SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2021
Baker City, Oregon
4A
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EDITORIAL
Help, not harm
Whitney and Shannon Black, a Baker City couple who own a fuel
distributing business, have prompted a worthwhile conversation at
City Hall, and in the community, about how pandemic restrictions have
harmed local businesses and residents.
The City Council heard from several people on the topic during its
Tuesday, Feb. 9, meeting. The city also received a couple dozen letters.
Most writers endorsed the Blacks’ proposal that the Council approve a
“common sense sanctuary” that would call for city businesses to deter-
mine their own precautions, such as mask requirements.
The frustration is understandable, especially when the state has twice
erred in calculating Baker County’s risk level and associated restric-
tions. The second mistake resulted in restaurants, gyms and other
businesses being subjected to the most stringent rules for a week longer
than they should have been. That’s inexcusable.
But there is no clear legal avenue for the city, by way of a resolution,
to supersede state mandates. Similar attempts, including a lawsuit fi led
last spring in Baker County, failed.
The Blacks’ letter is eloquent. Their legitimate concerns about the
community they love are heartfelt.
But elected city councilors should understand that even an implicit
encouragement that business owners fl out state regulations could harm
rather than help those businesses. The city is not in a position to defend
business owners facing fi nes, license suspensions or other punishments.
Some people don’t like to wear a mask to go shopping. But others
wouldn’t feel comfortable patronizing a local business that didn’t require
masks. And there is reason to believe that local residents who do wear
masks when required or recommended, and who take other precau-
tions, are helping businesses. Baker County’s virus cases have dropped
signifi cantly over the past few weeks. As a result, the county’s risk level
dropped Friday, Feb. 12, and restrictions on restaurants and other busi-
nesses are less strict than they’ve been since November. This is progress.
The City Council can help in other ways. Councilors can ask state
offi cials to redesignate Baker County from medium population to small.
That would mean the county’s risk level would be based solely on new
cases. Now, the county is rated on that metric and on its test positivity
rate. The change would make it more likely that the county remains
under the least-severe restrictions.
The City Council can also press state offi cials to justify, with data,
restrictions that have outsized effects on restaurants, gyms and the-
aters. The current situation in Baker County, for instance, where people
can watch movies in theaters but they can’t buy popcorn and candy, is
nonsensical. And it’s keeping the Eltrym Theatre closed.
The city’s elected councilors can, and should, advocate on behalf of
their constituents, including business owners. But councilors need to
ensure that advocacy doesn’t potentially create new problems for people
who have already suffered so much over the past year.
— Jayson Jacoby, Baker City Herald editor
OTHER VIEWS
America still depends on oil
Editorial from The Dallas
Morning News:
Most Americans, in fact
nearly all Americans, get around
using vehicles that use gasoline.
And nearly all of our goods are
delivered in trucks that use
diesel. If there’s no fuel, those
vehicles don’t magically start
running on water or banana
peels or old gym socks or any
other substance, natural or
man-made.
This is a hard, diffi cult truth
that Americans must absorb as
the White House seeks to cut
greenhouse gas pollution that
comes from burning fossil fuels.
The administration is putting
a fair amount of energy into
strategies that do not support
that stated goal. Among these is
President Joe Biden’s executive
order to halt leasing on federal
lands for oil and gas production.
If America produces less oil,
drivers will still fi ll their tanks,
only with fuel made from oil
produced somewhere else.
Two weeks ago, Biden an-
nounced a set of executive
orders designed to meet the
goal of signifi cantly and quickly
reducing carbon dioxide emis-
sions that contribute to climate
change. Among the orders is a
directive to the Department of
Interior to pause all oil and gas
leasing on federal lands until
the department can review its
fossil fuel leasing policies. Re-
viewing policies is a good move;
halting leasing is not.
Search Google for maps of
federal land, and you will fi nd
images of the U.S. that look like
someone took a paintbrush to
the western half of the coun-
try and ran out of paint at the
Rocky Mountains. Federal
land includes much more than
National Parks and forest
preserves. In the Western states
(not Texas), most land belongs to
the government, and the money
generated by those lands goes to
federal and state coffers.
Further, federal land contrib-
utes a chunk of total U.S. oil and
gas production. According to the
American Petroleum Institute,
federal land, both onshore
and offshore, in 2019 contrib-
uted about 22% of total U.S. oil
production and 12% of natural
gas production. (About 70% of
federal oil production comes
from offshore.)
Halting leasing won’t immedi-
ately halt production, as oil and
gas companies operate existing
wells and drill on leases already
in hand. But zero leasing means
production will most likely begin
to taper off, and the ultimate
decline will depend on how long
the moratorium remains.
That’s a sad way to punish oil
companies and their employees,
plus the communities through-
out the West that support them.
Oil companies faced losses that
will go down in the history
books in 2020, as the pandemic-
related recession reduced oil
and gas consumption, and many
have already cut back produc-
tion anyhow, before the leasing
moratorium. That makes 2021 a
pretty good time for the gov-
ernment to review its leasing
policies, but a terrible time to
halt leasing.
We join the Texas members
of Biden’s own Democratic
Party in recommending he allow
leasing to continue. And we join
the White House in asking the
Interior Department to review
oil and gas leasing policies, but
to do so after a period of public
comment. A series of public
forums throughout the affected
states, where local people can
weigh in, would be welcome.
Peculiar politics: Pelosi agreeing with Trump
The saying that politics makes
for strange bedfellows is a tidy
aphorism, but I’m not sure it covers
a situation as peculiar as Donald
Trump and Nancy Pelosi sharing a
section of squishy pillowtop.
And with Chuck Schumer get-
ting in the way besides.
Figuratively speaking, of course.
But then Trump is anything
but conventional. And I suppose
it ought not shock anyone that in
the waning days of his presidency
he would manage to maneuver his
way into the familiar position from
which he dominates the national
conversation.
And simultaneously reveal,
whether intentionally or not, the
hypocrisy of some of his more bitter
opponents.
The erstwhile president must
have chortled when Pelosi, the
Speaker of the House, agreed with
him that the $600 per person
payments in the second pandemic
relief bill, although “signifi cant” ac-
cording to Pelosi, are too small.
Both the former president and
Pelosi, whose disdain for Trump is
so palpable that she often seems
to be in physical pain when talk-
ing about him, lobbied for $2,000
checks.
So did Schumer, the Senate
minority leader whose descriptions
of Trump include both the aggres-
sively adjectival — “despicable” and
“monstrous,” among many others
— as well as straightforward nouns
such as “moron.”
(Perhaps Schumer is not aware
of the latter word’s noxious connec-
JAYSON
JACOBY
tion to the eugenics movement. Or
perhaps he is. When the subject is
Donald Trump, normal standards
of decorum are as relevant to politi-
cal discourse as a suit of armor is to
modern combat.)
Schumer’s senatorial colleague,
Bernie Sanders — also unlikely to
have an autographed copy of “The
Art of the Deal” on his bedside table
beside the nation’s most famous
pair of mittens — even joined in
threatening a fi libuster to force the
GOP-controlled Senate to allow a
vote on the $2,000 stimulus pay-
ments.
The whiff of hypocrisy wafts
across the years from 2018, after
Trump signed the tax cut bill that
was a milestone of his fi rst year in
offi ce.
Back then, it seems, Pelosi,
Schumer and their Democratic
colleagues seemed to think it an
affront to America that people
ought to be able to keep more of the
money they earned. Considerably
more than $600, for tens of millions
of Americans.
Not one Democrat, in either the
House or the Senate, voted for the
legislation.
Pelosi said the tax bill was
“designed to plunder the middle
class,” to cite just one of her inane
statements that would make a
C- student in Econ 101 feel much
better about himself.
A mere three years later, this
same bunch insisted that it’s
perfectly reasonable — necessary,
even — to dole out a couple grand
to many of those same people.
Trump was at least consistent.
He thought middle class Ameri-
cans ought to get an income boost
in 2017, and he thought they should
get one during the pandemic.
And a bigger one than his Re-
publican buddies — that supposed
cabal controlled by Trump the
puppet master — were willing to
endorse.
The ex-president’s role in
constructing the wall of partisan-
ship that looms so imposingly in
America is beyond dispute.
But Trump has laid many more
bricks with his words — most
notably his infantile verbal attacks
on his opponents — than with his
actions.
His policy positions were too
eclectic to fi t neatly into a box
labeled “Republican” or “conserva-
tive.”
Trump’s disdain for entangling
America’s military in foreign wars,
to cite a prominent example, hardly
endeared him to the neocons who
not so long ago dominated the GOP.
And his promotion of bigger
stimulus payments suggests to me
that had Pelosi, Schumer and the
rest of the Democratic leadership
in Congress paid a bit less atten-
tion to the president’s bluster over
the past four years, and a bit more
to what he advocated, that barrier
between the two branches of gov-
ernment might have been revealed
as a much less formidable obstacle
than we had supposed it to be.
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I went for a walk in town just
around dusk earlier this winter
and while I was out there, strolling
along, a blizzard came down off the
Elkhorns.
The storm arrived as such
tempests often do, which is to say
rather suddenly.
A light fall of fl akes was fl itting
down when I left my house, but
then the fl urry thickened into seri-
ous snow and in what seemed to
me the span of a minute or so the
visibility constricted to a couple of
blocks.
A stout wind from the east-
southeast, which is one of the two
common winter wind directions
hereabouts (switching round to
the northwest with the passage of
a cold front), slapped my nose and
cheeks and I had to squint to keep
my eyes clear.
A single snowfl ake is an insub-
stantial thing, of course, scarcely
felt.
But a constant stream of fl akes,
propelled by the gusts, has a pal-
pable weight.
As I trudged along I wondered
how I must look to anyone who was
inside one of the dozens of homes
I passed, and who happened to
glance out from a place of warmth
and light at the storm and the in-
distinct fi gure moving through the
thick and shifting white cloud.
I walked with a distinct hunch,
though I carried no physical bur-
den.
It was a curious experience but
mainly a pleasant one, despite the
constant buffeting and the soft
caress of the fl akes, feeling like
nothing so much as fi ngers lightly
tickling my face.
The combination of the failing
light and the volume of snow in the
air made me feel confi ned, but not
in a disturbing, claustrophobic way.
I felt instead as though I were
inside the full-scale version of a
snow globe. The Christmas decora-
tions that still graced many yards
heightened the illusion.
It was quiet out there in the
storm.
Snow, of course, absorbs noise.
But still I was surprised at how
soft the sounds were when a car
drove past, albeit at a modest speed
appropriate for slippery residential
streets.
Because I couldn’t see far my
own progress seemed distorted; I
felt that I was moving much more
slowly than usual even though
my pace was normal. I had little
sense of how many blocks I had to
cover, how many minutes before I
reached home.
I felt acutely alone, a single
organism amid a white maelstrom
that made the distinction between
town and country, between the
tame and the wild, seem fl imsy.
Jayson Jacoby is editor
of the Baker City Herald.