Page 4A
East Oregonian
Thursday, March 22, 2018
KATHRYN B. BROWN
Publisher
DANIEL WATTENBURGER
Managing Editor
TIM TRAINOR
Opinion Page Editor
Founded October 16, 1875
OUR VIEW
Environment vs. economy
Oregon’s environment and economy
are in a political battle.
The saving grace may be a new
legislative committee, which House
Speaker Tina Kotek and Senate
President Peter Courtney are forming to
find a solution.
The issue is legislation dubbed
“Clean Energy Jobs” by its supporters
and derided as “Tax and Job Loss”
by its opponents. It is a long-studied
and highly complex plan to reduce
greenhouse gases from Oregon’s very
largest polluters, put a price on carbon
emissions and invest the proceeds in
clean energy projects.
The controversy exemplifies
Oregon’s urban-rural divide.
Environmental groups and Democratic
legislators, especially in the Portland
and Eugene areas, enthusiastically
support the legislation and wanted
it approved in the 2018 Legislature.
Republican lawmakers and major
business groups generally oppose
the plan, saying it will be expensive
for corporations, drive up costs for
consumers and have minimal effects on
global greenhouse gases.
In what might be a stroke of political
genius, Kotek recently asked Courtney
to join her in creating and co-chairing a
AP Photo/Branden Camp, File
The Trump administration is doing away with a decades-old air emissions policy
opposed by fossil fuel companies, a move that environmental groups say will result
in more pollution. The Environmental Protection Agency issued notice Thursday it is
withdrawing the “once-in always-in” policy under the Clean Air Act, which dictated
how major sources of hazardous air pollutants are regulated.
legislative “special Joint Committee on
Carbon Reduction to continue the efforts
to cut statewide carbon emissions and
grow Oregon’s clean energy economy.”
The goal is to rework the current
legislation for the 2019 Legislature.
The Oregon Legislature has achieved
some success through its use of joint
Senate-House committees. Courtney
and Kotek recently formed the Joint
Committee on Student Success, which
was scheduled to launch its statewide
public hearings this week. Its members
include Rep. Greg Smith, R-Heppner.
That committee is modeled after last
year’s successful transportation-finance
committee, which also included Smith.
Kotek, a liberal Democrat from
Portland, is a keen backer of Clean
Energy Jobs. Courtney, a Salem
Democrat who is too moderate for some
members of his party, helped block
passage of the legislation this year,
saying it was not ready.
Courtney said he hopes the joint
committee can craft a bill that is both
effective and has widespread support not
only among Democratic and Republican
legislators but also from environmental,
business, transportation and other
groups.
The legislative leaders could start that
process by giving full representation to
urban and rural Oregon. They should
appoint equal numbers of Democrats
and Republicans to the Joint Committee
on Carbon Reduction.
As Courtney said in announcing the
committee with Kotek: “Urban or rural,
Democrat or Republican, we share the
same state, same air, same environment
and the same planet. It’s time human
nature starts taking care of Mother
Nature.”
YOUR VIEWS
Democratic dogs
sniff out trouble
We have a dog that believes in
democracy. She is such a strong proponent
that she roams the countryside to make sure
every kind of animal and bird and critter
take part equally. She even includes coyotes
and magpies and moles in her peculiar
republic. She wants each one to have a
vote, I would guess, on the frequency of
blue moons, or when Spring should actually
begin, or about cattle and open range.
She has paid for acting on this belief
that democracy must work locally. In her
concern that all vote she met, once, a foul-
smelling black and white beast that inflicted
olfactory damage, then stalked her all the
way home. We got in on that one. In her
eagerness that every one deserving of rights
should take on responsibility for it, she ran
into an old school critter that peppered her
hide with quills. We got in on that, too.
More than once hawks have pursued her,
diving and loudly demeaning her efforts
and ancestry.
Some want to be left alone, I tell her,
and some have power they don’t want
challenged, while most admire your work,
but from a pain-free, uninvolved distance.
I tell her stuff like that. I give her a
dog biscuit. She seems to understand.
But, if she’s the only one interested then
democracy may be going to the dogs.
Don Reese
Echo
Vote Carole Innes for
Pendleton city council
A vote for Carole Innes is a vote for a
better Pendleton.
Carole, a Pendleton resident for over
fifty years, will give the council a positive
presence in many ways. A long career
in finance will serve as a great asset in
understanding and maintaining budgetary
transparency. Her involvement with groups
and boards such as Altrusa, Umatilla
County Planning Commission, College
Community Theater, Mental Health
Advisory Committee, Behavioral Health
Board and as president of the BMCC
Foundation Board make her eminently
qualified for a position on the city council.
Carole understands that Pendleton’s
greatest asset is its people, and she will
work hard for the betterment of the entire
community.
Support Carole Innes for city council.
Bruce Gianotti
Pendleton
OTHER VIEWS
If Flynn and Manafort don’t face collusion charges, then who will?
T
rump-Russia special counsel Robert
who might conceivably have been part of a
Mueller is authorized to investigate
collusion scenario.
“any links and/or coordination between
But all have faced charges and none of
the Russian government and individuals
those charges, at least so far, has involved
associated with the campaign of President
allegations that Flynn, Manafort, Gates or
Donald Trump.” The popular word for
Papadapoulos played a role in a scheme of
that is “collusion,” and it remains at the
collusion, or coordination, or conspiracy,
heart of both the Mueller and the Senate
or whatever it is called. And that could tell
Intelligence Committee investigations.
the public something about the state of the
(Majority Republicans on the House
collusion allegation inside the Mueller
Intelligence Committee recently
investigation.
announced they were unable to find
To put it briefly: What kind of
evidence proving collusion.)
collusion scheme between Russia
While much about the Mueller
and the Trump campaign could have
investigation remains unknown, we
existed without Michael Flynn being
do know the indictments he has filed
part of it? What kind of collusion
and the pleas he has reached with
scheme could have existed without
various figures in the case. There are
Manafort? And Gates? And yet none
Byron
some — including charges against
of them — nor Papadapoulos, either
York
Russia’s Internet Research Agency,
— has been charged with taking part
Comment
several individual Russians and two
in a collusion scheme.
minor figures — that target either
Flynn pleaded guilty to one
people on the Russian side of the equation
count of lying to investigators about what
or those for whom there are no suspicions of he discussed in a phone conversation
collusion.
with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
But Mueller has charged three people
(Investigators have always known what the
who were in the Trump campaign inner
two men talked about, since the call was
circle — former national security adviser
wiretapped, recorded and transcribed.)
Michael Flynn, former campaign chairman
Manafort has been charged with a
Paul Manafort and former deputy campaign
daunting number of financial crimes,
chairman Richard Gates — all with ties to
including fraud and tax evasion, relating to
Russia and all of whom might be expected
his work for a pro-Russian political party in
to be part of a collusion scheme, had one
Ukraine.
existed. Mueller has also charged one
Gates was charged with most of the
peripheral hanger-on, George Papadopoulos, crimes Manafort faced, but received a deal
Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the
East Oregonian editorial board. Other
columns, letters and cartoons on this page
express the opinions of the authors and
not necessarily that of the East Oregonian.
from Mueller, allowing him to plead guilty
to one count of lying to investigators and one
count of hiding profits from his work with
Manafort in Ukraine.
Both Gates and Manafort were charged
with something called “conspiracy against
the United States.” As the former prosecutor
Andrew McCarthy points out, “there is no
such offense in federal law as ‘conspiracy
against the United States.’” But Mueller’s
office described their alleged crimes that
way, and some media commentators liked
the treason-ish sound of the phrase.
Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to one count
of lying to investigators about a conversation
he had with a Russian who wanted to create
ties with the Trump campaign.
All those charges, and none alleging
that any of these men, some of them at
the highest levels of the Trump campaign,
took part in any collusion, or coordination,
or conspiracy between the campaign and
Russia.
“I can’t imagine that there would have
been collusion or conspiracy with the
Russians that Michael Flynn didn’t know
about,” said Sol Wisenberg, a former
prosecutor with the office of independent
counsel Kenneth Starr. “If you’re trying to
make a collusion case and you are Mueller,
you’re trying to get someone to plead to the
crime you’re trying to prove.”
McCarthy has written much the same.
“When a prosecutor has a cooperator who
was an accomplice in a major criminal
scheme, the cooperator is made to plead
guilty to the scheme,” he wrote last
December. “This is critical because it proves
the existence of the scheme.”
But in the Mueller investigation, it is
precisely the people who would most be
expected to be part of a collusion scheme
who have not been charged with taking part
in any such activity.
Nevertheless, for those hoping for
collusion, there are still some possibilities.
Mueller might lodge, or might have already
lodged, additional charges against Flynn,
Manafort or Gates.
And there is still Carter Page, like
Papadopoulos a sometime volunteer Trump
adviser, who traveled to Russia in 2016.
Page has been publicly vague about his
dealings with Mueller but said recently that
he has been interrogated for more than 30
hours in the last year by the executive and
legislative branches of government. Perhaps
Mueller is waiting to charge him with
something. Or maybe someone else will be
charged with taking part in the long-sought
collusion.
Still, it’s hard to imagine a collusion plot
that never touched Flynn, Manafort or Gates.
Maybe it happened, but after more than 18
months of FBI, and now Mueller, investiga-
tions, it’s becoming harder to see how.
■
Byron York is chief political correspon-
dent for The Washington Examiner.
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