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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 16, 2018)
Page 4A East Oregonian Tuesday, January 16, 2018 KATHRYN B. BROWN Publisher DANIEL WATTENBURGER Managing Editor TIM TRAINOR Opinion Page Editor Founded October 16, 1875 OUR VIEW Nickels and dimes The message to Oregon legislators pay for PERS. Brown suggested that from Gov. Kate Brown’s staff last money could come from Oregonians’ week was that PERS has an immediate unclaimed property, increased problem. collections of debts owed to the state, Yet the solutions proposed by the lawsuit settlements, a potential tax governor are modest at best. amnesty program, higher-than-usual capital gains and estate taxes, and other The problem is the Oregon Public Employees Retirement sources. Revenue from System has too little Oregon Lottery “At least we new money to pay its games also could help projected pension along with got them to a schools, benefits. That gap, whose community colleges universities, pay for size ranges from $15 place where and billion to more than $20 PERS. billion depending on what The governor’s they’re admit- proposed assumptions are made, is legislation also PERS’ unfunded actuarial ting they have would create — but not liability. And to fill that pay for — a matching gap, schools, cities, a problem.” fund to encourage counties and the state are employers to act faster, — Sen. Bill Hansell, spending increasingly instead of letting their R-Athena larger shares of their current budget needs budgets on PERS. overwhelm their eventual Each PERS employer, of which there PERS obligations. For example, the state might match 25 cents for every are about 915, has its own unfunded dollar paid by a PERS employer. It liability. School districts generally are would be up to the 2019 Legislature to in the worst shape, with their unfunded fund that matching program. liability averaging 176 percent of their Those are good ideas. As state Sen. payroll. Brown will ask the 2018 Legislature, Bill Hansell noted, it’s good that the governor recognizes immediate action is which convenes Feb. 5, to pull money needed. from other sources and put it into “At least we got them to a place an account to help school districts Staff and AP photos Gov. Kate Brown, left, has said PERS has an immediate problem and suggested a way the state can address it. State Sen. Bill Hansell, right, said it’s good the gover- nor is at least talking about the problem. where they’re admitting they have a problem,” Hansell told the East Oregonian Monday. Still, it’s disappointing that this is all Brown could come up with from last year’s blue-ribbon task force on the PERS unfunded liability. And it’s even more discouraging that Brown won’t take up PERS benefits reforms. Not in this year’s legislative session; maybe not in next year’s, either. Brown says she doesn’t want to try approaches that will be thrown out by the Oregon Supreme Court. Instead, she and the Legislature must recognize their Catch-22: The only way to know whether further reforms will pass legal muster is to enact them and have them tested in court. Of course, that will require going toe-to-toe with the unions in an election year, and we’re not convinced Brown will do that, either. Instead of shying from productive reforms, the governor and legislators should embrace them with the knowledge that they dare not count on the PERS savings until the subsequent litigation settles. That would be a more courageous approach than Brown’s modest PERS proposals for the 2018 Legislature. OTHER VIEWS Trump and the ‘r-word’ D YOUR VIEWS Measure 101 represents larger health care failure It strikes me as odd how intelligent people on both sides of an argument auger themselves so deeply into an issue that, well, they cannot see the forest for the trees. Measure 101 is a classic case. It does not even matter whether you are for or against it; what should matter is under- standing that 101 is just using old baling twine to fix a badly broken cart. Dr. Hayden, a leading opponent to 101, in his Oregonian editorial pointed out that it is not a matter of whether we should pay to hold Oregon’s Medicaid system together, but how to pay. He touches on the very root of the problem, maybe without knowing it. We have far and away the most expensive health care in the world with abysmal health outcomes for the money. Many proponents of 101 are willing to throw whatever it costs to attempt to cobble together the failed health care system in our country. That is noble, but in the end it is futile. Our system cannot hold up much longer under these inefficient patches that fail to address the real problems both within the healthcare system and the outside forces that have driven it to this breaking point. An editorial in the East Oregonian called 101 a Band-Aid. Actually, it is a small Band-Aid being applied to the very large, soaked bandage: the Affordable Care Act. It is a failed attempt to staunch the hemorrhage of money we spend on health care. Both President Obama and (retired) Senator Baucus, the author of Obamacare, said that the two primary goals were to reduce the exorbitant costs of health care in this country and to provide access for all citizens to quality health care. It has failed at both. Insurance is not health care. This is why we are arguing over Measure 101. If we, the people, do not hold the feet of our elected ones to the fire to honestly address health care in our country, we will face many more 101s in the future. I’m not talking about the “anti-fix” Representative Walden and Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East Oregonian editorial board. Other columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions of the authors and not necessarily that of the East Oregonian. the elitist Republicans in D.C. proposed, nor the hollow words of so many Democrats, including Senator Merkley who also puts politics ahead of the people of our country. Measure 101 is proof that we need to look at, for example, the 34 other countries of the Organization for Economic Co-op- eration and Development, all of which have health care systems that: a) cost less than our country, b) provide health care to ALL their citizens, and c) have far better health outcomes than our country. All these countries, like our country, are “committed to democracy and the market economy.” Beyond a shadow of a doubt, the vast majority of universal health care systems around the globe work far better than our very expensive and very broken system. Our system — driven by corporate insurance as well as profit-based Big Med and Pharma — is probably the epitome of a failure of the free market system. It would take a column this size just to outline the massive administrative inefficiencies and redundancies within our healthcare system that drive costs way up before you or I can even see our doctor. It’s time our country implements a “Medicare For All” type system for all our citizens, which will achieve the goals of bringing costs down and improving health outcomes. Rick Meis Halfway One year in 100 words Saturday, Jan. 20 marks the one year anniversary of President Donald Trump’s inauguration. We’re asking readers to send a 100-word review of his first year in office. How has it compared to your expectations? Has your perception of him changed after a full year in office? What do you expect in his second year? Send your thoughts by email to editor@eastoregonian.com or to our office at 211 SE Byers Ave., Pendleton, OR, 97801. Include your name, city of residence and a phone number. onald Trump has been accountant. “I think that the guy is obsessed with race the entire lazy. And it’s probably not his fault, time that he has been a because laziness is a trait in blacks.” public figure. “I think sometimes a black may It started in the 1970s and ‘80s, think they don’t have an advantage when he was a New York real estate or this and that,” Trump said on mogul. His casinos and apartment television in 1989. “I would love to buildings had a record of treating be a well-educated black, because I black people differently from white really believe they do have an actual David people. In 1989, he inserted himself, Leonhardt advantage.” for no good reason, into one of New Trump referred to a Hispanic Comment York’s rawest racial controversies, Miss Universe as “Miss House- by taking out ads calling for the keeping.” execution of (wrongfully accused) suspects He repeatedly described Barack Obama in the Central Park jogger rape case. as unqualified, lazy or un-American: He More recently, Trump’s political rise claimed Obama wasn’t born here, was was built on — and there is no other “a terrible student,” played golf instead accurate way to say it — racism. He of working and “issued a statement for became a star on the right by promulgating Kwanzaa but failed to issue one for the lie that the nation’s first black president Christmas.” was born in Kenya. Trump then launched Trump explained his Muslim ban was his presidential campaign with a speech “no different” from the internment camps describing Mexicans as rapists. His for Japanese-Americans during World War signature proposals were building a wall II. to keep out Mexicans and banning all He said a federal judge hearing a Muslims, including U.S. citizens abroad, case about Trump University had “an from entering the country. absolute conflict” because the judge was “of The media often falls back on euphe- Mexican heritage.” misms when describing Trump’s comments Trump frequently casts heavily black about race: racially loaded, racially cities as dystopian hellscapes. “Our inner charged, racially tinged, racially sensitive. I cities, African-Americans, Hispanics are understand why, too. It’s better to err on the living in hell,” he said. He is slow to mention terrorism or hate side of caution with something as explosive crimes committed by white people, like the as the r-word. 2017 killing of an Indian man in Kansas. But here’s the truth: Donald Trump is a He frequently criticizes prominent racist. African-Americans for being unpatriotic, Yes, some of his individual comments ungrateful and disrespectful. He referred to aren’t about only race. (You can favor less immigration without being a racist.) Yet the one as a “son of a bitch.” He called Puerto Ricans who criticized his administration’s full picture is clear as can be. response to Hurricane Maria “politically He treats people differently based on motivated ingrates.” their race. Specifically, he treats people He has retweeted white nationalists who aren’t white worse than people who without apology. He called some partici- are. That — as Trump’s ally, Paul Ryan, pants in a white-supremacist march “very once said — is the textbook definition of fine people.” He was reluctant to distance racism. himself from David Duke, the former Ku After Trump’s vulgar insult about Klux Klan leader. He has tweeted anti-Se- Haitians last week, I set out to compile a mitic caricatures and neo-Nazi conspiracy definitive list of his racist comments, with theories. help from colleagues and readers. The full In a meeting about Pakistan, he version is online and includes video where wondered aloud why a Korean-American available. I realize that this exercise may feel like a intelligence analyst briefing him was not particularly depressing way to mark Martin working on North Korea policy. While speaking with Navajo war Luther King’s birthday. (For spiritual veterans, Trump mocked Sen. Elizabeth cleansing, I recommend taking a little Warren as “Pocahontas.” time today to watch one of King’s great At a 2016 rally, Trump pointed to one speeches.) But today, of all days, is one to attendee and said: “Oh, look at my Afri- recognize who Trump is. can-American over here. Look at him.” The president of the United States is Trump said last year that recent a racist, in thought and in deed. He is immigrants from Haiti “all have AIDS” pursuing policies designed to harm blacks, and that Nigerians, once seeing the United Latinos, Arabs and Asian-Americans. The States, would never “go back to their country can’t effectively fight back — and huts.” Last week, Trump vulgarly called undo the damage — unless we acknowl- for less immigration from Haiti and more edge reality. from Norway. His specific point was that The most damning evidence is Trump’s Haitians were inferior to Norwegians. own words: ■ “Black guys counting my money! I hate David Leonhardt is an op-ed columnist it,” Trump once said, according to a former for The New York Times. colleague, while complaining about an 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. 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.