OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, MARCH 9, 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
Trump budget cuts
to Coast Guard and
NOAA raise alarms
N
ew presidential administrations inevitably have different
spending priorities. Particularly when the White House
switches political parties, such reexaminations are
expected and encouraged. Call it what you will — draining the
swamp, sweeping out the cobwebs — but citizens understand the
advisability of getting fresh eyes into leadership positions.
At the state level, it can be observed that decades of one-party
control of governors’ offices can lead to entrenched patterns of
decision-making and a failure to rigorously challenges assump-
tions. Here in the Pacific Northwest, the fact Democrats have held
Oregon’s governorship since January 1987 and Washington’s since
January 1985 comes with a long-term institutional mindset that not
all find to their liking. If nothing else, electing a Republican would
give voters a baseline for comparing different approaches.
Priorities of the Donald Trump administration are starting to
take shape, upending not just eight years of agenda-setting by a
Democratic White House, but also challenging long-held priori-
ties espoused by a majority in Congress. Some of these upcom-
ing choices will have direct consequences in our area. It behooves
us to pay close attention. Beyond revisions in national healthcare
laws — a subject that will dominate political debates for months
or years to come — potential cuts to the U.S. Coast Guard, the
National Weather Service and federal fisheries programs deserve
close scrutiny in a place that is closely intertwined in all three.
‘Great Wall’
Emphasizing that nothing is settled and Congress has ulti-
mate control over spending, cuts to the Coast Guard are worrying.
Columbia River communities rely on the Coast Guard in ways
well beyond its most obvious maritime safety, search and rescue
roles. Not least, Sector Columbia River is a massive part of our
economy — protecting 420 miles of coast, 465 miles of inland riv-
ers and 33 ports with an active-duty workforce of 500, plus 105
reserve, 29 civilian and 890 volunteer Auxiliary personnel.
To free money for his “Great Wall,” Trump is eying a 14 per-
cent cut in Coast Guard spending, subtracting $1.3 billion from its
2017-18 budget. A considerable percentage of these cuts would
come from canceling a $500 million contract for a ninth National
Security Cutter — an expense others have also questioned. But
other Coast Guard budget cuts detailed in a plan obtained by the
Washington Post would impact drug-interdiction patrols and other
national security and law enforcement activities in which our local
Coast Guard plays an integral part.
Trump’s reported 17 percent cut to the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration — of which the National Weather
Service is a part — would have a large impact on several pro-
grams of intense local interest.
Don’t hide
“I am extremely concerned about
the proposed elimination of the Pacific
behind
Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund, the
reformist
Ocean Acidification Program, the
NOAA estuary research program,
rhetoric
the tsunami preparedness grant fund-
while
ing, the Sea Grant program, and other
severe cuts,” U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, killing or
D-Washington, said. We ought to all
wounding
share her concerns on these matters.
federal
agencies
we greatly
rely on.
Fired up
Writing for Seattle PI.com, Joel
Connelly provides valuable context for
how devastating these cuts would be,
and suggests that our region’s congres-
sional delegation should be fired up to resist them.
“The Trump administration is planning a tsunami of budget cuts
to the federal government’s chief climate science agency, gutting
Northwest programs from Pacific Coast salmon recovery to ocean
weather buoys, to preparation for tsunamis,” Connelly reported.
Axing the Sea Grant program — long exemplified in our area
by the esteemed Jim Bergeron — would subtract millions from
rural coastal economies, while cutting acidification work would
undercut the vital shellfish and crab industries on the Oregon and
Washington coast.
Connelly points out both U.S. House members represent-
ing the Washington Coast — Republican Rep. Jaime Herrera
Beutler and Democratic Rep. Derek Kilmer — serve on the House
Appropriations Committee. U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon,
and U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, serve on the U.S.
Senate’s spending panel. All can and must fight to preserve the
budgets of agencies vital to our coast.
Citizens can help by contacting members of Congress and the
White House and letting them know we support this spending that
is so essential to our safety and economic wellbeing.
Yes, by all means drain the swamp. But don’t hide behind
reformist rhetoric while killing or wounding federal agencies we
greatly rely on.
Ben Carson’s gray matter
By FRANK BRUNI
New York Times News Service
I
need Ben Carson in my head.
In my hippocampus, to be
exact.
According to Carson, the human
brain stores a per-
fect, indelible
record of every-
thing that it has
seen, heard and
done, and if he
just drilled a hole
through my skull and planted elec-
trodes in the right region, bingo! I’d
have access to the whole wondrous
trove.
Drill, baby, drill. I need the
access. As things stand now, I
lose 45 minutes every week to the
retrieval of forgotten passwords, and
I recently got three-quarters of the
way through a mystery before real-
izing that I knew whodunit, how he
dun it and why he dun it. I’d already
read the book.
Carson, our brand-new hous-
ing secretary, made an introductory,
supposedly inspirational speech to
federal employees this week, and
while this kind of thing normally
doesn’t wind up in the news, there’s
nothing normal about Carson.
During the speech, he went on
the tangent about the brain that I just
described, and while, granted, he’s
a renowned neurosurgeon and I’m
an expert on little more than semi-
colons, I do question his assertion
that with proper cerebral stimula-
tion, someone can “recite back to
you verbatim a book they read 60
years ago.” Maybe “Green Eggs and
Ham.” But “The Mill on the Floss”?
Several of Carson’s fellow
brain experts scoffed at this claim,
although there was much louder
scoffing at a subsequent stretch of
his remarks that described Amer-
ica as a magnet for dreamers who
arrived with “all of their earthly
belongings in their two hands, not
knowing what this country held for
them.”
He continued:
“There were other immigrants
who came here in the bottom of
slave ships, worked even longer,
even harder, for less. But they too
had a dream that one day their sons,
daughters, grandsons, granddaugh-
ters, great-grandsons, great-grand-
daughters, might pursue prosperity
and happiness in this land.”
Sometimes Twitter goes ber-
serk because it’s Twitter, other times
because it should. “Their dream?”
tweeted movie director Ava DuVer-
nay. “Not be kidnapped, tortured,
raped.”
I was transfixed by “even longer,
even harder, for less.” Not to be a
stickler, but that doesn’t quite cover
AP Photo/Susan Walsh
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson speaks to
HUD employees in Washington, D.C., on Monday.
the distance between the sweatshop
and the plantation.
On ABC’s talk show “The
View,” Whoopi Goldberg recalled
previous odd statements by Carson,
noting that “the man who thought
the pyramids were built for grain
silos” and who “called the Big Bang
theory ridiculous” was back with “a
brand-new epic.”
He’s a riveting
jumble and
an important
reminder that
brilliance and
competence
along one axis
hardly ensures
brilliance
or even
coherence
along another.
“Were the slaves really think-
ing about the American dream?”
she asked. “No, because they were
thinking, ‘What the hell just hap-
pened?’” It’s a thought I myself
have had after listening to Carson.
Carson is the only Afri-
can-American in Trump’s Cabinet,
and he’s a great lesson — for the
left as well as the right — that sensi-
tivity is a function of sensibility, not
merely of complexion or member-
ship in a given identity group.
A black person can bumble into
racially hurtful comments. A female
executive can turn a blind eye to
sexism in the ranks below her. A
gay person can ignore or indulge
homophobia. Diversity increases the
odds that an organization sees the
world more acutely, accurately and
empathetically. But it’s not the end
of the effort, and it’s no guarantee.
Carson rose from hardship to
acclaim and riches. He performed
awe-inspiring surgeries. He also
suggested that prison causes homo-
sexuality, which he separately lik-
ened to bestiality, and that Planned
Parenthood aimed, through abor-
tions, to limit the black population.
He compared Obamacare to slavery.
He’s a riveting jumble and an
important reminder that brilliance
and competence along one axis
hardly ensures brilliance or even
coherence along another. Although
we like to tag people as geniuses or
fools — it’s a stark, easy taxonomy
— they’re more complicated and
compartmentalized than that.
Carson is enraptured by what
people can be made to remember.
I’m fascinated by what they choose
to forget. Just before Trump nom-
inated Carson to be housing secre-
tary, one of Carson’s principal cam-
paign advisers said that the good
doctor knew far too little about the
federal government to work in it.
Trump decided to pay that no heed.
During the campaign, Trump
said that incidents of aggression in
Carson’s youth revealed a “patho-
logical temper” and lumped him
together with pedophiles, explain-
ing: “You don’t cure a child
molester. There’s no cure for it.
Pathological — there’s no cure for
that.”
But Carson shrugged that off
when Trump came around with
a glitzy job offer. It was all water
under the hippocampus.
In his speech Monday, Carson
said, “There is nothing in this uni-
verse that even begins to compare
with the human brain and what it is
capable of.” He got that much right,
and how.
WHERE TO WRITE
• U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici
(D): 2338 Rayburn HOB, Washing-
ton, D.C., 20515. Phone: 202- 225-
0855. Fax 202-225-9497. District
office: 12725 SW Millikan Way,
Suite 220, Beaverton, OR 97005.
Phone: 503-469-6010. Fax 503-326-
5066. Web: bonamici.house. gov/
• U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D): 313
Hart Senate Office Building, Wash-
ington, D.C. 20510. Phone: 202-224-
3753. Web: www.merkley.senate.gov
• U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D):
221 Dirksen Senate Office Building,
Washington, D.C., 20510. Phone:
202-224-5244. Web: www.wyden.
senate.gov
• State Rep. Brad Witt (D):
State Capitol, 900 Court Street N.E.,
H-373, Salem, OR 97301. Phone:
503-986-1431. Web: www.leg.state.
or.us/witt/ Email: rep.bradwitt@
state.or.us
• State Rep. Deborah Boone (D):
900 Court St. N.E., H-481, Salem,
OR 97301. Phone: 503-986-1432.
Email: rep.deborah boone@state.
or.us District office: P.O. Box 928,
Cannon Beach, OR 97110. Phone:
503-986-1432. Web: www.leg.state.
or.us/ boone/
• State Sen. Betsy Johnson (D):
State Capitol, 900 Court St. N.E.,
S-314, Salem, OR 97301. Telephone:
503-986-1716. Email: sen.betsy john-
son@state.or.us Web: www.betsy-
johnson.com District Office: P.O.
Box R, Scappoose, OR 97056. Phone:
503-543-4046. Fax: 503-543-5296.
Astoria office phone: 503-338-1280.
• Port of Astoria: Executive
Director, 10 Pier 1 Suite 308, Asto-
ria, OR 97103. Phone: 503-741-3300.
Email: admin@portofastoria.com
• Clatsop County Board of Com-
missioners: c/o County Manager, 800
Exchange St., Suite 410, Astoria, OR
97103. Phone: 503-325-1000.