OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, JANUARY 5, 2017
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
There’s still a
good case for
youth facilities
roposed closures of the North Coast Youth Correctional
Facility in Warrenton and the Naselle Youth Camp in
Pacific County, Washington, are coincidental in a sense,
but represent some similar flaws in thinking in the state capitals of
Oregon and Washington.
It is safe to surmise there was no coordination between officials
in Salem and Olympia to ax these facilities aimed at rehabilita-
tion of young offenders, even though officials in the two states do
attend many of the same regional meetings and share some of the
same philosophies.
In both states, the good news is that there has been a decline in
juvenile and young adult incarceration. An improving economy in
recent years, changes in patterns of drug use and gang activity, and
other factors all have combined to create good trends that diminish
the need for incarcerating residents in the their teens and 20s.
P
Young correction still needed
There is, however, a continuing need for strong intervention
in the lives of some young people. Breaking ingrained misbehav-
ior and destructive ties with bad influences sometimes requires
removing a young lawbreaker from the setting where they went
astray. Some will continue being a danger to themselves and oth-
ers so long as they remain immersed in the families and neighbor-
hoods that landed them in trouble in the first place. Positive think-
ing and social work aren’t always enough.
Intensive counseling in labor-intensive facilities like those
in Clatsop and Pacific counties often proves effective in break-
ing these bad patterns. Both the North Coast Youth Correctional
Facility and the Naselle Youth Camp have impressive records of
succeeding in getting young people their high school diplomas
and GEDs, a vital step toward mainstream employment and suc-
cessful lives. Both facilities have been effective in helping many
overcome drug and alcohol dependency. Though not all remain
sober, these treatment options at least expose young offenders to
the possibility that they may someday be able and willing to deal
with addictive behaviors.
Effective therapies
Their remoteness from the population centers of the Interstate
5 corridor is said by agencies to be a handicap when state offi-
cials have argued for closure, but evidence clearly suggests there
is much to be gained by lifting novice criminals out of the urban
setting. Though far from being a “summer camp,” Naselle Youth
Camp is especially good at showing intercity youth a world of
nature that few might otherwise experience. Its long partnership
with the Washington Department of Natural Resources has given
scores of young men their first time in the Northwest woods, con-
tributing to society by helping fight wildfires, restoring habitat and
other worthwhile hard work.
It is impossible to know whether agency administrators and
state politicians sincerely believe these youth facilities have lost
their reasons for existence, or whether the arguments they make
for closure are merely pretexts for spending less on vulnerable
young residents. Legislators in both states should deeply inquire
into the matter.
Political pawns
There can be little doubt, however, that beyond arguments con-
cerning the functional need for rural-based rehabilitation institu-
tions, state agencies are increasingly “circling their wagons” in
Salem and Portland and Olympia and Seattle — protecting urban
staff and spending at the expense of less-populous and -power-
ful rural counties. Where there once was a strategy of spread-
ing state facilities and the economic benefits associated with them
throughout counties, powerful bureaucracies now appear more
intent on preserving headquarters staffing and convenience. The
North Coast Youth Correctional Facility was targeted for closure
by Oregon officials in 2003, but was reopened later the same year,
while Washington’s Juvenile Justice Administration has also been
overtly striving to eliminate Naselle Youth Camp for more than a
decade.
State facilities obviously must make sense in their own right,
but these closures are stabs in the hearts of fragile small-town
economies. Local economic needs shouldn’t ever be the sole
driver of state facility decisions, but here in Naselle Youth Camp
we are speaking about one of the top five employers in a chron-
ically depressed county, a facility that functions well. Its clo-
sure would threaten the viability of Naselle-Grays River Valley
School District, which oversees NYC’s separate high school. In
Warrenton, there are 45 full-time equivalent jobs connected with
the North Coast facility. All this must be taken into consideration.
It is time to end threatening the Warrenton and Naselle facili-
ties over and over again. They make sense and should cease being
used as political pawns.
Trump’s bad example for the House
By FRANK BRUNI
New York Times News Service
D
onald Trump rightly repri-
manded House Republicans
on Tuesday for their move to
disembowel the Office of Congres-
sional Ethics, but
let’s not be duped
or dumb. This was
like a crackhead dad
fuming at his kids
for smoking a little
weed.
Their conduct hardly measured up
to his, which obviously encouraged it.
When they look at him, here’s what
they see: a presidential candidate who
broke with decades of precedent by
refusing to release his tax returns and
thus shine a light on his conflicts of
interest. A president-elect who has
yet to spell out how he would elimi-
nate those conflicts — and who has,
instead, repeatedly reminded reporters
and voters that he’s under no explicit
legal obligation to eliminate them at
all. A plutocrat whose children have
toggled back and forth between his
government activities and his corpo-
rate interests, raising questions about
the separation of the two.
Is it any wonder that House
Republicans felt OK about trying to
slip free of some of their own ethi-
cal shackles, no matter how ugly the
optics?
Finger wagging
The story here isn’t what, spe-
cifically, they attempted to do. Nor
is it their abandonment of the plan
once the media gasped and their dear
leader wagged his finger at them.
It’s the tone that Trump has set
and the culture that he’s creating. He
operates with an in-your-face defi-
ance, so these House Republicans
did, too. He puts his own desires and
comfort first, so they reserved the
right to do the same. With more than
a few of his Cabinet picks, he demon-
strated little sense of fidelity to what
he promised voters and even less
concern about appearances. House
Republicans decided to treat them-
selves to a taste of that freedom.
In this instance, they were slapped
down, though I sincerely doubt that
they came away from the confronta-
tion with the feeling that Trump had
higher standards than they imagined.
No, they just realized that he’s even
more hypocritical and inconstant than
they expected.
The Office of Congressional Eth-
ics is no model operation. Democrats
as well as Republicans have chafed
at what some of them see as its occa-
sional overzealousness and disregard
for due process. Had House Republi-
cans called for a bipartisan and trans-
parent review of its role and tactics,
they might not have encountered all
that much resistance.
But that’s not what happened.
In a secretive closed-door meeting
late Monday, before the first official
day of the new Congress, the House
Republican Conference voted to
diminish the office’s power and inde-
pendence. This was dark-of-night,
no-prying-eyes stuff, done over the
objections of Paul Ryan, the House
speaker, who could sense how disas-
trously it would play in the media.
After it played precisely that disas-
trously, Trump sent out two tweets
Tuesday morning asking why House
Republicans would take aim at the
ethics office when there was so much
other important work to do. House
Republicans then dropped the plan.
Chaos to come
The whole mess said a whole
lot about the chaotic days to come.
Although Ryan on Tuesday was
re-elected to his leadership post, his
grip on his caucus isn’t exactly a firm
one. And the wires between Trump
and House Republicans are evidently
crossed.
For that matter, the wires between
Trump and Kellyanne Conway are as
well: Mere hours before he tweeted
his disapproval of what the Repub-
licans were doing, she appeared
on “Good Morning America” and
defended their actions as part of the
“mandate” — her word, or rather hal-
lucination — that they and Trump
had received from voters to shake
things up.
I suppose that gutting the eth-
ics office would indeed qualify as
a shake-up. But so would declaring
Thursdays in the Senate to be cloth-
ing-optional or having the Rock-
ettes perform during the State of the
Union. Not all shake-ups are created
equal.
And turning “mandate” into a
mantra, which is a favorite Repub-
lican tactic right now, doesn’t turn it
into a truth. There’s no mandate here,
not when Hillary Clinton received
roughly 3 million more votes than
Trump did. Not when there are lin-
gering questions about meddling that
may have worked in Trump’s favor.
Not when the Republicans’ majorities
in the Senate and House just shrank.
Not when their edge in the House
owes more to gerrymandering than
to any tidal wave of demonstrable
enthusiasm for their agenda.
I’m not disputing the election
results or Republicans’ right — heck,
their obligation — to seize the reins
of leadership. I’m arguing against the
shamelessness of what they just tried
to do with the ethics office.
And I’m pleading that Trump stop
behaving in a way that sets the stage
for it. The new Congress — the new
Washington — will be no more or
less swampy than its new top gator.
Best that he wash away his own
muck.
Tech from hands to heads to hearts
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
New York Times News Service
S
oftware has started writ-
ing poetry, sports stories and
business news. IBM’s Wat-
son is co-writing pop hits. Uber has
begun deploying
self-driving taxis
on real city streets
and, last month,
Amazon delivered
its first package
by drone to a cus-
tomer in rural England.
Add it all up and you quickly
realize that Donald Trump’s election
isn’t the only thing disrupting soci-
ety today. The far more profound
disruption is happening in the work-
place and in the economy at large,
as the relentless march of technol-
ogy has brought us to a point where
machines and software are not just
outworking us but starting to out-
think us in more and more realms.
To reflect on this rapid change, I
sat down with my teacher and friend
Dov Seidman, CEO of LRN, which
advises companies on leadership
and how to build ethical cultures,
for his take.
“What we are experiencing today
bears striking similarities in size and
implications to the scientific revolu-
tion that began in the 16th century,”
said Seidman. “The discoveries
of Copernicus and Galileo, which
spurred that scientific revolution,
challenged our whole understand-
ing of the world around and beyond
us — and forced us as humans to
rethink our place within it.”
Once scientific methods became
enshrined, we used science and
reason to navigate our way for-
ward, he added, so much so that
“the French philosopher René Des-
cartes crystallized this age of rea-
son in one phrase: ‘I think, there-
fore I am.’” Descartes’ point, said
Seidman, “was that it was our abil-
ity to ‘think’ that most distinguished
humans from all other animals on
earth.”
Tech revolution
The technological revolution of
the 21st century is as consequen-
tial as the scientific revolution,
argued Seidman, and it is “forc-
ing us to answer a most profound
question — one we’ve never had to
ask before: ‘What does it mean to
be human in the age of intelligent
machines?’”
In short: If machines can com-
pete with people in thinking, what
makes us humans unique? And what
will enable us to continue to cre-
ate social and economic value? The
answer, said Seidman, is the one
thing machines will never have: “a
heart.”
“It will be all the things that
the heart can do,” he explained.
“Humans can love, they can have
compassion, they can dream. While
humans can act from fear and anger,
and be harmful, at their most ele-
vated, they can inspire and be virtu-
ous. And while machines can reli-
ably interoperate, humans, uniquely,
can build deep relationships of
trust.”
Therefore, Seidman added, our
highest self-conception needs to
be redefined from “I think, there-
fore I am” to “I care, therefore I am;
I hope, therefore I am; I imagine,
therefore I am. I am ethical, there-
fore I am. I have a purpose, there-
fore I am. I pause and reflect, there-
fore I am.”
We will still need manual labor,
and people will continue working
with machines to do extraordinary
things. Seidman is simply arguing
that the tech revolution will force
humans to create more value with
hearts and between hearts. I agree.
When machines and software con-
trol more and more of our lives,
people will seek out more human-
to-human connections — all the
things you can’t download but have
to upload the old-fashioned way,
one human to another.
Seidman reminded me of a Tal-
mudic adage: “What comes from
the heart, enters the heart.” Which is
why even jobs that still have a large
technical component will benefit
from more heart. I call these STEM-
pathy jobs — jobs that combine
STEM (science, technology, engi-
neering, math) skills with human
empathy, like the doctor who can
extract the besta diagnosis from
IBM’s Watson on cancer and then
best relate it to a patient.
It’s no surprise that the French
government began requiring French
companies on Jan. 1 to guarantee
their employees a “right to discon-
nect” from technology — when they
are not at work — trying to combat
the “always on” work culture.
Leaders, businesses and commu-
nities will still leverage technology
to gain advantage, but those that put
human connection at the center of
everything they do — and how they
do it — will be the enduring win-
ners, insisted Seidman: “Machines
can be programmed to do the next
thing right. But only humans can do
the next right thing.”