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
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