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OPINION 4A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, MAY 17, 2016 Humane revolution has some wins By NICHOLAS KRISTOF New York Times News Service 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 Warrenton has a good opportunity igital books were supposed to diminish the importance of libraries. Some skeptics even say that libraries no lon- ger are essential. But evidence doesn’t easier time fashioning a way support that. Even within forward. the conines of our region, Seaside presents a use- something quite differ- ful example. Its new library, ent is happening. Libraries opened in 2008, was built in Cannon Beach, Seaside, from scratch. Situated Warrenton and Astoria are near City Hall, the library community hubs, buzzing became part of Seaside’s with activity. Across the remarkable set of civic fur- Columbia, in Paciic County, niture, which includes the the Timberland Regional Bob Chisholm Community Library is a well-utilized Center and the recreation marvel. center and indoor swim- As Erick Bengel described ming pool. The library con- in last Thursday’s edition, tains cozy reading areas, as Warrenton faces the chal- well as rooms for meetings lenge of replacing its library, and author appearances. The advantage a small which is housed in a his- toric building that was once town enjoys — as opposed to Hammond’s town hall. The cities like Portland or Seattle lip side of Warrenton’s chal- — is building intimacy into its library. That is especially lenge is an opportunity. Astoria faces a similar apparent in Cannon Beach’s need to enhance the library library, but also in Seaside. These places become it has or build new. But Astoria’s matrix of prospec- magnets and what architects tive solutions has not led to call activity nodes. We wish an easy solution. Warrenton, Warrenton well. This could however, might have a much be a very good thing. D n 1903, New Yorkers executed an elephant on Coney Island, effectively torturing her to death. I Accounts vary a bit, but it seems Topsy was a circus elephant who had been abused for years and then killed a man who had burned her on the trunk with a cigar. After her owners had no more use for her, Topsy was fed cyanide, electro- cuted and then strangled with a winch. The Edi- son motion pic- ture company made a ilm of it, Nicholas “Electrocuting Kristof an Elephant.” So maybe there is an arc of moral progress. After many allegations of mis- treatment of animals, Ringling Bros. this month retired its circus elephants, sending them off to a life of leisure in Florida. SeaWorld said this spring that it would stop breeding orcas and would invest millions of dollars in rescuing and rehabilitating marine animals. Meanwhile, Wal-Mart responded to concerns for animal welfare by saying last month that it would shift toward cage-free eggs, following sim- ilar announcements by Costco, Den- ny’s, Wendy’s, Safeway, Starbucks and McDonald’s in the U.S. and Canada. This is a humane revolution, and Wayne Pacelle, president of the Humane Society of the United States, has been at the forefront of it. Alter- nately bullying companies to do bet- ter and cooperating with those that do so, he outlines his approach in an excel- lent new book, The Humane Econ- omy. These corporate changes have vast impact: Wal-Mart or McDonald’s shapes the living conditions of more animals in a day than an animal shelter does in a decade. There is also a lesson, I think, for many other causes, from the environ- ment to women’s empowerment to global health: The best way for non- proits to get large-scale results is sometimes to work with corporations to change behavior and supply lines — while whacking them when they resist. The Environmental Defense Fund and Conservation International do something similar in the environmental space, CARE works with corporations to ight global poverty, and the Human Rights Campaign partners with compa- nies on LGBT issues. Critics sometimes see this as moral compromise, negotiating with evil rather than defeating it; I see it as prag- matism. Likewise, Pacelle has been a James Estrin/The New York Times Elephants perform for the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Cir- cus in Uniondale, N.Y., in 2009. Ringling’s retirement of its elephants is just one example of how animal rights activists are winning gains by working with corporations to change behavior and supply lines. vegan for 31 years but cooperates with million. Countries follow their enlight- fast-food companies to improve con- ened self-interest when they protect ele- ditions in which animals are raised for phants, just as McDonald’s pursues its meat. self-interest when it shifts toward cage- “Animals jammed into cages and free eggs. crates cannot wait for the world to go It’s also astonishing how sensi- vegan,” Pacelle told me. “I’m quite sure tive companies are becoming to public they want out of this unyielding life of opinion about animals. After Cecil the privation right now, and once that ques- lion was shot dead in Zimbabwe, ani- tion is settled, then sensible people can mal protection groups lobbied airlines debate whether they to ban the shipment of should be raised for the such trophies. Delta, Wal-Mart or American, United, plate at all.” At a time when Air Canada and other the world is a mess, McDonald’s companies promptly Pacelle outlines a obliged. shapes hopeful vision. The In the pet store public has always had business, two chains the living some impact with — PetSmart and Petco conditions — have prospered charitable donations, and there have always without accepting the of more been occasional boy- industry’s norm of cotts, but sometimes dogs and cats animals in selling its greatest inluence from puppy mills and comes by leveraging a day than other mass breed- daily consumer pur- ers. Instead, since the an animal chasing power. 1990s they have made “As the humane space available to res- economy asserts its shelter does cue groups offering own power, its own in a decade. animals for adoption. logic and its essen- PetSmart and Petco tial decency, an older don’t make money off order is passing away,” Pacelle writes these adoptions, but they win customer in his book. “By every measure, life loyalty forever, and they have helped will be better when human satisfac- transfer 11 million dogs and cats to tion and need are no longer built upon new homes. the foundation of animal cruelty. Inde- I believe that mistreatment of ani- fensible practices will no longer need mals, particularly in agriculture, defending.” remains a moral blind spot for us It’s true that atrocities continue humans, yet it’s heartening to see the and that the slaughter of animals like consumer-driven revolution that is elephants persists. There were some underway. 130,000 elephants in Sudan 25 years “Just about every enterprise built on ago, while now there may be only 5,000 harming animals today is ripe for dis- in Sudan and the country that broke off ruption,” Pacelle writes. In a world of from it, South Sudan, Pacelle writes. grim tidings, that’s a welcome reminder Yet there is a business model for that there is progress as well. We’ve keeping grand animals like elephants gone in a bit more than a century from alive. One analysis suggests that a dead making a movie about torturing an ele- elephant’s tusks are worth $21,000, phant to sending circus elephants off to while the tourism value of a single liv- a Florida retirement home. But, boy, ing elephant over its lifetime is $1.6 there’s so much more work to do. Don’t let technology get in way of safety It takes a policy and a village I n rural areas like ours, it’s “all hands on deck” for law enforcement when a life-threatening incident arises. City police, county sheriff’s deputies and state oficers rely on radios to let them know when a fellow oficer needs a hand. In what authorities hope will be a short-term tran- sitional issue, Washington State Patrol’s switch to a new communications sys- tem recently resulted in a delay obtaining help for a trooper who was trying to make a dificult arrest on a remote roadside. The problem arose because the Federal Communications Commission freed up valu- able communications fre- quencies by squeezing law enforcement dispatch into a smaller part of the inite wavelength spectrum. If all goes well, this change from the old analog “wideband” system to a digital “narrow- band” system has the poten- tial to be more reliable, and make it easier for dispatch- ers to locate oficers. State agencies in Oregon and Washington have largely completed the switch to narrowband, but local implementation is more of a challenge. Purchasing and installing narrowband-com- patible systems is compli- cated and expensive — about $3,000 per radio for oficers and $4,500 for dispatchers. Flaws in the new system are only now becoming fully apparent as state agencies endeavor to mesh with local departments. State cops can hear locals, but locals can’t hear them. The picture that emerges is one of policing agen- cies all doing their best to ind workarounds for their now-incompatible com- munication systems. Local law-enforcement leaders struggle with how to pay for an under-funded mandate to upgrade in parallel with the states. A technological upgrade that damages the ability of public-safety personnel to talk to one another is ridic- ulous, unacceptable and in need of a fast and thorough solution. The FCC, which drove this change, and the large corporations that will proit from the bandwidth for- merly used by law enforce- ment, should be tasked with helping make sure this tran- sition is fully funded and well-engineered. generous system costs 1.2 last week, while the news percent of the GDP. So we media was focused on could move a long way up Donald Trump’s imaginary the scale with a fairly mod- .S. politicians love to pose friend, I mean imaginary est investment. as defenders of family val- spokesman, Hillary Clin- ton announced an ambi- And it would indeed ues. Unfortunately, this pose is tious plan to improve both be an investment — every often, perhaps usually, one of the affordability and qual- bit as much of an invest- ity of U.S. child care. ment as spending money remarkable hypocrisy. This was an import- to repair and improve our And no, I’m not talking about the ant announcement, even if transportation infrastruc- Paul contrast between public posturing it was drowned out by the ture. After all, today’s Krugman and personal behavior, although this ugliness and nonsense of a children are tomorrow’s contrast can be extreme. campaign that is even uglier and more workers and taxpayers. So it’s an Which is more amazing: the nonsensical than usual. For child-care incredible waste, not just for families fact that a long-serving Republican reform is the kind of medium-size, but for the nation as a whole, that so speaker of the House sexually abused incremental, potentially politically many children’s futures are stunted teenage boys, or how little attention doable — but nonetheless extremely because their parents don’t have the this revelation has received? important — initiative that could well resources to take care of them as well Instead, I’m talking about policy. be the centerpiece of a Clinton admin- as they should. And affordable child Judged by what we actually do — istration. So what’s the plan? care would also have the immediate or, more accurately, don’t do — to OK, we don’t have all the details beneit of making it easier for parents help small children and their parents, yet, but the outline seems pretty clear. to work productively. America is unique among advanced On the affordability front, Clinton Are there any reasons not to spend countries in its utter indifference to would use subsidies and tax credits a bit more on children? The usual sus- the lives of its youngest citizens. to limit family spending on child care pects will, of course, go on about the For example, almost all advanced — which can be more than a third of evils of big government, the sacred countries provide paid leave from income — to a maximum of 10 per- nature of individual choice, the won- work for new parents. We cent. Meanwhile, there ders of free markets, and so on. But don’t. Our public expendi- would be aid to states and the market for child care, like the ture on child care and early Can our communities that raise market for health care, works very education, as a share of child-care workers’ pay, badly in practice. income, is near the bottom neglect and a variety of other mea- And when someone starts talking in international rankings sures to help young chil- about choice, bear in mind that we’re of (although if it makes you dren and their parents. All talking about children, who are not in feel better, we do slightly children of this would still leave a position to choose whether they’re edge out Estonia.) America less generous born into afluent households with be In other words, if you than many other coun- plenty of resources or less wealthy judge us by what we do, but it would be a big families desperately trying to juggle ended? tries, not what we say, we place step toward international work and child care. very little value on the norms. So can we stop talking, just for a lives of our children, unless they hap- Is this doable? Yes. Is it desirable? moment, about who won the news pen to come from afluent families. Very much so. cycle or came up with the most effec- Did I mention that parents in the top When we talk about doing more tive insult, and talk about policy sub- ifth of U.S. households spend seven for children, it’s important to realize stance here? times as much on their children as that it costs money, but not all that The state of child care in Amer- parents in the bottom ifth? much money. Why? Because there ica is cruel and shameful — and even But can our neglect of children be aren’t that many young children at more shameful because we could ended? any given time, and it doesn’t take a make things much better without rad- In January, both Democratic can- lot of spending to make a huge dif- ical change or huge spending. And didates declared their support for ference to their lives. Our threadbare one candidate has a reasonable, fea- a program that would provide 12 system of public support for child sible plan to do something about this weeks of paid leave to care for new- care and early education costs 0.4 per- shame, while the other couldn’t care borns and other family members. And cent of the GDP; France’s famously less. By PAUL KRUGMAN New York Times News Service U