TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2021
Baker City, Oregon
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OUR VIEW
Student
loans and
benefits
Oregon Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley are back-
ing a plan to cancel up to $50,000 for federal student
loan borrowers.
“It’s ridiculous that so many students are forced to
take on back-breaking amounts of debt to go to school
— especially as the coronavirus continues to upend
our economy,” Merkley said in a statement. “It’s time
to cancel student loan debts so we can free up Ameri-
cans burdened by student debt to chase their dreams,
contribute to their communities, and help us pave the
way to economic recovery.”
The idea supported by Democrats is also to eliminate
any tax liability from having the debt wiped out.
People who are low income or who are racial minori-
ties would certainly benefi t, but the benefi t would
accrue mostly to wealthier families. They hold most
of the federal education debt. A simple policy of elimi-
nating $50,000 in federal student loan debt would be
a regressive policy, not a progressive one. It would be
a policy that would give more benefi ts to people who
need it less.
Wyden and Merkley say they want to ensure that
debt cancellation “helps close racial wealth gaps and
avoids the bulk of federal student debt cancellation
benefi ts accruing to the wealthiest borrowers.”
OK how is that going to be done? By race? By race
and income? And is this only a one-time deal or can col-
leges start escalating their costs and advertising: Don’t
worry, your fi rst $50,000 in college debt is now free.
Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the Baker City Herald.
Columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions
of the authors and not necessarily that of the Baker City Herald.
OTHER VIEWS
Editorial from The Los Angeles Times:
Vaccine shortages and precious doses wasted. Unnavigable
systems for making appointments. A stark racial and economic
divide in the distribution of shots. Scary virus mutants that
may render vaccines ineffective. Protesters disrupting vaccina-
tion sites.
It may seem at times that the high hopes for the COVID-19
vaccination rollout have fizzled since December, when the U.S.
Food and Drug Administration gave emergency authorization
to the first vaccine. But step back for a moment and chew on
this little factoid: In just two months, the U.S. has managed to
administer 55 million shots — more than any other country —
even during a chaotic time of plague and contentious presiden-
tial transition.
Overall, about 12% of the 330 million people in the U.S. have
received at least one dose, primarily people who are at highest
risk for sickness and death. And though five countries have
vaccinated a larger percentage of their population (an impres-
sive 76% in Israel), they have far fewer people to inoculate.
The Biden administration promised it would work with
vaccine makers to increase production of doses, and it has
delivered. In the last four weeks, the daily rate of inoculations
has just about doubled.
Things are looking up in California too. Last month, it was
among the worst states in using its share of COVID-19 vaccine
doses. Now, thanks to the opening of mass vaccination centers,
it’s about average and has administered about 6.3 million
shots.
And while disparities in vaccine distribution are concerning,
we are heartened by how quickly state and federal leaders
have moved to open vaccination sites in underserved commu-
nities.
Meanwhile, Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot vaccine may be
available for distribution in March. And though it has a lower
rate of preventing infections than the Pfizer and Moderna
vaccines now in use in the U.S., a 66% efficacy rate is nothing to
sneeze at. Most important, like the other two vaccines, it’s about
100% effective at preventing hospitalization or death. Plus, it
doesn’t require extreme cold storage, which will make it easier
to distribute.
Scientists can’t say for certain that being vaccinated reduces
one’s ability to transmit the virus, but recent studies offer
promising indications that it does by lowering the viral load for
the few people who do get sick after vaccination. If those pre-
liminary studies are verified, it means that a fully vaccinated
person protects both herself and her entire community.
Meanwhile, our collective vigilance is paying off. New
COVID-19 cases have dropped steeply to pre-holiday levels, pos-
sibly because of the precautions individuals are taking to avoid
infection, the seasonality of the virus, or the growing ranks of
those who have acquired immunity either through infection or
vaccination — or possibly a combination of all three factors.
We’re not out of the woods yet or at a point where we can
throw out our masks and hug strangers on the street. But the
trees are thinning and blue skies are peeking through.
Biden’s Iran policy problematic
By Eli Lake
Since President Joe Biden took offi ce,
Iran’s regional proxies have been busy.
This month alone, Houthi rebels in Ye-
men claimed credit for a drone attack
against Saudi Arabia’s Abha airport;
one of the most prominent critics of
Hezbollah, the journalist Lokman
Slim, was found murdered in his car
in Lebanon; and in Iraqi Kurdistan,
a front group for one of the country’s
most deadly Shiite militias claimed
credit for a series of rocket attacks in
and around Erbil.
It all feels like a chilling replay
of U.S. foreign policy under former
President Barack Obama. While U.S.
diplomats were negotiating the 2015
nuclear deal with Iran, the regime’s
proxies went on a rampage. After those
talks ended, Iranian General Qassem
Soleimani defi ed U.N. travel restric-
tions and went to Moscow to negotiate
his own deal with Russia to protect
and defend Syrian dictator Bashar
al-Assad. Obama denounced that esca-
lation and sent his secretary of state to
plead for restraint and cease-fi res, but
the effort had no effect.
The question for Biden is whether
he wants to repeat the mistakes of his
former boss as he seeks to revive the
nuclear agreement his predecessor
abandoned in 2018. So far, the signs are
not good that Biden has learned any
lessons from the Obama years.
Consider the rocket attacks this
week in Erbil. Biden’s spokespeople
have been quick to denounce these
escalations, which killed at least one
contractor and wounded both Ameri-
cans and Iraqis. They are awaiting the
result of an investigation, however,
before blaming Iran.
“We are supporting our Iraqi part-
ners in their efforts to investigate these
attacks, whether they were conducted
by Iran, whether they were conducted
by Iranian-backed militia forces or ele-
ments of such forces,” State Department
spokesman Ned Price said on Tuesday.
“We’re not going to prejudge that.”
A relatively unknown group called
Saraya Awliya al-Dam, or the Guard-
ians of the Blood Brigade, has claimed
responsibility for the Erbil attacks.
Michael Knights, the Bernstein fellow at
the Washington Institute for Near East
Policy and an expert on Iraqi militias,
told me this group is almost certainly a
front for Asaib Ahl al-Haq, a fanatic Shi-
ite militia that has menaced Iraq since
the 2000s. It’s possible that the Erbil
rocket attacks were not sanctioned by
Iran, Knights said. But Iran has enough
infl uence over Asaib Ahl al-Haq that it
could have prevented them.
Viewed in this light, Price’s parsing
does not matter. A group nurtured and
guided by Iran just mounted a major
escalation in Iraq. What will Biden do in
response?
At the very least, Biden should halt
any efforts to rejoin the 2015 nuclear
deal so long as Iran’s proxies are run-
ning wild. While it’s true that Biden
and his top advisers see the 2015 deal
as a way to forward U.S. interests by
temporarily limiting Iran’s enrichment
of uranium, Iran also has an interest in
ending the secondary sanctions that the
U.S. reimposed in 2018. Biden has more
leverage, at the moment, than Iran.
An even better option for Biden would
be to adopt a version of his predecessor’s
policy toward Iranian proxies. Former
President Donald Trump’s administra-
tion did not bother with distinctions
among the offshoots, factions and
militias that Iran supported. If a militia
attacked U.S. forces in Iraq, the U.S.
attacked the militia in response. Trump
was also willing to escalate to deter,
as he did a little more than a year ago
after militias nearly overran the U.S.
embassy in Baghdad. Trump autho-
rized the strikes that killed Soleimani
and a top militia leader, Abu Mahdi
al-Muhandis.
Biden is not Trump, of course. But if
he wants to calm tensions in the region,
he must convince Iran and its proxies
that he, too, is willing to escalate and
respond to their provocations. If Iran
concludes that it can obtain sanctions
relief while sowing further chaos, then
Biden will be returning the Middle
East to a status quo of dangerous
instability.
Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion
columnist covering national security and
foreign policy. He was the senior national
security correspondent for the Daily
Beast and covered national security and
intelligence for the Washington Times, the
New York Sun and UPI.
Conquering hunger in America
By Katie S. Martin
As the pandemic throws millions of
Americans out of work, cars line up
for miles outside food banks across
the country. COVID-19 did not create
the crisis of hunger in the United
States, but it has exposed its root
cause. Hint: It’s not a shortage of
food.
Even before the pandemic, 35 mil-
lion Americans were food insecure,
meaning they were not able to access
and afford enough nutritious food for
their families. And many more people
were one or two paychecks away from
needing help.
In a 2018 survey, the Federal
Reserve found that 40% of Americans
could not afford to pay an unexpected
$400 bill. When businesses were
forced to shut down, this lack of fi -
nancial cushion created an economic
shock and a dramatic increase in food
insecurity. Feeding America esti-
mates that in 2020, some 50 million
Americans — one in seven — suf-
fered from food insecurity.
Let’s be clear: The reason we have
massive lines at food bank distri-
butions is not because we have a
shortage of food supplies. Yes, in the
early days of the pandemic we faced
short-term shortages when people
stockpiled nonperishables and toilet
paper. But we have a robust food
supply that rebounded quickly to
respond to the need.
Millions of Americans are hungry
because they lack the means to pay for
food.
During COVID-19, we have awak-
ened to racial injustices and systemic
inequalities that put certain groups of
people at greater risk for losing their
jobs, contracting the virus and becom-
ing food insecure. Black and Latinx
Americans are more likely than whites
to work in low-wage service indus-
tries, and are more likely to lose their
jobs due to COVID-19. People of color,
particularly women, were already the
most at risk for food insecurity, fi nan-
cial instability and health disparities
prior to COVID-19.
Despite decades of providing chari-
table food from regional food banks
and local food pantries, food insecurity
remains a persistent public health
problem that the pandemic has only
exacerbated.
Food banks have risen to the occa-
sion and are addressing the immediate
need for food. To tackle the root causes
of food insecurity, however, we need
both public and private responses.
We need a stronger government
safety net that includes not just fed-
eral food assistance, but a minimum
wage that enables workers to afford
food, housing and other basic needs.
We need the business sector to step up,
not only with charitable donations, but
by paying living wages with benefi ts so
their employees don’t need to rely on
charitable food.
There is light at the end of this dark
tunnel. Vaccines are rolling out, busi-
nesses are beginning to reopen, spring
is around the corner and President Joe
Biden has signed executive orders to
reduce food insecurity during CO-
VID-19.
Importantly, the Biden administra-
tion has demonstrated its willingness
to tackle the root causes of hunger by
proposing a $15 minimum wage. The
federal rate of $7.25 has not budged
since 2009, which helps explain the
fi nancial devastation experienced by
millions of low-wage workers during
the pandemic, including many essen-
tial workers.
Let’s use this extraordinary moment
in history to reduce systemic inequali-
ties and ensure that all Americans
can afford enough food. Americans are
hungry for change.
Katie S. Martin is the executive director
of the Institute for Hunger Research
& Solutions at Connecticut Food
Bank-Foodshare, and the author of
“Reinventing Food Banks and Pantries:
New Tools to End Hunger,” Island Press,
2021.