A8 The BulleTin • Thursday, May 13, 2021
EDITORIALS & OPINIONS
AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER
Heidi Wright
Gerry O’Brien
Richard Coe
Publisher
Editor
Editorial Page Editor
Voters wanted for
school board election
V
oter turnout in school board elections can be low. Only
about a quarter of registered voters cast ballots in the
May 2017 election for seats on the board of the Bend-La
Pine Schools.
The pandemic may have driven
more parents than ever to be inter-
ested in this May’s school board elec-
tions. School closures and watching
children learn at home can do that.
If you were to write the script for
an ideal school board election, the
2021 race in Bend might not be it.
Yes, there is a debate about issues.
But it hasn’t been done in open, non-
partisan forums where people could
tune in at their leisure and watch the
candidates square off. Four of the
candidates declined to even be in-
terviewed by The Bulletin’s editorial
board. And there has been a lot of
effort put into candidates complain-
ing about each other, instead of ex-
plaining policies they support.
There was also something new
— or at least new enough that no-
body remembers it happening in the
last 20 years or so. One challenger,
Maria Lopez-Dauenhauer filed a
complaint with the school district
about her opponent, school board
chair Carrie McPherson Douglass.
Lopez-Dauenhauer alleged several
things, including that McPherson
Douglass posted on Facebook Lo-
pez-Dauenhauer’s home address
and an aerial map of it. It was appar-
ently part of an argument that Lo-
pez-Dauenhauer is “uber wealthy”
and McPherson Douglass needs
support.
Is there something legally wrong
with that posting that information?
We aren’t legal experts and can’t an-
swer that question. The information
is publicly available. McPherson
Douglass shared it. Should she have?
The post was taken down.
The real question is: Is that the
sort of thing that should decide the
race? No. It’s a sideshow.
Still, the school board scheduled
an executive session on Tuesday
to discuss it, according to a district
email. One good thing seems to have
come of it. The complaint exposed
a hole in the district’s policies. The
district told us it does not have a pol-
icy for handling complaints against
a school board member and it is
working to correct that. The Ore-
gon School Boards Association has
a recommended policy, which can
include referring an investigation to
a third party. “After receiving the re-
sults of the investigation, the Board
shall decide in open session what ac-
tion, if any, is warranted,” the OSBA
sample policy says.
It pays to do your homework in
school board elections. School board
members make big decisions about
the future of the district — budgets,
new schools, hiring the superinten-
dent and even the calendar. Read
the voter’s pamphlet. Check out
the reporting in The Bulletin about
the race. Look at the websites of the
candidates. The Bulletin’s editorial
board endorsed McPherson Doug-
lass, Marcus LeGrand, Shirley Olson
and Janet Sarai Llerandi. Whatever
you decide, please vote.
Bend has limited power
to control oil trains
A
resolution to raise aware-
ness is about all that the city
of Bend has the power to
do about oil trains passing through
town. That resolution is taking
shape in the city’s Environment and
Climate Committee.
The most recent draft is: “A reso-
lution opposing transportation of oil
by rail through the city of Bend.” It’s
five pages long with a recitation of
facts about the potential dangers of
oil trains. There is then an acknowl-
edgment that changes would have to
be made at the state or federal level.
The resolution calls for environ-
mental impact statements to be done
for oil train terminals and health
impact statements to be done prior
to approval of oil transfer and stor-
age permits. It also calls on railroad
and/or oil companies to make public
information about transportation
of oil by rail and plans for any in-
creased shipments.
If you have thoughts about what
the resolution should say, Cassie
Lacy is the city staff person that
works with the committee. You can
reach her at clacy@bendoregon.
gov. The committee is scheduled to
discuss it on Thursday. Presumably
its next stop will be the Bend City
Council.
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
Lawson for Redmond schools
As a dedicated local teacher, I am
proud to support Carmen Lawson
for the Redmond School Board,
where she would serve our commu-
nity as a strong voice for pragmatic
policies that support and develop the
best educational experience for our
children.
Carmen’s years in the classroom
give her an awareness of the realities
we educators face as we implement
school board policies. She knows
how these decisions will transfer to
the classroom and how our limited
resources are best allocated.
As a longtime Redmond resident
and a parent of three boys in elemen-
tary, middle and high school in the
Redmond School District, she un-
derstands the pressures families have
faced during the pandemic. She will
enhance and support what is work-
ing and work diligently to address the
weaknesses that have been uncovered.
It’s no secret that teachers have had
an extremely stressful time through-
out this distance learning year. Yet,
despite these challenges and frequent
setbacks, she chooses to lean in and
work even harder for her community
and our children.
— Macy Crowe, Bend
Getting vaccinated matters
In a recent letter, Gary Miranda
states that “the main population that
one puts at risk by not getting vac-
cinated is other people who choose
not to get vaccinated.” Not getting
vaccinated should have no effect,
Letters policy
Letters should be limited to one issue, con-
tain no more than 250 words and include
the writer’s signature, phone number and
address for verification. We edit letters for
he claims, on those of us who have
already been vaccinated. This argu-
ment is false in at least three ways.
First, the unvaccinated often get
very sick. St. Charles is currently
stretched to its limits with those ill
from COVID. Some elective surger-
ies have been canceled, and the ICU
is nearly full. This situation obviously
affects our whole community.
Second, the vaccines are, thank-
fully, very effective at preventing se-
vere illness and death (Johnson and
Johnson around 74%, Moderna and
Pfizer around 95%). But like all vac-
cines, they are not 100% effective.
Until herd immunity is reached, be-
cause of those who are still unvac-
cinated, we all have to continue to
mask and social distance in crowded
situations.
Third, we are in a race between the
disease evolving into more contagious
and deadly variants and attaining herd
immunity. Herd immunity will only
be reached if somewhere around 80%
of our population is vaccinated. Imag-
ine misinformation had prevented
large swaths of our population from
taking the polio or smallpox vaccines:
We would still be fighting those dread
diseases. COVID is no different. We
will all be dealing with mask-wearing,
lockdowns, and major disruptions to
our lives until a large portion of our
population gets vaccinated.
Not getting vaccinated (unless you
have a medical reason not to) does
set us all back. The vaccines are safe
and highly effective, and the sooner
we all get vaccinated, the sooner life
can return to normal.
—Mary Depew, Bend
brevity, grammar, taste and legal reasons.
We reject poetry, personal attacks, form
letters, letters submitted elsewhere and
those appropriate for other sections of The
Bulletin. Writers are limited to one letter or
guest column every 30 days.
Hartfield, Summers, Cummings
and Lopez for Redmond schools
Please join me in voting to re-
tain Shawn Hartfield, and elect Mi-
chael Summers, Jill Cummings and
Keri Lopez to the Redmond School
Board. These four candidates have
the board experience, business acu-
men, and financial, insurance and
human resource backgrounds nec-
essary to serve our growing school
district. Redmond deserves a board
who will lead responsibly and focus
on serving children and families,
giving parents a voice in their child’s
education and who are committed to
representing the entire community
and all stakeholders, not just a single
constituency.
As with many recent elections, this
nonpartisan race has become polit-
icized where equity, mental health,
work-life balance and gift cards for
teachers have become the primary
platforms for the candidates backed
by the teacher’s union. The Redmond
community deserves leaders who are
analytical and able to support their
decisions with facts and data. We
need to keep education in public ed-
ucation. Let’s bring the focus back to
educational excellence, sound policy,
safe schools and how we make up for
the learning lost in this past year.
Vote for the candidates who will
encourage student achievement
through high standards, rigorous
curriculum and high quality teachers.
Vote Hartfield, Summers, Cummings
and Lopez – the future of Redmond
schools depends on it.
— Ali Muilenburg, Redmond
How to submit
Please address your submission to either
My Nickel’s Worth or Guest Column and
send it to The Bulletin. Email submissions
preferred. Email: letters@bendbulletin.com
If China’s population shrinks, it’s the world’s financial problem
BY DANIEL MOSS
Bloomberg
C
hina’s slowest population
growth in decades may be felt
more acutely beyond its borders
than within them. The economy will
keep humming and incomes can con-
tinue to climb, albeit at a slower rate.
The rest of us, however, will need to
adjust to a persistently slacker pace of
global expansion and the prospective
ebbing of deflationary pressure. The
caricature of China as an unlimited
supplier of cheap labor holding down
the cost of everything from dishwash-
ers to dolls should be consigned to the
history books.
Beijing’s once-in-a-decade census
showed there were 1.412 billion people
in China last year. The annual average
growth of 0.53% in the past decade
was the slowest since 1953. Longstand-
ing trends became more pronounced:
The working-age population slumped
to 63.4% from more than 70% a de-
cade ago, while the share of residents
aged 60 and above jumped.
More than half of Chinese citizens
now live in cities. While it’s possible
that China’s headcount will actually
decline in a few years, that doesn’t
mean a crisis is looming. Some of the
world’s wealthiest economies have
wrestled with population retreat — or
something close to it. Japan’s popula-
123RF
Beijing, China
tion peaked in 2010, and South Korea
logged its first dip in 2020. Singapore
reported its first decline since 2003 last
year.
Each of these nations has long con-
tended with an aging society and a di-
minished fertility rate, while citizens
have consistently resisted prodding by
officials to churn out more kids. Yet
each has first-class infrastructure, great
schools, high standards of living and a
niche in technology supply chains that
gives them a shot at long-term pros-
perity in the pandemic era.
China need not fear for its commer-
cial viability just because this inevita-
ble byproduct of progress has caught
up with it. After all, it’s a relatively
common pattern of economic devel-
opment: Living standards rise, people
spend more time in school, get mar-
ried later, wrestle with more expensive
living costs and want to spend more
on the children they do have. Even if
Beijing has taken steps to reverse the
damaging one-child policy imposed
under Deng Xiaoping, I doubt it will
make much difference. The broader
global trend may be too entrenched for
even Beijing’s state muscle.
The consequences for the rest of
the planet may be more significant.
The world’s economic output has been
driven by China the past few decades,
especially since the financial crisis of
2007-2009. Its gross domestic product
has increased at an average annual rate
of about 8% since 2000. The equivalent
figure for the U.S. has been a bit less
than 2%.
As things stand, China will contrib-
ute more than one-fifth of the total in-
crease in global GDP in the five years
through 2026, according to Bloomberg
calculations based on International
Monetary Fund forecasts published in
April. The U.S. will account for 14.8%,
with India and Japan chipping in 8.4%
and 3.5%, respectively. Anemic popu-
lation growth, or an outright drop, is
likely to mean slower overall expan-
sion, even if GDP per capita may con-
tinue to climb. Assumptions about any
expected contribution may need to be
rethought.
Also up for debate is persistently
low inflation, something central banks
everywhere first welcomed but now
increasingly worry about. China’s as-
cent from an impoverished backwa-
ter to the workshop of the world and
premier exporter reflected, in large
part, the country’s ability to offer vast
amounts of relatively cheap labor to
multinational companies and their
suppliers. In the process, the country
was a major force in holding down
prices of goods destined for shelves in
the U.S. and Europe. The benefits of
this era may now be past, thanks to a
contracting labor market.
“China’s role in the global economy
has now changed from being an ex-
porter of deflation to a more neutral
one now and increasingly inflation-
ary into the future,” wrote Charles
Goodhart and Manoj Pradhan in their
2020 book “The Great Demographic
Reversal: Ageing Societies, Waning In-
equality, and an Inflation Revival.”
This isn’t all bad news, at least right
away. A Chinese model no longer
based on inexpensive labor pumping
out bargain-basement goods will erode
one of the props that has kept infla-
tion low, dangerously so in the view of
doves at the Fed. Meanwhile, a stroll
around parks, nightlife areas and shop-
ping malls of pre-pandemic Tokyo
show a declining population can still
have plenty of vitality. The U.S. saw the
second-slowest population growth rate
in history last decade at 7.4% — just
ahead of 7.3% during the Depression
era — yet life goes on.
If China aspires to world economic
leadership, this is what it looks like.
Sluggish demographics are part of the
deal.
e e
Daniel Moss is a columnist for Bloomberg.