East Oregonian
A4
Friday, December 21, 2018
CHRISTOPHER RUSH
Publisher
KATHRYN B. BROWN
Owner
DANIEL WATTENBURGER
Managing Editor
WYATT HAUPT JR.
News Editor
Founded October 16, 1875
OUR VIEW
Size really shouldn’t
matter on dairies
S
ome members of the Ore-
gon Legislature and a coalition
of environmental groups and
small-farm advocates want the state to
ban large dairy farms.
Their argument: large dairy farms
are bad.
They also want tighter regulations
governing dairy farms. The argument
is the legislature and the state govern-
ment know the best size for a dairy
farm.
Pardon our skepticism.
This is the same state government
that can’t build a much-needed Inter-
state 5 bridge over the Columbia
River, that can’t produce a website for
its Affordable Care Act program, that
can’t operate its foster care program,
that can’t fix its out-of-control retire-
ment plan ...
Yet this coalition wants that same
state government to tell farmers how
to farm by dictating how big a dairy
should be.
The Oregon Senate Commit-
tee on the Environment and Natural
Resources last week decided to intro-
duce two bills during next year’s ses-
sion targeting dairies larger than 2,500
cows, or 700 cows if access to pasture
isn’t available.
One concept would classify a large
dairy as an industrial facility and strip
it of protections under the state “right
to farm” law. That law allows Ore-
gon farmers to use normal farm prac-
tices, provided they follow the many
rules and regulations already placed
on them by the state and federal
governments.
Another legislative concept would
ban more large dairies at least until the
state comes up will a new permitting
system.
Neither proposal makes any sense.
The fact of the matter is that all
sizes of dairy farms in Oregon are
already robustly regulated. Any farm-
ers who don’t follow the rules will
find themselves in deep you-know-
what, both literally and figuratively.
Whether a dairy has 20, or 200 or
20,000 cows matters not one bit. What
matters is the quality of management.
Large or small, a farm with good man-
agement will meet the many regula-
tory requirements placed on it.
This coalition points to the Lost
Valley Farm, a bankrupt dairy in East-
ern Oregon that was poorly man-
aged, implying that all large farms
are equally bad. State regulators saw
the problems when they occurred and
took the owner to court, forcing him
into bankruptcy and putting him out
of business.
That is exactly what regulators do.
If someone screws up, tell him or her
Capital Press File
The size of a dairy farm doesn’t matter; the management does.
to fix the problems. If the problems
persist, take the owner to court.
But the main argument — that big
farms are bad — is simply not sup-
ported by the facts. The way Lost Val-
ley Farm was managed, it would have
failed no matter how many cows it
had.
But the “big-is-bad” argument has
even more holes in it.
Only a few miles from the failed
dairy farm, another larger dairy
farm, Threemile Canyon Farms, is
well-managed and recognized as a
good steward of the land. They care
for their 30,000 cattle and have an
independent inspector check up on
them, they have the largest manure
digesters in the West to handle the
waste and grow a variety of crops;
they treat their 300 year-round
employees well; and they are con-
stantly innovating to do things bet-
ter. They are good neighbors in every
sense of the word and are a point of
pride in the community.
Those who are hung up on size
ignore the realities of 21st century
agriculture. A farm needs to be the
right size for its market and to find
economies of scale.
To say a farmer is doing something
wrong because he, or she, has been
successful and sustainable and built a
small family farm into a large family
farm is illogical.
The state of Oregon should not pick
winners and losers in agriculture. It
should see that all sizes of farms are
well-regulated to protect the envi-
ronment and produce safe food. If a
farmer messes up, he or she should
correct the problem, whether the oper-
ation is 5 acres or 50,000 acres.
When it comes to regulating farms,
size really shouldn’t matter.
OTHER VIEWS
The rug comes out in Syria
the caliphate comes back.”
Mr. Trump has justified some of his most
resident Trump’s sudden move to
controversial decisions, including his con-
tinued support for Saudi Arabia’s Crown
yank U.S. troops out of Syria under-
mined at a stroke several foreign pol-
Prince Mohammed bin Salman, as needed
icy goals he has championed. The president to contain Iran’s threat to the United States
promised to finish the job of destroying the
and its allies. But the Syrian withdrawal
Islamic State, but the withdrawal will leave hands Tehran and its ally Russia a wind-
fall. Iran has deployed thousands of fighters
thousands of its fighters still in place. He
and allied militiamen to Syria and aspires to
vowed to roll back Iran’s aggression across
the Middle East, but his decision will allow create a corridor to Lebanon and the Med-
iterranean, as well as a new front against
its forces to entrench in the country that
Israel along the Golan Heights. In reaction
is the keystone of Tehran’s ambitions. He
to that threat, Mr. Trump’s national secu-
promised to protect Israel, but that nation
rity adviser, John Bolton, announced Sept.
will now be left to face alone the buildup
24 that “We’re not going to leave (Syria) as
by Iran and its proxies along its northern
long as Iranian troops are outside Iranian
border.
The president’s top national security
borders, and that includes Iranian proxies
advisers had carefully developed and artic-
and militias.”
ulated a strategy of maintaining a U.S. pres-
U.S. ambitions in Syria have never been
ence in Syria until the Islamic State was
backed by adequate resources, and a case
beyond revival and Iran withdrew its forces could be made that neither Congress nor the
— a plan they were defend-
American public were pre-
MR. TRUMP HAS pared to support the mission
ing up until this week. Mr.
by Mr. Bolton.
Trump has again demon-
JUSTIFIED SOME suggested
strated, to them and to the
But Mr. Trump’s decision
world, that no U.S. policy
OF HIS MOST appears to have been precip-
itated by the bellicose rheto-
or foreign commitment is
CONTROVERSIAL ric of Turkey’s Recep Tayyip
immune from his whims.
Mr. Trump claimed the
Erdogan, who last week
DECISIONS
Islamic State had been
threatened — not for the first
defeated, but that is not the view of the
time — a military operation against Syrian
Defense and State Departments. Thousands Kurds, even though U.S. troops are posi-
of jihadist fighters are still in Syria and con- tioned around them. The autocratic Turk-
ish ruler appears to have extracted multi-
trol splotches of territory in the Euphra-
ple favors from Mr. Trump in recent days,
tes Valley. A U.S. withdrawal will give the
including the sale of U.S. Patriot missiles
extremists an opportunity to reconstitute,
and a promise to reexamine the possible
as they did in Iraq following the prema-
ture U.S. withdrawal ordered by President
extradition of his rival, Fethullah Gulen,
Barack Obama.
from Pennsylvania. If Mr. Trump received
Until Wednesday, a prime talking point
anything in return, he hasn’t disclosed it.
of senior national security officials was
The Syrian Kurdish forces, which have
that, “if we’ve learned one thing over the
fought alongside the United States and
years, (the) enduring defeat of a group like
played a crucial role in liberating most of
this means you can’t just defeat their phys-
eastern Syria from the jihadists, will be per-
haps the foremost victims of Mr. Trump’s
ical space and then leave,” as the State
decision. Betrayed by Washington, they will
Department’s special envoy for the global
now be subject to a military offensive by
campaign against the Islamic State, Brett
Turkey. The stab in the back will send an
McGurk, put it last week. Defense Secre-
tary Jim Mattis said it another way in Sep-
unforgettable message to all who are asked
tember: “Getting rid of the caliphate doesn’t to cooperate with the United States in the
mean you then blindly say, ‘Okay, we got
fight against terrorism: Washington is an
rid of it,’ march out, and then wonder why
unreliable and dangerous partner.
The Washington Post
P
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.
Affordable Care Act
ruling a political trap
Wall Street Journal
N
o one opposes ObamaCare more
than we do, and Democrats are now
confirming that it was designed as a
way-station to government-run health care.
But a federal judge’s ruling that the law is
unconstitutional is likely to be overturned
on appeal and may boomerang politically
on Republicans.
Judge Reed O’Connor ruled for some
20 state plaintiffs that the Affordable Care
Act’s individual mandate is no longer legal
because Republicans repealed its finan-
cial penalty as part of the 2017 tax reform.
Recall that Chief Justice John Roberts
joined four Justices to say ObamaCare’s
mandate was illegal as a command to indi-
viduals to buy insurance under the Com-
merce Clause. “The Framers gave Congress
the power to regulate commerce, not to
compel it,” he wrote.
Yet the Chief famously salvaged
ObamaCare by unilaterally rewriting the
mandate to be a “tax” that was within Con-
gress’s power. Never mind that Democrats
had expressly said the penalty was not a tax.
Majority Leader Roberts declared it to be
so.
Enter Texas Attorney General Ken Pax-
ton, who argues in Texas v. U.S. that since
Congress has repealed the mandate, the tax
is no longer a tax, and ObamaCare is thus
illegal. Judge O’Connor agreed with that
logic, and he went further in ruling that
since Congress said the mandate is cru-
cial to the structure of ObamaCare, then
all of ObamaCare must fall along with the
mandate.
We’ll admit to a certain satisfaction in
seeing the Chief Justice hoist on his own
logic. But his ruling in NFIB v. Sebel-
ius was in 2012 and there is more at issue
legally now than the “tax” issue in that
opinion. One legal complication is that Con-
gress in 2017 repealed the financial part of
the individual mandate, not the structure of
the mandate itself. Republicans used bud-
get rules to pass tax reform so they couldn’t
repeal the mandate’s express language.
The Affordable Care Act has also been
up and running since 2014, which means
so-called reliance interests come into play
when considering a precedent. Millions of
people now rely on ObamaCare’s subsi-
dies and rules, which argues against judges
repealing the law by fiat.
Judge O’Connor breezes past this like a
liberal Ninth Circuit appeals judge handling
a Donald Trump appeal. He’s right that
Democrats claimed the individual mandate
was essential to the Affordable Care Act.
But when Congress killed the financial pen-
alty in 2017 it left the rest of ObamaCare
intact. When judging congressional intent, a
judge must account for the amending Con-
gress as well as the original Congress.
In any case, the Supreme Court’s “sever-
ability” doctrine calls for restraint in declar-
ing an entire law illegal merely because
one part of it is. Our guess is that even the
right-leaning Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals
judges will overturn Judge O’Connor on
this point.
As for the politics, Democrats claim to
be alarmed by the ruling but the truth is
they’re elated. They want to use it to fur-
ther pound Republicans for denying health
insurance for pre-existing conditions if the
law is overturned. Democrats campaigned
across the country against Mr. Paxton’s
lawsuit to gain House and Senate seats in
November, and they will now press votes in
Congress so they can compound the gains
in 2020.
President Trump hailed the ruling in
a tweet, but he has never understood the
Affordable Care Act. His Administration
has done good work revising regulations
to reduce health-care costs and increase
access, but the risk is that the lawsuit will
cause Republicans in Congress to panic
politically and strike a deal with Demo-
crats that reinforces ObamaCare. This is
what happens when conservatives fall into
the liberal trap of thinking they can use the
courts to achieve policy goals that need to
be won in Congress.
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 9780, or email
editor@eastoregonian.com.