Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 30, 2017)
OPINION 4A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, JANUARY 30, 2017 Founded in 1873 DAVID F. PERO, Publisher & Editor LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager CARL EARL, Systems Manager JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager OUR VIEW Washington state should follow Oregon on gillnetting The politics of cowardice T he Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission is to be com- mended for recognizing that a 2013 policy dictated by former Gov. John Kitzhaber to kick commercial salmon fishing off the Columbia River has failed. It isn’t just Lower Columbia River residents who think so. Bobby Levy, former commission chair, commented on Facebook, “Oregon Fish and Wildlife commissioners did the fair and right thing! I applaud you!!” Levy led the commis- sion in 2012 and 2013 when the two fish and wildlife commis- sions of Oregon and Washington state headed down the path to implementing the Kitzhaber scheme. Never fully thought out, gutting a centurylong tradition of supplying local consumers with some of the salmon we sup- port with our taxes and electric rates was largely the prod- uct of intense lobbying by one subset of recreational fishing, embodied by the Northwest Sportsfishing Industry Association. A long-successful alliance between different salmon-fishing interests was cast aside, resulting in a loss of important uni- fied advocacy for salmon recovery in the Columbia estuary and basin. Evicting gillnetters from the main stem of the Columbia by the end of 2016 was premised on a number of assumptions, including: • Successful alternative methods were supposed to be devel- oped to gillnets, including seine nets deployed from vessels and the shoreline. These alternatives have failed to achieve goals in terms of catching fish or allowing naturally spawning salmon to be freed unharmed and returned to the water. • Additional areas were supposed to be identified and devel- oped where hatchery salmon could be reared in net pens. These select area fishery enhancement projects, like the one that already exists in Youngs Bay, nurture salmon that are spe- cifically intended to be caught by commercial gillnetters. However, there are few locations suitable for such projects — nowhere near enough to replace the opportunities provided in the river’s main stem. • Commercial fishermen were to be kept financially whole via state compensation, license and equipment buybacks and other measures. The states have failed to put their money where their mouths were, at least to an adequate extent to make up for the damages caused by the Kitzhaber scheme. The right thing Oregon did the right thing with its open-ended deferral of dispossessing gillnetters of their livelihoods. Washington state commissioners, however, are motoring ahead with fishing restrictions. This conflict between fishing regulations in the two states will require resolution. Oregon has jurisdiction over most of the Columbia estuary, with Washington controlling only a nar- row band of water close to the north shore. Presumably, a short-term compromise can be worked out. In the longer term, a majority of Washington’s commission appears committed to eliminating gillnetting on the river, even calling for an aggres- sive license buyback program. This comes at the same time the Washington agency is cranking down commercial fishing on Willapa Bay, asserting escaped hatchery Chinook have now become “natural” salmon worthy of full-fledged conservation protections. This is disap- pointing. At the time of the 2013 decision to remove gillnets from the main Columbia, many envisioned Willapa could host some replacement commercial fishing, in effect becoming a fishery enhancement area. Sports fishing vital None of this means recreational fishing is unimportant or under-valued by the communities of the Columbia River and Willapa Bay. Sports fishing is a vital part of our local culture and economy. We would be at least equally opposed to curtail- ing recreational fisheries as we are to the ill-considered moves against gillnetting. But by chopping gillnetting, Washington state directly threatens the financial stability of local families. There are fish- ing families who will no longer be able to anchor their lives here without the income that seasonal gillnetting represents. These are men and women who will no longer shop in local stores, children who will no longer attend local schools. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee should let his appointed com- missioners know it’s time to go back to the drawing board and find a true path to the future for Columbia River commercial fishing. AP Photo/Susan Walsh President Donald Trump, center, grabs the hand of Defense Secretary James Mattis, right, after he signed an executive action on rebuilding the military during an event at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., on Friday. Vice President Mike Pence watches, left. By DAVID BROOKS New York Times News Service T his is a column directed at high school and college students. I’m going to try to convey to you how astoundingly different the Republican Party felt when I was your age. The big guy then was Ronald Reagan. Temperamentally, though not politically, Reagan was heir to the two Roosevelts. He inherited a love of audacity from TR and optimism and charm from FDR. He had a sunny faith in America’s destiny and in America’s ability to bend global history toward freedom. He had a sunny faith in the free market to deliver prosperity to all. He had a sunny faith in the power of technology to deliver bounty and even protect us from nuclear missiles. He could be very hard on big government or the Soviet Union, but he generally saw the world as a welcoming place; he looked for the good news in others and saw the arc of history bending toward progress. When he erred it was often on the utopian side of things, believing that tax cuts could pay for themselves, believing that he and Mikhail Gorbachev could shed history and eliminate all nuclear weapons. The mood of the party is so different today. Donald Trump expressed the party’s new mood to David Muir of ABC, when asked about his decision to suspend immigration from some Muslim countries: “The world is a mess. The world is as angry as it gets. What, you think this is going to cause a little more anger? The world is an angry place.” Consider the tenor of Trump’s first week in office. It’s all about threat perception. He has made moves to build a wall against the Mexican threat, to build barriers against the Muslim threat, to end a trade deal with Asia to fight the foreign economic threat, to build black site torture chambers against the terrorist threat. Trump is on his political honey- moon, which should be a moment of joy and promise. But he seems to suffer from an angry form of anhedonia, the inability to experi- ence happiness. Instead of savoring the moment, he’s spent the week in a series of nasty squabbles about his ratings and crowd sizes. If Reagan’s dominant emotional note was optimism, Trump’s is fear. If Reagan’s optimism was expansive, Trump’s fear propels him to close in: Pull in from Asian entanglements through rejection of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Pull in from European entanglements by disparaging NATO. It’s not a cowering, timid fear; it’s more a dark, resentful porcupine fear. Trump has changed the way the Republican Party sees the world. Republicans used to have a basic faith in the dynamism and openness of the free market. Now the party fears openness and competition. We have a word for people who are dominated by fear. We call them cowards. Trump was not a coward in the business or campaign worlds. He could take on enormous debt and had the audacity to appear at televised national debates with no clue what he was talking about. But as president his is a policy of cowardice. On every front, he wants to shrink the country into a shell. J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote, “A man that flies from his fear may find that he has only taken a short- cut to meet it.” Desperate to be liked, Trump adopts a combative attitude that makes him unlikable. Terrified of Mexican criminals, he wants to build a wall that will actually lock in more undocumented aliens than it will keep out. Terrified of Muslim terrorists, he embraces the torture policies guaranteed to mobilize terrorists. Terrified that U.S. business can’t compete with Asian business, he closes off a trade deal that would have boosted annual real incomes in the United States by $131 billion, or 0.5 per- cent of GDP. Terrified of Mexican competition, he considers slapping a 20 percent tariff on Mexican goods, even though U.S. exports to Mexico have increased 97 percent since 2005. Trump has changed the way the Republican Party sees the world. Republicans used to have a basic faith in the dynamism and openness of the free market. Now the party fears openness and competition. In summer 2015, according to a Pew Research Center poll, Republicans said free trade deals had been good for the country by 51 to 39 percent. By summer 2016, Republicans said those deals had been bad for America by 61 per- cent to 32 percent. It’s not that the deals had changed, or reality. It was that Donald Trump became the Republican nominee and his dark fearfulness became the party’s dark fearfulness. In this case fear is not a reaction to the world. It is a way of seeing the world. It propels your reactions to the world. As Reagan came to office he faced refugee crises, with suffering families coming in from Cuba, Vietnam and Cambodia. Filled with optimism and confidence, Reagan vowed, “We shall seek new ways to integrate refugees into our society,” and he delivered on that promise. Trump faces a refugee crisis from Syria. And though no Syrian- American has ever committed an act of terrorism on American soil, Trump’s response is fear. Shut them out. Students, the party didn’t used to be this way. A mean wind is blowing.