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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (July 9, 2015)
OPINION 6A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, JULY 9, 2015 The wasted gift of Donald Trump 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 Where does Sen. Wyden stand on Oregon LNG? Y Senator says the right thing, but Mayor LaMear wants clarity ou don’t have to take a poll to know where Clatsop County is on LNG. In various guises, LNG has been on the county ballot some two or three times. In this context it is heartening to On each occasion, the propo- hear U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden demystify nents oI siting a liTue¿ed natural gas terminal at the mouth of the the remarks of Peter Hansen, chief ex- ecutive of Oregon LNG. Hansen dis- Columbia River have lost. The present makeup of the Clastsop County Board of Commissioners was determined by opposition to LNG. Commissioner Dirk Rohne was the vanguard. He served as a lonely voice among commissioners who went to extraordinary lengths to stack the deck in favor of LNG. It is also worth remembering the scant public process that gave a lease to Oregon LNG’s predecessor, Calpine, did not amount to a county- wide discussion. The decade we have spent deal- ing with the LNG elephant is Peter Gearin’s bad joke on Clatsop County. Gearin was executive director of the Port of Astoria. He made an absurdly bad deal on behalf of the Port’s tax- payers and for the state of Oregon — from which the Port leases the Skipanon property on where Oregon LNG hopes to site a terminal. missed the role of local government in siting the terminal and its pipelines. Sen. Wyden said Hansen’s remarks were “way over the line.” Derrick DePledge reported Wyden’s statement during his weekend visit to Astoria. Oregon Gov. Kate Brown — during her June visit here — said “there’s ab- solutely no question” the state has over- sight responsibility on the Skipanon site. Astoria Mayor Arline LaMear is correct that Wyden needs to tell us more clearly where he stands on the Oregon LNG proposal. “We’d like to have a straight answer on where he is on this particular project,” said Mayor LaMear. If Wyden needs an unequivocal reference point on where political sentiment in this county stands, he can — as Yogi Berra famously said — “You can look it up.” US must reduce deadly use of force B International newspaper points out startling statistics And yet the U.S. is profoundly y one credible count, 584 peo- beyond the bounds of the developed ple have been killed by police world when it comes to police-caused in the U.S. so far this year. Such a statistic deserves to be a shocking call to action. See tinyurl. com/KillingsStats. The Guardian newspaper’s data- base demonstrates the dif¿culties of easily categorizing these deadly inter- actions between civilians and law-en- forcement personnel. Even coming up with an accurate total is hard — there is no nationwide reporting require- ment for this of¿cial taking of a life, the ultimate civil right. Sparked by notorious shootings of African-American men, closer scru- tiny reveals that 287 white men and women have died as of July 7. Blacks, with a total of 159 deaths so far, have a death rate of 3.81 per 1 million of pop- ulation, compared to 1.68 for Hispanic residents and 1.45 for whites. Looking for example at a random single day of police-related deaths, May 7, ¿ve people died. They ranged in age from 18 to 72. Most were white. They died in California, New York, Georgia, Florida and North Carolina. The circumstances of the 18-year-old’s death suggests he committed “suicide by cop.” A 21-year-old allegedly tried to run down a deputy with a car after of¿cers responded to reports of a “sus- picious couple knocking on doors.” The 72-year-old, armed with a knife, was reported by his neighbors to be suicidal. Police said they shot him af- ter he rushed at them. It’s obvious that in many cases the police are pulled into personal crises, volatile situations in which they must do their best to contain the danger. It’s safe to say that being on the delivering end of someone’s death must haunt most of¿cers for the rest of their lives. Judging by how seldom of¿cers are prosecuted — and even more rarely convicted — of being trigger-happy, U.S. citizens are clearly disinclined to second-guess these life-and-death decisions made in the heat of the mo- ment. deaths. Here are some of The Guardian’s more disturbing ¿ndings • 27 percent of people killed by U.S. police so far in 2015 had mental health issues. • Black Americans killed by police are twice as unlikely to be unarmed as white people. Thirty-two percent of blacks killed by police were carrying no weapon, compared to the 15 per- cent of whites who were unarmed. So far this year, 102 unarmed people have died in interactions with police. • Oregon, with seven deaths brought about by law enforcement so far in 2015, ranks 16th among the 50 states and D.C. in per capita fatalities. Washington, with 11, rates 25th per capita. • England and Wales total 55 fatal police shootings in the last 24 years. The U.S. had 24 fatal police shootings in the ¿rst 24 days of 2015. Canada averages 25 fatal police shootings a year, whereas California has racked up 72 such deaths in 2015. Rolling this death rate back to something less startling will be a com- plex task. Better nationwide police training in using nondeadly force has to be part of the answer. Enhancing citizen awareness and conveying our expectations is another. Stepping up to adequately fund mental-health treatment and interventions is another. Civilian review boards provide crucial independent oversight in jurisdictions large enough to warrant them. Internal police policies must em- phasize this point, well made in the city of Houston “Above all, this de- partment values the safety of its em- ployees and the public. Likewise it believes that police of¿cers should use ¿rearms with a high degree of re- straint. Of¿cers’ use of ¿rearms, there- fore, shall never be considered routine and is permissible only in defense of life and then only after all alternative means have been exhausted.” By FRANK BRUNI New York Times News Service I keep reading that Donald Trump is wrecking the Republican Party. I keep hearing that he’s a threat to the fortunes of every other Republican presidential candidate, because he sullies the brand and puts them in an impossible position. What bunk. The truth is that he’s an opportunity for them as golden as the namesake name- plates on his phallic towers, if only they would seize it. The brand was plenty sullied before he lent his huff and his hair to the task. And by giving his Re- publican rivals a perfect foil, he also gives them a perfect chance to rehabilitate and redeem the par- ty. As it stands now, he’s using them. If they had any guts, they could use him. They could piggyback on the outsize attention that he receives, answering his unhinged tweets and idiotic utterances with some- thing sane and smart, knowing that it, too, would get prominent notice. They could define themselves in the starkest possible contrast to him, calling him out as the bul- ly and bigot that he is. Then he wouldn’t own the story, because the narrative would be about cool- er heads and kinder hearts in the party staring down one of its most needlessly divisive ambassadors and saying Enough. No more. We’re serious people at the limit of our patience for provocateurs. There was a hint of this last weekend, when Jeb Bush, whose wife is Mexican-American, lashed out at Trump’s broad-brush com- ments about Mexican immigrants crossing into the United States with an agenda of drugs and rape. Bush labeled those remarks “extraordinarily ugly” and “way out of the mainstream” and said that there’s “no tolerance” for them. But he didn’t exactly volun- teer that assessment. It came in response to a reporter’s question, and it came more than two weeks after Trump’s offense. Neither he nor Marco Rubio exhibited any hurry in distancing themselves from Trump, though both of them trumpet their person- al biographies as proof that they’re sensitive to Latino immigrants. On Fox Business on Tuesday, Rubio gave a pathetic master class in cowardly evasion, stammering his way though an interview in AP Photo/Seth Wenig Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump talks to reporters as he arrives to a fund raising event at a golf course in the Bronx bor- ough of New York, Monday, July 6, 2015. which he was asked repeat- edly for an opinion about Trump. You would have thought that he was be- ing pressed for malicious gossip about Frank the Easter Bruni bunny. He never did manage to up- braid Trump, though he was care- ful to mention the “legitimate is- sue” of border security that Trump had raised. As in 2012, Republicans can’t summon the courage to take on the dark heroes of the party’s lunatic fringe. As in 2012, this could cost them dearly. The Charleston, South Caro- lina, church massacre and subse- quent debate over the Confederate battle flag afforded them an ideal moment to talk with passion and poetry about racial healing. But the leading contenders re- acted in fashions either sluggish, terse, muffled or all three. They showed more interest in fleeing the subject than in grabbing profitable hold of it. Trump’s rant about immigrants, which he has since amplified, was another squandered moment. Chris Christie could have made good on his boasts about always telling it like it is and being un- constrained by politesse. Instead he made clear that he liked Trump and considered him a friend. That soft crunching sound you heard was the supposedly hard-charging New Jersey governor walking on eggshells. Rand Paul claims the desire and ability to expand the party’s reach to more minorities. So where’s his takedown of Trump? If they had any guts, they could use him. Bush has said that a politician must be willing to lose the party’s nomination in order to win the gen- eral election, but that philosophy can’t end with his allegiance to the Common Core. It has to include an unblinking acknowledgment of his party’s craziness whenever and wherever it flares. Trump’s hold on voters stems largely from his lack of any filter and from his directness, traits that they don’t see in establishment candidates. So his fellow Republi- cans’ filtered, indirect approach to him just gives him more power. And while he should be irrele- vant, he’s becoming ever more rel- evant, because he’s exposing their timidity and caution. They’re wrong to try to ignore him, because the media won’t do that and because he’s probably go- ing to qualify for the debates. Looking ahead to the first of them, conservative pundit George Will bought into the notion of Trump as an ineradicable pest who “says something hideously inflam- matory, which is all he knows how to say, and then what do the other nine people onstage do?” Oh, please. That’s hardly an ex- istential crisis. It’s a prompt for an overdue smidgen of valor. Without any hesitation, they tell him that he’s a disgrace. Without any hedging, they tell him that he’s absurd. It’s the truth. And for the Re- publican Party, it might just be transformative. The inspiring courage of small things brought Clemantine and unscathed. “Claire made Claire on stage. Oprah a hard, subconscious cal- asked when was the last culus She could survive, and maybe enable me to thought I knew the basic life time the girls had seen survive, too, but only if she story of my friend Clemantine their parents. It had been 12 years. Then Oprah cast off emotional respon- Wamariya. gave them a surprise sibility, only if she refused She was born in Rwanda 27 years “Your family is here!” to take on how anything or ago. anybody felt.” Her parents, brother and When she was 6 — though she sister had been found in Clemantine struggled to didn’t understand it — the genocide Africa, and now walked reconcile her old life with David began and her world started shrink- onstage. They all fell this one. A teacher she had Brooks at the Hotchkiss School ing. Her father stopped going to into one another’s arms. gave a class a thought ex- work after dark. Her family ate din- Clemantine’s knees gave periment. You’re a ferry captain on a ner with the lights off. out, but her mother held her up. To escape the mass murder, Clemantine’s story, as I knew it sinking boat. Do you toss overboard Clemantine and her older sister, then, has a comforting arc separa- the old passenger or the young one? Claire, were moved from house to tion, perseverance, reunion and joy. Clemantine lost it “Do you want to house. One night they were told to It’s the kind of clean, inspiring story know what’s that really like? This is crawl through a sweet potato ¿eld that many of us tell, in less dramatic an abstract question to you?” At Yale, she couldn’t understand and then walk away — not toward form, about our own lives — with anything, just away. clearly marked moments of struggle her own behavior. “Why did I drink only tea, never cold water? Why did They crossed the Akanyaru River and overcoming. (Clemantine thought the dead bodies But Clemantine and Elizabeth I cringe when the sun turned red?” Clemantine is now an amazing Àoating in it were just sleeping and Weil just wrote a more detailed into Burundi. Living off fruit, all her version of her story for the online young woman. Her superb and art- toenails fell out. She spent the rest of magazine Matter, and the reality is ful essay reminded me that while the her young girlhood in refugee camps not so neat. For one thing, Cleman- genocide was horri¿c, the constant in eight African na- tine never really mystery of life is how loved ones get tions. reconciled with her along with one another. We work hard to cram our lives Claire kept them on The sisters’ family. After the the move, in search of Oprah taping they into legible narratives. But we live psyches a normal life. Cleman- returned to Claire’s in the fog of reality. Whether you tine wrote her name apartment. “My fa- have survived a trauma or not, the were not in the dust at various ther kept smiling, psyche is still a dark forest of scars stops, praying some- unscathed. like someone he and tender spots. Each relationship how a family member mistrusted was tak- is intricacy piled upon intricacy, fer- would see it. One day, ing pictures of him. tile ground for misunderstanding and they barely survived a six-hour boat Claire remained catatonic; I thought mistreatment. When she was a young girl, ride across Lake Tanganyika Àeeing she’d ¿nally gone crazy, for real. I into Tanzania. Their struggles in the sat on Claire’s couch, looking at my Clemantine displayed the large cour- camps, for water and much else, were strange new siblings, the ones that age to endure genocide. In this essay almost perfectly designed to give a had replaced me and Claire. I fell she displays the courage of small sense that life is arbitrary. asleep crying.” The rest of the family things the courage to live with feel- In 2000, Claire got them refugee Àew back home to Africa the follow- ings wide open even after trauma; the maturity to accept unanswerable status in the United States through ing Monday. the International Organization for At every stop along the way, the ambiguity; the tenacity to seek co- Migration. Claire went to work as a pat narrative of Clemantine’s life is herence after arbitrary cruelty; the hotel maid in Chicago. A few years complexi¿ed by the gritty, mottled ability to create tenacious bonds that later, Clemantine was one of 50 win- nature of human relationships. The have some give to them, to allow for ners of Oprah Winfrey’s high school refugee worker who married Claire the mistakes others make; the un- essay contest. and fathered her children turned willingness to settle for the simple, In the middle of the 2006 show out to be more a burden than a sav- fake story; and the capacity to look celebrating the winners, Oprah ior. The sisters’ psyches were not at life in all its ugly complexity. By DAVID BROOKS New York Times News Service I