OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, AUGUST 8, 2016
Founded in 1873
DAVID F. PERO, Publisher & Editor
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
OUR VIEW
Transition won’t
change core values
T
ransition is a word that’s often scary. It need not be, it’s
simply an inevitable part of life.
The Daily Astorian just completed a transition with the
retirement of longtime Publisher Steve Forrester, who passed the
reins of leadership to his successor, David Pero, this past Friday.
During the transition period, many community and business
leaders in the cities The Daily Astorian serves asked the question
of what changes are ahead.
While there will be subtle changes in our approach to cover-
age, news emphasis and in enlarging our online presence, The
Daily Astorian’s core values of common sense and progressive
ideals remain solidly in place.
We will continue to be an active and representative voice in
the region and be an inclusive advocate for those who live and
work throughout Clatsop County and the Long Beach Peninsula
in Washington. Some of the topics that we will pay close atten-
tion to in the coming months include:
• The Housing Crunch. It exists throughout the region and
is everyone’s No. 1 concern. Like an octopus, it is an issue with
tentacles that inluence the economy, employment and quality
of life that will require public and private sector partnerships to
tackle and solve.
• Political Dysfunction. The U.S. Capitol and state
Legislature aren’t the only places this happens, it occurs at the
local level as well, and we will continue our watchdog role on
issues involving tax dollars and public policy.
• Children’s Well-Being. Children are the future and we will
continue to be vocal advocates for matters in education, health,
nutrition, safety and family life. We will pay extra attention to
the issue of lead in drinking water at area schools.
• Mental Health Treatment. The standards of care need to
rise, which will take community effort and strong professional
leadership.
• Homelessness. Strategies for helping the homeless need
to be developed as more and more people are attracted to the
region. It is not a problem the region can ignore, and needs both
public and private participation.
• Emergency Preparedness. Landslides, coastal erosion and
seismic danger all deserve systematic planning, public educa-
tion and preparation. Schools and other vital infrastructure must
gradually be moved to higher ground. Preparedness can save
lives with better routes to safety, along with stashes of emer-
gency supplies.
• Timber. The wood-products industry remains a value to the
entire region with mills that provide family-wage jobs. A long-
term future for forestry jobs will depend on developing addi-
tional value-added processing.
• The Oyster Industry. Paciic County’s oyster industry gen-
erates tens of millions of dollars in sales and payroll each year,
but it is under threat from a population explosion of burrowing
shrimp. Politics are blocking use of a pesticide needed to keep
the shrimp under control. A concerted effort is needed to over-
come objections in the governor’s ofice to pesticide use, along
with a public education campaign to explain the environmental
beneits of a healthy oyster industry.
• Legalized Marijuana. This new industry in the Paciic
Northwest needs to be brought under the umbrella of normal
federal banking rules and other regulations.
While each topic we’ve listed is a hot button, we want to
know your thoughts and we have set a goal of enlarging the
space devoted for readers’ opinions to include letters to the edi-
tor on a daily basis.
So please let us know, we’ll certainly be listening.
No right turn for Hillary
By PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times News Service
A
ll the experts tell us not to pay too
much attention to polls for another
week or two. Still, it does look as if
Hillary Clinton got a big bounce from
her convention, swamping her oppo-
nent’s bounce a week earlier. Better
still, from the Dem-
ocrats’ point of view,
the swing in the
polls appears to be
doing what some of
us thought it might:
sending Donald
Trump into a deep
spiral, in which his ugly nonsense gets
even uglier and more nonsensical as
his electoral prospects sink.
As a result, we’re inally seeing
some prominent Republicans not just
refusing to endorse Trump, but actu-
ally declaring their support for Clin-
ton. So how should she respond?
The obvious answer, you might
think, is that she should keep doing
what she is doing — emphasizing
how unit her rival is for ofice, let-
ting her allies point out her own qual-
iications and continuing to advocate
a moderately center-left policy agenda
that is largely a continuation of Presi-
dent Barack Obama’s.
But at least some commenta-
tors are calling on her to do some-
thing very different — to make a right
turn, moving the Democratic agenda
toward the preferences of those lee-
ing the sinking Republican ship. The
idea, I guess, is to offer to create an
American version of a European-style
grand coalition of the center-left and
the center-right.
I don’t think there’s much prospect
that Clinton will actually do that. But
if by any chance she and those around
her are tempted to take this recom-
mendation seriously: Don’t.
First of all, let’s be clear about
what she’s running on. It’s an
unabashedly progressive program, but
hardly extreme. We’re talking about
higher taxes on high incomes, but
nowhere near as high as those taxes
were for a generation after World War
II; expanded social programs, but
nothing close to those of European
welfare states; stronger inancial reg-
ulation and more action on climate
change, but aren’t the cases for both
overwhelming?
And no, the program doesn’t need
to be more “pro-growth.”
There’s absolutely no evidence
that tax cuts for the rich and rad-
ical deregulation, which is what
right-wingers mean when they talk
about pro-growth policies, actually
work, or that strengthening the social
safety net does any harm. Bill Clin-
ton presided over a bigger boom than
Ronald Reagan; the Obama years
have seen much more private job cre-
ation than the Bush era, even before
the crash, with job growth actually
accelerating after taxes went up and
Obamacare went into effect.
It’s true that there are things we
could do to boost the U.S. economy.
The most important of these things,
however, would be to take advan-
tage of very low government bor-
rowing costs to greatly expand pub-
lic investment — which is something
progressives support but conserva-
tives oppose. So enough already with
the notion that being on the center-left
somehow means being anti-growth.
Now let’s talk about the politics.
The Trumpiication of the GOP
didn’t come out of nowhere. On the
contrary, it was the natural outcome
of a cynical strategy: Long ago, con-
servatives decided to harness racial
resentment to sell right-wing eco-
nomic policies to working-class
whites, especially in the South.
This strategy brought many elec-
toral victories, but always at the risk
that the racial resentment would
run out of control, leaving the eco-
nomic conservatives — whose ideas
never had much popular support —
stranded. And that is what has just
happened.
So now the strategy that rightists
had used to sell policies that were nei-
ther popular nor successful has blown
up in their faces. And the Democratic
response should be to adopt some of
those policies? Say what?
Also, I can’t help but notice a curi-
ous pattern in the recommendations of
some self-proclaimed centrists. When
Republicans were in the ascendant,
centrists urged Democrats to adapt by
moving right. Now that Republicans
are in trouble, with some feeling that
they have no choice except to vote
Democratic, these same centrists are
urging Democrats to ... adapt by mov-
ing right. Funny how that works.
Back to the main theme: Grand
coalitions do sometimes have a place
in politics, as a response to crises that
are neither party’s fault — external
threats to national security, economic
disaster. But that’s not what is hap-
pening here. Trumpism is basically a
creation of the modern conservative
movement, which used coded appeals
to prejudice to make political gains,
then found itself unable to rein in a
candidate who skipped the coding.
If some conservatives ind this
too much and bolt the party, good for
them, and they should be welcomed
into the coalition of the sane. But they
can’t expect policy concessions in
return. When Dr. Frankenstein inally
realizes that he has created a monster,
he doesn’t get a reward. Clinton and
her party should stay the course.
LETTERS WELCOME
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Or by mail to Letters to the
Editor, P.O. Box 210, Astoria, OR
97103
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
No more Mo’s
M
o’s? Alas! Yet another blot on
Astoria’s riverfront. For our
irst trial of Mo’s, my wife and I
were served an inferior meal. Noth-
ing would induce me to venture a
second such offense.
PAUL YEAROUT
Gearhart
Mini Las Vegas?
I
am writing this open letter to
Mayor Sam Steidel, the Cannon
Beach City Council and City Man-
ager Brant Kucera. It is time that
our city manager leaves his ofice,
leaves his door open and pays a visit
to all the business owners in Can-
non Beach. Also make time to seek
out and talk to people who have lived
here, or would like to know our city
manager.
Cannon Beach is slowly becom-
ing another Seaside. What happened
to our title of being the “Carmel” of
the North Coast?
It was great that our tax money
was dedicated to a survey that made
little sense, nor did it pertain to our
community. I am glad the gentleman
who owns the company was able to
put together the strategic plan and
gave us 45 minutes of time explain-
ing his accomplishments of strategic
studies in other cities. One example
was about Las Vegas. Maybe we are
becoming like a mini Las Vegas.
Very few people I have talked to
felt this plan was the answer to solv-
ing the problems that were listed. We
need to have community meetings
— as many as needed — to cover all
those that own businesses, property
owners and renters in Cannon Beach.
Let us have a chance to express
concerns, ideas and visions for the
future so we can continue to be the
“Carmel” of the North Coast, and
not the second Seaside or a mini
Las Vegas. I understand the council
approved the plan, so be it. I still feel
the voices must be heard.
I am writing this because I was
not able to attend the council meet-
ing. I love Cannon Beach and have
owned property since 1964, and have
lived here for permanently 26 years.
I have been honored to have given
a great deal of volunteer time to the
Cannon Beach that I love, and hope
to continue to do so as I approach my
87th year of life.
MOLLY H. EDISON
Cannon Beach
A dim view
am appalled at the neo-McCar-
thyism of The New York Times
columnists and other mainstream
media. Whatever ails the world, they
blame on Russia and Vladimir Putin.
Relentlessly they portray Crimea’s
return to its original Russian home
as “Russian aggression,” a Cold War
meme.
In 2014, Ukraine underwent an
illegal anti-Russian coup, spear-
headed by neo-Nazis, against a dem-
ocratically elected president. The
U.S., through Undersecretary of
State Victoria Nuland, close col-
league of Hillary Clinton, played
an instrumental role in detaching
Ukraine from its historic Russian
connection.
I
Nuland and her husband, Rob-
ert Kagan, are leaders of a bipartisan
neoconservative movement. Seeking
to bring the world under U.S. hege-
mony, neocons support surround-
ing Russia and China with NATO
bases and nuclear missiles. NATO
is a military alliance formed in 1949
against the USSR. When the Cold
War ended, it ceased to be necessary.
President Reagan thought so, after
fruitful arms reduction diplomacy
with Soviet democratizer, Mikhail
Gorbachev. When Bill Clinton began
NATO expansion to Eastern Europe,
many senior diplomats, includ-
ing George Kennan, voiced strong
opposition.
Russia was invaded twice in the
last century through Ukraine’s lat
landscape. The Nazi invasion caused
over 25 million Russian deaths.
The recent coup would have placed
NATO in the Black Sea, threatening
Russia’s sole warm-water port, Sev-
astopol, in Crimea, where her leet
has been harbored since the 1700s.
Crimea’s nearly wholly Russian pop-
ulace voted in a referendum, legal
under international law, to return
to their traditional Russian home-
land. Russia did not retake Crimea
by force.
Putin’s Russia has not been an
aggressor nation. Instead, the U.S.,
under neocon inluence has started
a string of wars and interventions in
the Middle East and Central Asia.
And President Obama and Hillary
Clinton seek to implement the neo-
con strategy of extending NATO
around Russia and China. Such
global power projection risks nuclear
confrontation.
Whatever his shortcomings, Don-
ald Trump correctly recognizes the
need for good relations with Russia
in a multipolar world. Hence “lib-
eral” pundits, resorting to neo-Mc-
Carthyism, cast him as Putin’s pup-
pet. Critical of Clinton’s militarism,
Trump prefers cooperation with Rus-
sia. Green Party candidate Jill Stein
also takes a dim view of neocon mil-
itarism as wasteful, devastating and
provocative of nuclear war.
STEPHEN BERK
Astoria