A4 BAKER CITY HERALD • SATURDAY, JUNE 18, 2022
BAKER CITY
Opinion
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Baker City, Oregon
EDITORIAL
We need to
know cost
of universal
health care
T
he plan for universal health care in
Oregon may sound great. We wonder if
people are being given enough informa-
tion to judge it.
Th e task force building the plan off ers a long
list of selling points for the plan:
• Everybody in Oregon would have health
care.
• Th e health care benefi ts would be more gen-
erous than most current plans.
• Th ere would be more benefi ts available for
behavioral health treatment.
• Everyone would have dental benefi ts.
• Health coverage would not be related to
your job.
• People wouldn’t have to pay when getting
care. No copays. No deductibles. People would
pay based on how much they make.
Th e state board that runs it would have open
public meetings and report to the governor and
Legislature.
Th is week and in the weeks that follow the
state’s universal health care task force is holding
meetings with the public, through Zoom. You
can learn more about those tinyurl.com/OR-
healthmeetings.
In the background provided for these meet-
ings, the possible benefi ts of the program are
clearly spelled out. Some of the possible down-
sides, not so much.
For instance, this change means much of the
private health care insurance industry in Oregon
and any jobs associated with it would likely be
wiped out. No need for them when the state is
running the system. And the fact that it would
be a transparent, government board running
the system may not be such a plus if you don’t
like the prospect of the government taking over
more of the private sector and attempting to
manage it.
It would be nice to not have to worry about
what treatment might cost when you go to the
doctor or are wheeled into the emergency room.
But what will people pay?
Th e rates of the new income taxes that fam-
ilies will pay are not in the background docu-
ments for the meetings. Th e rates of the payroll
tax employers will pay are not there, either.
It’s one thing to tell people that overall they
would pay 13% less in premiums, deductibles
and copays than they do now. It’s one thing to
tell employers that they would pay 11% less than
they do now in premiums. Th ey should be told
upfront the expected rates for income and pay-
roll taxes that those assumptions are based on.
At least according to some task force docu-
ments, households would pay income tax rates
of up to 9.3% in addition to the income tax
they already pay. Th ere would be marginal rates
based on the federal poverty level. Th e rates
ramp up. For instance, households below 200%
of the federal poverty level would pay zero. Th e
line for a family of four to start paying would be
just over $55,000. A family of four would pay the
highest marginal rate of 9.3% for income over
$110,000.
Employers would pay a payroll tax based
on employee wages. Below $160,000 a year an
employer would pay a marginal rate of 7.25%,
jumping up to 10.5% for income of $160,000 or
more.
A plan for universal health care in Oregon
needs to be as frank with the costs as it is with
the possible benefi ts.
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.
YOUR VIEWS
Residents gather to walk
in peace, and against hate
On Friday June 10, a peaceful, all-ages
group of LGTBQ+ folks and allies gath-
ered for the 2nd-annual Baker Pride
Walk. Colored balloons, rainbow flags,
and “Love Wins” T-shirts were plentiful.
We walked from Central Park to Geis-
er-Pollman Park with beaming faces and
joyous laughter. It felt wonderful to feel
the love of our community and hear cars
honking in support.
Why didn’t more people know about
this Baker City event and that it had hap-
pened before? All you have to do is read
a June 14 Herald article to understand.
The arrest of 31 Patriot Front members in
riot gear near the Coeur d’Alene, Idaho,
Pride festival occurred the day after our
happy parade strolled along the Powder
River pathway. Patriot Front is a white
nationalist hate group and the arrested
members came from at least 11 states in-
cluding Oregon. Groups and individuals
who threaten violence to others promote
hate and rob law-abiding citizens of their
rights to assemble peacefully and without
fear.
If you want to build community and
stand against hate in Baker, there are
many opportunities to become involved
locally. To join us for the 3rd-annual
Baker Pride Walk, watch for posters and
event announcements next June or con-
tact the event organizer, Baker County
Safe Communities Coalition, or the event
funder, Eastern Oregon Coordinated
Care Organization.
Gretchen Stadler
Corvallis
Today’s green foliage
is tomorrow’s fire tinder
As I sit looking out my window on this
early morn, I am captivated by the sight of
the luxurious, nay, rampant growth of ev-
ery green thing known to man. Some wel-
come, others not at all. Our rainy season
has settled in to encourage rainforest-like
growth. The human eye has a sensitivity
to green light. Perhaps a holdover from
our ancient past as free range tenants of
forests and grasslands. The color offers a
sense of well being and calm. It is a good
way to begin the day, turmoil forgotten.
Then my thoughts turn to our sur-
rounding miles of grasslands and forests.
Now we see verdant growth replacing im-
ages of the dry brown ruin left by the win-
ter months. Yet our traditional weather
patterns foretell summer droughts and all
the tall greenery turning to flammable,
dried fuel for potential wildfires. Other
areas across the West have suffered fires of
amazing ferocity, even early in the season.
Homes and business districts burned out.
Could this portend a similar fate for us?
Looking eastward, I can see a large,
well-weathered wooden structure
wrapped with vegetation on two walls,
nearly to the eaves. Then I imagine the
lush foliage dry, desiccated, no longer an
eye-pleasing green, rather the tan color
of prime tinder. Just like the bare wood
walls. Is this why fires, once limited to fu-
el-filled forests, invade cities? Homes and
businesses are more vulnerable when the
in-town areas contain such structures as
I see across the street from my window.
How many others are dotted around our
community? Could we be vulnerable?
What about a neighbor’s stand of tall
grasses? Have I any that need trimming
down? How much is too much?
Should the drought cycle descend upon
us, the outlying areas could be at risk.
From there a wildfire combined with high
winds could bring unwelcome visitors in
the form of embers. I now look at over-
growth with a different perspective. Time
to dress and get outside, to tour the prop-
erty. Cut it back while it is still green.
Rick Rienks
Baker City
COLUMN
A curiously damp drive through an arid land
T
his spring has been so soggy it even
defied one of the world’s great rain
shadows.
On one day, anyway.
It was June 12. This happened to be the
day I was driving from Mill City across the
Cascade Mountains and back to Baker City.
I had been in Mill City for the weekend to
watch my nephew, Jonathan Pennick, grad-
uate from Santiam High School, and to visit
my parents, who live in Mill City.
In common with quite a lot of days over
the past two months, June 12, a Sunday, was
decidedly damp.
This was not surprising — and not only
because so many recent days were also
moist.
The National Weather Service — besides
the Defense Department the most vital fed-
eral agency, in my estimation — had, or
so it seemed to me, been implying for the
preceding week or so that the construction
of an ark might be a reasonable precaution
against the impending storm.
I was traveling by more conventional,
landbound means — an eight-year-old
Mazda 6 sedan that, though far from seawor-
thy, can go about 40 miles on a gallon of gas.
My route followed Highway 20 over
Santiam Pass, one of the major gaps in the
volcanic crest of the Cascades, which span
Oregon.
Although the Cascades are a middling
range by the elevated standards of the
Andes or the Alps, they create one of the
world’s most formidable barriers against
precipitation.
Which is to say, a rain shadow.
(Also, for about half the year, an equally
effective snow shadow.)
The way in which the crest of the Cas-
cades cleaves Oregon’s climate is dramatic,
and in more than one way.
The difference in the amount of rain and
snow that falls at the summit of Santiam
Pass and at, say, Redmond, in the lee of the
Cascades, is significant. The pass frequently
gets more than 100 inches of total precip-
itation in a year, while Redmond rarely
reaches even a dozen inches.
But even more noteworthy, I think, is
that this transition from rainforest to desert
happens over such a short distance. Red-
mond, as the crow flies, is only about 45
miles from the summit.
Yet even that figure understates the ra-
pidity of the change. The shift from moss-
draped firs and hemlocks to ponderosa
pines and junipers happens in just a mile or
so as the highway descends from the 4,817-
Jayson
Jacoby
foot summit.
The weather, too, frequently undergoes a
similarly sudden change. Several times I’ve
driven through a squall of rain or snow on
the west side of the pass, windshield wipers
frantically skimming the glass as I tried to
peer through the gloom, only to have sun-
shine dry the pavement while liquid still
dripped from my fenders as I started down
the east slope.
These effects of the Cascades, botanically
and climatologically, are so efficient that I
have come to expect that however nasty the
conditions on the west side or at the pass
itself, I can rely on relief before I’ve had my
first view of Suttle Lake, just four miles or so
east of the summit.
I was anticipating just such an experience
on June 12.
Rain fell almost incessantly after my
daughter, Olivia, and I left Mill City. Some-
times it slackened to a sprinkle, and some-
times the rain sluiced down, prompting me
to tinker frequently with the interval switch
for the wipers. But there wasn’t even a brief
stretch of dry asphalt.
As we crested the pass and began the
long downgrade, I waited for the rain to
subside.
Perversely, or so it seemed to me given
my expectations, the steady rain turned
torrential. Water filled lane ruts I wouldn’t
otherwise have noticed. I noticed them
when they were inundated; noticed them all
too well. I gripped the steering wheel more
tightly and concentrated on detecting the
telltale sensation — a sort of floating feeling
which is quite unpleasant at 55 mph — that
betrays incipient hydroplaning.
The windshield wipers struggled to clear
the glass. Each encounter with an oncom-
ing vehicle — and especially when it was a
commercial truck — was akin to the rinse
cycle at a drive-thru car wash. Except with-
out fragrant suds.
It was a curious experience.
I’ve driven this route, a corridor between
stands of thick-trunked ponderosa pines,
dozens of times, and almost always in fair
weather, no matter the season.
But I don’t recall ever making the trip
during a downpour. It felt passing strange
to see a deluge in a forest that epitomizes
the arid east side of the Cascades. I suspect
I would feel much the same if I saw snow
falling in a tropical rainforest or something
similarly incongruent.
The rain dissipated to the lightest of
showers near Redmond. There were sec-
tions of dry pavement between Redmond
and Prineville, although the highway shoul-
ders, strewn with the ubiquitous red cinders
of Central Oregon, were speckled with fre-
quent puddles.
The respite was brief.
As we climbed into the Ochocos east of
Prineville the rain resumed. It wasn’t quite
so copious as through the Cascades, and
there were a few interludes when I switched
off the wipers. The Ochocos cast a much
more modest rain shadow compared with
the Cascades, but the effect is noticeable
around Mitchell, where I’ve rarely seen wa-
ter streaming off Highway 26.
(Which is not to suggest Mitchell doesn’t
know of high water. Bridge Creek, the usu-
ally placid stream that flows through town,
has spawned damaging flash floods multiple
times, the result of cloudbursts upstream.)
Heavy rain returned as we ascended to
Keyes Creek Summit east of Mitchell, and
it continued through the meadows and into
Picture Gorge, where both Mountain Creek
and the John Day River barrelled down
their channels, the water the approximate
shade of chocolate milk.
We stopped for lunch in John Day and
saw there the first patches of blue sky all
day. I braced for a damp conclusion to the
trip — it looked as though storm clouds
had congealed over the Blue Mountains
northeast of Prairie City. But the final 80
miles were by a wide margin the most tran-
quil, with only a couple spatterings of rain.
It was altogether a queer journey.
I don’t believe I’ve seen so much precip-
itation along the familiar route, and espe-
cially in places, such as the lee of the Cas-
cades and the juniper country of Wheeler
and western Grant counties, where rain is
exceedingly rare.
The moisture, of course, is welcome in
this drought year. And as I pondered the
drive, in that slightly hallucinogenic state
that follows a long trip by car (a sort of ju-
nior varsity version of jet lag), I recalled not
only the rain pounding against the wind-
shield and the malevolent pools in the ruts,
but also the soft green of the meadows, the
splashes of color from the balsamroot and
the lupine, the sudden and strange lushness
in a land where moisture is conspicuous by
its absence.
█
Jayson Jacoby is editor of the Baker City Herald.