{"id":101815,"date":"2018-01-18T17:03:11","date_gmt":"2018-01-19T00:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/will-in-oregon-progressivism-spills-over-at-the-pump\/"},"modified":"2018-01-18T17:03:11","modified_gmt":"2018-01-19T00:03:11","slug":"will-in-oregon-progressivism-spills-over-at-the-pump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/will-in-oregon-progressivism-spills-over-at-the-pump\/","title":{"rendered":"Will; In Oregon, progressivism spills over at the pump"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/figure>\n

Today, however, Oregon is the state with the strangest state of mind, which has something to do with it being impeccably progressive: In the series \u201cPortlandia,\u201d the mention of artisanal lightbulbs might be satirical, but given today\u2019s gas-pumping controversy, perhaps not.<\/p>\n

On Jan. 1, by the grace of God \u2013 or of the government, which is pretty much the same thing to progressives \u2013 a sliver of a right was granted to Oregonians: Henceforth they can pump gas into their cars and trucks, all by themselves. But only in counties with populations of less than 40,000, evidently because this walk on the wild side is deemed to be prudent only in the hinterlands, where there is a scarcity of qualified technicians trained in the science of pumping. Still, 2018 will be the year of living dangerously in the state that was settled by people who trekked there on the Oregon Trail, through the territory of Native Americans hostile to Manifest Destiny.<\/p>\n

Oregon is one of two states that ban self-service filling stations. The other is almost-as-deep-blue New Jersey. There the ban is straightforward, no-damned-nonsense-about-anything-else protectionism: The point is to spare full-service gas stations from competing with self-service stations that, having lower labor costs, have lower prices.<\/p>\n

Oregon\u2019s Legislature offers 17 reasons \u201cit is in the public interest to maintain a prohibition on the self-service dispensing of Class 1 flammable liquids\u201d \u2013 aka, gasoline, which you put in your car\u2019s \u201cClass 1 flammable liquids tank.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first reason is: The dispensing of such liquids \u201cby dispensers properly trained in appropriate safety procedures reduces fire hazards.\u201d This presumably refers to the many conflagrations regularly occurring at filling stations throughout the 48 states where 96 percent of Americans live lives jeopardized by state legislators who are negligent regarding their nanny-state duty to assume that their constituents are imbeciles.<\/p>\n

Among Oregon\u2019s 16 other reasons are: Service-station cashiers are often unable to \u201cgive undivided attention\u201d to the rank amateurs dispensing flammable liquids. When purchasers of such liquids leave their vehicles they risk \u201ccrime,\u201d and \u201cpersonal injury\u201d from slick surfaces. (\u201cOregon\u2019s weather is uniquely adverse\u201d; i.e., it rains there.)<\/p>\n

\u201cExposure to toxic fumes.\u201d Senior citizens or persons with disabilities might have to pay a higher cost at a full-service pump, which would be discriminatory. When people pump gas without the help of \u201ctrained and certified\u201d specialists, no specialists peer under the hood to administer prophylactic maintenance, thereby \u201cendangering both the customer and other motorists and resulting in unnecessary and costly repairs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Self-service \u201chas contributed to diminishing the availability of automotive repair facilities at gasoline stations\u201d without providing \u2013 note the adjective \u2013 \u201csustained\u201d reduction in gas prices. Self-service causes unemployment. And \u201csmall children left unattended\u201d by novice gas pumpers \u201ccreates a dangerous situation.\u201d So there.<\/p>\n

Oregon\u2019s Solomonic decision \u2013 freedom to pump in rural counties; everywhere else, unthinkable \u2013 terrified some Oregonians:<\/p>\n

\u201cNo! Disabled, seniors, people with young children in the car need help. Not to mention getting out of your car with transients around and not feeling safe too. This is a very bad idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNot a good idea, there are lots of reason to have an attendant helping, one is they need a job too. Many people are not capable of knowing how to pump gas and the hazards of not doing it correctly. Besides I don\u2019t want to go to work smelling of gas.\u201d<\/p>\n

The complainers drew complaints: \u201cYou put the gas in your car not shower in it princess.\u201d \u201cIf your only marketable job skill is being able to pump gas, by god, move to Oregon and you will have reached the promised land.\u201d \u201cPumped my own gas my whole life and now my hands have literally melted down to my wrists. I\u2019m typing this with my tongue.\u201d<\/p>\n

These days, civic discourse is not for shrinking violets.<\/p>\n

To be fair, when Oregonians flinch from a rendezvous with an unattended gas pump, progressive government has done its duty, as it understands this. It wants the governed to become used to having things done for them, as by \u201ctrained and certified\u201d gas pumpers. Progressives are proud believers in providing experts \u2013 usually themselves \u2013 to help the rest of us cope with life.<\/p>\n

The only downside is that, as Alexis de Tocqueville anticipated, such government, by being the \u201cshepherd\u201d of the governed, can \u201ctake away from them entirely the trouble of thinking\u201d and keep them \u201cfixed irrevocably in childhood.\u201d<\/p>\n

George Will is a columnist for The Washington Post. Reach him by email at georgewill@washpost.com<\/a>. \u00a9 2018 The Washington Post Writers Group<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, however, Oregon is the state with the strangest state of mind, which has something to do with it being impeccably progressive: In the series \u201cPortlandia,\u201d the mention of artisanal lightbulbs might be satirical, but given today\u2019s gas-pumping controversy, perhaps not. On Jan. 1, by the grace of God \u2013 or of the government, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":101816,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5758,6334],"tags":[125],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-101815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columnists","category-columnists-guest-columns","tag-newsletter-opinion"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101815\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101815"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=101815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}