OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 17, 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
Water
under
the bridge
Compiled by Bob Duke
From the pages of Astoria’s daily newspapers
10 years ago this week — 2006
The fans waited at the rail above the West Mooring Basin rooting for
their special number. The cannon loudly banged in the start of the race.
But spectators hoping for their little duck to be the irst across the in-
ish line at the Ducky Derby had to wait quite a while. The boat engine that
was supposed to help push the bath-time pets from one pier to the next
wasn’t working, nor was a spare motorboat that tried to ill in.
Eventually, the tight clump of about 100 ducks drifted to the waiting
ambassadors and Regatta queen, who had the dificult task of determining
a winner in a neck-and-100-other-necks inish. Duck 191, which had the
support of Marcy Phillips of Astoria, took top prize at the event.
Most of the people who testiied at the Cannon Beach City
Council meeting Tuesday do not support paving 29 percent of
one former sewer lagoon to provide more parking. Instead,
they want it entirely restored as a wetland.
“Where are the working families going to live?” That’s a question
that preys on the mind of Kathy Lucas, executive director of the Clatsop
County Housing Authority, as Astoria property values continue to rise.
“Rents are escalating, wages are service-industry type. One can’t sup-
port the other,” she says. “Working families already living in our neigh-
borhoods are being squeezed out.”
50 years ago — 1966
An Alaska irm has bought two
of the three state-owned ferries
left idle by the opening of the Asto-
ria Bridge. But the “queen” of the
Oregon leet – the M.R. Chessman
– still belongs to the state.
The state surplus property
division Friday sold the Tour-
ist No. II and Tourist No. III to
Alaska Marine Developers, Inc., a
irm headed by Robert E. Speidel,
of Spenard, Alaska.
Speidel paid $34,000 for the
old Tourist II, and $48,000 for the
Tourist III.
Average daily trafic in toll-paying
vehicles for the irst 14 days of oper-
ation of the Astoria Bridge was 2,701,
according to data provided today by
Oregon Highway Department.
The Daily Astorian
The opening of the Astoria
Bridge in 1966 ended the
era of ferry travel between
Astoria and Megler, Wash-
ington.
One of the inest tuna ishing seasons in several years is still
under way off the Oregon Coast, and catches are coming in
steadily, although not quite as big per boat.
The reorganized boys’ drum and bugle corps, the Sunsetters, will
make its irst appearance Sunday at 11 a.m. at the American Legion Pic-
nic at Crabapple Lake in Fort Stevens State Park, as a rousing welcome to
the visitors from Walldorf, Germany, who will be guests of the Legion at
a barbecued picnic lunch.
Business has been better in Astoria this year. The down-
town district has been bustling. Trafic has been thicker on our
streets this summer than ever before in the memories of oldest
inhabitants.
An accompaniment to this thriving activity has been an
acute increase in the problem of inding satisfactory parking
downtown for shoppers and others doing business in the city’s
core area.
75 years ago — 1941
Clatsop County labor is now being employed extra hours at overtime
pay to the greatest extent since overtime pay became general.
So rushed is the Youngs Bay Lumber company mill to complete illing
a 3,500,000-foot order of lumber for the new motorship Oregon that its
lumberjacks are working 10 hours a day, seven days a week. The freighter
is at Warrenton, waiting for the balance of its order to be cut. Before the
present national emergency a ship seldom if ever called unless her cargo
was on the dock.
Between 300 and 400 cars an hour moved over the new-
ly-opened Neahkahnie section of the Oregon Coast highway
Sunday, the State Highway Department said today.
The road, linking Nehalem and Cannon Beach junctions, is
said to be one of the most scenic along the 400 miles of Oregon
coastline.
From the shore of the Paciic to inland prairies, sport ishermen by the
hundreds will cast their lines for the biggest royal Chinook in the Colum-
bia River from Aug. 26 to Sept. 1, the seven days of the 1941 Astoria
Regatta salmon derby.
The city of Astoria has warned H.E. Stemler of Portland
and the Tidepoint company of Astoria that they will be held
responsible for “disturbance” of natural and existing condi-
tion” likely to cause slides on Taylor
Avenue between Monterey and Florence.
Sailboat races at this year’s Regatta are likely to be the best and
the biggest in scope of any modern Regatta, judging by arrangements
completed by the marine events committee of the Regatta commission,
headed by Joseph Dyer of Astoria, and by the Columbia River Yacht-
ing Association.
To each his own Olympics
By CHARLES
KRAUTHAMMER
Washington Post Writers Group
W
ASHINGTON — You
may be thrilled by the feats
of Katie Ledecky, mes-
merized by the grace of the women
gymnasts, startled by Rio spectators
mocking U.S. soccer star Hope Solo
with chants of “Zika! Zika!” (the irst
recorded instance, noted one wit, of
a stadium rocking
to the invocation
of a virus). Allow
me, however, to
interrupt the pre-
packaged, heart-tug-
ging, tape-delayed
Olympic coverage to bring you the
real sporting news of the year.
It has just been announced that on
Nov. 11 in New York City the World
Chess Championship will begin.
You scoff, of course. For
years, I’ve had to put up with
amused puzzlement at my taste in
entertainment. (Old joke: How do
you do the wave at a chess match?
With your eyebrows.) But I remain
undaunted.
True, chess is not an Olympic
sport. But it should be. In 1984, when
challenger Garry Kasparov forced that
championship match into 17 draws
in a row — each about ive hours of
unbearable, unrelenting concentration
— world champion Anatoly Karpov
was so physically and mentally
drained (he lost 22 pounds) that the
Kremlin pressured the World Chess
Federation to stop the match, thereby
saving Soviet-favorite Karpov from
forfeiting the title to the brash, free-
thinking, half-Jewish Kasparov.
My irst tournament — the 2002
Atlantic Open, a weekend of all-day
pressure so intense that I left in a near-
catatonic Karpovian state — was
also my last. I have stuck to casual
ive-minute “blitz” chess ever since.
My winnings — a $150 check that
remains framed and forever uncashed
— hang as a reminder never to do that
again.
And while chess’ governing
body cannot match the International
Olympic Committee for corruption,
the World Chess Federation more
than makes up for that in weirdness.
Its president, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov,
former president of Russia’s republic
of Kalmykia, is not only a reliable
Moscow toady (sanctioned by the
Treasury Department in November
2015), but a nutcase who insists he’s
been abducted by aliens. They wore
yellow suits.
So why am I so excited about the
upcoming match in New York? Who
goes to a chess game anyway?
I do. Twice, in fact, in the early
1990s when the championship was
also played in New York (the 1995
match on the observation deck of the
World Trade Center). I drove from
Washington both times with a couple
of friends, to the consternation of
the rest of our acquaintances, who
thought we were certiiable.
They didn’t understand that we
don’t actually sit and watch the game.
Instead, we go to the grandmaster
room where the greatest chess minds
in the world crowd around a few
drop-down demonstration boards,
trading furious in-game commentary
on the boneheadedness of the latest
move and the cosmic brilliance
of their own proposed nine-move
counterattack.
My friends and I were barely
hanging on trying to follow the
dazzling riffs lung about by the
immortals around us. Not to denigrate
the elegance of the balance beam
or the beauty of the pole vault, but
that experience was (as we used
to say when the world was young)
mind-blowing.
Twenty-one years is a long time
to wait to have your mind blown
again. But there’s a more mundane
reason for making the trip this time: a
compelling storyline with a touch of
the Cold War tension that made the
1972 Bobby Fischer-Boris Spassky
match such an international sensation.
The reigning world champion
is Magnus Carlsen, a 25-year-old
Norwegian who, unlike Fischer, is
quite normal. He sports a winning
personality and such good looks that
he does commercials for a European
clothing line.
His challenger is the classic
Russian heavy, Sergey Karjakin, who
(reports The New York Times) is a
fan of both Vladimir Putin and the
invasion of Crimea and who knocked
off two brilliant Americans to get to
the title ight.
Not exactly U.S.-USSR 1972.
But Norway-Russia 2016 does have
its charms, given Putin’s threats
and intrusions into the Baltics and
Scandinavia. Go Oslo!
I do concede that since Fischer-
Spassky, chess has lost much of
its mystique. The fall can be dated
to May 11, 1997, when IBM’s
Deep Blue beat Kasparov, widely
considered the greatest human ever to
play the game.
Today we don’t even bother
with the man-machine contest. No
human can beat the best software.
The ultimate world series is between
computer programs. And machines
don’t sweat.
Or strive, suffer or exult. Humans
do. So I’ll join the fun and cheer the
Olympians. It’ll help pass the time
until the main event Nov. 11.
Wisdom, courage and the economy
By PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times News Service
I
t’s fantasy football time in political
punditry, as commentators try to
dismiss Hillary Clinton’s dom-
inance in the polls — yes, Clinton
Derangement Syndrome is alive and
well — by insisting that she would
be losing badly if only the GOP had
nominated someone else. We will,
of course, never know. But one thing
we do know is that none of Donald
Trump’s actual rivals for the nomi-
nation bore any resemblance to their
imaginary candidate, a sensible, mod-
erate conservative with good ideas.
Let’s not forget, for example,
what Marco Rubio was doing in
the memorized
sentence he
famously couldn’t
stop repeating:
namely, insinuating
that President
Barack Obama is
deliberately undermining America. It
wasn’t all that different from Donald
Trump’s claim that Obama founded
ISIS. And let’s also not forget that
Jeb Bush, the ultimate establishment
candidate, began his campaign
with the ludicrous assertion that his
policies would double the American
economy’s growth rate.
Which brings me to my main
subject: Clinton’s economic vision,
which she summarized last week.
It’s very much a center-left vision:
incremental but fairly large increases
in high-income tax rates, further
tightening of inancial regulation,
further strengthening of the social
safety net.
It’s also a vision notable for its lack
of outlandish assumptions. Unlike just
about everyone on the Republican side,
she isn’t justifying her proposals with
claims that they would cause a radical
quickening of the U.S. economy. As
the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center put
it, she’s “a politician who would pay
for what she promises.”
So here’s my question: Is the
modesty of the Clinton economic
agenda too much of a good thing?
Should accelerating U.S. economic
growth be a bigger priority?
For while the U.S. has done
reasonably well at recovering from
the 2007-09 inancial crisis, longer-
term economic growth is looking
very disappointing. Some of this is
just demography, as baby boomers
retire and growth in the working-age
population slows down. But there
has also been a somewhat mysterious
decline in labor force participation
among prime-age adults and a sharp
drop in productivity growth.
The result, according to the
Congressional Budget Ofice, is that
the growth rate of potential GDP —
what the economy could produce at
full employment — has declined from
around 3.5 percent per year in the late
1990s to around 1.5 percent now. And
some people I respect believe that
trying to get that rate back up should
be a big goal of policy.
But as I was trying to think this
through, I realized that I had Reinhold
Niebuhr’s famous Serenity Prayer
running through my head: “Grant
me the serenity to accept the things
I cannot change, courage to change
the things I can, and wisdom to know
the difference.” I know, it’s somewhat
sacrilegious applied to economic
policy, but still.
After all, what do we actually
know how to do when it comes to
economic policy? We do, in fact,
know how to provide essential health
care to everyone; most advanced
countries do it. We know how to
provide basic security in retirement.
We know quite a lot about how
to raise the incomes of low-paid
workers.
I’d also argue that we know how
to ight inancial crises and recessions,
although political gridlock and deicit
obsession has gotten in the way of
using that knowledge.
On the other hand, what do we
know about accelerating long-run
growth? According to the budget
ofice, potential growth was pretty
stable from 1970 to 2000, with nothing
either Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton
did making much obvious difference.
The subsequent slide began under
George W. Bush and continued under
Obama. This history suggests no easy
way to change the trend.
Now, I’m not saying that we
shouldn’t try. I’d argue, in particular,
for substantially more infrastructure
spending than Clinton is proposing,
and more borrowing to pay for it. This
might signiicantly boost growth. But
it would be unwise to count on it.
Meanwhile, I don’t think enough
people appreciate the courage
involved in focusing on things we
actually know how to do, as opposed
to happy talk about wondrous growth.
When conservatives promise
fantastic growth if we give them
another chance at Bushonomics, one
main reason is that they don’t want
to admit how much they would have
to cut popular programs to pay for
their tax cuts. When centrists urge
us to look away from questions of
distribution and fairness and focus on
growth instead, all too often they’re
basically running away from the real
issues that divide us politically.
So it’s actually quite brave to say:
“Here are the things I want to do, and
here is how I’ll pay for them. Sorry,
some of you will have to pay higher
taxes.” Wouldn’t it be great if that
kind of policy honesty became the
norm?