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Their view: ‘Dreamers’ are people, not bargaining chips

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Arena board welcomes new members appointed by Luzerne County Council

<p>Washington&#8217;s corps of video-pundits celebrated 2017&#8217;s final daze by fixating on North Korea&#8217;s nukes, Republicans&#8217; disarray and Democrats&#8217; discombobulation. Then they eased seamlessly into their 2018 obsession over President Donald Trump&#8217;s &#8220;Fire and Fury,&#8221; as told by his fired and furious. </p><p>But inside the traditionally cheerless chambers and cubicles of the federal bureaucracy, newly arrived TrumpWorld ideologues and their career-professional colleagues ended 2017 with a clash of cross words over banned words that never really received the insightful help only a certified pundit can provide. Until now. For I have not only seen this problem once before &#8212; but I remember how a senior official solved it by devising a creative workaround.</p><p>As controversies go, this Trump administration version is one that (to paraphrase poet Robert Frost), couldn&#8217;t be called ungentle, but how thoroughly departmental &#8212; and governmental. We might never have known about this except it was revealed in a scoop by The Washington Post&#8217;sLena H. Sun and Juliet Eilperin.</p><p>At a budget meeting with senior officials in the Atlanta headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month, policy analysts were reportedly told by a senior official that they are now prohibited from using seven words and phrases in official documents and presentations: &#8220;vulnerable,&#8221; &#8220;entitlement,&#8221; diversity,&#8221; transgender,&#8221; &#8220;fetus,&#8221; &#8220;evidence-based&#8221; and &#8220;science-based.&#8221; The official was relaying instructions from higher-ups. CDC is overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services.</p><p>The guidance, as delivered to the policy analysts, reportedly included one suggested workaround. Instead of &#8220;evidence-based&#8221; or &#8220;science-based,&#8221; the analysts were encouraged to say: &#8220;CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes.&#8221; Whatever that means.</p><p>The Post scoop quoted an unnamed longtime CDC analyst who said: &#8220;In my experience, we&#8217;ve never had any pushback from an ideological standpoint.&#8221; The analyst said others in the room were &#8220;incredulous&#8221; at hearing about the Trump administration&#8217;s forbidden words, adding: &#8220;It was very much, &#8216;Are you serious? Are you kidding?&#8217;?&#8221;</p><p>My reaction was a bit different: Where&#8217;s Alfred Kahn when we really need him?</p><p>Actually, we know the answer. Kahn, a highly-respected economist and regulatory scholar, who was the architect of President Jimmy Carter&#8217;s deregulation of the airline industry, died in 2010 at age 93. But to describe Kahn in just those terms &#8212; or even to say he also reluctantly agreed to serve as Carter&#8217;s White House inflation czar, as head of the Council on Wage and Price Stability &#8212; is to miss the essence of this unique figure in resolving mundane matters of governance.</p><p>For Kahn became a superhero of those of us who had yearned in vain for straight-talk from an economist &#8212; a skill that was enhanced by the fact that he also possessed a world-class Groucho Marx moustache and a world-class talent for quick-draw quips. The combination somehow enabled him to be able to technically obey a presidential word-ban &#8212; while smashing it to de-facto smithereens, in a way that left even his outraged bosses laughing.</p><p>One day in 1978, Carter was said to have been furious that Kahn had publicly warned of the importance of preventing a &#8220;recession;&#8221; Kahn was told to avoid using the term, lest he generate a climate leading to an economic downturn. So Kahn came up with a euphemism &#8212; instead of &#8220;recession&#8221; he using the word &#8220;banana.&#8221;</p><p>As in: &#8220;Between 1973 and 1975 we had the deepest banana that we had in 35 years, and yet inflation dipped only very briefly.&#8221;</p><p>Soon Kahn encountered another presidential objection &#8212; the president of United Fruit Company chided him for denigrating bananas. So instead, Kahn started saying &#8220;kumquat.&#8221;</p><p>With inflation topping 10 percent in 1979, Kahn, who had large problems and no staff, wanted to leave his job. At one point he famously joked: &#8220;I can&#8217;t figure out why the president doesn&#8217;t fire me.&#8221; (He paused.) &#8220;Actually, I do know. Nobody would be foolish enough to take this job.&#8221;</p><p>Which brings me back to the CDC. Predictably, after the Post&#8217;s scoop appeared, the CDC&#8217;s new director, Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald, faced a wave of criticism &#8212; from both inside and outside her agency. She did not refute the account of what policy analysts had been told at that meeting. But she quickly tweeted a denial that any such thing was now the CDC policy.</p><p>&#8220;I want to assure you there are no banned words at CDC,&#8221; said the new director.</p><p>How do you like them pineapples?</p><style>
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<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>Martin Schram</p><p>Guest Columnist</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Martin Schram, an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service, is a veteran Washington journalist, author and TV documentary executive. Readers may send him email at <a href="mailto:martin.schram@gmail.com">martin.schram@gmail.com</a>.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Their view: A fruitful substitute for forbidden words