OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 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
Rural communities
should ensure
contraceptive care
T
he good news: Teen pregnancies are down throughout
the U.S. and Oregon. The not-so-good news: Rural areas
like ours account for a disproportionate share of them
due to less access to reproductive-planning services.
Babies are good and never to be regretted. But as eloquently
noted by Alexa Knutsen, a 30-year-old new mom and lead
teacher at the alternative education program at Gray School in
Astoria, “You know that when you look at your child, you’re
like, this is life-changing and I don’t regret this. But, ‘Man
this was hard, and I don’t know if I was ready for that at that
moment.’ And I’ve had my students say as much.”
A baby and the pregnancy leading up to one are among the
most profound changes in the life of a woman, hopefully one
in which the prospective father and other family members are
fully and supportively engaged. It’s impossible to overstate
what an impact a baby has on a parent’s emotions, time and
finances. The challenges can be far magnified if the mother is
a teenager, with schooling and other prerequisites of adulthood
still unfinished.
In Clatsop County, the Oregon Health Authority estimates
the teen birth rate at 30 per 1,000 women 15 to 19, higher than
the statewide rate of 25.1 and considerably more than in some
nearby more-urban counties. The rate in Washington County,
for example, is 19.5. The nationwide rate was 22.3 in 2015,
down from 41.5 in 2007.
More effective use of contraceptives and higher-quality sex
education are credited for the decline.
Clatsop County has only one family planning clinic — at
the county building in Astoria. Elsewhere in the county, lack of
convenient contraceptive care is a serious issue. On a positive
note, local high schools appear to recognize the issue, and are
taking or planning steps to help address the need to deliver bet-
ter information to teens.
In a time of increasing scarcity of public funds, potential
cuts in the Affordable Care Act and congressional attacks on
Planned Parenthood, it’s vital for all rural communities to act
in the best interests of young people by ensuring the availabil-
ity of contraceptive education and care.
All the care in the world is no substitute for responsible
behavior. But we owe it to our kids and communities to make
sure babies and teens get the best possible start in life.
Class-size bill isn’t a
cure for the problem
A
bill that’s been introduced in the Oregon Legislature that
originated with the chairwoman of the House Education
Committee seeks to make class size a mandatory part of
collective bargaining with teachers.
While every Oregonian should be concerned about our children
and the relationship of class size to quality education, we think it’s
a bad idea because class size is a symptom of a much larger prob-
lem which this bill doesn’t address. The full Education Committee
should dismiss it when it comes to a vote.
The bill was proposed by Rep. Margaret Doherty, D-Tigard,
who is a former contract negotiator for the Oregon Education
Association, which represents teachers. Class sizes are not cur-
rently negotiated as part of working conditions covered by collec-
tive bargaining.
Doherty’s bill comes at a time when the state is generating
record revenue but yet still faces a $1.8 billion shortfall because
of legacy costs like the Public Employees Retirement System and
Medicaid cutbacks. The full Legislature is struggling to provide
even close to adequate, sustainable funding for existing faculty
sizes, which would need to increase to lower class sizes. As Chuck
Bennett of the Confederation of School Administrators said during
a committee hearing last week, “There is no debate on class size;
smaller classes are better for kids. … The problem is the fund-
ing is just not there for the level of personnel we believe would be
required.”
Bennett also told the committee the requirement would give
teachers’ unions another bargaining chip without giving school
officials’ resources to meet their demands. “You’ve got a bucket of
demands; I’ve got a bucket of nothing,” Bennett said.
While we will always argue for lower class sizes, better teach-
ing conditions and higher quality eduction, Bennett is right.
Legislators should avoid bills like this that can create mandates and
don’t do anything to address the real causes that determine class
size. They instead should focus their efforts on finding a cure for
the overall problem rather than simply trying to treat a symptom.
Trump and the ‘Madman Theory’
AP Photo/Alex Brandon
President Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference Friday in Maryland.
By CHARLES
KRAUTHAMMER
Washington Post Writers Group
W
ASHINGTON — At the
heart of Donald Trump’s
foreign policy team lies
a glaring contradiction. On the one
hand, it is com-
posed of men of
experience, judg-
ment and tradition-
alism. Meaning,
they are all very
much within the
parameters of mainstream American
internationalism as practiced since
1945. Practically every member
of the team — the heads of State,
Homeland Security, the CIA, and
most especially Defense Secretary
James Mattis and national security
adviser H.R. McMaster — could
fit in a Cabinet put together by, say,
Hillary Clinton.
The commander in chief, on
the other hand, is quite the oppo-
site — inexperienced, untraditional,
unbounded. His pronouncements
on everything from the “one China”
policy to the two-state (Arab-Is-
raeli) solution, from NATO obsoles-
cence to the ravages of free trade,
continue to confound and, as we say
today, disrupt.
The obvious question is: Can
this arrangement possibly work?
The answer thus far, surprisingly, is:
perhaps.
The sample size is tiny but take,
for example, the German excursion.
Trump dispatched his grown-ups —
Vice President Pence, Defense Sec-
retary Mattis, Secretary of Home-
land Security John Kelly and
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson —
to various international confabs in
Germany to reassure allies with the
usual pieties about America’s com-
mitment to European security. They
did drop a few hints to Trump’s
loud complaints about allied para-
sitism, in particular shirking their
share of the defense burden.
Within days, Germany
announced a 20,000-man expansion
of its military. Smaller European
countries are likely to take note of
the new setup. It’s classic good-cop,
bad-cop: The secretaries represent
foreign policy continuity but their
boss preaches America First. Mes-
sage: Shape up.
John Hannah of the Foundation
for Defense of Democracies sug-
gests that the push-pull effect might
work on foes as well as friends. Last
Saturday, China announced a cut-
off of all coal imports from North
Korea for the rest of 2017. Con-
stituting more than one-third of
all North Korean exports, this is a
major blow to its economy.
Alas, there
is also a
worst-case
scenario. It
needs no
elaboration.
True, part of the reason could
be Chinese ire at the brazen assas-
sination of Kim Jong Un’s half-
brother, who had been under Chi-
nese protection. Nonetheless, the
boycott was declared just days after
a provocative North Korean missile
launch — and shortly into the term
of a new American president who
has shown that he can be erratic
and quite disdainful of Chinese
sensibilities.
His wavering on the “one China”
policy took Beijing by surprise.
Trump also strongly denounced
Chinese expansion in the South
China Sea and conducted an osten-
tatious love-in with Japan’s prime
minister, something guaranteed to
rankle the Chinese. Beijing’s boy-
cott of Pyongyang is many things,
among them a nod to Washington.
This suggests that the peculiar
and discordant makeup of the U.S.
national security team — tradition-
alist lieutenants, disruptive boss —
might reproduce the old Nixonian
“Madman Theory.” That’s when
adversaries tread carefully because
they suspect the U.S. president of
being unpredictable, occasionally
reckless and potentially crazy dan-
gerous. Henry Kissinger, with Nix-
on’s collaboration, tried more than
once to exploit this perception to
pressure adversaries.
Trump’s people have already
shown a delicate touch in dealing
with his bouts of loopiness. Trump
has gone on for years about how we
should have taken Iraq’s oil for our-
selves. Sunday in Baghdad, Mattis
wryly backed off, telling his hosts
that “All of us in America have gen-
erally paid for our gas and oil all
along, and I am sure we will con-
tinue to do so in the future.”
Yet sometimes an off-center
comment can have its uses. Take
Trump’s casual dismissal of a U.S.
commitment to a two-state solution
in the Middle East. The next day,
U.S. policy was brought back in line
by his own U.N. ambassador. But
this diversion might prove salutary.
It’s a message to the Palestinians
that their decades of rejectionism
may not continue to pay off with an
inexorable march toward statehood
— that there may actually be a price
to pay for making no concessions
and simply waiting for the U.S. to
deliver them a Palestinian state.
To be sure, a two-track, two-pol-
icy, two-reality foreign policy is
risky, unsettling and has the poten-
tial to go totally off the rails. This
is not how you would draw it up in
advance. It’s unstable and confus-
ing. But the experience of the first
month suggests that, with prudence
and luck, it can yield the occasional
benefit — that the combination of
radical rhetoric and conventional
policy may induce better behavior
both in friend and foe.
Alas, there is also a worst-case
scenario. It needs no elaboration.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Street parking
nough about politics, for now.
On my frequent walks around
my neighborhood, I have noticed
that on various streets in the area
there are cars parked on both sides
of the roadway.
These avenues were laid out in
the 1940s, for the most part, and
are barely wide enough for today’s
automobiles to negotiate them when
vehicles line both sides. School
buses and other support vehicles
such as garbage trucks are, in some
cases, unable to travel down these
E
streets, yet only one of the five or
six residential avenues in the area
in which I live are posted to indi-
cate parking on only one side of the
street.
I was under the impression
(obviously wrongly) that a builder
was required to establish off-street
parking as part of the requirement
to build a house in the city. In many
cases, homeowners have turned
their garages into studies or libraries
as I have, however, the driveways
still exists, and yet some residents
refuse to use that off-street space to
park, choosing instead to park their
vehicles on the street, thus impeding
traffic flow.
Perhaps it is high time for the
city of Astoria to take a hard look
at these streets, and designate many
more of them “parking one side
only,” if for no other reason, for
possible accessibility of emergency
vehicles, such as ambulances and
fire trucks.
That is what I think; I could be
wrong.
DAVID GRAVES
Astoria