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About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 13, 2017)
2 Wednesday, September 13, 2017 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon O P I N I O N Editorial… We are our own disaster relief program Sisters has had a tough year. A hard win- ter has been followed by a brutal fire season that cut summer short and choked up the local economy. Smoky conditions ripped the heart right out of the busy summer season, which is when most of our local businesses put together the bankroll that gets them through the winter. The eclipse didn’t pan out to be an economic boon; Labor Day was smoky and slow and the Sisters Folk Festival was cancelled due to air-quality concerns. Those are tough blows to take for local shops and restaurants. There may be some programs to help out those hit hard by what can only be termed a slow-rolling economic disaster, but in all like- lihood, Sisters is on its own. And we can handle that. We can pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and be our own disaster-relief program. It doesn’t have to be arduous, either. A little extra effort to dine out locally more frequently; a little extra sus- tained effort to shop local instead of buying online or at the box store will go a long way toward filling the hole left by the great sum- mer smokeout. Most shops in Sisters can order quickly what they don’t have in stock, and Sisters is full of dining options for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Maybe this is a good opportunity to rediscover our hometown and keep our dollars at work in our own community, while reaching out a hand to help our neighbor. Jim Cornelius Editor 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 Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned.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: A recent visit during “Solar Eclipse” week to Camp Polk Cemetery found the flagpole and American flag posted by local Sisters VFW and American Legion Posts, to honor veterans buried there, on the ground. The pole had been bent at the base and the flag ruffled in the dirt. On Wednesday, first day of school, the flag and pole at Sisters Christian Academy was lifted from the mount, and tossed into the parking lot, smashing the solar light system. The flag was stolen. Both flagpoles honoring veterans have been repaired/replaced by an anonymous donor, and are proudly flying again. If anyone has any information concerning the two flagpoles, or knows of any other flags being damaged, please call 541-549-1132 and leave a message as VFW and American Legion would like to remedy the problem as soon as possible. Bill Anttila VFW Post 8138 Service Officer s s s To the Editor: Thank you, Sisters Folk Festival Board of Directors. This was a very difficult and courageous decision (to cancel the event), and it was the right one. The renowned qual- ity of the festival would have been com- promised, and many who could not have enjoyed their tickets would have been forced to forfeit the value because of the smoke. For these reasons, and in appreciation of what the festival has brought to my com- munity, musically and financially, I will not accept a refund for my tickets. Use the money to put the festival back on its feet for an even better event next year! Erik Dolson s s s See LETTERS on page 28 Sisters Weather Forecast Courtesy of the National Weather Service, Pendleton, Oregon Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday Patchy Smoke/Sunny Mostly Sunny Sunny Mostly Sunny Partly Sunny Mostly Cloudy 75/34 66/36 71/36 74/40 61/38 66/32 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 Easterling 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. ©2017 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. Jonah Goldberg The Obama Department of Homeland Security concluded that left-wing “antifa” forces were engaged in “domestic terrorist violence,” accord- ing to documents obtained by Politico. Who am I to argue with the fine men and women of for- mer President Obama’s DHS? In fact, as someone who has been fighting with antifa defenders for a good while, I feel a bit like the defense lawyer in “Miracle on 34th Street” when the U.S. Post Office confirms that his cli- ent is actually Santa Claus: Hey, don’t take my word for it; “terrorist violence” is the term chosen by profession- als working for a Democratic White House. With this moral victory secured, let me now break with some of my friends on the right and say that I think it’s a bad, or at least prema- ture, idea to go all the way and label antifa an actual terrorist organization. Many defenders of the antifa cause insist these loosely organized activists are simply anti-fascist, and that fighting fascism is some kind of get-out-of-jail-free card for lawlessness, violence and intimidation. That’s nonsense. The state has a monopoly on all violence save for self- defense. In a nation of laws, people cannot exempt them- selves from the rules because they don’t like someone’s ideas. Giving a bunch of adre- nalized anarchists unilateral authority to designate fascists strikes me as an incandes- cently stupid idea. Antifa’s understanding of what quali- fies as fascist includes con- servative campus speakers, defenders of free speech and even plain old Republicans. And yet, college adminis- trators, local politicians and police departments, particu- larly in places like Berkeley, have given antifa protest- ers a kind of benefit of the doubt. And so have some in the media who think there’s something romantically heroic about direct action and, in the Trump era, resistance. This isn’t to say that there have been no arrests. But uni- versity officials and local poli- ticians have been intimidated on numerous occasions. In Portland, a parade was can- celed because an email threat- ened violence if Republicans were allowed to march in it. In Berkeley, Mayor Jesse Arreguin urged UC Berkeley to cancel “Free Speech Week” for fear of violence, giving antifa a heckler’s veto. So much for the home of the free speech movement. Predict- ably, such responses have only emboldened the goon squads. Still, the local authorities that are contributing to the problem are also the best solu- tion for it. In fact, Arreguin has the right idea when he says antifa should be labeled a gang. Like many gangs, antifa is less of a sophisticated crim- inal enterprise and more of an excuse for hooligans to make trouble. Maybe local police departments aren’t up to the task of combating them, but we won’t know until they stop appeasing them. Meanwhile, officially des- ignating antifa a terrorist orga- nization would most likely be opening a Pandora’s box. There is a huge difference between countering foreign terrorists, who have no consti- tutional rights, and domestic ones. The federal government is constitutionally empowered to fight foreign threats. The states are supposed to fight crime, even domestic-terrorist violence. The groundswell behind the label “terrorist” for antifa is a call to blur that dis- tinction. Although treating American radicals and vigi- lantes the way we treat for- eign members of the Islamic State or al-Qaida might play well in certain corners of the populist right these days, seri- ous conservatives should be very skeptical about granting the federal government new police powers, which could be used to other ends in future administrations. Elevating antifa to the cat- egory of terrorist organization would fuel the worst trends in our politics. It would entice President Trump to indulge his strongman shtick, and it would give antifa the stature it clearly craves. It would also likely accelerate vigilante violence among the white nationalists. Launching a fed- eral crusade against domes- tic enemies would only fuel the fallacy that anyone antifa attacks is a fascist. We should fight crime, whatever guise it takes, on the local level — as the founders intended. © 2017 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.