OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, AUGUST 11, 2015
No longer the land of opportunity
Founded in 1873
STEPHEN A. FORRESTER, Editor & Publisher
LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor
BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
HEATHER RAMSDELL, Circulation Manager
Where are Sanders,
Trump leading us?
Wyden says Sanders is ‘real;’ writer
says Trump is P.T. Barnum
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Northwest over the weekend. On Saturday his outdoor
rally in Seattle was hijacked by Black Lives Matter organizers,
but he subsequently drew a crowd indoors. In Portland, the
insurgent Democratic presidential candidate drew his biggest
crowd ever — 28,000 in the Rose Garden — 20,000 inside
and 8,000 standing outside.
In the same week, the Republican
presidential candidate Donald Trump
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breaking new ground on the topic of
misogyny.
Sanders and Trump are an inter-
esting pair. Is Sanders akin to Eugene
McCarthy in 1968, who forced
President Lyndon Johnson into retire-
ment? Is Trump a new version of Ross
Perot, who drained GOP votes in the
1992 general election, or is he an up-
dated version of George Wallace, who
fed right-wing voters’ base instincts?
When asked last week if he were a
“Bernie Sanders Democrat,” Oregon
Sen. Ron Wyden said: “Bernie is
real.” Therein lies the essential dif-
ference between the liberal outlier
and the right wing bomb-thrower.
T
Sen. Sanders’ epic December
2010 Senate speech on income in-
equality is the bedrock of what the
man believes. Sanders’ straight talk
is a threat to Clinton, who has a hard
time giving us a consistent story line.
In “Donald Trump’s Sales Pitch,”
The New Yorker’s James Surowiecki
likens Trump to P.T. Barnum, who
understood that you have say in-
creasingly outlandish things to get
the public’s attention.
Neither Sanders nor Trump may
persist as major party nominees. But
they will assuredly change the course
of history in 2016. Campaigns are
the prelude to government. While
Sanders’ rhetoric leads to substantive
policy initiatives, Trump’s insults
seem only to feed grudges.
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engaged community
here is no remaining doubt this is
a year for the record books when
it comes to lack of rainfall. Recent
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dangerous conditions.
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federally designated primary drought
disaster location. Clatsop County and
Washinton’s Wahkiakum County are
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being “contiguous” to disaster areas.
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treme” drought, while the remainder
of lands in the vicinity of the Columbia
River estuary are in the slightly better
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Despite minor showers and drizzle
this week, it’s probably only a matter
of time before the entire Columbia-
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category. We are still more than seven
weeks away from the Oct. 1 start of the
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dry weather is predicted for August,
“and the long-term forecast is calling
for a strong El Niño weather pattern
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this will mean another low snowpack
and another year of drought,” accord-
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All this draws strong attention to
the importance of local professional
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see that grass, brush and leaves are
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to any source of combustion. This
can be a cigarette butt carelessly dis-
carded from a passing vehicle, a spark
thrown by a mower blade striking a
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idation of hay on a sunny afternoon.
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must only be built in designated plac-
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of year. Immediately report any viola-
tions to proper authorities.
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trate how fast an emergency can de-
velop and how much we depend on
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the northwestern tip of Fort Stevens
State Park and a west wind pushed
it into shore pines and driftwood.
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Department and Oregon Department
of Forestry quickly arrived and kept
the situation from getting out of
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District No. 1 and the Long Beach
Volunteer Fire Department rushed to
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ing nearby buildings and forestland.
Local departments have also dealt
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recent weeks.
This highlights the ongoing need
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and public support. Though no society
can afford to be permanently prepared
for every disaster scenario, here in this
usually moist place we will have to
be especially vigilant as the prospect
of long droughts elevates the risk of
life-threatening situations.
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away from homes and other structures,
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Protection Plans and avoiding po-
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immediately, since early intervention
is key to keeping them manageable.
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when working outdoors.
We’ll get through this. The rains
will return. But for now, we need ev-
eryone to pay close attention. Fast re-
porting and action can save property
and lives.
Rick, who thought he
narrative of cruelty” to those
was one-eighth American
at the bottom.
Indian, pretty much raised
The musician Ted Nu-
AMHILL — We like to boast of himself, along with his
gent once suggested that the
America as the “land of opportu- brother and two sisters. His
“takers” in society are “enti-
nity,” and historically there is truth to mom died when he was 5,
tlement chumps” and “glut-
that.
and his dad — “a profes-
tonous, soulless pigs.” The
“We have never been a nation of sional drunk,” Rick once
conservative author Neal
haves and have-nots,” Sen. Marco told me — abandoned the
Boortz compared the poor
to toenail fungus.
Rubio once declared. “We are a nation family. A grandmother pre-
Sure, entitlements are
of haves and soon-to-haves, of people sided, and the kids hunted
Nicholas
a legitimate issue for de-
who have made it and of people who DQG ¿VKHG WR SXW IRRG RQ
Kristof
bate. But if you’re troubled
will make it.”
the table.
That’s a lovely aspiration, the vi-
School might have been an es- by publicly subsidized meals, what
sion that brought Rubio’s father to calator to a better life, for Rick had DERXW WKH ELOOLRQ LQ DQQXDO WD[
the United States — and my father, D WHUUL¿F PLQG EXW DV D ER\ KH KDG subsidies for corporate meals and en-
too. Yet I fear that by 2015 we’ve DQ XQGLDJQRVHG DWWHQWLRQ GH¿FLW GLV- tertainment? And if you want to see
become the socially rigid society our order and teachers wrote him off. In a real scam, how about those zillion-
IRUHEHDUVÀHGUHSOLFDWLQJWKHEDUULHUV the eighth grade, the principal pun- DLUHVZKRFODLPKXJHWD[GHGXFWLRQV
and class gaps that drove them away. ished Rick for skipping school, by IRUGRQDWLQJDUWWRWKHLURZQQRQSUR¿W
That’s what the presidential candidates VXVSHQGLQJKLPIRUVL[PRQWKV5LFN museums, which aren’t even open to
should be debating.
was thrilled. By 10th grade he had people dropping by?
I hear from people who say
Researchers have repeatedly found dropped out for good.
that in the United States, there is now
Rick worked in lumber mills and something like: I grew up poor, but
less economic mobility than in Canada machine shops, then became a talented I worked hard and I made it. If other
or much of Europe. A child born in the custom painter of cars. After his hand people tried, they could, too. Bravo!
bottom quintile of incomes in the Unit- was mashed in an accident, he sur- 6XUH WKHUH DUH H[WUDRUGLQDU\ SHRSOH
ed States has only a 4 percent chance vived on disability and odd jobs. His who have overcome mind-boggling
of rising to the top quintile, according phone worked when he had enough hurdles. But they’re like the NBA cen-
ters with short parents.
to a Pew study. A separate (somewhat money to pay the bills.
Remember that disadvantage is less
dated) study found that in Britain, such
He married twice and divorced
a boy has about a 12 percent chance.
twice, raised children as a single dad, about income than environment. The
By
another
and was a loyal best metrics of child poverty aren’t
measure, “inter-
friend to every- monetary, but rather how often a child
Remember
generational in-
one around. A few is read to or hugged. Or, conversely,
come elasticity,”
years ago, Rick was how often a child is beaten, how often
that
social mobility is
slowly
mending the home descends into alcohol-fueled
¿VW¿JKWVZKHWKHUWKHUHLVOHDGSRLVRQ-
twice as great for
from
a
serious
disadvantage ness, dependent ill-
Canada as for the
on ing, whether ear infections go untreat-
United States.
a crucial medicine. ed. That’s a poverty that is far harder
is less about
Alan Krueger,
Then he abruptly to escape.
income than
Some think success is all about
a Princeton econ-
weakened and had
“choices” and “personal responsibili-
omist, has noted
to be hospitalized.
environment.
that in the United
It turned out that ty.” Yes, those are real, but it’s so much
States, parents’ in-
KLV H[ZLIH¶V FDU more complicated than that.
“Rich kids make a lot of bad choic-
comes correlate to
had been towed and
their adult children’s incomes roughly she had needed to pay a fee to get it es,” Reardon notes. “They just don’t
as heights do. “The chance of a person back. So Rick had given her $600 and come with the same sort of conse-
who was born to a family in the bot- skipped the medicine. That’s what put quences.”
Rick acknowledged that he had
tom 10 percent of the income distribu- him in the hospital.
tion rising to the top 10 percent as an
And, yes, that was for his EX-wife. made bad choices. He drank, took
adult is about the same as the chance
Last year, I wrote a series titled GUXJV DQG ZDV DUUHVWHG DERXW
that a dad who is 5 feet 6 inches tall “When Whites Just Don’t Get It,” times. But he also found the strength
having a son who grows up to be over about race gaps (the reaction was not to give up alcohol when he felt he
6 feet 1 inch tall,” Krueger observed in entirely enthusiastic!). I also think that was turning into his father. What dis-
a speech. “It happens, but not often.”
many successful Americans “don’t tinguished Rick wasn’t primarily bad
choices, but intelligence, hard work
,¶YHEHHQUHÀHFWLQJRQWKLVEHFDXVH get” the income gulf.
of a friend in my hometown, Yamhill.
Sean Reardon of Stanford Univer- and lack of opportunity.
So let’s just drop the social Darwin-
Rick Goff was smart, talented and sity has calculated that the race gap
hardworking, but he faced an uphill in student test scores has diminished, ism. Success is not a sign of virtue. It’s
struggle from birth; I wrote about him but that the class gap has widened. A mostly a sign that your grandparents
ODVW \HDU DV DQ H[DPSOH RI WKH DSKR- half-century ago, the black-white test did well.
Meanwhile, more children in
rism that “talent is universal, but op- score gap was 50 percent greater than
portunity is not.”
the gap between the richest 10 percent America live in poverty now (22 per-
And now Rick is dead. He died of and the poorest 10 percent. Now it is cent at last count) than at the start of
heart disease last month in his home in the other way around, with the class WKH ¿QDQFLDO FULVLV LQ SHU-
cent). They grow up not in a “land of
Yamhill at age 65.
gap almost twice that of the race gap.
I visited him the day before he died,
Consider that 77 percent of adults opportunity,” but in the kind of social-
as he was pained and struggling to in the top 25 percent of incomes earn ly rigid hierarchies that our ancestors
walk, and I keep thinking of his prodi- a B.A. by age 24. Only 9 percent of ÀHGWKHNLQGRIVRFLHW\LQZKLFK\RXU
outcome is largely determined by your
gious talents that were never fully de- those in the bottom 25 percent do so.
ployed because, in the United States,
Yet as Tim Wise notes in a forth- beginning.
Now, that’s what the presidential
too often the best predictor of where FRPLQJERRN³8QGHUWKH$IÀXHQFH´
we end up is where we start.
there’s an “increasingly vituperative candidates should be discussing.
By NICHOLAS KRISTOF
New York Times News Service
Y
‘Black Lives Matter’ and the GOP
variably poor and minority
First, before the answer,
neighborhoods — are then
I have a nit to pick with the
charged with doing the dirty
question. The framing of
nly one candidate in last week’s work. The increase in sheer
the state of race relations
Republican presidential debate numbers of interactions
as a “divide,” to my mind,
was asked to directly address the creates friction with target-
creates a false impression,
Black Lives Matter movement, and ed populations and ups the
an equivalency. It suggests
that candidate was Gov. Scott Walker. odds that individual biases
a lateral-ness. But this
Moderator Megyn Kelly asked will be introduced.
discussion is about verti-
Walker:
cal-ness, about hierarchy. It
Without fail, something
is about whether state pow-
“Governor Walker, many in the eventually goes horribly
Charles
er is being used dispropor-
Black Lives Matter movement, and wrong.
Blow
tionately as an oppressive
beyond, believe that overly aggres-
We look at the end inter-
VLYH SROLFH RI¿FHUV WDUJHWLQJ \RXQJ DFWLRQH[DPLQLQJWKHRI¿FHUVIRUELDV and deadly force against minorities
African-Americans is the civil rights and the suspect for threatening behav- — particularly black people — in this
issue of our time. Do you agree? And ior, rather than looking at the systems country.
Carson responded with a prelude
if so, how do you plan to address it? If that necessitated the interactions.
not, why not?”
Society itself is to blame. There is that seemed to label those demand-
Walker responded with an answer blood on everyone’s hands, includ- ing justice and equality “purveyors
DERXW VXI¿FLHQW WUDLQLQJ RI RI¿FHUV LQJ WKH KDQGV VWLOO FOXWFKLQJ WKH WD[ of hatred” seeking a “race war,” an
“not only on the way into their po- revenue that those cities needed but RXWUDJHRXVO\ H[DJJHUDWHG XVH RI LQ-
sitions but all the way through their refused to solicit, instead shifting the cendiary rhetoric.
Then he said:
time” and about “conse-
mission of entire po-
“What we need to think about in-
quences” for those who
lice departments “from
stead
you know, I was asked by an
don’t properly perform
‘protect
and
serve’
to
All Lives µSXQLVK DQG SUR¿W¶´ DV NPR —
reporter once, why don’t I talk
their duties.
Both the question
Mother Jones magazine about race that often. I said it’s because
Matter
and the answer focused
recently put it in a fas- I’m a neurosurgeon. And she thought
may be
an inordinate amount
cinating article on this that was a strange response. And you
say — I said, you see, when I take
of attention on police
subject.
one’s
conduct and not enough
Is it a coincidence someone to the operating room, I’m ac-
on revealing that they
many of the recent tually operating on the thing that makes
personal that
are simply the agents of
cases involving black them who they are. The skin doesn’t
SROLF\LQVWLWXWHGE\RI¿-
position. people killed by the po- make them who they are. The hair
cials at the behest of the
lice began with stops for doesn’t make them who they are. And
it’s time for us to move beyond that.”
body politic.
minor offenses?
7KLV ZDV DQ HORTXHQW H[SRVLWLRQ
7KLVGH¿FLWRIH[DPLQLQJV\VWHPV
7KLV³¿VFDOPHQDFH´DVWKHPDJD-
H[LVWVDOODFURVVWKLVGHEDWH,WIDLOVWR zine called it, is added to a system of- of the absurdity of race as a biologi-
LQGLFWVRFLHW\DVDZKROHDV,¿UPO\ ten already addicted to ever-improving cal construct but also an absurdly ele-
believe it should. It puts all the focus crime numbers — a statistically unsus- mentary avoidance of racism as a very
on the tip of the spear rather than on tainable condition — and a ballooning real social construct. I wish it were that
the spear itself.
prison population. To maintain the mo- people could all simply “move beyond
Look at it this way: Many local mentum, cities needed to crack down that” at will, that they were able to
PXQLFLSDOLWLHV H[SHULHQFH EXGJHWDU\ on lower and lower-level crimes, sac- simply choose to slough off the cumu-
SUHVVXUH 5DWKHU WKDQ UDLVH WD[HV RU UL¿FLQJPRUHDQGPRUHOLYHV²ODUJHO\ lative accrual of centuries of systemat-
cut services in response, things that poor and minority ones — to feed the ic anti-black negativity. But, that is not
are often politically unpalatable, they beast. Public safety gave cover for a a power people possess.
That is why when people respond
turn to law enforcement and courts perversion of justice.
to make up the difference in tickets
In another moment during the de- to “Black Lives Matter” with “All
DQG¿QHV6RPHFDQDOVRLQFUHDVHWKH bate, Kelly asked Ben Carson about Lives Matter,” it grates. All Lives
QXPEHURI¿QDEOHRIIHQVHVDQGVWLIIHQ race relations in America and “how Matter may be one’s personal posi-
the penalties.
divided we seem right now.” She con- tion, but until this country values all
2I¿FHUVDOUHDG\GLVSURSRUWLRQDWH- tinued: “And what, if anything, you lives equally, it is both reasonable and
ly deployed and arrayed in so-called FDQGR²\RXZRXOGGRDVWKHQH[W indeed necessary to specify the lives
it seems to value less.
“high-crime” neighborhoods — in- president to help heal that divide.”
By CHARLES M. BLOW
New York Times News Service
O