OPINION
6A
T HE
D AILY A STORIAN
Founded in 1873
STEPHEN A. FORRESTER, Editor & Publisher
LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor
BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
HEATHER RAMSDELL, Circulation Manager
Most popular program
you’ve never heard of
T
Land & Water Conservation
Fund sustains Willapa refuge
he Land and Water Conservation Fund may be the most
popular federal program you’ve never heard of. Relying
on no taxes, it takes some of the proceeds from offshore oil
and gas leases and reinvests those funds in outdoor recreation
and conservation throughout America.
It is national self-improvement
using assets that belong to all of us
— a sort of saving account in the
form of better state and local parks,
as well as enhancements in national
parks, wilderness areas, forests and
wildlife refuges. Started in 1964, it
is key to the creation and mainte-
nance of “thousands of local play-
JURXQGVVRFFHU¿HOGVDQGEDVHEDOO
diamonds,” according to the Trust
for Public Land. It was the creation
of Washington’s legendary Sen.
Henry “Scoop” Jackson, at the re-
quest of President John Kennedy.
In a continuation of a tiresome
pattern, last year Congress used
only $306 million for intended pur-
poses, siphoning away the bulk of
LWCF money. In all the years, $17
billion from the LWCF has been
frittered away. For the coming
budget period, President Obama
has asked that the entire $900 mil-
lion in current funds be used as
federal law requires. This request
is strongly supported by Sens. Ron
Wyden and Jeff Merkley.
The biggest project that may be
funded in Oregon is the Pathways
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PLOOLRQ WR VWDELOL]H ¿VK UXQV
and improve public access with ac-
quisitions in the Oregon National
Historic Trail, the John Day Wild
and Scenic River, the Columbia
River Gorge National Scenic Area
and John Day Fossil Beds National
Monument. In the lower Columbia
region, this package includes the
:LOODSD DQG 5LGJH¿HOG QDWLRQDO
wildlife refuges.
In Oregon, “Without full fund-
ing, some critical projects in Oregon
like protecting the east moraine of
Wallowa Lake, will never get com-
pleted and instead be lost to devel-
opment or other threats,” said Kelley
Beamer, executive director of the
Coalition of Oregon Land Trusts.
In Willapa, $4.2 million would
pay willing sellers for a 1,458-
acre Willapa refuge expansion.
According to the Washington
Wildlife & Recreation Coalition:
“Funds would acquire three prop-
erties next to the main unit. They
would help protect and improve
the overall health and function of
the Willapa Bay watershed and
the aquatic species within it. This
acquisition would also create an
opportunity to enhance and restore
western red cedar forests to even-
tually re-establish late successional
old-growth function. These areas
are important to Federal and State
endangered/threatened
species
and most migratory bird species
XVLQJWKH3DFL¿F)O\ZD\7KHIHG-
erally-listed marbled murrelet re-
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:DVKLQJWRQ DV D VLJQL¿FDQW JDS
in suitable nesting habitat along
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Increasing available habitat in this
area is critical to expanding the
geographic distribution of the mur-
relet within its threatened range.”
In our area, U.S. Rep. Suzanne
Bonamici is fully supportive of the
LWCF. U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera
Beutler, R-Wash. 3rd Dist., has
in the recent past voted to elimi-
nate the LWCF, even though fel-
low Washington Republican Dave
Reichert supports it.
This program clearly deserves
continuing enthusiastic support
by Congress. Generations of bi-
partisan support for this smart in-
vestment of national funds in local
communities deserves to be hon-
ored and sustained.
Hanford has been
‘an unlimited spigot’
I
f a massive amount of mon-
ey is available for spending,
at a minimum there will be
waste, perhaps fraud and maybe
theft. The larger the amount of
money, the bigger the magnet.
We’ve seen that in the Iraq and
Afghanistan wars. The same
thing happens in the private sec-
tor. And it seems to be happen-
ing domestically at the Hanford
Nuclear Reservation.
The Richland-based journalist
Anna King told an Astoria audi-
ence last Thursday that 14,000
Department of Energy employees
are working on Hanford’s cleanup.
And work is stalled, perhaps hope-
OHVVO\DWWKHPXOWLVWRU\YLWUL¿FDWLRQ
plant.
Also last week, Oregon Sen.
Ron Wyden decried the lack of
progress in the Hanford cleanup.
“Obama has no plan,” said Wyden.
“It has been an unlimited spigot. It
is astounding the amount of money
that’s been laid out.”
Hanford was an enormously
important, but secret installation
of World War II. Its B Reactor
made radioactive material that be-
came the ingredient for the atomic
bombs dropped on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, leading to Japan’s un-
conditional surrender.
When things are done in secret,
there is little skepticism and no
cross-examination. From the start,
+DQIRUG RI¿FLDOV IDLOHG WR UHFRJ-
nize they were creating a mess that
would haunt our region for eons.
Sen. Wyden raises the prospect
that national willingness to clean
up Hanford might wane. “I’m not
sure the rest of the country will go
along with this much longer,” he
said.
Mismanagement is the po-
lite word for what’s going on at
Hanford. While Hanford is no lon-
ger off limits to the public, the ves-
tige of secrecy lingers. Anna King
described a situation that is long on
massive reports and short on can-
dor.
She is also correct that Hanford
is “the legacy that we were hand-
ed.” We must contain the damage
that is sitting there, perilously close
to the Columbia River.
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, MAY 5, 2015
Restoring faith in justice
lieve in justice, this is the
RI¿FHUVKRWDQGNLOOHG-RKQ
case to start showing, be-
Crawford in an Ohio Wal-
cause I shouldn’t have (sat)
Mart as he walked around
on death row for 30 years,
ast week, Baltimore’s chief WKH VWRUH ZLWK DQ DLU ULÀH
Hinton said. ”All they had to
he’d
picked
up
off
the
store’s
prosecutor, Marilyn J. Mosby,
do was test the gun.”
own shelves, and another
FKDUJHGVL[RI¿FHUVLQWKHGHDWKRI RI¿FHU JULOOHG KLV JLUOIULHQG
Last year Glenn Ford,
Freddie Gray.
Louisiana’s longest-serving
until she cried, “accusing
death row prisoner, was also
The charges included second-de- her of lying, threatening her
set free after nearly 30 years
with
jail
time
and
suggesting
gree murder, manslaughter, assault,
facing execution for a mur-
she
could
be
on
drugs,”
ac-
Charles
PLVFRQGXFWLQRI¿FHDQGIDOVHLPSULV-
der that he also did not com-
cording to CNN.
Blow
onment.
mit. According to The New
After the city of Cleve-
(These were only charges. There land claimed — then apologized for York Daily News: “A judge freed Ford
ZLOOEHDGHIHQVHDQGDWULDO7KHRI¿- claiming — that Tamir Rice was re- from the Louisiana State Penitentiary
cers remain innocent until and unless VSRQVLEOHIRUKLVRZQGHDWKZKHQRI¿- a year ago when evidence, believed to
cers shot him in the stomach — an inju- have been suppressed during the trial,
proven guilty.)
Mosby said at a news conference ry he would later die from — in a park surfaced exonerating him from the all-
Friday as she laid out the case and an- as he played with a toy gun.
white jury’s decision in the murder of
According to The Washington Post: a nearly blind Shreveport watchmaker,
nounced the charges: “To the people of
Baltimore and the demonstrators across ³,QWKHFRXUW¿OLQJZKLFKZDVDIRUPDO Isadore Rozeman.”
America: I heard your call for ‘No jus- response from the city to a federal law-
The lead prosecutor in the Ford
tice, no peace.’” She continued: “Last suit by the Rice family, city attorneys case, A.M. Stroud III, apologized in
but certainly not least, to the youth declare that Tamir and his family ‘were a column published by The Shreve-
of the city. I will seek justice on your directly and proximately caused by port Times, saying: “In 1984, I was 33
behalf. This is a moment. This is your their own acts ...’ and added that Tamir years old. I was arrogant, judgmental,
moment. Let’s ensure we have peace- caused his own death ‘by the failure ... narcissistic and very full of myself. I
ful and productive rallies that will de- to exercise due care to avoid injury.’”
was not as interested in justice as I was
And after Anthony Ray Hinton sat in winning. To borrow a phrase from
velop structural and systemic changes
on Alabama’s death row Al Pacino in the movie And Justice for
for generations to come.
for 30 years — “one of All, ‘Winning became everything.’”
You’re at the forefront of
Faith
the longest-serving death He concluded: “How totally wrong
this cause and as young
row prisoners in Alabama was I.”
people, our time is now.”
in the
history,” according to the
Mosby seemed to rec-
After last month, NPR reported that
ognize in that moment that
system Equal Justice Initiative, Mayor Rahm Emmanuel of Chicago
which won his release was supporting a $5.5 million repara-
this case and others like it
is the
last month — for mur- tions package for victims of a former
are now about more than
ders he didn’t commit. He SROLFH FRPPDQGHU DQG KLV RI¿FHUV LQ
individual deaths and indi-
was arrested and charged that city. As MSNBC’s Trymaine Lee
vidual incidents, but about bedrock
based on the assertion that put it, they “for decades ran a torture
restoration — or a forma-
of
the
a revolver taken from his ring that used electrical shock, burning
tion — of faith for all of
mother’s home was used and beatings on more than 100 black
America’s citizens in the system.
in two capital murders and men.”
American justice system
a third uncharged crime. Even after ex-
itself.
All of this and more eats away at
Faith in the system is the bedrock perts found in 2002 that the gun didn’t SXEOLFFRQ¿GHQFHLQHTXDOMXVWLFHXQGHU
of the system. Without it, the system is match the crime evidence, prosecutors WKH ODZ DQG UHDI¿UPV SHRSOH¶V ZRUVW
drained of its inviolable authority. This refused to revisit the case.
fears: that the eyes of justice aren’t
It took more than a decade of ad- blind but jaundiced.
is the danger America now faces.
After George Zimmerman shot ditional litigation before a judge threw
As Langston Hughes once wrote:
Trayvon Martin through the chest and RXW WKH FDVH 3URVHFXWRUV ¿QDOO\ FRQ- “That Justice is a blind goddess / Is a
walked free. After there was no indict- ceded that the crime bullets couldn’t be thing to which we black are wise: / Her
PHQWRIWKHRI¿FHUZKRFKRNHGWKHOLIH matched to the Hinton weapon.
bandage hides two festering sores / That
“For all of us that say that we be- once perhaps were eyes.”
out of Eric Garner on video. After an
By CHARLES M. BLOW
New York Times News Service
L
Call it a stroke of fate
from a tree, a basketball
doctor’s words or Chris’s ex-
coach who was running up
pression scared me more.”
and down the court looking
The next months were
back and forth, and a preg-
DGEWATER, Md. — The the worst of her life. “I didn’t
nant woman who swerved
go
through
a
day
without
thing that’s easy to miss about
crying,” she said. She was
KHUKHDGWRFKHFNWUDI¿FEH-
Tara is how competitive she is.
afraid to exercise or even
fore crossing the street. Dis-
In a big Irish family of gabby, ar- turn her head.
sections can be caused by
“At some point,” she
sneezing, coughing, vom-
gumentative people, my niece is a
iting, sex or even leaning
lovely, willowy brunette with an easy said, “I got really angry
about,
why
the
hell
do
I
do
back to get your hair washed
Maureen
laugh and quiet manner.
everything right and then
at a salon. And sometimes
Dowd
the only symptom is a head-
Her parents had a love match on almost die? From playing
the tennis courts at Catholic Universi- tennis? The thought of not being able to ache or neck ache.
Caplan is not sure if strokes are in-
ty, when my brother Martin was coach do anything more than what I’d already
creasing among younger people or if
of the men’s team and his future wife, done was so sad to me.”
Tara was part of a disturbing health doctors are just getting better at realiz-
Jone, was coach of the women’s team.
They are not the overindulging side trend, according to a Washington Post ing “it’s not just old folks.”
of the family. Tara never smoked or did piece that ran a month after she had the
He said stroke experts have had a hard
drugs, and two glasses of wine on a stroke. After years of declining in the time getting the message across to ER
elderly, the paper reported, strokes are personnel that if a stroke is suspected, a
weekend is a bacchanal.
Tara constantly challenges herself. rising among younger adults.
vascular image must be taken as well as
Because they are accustomed to be- DEUDLQLPDJHEHFDXVHLWVKRZVXS¿UVWLQ
She played on her mom’s tennis team at
Catholic, helping it earn a Division III ing healthy, younger stroke victims of- the vessels that supply and drain the brain.
national ranking, and, at 25, joined the ten deny or ignore the symptoms, lead-
“You have to be pushy,” he ex-
California National Guard, winning the ing them to miss treatment in the critical plained to me later. “There are a lot of
hours and days afterward. And, because organs ER people have to deal with
WRSZRPHQ¶V¿WQHVVDZDUG
Tara had already done several triath- they look young and healthy, doctors quickly, but they get little neurology
lons, but approaching her 40th birthday often don’t consider stroke as a cause.
training. The brain is the Rolls-Royce
Tara lost 30 percent of her peripher- of the system. Would you run your
two years ago, she began training two
hours a day to compete in a Half Iron- al vision. Doctors told her to cut back Rolls-Royce into the local gas station?
man, cheered on by her husband, Chris on physical activity.
If you have problems with the brain,
“So I was going to walk gingerly ask for a neurologist. If you live in a big
O’Kieffe, who runs a successful Kona
Ice franchise in their Chesapeake Bay and turn my head slowly and do what I FLW\ ¿QG DQ DFDGHPLF PHGLFDO FHQWHU
town. After 16 years teaching kids with needed to do to see Kasey grow up, and that has a specialization in stroke.
disabilities, Tara — mother to a pretty that was my battle,” she said. “I was liv-
“I’m afraid to go to the emergency
9-year-old, Kasey — now helps Chris ing like I was made of glass.”
room,” he added. “I think it’s dangerous.”
I urged her to get
with the business.
Caplan dryly admitted that it’s a
another opinion, and contradiction: You have to worry about
Last spring, she also
Some
she booked an ap- getting to the ER fast and then wor-
decided to start playing
pointment with a na- ry about the quality of treatment once
tennis again. She was
younger
tional stroke expert, you’re there.
nervous that, because
Dr. Louis Caplan, a
of her tennis family, people have
He assured Tara that her stroke was
Harvard professor of not caused by nerves or a weakness in
her friends would have
neurology who works her arteries and said that there was only
high expectations.
strokes
at Beth Israel Deacon- a 1 percent chance of recurrence for this
Her
shoulders
from
ess Medical Center.
tensed up through her
NLQGRIVWURNHDIWHUWKH¿UVWPRQWK+H
When I met Tara at told her he was going to play tennis and
HQWLUH ¿UVW PDWFK EXW
WKHDLUSRUWWRÀ\XSWR advised her to do the same.
she was elated when recreational
Boston, I walked past
she won. By the time
“Unfortunately, doctors and patients
drugs.
her. In four months, put too many restrictions on them-
she drove home and
she had lost 15 pounds, selves,” he said later. “They’re told,
got in the shower, how-
ever, she had a throbbing pain in the and her spark was gone.
‘Don’t lift your baby,’ ‘Don’t have in-
$W&DSODQLVJUXIÀ\DQJHOLFOLNH tercourse.’ Because movement brought
back of her head above her neck.
She took some Advil and got into a Frank Capra character. He showed this on, they think they cannot have any
bed. She looked at her phone, but the Tara picture cards to test her memory movement. That overprotectiveness
letters were moving. She tried to watch and speech, checked her visual abilities can be worse than the dissection itself.”
TV with Chris, but it was “like looking and looked at her brain and vascular im-
When Tara got home, she ran a mile
through a really thin layer of water, rip- ages. They had been misinterpreted by and a half, crying all the way.
the Maryland doctors, who thought that
pling and sparkling.”
“It was like I realized I don’t have to
She assumed that she was having Tara’s vertebral artery had closed when throw me away and try to develop this
KHU¿UVWPLJUDLQHDOHWGRZQDIWHUEHLQJ it had just narrowed, meaning it could new person,” she said.
open and heal.
so amped up.
2Q$SULOWKH¿UVWDQQLYHUVDU\RI
Some younger people have strokes her stroke, she ventured back onto the
The headache was still there in the
morning, and the morning after that. from recreational drugs. But others — court for a cardio tennis class. She was
Her husband teased her about being “a even children and teenagers — have WHUUL¿HG DQG KHU IULHQGV ZHUH MLWWHU\
ELJEDE\´DQGKHOGXSKLV¿QJHUVWRWKH strokes after dissections, a tear in the picking up balls for her.
wall of an artery that unleashes a clot.
right of her face to test her vision.
“I was nervous for a few hours af-
“It can happen with a sudden ev- terwards,” she said. “I would look in
“I can’t see your hand at all,” she
eryday movement that stretches the the mirror and smile and make sure I
told him.
“We need to go to the emergency artery,” said Caplan, who sees dissec- wasn’t drooling.”
tions on a regular basis. “The arteries
room,” Chris said.
As we drove in her neighborhood
She had some tests. “The doctor came are more elastic with younger people.” one recent afternoon, she marveled at
He has treated a doctor who lurched how wonderful it was to see the spring.
in and said, ‘Well, it turns out you had a
stroke,’” she recalled. “I don’t know if the when he thought his kid was falling “I missed the last one,” she said.
By MAUREEN DOWD
New York Times News Service
E