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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 19, 2016)
OPINION 4A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2016 Founded in 1873 DAVID F. PERO, Publisher & Editor 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 OUR VIEW State’s bafling embrace of Oracle Oregon state oficials make target of lawsuit a primary technology vendor ow’s this for cruel irony? Oregon state oficials sue mul- tinational computer giant Oracle for $6 billion for failed technology, then agree as part of a settlement to use more of the company’s products and services over the next six years. You can’t make this stuff up, folks. There is no way of knowing whether the Oregon could have done better proceeding to trial. Legal studies have shown that most plaintiffs who pass up a settlement offer and go to trial end up get- ting less money. As one expert noted: “In the vast majority of cases, the defendant’s offer is perceived to be half a loaf when in fact it is an entire loaf or more.” This leaves taxpayers and editorialists to focus on the terms themselves. Here’s what we know: • The settlement is valued at $100 million — less than 2% of what the state sought when it iled suit against Oracle in 2014. The state accused Oracle of fraud and other misdeeds when it billed Oregon $240 million for a Cover Oregon health insurance exchange website that never worked. • Only $25 million of the settlement value will come in the form of cash — and that money will likely be used to help offset attorney fees and other legal costs. Oregon already has spent $16 million on Markowitz Herbold and three other irms hired to pursue Oracle for damages. • Oracle will provide a $10 million grant to fund science and math education in Oregon’s public schools. • The remaining $65 million is the value put on a six-year licens- ing agreement with Oracle to use its technology to upgrade the state’s outdated computer systems. Gov. Kate Brown was asked about entrusting Oracle with more of the state’s technology systems after the stunning failure of Cover Oregon. She said while Oregon had “a bad experience” with the health exchange project, the settlement provides the state with “an incredible opportunity” to take advantage of Oracle’s business software. Count us as skeptical. State government has an awful record when it comes to information technology projects. Millions of dol- lars have been wasted on computer projects that loundered. State databases containing conidential information have been hacked. And a recent audit found that weaknesses remain across all state technology projects. Making Oracle a primary technology provider for the next six years by virtue of a lawsuit settlement seems terribly short-sighted and a noncompetitive method of selecting vendors in a rapidly changing industry. The Cover Oregon debacle has been examined in depth by our state’s newspapers and was the target of state and congressional investigations. The project was undermined by questionable con- tracting practices, lack of proper oversight and political meddling by former Gov. John Kitzhaber and his administration. For its part, Oracle fell behind schedule and was unable to demonstrate that its website worked. In the end, Oregon spent more than $240 million on Cover Oregon and failed to sign up a single person for health- care coverage through its website. State House Minority Leader Mike McLane said the settlement “marks the end of one of the most embarrassing chapters in Oregon history.” It also means that, legally, no one is liable for wasting all this money. Without a trial, state oficials won’t be compelled to tes- tify under oath about what went so terrible wrong and why. And that is the price Oregonians ultimately pay. H When a crackpot seeks presidency By NICHOLAS KRISTOF New York Times News Service O ne of the mental traps that we all fall into, journalists included, is to perceive poli- tics through narratives. President Gerald Ford had been a star football player, yet somehow we in the media devel- oped a narrative of him as a klutz — so that every time he stumbled, a clip was on the evening news. Likewise, we in the media wrongly portrayed President Jimmy Carter as a bumbling lightweight, even as he tackled the toughest challenges, from recognizing China to returning the Panama Canal. Then in 2000, we painted Al Gore as inauthentic and having a penchant for self-aggrandizing exaggerations, and the most memorable element of the presidential debates that year became not George W. Bush’s mis- statements but Gore’s dramatic sighs. I bring up this checkered track record because I wonder if once again our collective reporting isn’t fueling misperceptions. A CNN/ORC poll this month found that by a margin of 15 percent- age points, voters thought Donald Trump was “more honest and trust- worthy” than Hillary Clinton. Let’s be frank: This public perception is completely at odds with all evidence. On the PolitiFact website, 13 percent of Clinton’s statements that were checked were rated “false” or “pants on ire,” compared with 53 percent of Trump’s. Conversely, half of Clinton’s are rated “true” or “mostly true” compared to 15 percent of Trump statements. Clearly, Clinton shades the truth — yet there’s no comparison with Trump. I’m not sure that journalism bears responsibility, but this does raise the thorny issue of false equivalence, which has been hotly debated among journalists this campaign. Here’s the question: Is it journalistic malpractice to quote each side and leave it to read- ers to reach their own conclusions, even if one side seems to fabricate facts or make ludicrous comments? President Barack Obama weighed in this week, saying that “we can’t afford to act as if there’s some equiv- alence here.” I’m wary of grand conclusions about false equivalence from 30,000 feet. But at the grass roots of a campaign, I think we can do better at signaling that one side is a clown. Clearly, Clinton shades the truth — yet there’s no comparison with Trump. There are crackpots who believe that the earth is lat, and they don’t deserve to be quoted without explain- ing that this is an, er, outlying view, and the same goes for a crackpot who has argued that climate change is a Chinese-made hoax, who has called for barring Muslims and who has said that he will build a border wall and that Mexico will pay for it. We owe it to our readers to signal when we’re writing about a crackpot. Even if he’s a presidential candidate. No — especially when he’s a presidential candidate. There frankly has been a degree of unreality to some of the cam- paign discussion: Partly because Hillary Clinton’s narrative is one of a slippery, dishonest candidate, the discussion disproportionately revolves around that theme. Yes, Clinton has been disingenuous and legalistic in her explanations of emails. Meanwhile, Trump is a mythomaniac who appears to have systematically cheated customers of Trump University. Clinton’s inances are a mineield, which we know because she has released 39 years of tax returns; Trump would be the irst major party nominee since Ford not to release his tax return (even Ford released a tax summary). And every serious analyst knows that Trump is telling a whop- per when he gleefully promises to build a $25 billion wall that Mexico will pay for. Then there’s the question of foundations. Yes, Clinton created conlicts of interest with the family foundation and didn’t fully disclose donors as promised. But the Trump Foundation lat out broke the law by making a political contribution (which may have been a bribe to avoid an investigation, but that’s another story). It’s also worth avoiding moral equivalence about the work of the two foundations: The Clinton Foundation saves lives around the world from AIDS and malnutrition, while the Trump Foundation used its resources to buy — yes! — a large painting of Trump, as a gift for Trump (that may violate IRS rules as well). The latest dust-up has been health care. Neither candidate has been very open about health, but Clinton has produced much more detailed medical records than Trump, and an actuarial irm told The Washington Post Fact Checker that Clinton has a 5.9 percent chance of dying by the end of a second term in ofice, while Trump would have a 8.4 percent chance. So I wonder if journalistic efforts at fairness don’t risk normalizing Trump, without fully acknowledging what an abnormal candidate he is. Historically we in the news media have sometimes fallen into the traps of glib narratives or false equiva- lencies, and we should try hard to ensure that doesn’t happen again. We should be guard dogs, not lap dogs, and when the public sees Trump as more honest than Clinton, something has gone wrong. For my part, I’ve never met a national politician as ill informed, as deceptive, as evasive and as vacuous as Trump. He’s not normal. And somehow that is what our barks need to convey. The uses of patriotism amid a crisis of solidarity By DAVID BROOKS New York Times News Service T his column is directed at all the high school football players around the country who are pulling a Kaepernick — kneeling during their pregame national anthems to protest systemic racism. I’m going to try to convince you that what you’re doing is extremely counterproductive. When Europeans irst settled this continent they had two big thoughts. The irst was that God had called them to create a good and just society on this continent. The second was that they were screwing it up. The early settlers put intense moral pressure on themselves. They illed the air with angry jeremiads about how badly things were going and how much they needed to change. This harsh self-criticism was the mainstream voice that deined American civilization. As the historian Perry Miller wrote, “Under the guise of this mounting wail of sinfulness, this incessant and never successful cry for repentance, the Puritans launched themselves upon the process of Americanization.” By 1776, this fusion of radical hope and radical self-criticism had become the country’s civic religion. This civic religion was based on a moral premise — that all men are created equal — and pointed toward a vision of a promised land — a place where your family or country of origin would have no bearing on your opportunities. Over the centuries this civic reli- gion ired a fervent desire for change. Every signiicant American reform movement was shaped by it. Abraham Lincoln wrote, “If ever I feel the soul within me elevate and expand to those dimensions not entirely unworthy of its almighty Architect, it is when I con- template the cause of my country.” Martin Luther King Jr. sang the national anthem before his “I Have a Dream” speech and then quoted the Declaration of Independence within it. This American creed gave people a sense of purpose and a high ideal to live up to. It bonded them together. Whatever their other identities — Irish- American, Jewish American, African- American — they were still part of the same story. Over the years, America’s civic reli- gion was nurtured the way all religions are nurtured: by sharing moments of reverence. Americans performed the same rituals on Thanksgiving and July 4; they sang the national anthem and said the Pledge in unison; they listened to the same speeches on national occasions and argued out the great controversies of our history. All of this evangelizing had a big effect. As late as 2003, Americans were the most patriotic people on earth, according to the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center. Recently, the civic religion has been under assault. Many schools no longer teach American history, so students never learn the facts and tenets of their creed. A globalist mentality teaches students they are citizens of the world rather than citizens of America. Critics like Ta-Nehisi Coates have arisen, arguing that the American real- ity is so far from the American creed as to negate the value of the whole thing. The multiculturalist mindset values racial, gender and ethnic identities and regards national identities as reaction- ary and exclusive. There’s been a sharp decline in American patriotism. Today, only 52 percent of Americans are “extremely proud” of their country, a historical low. Among those 18 to 29, only 34 percent are extremely proud. Americans know less about their history and creed and are less likely to be fervent believers in it. Sitting out the anthem takes place in the context of looming post-na- tionalism. When we sing the national anthem, we’re not commenting on the state of America. We’re fortifying our foundational creed. We’re expressing gratitude for our ancestors and what they left us. We’re expressing commit- ment to the nation’s ideals, which we have not yet fulilled. If we don’t transmit that creed through shared displays of reverence we will have lost the idea system that has always motivated reform. We will lose the sense that we’re all in this together. We’ll lose the sense of shared loyalty to ideas bigger and more tran- scendent than our own short lives. If these common rituals are insulted, other people won’t be moti- vated to right your injustices because they’ll be less likely to feel that you are part of their story. People will become strangers to one another and will inter- act in cold instrumentalist terms. You will strengthen Donald Trump’s ethnic nationalism, which erects barriers between Americans and which is the dark opposite of America’s traditional universal nationalism. I hear you when you say you are unhappy with the way things are going in America. But the answer to what’s wrong in America is America — the aspirations passed down generation after generation and sung in unison week by week. We have a crisis of solidarity. That makes it hard to solve every other problem we have. When you stand and sing the national anthem, you are building a little solidarity, and you’re singing a radical song about a radical place.
