundly defeated. Crook County’s economy has historically depended on logging and ranching, both of which have been curtailed in recent decades by federal environmental and land management laws. But there’s a reason the agencies’ decisions aren’t subject to local votes: The Forest Service and BLM manage public lands on behalf of all Americans, not just those who live nearby. Crook County can’t dictate how many cattle can graze on BLM rangeland, or how much timber should be logged in the Ochoco National Forest, because citizens in the nation’s 3,141 other counties and parishes also have a right to insist that their ownership interests are protected. Federal laws governing public lands generally grant local communities a role in decision-making, and federal agencies are required to coordinate their policies with state and local authorities. Crook County has taken this requirement and pushed it beyond the limit. Coordination, the Natural Resources Policy claims, essentially means that federal lands must be managed in ways that reflect local priorities. Baker County in Eastern Oregon and Owyhee County in Idaho have approved similar policies, and the idea seems likely to spread. Its chief legal theorist is Wyoming attorney Karen Budd-Falen, who visited the Crook County seat of Prineville last March. “The federal statutes are so broad that it’s actually not that hard to write a local land use plan that is completely in line with federal statutes,” The (Portland) Oregonian quoted her as saying. Budd-Falen was a member of President Trump’s transition team, and her name is mentioned as a potential nominee to lead the BLM. Even as head of the BLM, Budd-Falen would be stymied in any attempt to surrender much of her agency’s authority to local governments. In a landmark 1987 decision, Granite Rock vs. California Coastal Commission, the Supreme Court upheld federal supremacy in the management of federal lands. Neither the White House nor Congress is likely to pursue an erosion of this supremacy — whether they favor preservation or exploitation of natural resources on public lands, the executive and legislative branches don’t want their priorities vetoed at the local level. Coordination can and does occur in many forms of federal land-use planning. Examples include the collaborative plans developed for both the Malheur refuge and the Ochoco forest. These plans attempt to balance competing interests — a difficult but often fruitful effort that Crook and other counties should continue to pursue. Coordination essentially means that federal lands must be managed in ways that reflect local priorities. OTHER VIEWS I believe Juanita O n Friday evening MSNBC husband and then her cat killed. Must host Chris Hayes sent out a we believe that, too? tweet that electrified online Similarly, there are reasons to be conservatives: “As gross and cynical at least unsure about Paula Jones’ and hypocritical as the right’s ‘what claim that Clinton exposed himself about Bill Clinton’ stuff is, it’s also true to her and demanded oral sex. that Democrats and the center left are Jones was championed by people overdue for a real reckoning with the engaged in what Ann Coulter once allegations against him.” Hayes’ tweet Michelle proudly called “a small, intricately inspired stories on Glenn Beck’s The Goldberg knit right-wing conspiracy” to bring Blaze, Breitbart and The Daily Caller, down the president. She described Comment all apparently eager to use the Clinton “distinguishing characteristics” of scandals to derail discussions about Clinton’s penis that turned out to Roy Moore, the Republican nominee for the be inaccurate. Her sister insisted to Sidney Blumenthal, then a New Yorker writer, that she U.S. Senate in Alabama who is accused of sexually assaulting minors. was lying. Should feminists have backed her Yet despite the right’s evident bad faith, I anyway? I’m still not sure, but the evidence agree with Hayes. In this #MeToo moment, was less definitive than that against Harvey when we’re reassessing Weinstein, Trump or decades of male Moore. misbehavior and turning Of the Clinton open secrets into exposés, accusers, the one who we should look clearly at haunts me is Broaddrick. the credible evidence that The story she tells about Juanita Broaddrick told Clinton recalls those the truth when she accused we’ve heard about Clinton of raping her. Weinstein. She claimed But revisiting the Clinton they had plans to meet in scandals in light of today’s a hotel coffee shop, but at politics is complicated the last minute he asked as well as painful. Democrats are guilty of to come up to her hotel room instead, where he apologizing for Clinton when they shouldn’t raped her. Five witnesses said she confided in have. At the same time, looking back at the them about the assault right after it happened. smear campaign against the Clintons shows we It’s true that she denied the rape in an affidavit can’t treat the feminist injunction to “believe to Paula Jones’ lawyers, before changing her women” as absolute. story when talking to federal investigators. Writing at Crooked.com, Brian Beutler But her explanation, that she didn’t want to go warns that in future elections, right-wing public but couldn’t lie to the FBI, makes sense. propaganda will exploit the progressive Put simply, I believe her. commitment to always taking sexual abuse What to do with that belief? Contemplating charges seriously. It’s easy to imagine an outlet this history is excruciating in part because of like Breitbart leveraging the “believe women” the way it has been weaponized against Hillary rallying cry to force mainstream media Clinton. Broaddrick sees her as complicit, coverage of dubious accusations. interpreting something Hillary once said to The Clinton years, in which epistemological her at a political event — “I want you to know warfare emerged as a key part of the that we appreciate everything you do for Bill” Republican political arsenal, show us why — as a veiled threat instead of a rote greeting. we should be wary of allegations that bubble This seems wildly unlikely; Broaddrick was up from the right-wing press. At the time, decades away from going public, and most reactionary billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife reporting about the Clinton marriage shows was bankrolling the Arkansas Project, which Bill going to great lengths to hide his betrayals. David Brock, the former right-wing journalist Nevertheless, one of the sick ironies of who played a major role in it, described as the 2016 campaign was that it was Hillary a “multimillion-dollar dirty tricks operation who had to pay the political price for Bill’s against the Clintons.” Various figures in misdeeds, as they were trotted out to deflect conservative media accused Bill Clinton of attention from Trump’s well-documented murder, drug-running and using state troopers transgressions. as pimps. Brock alleges that right-wing figures And now they’re being trotted out funneled money to some of Clinton’s accusers. again. It’s fair to conclude that because of In this environment, it would have been Broaddrick’s allegations, Bill Clinton no absurd to take accusations of assault and longer has a place in decent society. But harassment made against Clinton at face we should remember that it’s not simply value. On Monday, Caitlin Flanagan, perhaps partisan tribalism that led liberals to doubt her. taking up Hayes’ challenge, urged liberals Discerning what might be true in a blizzard of to remember some of what Clinton is said lies isn’t easy, and the people who spread those to have done. “Kathleen Willey said that she lies don’t get to claim the moral high ground. met him in the Oval Office for personal and We should err on the side of believing women, professional advice and that he groped her, but sometimes, that belief will be used against rubbed his erect penis on her, and pushed us. her hand to his crotch,” Flanagan wrote, ■ recalling the charges Willey first made in 1998. Michelle Goldberg, a New York Times It sounds both familiar and plausible. But op-ed columnist, covers politics, gender, Willey also accused the Clintons of having her religion and ideology. The left is overdue for a real reckoning with the allegations against Bill Clinton. YOUR VIEWS Violation of pesticide law a symbol of bigger problems Imagine if our local political leadership worked toward passing laws treating drug dealers similar to noxious weeds. Drug dealers are invasive, traveling county to county, crossing state lines. They distribute harmful poison in a faulty, careless and negligent manner. Their injurious poisons are changing and killing our young adults by biologically impairing rational thinking. Their contaminating poisons develop a brain disease that makes you too selfish to see the havoc you created or care about the people whose lives you have shattered. The heartache drug dealers cultivate for families is indescribable as someone they love turns into someone they don’t know. Methamphetamine and heroin addiction grows criminal drug addicts. Daniel Webster wrote: “Let us not forget that the cultivation of the earth is the most important labor of man. When tillage begins, other arts will follow.” The farmers, therefore, are the founders of civilization. In the fall 2017 Oregon Department of Agriculture Pesticide Bulletin, notices of violations were announced. Part of the responsibilities of the Oregon Department of Agriculture’s pesticides program is to investigate pesticide complaints, determine compliance with the Oregon Pesticide Control Act and initiate any administrative actions deemed necessary. Umatilla County Commissioner Larry Givens was issued a violation for performing pesticide applications activities in a faulty, careless or negligent manner. It reminds us that little duties neglected bring great downfalls. Sally Sundin Walla Walla LETTERS POLICY The East Oregonian welcomes original letters of 400 words or less on public issues and pub- lic 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 let- ters 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 Dan- iel Wattenburger, 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@eastoregonian.com.