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About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 3, 2016)
2 Wednesday, August 3, 2016 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon O P I N I O N Robert B. Reich 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 Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned.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: “Complainers, whiny, narrow-minded, curmudgeons, NIMBY attitude...”—just a few phrases from recent letters regarding the increased airplane noise. It’s fine to say the noise doesn’t disturb you. You can say that you are willing to trade quiet for economic development. This is a personal decision that every Sisters resident should be allowed to make. But why the name-calling? Do we need to demonize each other? Wanting a peace- ful backyard or a quiet bedtime for your kids does not equal being “anti-growth,” and business development doesn’t have to mean “anti-environment.” Are we really unable to listen to each other’s concerns and come to some kind of compromise? Whether the noise bothers you or not ... the name-calling should. Sarah Moulton s s To the Editor: This has nothing to do with noise pollu- tion or airport controversy, this has to do with a local business stepping up in true Sisters fashion. As you may or may not know, Justin Veloso is battling cancer and we are hosting a fund- raiser for him at The Belfry on September 15 at 6 p.m. In addition to music, drinks and food, we are hosting a live auction. I have been seeking donations to put together some amazing packages for the auction. One such item is an adventure package. I contacted Skydive Awesome to see if they might be willing to assist us in some way. Without a moment of hesitation, Cara at Skydive Awesome donated two tandem sky- dives for our cause. This is what it’s all about, being in business in Sisters, Oregon — stepping up to the plate s See LEttErS on page 14 Sisters Weather Forecast Courtesy of the National Weather Service, Pendleton, Oregon Wednesday thursday Friday Saturday Sunny Sunny Slt. chance t-storm Mostly sunny 83/43 86/49 83/47 79/45 Sunday Monday Sunny Sunny 78/46 79/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. In her speech accepting the Democratic nomina- tion for president, Hillary Clinton said the nation was at “a moment of reckoning.” She’s right, but the reck- oning is not simply the choice voters face this fall between her and Donald Trump. The real reckoning is larger, and it will extend beyond Election Day. Yet Washington insiders expect a return to politics as usual. I’m already hearing Republicans dismiss Donald Trump as a weird aberration. “Ordinarily, Trump wouldn’t have stood a chance,” a Republican operative told me. “He won because he didn’t have a clear opponent until the very end.” I get a similar story from Democrats trying to explain Bernie Sanders. “His cam- paign was a freak,” a long- time Democratic adviser told me. “Hillary will be elected and then Washington will go on as if nothing happened.” They want to return to business as usual because many of them make their bread on that business — working for big corpora- tions, Wall Street or wealthy individuals as political con- sultants, lobbyists, corpo- rate lawyers, government- relations specialists, public- relations specialists, trade association staff and paid experts. But Trump isn’t just an aberration, and Sanders wasn’t just a flash in the pan. Both of them, in very differ- ent ways, reflect a crisis in our political economy. In a Gallup poll taken in mid-July, before the con- ventions, 82 percent said America was on the wrong track. In an NBC News/ Wall Street Journal poll just before that, 56 percent said they preferred a candidate who would bring sweeping changes to the way the gov- ernment functioned, no mat- ter how unpredictable those changes might be. The major issue the pub- lic is reacting to isn’t terror- ism or racism. We didn’t see these numbers after 9/11. We didn’t even get these sorts of responses in the late 1960s, when American cities were torn by riots and when the Vietnam War was raging. It’s the rigging of our economy — the increas- ingly tight nexus between wealth and political power. Big money has been buying political clout to get laws and regulations that make big money even bigger. As Clinton said in her accep- tance speech, “I believe that our economy isn’t working the way it should because our democracy isn’t working the way it should.” She’s correct, but she didn’t finish the logic. Democracy is not working the way it should because it’s being corrupted by big money. That big money is altering the rules of the game to generate even big- ger money. Americans now pay more for pharmaceuticals than the citizens of any other advanced nation because Big Pharma is setting the rules. We pay more for Internet service, health insurance, airline tickets and bank- ing services because the increasing market power of key players in these indus- tries lets them raise prices. Antitrust enforcement has been systematically weakened. The biggest Wall Street banks continue to reap the financial benefits of being too big to fail. Hedge fund partners make bundles from confidential information, trading on which used to be illegal. CEOs cash in their stock options and grants just when they pump up the value of their company’s stocks with buybacks. It’s allowed because laws and regula- tions have been loosened. Trade agreements are now designed to protect the intellectual property and foreign assets of giant cor- porations, but nothing is done to protect the incomes of Americans who lose their jobs to foreign competition. This is business as usual in Washington. Clinton has a long list of good proposals for help- ing average working people, but none of them will go anywhere if Washington stays the same and the economic game remains rigged. © 2016 By Robert Reich; Distributed by 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.
