OPINION
6A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, JULY 18, 2017
Founded in 1873
DAVID F. PERO, Publisher & Editor
LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor
JEREMY FELDMAN, Circulation Manager
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
OUR VIEW
Should sadism be
allowed in military
recruit training?
azing is always with us. We read about incidents involv-
ing preteens and teens on social media. These have led
to suicides. High school football team hazing has made
the news. A few years ago, hazing on a professional football
team was made public.
One year ago, a U.S. Marine Corps recruit jumped to his
death following what has been called hazing by a drill instructor.
The case of recruit Raheel Siddiqui was striking for two reasons.
He was a Muslim during a time when our military faces excep-
tional challenges in the world of Islam. And the drill instructor’s
actions, described in news reports, were more startling than the
legendary 1956 Parris Island incident in which a drill instructor
marched his platoon into a creek at night, leading to six recruit
deaths.
The New York Times Magazine of July 9 carried the most
comprehensive report of the Siddiqui incident. In a litany of
taunting a Muslim recruit about his religion, a drill instructor
ordered the recruit to enter a large clothes dryer, closed the door
and pushed the start button. That is only one incident.
Former Marines will recognize some of the “drills” recruits in
Janet Reitman’s article were put through. But they will be star-
tled and repulsed by others. Reitman notes that even another
drill instructor was sickened by the Muslim recruit’s hazing he
witnessed.
Reitman does not use the word, but she describes situations
in which rigorous training became what many of us would call
sadism.
The intractability of the Parris Island drill instructor cul-
ture that reliably emerges every few years was illustrated by the
experience of a Marine Corps commandant – Charles Krulak
– who tried to overhaul that boot camp. Krulak told Reitman
that his transformational process had a tangible effect for a few
years. “Problem was,” said Krulak, “after I left we had a chang-
ing world. I think in all these years of war, we lost a bit of our
focus. There are people who think war entitles them to behave
any way they want.”
The military services are bureaucracies. Thus their pockets
of incompetence or corruption seldom are made accountable.
When U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell sought answers about the death
of Siddiqui, who was her constituent, congressional colleagues
warned Dingell not to confront the incident.
What is missing from this discussion is recognition of the
financial stakes of the game. Marine Corps recruit training is
expensive. Each recruit is an asset in which the Marine Corps
invests. Professional football came to that recognition when it
figuratively asked: Why are we allowing hazing to impair our
million-dollar assets?
H
‘Lemons-to-lemonade’ on
youth correctional facility
latsop County commissioners and Sheriff Tom Bergin
are taking a welcome “lemons-to-lemonade” approach to
news that the North Coast Youth Correctional Facility in
Warrenton will close by Oct. 1.
The Legislature agreed with Gov. Kate Brown’s budget rec-
ommendation to close the 50-bed facility when it adopted
the state’s budget for the next two years. The Oregon Youth
Authority is coordinating with the facility’s 40 staff members to
search for other work options.
Meanwhile, after the news in December that the governor
was recommending the facility’s closure, the county sought
other options for its potential use. In May, the county hired a pri-
vate firm to study the possibility of relocating the county’s over-
crowded jail in Astoria to the youth facility site.
If it’s deemed feasible, the move would more than double
the jail’s inmate capacity. The county jail can currently hold 60
inmates, and the study thus far indicates the youth facility could
be expanded to handle 135.
However, it hasn’t been determined whether the project
would be affordable, A remaining part of the study will address
the costs of expansion, security upgrades and the price of
deferred maintenance issues. Authorities say those costs may be
significant.
But the project thus far is promising. It could solve two
immediate problems of what to do with the facility after it
closes, and how to expand the county’s needed jail space.
Officials say the study should be wrapped up later this sum-
mer, although Bergin predicts any conversion wouldn’t be a
quick process and could take a year or two to complete.
Reflecting on the potential project, Bergin put it in the right
perspective. “We’ve got a long way to go and a lot of work to
do, but we’re hopeful,” he said.
C
Republicans leap
into the awful known
By PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times News Service
S
ometime in the next few days
the Congressional Budget
Office will release its analysis
of the latest version
of the Republican
health care plan.
U.S. Sen. Mitch
McConnell is
doing all he can
to prevent a full
assessment, for
example by trying to keep the CBO
from scoring the Cruz provision,
which would let insurers discrimi-
nate against people with pre-existing
conditions. Nonetheless, everyone
expects a grim prognosis.
As a result, White House aides
are already attacking CBO’s
credibility, announcing in advance
that whatever it says will be “fake
news.” So why should we believe
the budget office, not the Trump
administration? Let me count the
ways.
First, this White House already
has a record of constant, blatant
lying about health care that is, as far
as I can tell, without precedent in
modern history. Just a few days ago,
for example, Vice President Mike
Pence made the completely false
assertion that Ohio’s expansion of
Medicaid led to a cutback in aid for
the disabled — a lie that the state’s
government had already refuted. On
Sunday, Tom Price, the secretary
of Health and Human Services,
claimed that the Senate bill would
cover more people than current law
— another blatant lie. (You can’t cut
hundreds of billions from Medicaid
and insurance subsidies and expect
coverage to grow!)
The point is that on this issue
(and others, of course), the Trump
administration and its allies have
negative credibility: If they say
something, the default assumption
should be that they’re lying.
Second, the CBO is hardly
alone in its negative assessments
of Republican health care plans. In
fact, just about every group with
knowledge of the issue has reached
similar conclusions. In a joint letter,
the two major insurance industry
trade groups blasted the Cruz provi-
sion as “simply unworkable.” The
American Academy of Actuaries
says basically the same thing. AARP
has condemned the bill, as has the
American Medical Association.
Third, contrary to White House
disinformation, the CBO actually
did a pretty good job of predicting
the effects of the Affordable Care
Act, especially when you bear in
mind that the act was a leap into the
unknown: we had very little expe-
rience of how an ACA-type system
AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta
Protesters against the Republican health care bill gathered inside
the office of U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, on Capitol Hill in Wash-
ington, D.C., Monday.
would work.
True, the CBO overestimated
the number of people who would
buy insurance on the exchanges
the act created; but that was partly
because it overestimated the number
of employers who would drop
coverage and send their workers to
those exchanges. Overall gains in
coverage have been reasonably well
in line with what the CBO projected
— especially in states that expanded
Medicaid and did their best to make
the law work.
Finally — and this seems to me
to be the most compelling argument
of all — predicting the effects of
destroying the ACA is much easier
than predicting the consequences
when it was enacted, because what
the Senate bill would do, pretty
much, is return us to the bad old
days. Or to put it another way, what
McConnell and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz
are selling is a giant leap into the
known, taking us back to a system
whose flaws are all too familiar
from recent experience.
After all, before Obamacare,
most states had more or less unreg-
ulated insurance markets, similar to
those the Senate bill would create.
Many of these states also had
skimpy, underfunded Medicaid
programs, which would be the effect
of the bill’s brutal Medicaid cuts.
So while careful, nonpartisan
modeling, the kind the CBO excels
in, is important, you don’t need
a detailed analysis to know what
American health care would look
like if this bill passes. Basically, it
would look like pre-ACA Texas,
where 26 percent of the nonelderly
population was uninsured.
And lack of insurance wouldn’t
be the only problem: Many people
would have “junk insurance” —
insurance with deductibles so large
or coverage limitations so extensive
as to be effectively useless when
needed.
Now, some people might be
satisfied with that outcome. Hard-
core libertarians, for example, don’t
believe making health care available
to those who need it is a legitimate
role of government; letting some
citizens go bankrupt and/or die if
they get sick is the price of freedom
as they define it.
But Republicans have never
made that case. Instead, at every
stage of this political fight they have
claimed to be doing exactly the
opposite of what they’re actually
doing: covering more people, mak-
ing health care cheaper, protecting
Americans with pre-existing condi-
tions. We’re not talking about run-
of-the-mill spin here; we’re talking
about black is white, up is down,
dishonesty so raw it’s practically
surreal. This isn’t just an assault on
health care, it’s an assault on truth
itself.
Will this vileness prevail? Your
guess is as good as mine about
whether Mitch McConnell will hold
on to the 50 senators he needs. But
the mere possibility that this much
cruelty, wrapped in this much fraud-
ulence, might pass is a horrifying
indictment of his party.
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.