I yield to no one in my enjoyment of bourbon. I would have liked the opportunity to buy my own bottle of Pappy Van Winkle and I think those Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission guys were jerks for using the power of their offices to cut to the head of the line. But that’s all they did, cut in line. As abuses of power go, this is minor-league stuff. Especially when compared to the serious abuse that took place a couple of years ago when, with more than 80% of COVID-19 deaths occurring among the unvaccinated elderly, our former governor used the power of her office to direct that tens of thousands of doses of federally supplied vaccine go first to her political supporters in the teachers’ union rather than elderly Oregonians.
This selfish disregard for the lives and health of Oregon’s most vulnerable was not a case of cutting in line. It was a case of diverting vaccine from people who, through taxes paid to the federal government, not to the state of Oregon, owned the vaccines Gov. Kate Brown gave away. This is a real scandal – a scandal that killed real people – not just a bunch of yahoos cadging a few bottles of booze.
Bill Merritt, Portland
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