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About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 7, 2016)
2 Wednesday, September 7, 2016 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon O P I N I O N John Kass American Voices Welcome music lovers to the 21st Annual Sisters Folk Festival! 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 Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned.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: “Can’t we all get along?” — Rodney King This was almost 25 years ago. We are a slow-moving people. Stan Robson’s Nugget letter to the editor about current racism last week caught my eye when he said this: “I always tried to instill in my folks that everyone was to be treated with respect and dignity.” I’m assuming when you say “my folks” that you are not talking about your parents or “Americans” in general, but whatever race/ethnicity you identify with — which I feel drives the racism/division stake yet a little deeper. I randomly came across a Rubin Report interview recently, with Larry Elder (radio talk show host) about racism (BLM) who said something that made complete sense to me. The interviewer referred to Mr. Elder as black. Mr. Elder went on to say that he also does not like the term African-American. He was born and raised in the U.S and has never been to Africa. The host mentioned that he once referred to a guest as an African-American, and the guest corrected him by saying she was actually from Jamaica (insert cricket noise here). Let’s face it, there are so few people that are 100 percent anything. I just learned you can mail in saliva to find out your legit heritage. Stay tuned — we might be related! I think if we all did this, we might have more understand- ing, empathy, grace, etc. for all humankind. I guess in the end, if I were in charge we’d just all be called “American,” or Pre-American in some cases. My husband is from the Nez Perce Tribe — so in the end “his folks” were here first anyhow ... so there’s that. Group hug from this American, Becky Aylor s s s To The Editor: The Robert B. Reich opinion column in the August 31 Nugget was deplorable. In his piece, he states that, “the best argu- ment for a single-payer health care plan is the See lEttErS on page 19 Sisters Weather Forecast Courtesy of the National Weather Service, Pendleton, Oregon Wednesday thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday Mostly sunny Sunny Sunny Sunny Mostly sunny Sunny 71/39 74/36 79/40 80/42 70/32 70/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. Hillary Clinton’s defend- ers keep insisting that there was “no quid pro quo” in having Mrs. Clinton, when she was secretary of state, meet privately with Clinton Foundation donors — many of them foreign donors — seeking the favors of Mrs. Clinton and the American government. The talking points were established early on by Clinton surrogate and interim Democratic Party Chair Donna Brazile on ABC, after the Associated Press broke its story about Clinton Foundation mega- bucks donors getting all that happy face-time alone with Hillary. Brazile said: “So, you know, this notion that, some- how or another, someone who is a supporter, someone who is a donor, somebody who’s an activist, saying, I want access, I want to come into a room and I want to meet people, we often crimi- nalize behavior that is nor- mal. And it’s — I don’t — I don’t see what the smoke is.” Only in Washington can it be considered normal, not criminal, for insiders to use our government to get rich. There have been many Republican officials who stood up and said they can’t vote for Trump for what he’s done or said. So where are the Democrats who are standing up to say they can’t support influence-peddling and the Clintons? Their silence indicates assent. Maybe it’s that being a Midwesterner, I can’t quite appreciate the difference between normal influence peddling and abnormal influence peddling. But being from Chicago, where corruption is the glue that holds politics together —and the bread and the meat and the sport peppers and the fries — I can tell you what corruption does not smell like. It does not smell like a smoking gun or a nonsmok- ing gun. And it does not speak Latin. It smells like meat a-cookin’, and that’s not a language of words, but of appetite. It smells sweet, and there is no recipe. The rec- ipe is understood, implied, and if you dare ask for the recipe, you are immediately ostracized and kicked out of the kitchen. It doesn’t involve a straight payoff. Everything is layered. A deal goes to Mr. X. Another deal goes to Ms. Y. It’s all circular and rather complicated, like the Clintons parsing English, and everything is under- stood in the spaces between the words. When pundits moan about “no smoking gun” and “no quid pro quo,” they must be referring to some cartoon definition of cor- ruption, as if it involved an envelope stuffed with dead presidents, handed over to some grubby-fingered hack in the backroom of a greasy tavern with a tired Kiefer Sutherland doing the voice-over. But people with govern- ments and nations in the palms of their hands don’t deal that way. The other day at break- fast, I was talking about this stupid, narrow Washington definition of political cor- ruption with a man who has made it his life study. “Say you’re in a meet- ing with an elected official, and you say, ‘I’ll give you so much money if you give me this favor and that favor,’ You know what happens next?” asked the man wise in the Chicago Way. I knew, but I played along: No, what happens? “The first thing the poli- tician will think to himself, ‘Why is he talking that way? This son-of-a-b---- is wired up,’” he said. “And no one will ever talk to you ever again.” That’s why it’s depress- ing to hear meat puppets insist that there is no there, there, with the Clinton Foundation and Hillary, because it’s already been laid out. The corruption was in the selling of access to the high- est reaches of the federal government. To someone who was then a sitting secretary of state who — as all the for- eign tough guys with trea- sure understood — was already reaching for the White House. © 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.