SATURDAY, JUNE 26, 2021
Baker City, Oregon
A4
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EDITORIAL
Animal
‘cruelty’
initiative
frightening
It sounds farfetched, and quite likely it is.
Oregonians ought to hope so, anyway.
At least those Oregonians who like to eat the occa-
sional burger or slice of bacon. Or hunt deer and elk. Or
watch or compete in rodeos.
But the economic destruction that Initiative Peti-
tion 13 could cause in this state is so severe, and so
widespread, that the campaign supporting it, however
quixotic it might be, simply can’t be ignored.
David Michelson of Portland is the chief petitioner.
His goal is to put on the statewide ballot in November
2022 a petition that would criminalize, under animal
abuse laws, essential parts of the ranching business, in-
cluding branding and dehorning cattle, and castrating
bulls. Even artifi cial insemination could be classifi ed as
sexual assault of an animal, which is a Class C felony.
Backers of the initiative emphasize that it would not
actually prohibit ranchers from selling their animals to
slaughter — but they could do so only after the animal
dies naturally. You needn’t be in the livestock business
to know this wouldn’t — couldn’t— work.
The petition would also eliminate exceptions to
animal cruelty laws for hunting, fi shing, rodeos and
wildlife management.
It might seem unbelievable that a majority of Or-
egonians would vote for a measure that would wreak
such havoc on an industry that’s a big part of Oregon’s
economy. But little wonder that the Oregon Farm
Bureau and other groups are preparing to counter the
petition with compelling stories about how much dam-
age this effort could have.
— Jayson Jacoby, Baker City Herald editor
OTHER VIEWS
It’s time to pay college athletes
Editorial from The Chicago Tribune:
It’s not just mania about college hoops
that puts the “madness” in March Mad-
ness. Think about the money behind
NCAA basketball. John Calipari, coach
of perennial powerhouse University of
Kentucky, makes $8 million a year. Duke’s
famed Mike Krzyzewski makes $7 mil-
lion. Closer to home, University of Illinois
men’s basketball coach Brad Underwood
got $3.8 million this year.
Before the pandemic, March Madness
raked in $1.18 billion in television ad rev-
enue for the NCAA, which also gets $1.1
billion for TV rights to the tournament.
How about the man at the top — NCAA
President Mark Emmert? Nearly $4 mil-
lion annually.
What about the athletes who hit the
buzzer beaters, who dunk the dunks and
leap into end zones to win games and
championships? Consider the story of
Shabazz Napier, who in 2014 helped the
University of Connecticut Huskies win
the NCAA men’s basketball title. Napier
told the media at the time, “Sometimes,
there are hungry nights where I’m not
able to eat, but I still got to play up to my
capabilities.”
This week, the U.S. Supreme Court
issued a ruling that could finally open the
door for college athletes to be fairly com-
pensated for their work and talent, which
makes millions for the people at the top.
The case involved a former University of
West Virginia football player who claimed
the NCAA rules governing education-
related compensation violated federal an-
titrust law intended to foster competition.
In a unanimous decision, the court ruled
that the NCAA cannot prohibit education-
related payments to college athletes.
The decision has the potential to go
much deeper, however. The court ap-
peared open to a much broader challenge
to the NCAA’s ban on paying athletes. In
his concurring opinion, Justice Brett Ka-
vanaugh wrote, “Nowhere else in America
can businesses get away with agreeing
not to pay their workers a fair market rate
on the theory that their product is defined
by not paying their workers a fair market
rate.
“And under ordinary principles of anti-
trust law,” Kavanaugh continued, “it is not
evident why college sports should be any
different. The NCAA is not above the law.”
Kavanaugh summed it up perfectly. It’s
true, student-athletes often get scholar-
ships, room and board, books and other
perks in exchange for what they do on the
court, field or gridiron. But what they do
amounts to a full-time job. And the daily
grind they endure — the practices, the
strength training, the games and tourna-
ments — is work product that morphs
into massive profi ts for the NCAA and
the people at the top rungs of universi-
ties.
We fully expect the NCAA to dig in its
heels and fi ght to the last. The organiza-
tion should brace itself, however, for the
possibility that the nation’s high court de-
cides sometime in the future to address,
in a much broader way, the NCAA’s
exploitation of student-athletes. Justice
Neil Gorsuch offered a window into the
court’s mindset, writing that the NCAA
is a “massive business” and adding that
those “who run this enterprise profi t in a
different way than the student-athletes
whose activities they oversee.”
The NCAA doesn’t have to wait for the
Supreme Court to act, however. It can
see the writing on the wall, pay athletes,
and fi nally remedy the unfairness it has
perpetuated for far too long.
Carelessly wielding statistics as a weapon
I remember, and more clearly
than most childhood episodes, the
day my dad explained to me the
concept of guilt by association.
I think my memory remains
unusually vivid, among so many
dozens of conversations, because
the idea seemed to me then so
unfair.
It still does.
I surely was no older than 10
that day, and probably nearer to
eight. But even more than four
decades later I bristle at the notion
that anybody might malign my
character not because I had done
something wrong, but because I
was linked to someone who had.
I was particularly irked that I
might be branded as guilty even
if the “association” were contrived
rather than real.
I had occasion recently to ponder
that distant discussion with my
dad.
The impetus for my reminiscing
was a story in the Salem States-
man Journal newspaper about a
survey conducted this January in
Oregon.
DHM Research and the Or-
egon Values and Beliefs Center,
which the newspaper described
as “independent nonpartisan
organizations,” surveyed 603
Oregon residents in a 15-minute
online questionnaire Jan. 8-13.
There were quotas for each area
of the state, as well as for gender,
age and education, to ensure the
respondents represented the state’s
diversity.
The lead paragraph in the story
— as lead paragraphs are supposed
to do — does an admirable job of
JAYSON
JACOBY
introducing the topics to come.
“Nearly four in 10 Oregonians
strongly or somewhat agree with
statements that refl ect core argu-
ments of white nationalist and
other far-right groups, according to
a new statewide survey.”
Any reader, even those who are
barely sentient, couldn’t help but
be intrigued by that sentence.
Although I suspect most people
would react with something other
than basic curiosity.
Disgust, for instance.
As a native Oregonian with
a great affi nity for the state, I
certainly fi nd abhorrent the notion
that in any group of 10 people
within our borders, four are apt to
be bigots.
I’d be especially incensed if I be-
lieved that statistic to be accurate.
But I don’t.
What I fi nd obnoxious is how
the organization that paid for the
survey has used the results to im-
pugn about 1.7 million of my fellow
Oregonians.
Lindsay Schubiner, a program
director at that organization, West-
ern States Center, described the
survey fi ndings as “disturbing.”
“These numbers show that
they’re certainly not the majority,
but I think this data does give in-
sight into the size of the population
that white nationalists may be able
to appeal to or potentially recruit
from,” Schubiner told the States-
man Journal.
Here are some of the numbers on
which Schubiner bases this scur-
rilous contention.
The survey found that 86% of
respondents agreed that America
should “protect and preserve” its
multicultural heritage, down from
92% in a similar survey in 2018.
Meanwhile, the percentage of
respondents who believe America
“must protect and preserve its
white European heritage” has risen
from 31% in 2018 to 40% — hence
the claim that four in 10 Orego-
nians are merely waiting for the
skinheads and neo-Nazis to show
up with their propaganda (larded,
most likely, with enough misspell-
ings and questionable grammar to
disappoint a second-grader).
I fi nd it passing strange that
anyone, upon learning that more
than twice as many people in a
survey think it’s important to
preserve multicultural heritage, as
compared with preserving white
European heritage, would deduce
that the population represented in
the survey is fertile recruiting terri-
tory for white supremacists.
Another fi nding in the survey
is that more Oregonians actually
admit supporting what the news
story describes as “white national-
ism and paramilitary groups” now
as in 2018. That support has risen
from 6% of respondents then to
11% in the 2021 survey.
But the difference between
that 11%, and the 40% who think
white European heritage is worth
protecting and preserving, is hardly
trivial.
In straight numbers, extrapolat-
ing from the 40% survey result,
this amounts to about 1.2 million
Oregonians. And the Western
States Center implies that this
group is susceptible to the outland-
ish and hateful messages spewed
by malcontents who think the
swastika is cool.
I fi nd far more compelling than
a survey the actual events that
transpired in Grant County in
2010.
The national director of the Ary-
an Nations, Paul R. Mullet, showed
up that year in John Day, claiming
he was looking to buy property and
establish a “national compound” for
his goose-stepping cretins.
Mullet told the Blue Mountain
Eagle newspaper that he believes
his group “is a good fi t with the
values here.”
Perhaps he meant the sort of
people who, if asked in an anony-
mous survey, might agree that
white European heritage, along
with a bunch of other heritages, is
a part of American history worth
preserving.
But it turns out that Grant
County residents didn’t cotton to a
bunch of bigots moving into their
bucolic section of Oregon.
They put on a public protest
against the Aryan Nations.
John Day’s mayor, Bob Quinton,
told the Blue Mountain Eagle that
being associated with the Aryan
Nations was “the last kind of thing
our reputation needs. We need to be
inclusive and emphasize positive
things here.”
What bothers me almost as
much as surveys being used to
draw ridiculously broad assump-
tions about people’s feelings is that
such exaggerations also suggest
that nasty people have far more
infl uence than actual evidence —
Grant County, for instance — sug-
gests they possess.
In effect, groups such as the
Western States Center contribute
to white supremacists’ ability to
coopt people’s pride in their heri-
tage.
There is of course nothing inher-
ently offensive about such pride.
Indeed, the survey itself strongly
suggests that Oregonians respect
all cultures, and not only their own.
Considering how marginalized
white supremacists are, I fi nd it
fanciful for the Western States
Center to contend that the sur-
vey results in any way refl ect the
number of Oregonians who have
anything in common with racist
cretins.
I don’t think it’s coincidental
that Schubiner was conspicuously
hedging in her comments to the
Statesman Journal — speaking
of white nationalists who “may be
able to appeal to” or “potentially
recruit from” Oregonians based on
the survey results.
Still and all, I think the group is
engaging in guilt by association.
I’m confi dent that the vast
majority of people who are proud
of their heritage — whatever that
might be — are all but impervious
to the poison propaganda of those
few among us who pervert pride
into hatred.
Jayson Jacoby is editor
of the Baker City Herald.