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About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (March 2, 2016)
2 Wednesday, March 2, 2016 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon O P I N I O N John Kass American Voices Letters to the Editor… The Nugget welcomes contributions from its readers, which must include the writer’s name, address and phone number. Let- ters to the Editor is an open forum for the community and contains unsolicited opinions not necessarily shared by the Editor. The Nugget reserves the right to edit, omit, respond or ask for a response to letters submitted to the Editor. Letters should be no longer than 300 words. Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned. The deadline for all letters is noon Monday. To the Editor: How long do we have to look at the eyesore that used to be the Ski Inn? That’s prime real estate in our beautiful new downtown. There are laws against abandoning cars, is there a law about abandoned buildings? Just tear it down. A half-day job for an excavator. And why in the world is the City working on a way to give away money to attract busi- ness when we don’t have housing for their employees? This is putting the cart before the horse. If the City has money to throw away, they should use that money to attract a builder for the apartments that have already been mas- ter-planned at Cold Springs. Bruce Berryhill s s s To the Editor: I’m writing about a new policy at the Sisters Public Library that has me flum- moxed. Walking or biking to the Sisters library accompanied by my well-behaved and friendly dog has always been fun for me. Unfortunately, there is a new pet policy that does not allow your pet to wait outside leashed next to a bench or a tree while you check out your book. Sisters has always felt like a pet-friendly place to live. Last week it didn’t feel like that when I was singled out in front of other patrons by a library employee walking around the library asking who’s dog was outside. I thought, “Oh no, what is my dog up to?” Well, apparently, just quietly lying there curled up waiting 10 minutes for me at the bench. I guess this is now unacceptable to library staff. When I said the dog was mine, I was told there is a new pet policy everyone knows about, forbidding unattended pets on the prop- erty and that I could go tie my dog up “over there somewhere.” Never mind that there was no signage or other way for me to have known that my dog was unwelcome outside. See LetterS on page 28 Sisters Weather Forecast Courtesy of the National Weather Service, Pendleton, Oregon Wednesday thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday Partly Sunny Chance Showers Rain Likely Rain Likely Chance Showers Chance Rain/Snow 55/37 54/31 53/33 53/34 50/29 47/Na The Nugget Newspaper, Inc. Website: www.nuggetnews.com 442 E. Main Ave., P.O. Box 698, Sisters, Oregon 97759 Tel: 541-549-9941 | Fax: 541-549-9940 | editor@nuggetnews.com Postmaster: Send address changes to The Nugget Newspaper, P.O. Box 698, Sisters, OR 97759. Third Class Postage Paid at Sisters, Oregon. Publisher - Editor: Kiki Dolson News Editor: Jim Cornelius Production Manager: Leith Williver Classifieds & Circulation: Teresa Mahnken Advertising: Karen Kassy Graphic Design: Jess Draper Proofreader: Pete Rathbun Accounting: Erin Bordonaro The Nugget is mailed to residents within the Sisters School District; subscriptions are available outside delivery area. Third-class postage: one year, $45; six months (or less), $25. First-class postage: one year, $85; six months, $55. Published Weekly. ©2016 The Nugget Newspaper, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. All advertising which appears in The Nugget is the property of The Nugget and may not be used without explicit permission. The Nugget Newspaper, Inc. assumes no liability or responsibility for information contained in advertisements, articles, stories, lists, calendar etc. within this publication. All submissions to The Nugget Newspaper will be treated as uncondition- ally assigned for publication and copyrighting purposes and subject to The Nugget Newspaper’s unrestricted right to edit and comment editorially, that all rights are currently available, and that the material in no way infringes upon the rights of any person. The publisher assumes no responsibility for return or safety of artwork, photos, or manuscripts. Call me a loser conserva- tive, but Donald Trump is not my cup of tea. Rand Paul was the can- didate I liked, one who suffered a charisma defi- cit, yes, but a conservative who actually referred to the Constitution. I thought he had a chance to attract young voters and realign the Republicans away from their war-party impulses and toward some semblance of fiscal sanity. As a result, Paul was sav- aged early on by the GOP establishment as some kind of dangerous “isolationist,” which means he didn’t want American kids to fight wars in the Middle East. Back then the GOP estab- lishment didn’t mind Trump, when he was sucking up all the TV media oxygen on Fox News and thereby asphyxiat- ing the Paul campaign. In the establishment mind, Trump must have been a useful idiot. Now they fear Trump. I don’t fear him — Congress and the courts will do their job — but Trump is every- thing I don’t like in a leader for the republic. He’s charismatic and strenuously nonspecific, with a campaign built largely on messianic appeal. His core true believers really don’t care what he says any- more. So in this, Trump is rather like the current presi- dent, only pinker, and with crazy hair and a lot more attitude and fewer establish- ment media pooches begging for his biscuits. That said, I’m loving what Trump’s been doing to the Republican political establishment. Because if any collection of weasels deserved what’s coming to them, it’s this crew, for all the promises they’ve made to their con- servative base, and all the times they’ve broken them so the big donors wouldn’t be angry. I can’t say I don’t like what’s happening, because they deserve it so. The common wisdom is that if Trump continues on and wins the Republican nomination, he’ll be trounced by Democrat Hillary Clinton, who recently announced that she always tries to tell the truth. But I’m not so sure. Still, if you read the bleating op- eds, you get a sniff of the GOP establishment panic. They weep about disaster at hand. What they don’t say is that they’d rather have Democrat Hillary Clinton in there — the true establish- ment Wall Street candidate — than Trump. But they haven’t aban- doned their dreams of a Trumpless ticket just yet. They think if only they can get Ben Carson to drop out, and arrange a marriage, something to elevate their new flavor, Marco Rubio. If they can only talk sense into Ted Cruz, but they can’t, because they’ve spent the past couple of years hating Cruz’s guts. What they’ve completely missed is that the American people are angrier than they’ve ever been, and with good reason. The party lead- ers thought they could herd that anger. “They didn’t see Trump as the vessel for all this anger,” Tom Bevan, a friend and publisher of the RealClearPolitics website, said. “They looked at Trump and thought ... there’s no way Republicans, no matter how angry, would rally around this guy. You’ve heard the establishment types say that they don’t know a single per- son who’d vote for Donald Trump. And then he goes out and wins.” The anger you see on the Republican side will hit the Democrats in the next election cycle. As much as I’d hoped, I think it’s too early for that kind of revolt this year. The liberal media ripped on the GOP for hav- ing so many candidates run- ning for president, but it is the Democratic Party that has insulated itself against democracy. All those millennials feeling the bern for Bernie Sanders will soon realize that Clinton and the Democratic Party have already rigged the game with all her superdel- egates and Wall Street cash. But that’s in the next cycle. Now it’s the time of Trump, the barbarian at the Republican establishment’s gates. © 2016 Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer and are not necessarily shared by the Editor or The Nugget Newspaper.
