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Wednesday, July 6, 2016 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
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P
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N I
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Robert B.
Reich
American Voices
WelcomeQuilters!
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:
When I was a little girl, every time a plane
went over our Southern California home, we
all ran out to see it. How could that thing stay
up there? To this day, I still get a thrill every
time I hear a plane or helicopter go over.
I live about five blocks from the airport, at
Tamarack Village Apartments. The lawnmow-
ers in the park and nearby neighbors are much
more annoying than the planes, but I don’t
mind because they keep everything looking
great.
Right now, at 2 p.m. on Friday, July 1, I
have not seen or heard a plane since around
1 p.m. when a green helicopter went over. If
I lived in Redmond I could hear and watch
planes all day and night.
I will be 88 on July 7. I hope I will never
become so narrow-minded that I cannot enjoy
seeing a skydiver coming slowly to earth, or
hearing the wonder of that beautiful thing
defying gravity.
Oops! Gotta go! There’s another one going
over.
Maggie Bull
s
s
s
To the Editor:
Re: “The Bunkhouse Chronicle — The big
identity party,” The Nugget, June 29, page
20).
Amen! Each and every person in the
U.S. Congress should read this. Obama too,
although he would vehemently deny every
truth you just stated.
Christine DeForest
s
s
s
To the Editor:
A nuisance is defined in the Webster’s New
World Dictionary as an act, condition, thing or
See lEttERS on page 13
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The tectonic plates of
American politics are no
longer moving along the old
fault lines of “left vs. right”
or even Democrat versus
Republican.
As we’ve seen this
bizarre political year, the
biggest force welling up is
rage against insider elites in
both parties and against the
American establishment as a
whole — including the deni-
zens of Wall Street, large cor-
porations and the mainstream
media.
Now, with Bernie Sand-
ers essentially out of the
race, Donald Trump wants
Americans to believe he’s the
remaining anti-establishment
candidate. It’s smart politics,
but it’s a hoax.
Trump is even more of
an establishment figure than
Hillary Clinton — inherit-
ing a fortune from his father,
spending years bribing politi-
cians to subsidize his hotels
and casinos, and repeatedly
using bankruptcy to shield
his money while leaving
creditors and workers hold-
ing the bag.
But Trump is also a bril-
liant huckster who knows his
mark.
“There is one thing that
Bernie Sanders and I are in
complete accord with and
that’s trade,” Trump said
last week. “[Sanders] said
we’re being ripped off, and
I say with being ripped off.
I’ve been saying it for years,
he’s been saying it for years.
I think I am saying it even
louder. ... Globalization has
made the financial elite who
donate to politicians very
wealthy. But it has left mil-
lions of our workers with
nothing but poverty and
heartache.”
It’s pure demagoguery.
Trade isn’t to blame for the
declining wages and job
security of most Americans.
The real problem has been
the unwillingness of the big-
gest beneficiaries of trade
(and also of job-displacing
technologies) to share the
gains with the rest of Amer-
ica through larger wage sub-
sidies, stronger safety nets,
better schools and easier
access to higher education.
Trump’s Republican Party
has been the main culprit.
Trump has vowed to
withdraw from the pending
Trans-Pacific Partnership —
“another disaster done and
pushed by special interests
who want to rape our coun-
try,” he said recently —
which Hillary Clinton praised
in 2012 as “set[ting] the gold
standard in trade agreements”
before later reversing her-
self after Sanders came out
strongly against it.
The central problem with
the TPP is it would penalize
member nations for raising
health, safety, environmen-
tal and labor standards. But
this aspect of the TPP doesn’t
trouble Trump, who calls
America “overregulated.”
Trump’s faux populism
extends to “powerful corpo-
rations, media elites and pow-
erful dynasties,” who, he said
last week in Pennsylvania,
again echoing Sanders, have
“rigged the system for their
benefit [and] will do anything
and say anything to keep
things exactly as they are.”
Unwittingly, the GOP
establishment seems intent
on proving Trump’s point.
Mitt Romney condemns him,
conservative media pundit
George Will is deserting the
Republican Party because
of him, big business groups
such as the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce and the National
Association of Manufactur-
ers blast him.
“It’s almost, in some
ways, like I’m running
against two parties,” Trump
crowed recently. He has also
said, “The people who rigged
the system are supporting
Hillary Clinton.”
It’s all an act. The real
Donald Trump thinks U.S.
wages are too high and has
fought against the unioniza-
tion of his hotel employees.
His businesses outsource
abroad like mad. Most of the
suits, ties and cufflinks he
peddles are made in China.
His luxury line of furniture
comes from Turkey. The
crystal for his Trump Home
line is produced in Slovenia.
And the real Trump is on
the side of the super-wealthy.
He proposes to cut taxes on
the rich from 39.6 percent
to 25 percent, and to reduce
taxes on all business income
to 15 percent. The real Trump
isn’t a populist. He’s a pluto-
crat. Above all, he’s a con
man. And the people being
conned are average working
Americans who are buying
Trump’s ruse of being a man
of the people.
© 2016 By Robert Reich;
Distributed by Tribune Con-
tent 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.