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Wednesday, March 2, 2016 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
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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.
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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
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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.