SATURDAY, MAY 15, 2021
Baker City, Oregon
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EDITORIAL
Drug team
has had a
busy stretch
The Baker County Narcotics Enforcement Team
has been busy recently.
This is both good news, and bad.
Bad, of course, because the team’s arrests stem
from signifi cant drug distribution happening in and
around Baker County.
But it’s gratifying to see that police are identifying
these operations, arresting suspects and confi scating
drugs.
During the past three weeks, the Narcotics En-
forcement Team, whose members include offi cers
from the Baker City Police, Baker County Sheriff’s
Offi ce and Oregon State Police, with support from
the Baker County District Attorney’s Offi ce, has
arrested two men, one in Baker City and one in
Ontario, who are accused of selling heroin and meth-
amphetamines, and in one case fentanyl, in Baker
County and surrounding areas.
Both arrests resulted from investigations by the
Narcotics Enforcement Team, said Lt. Ty Duby of the
Baker City Police, who’s also a former Oregon State
Police detective.
Duby said the team concept is crucial because it al-
lows police to focus their efforts based on information
they develop about potential drug sales networks.
Although arrests are always possible in the normal
course of police work, Duby said having a group of
offi cers dedicated to pursuing narcotics cases greatly
improves the chances that suspects will be arrested.
The Baker County team has proved its worth this
spring. We can only hope that it will be so effective
that it will no longer be necessary.
— Jayson Jacoby, Baker City Herald editor
OTHER VIEWS
Time to institute paid family leave
Editorial from The Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette:
President Joe Biden’s American
Families Plan contains a long list of
potential investments aimed at revi-
talizing the country, but one proposal
in particular is long overdue: paid
family leave.
With no federally mandated paid
leave, the U.S. fi nds itself an anach-
ronism in comparison with dozens
of other industrialized countries. As
such, it falls further behind economic
competitors in terms of the number of
women participating in the labor force.
The situation has gotten worse with
the coronavirus pandemic, which has
pushed more women from the work-
force to the lowest levels in more than
three decades. It’s time the country
acknowledged that paid family leave is
needed to remain competitive.
Biden’s plan would commit $225
billion over a decade toward imple-
menting paid family and medical
leave. It would provide workers up to
$4,000 a month when they take family
or medical leave. A range of weekly
wages would be replaced, rising to 80%
of wages for the lowest-earning work-
ers. Within 10 years, the plan would
guarantee 12 weeks of paid parental,
family and personal illness leave.
Under the federal Family and Medi-
cal Leave Act now in place, workers
can qualify for 12 weeks of leave for
the birth of a child, to care for a sick
family member, or for other medical
reasons. Although the worker’s job
is protected, it is unpaid, and many
simply cannot afford to forgo 12 weeks
of pay.
The Biden administration esti-
mates that nearly 1 in 4 new mothers
returns to work within two weeks of
giving birth and 1 in 5 retirees left the
workforce earlier than planned to care
for an ill family member. Although
some companies have seen the benefi t
of offering paid leave as a way of re-
taining valued employees, the Bureau
of Labor Statistics estimates that 95%
of the lowest earners still have no ac-
cess to paid family leave.
Paid family leave helps workers and
employers alike. New parents have the
opportunity to be at home with their
child in those earliest days, and stud-
ies from the few states that do have
paid family leave show that mothers,
in particular, are more likely to return
to the workforce following the leave
of absence. Those with a sick family
member can facilitate important and
needed care without worrying about
their fi nancial situation. And com-
panies benefi t from higher rates of
worker retention and reduced turn-
over costs.
The plan proposed by Biden offers
a starting point to begin phasing in a
national policy of required paid family
leave. It’s something that is needed if
the U.S. is to maintain a robust, com-
petitive workforce.
Fact-checkers show refreshing interest in Biden
I’ve been pleased recently to see
that the fact-checkers at The As-
sociated Press, who never refuted
so many statements and with such
apparent glee as they did during
the Trump presidency, have not let
their enthusiasm for exposing exag-
gerations and falsities go fl accid in
the Biden era.
Which is not to say the media
organization is quite fi nished with
the erstwhile resident of the White
House. It’s as if the AP, after more
than four years of mining unparal-
leled riches, refuses to stop digging
for new offshoots from the glittering
vein that was the Trump adminis-
tration.
Although not even the most
naive observer of political journal-
ism could believe that the media
have been as aggressive in covering
Biden as they were with Trump,
the AP’s fact check following Biden’s
address to Congress last month was
to me refreshingly blunt.
Biden, for instance, in talking
about immigration, touted his
efforts as vice president during
Barack Obama’s presidency, saying
“The plan was working, but the last
administration decided it was not
worth it.”
Anyone who’s not a mindless
Biden acolyte recognizes how vapid
that claim is.
And the AP, to its credit, didn’t
equivocate.
“That’s wrong,” was the AP’s as-
sessment.
The fact-checkers bolstered that
by noting that the Trump admin-
istration sent similar amounts of
fi nancial aid to Central America
as the Obama administration did,
yet the number of unaccompanied
children crossing the U.S. border
from Mexico in March 2021 was the
highest on record.
The AP also challenged Biden’s
JAYSON
JACOBY
claim that his economic plan,
including spending $2.3 trillion on
“infrastructure” (a term that, as the
Biden administration defi nes it,
apparently includes money to build
a garage on my property), is sup-
ported by a “broad consensus of eco-
nomics — left, right, center — and
they agree that what I’m proposing
will help create millions of jobs and
generate historic economic growth.”
The reality, the AP concluded,
is that Biden is “glossing over the
naysayers.”
Those include Larry Summers,
who was Obama’s top economic
and treasury secretary during Bill
Clinton’s presidency. Summers, the
AP pointed out, has “warned that
Biden’s relief package risks rates of
infl ation not seen in a generation.”
Yet even as the AP was subject-
ing Biden’s claims to the unfl atter-
ing mirror of reality, its fact-check-
ers also got in a few digs, albeit
indirectly, at Trump.
The story, though it focused on
Biden’s speech, took on a couple
statements from Sen. Tim Scott
of South Carolina, who gave the
Republican response.
(A tradition, by the way, which
ought to be scrapped. One partisan
speech per evening should be the
legal limit.)
Scott credited the Trump ad-
ministration for contributing to the
rapid development of COVID-19
vaccines, noting that “our country
is fl ooded with safe and effective
vaccines.”
The AP, reverting to its previous
curious standard when it comes
to any statement that praises
Trump, deemed Scott’s claim “a real
stretch.”
But the AP’s support for that con-
clusion — and I’m being charitable
— is sketchy.
The fact-checkers could hardly
ignore the fact that vaccines exist,
and that the Trump administra-
tion’s Operation Warp Speed
helped to make that possible.
But the AP was not deterred by
the absence of a compelling coun-
terclaim to Scott.
Instead, the fact-checkers’ tepid
response was that “several state
governors were complaining about
jumbled signals from Trump’s
team” regarding vaccine avail-
ability during the last month of his
presidency.
The AP doesn’t name any of
the governors, but it seems likely
that the list would include Oregon
Gov. Kate Brown. Trouble is, she
was complaining about the Trump
administration even while Oregon
had stockpiles of thousands of
doses of vaccine it apparently was
incapable of distributing.
The fact-checkers conclude with
what, given the subject of Scott’s
statement, qualifi es as a non sequi-
tur: “Trump was focused on his
campaign to overturn the election
results and did not devote much
public attention to the pandemic
as his term came to an end.”
That’s a reasonably fair assess-
ment.
What it has to do with Scott
pointing out that the country is
“fl ooded with safe and effective
vaccines,” is another matter.
✐
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The purveyors of consumer prod-
ucts, perhaps the keenest observers
of contemporary culture, have gone
all in on the pandemic.
In the hypercompetitive market-
place, the most agile players tend to
thrive, of course, while the plodders
fail. And certain companies have
pursued the unique opportunities
that COVID-19 has presented like
so many cheetahs latching onto a
hapless wildebeest.
Some of these gambits are so
obvious that they hardly require an
MBA to recognize.
We’ve all seen the proliferation
across all media in advertise-
ments for face masks, for instance,
a product previously of interest
mainly to the relatively few among
us who work regularly with caustic
chemicals or paint a lot of cars.
But the virus has also created
profi t niches that aren’t so predict-
able.
The other day I watched a TV
ad for what at a cursory glance
seemed to be a typical swiveling
offi ce chair.
Except the typical swiveling
offi ce chair, at least in my experi-
ence with the breed, is not capable
of massaging your lower back and
warming your kidneys while you’re
sitting in it, tapping away at a
keyboard or giggling at YouTube
videos of people trying to skate-
board down fl ights of concrete stairs.
The target audience for this chair
isn’t an offi ce drone or an executive,
however, but rather workers who
have sought, or have been required,
to hunker at home to keep clear of
COVID-19.
The chair, besides its ability to
knead your knotted muscles and
keep your internal organs toasty,
boasts several other features — I
don’t recall the details — designed
to appeal to homebound employees.
My initial reaction to the ad was
a grudging admiration for who-
ever decided that tinkering with
a simple piece of furniture could
tempt people who didn’t realize they
needed an offi ce chair to sign up for
the easy payment plan.
But as I watched the actor relax
in the chair and participate in a
Zoom (or at least Zoom-like) meet-
ing with a beatifi c smile that was
about as convincing as the wood-
grain in a 1974 Pinto, my apprecia-
tion for the marketing savvy was
replaced by dismay.
It struck me that the scenario
that plays out in the commercial
might not be so temporary after all
— that employees padding around
in pajamas rather than business
casual might remain commonplace
even after we’ve banished the pan-
demic to history.
This isn’t wholly negative, to be
sure.
COVID-19 has ravaged our
economy, but the damage certainly
would have been worse if not for
modern communication technology
— some of which wasn’t available
as recently as a decade or so ago —
that kept certain sectors running
even as offi ces closed.
Yet the possibility that the trend
precipitated by the worst pandemic
in a century could insinuate itself
into society on a more permanent
basis seems to me the grimmest of
prospects.
I don’t believe we will prosper, in
the long run, from making murky
the formerly distinct boundary
between home and work.
When our homes cease to be
refuges — the places where we can
relax after the travails of the work-
day, and recognize them as trivial
compared with the joys of fam-
ily — then I fear we will have lost
something that can’t be replaced.
Jayson Jacoby is editor
of the Baker City Herald.