A8 The BulleTin • Tuesday, June 15, 2021
EDITORIALS & OPINIONS
AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER
Heidi Wright
Gerry O’Brien
Richard Coe
Publisher
Editor
Editorial Page Editor
Deschutes is
shortchanged
on pot money
T
he 2021 Legislature is drawing to a close. We hope an
important bill for Deschutes County will still move
forward: House Bill 3295.
It would enable Deschutes County
to continue to receive marijuana
tax revenue. It’s a bipartisan effort
of state Reps. Jason Kropf, D-Bend,
and Jack Zika, R-Redmond.
The way the state’s rules were writ-
ten, counties are supposed to share
in marijuana tax revenue unless they
don’t have any marijuana businesses.
But even though Deschutes County
has pot businesses, the county won’t
get any money. That will mean a loss
of about $125,000 that the county
could use to fight addiction and
crime. That’s only the amount as of
now. In the future, it could be more.
It’s not fair that Deschutes County
could miss out.
The state’s rules for the pot rev-
enue simply didn’t anticipate what
happened in Deschutes County. The
county has marijuana processors
and growers. But in 2019, Deschutes
County commissioners put a mora-
torium in place that there could not
be new ones — in areas outside the
county’s cities. Deschutes County
residents voted in November 2020
to keep that moratorium in place
for new marijuana processors and
growers — in the areas outside the
county’s cities.
So then the Oregon Liquor Con-
trol Commission looked at Deschutes
County’s situation and the law. It de-
cided because the county does not
allow all types of new marijuana busi-
nesses it is not entitled to any mar-
ijuana tax revenue. Kropf summed
it up well in legislative testimony.
The rules were written like an on/off
switch, he said, when it should have
been written like a dimmer switch.
Deschutes County officials argued
the result wasn’t fair to county resi-
dents. The county mounted a chal-
lenge in Oregon Tax Court.
Kropf and Zika proposed a leg-
islative solution. And that bill just
made it out of committee last week.
The Legislature should pass it before
it adjourns.
Problems with state
accounting, again
T
he Oregon Secretary of State’s
Office audits tell us what
we know but need to be re-
minded about: State government
makes mistakes with money.
Every year there’s a roundup of
these mistakes. And it’s clear it’s
necessary. For the fiscal year 2020,
state auditors found $6.4 billion in
accounting errors. That’s right, $6.4
billion.
Those were unintentional mis-
takes. It’s not like somebody was
trying to abscond with $6.4 billion.
They were mistakes. Basically, num-
bers were put in the wrong column
and later caught thanks to state au-
dits. It does make you wonder what
wasn’t caught.
What can be more important is
when the audits uncover weaknesses
in the policies for handling money.
For instance, the Department of
Consumer and Business Services is a
state agency dedicated to consumer
protection and business regulation.
It failed to properly follow new ac-
counting rules required for fiscal year
2020. Other state agencies got it right.
The department misinterpreted the
new rules and reported about $400
million incorrectly. That department
also failed to have required docu-
mentation explaining how it made
decisions about handling money in
two areas, such as determining what
is uncollectible money.
And there’s more. When state
auditors tested some spending to
ensure proper procedures are fol-
lowed so federal funds may be used
to pay for them, it found mistakes.
The biggest problem was in the child
care and development fund. That is
a federal grant program that helps
provide child care services for low-
income families and improve child
care overall. Auditors found $4.2
million in errors. Numbers were
miscalculated, provider copays were
off, there was a lack of documenta-
tion to back up payments and more.
New report. Similar conclusions.
Without state auditors peering over
the shoulders of other state agencies,
even more mistakes would be made.
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.
Columnist suggests a return to the
fantasy epic for summer reading lists
BY HUGH HEWITT
Special to The Washington Post
S
ummer beckons, and so does the
easy season’s need for a good,
nourishing read.
Everything after J.R.R. Tolkien’s
“The Lord of the Rings” is in some
way derivative, but fantasy epics re-
main a staple on many bookshelves,
including mine.
CNN’s Chris Cillizza sent me into
the endless but eventually satisfac-
tory Wheel of Time series by Robert
Jordan. The New York Times’ Ross
Douthat nudged me toward British
writer Joe Abercrombie, with a warn-
ing that his books are as grown-up
and dark as “Games of Thrones” but
have the decided advantage of an au-
thor committed to finishing his epics.
During the pandemic’s endless op-
portunities to walk, I blew through
Brandon Sanderson’s “Mistborn” series
(on audio) but hesitated on brink of his
“The Way of Kings.” Patrick Rothfuss
is delivering the goods in his Kingkiller
Chronicle trilogy, but he’s only two-
thirds finished. So, Abercrombie it will
be when next I get the epic itch.
The attraction of epics is much
the same as those of Patrick O’Bri-
an’s 20 works built around British na-
val officers Jack Aubrey and Stephen
Maturin: The writers create entire
worlds around a few central charac-
ters and a long list of recurring friends,
lovers, competitors and enemies. “For
the past 30 years the greatest novel-
ists writing in English,” asserted play-
wright David Mamet, “have been
genre writers: John le Carré, George
Higgins and Patrick O’Brian.” From
Mamet, that’s quite a tribute.
Thriller authors, like Daniel Silva
and Brad Thor, have legions addicted
to their knowledge and storytelling
prowess. C.J. Box’s books deliver an
understanding of the mountain west
not easily available to city folk on the
coasts — and an unlikely hero in Joe
Pickett. And I inhaled “Ridgeline,”
the new historical fiction by Michael
Punke (author of “The Revenant”),
about an 1866 battle in Wyoming’s
Powder River Valley between the La-
kota and the U.S. Army.
These writers are terrifyingly pro-
lific — add up their titles and ask
yourself, “How do they do it?”
They serve the need for the human
imagination to travel far from what-
ever reality it inhabits day to day.
Nonfiction writers broaden our
horizons, too, but their work is both
harder and easier to absorb. Three
nonfiction books have made it on to
my “necessary bookshelf” this year
— works that need to be read to un-
derstand our age: Niall Ferguson’s
“Doom,” Josh Rogin’s “Chaos Un-
der Heaven” and Joby Warrick’s “Red
Line” can grip as tightly as any thriller,
but the reader has to take mental
notes if not actual ones.
These books form the basis of im-
portant — and official — conversa-
tions in our national politics, and the
details matter.
Where does this leave fantasy epics?
Their purpose, beyond pure enter-
tainment, is construction of a moral
universe different from ours, with dif-
ferent gods and dilemmas; rituals and
standards, tests, triumphs and failures.
Many of the epic fantasies construct
vast archipelagoes of competing re-
gimes that, while hardly as helpful as
Aristotle’s “Politics,” still dance around
the ancient and central question of
what form of government is best. Ma-
chiavelli is embedded in these tales,
as is Rousseau. Very few Thomas Jef-
fersons, quite a few Stalins and Maos,
and occasionally the attempt at the
genuinely heroic.
Mostly they give space to roam far
from 2021 — or 1968, when I read
Tolkien for the first time. For some
(not me), escape means science fic-
tion; others have their own guilty
pleasures. But as summer approaches,
and if you’ve read everything by
Dickens or you are done with Evelyn
Waugh, take Douthat’s advice (with
his disclaimer about Abercrombie’s
grown-up content) and try something
completely different.
What can it cost you, save the price
of a book and a few hours away from
Twitter and Instagram?
e
Hugh Hewitt hosts a nationally syndicated radio
show on the Salem Network, is a professor of
law at Chapman University Law School and a
Washington Post contributing columnist.
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Upcoming UFO report won’t change minds, but maybe it should
BY STEPHEN CARTER
Bloomberg
T
hose of us who’ve dreamed of
extraterrestrial life since sci-
fi-drenched childhoods are
awaiting the federal government’s
forthcoming report on UFOs. And yet
the report is unlikely to change any
minds.
Which makes the controversy over
unidentified flying objects a lot like ev-
erything else these days — and a good
candidate to teach us a thing or two
about the value of cognitive humility.
Let’s start with some data. Pollsters
tell us that 1 American in 3 believes
that we’ve had extraterrestrial visitors.
And — for once! — there’s no partisan
divide. According to Gallup, Demo-
crats (32%) and Republicans (30%) are
about equally likely to believe that at
least some UFOs are alien spacecraft.
Belief is somewhat higher among inde-
pendents, at a robust 38%. (And maybe
higher still in Roswell, New Mexico.)
Somebody’s right; somebody’s
wrong.
Should we decide who by relying on
official pronouncements? According
to multiple leaks, the congressionally
mandated report from the Director of
National Intelligence, due any day, will
say that the government has no evi-
dence of extraterrestrial visitors. Does
it follow that those who believe other-
wise are — to take the current argot —
living in a realm that’s fact-free?
I’ll go with no — but it’s important
to understand why.
For enthusiasts, the toughest chal-
lenge has always been Fermi’s para-
dox: If the universe contains other civ-
ilizations more advanced than ours,
why haven’t we found any sign? Our
searches have come up nil, even in re-
gions we’ve swept with care.
Happily, if you’re among the be-
lievers, you have plenty of ripostes to
choose from.
Readers of Liu Cixin’s “Three-Body
Problem” trilogy are familiar with the
theory that extraterrestrials are quite
rationally hiding their locations, to
avoid being destroyed by more power-
ful extraterrestrials. Another idea, pro-
posed by the economist Robin Han-
son and his collaborators, is that any
“grabby” civilizations out there have
expanded so rapidly that we can’t de-
tect the signs. Why not? Because their
rapid expansions came after the signals
we can observe departed their distant
galaxies billions of years ago: “If they
were where we could see them, they
would be here now instead of us.” (A
thought that for Hanson helps explain
why, if more advanced civilizations ex-
ist, we shouldn’t be trying quite so hard
to contact them.) A third possibility is
that more advanced aliens exist, and
they’re neither hiding nor grabby but
instead have found a path of techno-
logical evolution that doesn’t leave the
sorts of signals we’re capable of search-
ing for.
Fair enough.
On the other hand, the conspirato-
rially minded might conclude that the
U.S. government knows we’ve had vis-
itors and is hiding the truth. (Cue “In-
dependence Day.”) For those who take
this view, the claims by various govern-
ment agencies to have no evidence that
UFOs are alien spacecraft might serve
only to deepen suspicion. After all, if
a massive conspiracy has been hiding
the truth for decades, the conspirators
are hardly going to disclose the details
just because Congress says so!
Besides, according to The New York
Times, there will be something for ev-
eryone in the report. A number of the
UFOs spotted by military aircraft over
the years remain unidentified. (UAPs,
the government now calls them, for
“unidentified aerial phenomena.”) The
report is expected to conclude that
they aren’t part of any known classi-
fied program. When Scientific Amer-
ican is forced to admit that “the mind
boggles” at the many possibilities, we
might reasonably predict that not too
many minds will be changed.
But this should come as no surprise.
We turn out not to be good at chang-
ing our minds. Our political divisions
make this tendency worse. Committed
political partisans not only have trou-
ble altering their views on contested
political issues; even in everyday life,
they seem to suffer from a more gen-
eral cognitive inflexibility.
That’s one of the reasons that what
we ought to be cultivating is a general
cognitive humility — not just about
UFOs but about much more in the
world around us. Like the Handarrata
in Ursula LeGuin’s “The Left Hand
of Darkness,” we need to gain a keen
sense of how little we know.
Cognitive humility involves recog-
nizing our biases and shortcomings,
in part by cultivating a realistic esti-
mate of our own knowledge and pow-
ers of reason. It’s a skill that matters.
On many contested issues, we tend to
make up our minds on which expert
to trust only after we know which one
takes the same view we do. There’s no
reason to expect the UFO debate to be
any different.
Consider the strangely behaving
object currently speeding out of the
solar system. Dubbed ‘Oumuamua, a
Hawaiian term for “visitor from afar
arriving first,” most researchers think
it is the remnant of a comet, but Har-
vard astronomer Avi Loeb argues it has
characteristics that suggest a techno-
logical origin. One needn’t get in the
middle of that fight to recognize that a
lot of observers have chosen sides ac-
cording to their priors.
Where does that leave me? In the sit-
uation where I think we should most
often be. Rather than label the beliefs
of UFO enthusiasts false, I prefer to say
that much as I’d like them to be right,
I’m not yet persuaded. Perhaps the
piece of evidence that will make the
difference is right around the corner.
And if extraterrestrial visitors ever
do arrive, I suspect they’ll have plenty
of cognitive humility already. (No
“Klaatu barada nikto.”) Otherwise,
they’d have far been too busy fighting
each other to make their way across
the stars.
e
Stephen Carter is a Bloomberg columnist. He is a
professor of law at Yale University.