A8 The BulleTin • Sunday, april 18, 2021
EDITORIALS & OPINIONS
AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER
Heidi Wright
Gerry O’Brien
Richard Coe
Publisher
Editor
Editorial Page Editor
Jefferson County vote
will likely determine
future of fire, rescue
D
ial 911, and seconds count. There’s not necessarily an
optimal way to run fire and ambulance services. But
Jefferson County voters face an important choice in
the May election: Should their fire service and ambulance service
merge?
That vote is not on the ballot. A
vote for candidates on the Emer-
gency Medical Services Board is.
One slate of candidates have been
on the Emergency Medical Services
Board for years and do not want a
merger: John Curnutt, Louise Muir
and Patricia Neff. Another slate of
candidates — Mike Ahern, Janet
Brown and Joe Krenowicz — sup-
port consolidation.
We can’t say authoritatively that
a merger would improve service.
There are reasons to believe that
might be so.
Listen to 911 calls. If you just lis-
ten to a couple 911 calls, it can give
you a very distorted picture of what
happens. Pick out a few recordings
in any 911 district in the country
and we’d bet you can find some that
didn’t go smoothly.
That said, we’ll tell you about one
in Jefferson County. It was a call
about a man in the unincorporated
community of Gateway who needed
medical help. He had no pulse.
Gateway is about 11 miles north of
Madras. 911 had to get clarification
about who would respond. The two
agencies — fire and EMS — operate
on different frequencies. If these two
agencies were consolidated, it’s hard
to imagine there would have had to
be a phone call to straighten it out.
That same theme — better coordi-
nation of response between the two
agencies and 911 — was brought up
in an analysis completed just a few
years ago. The study funded by the
public looked at the possibility of a
fire/EMS merger. The 2019 consul-
tant report was clear: “The Jefferson
County Fire District and the Jeffer-
son County Emergency Medical
Services District should move for-
ward with seeking voter approval
to form a single emergency service
district.”
Coordination would improve.
Would it save money or even cost
less? That’s not as likely. Some man-
agement and administrative func-
tions could perhaps be consolidated.
But it doesn’t necessarily mean that
a consolidated department would
mean a cut in taxes. The 2019 re-
port identified existing funding
challenges that the districts already
faced.
The key issue is to ensure Jeffer-
son County residents get the emer-
gency medical and fire service they
deserve. Vote for the incumbents on
the EMS board and there’s little hope
of change.
COCC should fight like
heck to grow enrollment
C
entral Oregon Community
College’s enrollment has been
dropping.
It’s not at all reflective of the qual-
ity and incredible bargain of educa-
tion at COCC. A student at COCC
can get a great education and save a
lot of money.
Colleges and community colleges
have generally seen declining enroll-
ment over the last few years. That
began before the pandemic. The
peak for COCC was about in the
2012-13 school year. Since then full-
time credit enrollment declined by
about 46% from 6,633.
What we found very interesting
about the COCC board meeting last
week, was how bullish the university
administration is about the future.
The school’s budget is built around
an assumption of a 4% growth rate
in enrollment for the next few years.
The discussion came up during
a budget presentation, so the first
thing we wondered about were the
numbers in the red. COCC’s budget
projection already puts it at a pro-
jected ending fund balance of neg-
ative $4.1 million for the 2021-23
budget period. It pretty much grows
out of it by 2023-25. So what would
happen if the 4% enrollment growth
didn’t materialize?
It wouldn’t mean disaster. The
institution would adjust. It has re-
serves. And as COCC board mem-
ber Bruce Abernethy pointed out,
the numbers can always look worse
than any reality the college ever con-
fronts because COCC budgets so
conservatively.
The relative financial situation of
COCC is not the most important
consideration. Its students and po-
tential students are.
Community colleges are where
many minority students and low-in-
come students access higher edu-
cation and more training. For their
sake, we certainly hope COCC’s
growth is 4% or more.
Editorials reflect the views of The Bulletin’s editorial board, Publisher Heidi Wright, Editor
Gerry O’Brien and Editorial Page Editor Richard Coe. They are written by Richard Coe.
‘Cancel culture’ wars are useless
BY ALYSSA ROSENBERG
The Washington Post
E
very day brings a new salvo in
the battle over “cancel culture.”
Disney cuts ties with conserva-
tive actress Gina Carano. The guard-
ians of Dr. Seuss’ legacy disavow some
of his books. A low-level USA Today
editor gets fired for a tweet declaring
all mass shooters are white men. But
it’s exhausting living in a perpetual
state of conflict that does little to ad-
vance anyone’s actual political goals.
If conservatives are serious about pro-
tecting a broad range of public expres-
sion, and liberals sincerely want new
norms to take root, there are grounds
for a truce.
Consider five starting points for
such a framework:
First, make it harder for skittish
employers to fire or blackball people
over their political views.
Carano’s dismissal from “The Man-
dalorian” over a series of inflammatory
social media posts spurred conservative
complaints about Hollywood’s liberal
orthodoxy. So why not work to narrow
the morality clauses used to keep Hol-
lywood and sports stars in ideological
line, and strengthen the protections for
speech in collective bargaining agree-
ments? There’s plenty in this principle
for liberals, too, as the Colin Kaeper-
nick controversy demonstrated.
Similarly, both left and right fre-
quently argue that academia has be-
come inhospitable, whether to con-
servatives who question the rigor of
certain disciplines or to professors who
criticize the policies of the Israeli gov-
ernment. The solution to both sets of
complaints is to do more to defend
faculty from firing and to prevent pol-
iticians and donors from monkeying
with tenure decisions. People across the
political spectrum should stand up to
a Kansas effort to make it easier to sus-
pend or terminate professors, includ-
ing those with tenure. Newspapers and
magazines, too, would do well to set ex-
pansive standards for what ideas their
employees can explore — and make
clear they’ll defend writers and editors
who come under coordinated attack
from the right or the left.
Second, liberals should agree it’s
good for troublesome works to be avail-
able, while conservatives should accept
context and content labels.
Keeping works in print and avail-
able in digital libraries would undercut
complaints about censorship. A school
might decide not to use certain Dr. Se-
uss books, but parents could still seek
them out. It’s no hardship to skip a pref-
ace that acknowledges and analyzes
Dr. Seuss’ use of racist tropes — or to
fast-forward past a content warning on
a TV show. And in the entertainment
world, keeping controversial material
available in box sets and streaming ser-
vices should be a liberal goal. Why let
stars and companies launder their rep-
utations by making problematic old
works disappear?
Third, put a statute of limitations on
cruel, stupid things people say as chil-
dren and teenagers.
The ninth graders who made head-
lines in Texas last week for discussing
buying and selling their Black class-
mates deserve whatever discipline their
school system doled out. It’s entirely
appropriate that Alexi McCammond, a
former Axios reporter who was named
the new top editor of Teen Vogue, apol-
ogized in 2019 for ugly, anti-Asian re-
marks she made in 2011 as a teenager.
But as repulsive as this sort of behavior
is, there ought to be a limit on how far
such incidents follow young people into
adulthood.
Fourth, liberals and conservatives
should seek to end corporate welfare
in exchange for corporate freedom of
speech.
States and cities have long thrown
money and tax breaks at corporations
to get businesses to relocate factories
and headquarters into new jurisdic-
tions. Though some locales have gotten
wise to the dubious economic benefits
of these deals, Republicans disgrun-
tled by the liberal positions some com-
panies have taken are trying to use
these subsidies to bring big business
to heel. Here’s a better idea: Govern-
ments should stop showering compa-
nies with cash, and stop caring what
bandwagons those companies hop on.
Consumers who want to affirm their
politics when choosing a particular
soft drink or airline can make those
decisions for themselves.
Finally, everyone should think seri-
ously about redemption.
Social media pile-ons and profes-
sional death sentences become the
easy default but accomplish little.
Conservatives get nothing of mate-
rial value out of a libertarian think
tank staffer losing his job over a dumb
tweet. It’s not clear what the staff at
Teen Vogue won for themselves in not
having McCammond as their boss.
Human urges to judge and con-
demn are hard to rein in. But there are
choices we can make about how we
use our outrage. Some of them can
make the world better in the long
term — instead of just making us feel
smug in the moment.
e e
Alyssa Rosenberg writes about the intersection
of culture and politics for The Washington Post.
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Bernie Madoff left behind only misery and heartache
BY JOE NOCERA
Bloomberg
B
ernie Madoff is dead, and it is
unlikely that even the people
who were once closest to him
will shed a tear. Not his wife, Ruth,
whose life was destroyed when Mad-
off’s Ponzi scheme was revealed in
December 2008. Not his brother, Pe-
ter, Madoff’s former chief compliance
officer, who spent nearly a decade in
prison after pleading guilty to a variety
of charges. Not his niece Shana, Peter
Madoff’s daughter, who also worked
in the compliance department. And
certainly not his daughters-in-law or
his grandchildren; both his sons died
after he went to prison, one from sui-
cide and the other from cancer.
By all appearances, Madoff loved
his family deeply. He once held his
son Mark’s hand for the duration of
a dinner because Mark was going
through a difficult divorce, according
to Town & Country. But that turned
out to be just another fraud. He had to
know that once his decadeslong Ponzi
scheme came to light, it would be ru-
inous not just to his firm’s clients but
to his family. The word “sociopath” is
overused these days, but it fits Madoff
to a tee. He had neither empathy nor
a conscience. That’s the mentality re-
quired to rip off thousands of people
who are depending on you.
Madoff’s Ponzi scheme is what’s
called affinity fraud — “the pleas-
ant-sounding term criminologists use
when one member of a close-knit,
trusting community exploits that trust
to steal from others in the group,” as
Madoff biographer Diana Henriques
put it. Madoff was Jewish, and his
community were his fellow Jews.
Some, like Fred Wilpon, the former
owner of the New York Mets, were
wealthy. But many were not. Mid-
dle-class Jews gave him their money
in the belief that their growing nest
eggs would pay for their children’s col-
lege tuition or their retirement. Mad-
off was adept at gaining people’s trust.
When they discovered that those
gains were nothing more than an il-
lusion, they were crushed. I once met
a TSA guard at the Las Vegas airport.
She was elderly, and after she looked
at my driver’s license, she told me how
much she missed New York.
“What’s keeping you from moving
back?” I asked her flippantly. “Mad-
off,” she said. “I don’t have any money
anymore.”
In the months after Madoff’s ar-
rest, I was pretty unsympathetic to the
plight of those who had lost money
with Madoff. I thought they should
have realized that it’s implausible for a
money manager to generate the kind
of steady returns that Madoff did.
But then someone showed me a
statement from Bernard L. Madoff
Investment Securities LLC. I was as-
tonished. It was extremely detailed,
with a long list of securities that the
client supposedly owned, along with
monthly gains or losses. It must have
been arduous for those helping Mad-
off commit the fraud to compile —
and have it add up to a small gain
each month. But if you were a rela-
tively unsophisticated investor, could
you truly be expected to even suspect
that the statement was fraudulent?
Unlikely.
In real dollars, the Madoff Ponzi
scheme lost around $19 billion. Ac-
cording to the trustee for the Madoff
estate, $14.4 billion has been recov-
ered so far — an extraordinary ac-
complishment. But that does not sug-
gest that Madoff’s former clients are
close to being made whole. You see,
when you add in the fictitious gains
that the victims thought they had, the
amount comes to more than $64 bil-
lion.
Even if the trustee, Irving Picard,
were to recover the entire $19 billion,
the victims would still be out $45 bil-
lion. Though that money never truly
existed, it was real in the minds of the
victims who were counting on it.
Last summer, at the age of 82, Mad-
off petitioned the court for a compas-
sionate release, something the Federal
Bureau of Prisons has begun to grant
elderly prisoners who are sick. In
2009, he was sentenced to 150 years in
prison. But now, he said, he was ter-
minally ill with kidney failure and was
likely to die within 18 months.
Bernie Ebbers, the former chief
executive officer of WorldCom, had
been granted a compassionate release
six months earlier. Madoff’s brother,
Peter, had spent a portion of his sen-
tence in home confinement. Former
Donald Trump aides Paul Manafort
and Michael Cohen also finished their
sentences at home.
But not Madoff. “When I sentenced
Mr. Madoff in 2009, it was fully my
intent that he live out the rest of his
life in prison,” U.S. Circuit Judge
Denny Chin said.
“Nothing has happened in the 11
years since to change my thinking.”
Less than a year later, he died alone —
no family, no friends, no former col-
leagues. Which, given all the harm he
caused to so many people, is exactly
what he deserved.
e e
Joe Nocera is a Bloomberg columnist
covering business.