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OPINION 4A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, MAY 26, 2015 Restoring memoriam to Memorial Day Founded in 1873 STEPHEN A. FORRESTER, Editor & Publisher LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager CARL EARL, Systems Manager JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager HEATHER RAMSDELL, Circulation Manager Salmon’s fan club should stay intact By CHARLES M. BLOW New York Times News Service T his Memorial Day, as we headed to the lake and the beach, grilled and drank, shopped and saved, laid out in the sun or sought shady places, we hopeful- ly remained cognizant that the holiday didn’t begin Charles as a day of Blow celebration or commerce but one of solemnity and, indeed, memoriam. AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana The Washington Monument is reflected in part of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. As David W. Blight, a profes- increasingly, limb for this country, and that must be saluted. sor of history and the director of Some of our wars are those of di- the Gilder Lehrman Center for the sastrous execution, others of decep- Study of Slavery, Resistance and tive inception, some a bit of both, but hen Gov. John Kitzhaber abruptly resigned in January, Abolition at Yale wrote in The New they are all ours. Yet we are drifting away from this WZR SLHFHV RI XQ¿QLVKHG EXVLQHVV ZHLJKHG RQ WKH York TimesLQGXULQJWKH¿QDO WUDGLWLRQ RI KRQRULQJ VDFUL¿FH 7KH lower Columbia River. Kitzhaber had alluded to the need for year of the Civil War, a racetrack public in general and the elected of- was converted to ¿FLDOVZKRKDYHVDQF- adaptive management of his gillnet plan. an outdoor prison tioned and sustained 6HLQH¿VKLQJDSSHDUHGQRWWR Brown did not waver in her sup- for Union captives; We are our wars, sometimes be working as planned. And the port for Buckmaster. State Sen. “at least 257 died over substantial pub- drifting lic objection, have a coastal seat on the state Fish and Betsy Johnson also deserves of disease and were diminishing personal Wildlife Commission had been credit for giving credibility to hastily buried in a away stake on the battle- vacant for two years. the nomination. mass grave behind ¿HOGV ² IHZ RI WKHLU from this The new governor, Kate At the end of the day, the grandstand.” own lives and the tradition of Blight wrote: lives of their children, %URZQ QDPHG $VWRULD ¿VK- Buckmaster will be a valu- “After the Confed- siblings and spouses. erman Bruce Buckmaster to able contributor to the Fish honoring erate evacuation of President Barack the commission. Because of and Wildlife Commission. He Charleston, black Obama isn’t a mili- sacrifice. Buckmaster’s involvement with NQRZVLWVWHUUDLQRI¿VKLQJDQG workmen went to tary veteran, nor are many of the presi- Salmon for All and his perceived hunting well. He knows the the site, reburied the Union dead properly, and built dential hopefuls who have declared closeness to the commercial FRPSOH[LW\ RI WKH ¿VK UHVRXUFH a high fence around the cemetery” or might declare a run for the White ¿VKLQJ LQGXVWU\ KH QRPLQDWLRQ on the Columbia River. and the freed people, “in cooperation House in 2016. Hillary Clinton, Martin O’Mal- GUHZ ¿UH IURP WKH VSRUW¿VKLQJ Most of all, Buckmaster with white missionaries and teach- ers, staged a parade of 10,000 on the ley and Bernie Sanders have never industry. NQRZV WKDW ¿VK PLWLJDWLRQ HQ- track.” served. Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Rand Over a matter of weeks, hancement and allocation on the He continued: “After the dedi- Paul, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Buckmaster was vetted in inter- Columbia River involve a web cation, the crowd dispersed into the Chris Christie, Ben Carson, Mike views with an array of interest of agreements among stakehold- LQ¿HOG DQG GLG ZKDW PDQ\ RI XV GR Huckabee, Rick Santorum, Carly Fio- groups ranging from agricul- ers over decades. The nature of on Memorial Day: enjoyed picnics, rina and Bobby Jindal have not either. listened to speeches and watched sol- Only Rick Perry, Lindsey Graham WXUH WR KXQWHUV WR VSRUW¿VKHUV those compromises, arrange- diers drill.” and Jim Webb have. Beneath and above that level ments, federal court rulings and Blight concluded: “The war was As USA Today reported in 2012: “In 2013, just 19 percent of the 535 RI VFUXWLQ\ WKH VSRUW¿VKLQJ LQ- congressional acts have created over, and Memorial Day had been founded by African-Americans in a combined members in the U.S. House dustry’s negative campaigning a vast fan base for salmon. Thus, ritual of remembrance and consecra- and Senate will have active-duty mil- went forward, culminating in it is a misbegotten enterprise to tion. The war, they had boldly an- itary service on their résumé, down rally on the steps of the Capitol. select one stakeholder group for nounced, had been about the triumph from a peak in 1977 when 80 percent of their emancipation over a slave- of lawmakers boasted military ser- Through all of this, Gov. demonization. holders’ republic. They were them- vice.” selves the true patriots.” The newspaper explained: This is the history from which this “The transition from the draft to KROLGD\ VSULQJV KRQRULQJ VDFUL¿FH an all-volunteer military in 1973 is a $QG KRQRULQJ VDFUL¿FHV FDQ H[LVW driving force of the decline, but veter- apart from endorsing missions. Many ans and their advocates say they face of our veterans have given life, and PRUH FKDOOHQJHV UXQQLQJ IRU RI¿FH In face of relentless opposition, Gov. Brown stuck by her nomination W No snow makes it KDUGIRU¿VKWRJR E ‘We’re borrowing from the future’ ach spring much excitement naturally centers on return- ing salmon runs, but this also is a key time for outward-bound young salmon headed toward the VDOWZDWHURIWKH3DFL¿F2FHDQ This year offers a taste of what climate researchers tell us will become routine as the cen- tury moves forward: In-stream ÀRZVWKDWDUHPXFKDIIHFWHGE\ lack of snowpack in the moun- tains surrounding the Columbia- Snake watershed. “Managers are running out of ways to add water to the river system in order to move the last of the juvenile salmon through the dams,” Columbia Basin Bulletin reported last Friday. There is no way to sugarcoat it: water storage in the form of snow is beginning to be an unde- SHQGDEOHZD\RIPRYLQJ¿VKXS and down the river. Last Friday, river manag- ers began a 10-day drawdown of Grand Coulee Dam waters LQ RUGHU WR ERRVW ULYHU ÀRZV DW McNary Dam. This is a cause for concern considering our low-snow winter and uncertain spring precipitation. If rainfall and runoff aren’t adequate, the Grand Coulee drawdown won’t leave water managers with much margin for error. “Yes, we know we’re borrowing from the fu- ture,” a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration )LVKHULHVRI¿FLDOVDLGGXULQJLQ VWUHDPÀRZGLVFXVVLRQV This spring’s maneuvering is an interesting look behind the scenes at how system operators budget waters between differ- ent reservoirs and needs. In es- sence, stored water represents a saving account that can be spent to produce electricity, transport salmon, irrigate crops and other purposes. When it comes to moving young salmon toward the ocean, logistics are complicated by dif- fering time and requirements for salmon runs. With the juve- nile run winding down in the Snake River and without more water available from a reser- voir on the Lower Snake, the Bulletin reported the Technical Management Team that juggles ¿VK DQG K\GURHOHFWULFLW\ JHQHU- ation is now concentrating on passing juveniles through the Lower Columbia River dams by calling on Grand Coulee water. 8QIRUWXQDWHO\ WKH 3DFL¿F Northwest will become much more familiar with all these issues in coming decades. We will have to become increasingly adept at choreographing water releas- es, transporting young salmon around danger spots, and using ZDWHUZLWKPD[LPXPHI¿FLHQF\ to have enough for everything. It will also be necessary to alter the West’s water laws: A proposal in Washington state would allow the state Department of Ecology to lease water from private land- owners who control it, in order to temporarily shift it to other pri- orities. A long-term change to this year’s conditions isn’t expected until mid-century. But it is none too soon to start getting ready. in the modern era of political cam- paigns.” As for the current Congress, as the PBS NewsHour noted in Novem- ber: “In all, 97 members of the next session of Congress will have served in the U.S. military. That means less than 18 percent of the new congres- sional delegation served in the armed forces. (Note: This number includes one nonvoting delegate from the Northern Marianas.)” And, as FiveThirtyEight pointed out in March: “As of Jan. 31, there were close to 1.4 million people serving in the U.S. armed forces, according to the latest numbers from the Defense Manpow- er Data Center, a body of the Depart- ment of Defense. That means that 0.4 percent of the American population is active military personnel.” Furthermore, we are moving to- ward a society in which the rich and powerful avoid service while those of fewer means sometimes see it as one of only a few options. As Karl W. Eikenberry and David M. Kennedy wrote in The Times in ³6R PDQ\ RI¿FHUV KDYH VRQV and daughters serving that they speak, with pride and anxiety, about war as a ‘family business.’” The authors continued: “Here are the makings of a self-perpetuating military caste, sharply segregated from the larger society and with its enlisted ranks disproportionately recruited from the disadvantaged. History suggests that such scenarios don’t end well.” In a way, Memorial Day may be a time for us to consider the evolution of this day: a day established by a dis- advantaged population to honor war heroes who now belong to a military whose members are increasingly be- ing drawn from a disadvantaged pop- ulation. Next year, think about that be- tween the barbecue and beers. Is the tech revolution overhyped? it effectively aren’t the selves. Nothing like that is same thing. Give it time, happening now. said economic historians, Another possibility is that new technologies are emember Douglas and computers will even- more fun than fundamen- Adams’ 1979 novel The tually deliver the goods (and services). tal. Peter Thiel, one of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the the founders of PayPal, This optimism seemed Galaxy? famously remarked that vindicated when produc- ZHZDQWHGÀ\LQJFDUVEXW It began with some technology WLYLW\ JURZWK ¿QDOO\ WRRN got 140 characters instead. off circa 1995. Progress snark, dismissing Earth as a planet And he’s not alone in sug- ZDV EDFN ² DQG VR ZDV Paul whose life-forms “are so amazingly gesting that information America, which seemed Krugman primitive that they still think digital to be at the cutting edge of technology that excites watches are a pretty neat idea.” the Twittering classes may not be a the revolution. But that was then, in the early But a funny thing happened on big deal for the economy as a whole. stages of the information technology the way to the techno-revolution. We So what do I think is going on revolution. did not, it turned out, get a sustained with technology? The answer is that Since then we’ve moved on to return to rapid economic progress. , GRQ¶W NQRZ ² EXW QHLWKHU GRHV PXFK PRUH VLJQL¿FDQW WKLQJV VR Instead, it was more of a one-time anyone else. Maybe my friends at much so that the big technology idea spurt, which sputtered out around a Google are right, and Big Data will of 2015, so far, is a digital watch. decade ago. Since then, we’ve been soon transform everything. Maybe But this one tells you to stand up if living in an era of iPhones and iPads 3-D printing will bring the infor- you’ve been sitting too long! and iDontKnows, but even if you ad- mation revolution into the material OK, I’m snarking, too. But there MXVWIRUWKHHIIHFWVRI¿QDQFLDOFULVLV world. Or maybe we’re on track for is a real question here. Everyone growth and trends in income have re- another big meh. What I’m pretty sure about, how- knows that we live in an era of in- verted to the sluggishness that char- ever, is that we ought to scale back credibly rapid technological change, acterized the 1970s and 1980s. which is changing everything. But In other words, at this point, the the hype. You see, writing and talking what if what everyone knows is whole digital era, spanning more wrong? And I’m than four decades, breathlessly about how technolo- not being wildly is looking like a dis- gy changes everything might seem We’ve been appointment. New harmless, but, in practice, it acts as contrarian here. A growing number of technologies have a distraction from more mundane is- living in economists, look- yielded great head- VXHV ² DQG DQ H[FXVH IRU KDQGOLQJ ing at the data on lines, but modest those issues badly. If you go back an era of productivity and in- economic results. WR WKH V \RX ¿QG PDQ\ LQÀX- ential people saying the same kinds comes, are wonder- iPhones and Why? ing if the technolog- One possibility of things such people say nowadays: iPads and ical revolution has is that the numbers This isn’t really about the business been greatly over- are missing the re- cycle, never mind debates about K\SHG ² DQG VRPH iDontKnows. ality, especially macroeconomic policy; it’s about technologists share WKH EHQH¿WV RI QHZ radical technological change and a their concern. products and services. I get a lot of workforce that lacks the skills to deal We’ve been here before. The pleasure from technology that lets with the new era. And then, thanks to World War II, Hitchhiker’s Guide was published me watch streamed performances during the era of the “productivity by my favorite musicians, but that ZH¿QDOO\JRWWKHGHPDQGERRVWZH paradox,” a two-decade-long period doesn’t get counted in GDP. Still, needed, and all those supposedly un- during which technology seemed to new technology is supposed to serve TXDOL¿HGZRUNHUV²QRWWRPHQWLRQ EH DGYDQFLQJ UDSLGO\ ² SHUVRQDO businesses as well as consumers, and 5RVLHWKH5LYHWHU²WXUQHGRXWWREH computing, cellphones, local area should be boosting the production of quite useful in the modern economy, networks and the early stages of the traditional as well as new goods. The if given a chance. Of course, there I go, invoking ,QWHUQHW ² \HW HFRQRPLF JURZWK big productivity gains of the period was sluggish and incomes stagnant. from 1995 to 2005 came largely in history. Don’t I understand that Many hypotheses were advanced to things like inventory control, and everything is different now? Well, explain that paradox, with the most showed up as much or more in non- I understand why people like to popular probably being that invent- technology businesses like retail as say that. But that doesn’t make it ing a technology and learning to use in high-technology industries them- true. By PAUL KRUGMAN New York Times News Service R