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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (April 6, 2016)
OPINION 6A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, APRIL 6, 2016 The GOP’s gay freakout Founded in 1873 By FRANK BRUNI New York Times News Service 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 Water under the bridge Compiled by Bob Duke From the pages of Astoria’s daily newspapers 10 years ago this week — 2006 Trees and lawn furniture soon will sprout from the concrete slab where the old Astoria Safeway once stood. At Monday’s meeting, the Astoria City Council approved a site plan for the downtown plaza and authorized $90,400 to pay for eight benches, four picnic tables, 54 planters, a $6,500 portable aluminum stage, two trash cans, 29 trees and plenty of shrubs and Àowering ground cover. Astoria’s John Warren Field may not be every Clatsop County resident’s favorite choice, but it’s the best option for locating a new Clatsop Community College campus, college president Greg Hamann told the Warrenton City Commission Tuesday evening. “We are going to try to pick the best possible site based on the criteria we developed for ourselves,” Hamann said during his presentation of the “site selection process.” Despite almost 30 years of experience building in Astoria, Jim Wilkins failed to follow the proper procedures when he performed an excavation in Uppertown that’s blamed for damaging more than two dozen nearby homes, lawyers told a jury Wednesday in Clatsop County Circuit Court. 1o one was inMured when an Astoria police of¿cer’s gun acci- dentally went off while he was arresting a suspect in the park- ing lot of the Crest Motel, 5366 Lief Erikson Drive, early Friday morning after a high-speed chase. The accidental discharge hap- pened as Sgt. Brad Johnston drew his Glock 9 mm handgun as he approached the man’s van, which had stopped in the park- ing lot after a 70-mph chase that started at 39th Street at 1:52 a.m. The bullet went into the back end of the van, where the door meets the Àoor. “It’s a very rare occasion for an accidental discharge to hap- pen in our agency,” said Astoria Police Chief Rob Deu Pree. 50 years ago — 1966 To the many things named for Lewis and Clark can now be add- ed a nuclear submarine. The USS Lewis and Clark, SSBN 644, was commissioned recently at Norfolk, Va., the 33rd type sub- marine to join the field. Development of a new industry in the 3aci¿c 1orthwest through extraction of minerals from the vast deposits of “black sand” at the mouth of the Columbia river was announced Thursday. 2f¿cials of the Washington Minerals 3ro¿t Corp., Tacoma, said a plant would be built near Ilwaco for commercial processing of the deposits. Astoria drag boat owner George Moskovita Monday alerted the lower Columbia River area drag boat Àeet to the presence of Russian trawlers ¿shing off the Washington coast. Danny Hampton, operator of Moskovita’s trawler Rodoma, reported ¿ve Russian trawlers ¿shing abreast about 25 miles off the mouth of the Columbia River nearly ran him down Monday morning. He said he had to take evasive action to avoid them. Four blocks of city-owned land in West Slope addition will be offered for public auction sale as a unit at a minimum price of $4,569 under terms that require the purchaser to develop streets and sewers, the city council decided Monday night. Rep. Wendell Wyatt, Astoria Republican, told the U.S. House of Representatives Thursday that the presence of four Russian drag boats ¿shing on the U.S. continental shelf is an “outrageous situation.” Wyatt charged that the U.S. State Department has not shown enough concern about this problem. He said he has protested to the department repeatedly, calling for it to work toward an agreement with the Russians under which they would observe the same regulations for conservation of ¿sh stocks as our ¿sh- ermen do. 75 years ago — 1941 A total of 65 Clatsop County manufacturers and processors of products varying from wooden shoes to canned salmon are listed in a directory of manufacturing and processing plants issued by the 3aci¿c 3ower /ight company covering the Columbia basin area which it serves. The directory, attractively bound and well decorated, has just came off the press and is ready for distribution, according to Arthur Dempsie, district manager for the company. “Such a commodity index of the area is particularly timely now because sudden demands of the national defense program have exhausted many nor- mal sources of supply and purchasing agents frequently are hard pressed to ¿nd new ones,” Dempsie declared. A new salary schedule for Astoria city schools, which provides increases for teachers to continue through the seventh year of con- tinued service, was adopted by the school board Tuesday night. The existing schedule pays grade school teachers $90 a month during their ¿rst year $93.75 second $97.50 third $101.25 fourth and $105. ur infrastructure is inex- cusable, much of our pub- lic education is miserable and one of our leading presidential candidates is a know-nothing, say-anything egomaniac who yanks harder every day at the tattered fabric of civil discourse and fundamental decency in this country. O But let’s by all means worry about the gays /et’s make sure they know their place. Keep them in check and all else falls Frank into line, or at Bruni least America notches one victory amid so many defeats. That must be the thinking behind Republican efforts to push through so-called religious liberty laws and other legislation — most egregiously in 1orth Carolina — that excuse and legitimize anti-gay discrimination. They’re cynical distractions. Politi- cally opportunistic sideshows. And the Republicans who are promoting them are playing a short game, not a long one, by refusing to acknowledge a clear movement in our society toward /*BT equality, a trajectory with only one shape and only one destination. They’re also playing a provincial game, not a national one, and scoring points in their corners of the universe at the expense of the Republican Par- ty’s image from north to south and coast to coast, a brand that needed a makeover — remember the broadly ballyhooed “autopsy” following Mitt Romney’s 2012 defeat? — and some- how didn’t get so much as a tweezed eyebrow or dab of blush. Yes, two of the four longest-last- ing candidates for the party’s pres- idential nomination, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, are the sons of Cuban immigrants, but much of the oratori- cal gun¿re they exchanged revolved around who would be tougher on immigration. The autopsy didn’t rec- ommend that. 1or did it want Republican lead- ers to spotlight divisive social issues and hurtle anew into the culture wars, which is precisely what *ov. Pat McCrory of 1orth Carolina, who is up for re-election in the fall, just did. He hastily signed a sweeping anti- gay and anti-transgender law that was rushed through the state /egislature as if the state’s security and economy were in immediate peril. t takes forever in this country to build a new bridge, tunnel or train line, but it took no time Àat for pol- iticians in the Tar Heel State to con- vene a special session, formally ostra- cize 1orth Carolina’s /*BT voters and wrap conservative Christians in a tight embrace. Who says America’s can-do spirit is dead? What happened in 1orth Carolina is a problem for Republicans atop the I Emery P. Dalesio/AP Photo People protest outside the North Carolina Executive Mansion in Ra- leigh, N.C., March 24, . North Carolina legislators decided to rein in lo- cal governments by approving a bill that prevents cities and counties from passing their own anti-discrimination rules. North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory later signed the legislation, which dealt a blow to the LGBT movement after success with protections in cities across the country. major trouble (Cruz, Donald Trump) lotte, that extended /*BT protections that they already had. It exposes against discrimination to transgender divides within the party that are ever people who want to use bathrooms more dif¿cult to paper over and con- that correspond with their gender tradictions that aren’t easy to explain identity. The law went so far as to for- away. bid any municipality from instituting While the marriage of the party’s its own anti-discrimination protec- evangelical and business wings has tions, lest they contradict the state’s. never been a cuddly one, it’s espe- Apparently conservatives love cially frosty now, their incompati- the concept of local control when ble desires evident in the signi¿cant the locality being given control tilts number of prominent corporations right, but they have a different view that have denounced the 1orth Car- when it leans left. Rural sensibilities olina law and that suc- must be defended while cessfully pressed the ones are Who says cosmopolitan Republican governor of dismissed. *eorgia, 1athan Deal, America’s 1orth Carolina har- to veto recent legisla- bors both. Its tensions tion that would have are America’s in min- can-do permitted the denial of iature, and in terms spirit is services to /*BT peo- of gay rights, they’re ple by *eorgians citing a reminder that the dead? religious convictions. Supreme Court’s rul- Corporations want ing last June to legalize to attract and retain the most talented same-sex marriage nationwide was workers, and that’s more dif¿cult in hardly the ¿nish of the ¿ght. states with discriminatory laws. They That ruling was certain to prompt want to reach the widest base of cus- the kind of backlash now occurring in tomers and sow loyalty among young 1orth Carolina, *eorgia and elsewhere, consumers in particular, and the best because the steadily growing majority strategy for that is an /*BT-friendly of Americans who favor gay equality is one, given that eight in 10 Americans not yet overwhelming, and the climate between the ages of 18 and 29 support of acceptance changes greatly from nondiscrimination laws, according state to state and county to county. to a 2015 Public Religion Research Institute survey. oo many of us /*BT Americans So they’re increasingly at logger- and our allies were too busy cele- heads with the *2P, whose gay-rights brating to stay alert to that. Too few of advocates are still in the minority and us acknowledged the tenaciousness whose socially conservative members of opponents who will resort to what- still pro¿t from and promote a deri- ever they must, including the hallu- sive view of gays. cinated specter of male sexual pred- What’s more, several major com- ators entering women’s restrooms, to panies are so concerned about the sweep aside anti-discrimination laws brew of misogyny, racism and xeno- that include us and to turn public sen- phobia stirred up by Trump that timent against us. they are debating whether to follow They will lose in the end — through with their usual sponsorship whether that’s 10, 20 or 30 years from of the Republican 1ational Conven- now. Meanwhile, they’ll do undeni- tion, as The Times’ Jonathan Martin able harm to the Republican Party and Maggie Haberman reported last nationally and force tough, coali- week. tion-straining choices upon it. They’ll also steal oxygen from he party’s anti-gay efforts not matters more central to this country’s only undermine its pro-busi- continued vitality and prosperity. ness stance but also contradict con- /ook, I used to be a restau- servatives’ exaltation of local deci- rant critic. I know dessert is import- sion making. The 1orth Carolina law ant. But if you want to make Amer- was drafted and passed expressly to ica great again, you can’t waste time undo and override an ordinance in worrying about who’s cutting the the state’s most populous city, Char- wedding cake. T T Open forum Kudos udos to Joshua Bessex for the pho- tographs of the plane that was lifted from the river on Tuesday. This type of on the spot photojournalism will remain in The Daily Astorian archives for many years to come. While all of us in Astoria empathize with the families of the two people who died in the crash, the fact will remain that we, as a community, were there for them in their time of need for closure. Thank you to all the Clatsop County personnel who contributed to this recovery. It was very important. BOB POTTER Astoria K Don’t raise age t seems as if some of the current crop of political hopefuls in this presiden- tial race would like to change the Social Security system by increasing the retire- ment age on bene¿t entitlements. There is, at least, one big problem with this concept. Many of us have retired from jobs — some of them with or under the auspices of the federal government — that require us to retire at 60 or 65 years of age. So if the age to qualify for Social Security bene¿ts were raised, it would require many of us to ¿ll the gap by spending the last 5 or 10 years of our working lives slinging hash at Mickey Dee’s because we would be unable to continue, by law, with our previous careers. Once again the powers that be in I Washington, D.C., would seek to pay back the money that they have pilfered from the Social Security fund by creat- ing potential hardships for those who would otherwise be entitled to bene¿ts from the Social Security system. This hardly seems equitable, but I guess it must be an acceptable way of doing business for the federal govern- ment after all, elected of¿cials have their own retirement plans that we, as taxpay- ers, pay for, but have nothing to do with the success or demise of the Social Secu- rity system — so why do they care if the system goes bust? And, don’t even get me started on the *I Bill, in the 1960s and 190s, or I will run out of words to post this, for sure. That’s what I think; I could be wrong. DA9ID *RA9ES Astoria No LNG ven the name Oregon /1* ran- kles. A more honest name would be ExploitingOregon/1*. There’s no Ore- gon in O/1*, and nothing Oregon gets from it. Oregon /1* is a subsidiary of /eucadia Corporation, a Wall Street stock-holding company which special- izes in investing in businesses that are either distressed or poorly managed. Its core strategy is to buy assets when their prices are low and sell them after their prices rise (Wikinvest). In 200, /eucadia bought the bank- rupt Calpine Corporation’s property E lease of 94 acres on Warrenton’s Ski- panon Peninsula in a 1ew York bank- ruptcy court for $4.25 million. /eucadia pledged $500,000 to back its new /1* Development Co. To get its money back, /eucadia needs to get completed permits to build an /1* terminal on the leased Skipanon land. Then it can sell the lease and permits and walk away with a very fat pro¿t. Any promises /eucadiaO/1* makes about jobs or community invest- ment, about environmental mitigation or safety, are just smoke and snake oil. They won’t be here if the terminal is ever built. And the sad truth is, the state doesn’t have anywhere near enough inspectors to assure that any successor company does what the permits specify. The sole purpose of the O/1* effort is to deliver a pro¿t to Wall Street inves- tors. Meanwhile, the people, the busi- nesses and the communities here suffer extensive business and environmental damage, endure years of disruption and are placed in potential catastrophic danger. Warrenton’s City Commission must support the ¿ndings of its own hearings of¿cer, who listened to hours of pub- lic testimony and studied the issues and Oregon’s laws for months, and reject Oregon /1*. Commissioners will be long remembered either way, either for standing up for their community, its peo- ple and our special place to live, or for selling out to Wall Street. RO*ER ROCKA Astoria
