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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
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JANNA HEIMGARTNER
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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