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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 15, 2018)
Page 4A East Oregonian Thursday, November 15, 2018 CHRISTOPHER RUSH Publisher KATHRYN B. BROWN Owner DANIEL WATTENBURGER Managing Editor WYATT HAUPT JR. News Editor Founded October 16, 1875 OUR VIEW Last week’s election underscores urban-rural divide T he urban-rural divide is not just a “divide.” It is a widening chasm, one whose fissures were underscored by last week’s election results. Large cities and suburbs supported Democrats. Rural areas went Republican. The results were that Democrats took over the U.S. House and Republicans expanded control of the Senate. Those results were backed up by research. Based on a survey of more than 115,000 voters and 20,000 non- voters, The Associated Press reported, “Nationally, urban and suburban voters preferred Democratic over Republican candidates, while voters in small towns and rural places favored Republicans.” There were exceptions, of course. However, the same split generally held true in Oregon, where the geographically largest part of the state was on the losing side of the governor’s race and high-profile ballot measures concerning immigration and abortion. Democrats also gained supermajorities in the Legislature, in part by ousting suburban Republicans. In Washington state, urban areas ensured passage of statewide ballot measures that restricted firearms and enabled more criminal prosecutions of police officers who used deadly force. Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell was overwhelming re-elected by Western Washington and Eastern Washington’s Whitman County. But with the exception of King and Jefferson counties, the state’s voters overwhelmingly defeated a proposed carbon fee, which should give the Oregon Legislature pause as it considers a state carbon cap-and-invest program. In Oregon, Republican Knute Buehler prevailed in 29 of Oregon’s 36 counties but lost by a substantial margin to incumbent Democratic Gov. Kate Brown. In several rural counties, Brown didn’t crack 20 percent of the vote. What does this mean for the rural Northwest? For politicians, they must be wary of treating statewide vote totals as mandates. If they assume otherwise, E.J. Harris/EO Media Group A voter drops off a ballot in the drop box at the Umatilla County Courthouse in Pendleton on Nov. 6. they will increase the urban-rural chasm. For residents, they figure out how better to convey their story to urbanites: That they live in rural America out of choice, not because they are economic or geographic victims of circumstances. That they value the land and water because they interact with natural resources every day. That although they hold fewer degrees in higher education, according to state and national data, those statistics are irrelevant as far as rural residents’ intelligence, ingenuity and aptitude for solving problems. They must also realize that land mass doesn’t matter when it comes to the ballot box, and that democracy grants each individual a vote. Getting a hand on the levers of power won’t happen by throwing stones and insults from the outside. It will happen by finding and supporting champions for rural areas regardless of political stripe. Without the daily toil of rural Americans, urbanites would not have the food, electricity, water and natural resources they take for granted. This challenge is not new. Rural Americans have been telling their story for generations. But the 2018 election results give increased urgency. OTHER VIEWS The struggle to stay human amid the fight I Oregon Democrats get legislative tax leverage Bend Bulletin I f you don’t like taxes, Nov. 7 was a rough morning in Oregon. Final results are still out, but Democrats now apparently hold a supermajority in the Legislature. All those tax bills thwarted in the past by Republicans? Democratic supermajorities could even now have an eye on your wallet. Oregon Democrats used to have to pretend that massive tax hikes, such as a proposed annual $700 million state carbon tax, weren’t taxes at all. That enabled them to slouch past the state constitutional requirement for a supermajority. In an outrageous bit of trickery, legislators insisted the new carbon taxes were not taxes because — they wrote that they were not in the bill. Now they won’t even have to pretend. Plans for a $1 billion or more gross receipts tax will surely come back off the shelves. Democrats put plans for such a tax on hold after the failure of Measure 97, waiting for the outcome of the 2018 election. With a supermajority, expect it to be back. In the Democratic Temple of Taxation, gross receipts taxes are among the holiest of holies. They tax business sales, usually don’t allow deductions and businesses basically have to pay no matter what — 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. even if they are not making a profit. But they have serious flaws. Why tax a business that isn’t managing to make a profit? Do Democrats really want to encourage more businesses to fail? Gross receipts taxes also tax all transactions between businesses, including when businesses buy supplies and equipment to build their products. That means that gross receipts taxes pyramid. Businesses end up paying taxes on taxes on taxes. We know Oregonians don’t like sales taxes, but they are much fairer than charging taxes on taxes on taxes. And as the Oregon Legislative Revenue Office pointed out, tax pyramiding almost inevitably means higher prices for consumers. The Legislature has also considered in the past bills that would cut mortgage interest deductions for homeowners. More than half a million Oregonians could lose that tax break for their state taxes. With the Legislature loaded with Democrats, start saying your goodbyes now to that deduction. The only solace is that in Oregon voters still hold a check on the power of the Legislature to tax with or without a supermajority. Taxes can be challenged at the ballot box — except of course, Democrats may resort to their old trick of insisting taxes are really not taxes at all. watched Stanley Kubrick’s The war blew away that masterpiece “Paths of Glory” last gentility, those ideals and that faith weekend, prompted by all the in progress. Ernest Hemingway World War I centenary tributes. Set captured the rising irony and in the trenches near the end of the cynicism in “A Farewell to Arms.” war, it’s a movie about a man who His hero is embarrassed “by the tries to maintain his integrity and his words sacred, glorious and sacrifice faith in humanity amid the stupidity, and the expression, in vain.” He David futility, cruelty and cynicism of war. had seen nothing sacred in the war, Brooks nothing glorious, just meaningless It’s weirdly relevant today. Comment Kirk Douglas plays a French slaughter. colonel named Dax, who lives in European culture suffered a massive disillusion during the conflict — no the trenches and leads his men in battle. God, no beauty, no coherence, no meaning, Far away in the palaces, pampered French just the cruel ironic joke of life. Cynicism generals order his exhausted men to take a breeds a kind of nihilism, a disbelief in all nearly impregnable German position. One values, an assumption that others’ motives general hopes the assault will help him are bad. It makes it hard to see the good that score political points. Another is promised remains. a promotion. Something like 4,000 men are Fussell wrote that the war spread an expected to die or be wounded for these adversarial mentality. The men in the objectives. trenches were obsessed with the enemy — When the assault catastrophically fails, those anonymous creatures across no man’s the generals look for scapegoats and decide land who rained down death. “Prolonged to execute three enlisted men, more or less trench warfare, whether enacted or chosen at random, for alleged cowardice. Dax is finally overcome with disgust and remembered, fosters paranoid melodrama,” he wrote. explodes at one of the generals: “You’re a The “versus habit” construes reality as degenerate, sadistic old man. You can go to us versus them — a mentality that spread hell!” through British society. It was the officers The general — cynical, crafty, versus the men, and, when they got home, bureaucratic, incapable of emotion — the students at university versus the dons. replies: “You’ve spoiled the keenness of “Simple antithesis everywhere” is how your mind by wallowing in sentimentality. Fussell captured the mentality. Along with it … You are an idealist, and I pity you as I was what T.S. Eliot called a “dissociation of would the village idiot. We are fighting a sensibility,” in which thoughts of tenderness war, Dax, a war that we’ve got to win.” and care are cut off from reason and It’s the eternal argument. When you are calculation. fighting a repulsive foe, the ends justify George Orwell wrote that he recognized any means and serve as rationale for any the Great War mentality lingering even in selfishness. the 1930s in his own left-wing circles — the Dax’s struggle is not to change the war same desire to sniff out those who departed or to save lives. That’s impossible. The war from party orthodoxy, the same retelling of has won. The struggle is simply to remain mostly false atrocity stories, the same war a human being, to maintain some contact hysteria. As Christopher Isherwood put it, with goodness in circumstances that are all the young people who were ashamed inhumane. of never having fought in the war brought Disillusionment was the classic warlike simplicities to political life. challenge for the generation that fought Some of the disillusioned drop out of and watched that war. Before 1914, there public life, since it’s all meaningless. But was an assumed faith in progress, a general others want to burn it all down because trust in the institutions and certainties of it’s all rotten. Moderation is taken for Western civilization. People, especially in cowardice. Aggression is regarded as the educated classes, approached life with a courage. No conciliatory word is permitted gentlemanly, sporting spirit. when a fighting word will do. As Paul Fussell pointed out in “The ■ Great War and Modern Memory,” the upper David Brooks has been a senior editor at classes used genteel words in place of plain The Weekly Standard and is a columnist for ones: slumber for sleep, the heavens for the the New York Times. sky, conquer for win, legion for army. 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.
