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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (April 17, 2018)
Page 4A East Oregonian Tuesday, April 17, 2018 KATHRYN B. BROWN Publisher DANIEL WATTENBURGER Managing Editor TIM TRAINOR Opinion Page Editor Founded October 16, 1875 YOUR VIEWS Law enforcement must oppose gun initiative The proposed Ballot Initiative Petition 43 (restriction of the sale, production and ownership of assault weapons and high- capacity magazines) is running a parallel course to the ballot measure that outlawed hunting cougars with dogs. At that time, the Oregon Wildlife Commission sat on its hands and presented no news releases showing predation on wildlife, livestock and pets. They also failed to explain the rules and humane techniques employed by trappers. Now the ball is in the Oregon State Police’s court. When reporting on the proposed initiative, the news media nearly always shows an AR15-type weapon and dwells on assault weapons. The OSP must put out public statements that show the true devastating affect that hundreds of thousands of legal, law-abiding gun owners will suffer. In 120 days, these citizens will be charged as felons if not submitting to the irrational demands of the proposed initiative. Upon conviction as a felon, all their guns will be confiscated. I’m positively sure that the rank and file state police officers do not want any part of the consequences of this proposal. The years I proudly served as an OSP officer we were told not to let any political influence sway our judgment. Several times during investigation of a case an individual would say they were a friend or close associate with the mayor or governor. I took great pleasure in smiling and asking that person to say hello to the politician mentioned. The OSP leadership, along with all other police agencies, must dredge up some intellectual integrity, stand tall and do what is right to protect lawful gun owners and the once-proud OSP reputation. This plea should be tripled for Governor Kate Brown, who professes to serve all Oregonians. She must make sure all news media outlets report the full impact Initiative Petition 43 will have on legal gun owners. This initiative, reported by the media as aimed at restricting assault weapons, is much more insidious. Let the Oregon Legislature resolve the issue. Larry Snyder Condon Keep Jake Cambier on Pendleton council Do you want to elect a well qualified and personable Pendleton city councilor? Then Jake Cambier is an excellent choice. He was appointed to the Pendleton City Council nearly two years ago to fill a vacant position and he has done a fine job. Today Pendleton is a great place to live, it has a bright future and Jake is eager to continue his work on the council. Jake Cambier has already proven himself to be worthy. He has successfully experienced leadership as a Pendleton city councilor, in the military and as a medical doctor, and he served a decade on the Pendleton School Board. Most importantly, he desires to continue developing the significant working relationships he has thus far established. Ultimately, good leadership demands a deep sense of caring for the job and for serving constituents, taking responsibility, and thoughtful decision making. Leaders like Jake take these challenges, are highly respected in their communities and are remarkably respectful of others. Jake Cambier is the person, the leader that fits this job and this community. He has my support and he will appreciate your vote on May 15. Alice Nelson Pendleton Russell for Morrow County commissioner Please join me in re-electing Don Russell as Morrow County commissioner. Don has worked hard to bring some changes in the county that have been needed to be done. He always listens to people’s concerns and tries to help them. Let’s give him another term to improve our county. Vote Don Russell for Morrow County commissioner. John Wenholz, former Morrow County commissioner Irrigon Support Rob Collins for Circuit Court judge This letter is in reference the race for Circuit Court judge and my support of Rob Collins for that position. I have known Rob Collins since he started to practice law throughout Umatilla and Morrow counties since 1981. He is a product of our local public school system. His background and experience includes all aspects of estate planning, real estate, business, personal injury, family and appeals. Rob has donated much of his personal time to energy to a number of boards and committees. I personally served with Rob on one board for several years and he always demonstrated leadership in a way that provided quality results and lead the way in strengthening lines of communications among the board members. He is an extremely hard worker, knowl- edgeable, fair and would serve the public very well on the Circuit Court. Please support Rob Collins for Circuit Court judge for Umatilla and Morrow counties. Phillip W. Houk Pendleton senior operations auditor. I wrote this letter to highlight just a few of the reasons Carole will serve the residents of Pendleton with the same forward momentum she has taken during her life. I’m proud to call her my sister and my best friend. Pendleton would be wise to call Carole Innes the Ward I city councilor. Innes a wise choice for Pendleton council I am honored to recommend my sister Carole lnnes as the best candidate for the Pendleton City Council seat Ward 1. I have a unique perspective of knowing Carole not only as a loving sister to me and her three other siblings, but a compassionate daughter to our parents, a loving and supportive spouse and a wonderful and giving “Auntie” to her nieces, nephews (and unrelated children) — likely having attended more school program events than most biological parents. Besides a lifelong history with my sister, I have had the privilege of watching Carole grow up and mature into a respected and upstanding citizen. She has intelligence, a competitive spirit and finesse with interpersonal relationships both at a personal level and in groups. Those who know Carole have no problem believing she has always been an overachiever. Preparing her for this election she began her government/political interests by serving three years on student council in high school. My sister Carole has been a proud resident of Pendleton since entering the first college transfer class at Blue Mountain Community College in 1963. She earned scholarships to BMCC and worked hard to earn money to pay tuition to the University of Oregon. She went on to proudly serve BMCC working with other faculty wives after marrying Murray Innes III, the then- chairman of the English department at BMCC. After my brother-in-law’s untimely death in 1983 she never faltered and handled life’s curve ball well, and continued to serve BMCC as an active member of the College Community Theatre. Carole advocated for community mental health by serving on the Greater Oregon Behavioral Health Board (GOBHI) as a lay person because she believed strongly that patients of these services need to be heard but have a difficult time finding their voice. She served eight years on the Umatilla County Planning Commission. She is a past president and a dedicated 28-year member of Altrusa International. Currently, she is president of the Blue Mountain Community College Foundation. She was employed for 48 years at the same financial institution, working her way up from a bookkeeper role to a regional Jackie Maronda-Golladay Kennewick, Wash. America is in peril, but it’s not because of guns The epidemic of school shootings has fractured an America already in serious peril. Students are blaming the Second Amendment, the NRA, and President Trump, marching for gun control. Indeed, the Second Amendment is under intense attack, pundits claiming our founding fathers never intended for Americans to be armed, only state-controlled militias. School shootings are not the only vice fracturing America. The FBI and DOJ refuse to honor petitions from Congress to turn over evidence of injustice and potential treason from the Obama Administration / Clinton State Department. The Mueller interrogation, with unlimited and unaccountable public funds and scores of lawyers who detest the President, has wreaked havoc on the Trump Administration. The press, media, Democrats, and establishment Republicans support the destroy Trump agenda, even if it means undermining the rule of law, protecting those guilty of treason, and destroying the American Republic in the process. The definition of tyranny is “the arbitrary or unrestrained exercise of power … abuse of authority.”The Mueller investigation is an arbitrary and unrestrained exercise of power, an abuse of authority. There is no oversight, no time or taxpayer-financed limit to his authority to destroy a duly elected president and disenfranchise those that elected him. Is it any surprise the press, media, Planned Parenthood, Hollywood, globalists, and Democrats parade the students around America to blame guns, the Second Amendment, the NRA and conservative Christians for the shooting of students? Not the armed officers that refused to protect the kids, not the prescription drugs these kids were given to control them, not the violent video games that teach them to kill without compunction, not the eradication of morals, discipline and accountability. I do not advocate violence or bloodshed, nevertheless American citizens must defend liberty against tyranny as did our forefathers. Stuart Dick Irrigon OTHER VIEWS Paul Ryan, Republicans and the Republic T o adapt the old principles; it’s about loyalty phrase to today’s to the man, and I think that’s GOP: The ships are challenging.” leaving the sinking rat. Dent is a Pennsylvania That’s the moral of Paul moderate in a district Ryan’s unexpected but not Trump won by 7.6 points surprising announcement — not a comfortable margin this week that he will give considering Democrat up the speakership — the Conor Lamb’s victory last Bret second Republican speaker Stephens month in a Pennsylvania to do so in just three district Trump won by Comment years — and retire after nearly 20 points. Much the 20 years in the House. The same could be said of New Wisconsin congressman pleaded a Jersey’s Rodney Frelinghuysen desire to spend more time raising (Trump by 0.9 percent), his children. This, presumably, Washington’s Dave Reichert after he’d abandoned hope of (Clinton by 3), or Florida’s Ileana raising the child in the White Ros-Lehtinen (Clinton by 19.6). House. The last time Republicans had Ryan’s departure comes atop the anywhere near this number of three dozen and counting House House retirements, 27 in 2008, Republicans who’ve decided they Democrats picked up 21 seats. have better things to do in life than Live by Trump; die by him. either lose their seats in November Liberals may despise Ryan for or spend the next few years in the tax bill or other policies they the likely minority, carping about oppose on ideological grounds. But Nancy Pelosi and trying to stop the from a conservative point of view, president’s impeachment. that was not a failure. Instead, it Many of these Republicans once was the Faustian bargain he struck believed that Donald Trump alone with the president, normalizing possessed the kind of political the abnormal and forgiving the virility needed to vanquish Hillary unforgivable for the sake of a Clinton and make America great single mediocre policy win. again. Only belatedly have they The world will little note figured out that the virility comes nor long remember that in 2017 with a case of syphilis. Republicans cut the top marginal “There’s a lot of weariness rate to 37 percent from 39.6 and a lot of exhaustion, frankly,” percent and otherwise tried but Charlie Dent, one of the retiring failed to kill Obamacare. It will Republicans, told CNN this remember the alacrity and ease week. “The litmus test for being with which the supposedly likable a Republican these days is not face of pro-growth, family-friendly about any given set of ideals or conservatism opportunistically 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. played the sycophant to the congenitally mendacious and previously priapic nativist bigot who, through a bad fluke, captured the White House. A conservative rejoinder to this critique is that the speaker had no choice; that Trump was the lemon with which he had to make lemonade. Nonsense. Congress and the White House are coequals, and Ryan and other Republicans who saw Trump for what he is never owed him obeisance. They owed the country an alternative political vision, untainted by Trumpism, which could emerge from the debacle of this presidency with clean hands. Ryan’s failure to deliver one will be remembered as the central fact of his once-bright career. Is there an alternative? Among Republicans, Ohio’s John Kasich, Nebraska’s Ben Sasse, and Arizona’s Jeff Flake and John McCain have sought in different ways to offer one, without immediate success but with integrity, honor and a sense of the long view. In a party of Pétains they are the conservative de Gaulles. There are also grass-root efforts, not all of them partisan or even particularly right-leaning, but committed to defending foundational liberal values globally in an era of creeping authoritarianism and debased populism. One of them is the nonpartisan Renew Democracy Initiative, led by Garry Kasparov, which had its launch this month. “There is still a center in Western politics, and it needs to be revitalized intellectually, culturally, and politically,” reads a plank in its manifesto (to which I’m a signatory, along with more illustrious names like Norman Foster, Anne Applebaum and Mario Vargas Llosa). “The center-right and center-left are still joined by a broad set of common values, including respect for free speech and dissent, a belief in the benefits of international trade and immigration, respect for law and procedural legitimacy, a suspicion of cults of personality, and an understanding that free societies require protection from authoritarians promising easy fixes to complex problems.” This may not be a strictly Republican position, certainly not in this administration. It is a republican one. And it offers conservatives disgusted with what their former partisan home has become a different sort of base from which they can begin to build a better form of politics, free of both the corruptions of Trumpism and the capitulations of Ryanism. Liberals who understand that our common political health requires a morally and intellectually sound conservative movement might consider getting aboard. ■ Bret Stephens won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2013. He began working as a columnist at The New York Times in 2017. 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. 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.
