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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 3, 2016)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Saturday, September 3, 2016 Founded October 16, 1875 KATHRYN B. BROWN DANIEL WATTENBURGER Publisher Managing Editor JANNA HEIMGARTNER TIM TRAINOR Business Ofice Manager Opinion Page Editor OUR VIEW Inviting fraud in road repair Oregon Department of Transportation resists increased quality control Add potential fraud to the Another federal report described the quality checks used by Oregon lengthening list of problems as “very weak,” saying they “will with Oregon’s Department of only detect severe problems with Transportation. contractor test results.” Well known for its exaggerated Former ODOT forecasts and employees also have increasing bonded called attention to indebtedness despite ODOT the agency’s lax higher taxes, a oversight system. recent article shed managers “Quality control was light on the agency’s claim there is not taken seriously,” vulnerability to a long-time quality fraud in road repairs. no evidence specialist Nick Budnick that contractors control told Budnick. A of Pamplin Media internal reported that are gaming the former auditor for ODOT ODOT’s road- system —but said there is a “huge paving inspection of fraud.” A program has more note that several risk former quality cracks than Byers, technicians have assurance specialist Bailey or just about said that while there any of the worst streets in Pendleton. been suspended. are plenty of good road contractors, The report “it is easy for a revealed that: contractor to falsify documentation.” • Asphalt contractors can ODOT managers downplay game ODOT’s inspections and these concerns. They claim there compromise road quality, leading is no evidence that contractors are to premature potholes and further gaming the system. But they note costly repairs. that the state has suspended several • Oregon does not track asphalt contractor technicians, one of whom quality results systematically or use was suspected of fraud. testing methods common in other Doing nothing and refusing states. to acknowledge the potential for • Contractors often know in fraud despite repeated warnings advance where and when ODOT is a glaring example of wrong will conduct asphalt inspections. at ODOT — an agency that will Worse, these vulnerabilities collects $4.6 billion in revenue this have been well known to ODOT biennium. management since at least 2005. Legislators should keep that That’s when the Federal Highway in mind as they craft a new Administration pointed out these transportation spending bill. issues in a nationwide report Taxpayers ought to remain skeptical and made recommendations for when ODOT asks for higher taxes improvement. Eight years later, and fees. Reform must come before the feds conducted a new study more revenue. and reached the same conclusions. 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 The governor and the measure The (Albany) Democrat-Herald ov. Kate Brown has had a somewhat tortured relationship with Measure 97, the proposal on the November ballot for a corporate sales tax. First, as you might recall, she at least appeared to deliberate for a long time on whether to support the measure, which would impose a 2.5 percent gross receipts tax on certain corporations on sales in Oregon above $25 million annually. It’s estimated that the tax would raise $3 billion a year, and proponents of the measure have said the money would be earmarked for K-12 education, health programs and senior services. (Of course, as we’ve noted, nothing in the measure forces the Legislature to spend the money on those areas.) In any event, Brown pondered the measure for quite some time, although the suspense lessened somewhat when she announced her suggestions for how to spend the additional tax money should the event pass. A few weeks after that, she announced that she would support Measure 97. By that time, the endorsement did not exactly come as a political bombshell. Still, we were somewhat surprised to receive a terse press release on Friday about the measure from the governor’s campaign. Here’s the complete text of the release: “In response to a press report this morning, Governor Kate Brown reiterates that she endorsed Measure 97 because she believes the vast majority of costs will appropriately be paid by out-of-state corporations. “As Governor Brown continues to point out, the campaign against Measure 97 is raising millions of dollars to ight it because corporations know this as well.” We were curious, so we tried to track down the “press report” in question, and our best guess is that it refers to an interview OPB’s Jeff Mapes did on Thursday with Brown. And we G suspect the part of the interview that worried Measure 97 supporters was the governor’s concession that Oregon consumers would pay more if the measure is approved, as businesses passed through at least some of their additional costs. That’s a sore point for Measure 97 supporters, who have contended that the large corporations targeted by the tax would not pass along those increased costs. So it had to rankle to see the governor toss that argument under the bus: “Oregonians are smart enough to realize there will be, um, they will bear some of these increased costs,” Brown told Mapes. She did not say what share of the tax would be passed on to consumers. The nonpartisan Legislative Revenue Ofice has estimated that the measure eventually would cost Oregon households somewhere between $372 and $1,282 a year. To be fair, Brown still supports the measure, which she believes is the only “viable option” to adequately fund vital state services. And it would appear that sometime after her interview with Mapes, she concluded that the “vast majority” of costs would be paid by “out-of-state corporations,” judging by Friday’s statement. The question of who winds up paying the bill for Measure 97 will be a critical one as the campaign heats up. After all, if proponents can frame their case in terms that Measure 97 will “make Comcast pay,” in the words of a pro-97 bumper sticker, that’s potentially a winning strategy. But if the question becomes how much more an average Oregon household will pay because of Measure 97, that spells trouble for supporters. That’s why Brown’s burst of candor with Mapes about the costs of the measure potentially could become an important moment in the campaign. But it could be that the governor is just saying what Oregonians have been “smart enough” to igure out for themselves. OTHER VIEWS Identity politics run amok nce, I seem to recall, we had Doctors get cheap nannies, everyone philosophical and ideological else gets the shaft. differences. Once, politics This is false, too. The fact is, a was a debate between liberals and vast majority of Americans beneit. conservatives, between different views A study by John McLaren of the of government, different views on University of Virginia and Gihoon values and America’s role in the world. Hong of Indiana University found that But this year, it seems, everything each new immigrant produced about has been stripped down to the bone. 1.2 new jobs, because immigrants are David Politics is dividing along crude identity Brooks producers and consumers and increase overall economic activity. lines — along race and class. Are Comment A report from the Partnership for a you a native-born white or are you an New American Economy found that outsider? Are you one of the people or immigrants accounted for 28 percent of all one of the elites? new small businesses in 2011. Between 2006 Politics is no longer about argument and 2012, over 40 percent of tech startups in or discussion; it’s about trying to put your Silicon Valley had at least one foreign-born opponents into the box of the untouchables. founder. Donald Trump didn’t invent this game, The cities that are but he embodies it. His doing best economically advisers tried to dress him work hard to attract new up on Wednesday afternoon immigrants because the as some sort of mature beneits are widely shared. summiteer. But he just can’t As Ted Hesson points out be phony. in The Atlantic, New York, By his evening Chicago, Houston and Los immigration speech he’d Angeles account for about returned to the class and 20 percent of U.S. economic race tropes that have deined output, and in those places, his campaign: that the immigrants can make up as American government is in much as 44 percent of the the grips of a rich oligarchy total labor supply. that distorts everything for Identity politics distorts its beneit; that the American politics in two ways. First, people are besieged by it is Manichaean. It cleanly foreigners, who take their divides the world into jobs and threaten their lives. opposing forces of light and It’s not that these two darkness. You are a worker or an elite. You are ideas are completely wrong. The rich do American or foreigner. have more inluence. There are indeed some Seeing this way is understandable if you foreigners who seek to harm us. It is just that are scared, but it is also a sign of intellectual Trump (like other race and class warriors) laziness. The reality is that people can’t be takes these kernels of truth and grows them reduced to a single story. An issue as complex into a lie. as immigration can’t be reduced to a cartoon. Trump argues that immigration has sown It is simultaneously true that immigration fuels chaos across middle-class neighborhoods. This is false. Research suggests that the recent American dynamism and that the mixture of mass unskilled immigration and the high-tech surge in immigration has made America’s economy threatens to create a permanent streets safer. That’s because foreign-born men underclass. are very unlikely to commit violent crime. Second and most important, identity According to one study, only 2 or 3 percent of Mexican-, Guatemalan- or Salvadoran-born politics is inherently the politics of division. But on most issues — whether it men without a high school degree end up is immigration or the economy or national incarcerated, compared with 11 percent of security — we rise and fall together. their U.S.-born counterparts. Immigration, even a reasonable amount of Trump argues that the lood of immigrants illegal immigration, helps a vast majority is taking jobs away from unskilled native of Americans. An economy that grows at 3 workers. But this is mainly false, too. There’s percent would help all Americans. an intricate debate among economists about Identity politics, as practiced by Trump, this, but if you survey the whole literature on but also by others on the left and the right, the subject you ind that most research shows distracts from the reality that we are one immigration has very little effect on native nation. It corrodes the sense of solidarity. It wage or unemployment levels. breeds suspicion, cynicism and distrust. That’s because immigrants low into Human beings are too complicated to be different types of unskilled jobs. Unskilled deined by skin color, income or citizenship immigrants tend to become maids, cooks and farmworkers — jobs that require less English. status. Those who try to reduce politics to these identities do real violence to national Unskilled natives tend to become cashiers life. and drivers. If immigrants are driving down ■ wages, it is mostly those of other immigrants. David Brooks became a New York Times Trump claims the rich beneit from Op-Ed columnist in September 2003. immigration while everyone else suffers. O Politics is no longer about argument or discussion; it’s about trying to put your opponents into the box of the untouchables. YOUR VIEWS Owyhee Canyonlands need permanent federal protection Just where we are in protecting the Owyhee Canyonlands is uncertain but leadership has reached the White House. We need to protect this Oregon treasure for future generations. Ninety-ive percent of the Owyhee Canyonlands has no form of protection, and threats such as oil and gas development and mining continue to grow. Idaho has protected its part of the Owyhee. Oregon needs to launch a movement to claim this region from the possible corruption of money. It is a task we face today in a democratic society. The environmentalism that inspired former presidents to pass acts to save America’s wilderness areas remains crucial. Saving Owyhee Canyonlands is another battle against the corrupting inluence of money in politics. Now we must wage a battle to make possible this signiicant environmentalism and to permanently protect Oregon’s Owyhee Canyonlands. Dorys C. Grover Pendleton Wall Street loves the Clintons, but Americans need defense The primary cause of the 1930s Great Depression was speculation by commercial banks in the stock market while governmental missteps prolonged it. Because of the banking abuses, legislation was enacted in 1933 known as the Glass-Steagall Act to erect a barrier between investment banking and normal commercial bank operations to prevent another inancial disaster. That act was wrongly appealed in 1999 when President Bill Clinton signed the legislation to deregulate the banking industry, allowing the banks once again to police themselves. Wall Street is now laughing at America because by the end of 2015, the four largest investment banks in New York have created credit swap derivatives of $186.6 trillion. A derivative is an agreement between two parties to pay each other money depending on the performance of some other underlying asset, such as a bond. We know that Hillary Clinton has amassed an enormous campaign chest by making speeches to wealthy donors, such as hundreds of thousands of dollars received from Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs alone has created $51.2 trillion in derivatives. Massive losses by an institution creating derivatives will allow them to use their bank deposits to offset the derivative losses. This is known as a bail-in and the depositors can be wiped out. The Glass-Steagall Act must now be reenacted to prevent Wall Street creation of a new generation of victims. Robert Dahlquist Orange, Calif.
