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OPINION
East Oregonian
Friday, August 11, 2017
OTHER VIEWS
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
OUR VIEW
Tip of the hat;
kick in the pants
Tip of the hat to the many different volunteer and professional fire
crews who responded to the blazes Wednesday on Weston Mountain.
There were at least two different fire starts (perhaps more) and those fires
behaved erratically, due to the variety of
vegetation (stubble field, standing wheat,
scrub grass, forest) along the unique slope
of that country. The fires closed Highway
204 toward Tollgate for hours, and brought
fire crews from as far away as Hermiston to
control and mop up the blaze, which grew
to 250 acres at its peak. Oregon Department
of Forestry crews even stayed at the scene
overnight to make sure it didn’t relight.
The small city of Weston, where you
could watch the fire creeping down the hill
toward Main Street, sure are happy for the quick response. As are the rest of
us.
A kick in the pants, though, to the smoke kicked up by that fire.
It mixed in with all the Canadian soot that jumped the border from
British Columbia to really do a number on local air quality.
The weather report shows a front may blow out this smoky, stagnant air
Friday and Saturday, hopefully keeping
the sky clear going into the total solar
eclipse on August 21.
But the odds of Eastern Oregon
going without a wildfire for a week —
fresh off a steady stream of 100-degree
temperatures — doesn’t seem too great.
Especially as those eclipse crowds start
making their way into the forests, on
foot and behind the wheel, in record
numbers.
We can hope for a bit of wind to
blow out the smoke. But for the time
being, we can look at the bright side: The beautiful sunrises and sunsets,
scorching through the thick air.
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
OHA reveals lack of ethics
The Bend Bulletin
H
ow does a state agency influence
proposed legislation?
The Oregon Health Authority
came up with a shocking approach: Try
to plant negative news stories about a
nonprofit that would benefit from the
legislation.
The Portland Tribune’s Nick
Budnick reported Friday that the OHA
plotted to find a disgruntled patient and
anonymously connect that patient with
a newspaper. The goal was to have the
newspaper publish a story that would
damage FamilyCare’s credibility. The
OHA plan involved identifying friendly
legislators and getting them to plant the
stories so the OHA could appear neutral.
FamilyCare is a Portland-area
nonprofit that provides care to
low-income Medicaid patients under the
OHA’s supervision. The two were in a
court dispute because FamilyCare said
OHA set reimbursement rates too low.
No newspaper stories resulted, but a
bill that would have helped FamilyCare
died in committee in the recent session
of the Legislature.
The plan came from OHA’s
communications staff and was not
formally approved, but Budnick found
evidence that OHA Director Lynne
Saxton signaled her approval in an
email, saying some new developments
“will build on the already good start
you have outlined.” (Saxton resigned
Monday.)
FamilyCare is one of the state’s 16
coordinated care organizations. It has
been a vehement critic of the OHA,
Budnick reported, accusing the agency
of incompetence and trying to damage
the nonprofit.
FamilyCare had a lower rate of
reimbursement than other CCOs
because it had a healthier population,
Budnick reported. The agency also said
FamilyCare was “taking advantage
of taxpayer money” by paying
providers more than Medicaid required.
FamilyCare said it did so to make sure
patients could get appointments and to
focus on prevention.
Whatever the merits of the rate
argument, the notion of a state agency
seeking to influence the Legislature by
secretly planting negative stories reveals
an appalling lack of ethical standards.
Budnick found numerous references
to the OHA’s interest in maintaining
its reputation. Clearly, the agency
has done exactly the opposite with its
underhanded tactics.
YOUR VIEWS
Renewable fuel standard
supports Oregon jobs
Oregon is home to vast renewable
resources, providing new and exciting
opportunities to lead the way in the fight
against climate change. We produce 13
percent of the nation’s hydroelectric
power and our geothermal potential is
rivaled only by Nevada and California.
We are also home to some of the West
Coast’s premier biofuel facilities,
producing cleaner liquid fuels from
agricultural feedstocks, supporting
nearly 16,000 Oregon jobs.
A lot of this progress has been driven
by state and local efforts. But federal
policies play an important role. That’s
why we need our lawmakers in Congress
to stand up for the renewable fuel
standard, which ensures that renewable
fuel can compete at the gas pump.
Oil companies are looking for any
opportunity to hold back competition,
and biofuels are a top target. They
displaced 500 million barrels of oil in
2016, cutting emissions and protecting
consumers from price manipulation.
More importantly, thanks to the
increasingly sustainable agricultural
practices, those biofuels cut emissions
by an average of 43 percent, according
to federal reports.
Conventional ethanol production also
leaves behind processed grain that is
repurposed as low-cost animal feed. The
next generation of ethanol, produced
from material like wood waste and corn
cobs, is even more promising, with some
varieties reducing the total carbon in the
atmosphere over their full lifecycle.
Thanks to smart policies like the
renewable fuels standard, the future
is bright for Oregon. Lawmakers like
Congressman Greg Walden, who chairs
the energy committee, should take note,
and protect that progress.
Bobby Levy
Echo
Google’s war over the sexes
M
in which self-selection and sexism
en and women are different.
can shape an industry. Even if more
On this, almost everyone
men than women are attracted to a
acquainted with reality
particular field, a male-dominated
agrees. How different is the more
controversial question, to which there
profession can be distinctly unpleasant
is one particularly interesting answer:
for the women who work in it, in
A little more different than they used
ways that can justify special scrutiny,
to be.
recruitment and redress.
This growing difference seems
But Damore also made reasonable
Ross
to be a striking aspect of modern
Douthat points about different ways to pursue
Western life. In societies where both
diversity and the costs and benefits
Comment
sexes have greater freedom — and
thereof, in an earnest and dialogic style
women have more educational and
that a healthy corporate culture would
professional opportunities relative to men than have found a way to answer without swiftly
in the past — the sexes’ academic interests
giving him the ax.
At the same time, there was a sense in
tend to diverge relative to more traditional
societies. And not only their interests but their which Damore had to be fired, precisely
because of the intertwined realities that he
personalities as well: The more officially
described. Silicon Valley is a very male
egalitarian a society, a credible body of
environment, a land of nerd kings and
research suggests, the stronger the differences
in stereotypically male and female personality brogrammers whose deepest beliefs tend to
be the sort that men come
traits.
up with when they don’t
Conservatives sometimes
have very many women
worry that our society
around — arch-libertarian,
features an unhealthy
irreligious, utopian in a
blurring of sexual identities,
mechanistic style.
an androgyne confusion.
But the internet industry
The left tends to be more
is also part of a wider elite
optimistic about such
culture that is trending
blurring, seeing it as a
in the opposite direction,
liberation from the rule of
becoming more feminized
patriarchy and the prison of
and feminist, and inclined
heteronormativity.
to view male-dominated enclaves with great
But the opposite trend, the divergence
suspicion. So Silicon Valley’s leaders use
of the sexes, might be more important.
corporate wokeness, diversity initiatives and
Some of our present difficulties may flow
progressive virtue signaling as a kind of self-
from an excess of feminine and masculine
protection, a way of promising that they’re
differentiation, from the sexes growing apart
mostly men but they’re the good kind of men,
and losing common ground, from the decline
so that discrimination lawsuits and antitrust
of marriage’s male-female partnership and
actions and other forms of regulation are less
the rise of a singlehood that’s often more
attractive to their critics.
sex-segregated than family life.
I strongly suspect that more than a few
Certainly the frontiers of sexual
Silicon Valley higher-ups agreed with the
license often feature strong male-female
broad themes of Damore’s memo. But just
differentiation rather than androgyny or
as tech titans accept some censorship and
gender-neutrality.
oppression as the price of doing business in
Think of the clichés that prevail in internet
China, they accept performative progressivism
pornography, or the gendered kinks of
as the price of having nice campuses in the
“Fifty Shades of Grey.” Even our culture’s
most liberal state in the union and recruiting
highest-profile gender transition had a highly
sex-specific presentation — Bruce Jenner was their employees from its most elite and
liberal schools. And for questioning that
the ultimate male Olympian; Caitlyn Jenner,
political performance while defending the
a busty, hyper-feminized Vanity Fair cover
disproportionate maleness that makes it
model.
necessary, the Google memo-writer simply
So too with political trends. The idea of a
had to go.
“Mommy Party” and a “Daddy Party” goes
This is not a healthy dynamic, obviously.
way back, but the Trump-Clinton election
Indeed, part of why the alt-right has such
made the increasingly gendered nature of the
a strong (if sub rosa) presence in Northern
parties seem ridiculously stark. As Ed West,
California is because it’s a predictable kind
a columnist for The Week, pointed out last
of male response to professional life under
week, the social justice left and the alt-right
the rule of political correctness — a response
are among the most gendered movements
that the Damore firing will only make more
imaginable — “the political equivalent of the
Lego Friends Heartlake Cupcake Cafe and the attractive.
Meanwhile, the real truth — which the
Lego Nexo Knight’s Clay’s Falcon Fighter
Blaster, examples of where greater freedom of memo at its most sensible almost grasped
— is that Silicon Valley might benefit from
association and self-actualization has led men
having a more female-friendly culture because
and women.”
of the differences between men and women,
Consider it this way: If you asked a right-
wing misogynist to craft a sexist parody of his not because those differences are all somehow
a misogynist invention. The fact that the
political opponents, you might get something
like the highly neurotic, fainting-couch politics brave new online world of social media may
be particularly psychologically unhealthy
of recent campus and online progressivism,
for young women, for instance, seems like a
whose acolytes oscillate between soft
telling indicator of what can go wrong with
therapeutic language and maenad-like frenzy.
a virtual architecture built by brilliant and
If you then asked a left-wing misandrist
obtuse males.
to do the same sort of parody in reverse,
But since the usual way to reintegrate
you’d end up with something like the online
the sexes is to have them marry one another
far-right — nerds and autodidacts obsessed
and raise kids, what Silicon Valley probably
with cuckoldry, fascist cosplayers eager for
needs right now more than either workplace
evidence of their own racial superiority,
anti-microaggression training or an alt-right
would-be lotharios furious at feminism,
underground is a basic friendliness to family,
libertarians with a ten-point case for
pregnancy and child rearing.
despotism.
This is why the new Apple headquarters,
The divergence of the sexes also provides
a useful context for thinking about this week’s which has a 100,000-square-foot fitness and
culture-war controversy, the high-profile firing wellness center but no child care center, is a
of a Google software engineer, James Damore, more telling indicator of what really matters
for a memo he wrote criticizing the company’s to Silicon Valley than all the professions of
gender-egalitarianism that have followed
diversity policies.
James Damore’s heretical comments about sex
Damore’s memo argued, roughly, that the
differences.
tech world’s conspicuous dearth of women is
Those differences, the real ones, have
quite possibly a consequence of the trend I’ve
one common root: Women bear children;
just described — that more men than women
men do not. Figuring out how to respect that
are attracted to the kind of work that’s done
essential fact and all its implications, while
by programmers and software engineers, and
also respecting the equality of the sexes, is
that it’s a mistake to assume discrimination
one of the great challenges of our age. And it’s
when self-selection might be at work. He also
because we are failing at it that the sexes have
questioned why Google’s official rhetoric and
begun to go their separate ways.
internal propaganda focus on the diversity
■
of sex and race while ignoring the value of
Ross Douthat joined The New York
political or ideological diversity.
Times as an Op-Ed columnist in April 2009.
The memo was sometimes tone deaf,
Previously, he was a senior editor at the
clinical, insensitive (in, well, a stereotypically
Atlantic and a blogger for theatlantic.com.
male sort of way), understating the ways
Silicon Valley
might benefit
from having a
more female-
friendly culture.
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.