OPINION
Wallowa.com
Wednesday, May 11, 2022
A5
OTHER VIEWS
Joe Guzzardi
White House
deaf to
immigration
alarm bells
howing complete indifference to his
party’s fate, President Joe Biden is
doing all he can to damage Demo-
crats’ chances for election in the upcom-
ing midterms and his reelection in 2024.
Biden’s resolute determination to harm
the Democrats may be explained sev-
eral ways. At age 79, Biden has achieved
his lifelong goal of becoming president.
After at least two failed efforts in 1988 and
2008, and possibly a third failure, depend-
ing on how the facts are interpreted from
1984, Biden is finally in the White House.
Another possible explanation is that
Biden knows Democratic leadership con-
siders him, at best, inconsequential, and
that Barack Obama is still embraced as the
party’s hero. Biden has no reason to care
about his fellow Democrats’ fate if they’re
indifferent to him. At a White House event
to celebrate Obamacare’s 12th anniver-
sary, Biden wandered alone and aim-
lessly as his apathetic Democratic col-
leagues flocked giddily around Obama.
Maybe the most obvious rea-
son explains everything. At age 79,
Biden is too old to care about his
2024 political future. He’s climbed
the White House Mountain; no taller
summit remains to conquer.
Perhaps the best indicator of Biden’s
reelection disinterest is his refusal to heed
his personal, confidential polling firm’s
advice on the key issues that concern the
nation, specifically immigration and infla-
tion. A New York Times article, “Biden
Received Early Warnings that Inflation
and Immigration Could Erode his Sup-
port,” shows the president has reck-
lessly and lawlessly pressed ahead on
open borders and illegal immigration.
Early on in his presidency, according to
the article, Biden enjoyed strong national
support, but his favorability quickly eroded
as the border crisis intensified. The John
Anzalone-headed research team found that
because voters feel that Biden and his dep-
uties are clueless when it comes to design-
ing a plan to combat the festering border
crisis, immigration represents an inten-
sifying vulnerability for the president.
Biden’s failure to slow migration is,
the pollsters concluded, “starting to take
a toll.” As early as last spring, when traf-
ficked unaccompanied minors strained
Health and Human Services capacities,
pollsters warned that “immigration is
the only issue where the president’s rat-
ings are worse with our targets than with
voters overall.” And on July 9, “Pres-
ident Biden continues to hold weaker,
negative ratings on two hot-button
issues [immigration and crime] that
have been recently bubbling up.”
Despite his pollster’s immigration red
flags, and the unanimous national consen-
sus that Vice President Kamala Harris’ dis-
cover-the-root-causes solution to migra-
tion is a bad joke played on U.S. citizens,
on May 23, Biden intends to lift Title 42,
which has been an important tool in turn-
ing away illegal border crossers for health
reasons. A Louisiana federal judge’s tem-
porary restraining order that the admin-
istration has agreed to honor may delay
Title 42’s removal, but if it’s shelved,
DHS officials anticipate 18,000 illegal
immigrants a day will flood the border.
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas
announced what he optimistically labeled
as a plan to cope with the historic surge.
The costly concept includes spending
more taxpayer money on medical support,
and more funding for air and ground trans-
portation to release the migrants into the
interior from the border. As a footnote to
its plan, DHS added that it will use Expe-
dited Removal more frequently. Border
agents scoff at the mere suggestion it will
be a useful tool. Once aliens claim fear of
persecution if returned home, an Expedited
Removal converts to a notice to appear
which migrants rarely honor. Migrants
are spreading the word among each other
that the keys to getting U.S. residency
are the words, “Fear of Persecution.”
The Times story misses the point,
perhaps purposely, about Biden and
his cronies. The administration didn’t
need to pay taxpayer funds to a profes-
sional pollster to advise it that Ameri-
cans are unhappy. Biden et al don’t care.
The arrival of mostly poor, unskilled,
limited English-speaking aliens from
150 nations through mass immigra-
tion is a fundamental elitist goal.
While the 2022 mid-terms and con-
gressional control may be at risk in
the short-term, the long-term pic-
ture that will erase the middle-class
and end American sovereignty looks
rosy to the Biden administration.
———
Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immi-
gration Reform analyst who has written
about immigration for more than 30 years.
Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.
S
State’s billion-dollar timber case might
be better resolved by Legislature
manent value of such lands to the state.”
Beyond that, the details
have been up for grabs.
Differing benefits
OTHER VIEWS
Randy Stapilus
T
he state court case of Linn v. Ore-
gon has involved a stake of a bil-
lion dollars and turned on a sub-
tle interpretation of state law, but it
ought to cause Oregonians to reflect
on the meaning of … value.
The value, that is, of their state lands.
The case Linn County v. State of Ore-
gon and State Forestry Department is being
fought (it will no doubt be appealed to the
Oregon Supreme Court) over whether the
state owes 15 counties about a billion dol-
lars — no small consideration by itself.
Here’s the basis for the claim.
In 1931, the Oregon Legislature passed
a law setting up a program to expand state
forest operations (then just a couple of
decades old). The state Forestry Board
was allowed to obtain land from coun-
ties, whether by gift or purchase or other
transfer. In voluntary agreements, as long
as the land would be used for “[g]row-
ing forest crops, water conservation, water-
shed protection, [or] recreation;” these
tracts would become state forest lands.
The counties would be compen-
sated. Since some of those lands would be
leased, or the state would get other pay-
ments for their use, the counties would
by law receive from the state “5 cents
per acre annually and 12½% of all rev-
enues received from said lands.”
State laws controlled how state for-
estry was supposed to manage its lands,
but the basic rule was, “The board shall
manage the lands acquired pursuant to
this act so as to secure the greatest per-
Lands used for water conservation, for
example, aren’t likely to generate as much
immediate income as lands used for for-
estry. How the lands are used reflects
how much money the counties receive.
The counties maintain that if the state
had managed the lands for the highest pay-
out, they would have over the years gotten
about a billion dollars more than they did.
What exactly, precisely, was this deal
between the state and the counties? Was it a
contract or something a little less formal?
That can matter, because contracts
legally often are taken to have a long
shelf life, and their terms can (in some
cases) supersede laws. Or were these
agreements just administrative actions,
which could be altered over time?
That’s the core issue in the new Court
of Appeals decision. The court distilled
the matter this way: “For the purposes
of our analysis, the dispositive issue pre-
sented by defendants’ seventh assign-
ment of error [there were other issues
the court didn’t specifically address] is
whether the board’s obligation to man-
age certain forestlands ‘so as to secure the
greatest permanent value of those lands to
the state’ … is a term in a statutory con-
tract between the state, on the one hand,
and various Oregon counties, on the other.
Plaintiffs say yes; defendants say no.”
A billion dollars rests largely
on that obscure point.
The decision was almost a split-the-dif-
ference matter, in that it held that a con-
tract of sorts had been made and the coun-
ties did have a financial interest they
could seek to protect in court. But the
court also ruled, “We treat a statute as
a contractual promise ‘only if the leg-
islature has clearly and unmistakably
expressed its intent to create a contract.”
The reason for that is simple reason:
The acts of one legislative session ordi-
narily cannot bind those of another ses-
sion in the future (just as a future gov-
ernor typically can reverse actions
taken by a previous governor).
Court’s view
The court also didn’t accept the coun-
ties’ argument that the state had committed
to managing the lands in a specific way, that
“the greatest permanent value” necessar-
ily equated to the highest immediate payout
to the counties. Maybe “permanent value”
implies a different kind of management.
Here we come to what, for most of us,
should be the core of the matter: What
does “greatest permanent value” mean?
A state administrative rule says it
“means healthy, productive, and sustain-
able forest ecosystems that over time and
across the landscape provide a full range
of social, economic, and environmen-
tal benefits to the people of Oregon.” Sev-
eral benefits are listed — timber pro-
duction, fish and wildlife environments,
protection against flooding, recreation
and more — but actually managing the
lands means balancing these objectives.
How best to balance those benefits is
also a matter of time and conditions. The
best use of the lands may have seemed
far different in 1931 than in 2021, or how
they may seem decades from now.
This is the sort of messy calcula-
tion that, strange as it may seem, poli-
tics should help resolve. It sounds like
another useful subject for this year’s
gubernatorial campaigns to address.
———
Randy Stapilus has researched and writ-
ten about Northwest politics and issues since
1976 for a long list of newspapers and other
publications. A former newspaper reporter
and editor, and more recently an author and
book publisher, he lives in Carlton.
B2H seeks to overstep noise laws meant to
protect Oregonians’ health, safety and welfare
OTHER VIEWS
Fuji Kreider
E
ver hear the snap, crackle, pop or
humming of transmission lines?
Would you want to live near them?
How about hike, fish or recreate in your
favorite park with those sounds buzzing
in the background? This is corona noise.
High-voltage transmission lines, such as
the proposed Boardman to Hemingway
line, emit a low humming or crackling
noise that is referred to as “corona sound.”
The corona sound emitted by B2H will
not exceed Oregon’s maximum allow-
able industrial sound levels (so you won’t
go deaf); however, it will exceed what’s
called “ambient antidegradation stan-
dard.” This standard says that an industrial
sound cannot exceed the natural (ambi-
ent) background sound more than 10 deci-
bels (dBA) in any given hour of a day
(24-hour period). Every increase of 10
dBA is experienced by humans as a dou-
bling of the sound. This ambient deg-
radation standard was created and put
into law to protect Oregonians’ health,
safety and welfare. Health studies have
shown that this type of sound can affect
sleeping patterns and people’s health.
So what is the Stop B2H Coalition’s
contested case about? If the state of Ore-
gon rules that Idaho Power must comply
with the state’s noise control standards, the
project is unpermittable. Therefore, Idaho
Power is asking the state for an exception
to the rules and a complete variance from
the rules. A variance would raise the ambi-
ent background an additional 10 dBA — a
blanket variance for 300 miles. The excep-
tion would be for specific residents along
the way where Idaho Power already knows
there will be noise exceedances from the
rules. There are 42 predicted by Idaho
Power; we believe there are likely more.
Our case has been brought forward by
Stop B2H plus four individuals. We have
all taken different angles to this issue in an
attempt to demonstrate that Idaho Power
cannot comply with the law and should not
qualify for an exception or variance. Our
issues include: 1) Insisting on strict com-
pliance to Oregon laws and rules, including
what constitutes “infrequent foul weather”
(when corona is loudest) and what quali-
fies for exception and variance (remember:
sound doubles with every 10 dBA). 2) The
boundary for the noise study was arbitrarily
reduced by Oregon Department of Energy
staff (1 mile to 0.5 mile). 3) The monitor-
ing stations used to measure background
(ambient) sound were not “representative”
of rural residential areas (e.g., adjacent to
the Union Pacific railroad). 4) The ODOE
lacks legal authority to issue the variance.
5) The mitigation measures proposed,
which essentially amount to an “after-the-
fact” complaint process and window treat-
ments, are not mitigation. The law says that
the Commission on Environmental Qual-
ity (CEQ) is supposed to be the only entity
able to issue a variance — not ODOE.
By Idaho Power’s admission, there is
not a technological way to mask corona
noise. Idaho Power is proposing retro-
fitting some houses and providing new
windows to those affected as mitigation.
Apparently, Idaho Power doesn’t realize
that many Eastern Oregonians spend time
outside their homes: feeding livestock,
working the land, recreating and enjoy-
ing the outdoors on a regular basis. Many
of us live in this rural region of the state
for the very peace and quiet we enjoy.
Corona noise is an industrial intru-
sion that our laws are supposed to pre-
vent. Unfortunately, we have to pre-
vail in this case to preserve what we
have. Please Support Stop B2H and
check us out at www.stopb2h.org.
———
Fuji Kreider, of La Grande, is the sec-
retary/treasurer of the Stop B2H Coalition.
She is a community organizer and organi-
zational development consultant who has
worked in various sectors and countries. She
loves to cook, travel to off-the-beaten-path
locations, hike, raft and play with friends.