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About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 9, 2016)
2 Wednesday, November 9, 2016 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon O P I N I O Robert B. Reich The Nugget salutes our Veterans American Voices with deep gratitude for your Service & Sacrifice 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 Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned.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: After reading Liam Hughes’ commentary entitled “What’s a little rain?” it is obvious to me that he did not experience the Columbus Day storm in 1962. I don’t think he realized that the October 15, 2016, storm was predicted to have nearly the same intensity. Those of us in western Oregon were encouraged by the press, pub- lic agencies, and law enforcement to avoid travel and to stay home and prepare for poten- tially long power outages and wind dam- age. I think that played a huge role in the empty stands at the OSU football game he attended. It seems it was an example of intelligent people following the advice given them rather than a bunch of “weenies” being afraid to come out in the rain. Joan Wood Sisters Weather Forecast Courtesy of the National Weather Service, Pendleton, Oregon Wednesday Thursday Friday N Saturday Sunday Monday Sunny Sunny Chance rain Partly sunny Chance rain Chance rain 59/32 60/37 58/36 56/36 56/38 57/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. The parallels are strik- ing. In the last decades of the 19th century—the so-called “Gilded Age”—America experienced inequality on a scale it had never before seen, combining wild opu- lence and searing poverty. American industry con- solidated into a few giant monopolies, or trusts, headed by “robber barons” who wielded enough power to drive out competitors. A few Wall Street titans such as J.P. Morgan controlled the nation’s finances. These men used their huge wealth to rig the sys- tem. Their lackeys literally deposited stacks of money on the desks of pliant legis- lators, prompting the great jurist Louis Brandeis to tell America it had a choice: “We may have democracy, or we may have wealth con- centrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.” We face a similar choice today. Then, America chose democracy. President The- odore Roosevelt, railing against the “malefactors of great wealth,” broke up the trusts. And he pushed Con- gress to end the most blatant forms of corruption. His fifth cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, went further— enacting social insurance for the elderly, the unemployed, and the disabled; a minimum wage and 40-hour work- week; the right to unionize; compensation for workers injured on the job; and strict limits on Wall Street. In other words, between 1870 and 1900, American capitalism got off track. Between 1901 and 1937 (the effective end of the New Deal), America put capital- ism back on track. We’re now in the Second Gilded Age, and American capitalism is again off track. Inequality is now nearly at the same level it was in the late 19th century. Half of all families are poorer today than they were a decade-and- a-half ago. The pay of CEOs and Wall Street bankers is in the stratosphere. Child poverty is on the rise. Mean- while, American industry is once again consolidating — this time, into oligopolies dominated by three or four major players. You can see it in pharmaceuticals, high- tech, airlines, food, Internet service, communications, health insurance and finance. The biggest Wall Street banks, having brought the nation to the brink of destruction a few years ago, are once again exercising vast economic power. And big money has taken over American politics. Will we put capitalism back on track, as we did before? The vile election of 2016 doesn’t seem to offer much hope. But future historians looking back on the tumult might see the start of another era of fundamental reform. Today’s uprising against the established order echoes the outrage average Ameri- cans felt in the late 19th century when they pushed Congress to enact the Sher- man Antitrust Act, and when Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan fulminated against big business and finance. Some 120 years later, Bernie Sanders — the unlikeliest of presidential candidates — won 22 states and 46 percent of the pledged delegates in the Democratic primaries, and pushed Hill- ary Clinton and the Demo- cratic Party to adopt many of his proposals. At the same time, Don- ald Trump, a faux populist, has laid bare the deep dis- contents of America’s white working class, which both parties have long neglected. Not incidentally, Trump has also jeopardized the social fabric of America and nearly destroyed the Republican Party. Hopefully some of America’s current elite will conclude, as elites did at the turn of the last century, that they’d do better with a smaller share of a growing economy fueled by a flour- ishing middle class, in a society whose members feel the system is basically fair, than in one riven by social and political strife. History has proven the early generation of reformers correct. While other nations opted for communism or fas- cism, Americans chose to make capitalism work for the many rather than the few. The timing is right, and the need is surely as great as it was over a century ago. © 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.
