Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (April 6, 2016)
2 Wednesday, April 6, 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 Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned.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: Reading Jeff Mackey’s letter in the March 30 Nugget News I thought I had accidentally happened upon that famous Monte Python skit: “Why, we were so poor we lived in a shoe box by the side of the road. Luxury! We dreamed of living in a shoe box. We were so poor the 12 of us had to live in a sardine can and walk six miles barefoot through the snow…” Then Mr. Mackey tells us about his mini- mum-wage jobs that he had ... wait for it … “over 50 years ago.” Right, Mr. Mackey. From 1960 to 1964 I worked my way through college by completely supporting myself on a job which paid $1.75 per hour though I had to work 50 hours a week. But my tuition was $250 per semester. My roommate and I paid $90 per month for a two-bedroom apartment. Gasoline was 30-something cents a gallon and I could get a complete meal at my favorite pub for $1.25 and chase it with a glass of beer for a quarter. Ever heard of inflation, Mr. Mackey? Two states have now agreed to phase in a $15-an-hour minimum wage over the next four years. Two states, Oregon not included. As for Mr. Mackey’s assumption that peo- ple earning a minimum wage expect that to be the apotheosis of their earning life is just Conservative blather. If you want to get riled up over such things, why not complain about oil companies that get billions in government subsidies. Or rich farmers and big agribusiness living off the public trough. Maybe you’re OK with giant defense contractors like GE raking in millions in Pentagon largess while paying virtually no income taxes. Do you even read The Nugget? The same issue has an article about the crisis of unaf- fordable housing in Sisters. Minimum-wage workers need a “living” wage in order to have a place to sleep and food to eat. That doesn’t seem unreasonable to me. R.T. Tihista s s s See LeTTeRs on page 22 Sisters Weather Forecast Courtesy of the National Weather Service, Pendleton, Oregon Wednesday Thursday Friday saturday Sunny Sunny Slt. chance showers Partly sunny 74/38 77/40 70/36 61/31 sunday Monday Partly sunny Partly sunny 60/32 60/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. Hush, young Bernie Sanders supporters. Shhh. Hillary Clinton’s cam- paign wants you to change your tone. And when you’ve changed it, tone it down. I don’t mind you mak- ing noise. But Clinton’s advisers don’t like it, and they talk as if you’re still in those pajamas with the feet. The message? Be still. Good night. Hush. Go to sleep. Why would Hillary whisper “hush” to young people feeling the Bern? Because she wants to be president of the United States and rule the world, and fulfill her destiny as queen of the new American political establishment. And she doesn’t need Sanders supporters ruining things. Sanders is the candidate with the momentum on the Democratic side. His vot- ers believe that he believes in something. And I think he does. I disagree with his views, but he does stand for something. And Hillary Clinton? What does she stand for? What does she believe in? Herself. Power. That’s about it. She’s like Frank Underwood in pantsuits. She’ll play the gender card, she’ll pander to race, she’ll force you to parse her sentences. These are tactics, not core principles. But she is the candidate with establishment support, with her Wall Street friends and those neoconserva- tive war hawks leaving the Republicans and rushing up to her for great big hugs. And though Sanders wants to debate her in New York, the Clinton cam- paign has explained the rules of silence. For weeks now, liberal pundits and Democratic senators have been telling Sanders voters to hush, to give up Bernie, just close your eyes, roll over and join Team Hillary. They whisper in the voice of reason in the dark — the way all estab- lishment whispers begin — saying that for the sake of party unity, just dump Bernie. Then you may curl up in Hillary’s lap for a bedtime story. What you may come to realize is that establish- ment Democrats and estab- lishment Republicans are quite similar. They’re the two horns on the head of the same goat. But don’t think about this now. You’ll never get to sleep. There is something that may make you shut your eyes. It’s that monster hid- ing under your bed: Donald Trump. Trump is the bogey- man now. And if you insist on staying awake, Hillary would like you to focus on The Donald. Trump says crazy things, so crazy lately that I won- der if he really wants to be president, or if the pres- sure has finally gotten to him. He allows stupidity to whoosh past his lips almost daily now. Perhaps he just wants out of the campaign. A bipartisan pub- lic freakout over a crazy man saying crazy things is sometimes entertain- ing, and Trump’s nonsense helps us forget the monster hiding under Clinton’s own bed: The FBI. Her top aides from her time as secretary of state may soon be ques- tioned by FBI agents inves- tigating how top secret and other classified documents came to be kept on her private server. And after they’re questioned, it will be her turn. There’s no assurance that her private server wasn’t hacked by foreign intelligence. At issue was whether she was merely negligent or willful, and either puts her in real legal and political jeopardy. And so what she needs is for Democrats to have nightmares about Trump, the better to ignore whether their leading candidate may very well be implicated in a criminal probe. And with so much stress on her, we might as well put Hillary back on the comfy chair in the quiet room: “Goodnight comb and goodnight brush. G o o d n i g h t n o b o d y. Goodnight mush. “And goodnight to the old lady whispering, ‘hush.’” © 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.