OPINION
6A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 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
OUR VIEW
Budget will show
the need to end
shortsightedness Farewell to the comic in chief
H
ow much does state governmental shortsightedness
cost?
Oregonians will get the answer to that question on
Thursday when Gov. Kate Brown is scheduled to unveil her pro-
posed balanced budget for the state. The budget for the next
biennium comes amid a predicted $1.4 billion deficit. While the
governor hasn’t publicly detailed it, she has strongly hinted the
spending plan will contain deep cuts for state agencies and ser-
vices to make up the gap, which has been a long time in the
making.
After the last legislative session and throughout the campaign
season, Brown and many of the state’s legislators and leaders put
all their eggs in one basket, relying on voters to pass Measure
97, the gross receipts tax on C corporations with more than $25
million in annual revenue. They endorsed the measure as the
way to overcome many of the state’s well-documented money
woes. The fatally flawed tax measure was backed by public
employee unions and was expected to generate $3 billion a year
in annual tax revenue. Voters, however, soundly rejected it.
The unfortunate, but predictable, result of going all in on
Measure 97 instead of looking for other solutions as even a
backup plan is that state leaders are yet again faced with making
what may be excruciating cuts with limited maneuvering ability.
One thing is certain though, the governor and Legislature
must look at both sides of the ledger, to try and boost incoming
revenue and lower outgoing expense. While the state does have
nearly $1 billion in reserves, those reserves are only supposed to
be tapped during a recession, and the state isn’t in one now. New
taxes and those that trickle down will certainly be met with stiff
resistance, as the defeat of Measure 97 illustrated, as will cuts
that affect livelihoods and services. Legislators have to deter-
mine the state’s most urgent priorities in both areas, and hard
choices that they didn’t want to face will have to be made.
Jump in PERS
One issue that must be addressed with vigor is the continu-
ing growth of the unfunded liability of the Public Employees
Retirement System. The program’s liability is now nearly $22
billion and is a root cause of the projected upcoming deficit.
PERS costs to the state’s local governments and school districts
are scheduled to jump by $885 million next year.
Legislators refrained from tackling the problem in their last
session, but it is unavoidable now. Calls for reform are even
coming from those associated with the system itself.
At a recent joint meeting of the Oregon Public Employees
Retirement System board and the citizen panel that oversees
its investments, Rukaiyah Adams, vice chair of the Oregon
Investment Council, appealed to state leaders. “My call to the
Legislature and to the governor is for leadership on this, and I
mean right now,” he said. “This is becoming a moral issue. We
can’t just talk about numbers anymore.”
The chair of the investment council, Katy Durant, followed
up, telling The Oregonian, “We’re beyond crisis. We should have
been addressing this 20 years ago and it’s just been building. It’s
a little bit like a Ponzi scheme. Sooner or later it’s going to catch
up with you.”
Fixing the PERS problem won’t in itself solve all of the
state’s funding issues, but it will certainly make the other prob-
lems more manageable. As Brown’s budget is expected to show,
it’s clear that it’s time to end the shortsightedness and fix the
problems, and PERS should be No. 1 on the list.
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By TIMOTHY EGAN
New York Times News Service
I
miss him already. Miss his
steady rationality, his I-got-this
mien, the eight years without a
hint of personal scandal. And not
to be overlooked,
I miss the wit of
Barack Obama.
No president has
had a better comic
sensibility.
Let’s face it:
We’re going to need to laugh to get
through the presidency of Donald
Trump and the Monster’s Ball of
his administration. Trump can’t tell
a joke, nor can he take one. He was
graceless and unfunny at the Al Smith
dinner last month, getting booed for
his boorishness. And he was petulant
and petty with his tweet after a “Sat-
urday Night Live” skit had him ask-
ing Siri about the Islamic State.
Thankfully, jokes at the expense
of the highest office in the land are
fully protected by the Constitution.
But jokes coming from the occu-
pant of that office are rare, and rarely
funny. Obama is the exception.
Anyone can write a joke. Few can
deliver one. Obama has great timing,
and a sense of self-deprecation honed
over years of making fun of his name
and his ears.
The highlights
Here’s a highlight reel to call
upon during the coming White
House humor drought:
While being interviewed for a
post-presidency job not long ago, an
employer played by Stephen Colbert
was skeptical that Obama had any
useful skills. “I did win the Nobel
Peace Prize,” said the president.
“Oh, what was that for?”
“To be honest, I don’t know,”
Obama said.
You would think that having your
legitimacy challenged would make
you Nixonian dark or Trumpian
enraged. For Obama, the birther non-
sense has given him some of his best
material. So there he was in a video
for the White House Correspondents’
dinner, waiting in line at the depart-
ment of motor vehicles to get a driv-
er’s license.
“You’re going to need a birth cer-
tificate,” says the clerk. Obama pulls
one from his pocket. “It’s real,” he
deadpans. Another video showed
him getting retirement tips from for-
mer House Speaker John Boehner.
Obama looked at the bright side: “I
can wear those mom jeans again.”
Appearing on “Between Two
Ferns,” the mock cable show with
Zach Galifianakis, Obama was
asked, “What’s it like to be the last
black president?” POTUS didn’t
blink. “What’s it like for this to be
the last time you’ll ever talk to a
president?”
Trump sends out angry tweets
demanding apologies, and cyberbul-
lying his many enemies. Obama used
Twitter to comment on an unusual
recipe for guacamole in The New
York Times. “Not buying peas in
the guac,” he wrote, a bipartisan
conclusion.
Abe Lincoln
The secret source of humor is not
joy, Mark Twain said, but sorrow.
And in looking back at the presidents
who could tell a joke, you see people
surrounded by tragedy. Obama may
have found some of his inspiration
from the man who held the union
together at its darkest time, Abraham
Lincoln.
Lincoln’s best-known comic line
came during a debate, when he was
accused of being two-faced. “Hon-
estly, “ he said, “if I were two-faced,
would I be wearing this one?”
Teddy Roosevelt, who lost his
wife and his mother on the same day,
was a buoyant prankster and joke-
teller, and probably the only presi-
dent to skinny dip in the Potomac.
His progressive agenda was often
stymied in the Senate. T.R. returned
the fire. “When they call the roll,”
he said, “the senators do not know
whether to announce present or not
guilty.”
His fifth cousin, Franklin Roo-
sevelt, loved a good joke, and not
just while mixing drinks during his
regular White House cocktail hour.
At the depth of the Great Depres-
sion, in signing legislation that loos-
ened the worst grip of Prohibition, he
said, “this would be a good time for
a beer.”
Harry Truman gave us the line
about how to find a friend in Wash-
ington — “Get a dog.” John F. Ken-
nedy parried concern about his
wealthy father buying the elec-
tion with a telegram he read for the
press: “Dear Jack: don’t buy a sin-
gle vote more than is necessary. I’ll
be damned if I’m going to pay for a
landslide. Love, Dad.”
Ronald Reagan, who learned to
glide through public life on a carpet
of soft humor, had this famous quip
to his wife after being shot: “Honey,
I forgot to duck.”
Obama’s humor is droll, with a
bite. He noted that Dick Cheney said
he was the worst president of his life-
time. “Which is interesting, because I
think Dick Cheney is the worst presi-
dent of my lifetime.”
The 44th president is leaving
office with soaring approval ratings,
or as he put it: “The last time I was
this high, I was trying to decide my
major.”
In Greece last week, after tour-
ing the timeless monuments of an
ancient civilization, Obama was pes-
tered with questions about the fate
of the planet when he hands the
office over to Trump. He offered
some reassuring words, echoing Yogi
Berra. “I always say that the only
thing that is the end of world is the
end of the world.”
Why corruption matters in the White House
By PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times News Service
R
emember all the news
reports suggesting, with-
out evidence, that the Clin-
ton Foundation’s fundraising cre-
ated conflicts of
interest? Well, now
the man who ben-
efited from all that
innuendo is on his
way to the White
House. And he’s
already giving us an object lesson in
what real conflicts of interest look
like, as authoritarian governments
around the world shower favors on
his business empire.
Of course, Donald Trump could
be rejecting these favors and sepa-
rating himself and his family from
his hotels and so on. But he isn’t.
In fact, he’s openly using his posi-
tion to drum up business. And his
early appointments suggest that he
won’t be the only player using polit-
ical power to build personal wealth.
America has just entered an era of
unprecedented corruption at the top.
The question you need to ask is
why this matters. Hint: It’s not the
money, it’s the incentives.
We could be talking about a lot
of money — think billions, not mil-
lions, to Trump alone. But America
is a rich country, whose government
spends more than $4 trillion a year,
so even large-scale looting amounts
to rounding error. What’s important
is not the money that sticks to the
fingers of the inner circle, but what
they do to get that money, and the
bad policy that results.
Normally, policy reflects some
combination of practicality — what
works? — and ideology — what fits
my preconceptions? And our usual
complaint is that ideology all too
often overrules the evidence.
Monetizing policies
But now we’re going to see a
third factor powerfully at work:
What policies can officials, includ-
ing the man at the top, personally
monetize? And the effect will be
disastrous.
Let’s start relatively small, with
the choice of Betsy DeVos as edu-
cation secretary. DeVos has some
obvious affinities with Trump: Her
husband is an heir to the fortune cre-
ated by Amway, a company that has
been accused of being a fraudulent
scheme and paid $150 million to
settle a class-action suit. But what’s
really striking is her signature issue,
school vouchers, in which parents
are given money rather than having
their children get a public education.
At this point there’s a lot of evi-
dence on how well school vouch-
ers actually work, and it’s basically
damning. For example, Louisiana’s
extensive voucher plan unambigu-
ously reduced student achievement.
But voucher advocates won’t take
no for an answer. It’s also true that
vouchers might find their way to
for-profit educational institutions.
And the track record of for-profit
education is terrible; the Obama
administration has been cracking
down on the scams that infest the
industry. But things will be differ-
ent now: For-profit education stocks
soared after the election. Two, three,
many Trump Universities!
Moving on, I’ve already writ-
ten about the Trump infrastructure
plan, which for no obvious reason
involves widespread privatization
of public assets. No obvious reason,
that is, except the huge opportuni-
ties for cronyism and profiteering.
What’s truly scary is the poten-
tial impact of corruption on foreign
policy. Again, foreign governments
are already trying to buy influence
by adding to Trump’s wealth, and he
is welcoming their efforts.
In case you’re wondering, yes,
this is illegal, in fact unconstitu-
tional, a clear violation of the emol-
uments clause. But who’s going to
enforce the Constitution? Republi-
cans in Congress? Don’t be silly.
Think about the tilt this de facto
bribery will give to U.S. policy.
What kind of regime can buy influ-
ence by enriching the president and
his friends? The answer is, only a
government that doesn’t adhere to
the rule of law.
Think about it: Could Britain or
Canada curry favor with the incom-
ing administration by waiving reg-
ulations to promote Trump golf
courses? No — those nations have
free presses, independent courts and
rules designed to prevent exactly
that kind of improper behavior. But,
someplace like Vladimir Putin’s
Russia can easily funnel vast sums
to the man at the top in return for,
say, the withdrawal of security guar-
antees for the Baltic states.
One would like to hope that
national security officials are
explaining to Trump just how
destructive it would be to let busi-
ness considerations drive foreign
policy. But reports say that Trump
has barely met with those officials,
refusing to get the briefings that are
normal for a president-elect.
So how bad will the effects of
Trump-era corruption be? The best
guess is, worse than you can possi-
bly imagine.