PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

I direct two departments – the Department of Pet Peeves and the Department of Good Quotes Worth Remembering. I have full and complete authority to run each as I see fit.

So, today, I am opening the Department of Pet Peeves.

1. “Essential government services:” Will someone please tell me what it means for a government program to be “essential?”  If programs are not essential, then why do they exist?  Now, I suspect the reason for the term is to find a way to divide government services into categories from the most important to the less important.  But, still, the term “essential” — or “non-essential” — conveys a terrible impression to the general public.

So, I say, change the name.

2. Fake news: I wish there was a better definition for this term, a relatively new one in politics. When President Trump uses it, as he did in Davos, Switzerland yesterday (in relation to reports that, at one point, he directed his general counsel to fire Robert Mueller), he probably means that he doesn’t like what the media is reporting.

But, to me, a former journalist, fake news means something else. It refers to what happens in society today when folks distribute “news” over social media which is definitively not true. They do it only to get a rise out of readers.

As I have said before in this blog, the definition of “news” is difficult to pinpoint in society today. But, for me – remember I am a former journalist — news is what an editor or publisher specifies it to be.

This was driven home to me many years ago when I was applying for job in Salem as assistant director of the, then, Department of Human Resources. If I got the job, one of my responsibilities would be to handle media relations for the Division of Corrections, an administrative arm including all of the state’s prisons (then there were only three, compared to 14 today), as well as parole and probation services. Today, Corrections is a separate department of state government.

The division director, Bob Watson, who became a good friend when I got the job, asked me what “news” was during my interview. I gave him what I considered to be a good answer then – and it is still true today. It’s what an editor or publisher specifies it to be.

So, Trump, you are wrong about “fake news.”

3. Believing the hospital and insurance taxes are new ones: The recent public vote on the hospital and health insurance taxes included a wrong fact – or at least one out of context. It was that the taxes are somehow new ones.

No.

They were first instituted in 2003. The goal was to create a pot of state money that could serve to garner federal matching funds under the Medicaid program. More than 40 states have engaged in this matching fund scheme, which is entirely legal under federal law.

I lobbied the tax issue for more than 10 years as I represented Providence Health System, which, today as in 2003, supported the taxes as a way to fund care for low-income Oregonians under Medicaid.

I have had my own questions about this tax over the years, but, as they say, it is what it is – and that is a compromise. The definition of the term is that no one likes all of its aspects, but it is the best one can do under the circumstances.

Opponents of the tax this time around portrayed the phrase “hold the possible hostage in pursuit of the perfect,” which I add is almost never possible.

The good news is that tax opponents lost time around, but it remains a goal for the legislature to design an approach for the future that is fair and taxes the widest swath of payers – which, for me, is the definition of fair. For now, Oregon voters have given the legislature more time to do the deed.