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About Baker City herald. (Baker City, Or.) 1990-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 4, 2019)
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2019 Baker City, Oregon 4A Write a letter news@bakercityherald.com EDITORIAL Police training beneficial The scenario was complete fi ction but the sense of dread was real. Police offi cers clutching rifl es and rushing through the halls of Brooklyn Primary School. Teenagers cowering in corners. The level of realism, however troubling it might be to some, was also necessary to ensure the exercise that took place Sept. 27 and 28 at the Baker City school achieved its goal. That goal was to help police offi cers hone their abil- ity to deal, as quickly and effectively as possible, with a situation we all dearly hope will never happen — a shooting or other violent attack at a school. By the accounts of the training experts who watched the two-day exercise, that goal was accom- plished. Gerod Rayburn, fi rearms coordinator at the state police academy, praised the offi cers who participated. “If that wasn’t a home run, that was a strong triple,” he told one group following a scenario. “I don’t know what could have gone any better.” Would that these offi cers never have to display their skills during an actual attack. But far better that if a disaster occurs, local law enforcement has the capacity to keep a catastrophe from being even worse than it might have been. — Jayson Jacoby, Baker City Herald editor Your views Herald failed to do its due diligence with misleading story about Truck Corral To be clear the Baker Truck Corral has not been sold and will not be sold to Pilot Corporation! On September 25 the Baker City Herald published a front-page story ti- tled “Company wants to replace Baker Truck Corral with Pilot Travel Center.” The article would lead most people to believe that the Truck Corral had sold out to Pilot Corporation (I have encountered people all over town that believe we have sold.) The Herald irre- sponsibly jumped the gun and failed to do their due diligence to fi nd the truth in the story before going to press. The fact is that at the time of publication the deal was already dead. How hard would it have been for the reporter to hang up his phone, get off his rear and drive out to the Truck Corral? I believe the reporter jumped to a false conclu- sion based on an application that Pilot had made to plan review. Just because Pilot submitted a plan for review doesn’t mean anything will ever come of it. They must know that they can obtain get a permit before making an offer. It is simple due diligence. The Herald did report “Ryan Rob- inson of Pilot Flying J said Tuesday that the company has not bought the Baker Truck Corral property. Robinson said the company is looking at options for the property but does not have a signed agreement.” This statement should have given the reporter pause. The story was not time sensitive. It could have waited until Friday’s paper to give the reporter time to get it right. Instead Herald rushed to publish a story that is potentially damaging to our business. Will people not frequent our business because they believe it has been sold? We have 54 employees that rely on us for their livelihood. So please come and see us. I do not believe the Herald intended to mislead the public, but it did. At the very least we believe we are owed an apology form the Herald. Kurt J. Miller General Manager/Owner Baker Truck Corral & Restaurant Baker City OUR VIEW Farm groups are lauding a new agricultural trade deal the administration has reached with Japan. During the 2016 election President Donald Trump campaigned against trade deals that he said put U.S. producers at a disadvantage. Once elected he made good on his promise to pull out of the Trans-Pacifi c Partnership, which was the pact regulating trading among 12 Pacifi c Rim nations. Trump said he would replace TPP with bilateral trade deals. The new deal is good news for U.S. farmers and ranchers. Japan represents a $14 billion market for U.S. farm products. Without this deal, American agriculture would face signifi - cantly higher tariffs than competitors that are a part of the 11-party successor agreement to TPP. According to the deal, Japan will reduce tariffs on products valued at $2.9 billion in stages. Among the products benefi ting from this enhanced access will be fresh and frozen beef and pork. Tariffs will be eliminated immediately on more than $1.3 billion of U.S. farm products including, for example, almonds, blueberries, cranberries, walnuts, sweet corn, grain sor- ghum, food supplements, broccoli and prunes. Other products valued at $3.0 billion will benefi t from staged tariff elimination. This group of products includes, for example, wine, cheese and whey, ethanol, frozen poultry, pro- cessed pork, fresh cherries, beef offal, frozen potatoes, oranges, egg products and tomato paste. This deal with Japan underscores two obvi- ous points that make bilateral agreements possible. Our trading partners want our goods. The Japanese, for example, have sought out wheat produced in the Pacifi c Northwest. More importantly, our partners are anxious to get their goods into the United States, the largest economy in the world. While we don’t pretend to understand the Trump negotiating strategy, and aren’t sure there is a strategy, new trade deals are being hammered out. The administration says its deal with Ja- pan doesn’t substantially change U.S. law, so it doesn’t require congressional approval. That’s good news, if it’s true. Congress hasn’t done anything to ratify the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the re- placement for the North American Free Trade Agreement announced a year ago. While it’s clear other countries want our business, it’s not clear Congress is interested in giving it to them. Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the Baker City Herald. Columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions of the authors and not necessarily that of the Baker City Herald. Puzzled by Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s snubs I haven’t paid much attention to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland in the 33 years since its fi rst class was inducted. And now that I have paid atten- tion I wish I hadn’t. It’s not that I don’t like rock mu- sic — indeed, it’s by far my favorite genre. But I’ve never given much cre- dence to the notion that something as subjective as music ought to be treated like, say, baseball. There is of course quite a lot of disagreement among baseball fans about which players should, or shouldn’t, be enshrined in that sport’s hall of fame. But at least baseball players’ careers can be compared based on wholly objective statistics (well, mostly objective; I’m not about to wade into such dilemmas as deadball vs. liveball eras, or the effects of performance- enhancing drugs). Baseball, and to a similar extent other professional sports, have multiple criteria that make possible straightforward comparisons — home runs and earned-run averages, touchdowns scored, rebounds grabbed, pucks netted or gloved. Music is altogether different. It will not do to say, for instance, that Eddie Van Halen is a “better” guitarist simply because he crams so many more notes into his solos JAYSON JACOBY than David Gilmour does, or that Aretha Franklin is a better singer because she has a greater range than Stevie Nicks. I understand, though, the desire to have a hall of fame to honor an art form that started in America and that has had such a profound infl uence on our culture, and indeed the world’s, over the past 60 years or so. We have something like an obsession with halls of fame in this country, anyway — there is, to name only one outstanding, and I submit surprising, example, an Insurance Hall of Fame. One can scarcely imagine the de- bauchery that ensues during that place’s induction ceremonies. (Actuarially sound debauchery, of course.) If there’s anything surprising about the Rock & Roll Hall it’s that it didn’t get built sooner. Recently one of my favorite music-related podcasts, All-Time Top 10, had an episode devoted to what the host and his guest deem the most egregious snubs in the rock hall’s history — bands or per- formers that deserve to be inducted but haven’t been. I was surprised by what I heard. Had I been asked beforehand whether I thought several of the artists discussed were in the hall of fame I would have answered yes. And, in the case of Pat Benatar, Iron Maiden and Duran Duran, to name just three prominent ex- amples, I would have been wrong. This didn’t bother me, exactly. My affi nity for certain bands is in no way reduced because they lack the affi rmation of the Rock Hall of Fame. Which, of course, is one of the more attractive things about music — you like whatever satis- fi es your unique tastes. (Even if that means you sing along to The Carpenters and John Denver. By which I mean me — I sing along to both when I’m alone in the car, and to several other frequently maligned artists. I sing badly, but with a certain gusto.) But the podcast did pique my curiosity. And for the fi rst time I read the roster of Hall of Fame inductees. I was shocked. Dismayed. Seething with righteous anger. Actually I wasn’t any of those things. But I did, as I suspect any rela- tively serious music fan would, fi nd some examples that surprised me, both among artists that have been enshrined, and among ones that haven’t been. I found it passing strange that Bon Jovi, Green Day and the Red Hot Chili Peppers have all been inducted, but another trio, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and the Scor- pions, have not. Each of the latter three has been a major commercial success and each has a loyal cadre of fans. All three, I would argue, are at least as signifi cant, if not more so, than those three groups that have been inducted — Bon Jovi, Green Day and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I wasn’t terribly surprised that several bands commonly belittled by self-righteous music critics as “corporate rock” have been left out. This cadre includes Boston, Foreigner, Styx and Kansas. Their chief sin, it seems to me, is that they sold too many millions of albums. I certainly respect the notion that the best-selling bands don’t necessarily offer much in terms of musical creativity, but neither is sales volume always inversely proportional to quality. That Bon Jovi has been inducted, a band I enjoyed when I was a teenager and still occasionally lis- ten to but which is hardly notable except for its extreme popularity, suggests to me that the critical disdain for corporate rock bands is not consistently applied by the hall of fame. But the more blatant omissions, I contend, involve women. I think it’s valid that both Ma- donna and Brenda Lee have been inducted into the Hall. But given their inclusion, I am perplexed that neither the late Whitney Houston, nor Pat Benatar, nor the Go-Go’s has been enshrined. Madonna is a pop culture icon, to be sure. But as a singer, to belabor the baseball analogy, she might barely make it to the minor leagues. Bena- tar and Houston — the latter in particular — are not merely major leaguers, but all-stars. The Go-Go’s (unnecessary apostrophe aside) were the fi rst all-female band to both write and perform the songs on an album that reached the top of the American charts. The fi rst and, almost 40 years after “Beauty and the Beat” was released, still the only such band. If that doesn’t qualify the Go-Go’s for the Rock Hall, I clearly have no concept of the criteria. Jayson Jacoby is editor of the Baker City Herald.