Half a century ago, as the
Vietnam War still raged, President Nixon began bombing neighboring Cambodia —
without bothering to mention it to Congress or the American people. After the
New York Times found out about it, this became known as the “secret bombing” of
Cambodia
But as Garry Trudeau pointed
out in “Doonesbury” four years later, it wasn’t a secret to the
Cambodians. “Secret bombings?” a
Cambodian says. “Boy, there wasn’t any secret about
them. Everyone here knew. I did. And my wife, she knew too!
She was with me, and I remarked on them.”
I think of this whenever people
in child welfare declare themselves shocked by something that everyone who has
to deal with child protective services already knows. The latest case in
point: a commentary for a medical journal by Dr. Katherine Campbell, a professor
of pediatrics at the University of Utah. The headline reads: “Prevention of Child Maltreatment as an
Unexpected Benefit of Social Policies.”
“Unexpected”? Not for those who are poor or
ever have been poor. I suspect they’d say: “It’s not unexpected to us. We
remarked on it.”
The commentary concerns a study that found that reports of what child protective services
agencies deem “neglect” declined in states that took advantage of the option to
expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, and increased in states that did
not take advantage of this option.
