OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, JUNE 30, 2016
Bachelor named Britain, looks for love
By FRANK BRUNI
New York Times News Service
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Our best benefactors
A scholarship is a vote of conidence
inancing a college education is no small undertaking. While
the rate of inlation has remained low, college tuition has
ramped up considerably over the past two decades. Young peo-
ple and their parents often cobble together an assortment of funds
and loans to make it work.
In this environment, Astoria in 1959, the Ross scholarships
High School Scholarships predate the founding of the
Inc., is a miraculous beneit. AHS scholarships fund.
Established in 1976, the fund
Younger funds at Knappa
holds a principal of about $7 and Warrenton high schools
million. At this year’s gradua- also awarded funds this spring.
tion, AHS Scholarships gave Established in 1997, the Knappa
away about $250,000. Coupling High School scholarships
scholarship money with inan- fund has a principal of over
cial aid from colleges, students $1 million. Coupling scholar-
left with about $1.5 million. ship money with inancial aid,
Three members of the AHS Warrenton High School grads
class of 2016 received in excess took away $250,000.
of $100,000. One of them
No matter how big the
received close to $200,000.
scholarship, a inancial gift to
AHS Scholarships Inc., is a deserving graduate is a vote
a collection of more than 50 of conidence. Sometimes, it is
funds that have been estab- the nudge that moves a young
lished by a variety of alumni man or woman in the direction
and friends of the school. of post-secondary learning.
Another 12 companies give
At a time when our nation
scholarships annually. One of depends on an educated work
this year’s achievements was force and citizenry, those who
inclusion of the Ed and Eda give scholarships are some of
Ross Scholarship. Established our best benefactors..
F
Dying forests
are emergencies
here is a tendency among
many in the environ-
mental community to regard
salvage logging and forest
thinning as thinly veiled ways
to allow unacceptable harvest
levels in U.S. national forests.
Long-term drought in the West
coupled with related factors
like insect damage should
force a reassessment of this
attitude.
The U.S. Forest Service
spent 56 percent of its budget
last year on ireighting, com-
pared to 16 percent in 1995,
according to a June 23 story by
the Christian Science Monitor.
Sixty-six million trees have
died in California alone since
2010 due to drought, higher
temperatures and an infesta-
tion of beetles that are ravag-
ing forests from Mexico to
Alaska.
The Forest Service is beg-
ging Congress to address ire-
ighting expenses as a sepa-
rate budget line item, in order
to avoid starving the agency
of funds desperately needed
for other purposes. There isn’t
enough money left to pay the
substantial costs of restor-
ing burned areas and keep up
with the many other priori-
ties that deserve to be top-of-
mind for our manager of more
than 300,000 square miles
of America – the size of the
nation of Turkey.)
Twenty-irst century ires
are a natural disaster of the
T
irst order and deserve to be
treated as such. This means
inding federal funds specif-
ically to ight them. The $2.6
billion spent by the Forest
Service in 2015 could have a
dent in long-deferred property
maintenance.
Logging is the logical way
to generate funds for ireight-
ing, as well potentially being
useful in creating ire breaks
around residential areas that
have encroached upon forest-
land. Forest thinning, although
not an eficient way of com-
mercially harvesting, might
also improve forest health
while reducing ire danger.
Logging opponents are
understandably skeptical when
it comes to Forest Service har-
vest plans. For decades, wild-
ire prevention served as a
convenient excuse for tim-
ber sales. In many cases, these
sales cost taxpayers more than
they brought in. The Reagan
administration was particularly
notorious. It was the backlash
against its malfeasance that
ushered in forest management
crafted by litigation.
But it now is time to treat
dying forests as the emergen-
cies they are. Reasonable,
scientiically sound harvests
can improve forest health
while providing funds for
ire suppression. It’s time for
a meeting of minds on this
complex and emotionally
fraught issue.
t has been forever since Britain
was single, and there will be
many lonesome and disorienting
nights ahead.
I
Maybe we should ix it up with
Switzerland.
Not immediately, of course. The
divorce from the European Union
was just announced. The paperwork
hasn’t been iled. There could be a
loss of nerve, a relaxing of conjugal
rules, tulips from Holland, chocolates
from Belgium. Greece and Portugal
could promise to stop leaving dirty
dishes in the
sink, Germany
to quit hogging
the remote.
But
as
things
stand
now, Britain
will soon stand
apart, and we
all know how
that goes: exhil-
aration,
fol-
Frank
lowed by panic,
Bruni
leading to an
age-inappropriate Tinder account.
Oh, look, here’s Iceland, lashing its
most voluptuous volcanoes. Nah, too
stony and lugubrious, and you can lis-
ten to only so much Bjork. Swipe left.
Britain on its own is unfathom-
able. Think of its relationship history:
epic trans-Atlantic romances, auda-
cious trans-Paciic affairs, lings in
this jungle, hookups on that dune. It
was usually dominant, occasionally
submissive but always coupled — if
not tripled, quadrupled or quintupled.
It had a lust for entanglement if no tal-
ent for idelity.
But it’s not the overlord it once
was. Those imperial pheromones are
gone. Where a crown once rested, a
bald spot spreads. Britain’s going to
need primping, prodding, perhaps a
prescription.
And introductions. So: Switzerland?
If marrying rich is the goal, mar-
rying Switzerland is the jackpot.
And Switzerland won’t do what Brit-
ain loathed in its current spouse and
encourage poorer, darker people to
drop in for fondue.
But it’s so worryingly petite. So
wearyingly standofish, resisting the
EU even while enveloped and pro-
tected by it. And it’s sure to insist
on a prenup longer than all of the
Harry Potter novels combined. Brit-
ain needs freer and easier love than
that, especially as its jowls sag and its
pound droops.
Maybe that means Albania, Mon-
tenegro or Macedonia. They’re the
Ian West/PA
Supporters hold a banners during a pro-EU rally in Trafalgar Square
in London, after some of the pro-EU events organized in the aftermath
of last week’s historic referendum have been canceled at short notice
over safety concerns on Tuesday.
Maybe we
should fix
Britain up with
Switzerland.
mail-order brides of the continent,
dreaming of an “I do” from the EU.
Surely they’d settle for Britain.
But would Britain settle for them?
The bloated pride that brought it to
this juncture won’t allow for a signif-
icant other that’s too other and insig-
niicant, and most outsiders can’t
locate Albania on a map. (Go south
to the heel of Italy, turn left, cross the
Adriatic, hope for the best.) There are
better charted, more ego-salving cor-
ners of Europe that haven’t bedded
down with Brussels and are still on
the market.
Like Norway. It and Britain have
plenty in common — they’re both
wintry, watery, ishy, boozy — but
also bring different, complementary
assets to the table. In Norway’s case,
oil. In Britain’s, Adele. If that’s not a
recipe for global domination, what is?
Britain isn’t a bachelor like most.
It has been married so many times
that it has pretty much run through
the available options.
Its predicament reminds me of
the movie “What’s Your Number?”
which I saw so that you wouldn’t
have to. Anna Faris plays a Bostonian
who believes that she has reached her
maximum allotment of sexual part-
ners and that her only hope for a hus-
band is to circle back and reconnect
with someone she disconnected from
previously.
For Britain that could be India.
Australia. Much of Africa. Some of
the Middle East. Its exes are every-
where, though approaching any of
them would require a new humility,
as the Britain of yesteryear wasn’t
a particularly modest or accommo-
dating suitor. It typically got the bet-
ter end of the deal, until the EU came
along and the arrangement wasn’t so
lopsided.
America is Britain’s most promi-
nent ex of all: the Elizabeth Taylor to
its Richard Burton. Should our one-
time colonial master become our 51st
state? If we acted quickly enough,
Boris Johnson could be tapped as
Donald Trump’s running mate, creat-
ing a tandem of tresses so perversely
dazzling that it alone makes the case.
This may have been Johnson’s plan
all along.
Britain is no more geographi-
cally nonsensical for us than Hawaii
or Alaska, though it’s probably too
long a cultural stretch. It simply
lacks the requisite prevalence of gun
ownership.
Which makes it a better it for
Canada. Canada is saner, except
about ice hockey. It’s Britain’s obvi-
ous match: comparably afluent, suf-
iciently English-speaking. Together
Britain and Canada can laugh at the
crudeness of us Americans, a favor-
ite shared pastime and an understand-
able one.
Britain is suddenly leaderless,
while Canada suddenly has a leader,
Justin Trudeau, who’s an interna-
tional heartthrob. He can expand his
portfolio to two continents, and has
tidy hair. Sorry, Boris.
And the monarchy survives! Can-
ada never ceased its ceremonial fealty
to it, and bows before Queen Eliza-
beth II much as Britain does. It’s a
source of puzzlement, but it’s a bridge
to Britain, which is going to need the
love.
Brexit shows you break it, you own it
by THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
New York Times News Service
he British vote by a nar-
row majority to leave the
European Union is not the end of
the world — but it does show us
how we can get there.
T
A major European power, a long-
time defender of liberal democ-
racy, pluralism and free markets,
falls under the sway of a few cyn-
ical politicians who see a chance to
exploit public fears of immigration to
advance their careers.
They create a stark binary choice on
an incredibly complex issue, of which
few people understand the full scope
— stay in or quit the EU.
These politicians assume that the
dog will never catch the car and they
will have the best of all worlds —
opposing something unpopular but
not having to deal with the implica-
tions of the public actually voting to
get rid of it. But they so dumb down
the debate with lies, fear-mongering
and misdirection, and with only a sim-
ple majority required to win, that the
leave-the-EU crowd carries the day by
a small margin.
Presto: the dog catches the car. And,
of course, it has no idea now what to do
with this car. There is no plan. There is
just barking.
Like I said, not the end of the world
yet, but if a few more EU countries try
this trick we’ll have quite a little mess
on our hands.
Attention Donald Trump voters:
This is what happens to a country that
falls for hucksters who think that life
can just imitate Twitter — that there
are simple answers to hard questions
— and that small men can rearrange
big complex systems by just erecting
a wall and everything will be peachy.
But I digress.
Because although withdrawing from
the EU is not the right answer for Brit-
ain, the fact that this argument won,
albeit with lies, tells you that people
are feeling deeply anxious about some-
thing. It’s the story of our time: the pace
of change in technology, glo-
But we need to under-
balization and climate have
stand that “the issue before
started to outrun the ability of
us is ‘integration’ not
our political systems to build
‘immigration,’” Mousav-
the social, educational, com-
izadeh added. The lived
munity, workplace and polit-
experience, in most cities in
ical innovations needed for
Europe today, is the fact that
some citizens to keep up.
“a pluralistic, multiethnic
We have globalized trade
society has grown up here,
and manufacturing, and
actually rather peacefully,
we have introduced robots
and it has brought enormous
Thomas L.
and artiicial intelligent sys-
beneits and prosperity. We
Friedman
tems, far faster than we have
need to change the focus
designed the social safety
of the problem — and the
The
nets, trade surge protectors
solution — from the physi-
and educational advancement
cal reality of immigration to
future the political and economic
options that would allow peo-
ple caught in this transition to belongs challenge of integration.”
have the time, space and tools
Schools, hospitals and pub-
to thrive. It’s left a lot of peo-
lic institutions generally
to
ple dizzy and dislocated.
will not rise to the challenge
those of the 21st century “if social
At the same time, we
have opened borders delib-
integration is failing.”
who
erately — or experienced
Indeed, in my view, the
the inlux of illegal migra-
countries
that nurture plu-
build
tion from failing states at an
ralism the best will be the
unprecedented scale — and
webs ones that thrive the most in
this too has left some peo-
the 21st century. They will
not
ple feeling culturally unan-
have the most political sta-
chored, that they are losing
bility, attract the most talent
walls. and be able to collaborate
their “home” in the deepest
sense of that word. The phys-
with the most people. But
ical reality of immigration, particularly it’s hard work.
in Europe, has run ahead of not only the
Yet in an age when technology is
host countries’ ability to integrate peo- integrating us more tightly together
ple but also of the immigrants’ ability and delivering tremendous lows of
to integrate themselves — and both are innovation, knowledge, connectivity
necessary for social stability.
and commerce, the future belongs to
And these rapid changes are tak- those who build webs not walls, who
ing place when our politics has never can integrate not separate, to get the
been more gridlocked and unable to most out of these lows. Britain leav-
respond with just common sense — ing the EU is a lose-lose proposition.
like governments borrowing money I hope the “Regrexit” campaign can
at near zero interest to invest in much- reverse Brexit and that Americans will
needed infrastructure that creates jobs dump Trump.
and enables us to better exploit these
Never forget, after the destruc-
technologies.
tion of World War II, the EU project
“Political power in the West has “emerged as a force for peace, pros-
been failing its own test of legitimacy perity, democracy and freedom in the
and accountability since 2008 — and world,” noted Eric Beinhocker, the
in its desperation has chosen to erode executive director of the Institute for
it further by unforgivably abdicat- New Economic Thinking at Oxford.
ing responsibility through the use of “This is one of humankind’s great
a referendum on the EU,” said Nader achievements. Rather than let it be
Mousavizadeh, who co-leads the Lon- destroyed we must use the shock of the
don-based global consulting irm Brexit vote to reimagine, reform, and
Macro Advisory Partners.
rebuild a new Europe.”