Page 4A
OPINION
East Oregonian
Wednesday, March 4, 2015
Founded October 16, 1875
KATHRYN B. BROWN
Publisher
JENNINE PERKINSON
Advertising Director
DANIEL WATTENBURGER
Managing Editor
TIM TRAINOR
Opinion Page Editor
OUR VIEW
Cover Oregon
much more than
a tech failure
Last week, the state legislature
passed a bill to dissolve Cover
Oregon. The only thing now keeping
the troubled state exchange from
being euthanized is Governor Kate
Brown’s signature.
If Brown complies, as is
expected, Cover Oregon will drift
off toward the bright light of history.
And history will not shine kindly
on the exchange. It will go down as
Oregon’s biggest tech debacle ever,
and you could exclude the word
“tech” and still make a credible
case. The biggest debacle in Oregon
government history? It is, as people
like to say, in the conversation.
Cover Oregon has now cost $300
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It signed not a soul up for health
insurance. Heck, it didn’t pave a
road or build a bridge. We didn’t
even get to buy a Hawaiian island
(like the one Oracle founder Larry
Eillison purchased for $300 million
in 2012) or throw an epic statewide
parade. That makes the failed
exchange a terrible disappointment
and a waste of money, without even
mounds of ticker tape to show for it.
But while the Cover Oregon
failure may be the bright, sticky
icing on the cake, there is mounting
evidence that the cake itself had
plenty of its own problems.
Our state government failed us
from the beginning. Now-disgraced
governor John Kitzhaber was a
strong proponent of President
Obama’s nationwide health care
reform, and he advocated for Cover
Oregon. Kitzhaber was always
prone to big ideas, yet sported
blinders on the details. Without a
program manager, the buildout and
preparation was poor.
It also came at a time when
investigative reporting on the state
capital was at all-time low. The
Oregonian was pulling back and
shifting focus from more in-depth,
print-oriented statehouse reporting
to a quicker Internet-based beast
known as OregonLive. More
peripheral outlets like yours truly
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with our own reporting. There were
few nagging journalists peppering
Kitzhaber and the Cover Oregon
crew with persistent questions.
Then came D-Day. The Cover
Oregon rollout was a disaster, and
it didn’t take long before everyone
was running for political cover. The
hunky-dory ad campaign added
insult to injury, almost advertising
a blithe ignorance of the systemic
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Kitzhaber, preparing for his own
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duck and run. If you can remember
(this was many scandals ago), he
asked Oregon Attorney General
Ellen Rosenblum to sue Oracle, who
was under a government contract to
build the online exchange. And he
campaigned to scrap the system that
just months before he was promoting
as proof of Oregon’s genius.
Eventually, he won that argument.
Cover Oregon was sent underground
while the federal portal went into
use.
Yet the indignities to the state
continue. Oracle counter-sued the
state and last week sued Kitzhaber
staffers, saying they advised the
governor to trash the exchange not
because it was systemically broken,
but because that would be his best
political move. The company is
pretty much saying that Kitzhaber’s
staff acted against the state’s best
interest in order to get him re-
elected.
Emails leaked to The Willamette
Week show Kitzhaber was well
aware of what a political anchor
around his neck the failed exchange
was, and he wanted it off the front
pages of newspapers across the state.
What he and his political operatives
did to make that a reality will be
hotly contested going forward.
It’s layer upon layer of
questionable decisions. A total mess,
followed up by a klutzy attempt at
recovery.
We can only say, using the online
lingo of the day: epic fail.
Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East Oregonian editorial board of Publisher
Kathryn Brown, Managing Editor Daniel Wattenburger, and Opinion Page Editor Tim Trainor.
Other columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions of the authors and not
necessarily that of the East Oregonian.
OTHER VIEWS
Reduce exemptions for vaccines
Baker City Herald
The “debate” over vaccinations is
misnamed.
That vaccines are overwhelmingly
effective and safe has been proved
beyond any reasonable doubt by decades
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But even if for some peculiar reason
you aren’t convinced by the published
research of the world’s eminent
immunologists, you need only consider
how vaccines have changed America for
the better.
Kids don’t die from polio or survive
the disease but with crippling, permanent
injury, as was depressingly common as
recently as the 1950s.
Other diseases that were once
widespread — measles, mumps,
whooping cough — have been nearly
eradicated as well.
The sole reason for these
improvements is vaccines.
Vaccines aren’t perfect, of course.
Very rarely they’re ineffective for an
individual. Even more rarely, a vaccine
can seriously harm a child.
Unfortunately, the minuscule risk of
vaccines has been exaggerated to the
point that in some places enough parents
are withholding vaccines from their
children that dangerous diseases we had
nearly forgotten in America have been
infecting more people than any time in
past several decades.
Oregon, sadly, is a leader in this
trend.
Our state has the highest rate of
students who aren’t fully vaccinated. Not
coincidentally, Oregon reported more
than 900 cases of whooping cough in
2012 — the state’s most in more than 50
years.
A state legislator wants to reverse this
trend. Sen. Elizabeth Steiner Hayward,
who is a medical doctor, is sponsoring
Senate Bill 442. Under the current law,
parents who don’t want their kids to be
vaccinated, but still enroll them in public
school, can opt out of inoculations for
medical, religious or philosophical
reasons. In effect, for any reason they
want.
SB 442 would get rid of the latter two
exemptions, leaving only the medical
one, which of course is legitimate. The
bill would apply not only to public
schools, but also to students who want to
attend private schools or daycares.
Oregon would join Mississippi
(which averages just 60 to 100
whooping cough cases per year) and
West Virginia as states that allow only
a medical exemption from vaccinations
for students attending public schools.
The Legislature should pass SB 442,
and Gov. Kate Brown should sign it into
law.
Parents could still say no to vaccines
for their kids, of course. That option
should always be available; it is, after
all, a free country.
But Oregon shouldn’t continue to be
so accommodating to those parents. That
approach has helped almost-banished
diseases revive and endangered students
and others who, for various medical
reasons, can’t be vaccinated. That’s
unacceptable — the more so since it’s a
threat we’ve proved as a society can be
almost completely avoided.
OTHER VIEWS
Leaving and cleaving
S
o much of life is about leave-
about how to live and whom to be
taking: moving from home to
close to (except in the most highly
college, from love to love, from
unusual circumstances). The person
city to city and from life stage to life
being left has to suppress vindictive
stage.
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by a steady wish for the other person’s
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ultimate good. Without accepting the
silence. Everybody everywhere is
idea that she deserved to be left, the
just a text away, a phone call away.
person being left has to act in a way
David
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Brooks worthy of her best nature, to continue
by the frequency and intensity of
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Comment
communication between two people.
not deserve and may never learn about.
The person moving on and
That means not calling when
changing a relationship no longer makes a
you are not wanted. Not pleading for more
one-time choice to physically go to another
intimacy or doing the other embarrassing
town. He makes a series of minute-by-minute
things that wine, late nights and instant
decisions to not text, to
communications make
not email or call, to turn
possible.
intense communication into
Maybe that will mean the
sporadic conversation or no
permanent end to what once
communication. His name
was, in which case at least
was once constant on his
the one left behind has lost
friend’s phone screen, but
with grace. But maybe it will
now it is rare and the void is
mean rebirth.
a wound.
For example, to be around
If you are like me
college students these days is
you know a lot of
to observe how many parents
relationships in which
have failed to successfully
people haven’t managed
start their child’s transition
this sort of transition well.
into adulthood.
Communication that was
The mistakes usually
once honest and life-
begin early in adolescence.
enhancing has become
The parents don’t create a
perverted — after a transition
space where the child can
— by resentment, neediness
establish independence. They
or narcissism.
don’t create a context in which the child can
We all know men and women who stalk
be honest about what’s actually happening in
ex-lovers online; people who bombard a
his life. The child is forced to deceive in order
friend with emails even though that friendship to both lead a semi-independent life and also
has evidently cooled; mentors who resent
maintain parental love.
their former protégés when their emails are
By college, both sides are to be pitied. By
no longer instantly returned; people who post
hanging on too tight, the parents have created
faux glam pictures on Instagram so they can
exactly the separation they sought to avoid.
“win the breakup” against their ex.
The student, meanwhile, does not know if
Instant communication creates a new sort
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of challenge. How do you gracefully change
adult because his parents haven’t treated
your communication patterns when one
him that way. They are heading for a life of
person legitimately wants to step back or is
miscommunication.
entering another life phase?
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The paradox is that the person doing the
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leaving controls the situation, but greater
then it can reboot on an adult-to-adult basis.
heroism is demanded of the one being left
The hiddenness and deception is no longer
behind. The person left in the vapor trail is
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hurt and probably craves contact. It’s amazing EHIRUHEXWÀXLGO\DQGVZHHWO\
how much pain there is when what was once
Communications technology encourages
intimate conversation turns into unnaturally
us to express whatever is on our minds in
casual banter, emotional distance or just a
that instant. It makes self-restraint harder.
void.
But sometimes healthy relationships require
The person left behind also probably
self-restraint and self-quieting, deference and
thinks that the leaver is making a big mistake.
respect (at the exact moments when those
She probably thinks that it’s stupid to leave
things are hardest to muster). So today a new
or change the bond; that the other person is
kind of heroism is required. Feelings are hurt
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and angry words are at the ready. But they
popularity.
are held back. You can’t know the future, but
Yet if the whole transition is going to be
at least you can walk into it as your best and
managed with any dignity, the person being
highest self.
left has to swallow the pain and accept the
Ŷ
decision.
David Brooks became a New York Times
The person being left has to grant the
Op-Ed columnist in September 2003. He has
leaver the dignity of her own mind, has to
been a senior editor at The Weekly Standard
respect her ability to make her own choices
and the Atlantic Monthly.
To be around
college students
these days is to
observe how
many parents
have failed
to start their
child’s transition
into adulthood.
YOUR VIEWS
Mileage tax discrimination
against rural Oregonians
The Oregon Department of Transportation
will initiate a test of a new form of taxing
gasoline by GPS tracking of miles beginning
July 1 with 5,000 “volunteers,” recognizing
that the current gasoline tax results in fewer
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of newer vehicles.
Besides the obvious and concerning
privacy issues this entails and inability to
protest our digital data (even the Pentagon has
been breached in addition to numerous private
sector businesses and innumerable health care
electronic records), a deeper and more sinister
process may be involved.
Our political divisions nationally and
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Democrats vs. Republicans, conservatives
vs. liberals but also increasingly by the urban
metropolitan vs. rural divide.
As the exodus from more rural,
economically depressed areas to denser
populated metropolitan areas with more
economic and education opportunities
these urban-rural divisions grow only
stronger. Overwhelmingly, in Oregon
generally controlled by the I-5 corridor and
metro, people in rural mostly Republican,
LETTERS POLICY
conservative Oregon feel increasingly
disenfranchised.
Taxing miles driven for rural areas, mostly
eastern and southeastern Oregon where
services are generally quite distant and a
simple shopping trip or doctor visit may
require hours of driving, is a disadvantage for
rural Oregon. The metropolitan areas with
established and reliable public transportation
and much shorter driving distance will be
more likely to endorse such a proposal,
essentially penalizing the rest of the state.
Since we in eastern and remote southeastern
Oregon do not have a meaningful vote, this
basically represents a tax shift to more rural
areas and we have already seen where those
dollars — our dollars — will be spent.
Besides the obvious issues of privacy and
inability to protect that privacy, GPS miles
driven in rural Oregon represents a regressive
tax on those of us enslaved to out vehicles
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drawing all of Oregon into a collective we,
this is but another hidden method to further
disenfranchise rural Oregon and divides us
as a state by more than just the Cascades.
Recognize this proposal for what it is: outright
discrimination.
Tim Hanlon
Pendleton
The East Oregonian welcomes original letters of 400 words or less on public issues and public policies for publication in the newspaper and on our website. The newspaper
reserves the right to withhold letters that address concerns about individual services and products or letters that infringe on the rights of private citizens. Submitted letters must
be signed by the author and include the city of residence. Send letters to 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@eastoregonian.com.