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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (May 20, 2017)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Saturday, May 20, 2017 Founded October 16, 1875 KATHRYN B. BROWN Publisher DANIEL WATTENBURGER Managing Editor TIM TRAINOR Opinion Page Editor MARISSA WILLIAMS Regional Advertising Director MARCY ROSENBERG Circulation Manager JANNA HEIMGARTNER Business Office Manager MIKE JENSEN Production Manager EO MEDIA GROUP East Oregonian • The Daily Astorian • Capital Press • Hermiston Herald Blue Mountain Eagle • Wallowa County Chieftain • Chinook Observer • Coast River Business Journal Oregon Coast Today • Coast Weekend • Seaside Signal • Cannon Beach Gazette Eastern Oregon Real Estate Guide • Eastern Oregon Marketplace • Coast Marketplace OnlyAg.com • FarmSeller.com • Seaside-Sun.com • NorthwestOpinions.com • DiscoverOurCoast.com OUR VIEW Growing pains hit Hermiston Hermiston hit a rough patch this Unfortunately, race does play week, as growing pains caught up to a part in some voter’s minds and the school district needs be upfront Eastern Oregon’s largest city with about that discussion as well. the defeat of a $104 million school Getting those attitudes into the light bond. It came as a shock to many in the of day, and confronting them, is city and school district, where bonds a way to move past such boorish had been in the habit of going to the opinions. ballot and returning with a stamp Another school bond is likely of approval. The steady stream of to come before Hermiston voters soon, and there are likely to be some building upgrades was necessary to changes to what voters saw this time keep up with the steady stream of around. rising enrollment, In our opinion, a and voters seemed The district must new elementary on to understand that Lane — the when passing four regroup quickly Theater district’s sixth — is consecutive bonds. But there was and find a plan critical to educating growing numbers a change in the more palatable the of young children political currents this in Hermiston. It’s year, and the district to voters. the most important must face that reality piece. head on. It must The second-biggest need is regroup quickly with something expanding the high school. Modular more palatable to voters in order to classrooms offer a poor learning keep district facilities from falling environment and are terribly any farther behind than they are expensive — they represent a poor now, and before voters get in the habit of filling in the “no” bubble on use of taxpayer dollars. And forcing students to go to school in shifts is their ballots. no way to go through a high school Perhaps the district could look to Blue Mountain Community College career. The community should make sure that’s not the sole viable option for help in doing that. BMCC saw for educating more students that can an important facilities bond fail fit in the building’s halls. An addition in 2014, but got up off the mat quickly by holding listening sessions to the high school that could handle additional class sizes until a second throughout the region, gathering public feedback at every stop. Just a school is built in the next decade or year later, they kept that feedback in so is key — and it was included in this year’s failed bond. mind when crafting a bond that did But perhaps both Highland Hills find majority support. and Rocky Heights will have to If the Hermiston board goes that stand a little longer. Although both route, they will likely hear similar schools are imperfectly designed, sentiments to what our reporter they are needed and should remain gleaned at the Hermiston Senior Center about why most people there in place, Limited upgrades can be completed, rather than a wholesale voted against the bond. Many felt raze and replace for buildings just a the school district unceremoniously few decades old. booted them from their longtime Pushing the “economic benefit” home, as part of the many changes of the bond also seemed like poor being made at the old Umatilla strategy — people want well- County Fairgrounds. While educated children when their money relocating the senior center was goes to their schools, and they aren’t clearly necessary, the district will thinking about monetary return on have to deal with the unavoidable their investment. political fallout from that action — The Hermiston School District no one votes likes senior citizens. has challenges before it. Navigating We also heard the ever-present the next two decades will require fears for those on fixed incomes — dexterity, both in educating a rapidly perpetually rising tax burdens and changing student body as well as cost of living increases — as well operating an increasingly complex as unsavory racial complaints that fiscal and facilities plan. Hispanic residents were responsible It needs the support of voters for most of the student growth but to do both, and should take this are not paying their fair share in opportunity to reconnect and retool. taxes. 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 Flight 93 Election’ crashes again I n case you’ve had the pleasure of reflect and magnify the inner truth of forgetting, “The Flight 93 Election” the officeholder. The job requires — was the title of a portentous essay, and exposes — that most conservative published in September under a Roman of concepts: character. And if we’ve pseudonym in The Claremont Review learned anything about Trump, it’s of Books, that declared the stakes for that his character isn’t just bad. It’s the United States in 2016 thus: “Charge irrepressible. the cockpit or you die.” Hence the past 10 days of our In the lurid imagination of the national life. Firing Jim Comey. Bret author — it turned out to be Michael Threatening Comey. Lying about the Stephens Anton, who now holds a senior job reasons for firing Comey. Admitting to Comment in the White House — the American the reasons for firing Comey. Blabbing republic was Flight 93, a plane secrets to Sergey Lavrov. Denying that deliberately set on a course for destruction secrets were blabbed. Then blabbing about by liberals and their accomplices in the blabbing to Lavrov. Republican establishment and the globalist No staff shake-up would have prevented “Davoisie.” As for Donald any of this from happening. Trump, Anton implied that he was It would have descended on a the political equivalent of Todd hapless White House staff like Beamer, the heroic passenger who a superheated pyroclastic flow cried “Let’s Roll” in a desperate from a presidential Pinatubo. bid for salvation. And it will continue to descend, “You may die anyway,” Anton week after grim week, until warned. “You — or the leader of Trump leaves or is forced from your party — may make it into office. the cockpit and not know how to That is the Trump reality. fly or land the plane. There are A man with a deformed no guarantees. Except one: If you personality and a defective don’t try, death is certain.” intellect runs a dysfunctional And here we are, not four administration — a fact finally months into the collapsing Trump presidency, visible even to its most ardent admirers. Who living Anton’s dreams. could have seen that one coming? Who knew In recent days, radio host Michael Savage that character might be destiny? has acknowledged “the administration is in To reread “The Flight 93 Election” today is trouble.” John Podhoretz in the New York Post to understand what has gone wrong not only and later The Wall Street Journal’s editorial with the Trump presidency, but also with so page compared Trump to Jimmy Carter — the much of the conservative movement writ large. most damning of all conservative indictments. In a word, it’s become unhinged. Then there’s Ann Coulter. In an interview To imply, as Anton did, that Barack Obama, with The Daily Caller, the author of “In Trump for all his shortcomings, was Ziad Jarrah, We Trust” said of the presidency that “it has Flight 93’s lead hijacker, is vile. To suppose been such a disaster so far,” and that it was that we’d all be dead if Hillary Clinton, for all possible that “the Trump-haters were right.” her flaws, had been elected is hallucinatory. She even dropped the f-bomb — “fascist” — To argue that the United States, for all its to describe Trump’s hiring of his relatives to problems, was the equivalent of a doomed senior White House posts. aircraft is absurd. To suggest that Donald “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle Trump, a man who has sacrificed nothing in his America,” Lyndon Johnson is reputed to have life for anyone or anything, is the worthy moral said (perhaps it’s apocryphal) after the CBS heir to the Flight 93 passengers is a travesty. anchorman said in 1968 that the Vietnam War It is the mark of every millenarian fanatic was unwinnable. to assume that the world stands on the verge Just so for Trump: If he’s lost Coulter, he’s of a precipice, and that only radical or violent lost angry America. That’s not his entire base, action can save it. That’s the premise of but — let’s face it — it’s a critical fraction of it. Anton’s essay. It’s also the kind of thinking that Now the hope of the president’s dismayed has inspired extremists from time immemorial, supporters is that this moment of near-political including the people who grabbed the planes bankruptcy will lead to a reinvention and a on 9/11. turnaround. Perhaps Trump can delegate his Maybe 2016 was the Flight 93 election, or executive authorities in the same way as he something like it. Maybe the pilots are dead. used to license his name, pretending to be Maybe the passengers failed to storm the president just as he once pretended to be a cockpit. Maybe the hijackers reached their real-estate tycoon. target by landing on the White House after all. That would suit Trump’s sole talent for ■ playing a successful character on TV. But Bret Stephens won a Pulitzer Prize for the reality of the presidency is that it tends to commentary in 2013. The conservative movement writ large has become unhinged. YOUR VIEWS Public option the best choice for American health system LETTERS POLICY 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 and a daytime phone number. The phone number will not be published. Unsigned letters will not be published. Send letters to managing editor Daniel Wattenburger, 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@eastoregonian.com. On Feb. 10, I attended a town hall meeting held by Rep. Walden in Boardman, pretty far from my home in Juniper Flat in south Wasco county. At the time it was the closest scheduled town hall in District 2. I have since attending town halls in The Dalles and Burns. The similarity of concerns in all three areas was striking: health care dominated questions and comments at all three meetings. At the Burns meeting Rep. Walden lamented that under the ACA large numbers of counties have only one insurance provider and next year are likely to have no providers. This is a valid concern, particularly in our rural counties. And it is a compelling argument for structuring health care around a public option, which would guarantee at least one provider everywhere. There is a working model we can look at: the German health care system. Germany is another large industrial democracy with a diverse population. Its system provides universal coverage with a better outcome than ours at two-thirds the per capita cost. Life expectancy at birth in 2013 in Germany was 80.9 years versus 78.8 here, and infant mortality at birth was 3.3 per thousand live births in Germany versus 6.1 here. The German system also provides choice, a guiding principle for many U.S reformers. There is a base public option so that no one slips through the cracks and options to purchase enhanced private-sector insurance if even better coverage is desired. Private insurance, pharmaceutical sales and medical device sales are regulated by the state to contain costs, probably necessary in any full-service system. Opponents of a public option often say that government involvement will lead to rationing (recall the overblown “death panel” concerns during the Obamacare debate). But before the ACA, we had rationing by income level in this country. Any financially-viable system using advanced medical technology cannot afford unrestricted use of expensive devices, procedures and drugs. This is a fact of life. More vigorous regulation of drug costs, procedures and a ballooning insurance industry coupled with relief from excessive malpractice litigation can reduce the need for rationing. Finally, a public option actually should be good for business, particularly small businesses. A public option would relieve employers of the burden of providing health care and guarantee employees unbroken coverage that they can take with them as they change or lose jobs. David Harris Maupin
