East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current, March 22, 2019, Page A4, Image 4

Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page. It is also available as plain text as well as XML.

    A4
East Oregonian
Friday, March 22, 2019
CHRISTOPHER RUSH
Publisher
KATHRYN B. BROWN
Owner
DANIEL WATTENBURGER
Managing Editor
WYATT HAUPT JR.
News Editor
Founded October 16, 1875
OUR VIEW
Tip of the Hat,
kick in the pants
A
tip of the hat to Pend-
leton’s Rhythmic Mode
dance team on its ninth state
championship.
This year’s performance again
combined athletic prowess, technical
mastery, creative choreography and
dramatic flair. And stilts.
To top it all off, there was no safety
net. The team, which performed at
the end of the night on Friday, got
one shot at its routine. It was nearly
flawless, and a short time later it was
named the champion.
Pendleton is highly supportive of
its dance team, and each year the
dance team does the city proud. Here’s
to another streak of success for the
program.
A kick in the pants to the U.S
Forest Service for its failure to com-
plete a Blue Mountain Forest Plan
Revision, or apparently even come
close.
The plan is already a full generation
behind schedule — the last one was
completed in 1990 and is supposed to
be updated every 10-15 years.
A draft of the plan was released in
2014 to noteworthy scrutiny, but a half
decade of work, meetings, objections
and revisions wasn’t enough time to
find an acceptable compromise.
We won’t speak for the plan itself
— it’s a nuanced and complicated
document that covers the gamut of
issues from grazing to logging to
roads to recreation. There’s no wonder
it would draw criticism from everyone
with a vested interest in our forests —
and that’s everyone.
But Glenn Casamassa, the new
northwest regional forester who took
the job in August 2018, should have
been able to inherit a plan ready for
implementation. Instead, it’s back to
the drawing board.
It’s going to take a whole lot of
work to rebuild trust with the people
who have spent the last 15 years of
their lives working on this plan, and
we hope to see better leadership the
OTHER VIEWS
Staff photo by Kathy Aney
Pendleton High School dance team dancers and coaches pose with their trophy Friday eve-
ning after winning the state 5A OSAA title for the second year in a row and nine times overall.
next time around.
While we’re on the topic of the for-
ests, a kick in the pants to Oregon
House Bill 2656, which could lock up
more than 1 million acres of Oregon
forestland by banning timber harvests,
road-building and the use of pesticides
and fertilizers in any forest watersheds
that provide drinking water to cities
and towns.
State and federal timber regulations
already protect water quality, yet this
bill could virtually shut the industry
down in some areas of the state.
Under the bill, any activities would
have to be approved by the state Board
of Forestry. Because the plans would
be made public ahead of time, one
might also assume that environmen-
tal groups would insert themselves
into the issue the same way they have
in other timber management issues. In
other words, the lawsuits would start
flying.
It should be noted that munici-
pal utilities are required to constantly
monitor their water quality. If there
was a problem, it would be found
immediately.
Well-managed forests have long
been a large part of Oregon’s history
— and its future, if the legislature and
environmentalists don’t shut it down.
The timber industry is in every sense
the epitome of a renewable resource.
Even those who don’t like logging
probably live in houses built using
lumber from Oregon’s forests.
OTHER VIEWS
Emergency New Zealand’s dealing with its gun problem. When will we?
funding of
W
border wall
hurts military
projects
San Diego Union-Tribune
P
resident Donald Trump’s plan to
divert $6.6 billion from the Penta-
gon and the Treasury Department
to help pay for the construction of a bor-
der wall is a frontal assault on the consti-
tutional provision that gives Congress the
authority to appropriate public funds. It
is shocking that 41 Republican senators
accepted this extralegal seizure of power.
But as illustrated by the Pentagon’s
newly released list of military construc-
tion projects that might have to be can-
celed, Trump’s plan isn’t just objec-
tionable because of his constitutional
overreach. It will also harm national
security by forcing cancellation of proj-
ects that are necessary for the safety of
members of the armed forces and for
military preparedness. In the San Diego
region, nearly $170 million that was
meant to be spent on construction of a
new Navy SEAL complex in Coronado
is in jeopardy. At Marine Corps Base
Camp Pendleton, $175 million in projects
may be canceled, including a fire emer-
gency response station needed to address
the huge threat of intensifying wildfires.
New landing pads for F-35B combat air-
craft at Marine Corps Air Station Mira-
mar and long-planned infrastructure proj-
ects at Naval Air Station North Island
and Naval Base San Diego could also be
scrapped.
Besides his signature concern about
unauthorized immigration, Trump says
a border wall is urgently needed to stop
narcotics trafficking. But this is undercut
by the fact that in recent years, the Drug
Enforcement Administration has repeat-
edly reported the vast majority of ille-
gal drugs entering the U.S. from Mexico
came through ports of entry.
The president has pledged to rebuild
the military after it was allegedly “totally
depleted” because of budget rules
approved by Congress in 2011. There is a
gap between his words and his actions.
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.
hen a terrorist mas-
sacred 50 people at
two New Zealand
mosques last week, Prime Min-
ister Jacinda Ardern immedi-
ately grasped the nettle. “I can
tell you one thing right now,”
she told a news conference.
“Our gun laws will change.”
That’s what effective lead-
ership looks like. New Zea-
land’s Cabinet has now agreed
in principle to overhaul those
laws,
experts are
review-
ing ways
to make
the country
safer from
firearms
and, Ardern
N icholas
promised,
K ristof
“within
COMMENT
10 days of
this horrific
act of terrorism, we will have
announced reforms.”
Contrast that with the
United States, where just since
1970, more Americans have
died from guns (1.45 million,
including murders, suicides and
accidents) than died in all the
wars in U.S. history (1.4 mil-
lion). More Americans die from
guns every 10 weeks than died
in the entire Afghanistan and
Iraq wars combined, yet we
still don’t have gun safety rules
as rigorous as New Zealand’s
even before the mosques were
attacked.
The National Rifle Associ-
ation (not to be confused with
the vast majority of gun own-
ers) will turn to its old smoke-
and-mirrors standby, arguing
that the killer’s hate, not his
guns and bullets, were the real
problem.
But while it’s true that white
supremacy is deadly and needs
to be confronted — some-
thing our vote-obsessed presi-
dent blindly ignores — without
the weapons of mass murder,
50 New Zealand worshippers
would still be alive; 17 Park-
land, Florida, schoolchildren
and staff members would still
be alive; nine Charleston, South
Carolina, churchgoers would
still be alive; 11 Pittsburgh con-
gregants would still be alive; 58
Las Vegas concertgoers would
still be alive; 26 Newtown,
Connecticut, first-graders and
adults would. ...
Why can’t leaders in Amer-
ica learn from experience, the
way leaders in other coun-
tries do? After a massacre in
Australia in 1996, the gov-
ernment there took far-reach-
ing action to tighten gun pol-
icy. In contrast, every day in
America, another hundred peo-
ple die from gun violence and
300 more are injured — and
our president and Congress do
nothing.
In fairness, liberals have
often been unhelpful, broad-
casting their own ignorance
about the firearms they propose
to regulate, or speaking blithely
of banning guns or of “gun
control” in ways that drive
responsible gun owners into
the arms of the NRA. I suggest
dropping references to “gun
control” and instead speaking
of “gun safety.”
It’s also true that there are
no simple solutions. The U.S.
now has more guns than peo-
ple, so criminals have a steady
supply — and so do ordinary
Americans at a time when sui-
cides are at a 30-year high.
But gun laws do make a
difference. When Connecti-
cut tightened licensing laws in
1995, firearm homicide rates
dropped by 40 percent. And
when Missouri eased gun laws
in 2007, gun homicide rates
surged by 25 percent.
Polls show some measures
have broad backing. For start-
ers, more than 90 percent even
of gun owners support uni-
versal background checks to
ensure that people are legally
allowed to own a gun before
they buy one.
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.
Astonishingly, about 22 per-
cent of guns in the U.S. are still
acquired without a background
check. In parts of the U.S., you
need a more thorough back-
ground check to adopt a dog
than to acquire a semi-auto-
matic AR-15 weapon.
The House passed a bill
last month to require universal
background checks, but it has
little chance in the Senate this
year.
Another basic step: Keep
guns out of the hands of peo-
ple shown to present a danger
to themselves or others, such
as when they are suicidal or
threatening a domestic part-
ner. Fourteen states have such
“red flag” laws, and similar leg-
islation is before Congress to
achieve something similar at a
national level.
We should likewise invest
more in “smart guns” that can
be fired only by an authorized
person; it’s outrageous that my
phone requires a pin or finger-
print but that an AR-15 doesn’t.
That would help with the esti-
mated 200,000 guns stolen
each year.
The regulatory model to fol-
low is automobiles. We hav-
en’t outlawed cars, but we have
required safety modifications
(seat belts, air bags) and limited
access to them (licenses, bans
after drunken driving) in ways
that have sharply reduced the
fatality rate per miles driven.
If we took this approach to
guns, many Americans would
still die. But experts have sug-
gested to me that we could
plausibly reduce gun deaths by
about one-third, saving 13,000
lives a year.
Slowly, the tide of public
opinion is shifting. The NRA’s
extremism is turning some
people off, and it seems on the
defensive, so eventually we
may follow New Zealand. But
how many more people will die
before the president and Con-
gress act?
———
Nicholas Kristof is a colum-
nist for the New York Times.
Send letters to managing
editor Daniel Wattenburger,
211 S.E. Byers Ave.
Pendleton, OR 97801, or email
editor@eastoregonian.com.