THURSDAY, APRIL 22, 2021
Baker City, Oregon
4A
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EDITORIAL
Oregon’s
rigid rules
hurting
our county
Baker County’s post-spring break, post-Easter
surge in COVID-19 cases is waning.
But the punishment to businesses, which haven’t
been implicated in the increase in infections, hasn’t
even begun.
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown needs to fi x this unfair
situation.
The state’s strategy for curbing the spread of the
virus is more fl exible than it was during the winter.
But it’s still too rigid.
Brown has in effect conceded that a surge in cases
at the county level doesn’t necessarily justify impos-
ing harsh restrictions on businesses such as restau-
rants, bars and theaters.
In mid-March the governor decided that counties,
even if they have a signifi cant increase in cases over
a two-week period, shouldn’t automatically be subject
to more stringent limitations. Brown approved what
state offi cials call a two-week “caution period,” during
which a county’s risk level doesn’t change.
Under the previous system, Baker County’s risk
level would have jumped from the lowest to the high-
est of the four levels (“extreme” risk) starting April 9
based on the county’s 79 cases from March 21-April 3.
The county’s surge continued during the caution
period, with 79 more cases for the two weeks end-
ing April 17. Based on that, the county’s risk level
increases to high (rather than extreme because the
state hasn’t reached a new threshold on COVID-19
patients who are hospitalized) this Friday, April 23.
That limits indoor dining at restaurants and bars
to 25% of capacity or 50 total people, whichever is
fewer, compared with the current 50%. The same
restriction applies to the Eltrym Theater and to in-
door gyms, fi tness centers and swimming pools. The
capacity for outdoor events, including school sports,
drops from 300 to 75.
These severe restrictions will be in effect through
at least May 6, according to an announcement from
the governor on Tuesday, April 20.
Lest anyone credit Brown for giving the county a
two-week grace period, consider this — the county’s
current COVID-19 trend is decidedly downward.
Since recording a two-day record high of 30 cases
on April 13-14, and 39 cases from April 13-15, the
county’s daily case totals have been 6, 2, 3, 0 and 6.
It seems likely that the surge, which according to
the Baker County Health Department was driven
largely by private social gatherings, has ended. Case
numbers are trending toward the rates that pre-
vailed from mid-January through most of March.
During that period the daily average was below
three cases per day, and the highest one-day total
was seven.
Yet even if this positive trend continues, businesses
— which, to reiterate, haven’t been implicated as
contributing to the recent surge in cases — will suf-
fer for at least two weeks.
This situation, which is both illogical and unfair,
highlights the need for the governor to allow county
health offi cials to determine risk levels, and the as-
sociated restrictions, based on fresh, comprehensive
data rather than stale and incomplete statistics.
Local offi cials are capable of determining whether
restaurants and other businesses are contributing
to an uptick in COVID-19 infections, and whether
restrictions on businesses could be benefi cial.
Early in the pandemic, when we knew relatively
little about COVID-19, and vaccines were limited to
the laboratory, it was sensible to have the governor
and state offi cials dictate a statewide approach.
That is no longer the case, and business owners
should no longer be subject to that blunt strategy.
— Jayson Jacoby, Baker City Herald
OTHER VIEWS
Don’t ‘pack’ the U.S. Supreme Court
Editorial from the Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette:
When Franklin Roosevelt tried to
“pack” the Supreme Court in 1937, that
is, expand its membership so he could
bend its membership toward the New
Deal and its majority ideology toward
the Democratic Party, he was shut
down.
The plan was to add a new justice
each time a justice reached 70 and
failed to retire. It would have meant six
new justices.
Roosevelt was understandably frus-
trated with the court knocking down
one New Deal reform after another.
But the court packing plan set off a
fi restorm. Not only the sitting justices
and the Congress but the newspapers
and the attentive public all let FDR
know, in no uncertain terms, that he
had overstepped his bounds.
It was a rare political miscalculation
for a master politician.
President Joe Biden, who is a
student of history, and of FDR, should
learn from the mistake.
Biden is turning out to be a pretty
good politician himself, and is on a roll
right now. He should drop any notion of
a new court packing scheme, for it is a
political as well as a moral and concep-
tual blunder.
The political error is that it will be
widely seen, as it was in FDR’s case, as
a power grab and presidential over-
reach.
The moral and conceptual error
is not constitutional. Nothing in the
Constitution prevents the court from
being smaller, which it once was (six)
or larger.
What’s wrong, and it is an affl iction
of both parties, is changing the rules
when you don’t get the result you want:
We lost, so change the voting rules.
Both parties have sore losers who
claimed they did not lose an election
but that the election was stolen — Sta-
cey Abrams and Donald Trump.
Now both parties want to rewrite
election rules to partisan advantage —
not to protect or expand the franchise
but to protect their hold on offi ce and
expand their voter base.
Court packing is more of the same:
Donald Trump got lucky with Supreme
Court openings and Mitch McConnell
was powerful and shameless enough to
block one nominee of Obama nominee
for the high court and push a third
Trump nominee through at the elev-
enth hour.
So now the right has the advantage
on the court and the Democrats want
a do over. They lost, so change the
system.
That’s not honorable, logical or politi-
cally smart, because what goes around
comes around.
Imagine how the Democrats would
have howled if Trump had tried to
pack the court.
Now, hypocrisy abounds in politics,
always, especially in Washington.
McConnell was against lame-duck
presidents making high court appoint-
ments before he was for them.
And all the fi ne legal “originalists”
in the GOP thought it was just fi ne
when the Supreme Court imposed
itself into a presidential election,
and ended it, with no constitutional
authority to do so.
When McConnell and the Demo-
crats debate the rules of the game, be
it nominations, or the rules of the Sen-
ate, be assured that it is not about the
administration of law or the customs
and honor of the Senate — which is
what the debate should be about. Both
sides are concerned with raw power
and nothing but raw power.
There is no evidence whatsoever
that a larger court would be a better
court. Or that McConnell’s bastardized
fi libuster well serves the Senate.
Court packing is a power grab, pure
and simple.
And Mitch McConnell is no conser-
vative and no custodian of the Senate,
like Robert Taft or Mike Mansfi eld.
He has diminished the Senate.
As for the Democrats, they are
playing with fi re. There is no popular
support for adding justices. And their
own hold on Congress is precarious.
When Roosevelt tried to pack the
court he was coming off a landslide
reelection. He had a mandate. The
Democrats today do not.
Nonetheless, the president has now
appointed a commission (of three
dozen, inexplicably) to “provide an
analysis of the principle arguments
in the contemporary debate for and
against Supreme Court reform.” It in-
cludes conservatives, as he promised
it would. He should instruct them
that court packing is off the table,
so the commission can look at other,
better, ideas, like term limits for the
justices, followed by senior status
and service in the lower courts if they
so choose. This is not prohibited by
Article III of the Constitution.
The other thing he should do is be
patient. The wheel will turn again
and Democrats will get the upper
hand on the court once more. Presi-
dent Barack Obama got two picks
and if he had fought for his third
nominee, or held on to the Democratic
majority in the Senate, he would have
done as well as Trump at shaping the
court.
Things are not so far out of order.
They will be if we start tinkering with
the system, a system that has served
us well since 1788, to satisfy a momen-
tary demand of one faction.
Getting tough with meddling Russia
Editorial from the New York Daily
News:
After the prior administration got
itself in hot borscht for, even before tak-
ing offi ce, all but assuring Russia that
there would be no lasting penalties for
2016 election interference, Joe Biden is
setting a better precedent and imposing
harsh sanctions. It’s good that Vladimir
Putin’s government will fi nally pay a
steep economic price for cyberattacks on
America, but don’t expect the penalties
to change the Kremlin’s behavior one
bit.
Via executive order issued Thurs-
day, April 15, Biden is imposing fresh
sanctions on Moscow: prohibiting U.S.
institutions from buying bonds from
Russia’s Central Bank, fi nance ministry
and its sovereign wealth fund; blacklist-
ing a half-dozen large cybersecurity
fi rms; expelling 10 Russian diplomats
from their embassy in Washington, and
turning the screws on more than 30
other people and entities.
It’s partial payback for the Solar-
Winds hack, one of the largest ever
network attacks on the U.S. govern-
ment and American corporate interests,
which was orchestrated by Russian
intelligence. Digging out of the dam-
age done could cost $100 billion. We
know too that after its infamous 2016
interference, Russia tried again in 2020
to infl uence an American presidential
election, and thankfully failed.
When such meddling is met by
weakness, as it repeatedly was during
the Trump administration, it is bound
to get worse. Which is not to say that
toughness cures the problem, as op-
posed to plunging the U.S. and Russia
into a mutually harmful economic Cold
War. Putin is too tough a customer for
that.
Buried in the administration’s re-
sponse was a new assertion that U.S. in-
telligence agencies had just “low to mod-
erate confi dence” in reports that Russia
had offered to pay bounties for the death
of American troops in Afghanistan. In
campaign season, that supposed crime
— and the then-president’s refusal to
confront the Kremlin over it — was held
up as proof that Trump was captive to
Putin. Because of the diffi culty of con-
fi rming the particular claims, Biden isn’t
ready to retaliate for them.
Turns out, real life is more compli-
cated than politics. Who’da thunk?
Letters to the editor
knowingly print false or misleading
claims.
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