OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2017
Founded in 1873
KARI BORGEN, Publisher
JIM VAN NOSTRAND, Editor
JEREMY FELDMAN, Circulation Manager
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
OUR VIEW
The ghost of Steve Bannon
EO Media Group
Secretary of State candidate Dennis Richardson, above, and Gov.
Kate Brown should have known about the problems and promptly
worked together to ensure a thorough, forthright audit of the Ore-
gon Health Authority.
Health authority
audit interference
was outrageous
tate officials went to great lengths to stymie an audit of the
Oregon Health Authority.
That is the most troubling aspect of the audit, which state
auditors were able to complete after Gov. Kate Brown appointed
a new director for the beleaguered agency.
The audit report, which Secretary of State Dennis Richardson
delivered last Wednesday in a highly politicized announcement,
found that the agency inadvertently misspent millions of state
and federal dollars. That is not a big surprise, as news about
the agency’s missteps has dribbled out for months. However,
the audit also showed that the health authority is above average
nationally for its handling of federal Medicaid money.
In that sense, the audit report contained both bad and good
news regarding Oregon’s $9.3 billion-a-year Medicaid program.
New Oregon Health Authority Director Patrick Allen, who on
Friday marked his 90th day on the job, agreed with the auditors’
recommendations and said the agency already was implementing
some of them.
The report states that the health authority previously had
impeded the auditors’ work but goes on to say, “OHA’s new man-
agement has been more proactive and transparent in addressing
these issues.”
Audits are an integral part of cost-effective governance.
Brown ousted former health authority Director Lynne Saxton this
summer; but it’s disconcerting that until then, the agency aggres-
sively interfered with what could be considered a routine audit.
That interference included hiring an outside auditing firm as
an intermediary between the health authority and the state Audits
Division. That seems unprecedented in state government. Allen
said he canceled the outside firm’s $200,000 contract as soon as
he learned about it.
According to the audit report, the health authority also had
monitored what its staff was telling auditors, potentially creat-
ing a chilling effect, and ordered front-line workers to go through
management instead of communicating with auditors.
“Preventing direct follow-up slowed our work, potentially
limited our access, and created a bottleneck for both us and
OHA. We had questions that staff could answer in minutes, but
were instead required to ask managers, who sometimes provided
incorrect information because they lacked the same level of
familiarity as staff,” the report says. In addition, “OHA delayed
answering requests and at times provided incomplete or errone-
ous information.”
Such interference, regardless of where it occurs in govern-
ment, is outrageous. Republican Richardson, who oversees the
Audits Division, and Democrat Brown, who oversees the Oregon
Health Authority and other agencies in the executive branch,
should have known about the problems and promptly worked
together to ensure a thorough, forthright audit.
Their failure to do so creates a stain on state government.
S
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AP Photo/Evan Vucci
President Donald Trump speaks on his decision to shrink the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase
Escalante national monuments Monday in Salt Lake City.
By CHARLES BLOW
New York Times News Service
teve Bannon may no longer be
physically in the White House,
but his spirit lingers there as
the guide of the
Donald Trump
administration and
the soul at the core
of its beliefs.
Bannon is
Dickensian in the
way his presence
— and nominal absence — haunts
the Trump presidency, defining its
past, dictating its present and damn-
ing its future.
Bannon is the author of Trump’s
ideology.
It is always worth remembering
that Bannon, who departed the
White House in mid-August and
returned to his right-wing website
Breitbart the same day, last year
proudly told Mother Jones: “We’re
the platform for the alt-right.”
Alt-right is just a new name for
Nazis and racists.
Maybe more important, the
Nazis and racists believe that
Breitbart is a welcoming platform
for them. A few days before Mother
Jones published its interview with
Bannon, The Daily Beast published
this:
“Richard Spencer, who heads
the white supremacist think tank
National Policy Institute, said he
was also pleased. Under Bannon’s
leadership, Breitbart has given
favorable coverage to the white
supremacist Alt Right movement.
And Spencer loves it.”
Yes, that Richard Spencer, the
one who has led three tiki-torch
hate marches in Charlottesville,
the second of which resulted in the
killing-by-car of counterprotester
Heather Heyer. That was the same
protest about which Donald Trump
insisted that there “were very fine
people on both sides.”
The Daily Beast quoted Spencer
saying: “Breitbart has elective
affinities with the Alt Right, and
the Alt Right has clearly influenced
Breitbart … In this way, Breitbart
has acted as a ‘gateway’ to Alt Right
ideas and writers. I don’t think it has
done this deliberately; again, it’s a
matter of elective affinities.”
S
Whether it was deliberate or
the result of “elective affinities,”
the two are drawn to each other
out of shared interests and a shared
worldview.
Even the phrase “elective affin-
ities” is likely taken from the title
of an 1809 novel by famed German
writer Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe, although its usage traces
back earlier.
That established, it is import-
ant to recall the three pillars of
the Bannonite “America First”
philosophy.
Trump the
conman has a
wingman and
together, in the
shadows, they
are leading us
to ruin.
Earlier this year at the
Conservative Political Action
Conference, Bannon outlined them:
national security and sovereignty ;
economic nationalism; and decon-
struction of the administrative state.
Everything Trump does or says
falls into one of those buckets.
Last month, when Trump
appointed Mick Mulvaney, a
man who despises the Consumer
Financial Protection Bureau, to
be acting director of that bureau,
Trump continued his Trojan Horse
strategy of implanting enemies in
government agencies to disable or
even destroy them.
When the desperate-for-a-win
Republican Senate last week passed
their 11th-hour disaster of a tax bill
that will eventually prove a jackpot
for the donor class and an albatross
for the working class, Trump
ensured that working people would
most feel the pain from the bill, in
cutbacks to government services
like education and the social safety
net.
Trump’s continued attacks on the
media — and on truth itself — is an
attempt to weaken the watchdogs,
to grease the skids toward more
oligarchy, more authoritarianism,
more fascism.
Even as the special counsel,
Robert Mueller, picks Trump’s
inner circle apart, Trump is fully
focused on doing as much damage
as possible before reaching his ever-
more-likely demise.
Trump may one day have to
abandon the post he inhabits, but he
plans to reduce the village to ashes
before he exits.
This sort of pumped-up, fatal
heroism in service of white national-
ism and in opposition to government
sounds to me rather Bannon-eque.
And we know that Bannon still
has the president’s heart, as well as
his ear.
As The Washington Post
reported at the end of August,
Trump continued to defy the
wishes of his chief of staff John F.
Kelly, including by reaching out to
Bannon: “The president continues
to call business friends and outside
advisers, including former chief
strategist Stephen K. Bannon, from
his personal phone when Kelly is
not around, said people with knowl-
edge of the calls.”
On Sept. 12, The Wall Street
Journal reported that Bannon told
a private group in Hong Kong that
he “speaks with President Donald
Trump every two to three days.”
White House press secretary
and chief twister-of-truths Sarah
Huckabee Sanders cushioned the
claim, telling reporters that the times
Trump and Bannon spoke were
“certainly not that frequently.”
But The Post followed up in
October, reporting that Trump and
Bannon “have remained in frequent
contact, chatting as often as several
times a week,” and that “Trump
usually initiates the talks because
incoming calls now are routed
through chief of staff John F. Kelly
and his disciplinarians.”
The Post continued: “Bannon
tells confidants he sees himself as
‘the president’s wingman,’ tending
to his base and taking on his ene-
mies. Trump still frequently consults
him, and Bannon believes he is
executing the president’s wishes.”
Trump the conman has a wing-
man and together, in the shadows,
they are leading us to ruin.