B6 The BulleTin • SaTurday, april 17, 2021
EDITORIALS & OPINIONS
AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER
Heidi Wright
Gerry O’Brien
Richard Coe
Publisher
Editor
Editorial Page Editor
OSU-Cascades
needs your help
in Legislature
I
f you have a few minutes this weekend, future college students
from Central Oregon and elsewhere could use your help.
Want them to have a great place
to go to a 4-year college right here?
They have that in OSU-Cascades.
But there’s a big difference between
getting to college and succeeding in
college and going on to get a job.
That’s where the plans for
OSU-Cascades’ student success center
comes in. Gov. Kate Brown threw her
support behind it. Local legislators are
behind it. But money for it is not in
the bill that matters, Senate Bill 5505.
That doesn’t mean it won’t be
there. To ensure it is added in and
stays there, legislators in Salem need
to know the people of Central Ore-
gon support their campus.
Don’t take it for granted.
One legislator tried earlier this
session to hamstring the poten-
tial of OSU-Cascades by severing
its connection to OSU. Staff and
students would get no say as their
school would be transformed into
something else, and they would be
switched. The new school would
have been forbidden from offering
anything more than a master’s de-
gree. That bill died, though that at-
titude toward this campus can’t be
allowed to take hold.
What the student success center
will offer is the kinds of services that
can have students’ backs and help
show them the way forward. It will
be the home of academic and career
advising, tutoring, support for veter-
ans and the very important personal
counseling and counseling about
how to pay for school. It’s where stu-
dents will be able to go for intern-
ships, to find out about recreation
programs and student organizations.
There will also be a multicultural
center. Don’t discount the impor-
tance of that to help ensure all stu-
dents feel welcome.
Our first thought — and maybe
yours — was: Why does the campus
need a new building for that? The
answer: growth. Unlike almost ev-
ery other higher education institu-
tion in the country, OSU-Cascades
is seeing solid, sustained increased
enrollment. There’s student demand.
Everything is getting more crowded.
If local students want a local oppor-
tunity to go to college, they should
have one. If students from outside
the area and outside the state want to
lift up themselves and learn in Cen-
tral Oregon, let’s get behind that.
The cost will be some $13.8 mil-
lion. That has already been matched
by student contributions of $5 mil-
lion. That’s right, students voted to
increase fees on themselves to raise $5
million for a campus building. Surely,
it’s an impressive statement about
how students feel about their school.
So if you have a moment take
some time this weekend and send off
an email to a member of the Ways
and Means Committee tinyurl.com/
waysandm or the Joint Subcommit-
tee on Capital Construction tinyurl.
com/subcomcap and tell them to put
the money for the OSU-Cascades
Student Success Center in SB 5505.
There is a much easier way, but it will
likely look like a form letter. That’s by
going to beav.es/J9C .
Historical editorials:
Saloon gets rejected
e e
Editor’s note: The following historical editorials
originally appeared in what was then called
The Bend Bulletin on April 20, 1906.
T
he Supreme Court of Wash-
ington recently handed down
a decision which is of interest
to people owning lots in Bend. The
owners of the townsite of Clark-
ston, Washington conveyed lots by
deeds providing for a reversion to
the grantor or in case of a barroom,
saloon or brewery should be main-
tained upon the land. A grantee
leased the premises for a saloon and
the action was brought for a restitu-
tion of the property. The defendant
did not seriously deny the validity
of the reversion clause but claimed
it had been waived as to him. The
court decided against this conten-
tion and held that reversionary
clauses of this nature are valid. A
provision similar to the one involved
in this case is contained in the deeds
of the Pilot Butte Development
Company to lots in Bend.
…
The resolution adopted by the
city council some time ago request-
ing citizens to clean up their adja-
cent streets and alleys, seems to have
been quite generally acted upon....
Every sum is made up of its units
and if every householder will keep
his premises and their surroundings
in good order the tidy and attractive
appearance of the city is assured.
Editorials reflect the views of The Bulletin’s editorial board, Publisher Heidi Wright, Editor
Gerry O’Brien and Editorial Page Editor Richard Coe. They are written by Richard Coe.
My Nickel’s Worth
Don’t flatten Worrell
I read with horror the plan to flat-
ten Worrell Park. This is one of the
last pockets of natural landscape in
downtown Bend. With its rocky ter-
rain, it is a wonderful place for fami-
lies and children with imaginations to
enjoy our native landscape. It is a ves-
tige of what Bend was once like before
any of us arrived.
All of this to justify expanding a
parking lot by 68 spaces. Please save
this enchanting small space.
— Susan Raleigh, Sunriver
Protect pollinators
The Bulletin had a great story in
the April 10 edition about protecting
pollinators and the Pollinator Pathway
program. This was the front page. In
striking contrast with the front page
story was the Real Estate section cover
page story “Wake Up Your Lawn for
Spring” which reported “at the end of
daylight savings time brings the ar-
rival of spring.” I think spring and the
start of daylight savings go together
(OK a typo) but lawns and mowing
and fertilizing and using herbicides
are all potential death to pollinators.
So maybe forget about waking up
your lawn and try reducing its size
and plant some native plants.
Good for Basey Klopp, a local res-
ident, who has received a grant and,
along with others, is encouraging peo-
ple to plant native plants and is work-
ing with many in the community to
plant pollinator gardens and create a
Pollinator Pathway that will eventu-
ally grow to other communities.
How about instead of flattening the
Bill Worrell Wayside at the County
headquarters into a parking lot, the
county retain it like it is and add it to
the Pollinator Pathway?
— Donna Owens, Bend
Parking infractions
David Welton’s guest column from
April 9 advocating for removing mini-
mum parking requirements contained
a number of erroneous assumptions. I
want to take issue with two of them.
Mr. Welton claims that the 5% of
people who don’t own cars would
benefit from not being forced to pay
for a spot to keep something they
don’t own. We all are forced in some
way to pay for things we don’t use.
People without children pay into the
school system. People with cars pay
for bike lanes they don’t use through
road taxes.
Mr. Welton also claims that the
cost of a parking spot could make or
break some budgets. For single family
homes, surface parking is only 1% of
building costs. Price is determined by
the market, not cost of spaces.
95% of Bend households own 1.9
cars. We need to keep minimum
parking requirements for new devel-
opments so as to minimize conges-
tion for the vast majority and to keep
streets safe and accessible for snow
removal and cyclists.
— Diana Franklin, Bend
Lost control over border
It is difficult to have confidence
in an administration that has either
lost control of our border or is sat-
isfied with thousands pouring over
the border. In March, over 172,000
were apprehended crossing our bor-
der illegally. This does not include the
thousands who escape apprehension,
or overstay their visas. The Biden ap-
proach has been to spend millions of
dollars of taxpayer money to accom-
modate the migrants rather than stop
them from coming here.
Many of the migrants are looking
for a better life, but also included are
gang members, terrorists and numer-
ous criminals. Most would not qualify
for asylum, but many are being re-
leased in the U.S. without a require-
ment for a court date; in other words,
open borders.
According to U.S.A. Today, 18,890
unaccompanied children were ap-
prehended in March, up from 9,297
in February, with many held in over-
crowded conditions as bad or worse
than when President Trump was ac-
cused of keeping kids in “cages.” Ac-
cording to Fox News, the numbers are
projected to be 30,000 by June. Most
speak only Spanish and will be added
to crowded classrooms in the U.S.
The border problems accelerated
when President Joe Biden overturned
the previous administration’s policies,
including the banning of deporta-
tions and requirement that migrants
remain in Mexico until their case for
asylum could be heard.
Promising amnesty and free health
care during the campaign acts as a
magnet.
Until the administration closes
the border, expect the numbers and
chaos to escalate.
— Charles Boyd, Bend
Letters policy
Guest columns
How to submit
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Please address your submission to either
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Fax:
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Republicans will regret their breakup with big business
BY TYLER COWEN
Bloomberg
A
s the author of a book-length
love letter to big business, I
have long viewed the Repub-
lican Party as more aligned with cor-
porate America than are Democrats.
That’s certainly the case from a rhe-
torical standpoint, and on policy as
well: It was former President Donald
Trump’s administration, after all, that
pushed through a significant cut in
the corporate income tax rate.
Yes, the real picture is much more
complicated. Big business typically
wants more high-skilled immigra-
tion, which Democrats tend to favor,
and the Democratic Party at times has
done more for free trade than have
Republicans.
In any case, all that has changed.
Many U.S. big businesses have sided
with Democrats on some aspects of
the culture wars, and leading mem-
bers of the Republican Party have re-
sponded with vitriol. In the span of
just a few years, they have gone from
making apologies for big business to
making threats against it.
The final straw may have been Ma-
jor League Baseball’s decision last
week to relocate the All-Star game
to Denver from Atlanta over con-
cerns about a new voting-rights law
in Georgia. Many Republicans in the
state favored the changes, and the re-
sponse from some Republicans in
Congress was to start talking about
revoking baseball’s antitrust exemp-
tion.
This is what it has come to in
21st-century America: Left-wing ac-
tivists bully corporations through so-
cial media, while right-wing critics
threaten them with the law.
Baseball’s relocation of the All-Star
game was very likely a business rather
than a political decision. If the game
had proceed in Atlanta, some of the
players undoubtedly would have spo-
ken out against the new voting law
or boycotted the game. The event
might have been dominated by poli-
tics. So baseball followed a common
crisis-management strategy, deciding
to take one public-relations hit now
instead of having to confront a slow
drip of unpleasant revelations over the
next several months.
There is a simple solution for the
Republican Party, if it is interested:
Give up its opposition to such voting
laws. Even if it opposes some parts
of the laws, or if the negative aspects
of the laws have been exaggerated, it
hardly seems worth the price to be
pushed into these ideological corners.
Practically speaking, the best evidence
suggests that such laws may not be a
big deal anyway.
There is also something about base-
ball itself. This is the institution that
so helped race relations in America by
clearing the path for Jackie Robinson.
You don’t have to agree with MLB’s
every decision to see its overall so-
cial influence as strongly positive. It
is hardly a historical villain in need of
restraint.
Beyond sports, there is more evi-
dence of a falling-out between Repub-
licans and big business. When more
than 100 major corporate leaders had
a conference call last week to discuss
what to do about the voting laws in
Georgia and elsewhere, J.D. Vance’s
response was the social-media equiv-
alent of pounding the table with his
shoe. “Raise their taxes and do what-
ever else is necessary to fight these
goons,” tweeted the best-selling au-
thor and likely Republican candidate
for U.S. Senate in Ohio. “We can have
an American Republic or a global oli-
garchy, and it’s time for choosing.”
Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri,
meanwhile, has put forward a “trust
busting” plan to rein in big business.
The plan seeks to beef up antitrust
prosecution and eliminate mergers
and acquisitions for firms of $100 bil-
lion or more in value. It is something
you might expect from the far left
wing of the Democratic Party, not a
leading Republican senator.
Of course this isn’t a serious pro-
posal. Do Republicans really want to
see Democratic administrations have
the dominant hand in antitrust deci-
sions for four or maybe more years?
Does the U.S. want to stop major
pharmaceutical firms from acquiring
smaller, more innovative companies
with drugs of potential importance?
Hawley’s bill is meant to send a mes-
sage: “Nice business you’ve got here.
Be a shame if anything happened to
it.” It is both a plea and a threat about
big business’s leftward slide.
I am not seeking to debate Geor-
gia’s voting rights bill, nor those of
any other state. But I do know a little
about sports. Baseball has long been
the least political and most traditional
of America’s pastimes, and it has a rel-
atively old fan base. So the question
Republicans might want to ask them-
selves is not how to punish Major
League Baseball. It’s how to get it back.
Right now, Republicans are moving in
exactly the wrong direction.
e e
Tyler Cowen is a columnist for Bloomberg. He
is a professor of economics at George Mason
University and writes for the blog Marginal
Revolution.