OPINION
6A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 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
File Photo
Commercial fishing vessels crowd the mooring basin at Port of
Ilwaco, Washington, in 2015.
Working the refs
Fishing essential
in monetary and T
cultural ways
By PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times News Service
or fishing communities, the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration’s annual publication about
commercial landings makes great reading. As we’ve
observed in the past, “Fisheries of the United States” is interesting
here in much the same way crop reports are a topic of fascination
for farmers.
Make no bones about it: Irrespective of decades of impressive
economic diversification, the Lower Columbia and nearby places
like Garibaldi, Newport, Willapa Bay and Westport, Washington,
are fishing communities in essential cultural and monetary ways.
Fishing dollars bounce around coastal towns and bolster the busi-
ness climate in much the way fish fertilizer makes plants prosper.
Analysis of multiyear trends points out some disturbing news
about the strength of commercial fisheries on the Lower Columbia.
The 2015 edition of the annual fisheries compendium from the
National Marine Fisheries Service (tinyurl.com/2015FishReport)
finds Astoria-area landings at something of a low ebb.
With about 92 million pounds of landings, we were in 13th
place nationwide in terms of volume in 2015. Reflecting the rel-
atively low price of some local harvests — such as hake and sar-
dines — we were in 27th place nationwide in the value of landings
— about $38 million. In our vicinity, we were far behind Westport,
Washington, in terms of value of the 2015 catch — Westport was
12th in the U.S. with a 2015 total of $65 million.
More important than annual “horse race” statistics between
ports is how well fishing fleets succeed over time. In Astoria’s
case, current trends are worrisome. Despite the superficial pleasure
of remaining the mainland West Coast’s No. 1 fishing port by vol-
ume, other 2015 indicators exhibit a troubling descent from recent
heights.
As recently as 2012, our percentage of the nationwide catch
was 1.764 percent. From there, it slid to 1.6 percent in 2013, 1.3 in
2014 and 0.947 last year. Total poundage landed last year was the
lowest since at least 2010. Landings were down 46 percent in 2015
since a recent peak in 2012. Last year’s catch also had the lowest
value since 2010 and is 24 percent less than in 2013.
None of this means anyone locally is at fault, apart from the all-
too typical situation in fishing in which booms are invariably fol-
lowed by busts. An example of this is the sardine catch. Pacific
sardines collapsed in 2015. The catch was 8.4 million pounds,
down from 51.1 million in 2014 and a recent annual average of
131.65 million pounds. In may behoove us to harvest at a more
moderate rate whenever they next rebound — though we are
aware of the countervailing argument that sardines might just natu-
rally be prone to big swings and fishermen should therefor go after
them with gusto whenever they get a chance. It also is possible that
our area’s fishing results were impacted by the mid-2013 Pacific
Seafoods fire in Warrenton — overall local landings fell from 159
million in 2013 to 122 million in 2014. But this explanation isn’t
likely to account for very much of the difference. Although Pacific
Seafoods is an undeniably huge player in the industry, its person-
nel took quick and professional steps to move to temporary facili-
ties immediately after the fire.
The largest worry in terms of fishing trends are the ways in
which the northeast Pacific Ocean’s productivity was hammered
from 2013 to 2015 by the ocean heatwave called the Blob, along
with an associated surge in toxic algae. The Blog showed some
initial signs of coming back to life this fall, but thankfully has now
faded again. Scientists have little doubt it will return in coming
years, adding to problems in a generally warmer and more acidic
ocean by midcentury. These changes will become a permanent
damper on a long-vital economic sector.
Our ailing ocean demands that we continue seeking eco-
nomic diversification, while doing all we can to make sure fish-
ing remains as viable as possible. For one thing, improving the
rationality of regulations can enhance returns for fishing boats and
improve the odds of meeting conservation goals. Faced with envi-
ronmental threats to fishing like the Blob, we should do everything
possible to eliminate man-made obstacles to the fishing economy,
including the asinine ban on mainstem Columbia gillnet fishing.
Fishermen have more than enough problems without politicians
adding to them.
F
he cryptic letter James
Comey, the FBI director,
sent to Congress on Friday
looked bizarre at the time — seem-
ing to hint at a major new Clinton
scandal, but offering no substance.
Given what we know now, how-
ever, it was worse than bizarre, it
was outrageous.
Comey apparently
had no evidence
suggesting any
wrongdoing by
Hillary Clinton;
he violated
long-standing rules about com-
menting on politically sensitive
investigations close to an election;
and he did so despite being warned
by other officials that he was doing
something terribly wrong.
So what happened? We may
never know the full story, but the
best guess is that Comey, like many
others — media organizations,
would-be nonpartisan advocacy
groups, and more — let himself
be bullied by the usual suspects.
Working the refs — screaming
about bias and unfair treatment, no
matter how favorable the treatment
actually is — has been a consistent,
long-term political strategy on the
right. And the reason it keeps hap-
pening is because it so often works.
You see this most obviously
in news coverage. Reporters who
find themselves shut up in pens
at Donald Trump rallies while the
crowd shouts abuse shouldn’t be
surprised: constant accusations
of liberal media bias have been a
staple of Republican rhetoric for
decades. And why not? The pres-
sure has been effective.
Part of this effectiveness comes
through false equivalence: news
organizations, afraid of being
attacked for bias, give evenhanded
treatment to lies and truth. Way
back in 2000 I suggested that if
a Republican candidate said that
the earth was flat, headlines would
read, “Views differ on shape of
planet.” That still happens.
The desire to get right-wing
critics off one’s back may also
explain why the news media
keep falling for fake scandals.
There’s a straight line from the
Whitewater investigation —
which ran for seven years, was
endlessly hyped in the press, but
never found any wrongdoing on
the part of the Clintons — to the
catastrophically bad coverage of
the Clinton Foundation a couple of
months ago. Remember when The
Associated Press suggested scan-
dalous undue influence based on a
meeting between Hillary Clinton
and a donor who just happened to
be both a Nobel Prize winner and
an old personal friend?
Sure enough, much of the initial
coverage of the Comey letter was
based not on what the letter said,
which was very little, but on a
false, malicious characterization
of the letter by Jason Chaffetz, the
Republican chairman of the House
Committee on Oversight and
Government Reform. You might
think reporters would have learned
by now not to take what people
like Chaffetz say at face value.
Apparently not.
Nor is it just the news media.
A few years ago, during the
peak of deficit-scold influence,
it was striking to see the various
organizations demanding deficit
reduction pretend that Democrats
who were willing to compromise
and Republicans who insisted on
slashing taxes for the wealthy were
equally at fault. They even gave
a “fiscal responsibility” award to
Paul Ryan, whose budget proposals
gave smoke and mirrors a bad
name.
And as someone who still keeps
a foot in the academic world, I’ve
been watching pressure build on
universities to hire more conserva-
tives. Never mind the way climate
denial, attacks on the theory of
evolution, and all that may have
pushed academics out of the
GOP. The fact that relatively few
conservatives teach, say, physics,
is supposed to be grossly unfair.
And you know some schools will
start hiring less qualified people in
response.
Which brings us back to
Comey. It seemed obvious from
the start that Clinton’s decision to
follow Colin Powell’s advice and
bypass State Department email was
a mistake, but nothing remotely
approaching a crime. But Comey
was subjected to a constant barrage
of demands that he prosecute
her for … something. He should
simply have said no. Instead, even
while announcing back in July
that no charges would be filed, he
editorialized about her conduct —
a wholly inappropriate thing to do,
but probably an attempt to appease
the right.
It didn’t work, of course. They
just demanded more. And it looks
as if he tried to buy them off by
throwing them a bone just a few
days before the election. Whether
it will matter politically remains to
be seen, but one thing is clear: he
destroyed his own reputation.
The moral of the story is that
appeasing the modern American
right is a losing proposition.
Nothing you do convinces them
that you’re being fair, because
fairness has nothing to do with
it. The right long ago ran out of
good ideas that can be sold on their
own merits, so the goal now is to
remove merit from the picture.
Or to put it another way, they’re
trying to create bias, not end it, and
weakness — the kind of weakness
Comey has so spectacularly dis-
played — only encourages them to
do more.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Not a sales tax
efeat the Tax says Measure 97
is a new sales tax. Measure
97 reforms the existing corporate
minimum income tax. It is not a
sales tax. The corporate tax already
is based on gross sales instead of
net profits so corporations cannot
avoid paying taxes.
Avoidance is a problem. Corpo-
rate taxes have gone from 18 per-
cent of state revenue to 6.7 percent.
Current corporate tax revenues are
allocated as the legislature chooses.
Measure 97 requires that new rev-
enues be allocated to education,
health care and senior services.
Defeat the Tax bases its argu-
ments on the false assumption
that the 1/4 of 1 percent affected
will raise prices. Prices will not be
raised because:
• An Oregon Consumer League
study compared corporations’
prices for the same items in differ-
ent states, and found “no connec-
tion to the prices large corporations
charge and the level of state taxes
they pay.”
• Oregon has the lowest corpo-
rate tax in the U.S. The few compa-
nies affected will not leave because
there’s no greener pasture. They
cannot raise prices and still com-
pete with the other 99.75 percent.
• Corporations deduct state
income taxes on federal tax
returns.
Defeat the Tax claims Measure
97 will “hurt seniors and low-in-
come families the most.” Mea-
sure 97 is endorsed by the Oregon
D
State Council for Retired Citizens,
League of Women Voters, Oregon
Assembly for Black Affairs, Ore-
gon Latino Health Coalition and
Children First for Oregon. Eight of
the top 10 contributors to Defeat
the Tax are out-of-state corpora-
tions, including Chevron, Shell,
Phillips 66 and Wells Fargo. You
decide.
GREG FISHWICK
Grants Pass
passes, I have the choice of pay-
ing less for grocery prices (smarter
shopping), higher utility rates (cut-
ting my usage), insurance rates
(find a more affordable rate) and
other services that allow me the
options that I cannot access with a
personal tax increase.
Take matters into your own
hands. Vote yes on Measure 97.
BOB POTTER
Astoria
Big companies a threat Upsetting ads
just received my property tax
assessment for next year. It’s
about 2.9 percent higher than this
year. The opponents of Measure
97 complain that passage of that
referendum will be “the biggest
tax increase in Oregon history.” I
know that there are convenient and
semantic differences among tax
rates, fees and percentages but still
… my 2.9 percent is larger than
their 2.5 percent.
The big companies and corpo-
rations are threatening us (we, their
consumers) with punitive price
increases, higher rates and layoffs.
Let’s see. Who can I punish for my
property tax increase? Where can I
relieve the pressure on my income
and profit? Nowhere.
Have the big businesses sug-
gested that their shareholders take
a bit less to compensate for the
increase? Have they suggested that
their CEOs (whom we know are
already grossly overpaid) take one
for the team? No. If Measure 97
I
atching TV and reading the
newspaper have made me
so upset. Trump wants to cancel
Social Security and all other pen-
sions when he takes office. I would
like to ask if all of you overly rich
people think he is the best thing
since sliced bread because he is
going to give you huge tax relief.
That will come by cutting all the
money that we have been paying
the last years. It is very scary to us
older people who depend on this
source of income.
I have a couple more scary
things about him being elected. He
will have us at war within three to
six months after taking office. He
supports Putin from Russia in all
his activities.
That is all for now. I know all
the Trump supporters will call me a
liar, but I am just going by what he
— and those running for Republi-
can offices — put in their TV ads.
JERRY WINTERS
Warrenton
W