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About Baker City herald. (Baker City, Or.) 1990-current | View Entire Issue (July 21, 2022)
A4 BAKER CITY HERALD • THURSDAY, JULY 21, 2022 BAKER CITY Opinion WRITE A LETTER news@bakercityherald.com Baker City, Oregon EDITORIAL Honoring a local hero I t’s hard to imagine an event that combines plain old fun with an impeccable cause better than the one coming up Friday evening, July 22 at the Haines Rodeo Arena. The Spc. Mabry James Anders Truck and Tractor Pull returns after a two-year hiatus due to the pan- demic. Gates open at 5:30 p.m. for the 7 p.m. specta- cle, which will feature tractors boasting as many as five engines, as well as one with two jet engines. Behind the boisterous nature of a truck and tractor pull, though, is the solemn remembrance of Mabry Anders, the 21-year-old Baker City soldier who was killed in action in Afghanistan on Aug. 27, 2021. But Friday’s event doesn’t just honor Mabry. It’s also a major fundraiser for the Spc. Mabry James Anders Memorial Foundation, which has awarded more than $60,000 in scholarships to Baker County students. This year the Foundation gave out six scholarships. Nothing, of course, can erase the tragedy that hap- pened in Afghanistan almost a decade ago. Anders, who had joined the U.S. Army in January 2010, was fatally shot while looking for roadside bombs after a vehicle in his convoy struck one of the improvised devices. But it’s heartwarming to realize that his legacy, through the Foundation that his mother, Genevieve Woydziak, oversees, will continue to enrich so many lives. Every dollar that changes hands at the Haines Ro- deo Arena Friday will be money well spent. And how often do you get to see a jet-powered trac- tor in action? — Jayson Jacoby, Baker City Herald editor OTHER VIEWS YOUR VIEWS City voters should get to decide on train quiet zone On July 12 the Baker City Council de- cided to ask city voters, by way of a bal- lot measure, to ban the production and therapeutic use of psilocybin, “magic mushrooms.” City staffers are to prepare an ordinance and a title for the ballot measure. This is the exact process the city council was following for the Quiet Zone issue, send the issue to the citizens for a vote. But on April 12 the city coun- cil reversed that decision, to involve the public, following a motion from appointed city council member Dean Guyer. If “magic mushrooms” can make the Nov. 8 ballot, then the city voters should also get to make their voices heard about the train horn. Both of these is- sues have already been decided in the past. A majority of Baker County voters, almost 64%, opposed Measure 109 (psi- locybin production and use) in Novem- ber 2020. Sure the train horn was voted on by Baker City voters back in 2002. That was a long time ago. Things have changed in Baker City since then, or maybe not. Why are certain city council members afraid to involve the voters again? The city council needs to reverse their decision to involve voters about the ban on psilocybin this Nov. 8, or re-reverse the decision to block city voters from vot- ing on the train horn. Roger LeMaster Baker City I joined abortion rights rally because I support freedom On the July 12th issue of the Herald an article on the front page was titled “Resi- dents protest Roe v. Wade reversal.” I was photographed and the caption below the photo stated “a group supporting abortion.” I don’t agree with the way this was worded because I don’t believe this was just for pro abortion. I was there for women’s rights and the freedom of choice. We should not be categorized for the reasons we march and to put it simply “supporting abortion” makes us seem like that is the only reason we showed up. I stand for having the free- dom to do what I choose to do with my body, not to be told what that is or is not. Fern Bruck Baker City COLUMN Pro-choice activists’ Webb telescope photos a welcome antidote tactics against judges hinder the cause BY CHRISTOPHER COKINOS Editorial from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: In a distressing new trend that all serious abor- tion-rights activists should condemn immediately, a pro-choice group is offering online payments to restau- rant staff who spot conser- vative Supreme Court jus- tices at Washington-area restaurants and tip off pro- testers so they can harass the justices. It’s difficult to over- state how counterproduc- tive such tactics are to the legitimate cause of restoring women’s biological rights — a cause that can only lose mainstream support with radical and provocative stunts like this. Fury at the Supreme Court majority that over- turned Roe v. Wade last month is real, and justified. The new majority zealously eviscerated Roe at the first opportunity, putting their own ideological agenda above a woman’s equal right to control her body, above respect for settled law and above the opinion of a clear majority of Americans. They have undermined the right of self-determi- nation and endangered the health and lives of countless women and girls in much of America. The high court richly deserves its deep and likely lasting loss of legiti- macy across the nation. But no one deserves to be hounded out of a restaurant by a mob, no matter how justified the cause might be. That’s what happened to Justice Brett Kavanaugh re- cently at Morton’s the Steak- house, a toney District of Columbia restaurant. When the restaurant later issued a statement defending Ka- vanaugh’s right to eat there unharassed, protesters ha- rassed the restaurant chain itself, with online trolling and a flood of fake reser- vations made under prank names. These are cheap theat- rics that despoil a valid and important protest move- ment. More ominous is the organized effort by pro- choice activists to offer what amount to bounty rewards for restaurant workers who tip off the group about con- servative justice sighting at their tables, so protesters can be sent there. As The Washington Post reports, the group (we refrain from naming it here, to avoid helping spread their danger- ous campaign) is offering $50 to restaurant staff who tip them off to a justice’s sighting, and $200 if the jus- tice is still there when pro- testers arrive. If violence en- sues, do they get a bonus? The response from the Biden administration should be a clear and unequivocal rejection of such tactics. In- stead, it has offered mixed messaging. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told an interviewer: “Any public figure should always, always be free from violence, intim- idation and harassment, but should never be free from criticism or people exercis- ing their First Amendment rights.” But these tactics are in- timidation and harassment, and could lead to violence. The proper place to pro- test this and other Supreme Court outrages is at the ballot box. The continuing fight for abortion rights is too crucial to let it be com- mandeered by those who will damage its legitimacy and drive off allies. Facts these days seem so grim. They feel like storm clouds: all too real and ready to bring more lightning than much-needed rain. A congressional commit- tee is establishing the pattern of facts around the attempted coup on Jan. 6, 2021, and the “Big Lie” that the presidential election was stolen. The death tolls from endless mass shoot- ings. Reports of hunger, war and democracies threatened. Why wouldn’t we all be scared, spooked and ex- hausted? But earlier this month we got a reminder of other kinds of facts, the kind that bring us awe and comfort and con- text — even joy. The kinds of facts that prompt scientists to break down in tears: facts — made sublime through im- agery — of the cosmos itself. Last week we saw the first images from a new space tele- scope. Those images and the facts they embody also matter; they are the antidote to the others. Even a few minutes spent gaping at the mountain range of gas and dust now dubbed the Cosmic Cliff or the cra- zy-bright heart of a distant galaxy lit by hot gases de- voured by a black hole isn’t trivial. And the longer we look, the better things get. The James Webb Space Telescope (ah, grim fact: It’s named for a homophobic for- mer NASA administrator) of- fered us infrared views of an- cient galaxies swirling like sea creatures around the whirl- pool of a gravitational lens. It focused on a foreground gal- axy so massive and perfectly placed in our line of sight that it distorts and magnifies dis- tant light. Look at that “deep field” and you can stare back 13 billion years. It showed us a planetary nebula — around a pair of dying stars in the Southern Ring Nebula — sur- rounded by its puffed-off dust and gases in such crenulated detail that its brown cloud looks almost like the grain of wood. It’s all the stuff of wonder. And wonder, like democracy, like the climate, like our safety, is in a pretty precarious place right now. If we need political and so- cial facts to undergird our approach to a better future — and we do — we also need science to keep gifting us with facts that allow us to expe- rience wonder. Without the wonder that comes from dis- covery, we become enmeshed in the very machinery that produces what ails us. Wonder reminds us of our better selves and that we live in the neigh- borhood of things that abide, like star clusters and a nebula. We belong to the infinite uni- verse. Astronomy largely asks lit- tle of us (though some Indig- enous communities fighting to keep sacred mountains free of observatories neces- sarily disagree). Yes, the latest space telescope cost $10 bil- lion (less than an aircraft car- rier). But if we spend some of our tax dollars to unlock secrets and vistas, that cost also keeps us rooted in the astonishment of the more- than-human. We learn for the sake of learning — which is, in fact, noble — and we gain more than knowledge published in peer-reviewed journals. Facts establish. They can also deepen. The Webb will probe deeper into the origins of the big bang than ever be- fore. It will help us understand the placement and motions of galaxies so we can grasp the evolution of the universe. If that’s too abstract, it also will scan alien worlds for signs that the conditions for life as we know it exist elsewhere. It might even find that life. What more profound discovery could there be? The wonder that we feel looking at these new images can be more than a moment of eye-candy. It provides, if we let it, the peace of cos- mic things, a way to connect through beauty and under- standing. When our eyes meet the universe we are lifted out of ourselves like a breath, and, then breathing back in, we can be renewed for what comes next. Christopher Cokinos is a poet and writer living in Salt Lake City. He writes frequently for Astronomy. com and is working on a book about the moon. OTHER VIEWS Getting mad alone won’t help Democrats Editorial from The New York Daily News: We can’t disagree with the anger aimed at Joe Manchin for dragging the Senate along for months before finally admitting there’s no pared-down version of a Build Back Better bill he will support after all. Manchin uses inflation as an excuse but simultaneously says he can’t countenance raising taxes on the wealth- iest Americans and businesses, which might actually help curb inflation. It genuinely hurts to see a single mem- ber of the majority party stick a shiv in legislation that would’ve helped mid- dle- and working-class Americans with child-care costs, accelerated rollout of clean energy technology, expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit, built gobs of affordable housing and scored a big win for a Democratic president — all because it would’ve meant having the richest among us pay the Treasury a bit more. The 2017 Trump tax cuts ballooned deficits and debt, did far less than adver- tised to stoke economic growth and were enduringly unpopular with the public. They must be targeted, not protected. What’s left of the package — lowering prescription drug prices while expand- ing Affordable Care Act subsidies — is surely worth sending to Biden’s desk. But Democrats should’ve delivered much more. Even as we say this, we acknowledge that Manchin, a conservative Demo- crat from a state Donald Trump won by nearly 40 points in 2020, is critical to the party’s Senate majority. Replace him with a Republican and Democrats lose committee control; they can’t con- firm judges, which they’ve so far done at a rapid clip; and they lose all ability, however weak it is, to set the legislative agenda. Such calculations explain why Demo- crats were right to decouple the biparti- san infrastructure legislation from Build Back Better last year. In this Washington, you take the victories you can get, when you can get them, or you likely go home empty-handed. So emotionally, Democrats can and should get as mad as hell at Manchin. Practically, their only constructive re- sponse is to regroup and figure out how to notch a win or two before November. Politics remains the art of the possible. CONTACT YOUR PUBLIC OFFICIALS President Joe Biden: The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Washington, D.C. 20500; 202-456-1111; to send comments, go to www.whitehouse.gov. U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley: D.C. office: 313 Hart Senate Office Building, U.S. Senate, Washington, D.C., 20510; 202-224-3753; fax 202-228-3997. Portland office: One World Trade Center, 121 S.W. Salmon St. Suite 1250, Portland, OR 97204; 503-326-3386; fax 503- 326-2900. Baker City office, 1705 Main St., Suite 504, 541-278-1129; merkley.senate.gov. U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden: D.C. office: 221 Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C., 20510; 202-224-5244; fax 202-228-2717. La Grande office: 105 Fir St., No. 210, La Grande, OR 97850; 541-962-7691; fax, 541-963-0885; wyden.senate.gov. U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz (2nd District): D.C. office: 1239 Longworth House Office Building, Washington, D.C., 20515, 202-225-6730; fax 202-225-5774. Medford office: 14 N. Central Avenue Suite 112, Medford, OR 97850; Phone: 541-776-4646; fax: 541- 779-0204; Ontario office: 2430 S.W. Fourth Ave., No. 2, Ontario, OR 97914; Phone: 541- 709-2040. bentz.house.gov. Oregon Attorney General Ellen F. Rosenblum: Justice Building, Salem, OR 97301- 4096; 503-378-4400. Oregon Gov. Kate Brown: 254 State Capitol, Salem, OR 97310; 503-378-3111; www. governor.oregon.gov. State Sen. Lynn Findley (R-Ontario): Salem office: 900 Court St. N.E., S-403, Salem, OR 97301; 503-986-1730. Email: Sen.LynnFindley@oregonlegislature.gov Oregon State Treasurer Tobias Read: oregon.treasurer@ost.state.or.us; 350 Winter St. NE, Suite 100, Salem OR 97301-3896; 503-378-4000. State Rep. Mark Owens (R-Crane): Salem office: 900 Court St. N.E., H-475, Salem, OR 97301; 503-986-1460. Email: Rep.MarkOwens@oregonlegislature.gov Oregon Legislature: Legislative documents and information are available online at www.leg.state.or.us.
