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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 19, 2016)
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, AUGUST 19, 2016 Lax laws O bama’s idea of ignoring our immigration laws and encouraging those who break them makes me think we need to take his thoughts a step fur- ther, and legalize bank robber- ies. This plan would require all banks to give money to any thief who asks for it, and have the taxpayers cover the cost to the banks. This would be similar to the guidelines that Obama and many others in our gov- ernment are now using con- cerning illegal aliens. Let- ting the taxpayers take care of all the cost. Any bank that refuses to cooperate with such a plan would be referred to as “un-American” for wanting to deny thieves a better life for themselves and their fam- ilies. The cost to the taxpayers in this plan might be similar to the cost for the illegal aliens. This plan may sound a little ludicrous, but Obama’s guide- lines on the illegal aliens have a similar tone, and Hillary Clinton seems to be have very similar plans to Obama’s. Or maybe even worse. Our immigration laws no longer exist — nor will our country, as we know it. - JIM ELVIN Salem Good call I would like to send a big thank you to Council- ors Cindy Price, Zetty Nem- lowill and Russ War for their thoughtful evaluation and real- istic vote to direct the city staff to plan ways to renovate the Astoria Library at its pres- ent location (“Divided coun- cil looks to renovate existing library,” The Daily Astorian, July 26). I would support a modest remodel of the library, which FRIDAY EXCHANGE would make it Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) acces- sible, and include an elevator to the basement. Lots of addi- tional square footage. Librar- ies are not the asset today that they were 50 years ago, and I think this is especially true with the younger generations. Financially, when looking over property tax statements to see where the money goes, we already have bond debt for Clatsop Community College and school districts, and sup- port for additional bonding is unlikely. The city does not need another big project to look after until we can take care of the infrastructure currently neglected: crumbling streets and sidewalks, parks, cemeter- ies and restrooms on the River- walk, to name a few. Wish my home was inside the zone of the three council- ors noted above. Thanks again, good call. MIKE GREEN Astoria Biased media A ssociated Press (AP) political articles no lon- ger offer balanced journalism. Most Republicans can give plenty of examples how the AP is blatantly biased these days toward the liberal (aka pro- gressive) Democrat agenda. For example, consider AP’s last week’s front page anti- Trump bashing article about the Latino vote (“Divided America: Will Trump Energize the Latino Vote?” The Daily Astorian, Aug. 12). Then this week we read another front page AP article (“Divided America: Global Warming Polarizes More Than Abortion,” The Daily Asto- rian, Aug. 16) illed with false and misleading statements and subtle comments to ridi- cule a contrary view about the “global warming” controversy, again a subtle anti-Trump piece. For example, most Republi- cans realize the earth’s climate undergoes natural change; but believe mankind’s impact is minimal. To advocate the con- trary is arrogant disregard of nature’s much more power- ful forces. Remember history when “overwhelming science” insisted the earth was lat? The article is mislead- ing because, for one thing, the piece makes no mention or analysis of the hundreds of millions of grants (tax dollars) to institutions that follow the liberal line of more govern- ment control over the coun- try’s energy resources and emissions. Follow-the-money is an appropriate phrase when it comes to the “global warm- ing” controversy. The AP usually injects emotion-geared adjectives and adverbs to generate a sub- tle bias toward the liberal/pro- gressive agenda. And it almost always identiies Republicans when bad things happen; but hardly ever Democrats. Everybody expects politi- cal bias of one kind or another on the opinion page of news- papers. To put political bias elsewhere is a remarkable change in the professionalism of journalists. It’s a change that’s helped to lead to the demise of much of print media these days. DON HASKELL Astoria Regatta success T he 2016 Astoria Regatta Festival was a huge suc- cess. I couldn’t have been more honored to be a co-ad- miral this year with Astoria Mayor Arline LaMear. Regatta Presidents Cliff Fick and Dan Arnoth, along with members of the Regatta Board, made a concerted effort to make this year’s celebration a regional one for the Lower Columbia and Clatsop County area. I was pleased that the Rose Planting Ceremony and the Concert in the Park were events staged in Warrenton. The Con- cert in the Park, on Friday, was well-attended and the perfor- mances by Sherrie Austin and John Berry were outstanding. I had overwhelming feedback from folks that they were anx- ious to see the concert become a regular event. My thanks to Paul Mitchell and the Warren- ton Business Association, as well as everybody else who worked together to make it happen. As mayor, I’m proud of what is happening in Warren- ton, but I’m also proud of what is happening in Astoria and throughout Clatsop County. As we become more con- nected and integrated in our daily lives, it demands that we work together to solve prob- lems. Many of the challenges we face are the same in each of our respective communities, and regional issues require regional solutions. We are stronger through cooperation and collaboration than we are individually. And, of course, it’s great that we can celebrate together, too! MARK KUJALA Mayor of Warrenton Enough E nough is enough. Power of money and inluence in collusion with corporate con- trolled mainstream media is The price of powerlessness W ASHINGTON — This week Russian bombers lew out of Iranian air bases to attack rebel positions in Syria. The State Department pretended not to be surprised. It should be. It should be alarmed. Iran’s intensely nationalistic revolutionary regime had never permitted foreign forces to operate from its soil. Until now. The reordering of the Mid- dle East is proceeding apace. Where for 40 years the U.S.- Egypt alliance anchored the region, a Russia-Iran con- dominium is now dictat- ing events. That’s what you get after eight years of U.S. retrenchment and withdrawal. That’s what results from the nuclear deal with Iran, the evacuation of Iraq and utter U.S. immobility on Syria. Consider: Iran The nuclear deal was sup- posed to begin a rapproche- ment between Washington and Tehran. Instead, it has solidiied a strategic-mili- tary alliance between Mos- cow and Tehran. With the lifting of sanctions and the normalizing of Iran’s inter- national relations, Russia rushed in with major deals, including the shipment of S-300 ground-to-air missiles. Russian use of Iranian bases now marks a new level of cooperation and joint power projection. Iraq These bombing runs cross Iraqi airspace. Before Presi- dent Barack Obama’s with- drawal from Iraq, that could not have happened. The resulting vacuum has not only created a corridor for Russian bombing, it has grad- ually allowed a hard-won post-Saddam Iraq to slip into Iran’s orbit. According to a Baghdad-based U.S. military spokesman, there are 100,000 Shiite militia ighters operat- ing inside Iraq, 80 percent of them Iranian-backed. Syria When Russia dramatically intervened last year, establish- ing air bases and launching a savage bombing campaign, Obama did nothing. Indeed, he smugly predicted that Vladimir Putin had entered a quagmire. Some quag- mire. Bashar Assad’s regime is not only saved. It encircled Aleppo and has seized the upper hand in the civil war. Meanwhile, our hapless secre- tary of state is running around trying to sue for peace, offer- ing to share intelligence and legitimize Russian interven- tion if only Putin will promise to conquer gently. Consider what Putin has achieved. Dealt a very weak hand — a rump Russian state, shorn of empire and sad- dled with a backward econ- omy and a rusting military — he has restored Russia to great power status. Reduced to irrelevance in the 1990s, it is now a force to be reck- oned with. In Europe, Putin has uni- laterally redrawn the map. His annexation of Crimea will not be reversed. The Europeans are eager to throw off the few sanctions they grudgingly imposed on Rus- sia. And the rape of eastern Ukraine continues. Ten thousand have already died and now Putin is threat- ening even more open war- fare. Under the absurd pre- text of Ukrainian terrorism in Crimea, Putin has threat- ened retaliation, massed troops in eight locations on the Ukrainian border, ordered Black Sea naval exercises, and moved advanced anti-air- craft batteries into Crimea, giving Moscow control over much of Ukrainian airspace. And why shouldn’t he? He’s pushing on an open door. Obama still refuses to send Ukraine even defensive weapons. The administra- tion’s response to these prov- ocations? Urging “both sides” to exercise restraint. Both sides, mind you. And in a gratuitous launt- ing of its newly expanded reach, Russia will be con- ducting joint naval exer- cises with China in the South China Sea, in obvious support of Beijing’s territorial claims and illegal military bases. Yet the president shows little concern. He is too smart not to understand geopoli- tics; he simply doesn’t care. In part because his priorities are domestic. In part because he thinks we lack clean hands and thus the moral standing to continue to play interna- tional arbiter. And in part because he’s convinced that in the long run it doesn’t matter. Fluctua- tions in great power relations are inherently ephemeral. For a man who sees a moral arc in the universe bending inex- orably toward justice, cal- culations of raw realpolitik are 20th-century thinking — primitive, obsolete, the obses- sion of small minds. Obama made all this per- fectly clear in speeches at the U.N., in Cairo and here at home in his very irst year in ofice. Two terms later, we see the result. Ukraine dis- membered. Eastern Europe on edge. Syria a charnel house. Iran subsuming Iraq. Russia and Iran on the march across the entire northern Middle East. At the heart of this disor- der is a simple asymmetry. It is in worldview. The major revisionist powers — China, Russia and Iran — know what they want: power, ter- ritory, tribute. And they’re going after it. Barack Obama takes Ecclesiastes’ view that these are vanities, nothing but vanities. In the kingdom of heaven, no doubt. Here on earth, how- ever — Aleppo to Donetsk, Estonia to the Spratly Islands — it matters greatly. shaping what people think is true. As a 70-year-old grand- mother, I am strong with pur- pose, caring about our children and grandchildren. Become informed about Measure 97 and share the truth with voters. The Oregon Center for Public Policy points out corporations pay 6.7 percent of all Ore- gon income taxes today ver- sus 18.5 percent 40 forty years ago, and are projected to pay 4.6 percent in 10 years, given the status quo. About 3 percent of C cor- porations will be affected by Measure 97, which means only 1/4 of one percent of businesses in the state will see their taxes go up. This will not result in higher costs for goods and services. We have 2,000 fewer teach- ers than before the inancial crisis of 2008, even though enrollment has increased. Cor- porations were bailed out on the backs of our children, the most vulnerable in our society. CAROL SCHERER Eugene Good job, Tim I t is not often that a member of our community retires with such an outstanding list of accomplishments, but Tim VonSeggern, born and raised in Astoria, retired in April hav- ing served a wide range of fel- low citizens spanning from Portland to the Oregon coast. Tim has been married to his .wife, Cammie, for 30 years, and they have two children, Jeremy and Melissa. Other members of his very close knit family include his brother Scott and his two supportive parents, long-time residents of our community, Jim and Clau- dia VonSeggern. Tim began his career as a paramedic, but his ambi- tion and desire to serve oth- ers led him to become a ire ighter, the captain of a ire- boat, a harbor pilot captain, and the project manager for the two primary ire boats that patrol the area from Portland to the mouth of the Columbia River. In all, Tim completed 30 years of service for the city of Portland. Fellow employees and subordinates would describe him as demonstrating an incredible work ethic, and embodying traits such as hon- esty, conidence, resourceful- ness, and fairness. Through- out his career, Tim has shown the determination to attack problems, learn new strate- gies and techniques for solv- ing problems, and has demon- strated a willingness to share what he has learned with oth- ers. He is an individual com- mitted to hard work and serv- ing others. With such a multitude of skills and wealth of knowl- edge, Tim hopes to continue to be involved in his commu- nity, while spending more time with his family, ishing, hunt- ing, working on his property in Nehalem, and remodeling a house with room to house a boat and room for friends and family to enjoy the coast that he so loves. Tim is wished the very best of luck by family, friends, and co-workers alike. CLAUDIA VONSEGGERN Nehalem Your generous support of The Daily Astorian Newspapers in Education program helped to provide hundreds of copies of the newspaper and unlimited access to our website to schools throughout Clatsop County each week during the 2015-2016 school year. Without your support, the majority of schools would not be able to have access to this valuable information that keeps students informed on important local events. Warren & Robin Anderson James W. Atteberry Jane Audrey J.E. Bakkensen Patrick Barker Thomas W. Bearman Marney Beemer Nancy Bell Grace Bruseth Lee B. 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