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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 15, 2017)
OPINION 6A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2017 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 Water under the bridge Compiled by Bob Duke From the pages of Astoria’s daily newspapers 10 years ago this week — 2007 Trump deserves Flynn By FRANK BRUNI New York Times News Service D The Daily Astorian/File Photo Scott Stonum, resource specialist at Lewis and Clark National Historical Park, walks along a stretch of the Fort to Sea Trail at Fort Clatsop in 2007. In an effort to regain the public’s trust, Port of Astoria commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday to dismiss Executive Director Peter Gearin. The Commission voted to appoint Operations Director Ron Larsen to the interim executive director position effective today. He will also act as the agency’s budget officer, as did Gearin. Port Administration Services Manager Rita Fahrney will assume Larsen’s duties in his absence. “As a result of both real and perceived mistakes made in the past, many within our community have lost confidence in the ability of the Port to carry out its mission in a responsible manner,” Commission President Don McDaniel read from a news release during a special meeting held after the Commission’s regular workshop. “It is the hope of the commissioners that the Port can once again gain the trust and support of the community. “My target year for the success of this work is the Lewis and Clark Tricentennial,” Scott Stonum said. “When my kids’ kids walk through here, I want them to walk through a natu- ral forest.” Walking the trails that wind their way around Fort Clatsop, the resource specialist for Lewis and Clark National Historical Park pointed out features the park wants, and doesn’t want, as it plans the long-term future of the forests in the expanded park. Staff at the new national park are crafting a management plan and environmental assessment for the 1,220 acres of for- estland, from the stands within the original park boundary to the 900 acres of industrial timberland recently purchased from Weyerhaeuser Corp. 50 years ago — 1967 The big Panamanian freighter Maritime Pioneer docked Monday morn- ing at the west side of Pier 3 after crossing a storm-tossed Columbia River Bar. The big vessel will load a cargo of around 6 million board feet of logs for Japan under charter to Columbia Sound company. A new rental scale for Port of Astoria owned property and buildings was approved by commissioners at the Tuesday night meeting. It calls for increases ranging up to 500 percent. Commissioners said they expect some strong objection to the increases and will be willing to discuss them with tenants. Com- missioners feel the raises are long overdue. Water stored by nature under the sands of Clatsop Plains could become important to Clatsop County development, consultant engineer Carl Green, Beaverton, told members of the county intergovernment committee at a dinner in Andrew and Steve’s restaurant Wednesday night. Green said Clatsop’s sources of water are all small streams with low summer flow, except the Columbia and the Nehalem. For this reason it is important to know if there is an abundant supply of good water under the sand dunes that would be available for domestic or industrial use or both. 75 years ago — 1942 Record crowds jammed the Labor temple and Astoria hotel ballrooms Friday night as Astoria and Clatsop County joined in observance of Presi- dent Roosevelt’s birthday, symbolized by the 12,000 President’s Birthday balls all through the nation. Large moving vans have been backed up before the Mont- gomery Ward store on Exchange Street the past few days load- ing the last of the company’s merchandise for removal from the city and, strangely enough, there was no picket line for the truck- men to pass through. The Retail Clerks’ union, which has main- tained pickets there for the past 10 months, removed them to permit the company to move its goods out of town. Whether this means the final withdrawal of Montgomery Ward from the retail field of Astoria has not been officially con- firmed. Tom Lovatt, who has been in charge here for the past several months, said he had no knowledge of the company’s intentions beyond his orders to ship out the balance of the mer- chandise at the store. Previously, however, a representative of the company from Oakland headquarters for the coast did say that his company had no desire to retire from this field but that, if the union persisted in its refusal to write a contract without a closed shop clause, there would probably be no alternative but to withdrawal. Drunk charges, as usual, occupied most space on the city police blotter during 1941, Chief of Police John Acton revealed today in his annual report to City Manager G.T. McClean. Of the 1,275 total arrests last year, 418 were for drunkenness, 112 cases more than for the same in 1940. onald Trump’s zeal for extreme vetting has one glaring exception, one gaping blind spot: his own administration. If you’re a bedraggled sixth-grader from a beleaguered country where the Quran is a popular text, he will stop you at our border. If you’re a retired lieutenant general who hallucinates an Islamic terror- ist behind every last garden shrub in America, he will welcome you to the White House. Michael Flynn’s fall was foreor- dained, predictable by anyone with the time, patience and fundamental seriousness to take an unblinking look at his past, brimming as it was with accusations of shoddy stew- ardship and instances of rashness. This is a man who once claimed that Arabic signs along the Mexican border pointed terrorists toward the United States — and who never provided any corrob- oration of that. I learned of this particular bit of hysteria when it was being discussed one night on Anderson Cooper’s show on CNN. The Trump apologist Kayleigh McEnany was asked for her reac- tion. She said that no one could prove that there weren’t such signs. Trump sold himself to Americans the way almost every- one who tries to make the transition from the private sector to public service does. Supposedly, he knew how to manage in a way that gov- ernment bureaucrats don’t, because he was from a realm of ultimate accountability. But I can’t imagine any lev- elheaded chief executive having the most delicate of conversations about his enterprise out in the open, as Trump did at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday night, discussing North Korea’s missile launch. And the cornerstone of manage- ment is the assembling of a team that’s competent and trustworthy. Trump put his together in a cavalier fashion, enchanted by people who were high on energy even if they were low on sanity, decency, discre- tion, humility or some combination of the above. And so we got Flynn, Stephen Miller and others whose stridency makes for a good show — Trump relishes a good show — but is a recipe for precisely the kind of recklessness that did in Flynn, who played footsie with the Russians and then lied about it. With this president there’s a surfeit of provocation and a dearth of due diligence. Where was the vetting, extreme AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster Retired Lt. Gen Michael Flynn talks to media as he arrives at Trump Tower in New York in November. Flynn resigned Monday for mislead- ing Vice President Mike Pence on his talks with the Russian ambas- sador over sanctions. or otherwise, of Mick Mulvaney, the congressman tapped for the Office of Management and Budget? Oops: He had a nanny for whom he’d failed to pay more than $15,000 in taxes. Where was the vetting, extreme or otherwise, of Steve Mnuchin, just confirmed as treasury secre- tary? Oops: He had all this offshore wealth and nearly $100 million worth of real-estate assets that he initially failed to mention in finan- cial disclosure forms. With this president there’s a surfeit of provocation and a dearth of due diligence. Where was the vetting — or, more to the point, the preparation — of Betsy DeVos, our new educa- tion secretary, who waltzed into her confirmation hearing and theorized that the greatest pedagogical threat to America’s schoolchildren was toothy, furry and fond of salmon. There have been so many embarrassments with so many nom- inees that a few who’d be in the foreground of the news otherwise have been spared the derision they deserve. Andrew Puzder, for instance. He’s up for labor secretary, and his confirmation hearing has been delayed four times as he deals with a tangle of financial interests that are only the half of it. Puzder runs the fast-food chains Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. and has spoken dreamily of how much he’d like to install robots in place of human workers — you know, the kind the labor department is supposed to protect. In a memo to Hardee’s managers, he once wrote, “No more people behind the counter unless they have all their teeth.” He’s cuddly, this one. Randy, too. He took great pride in a Carl’s Jr. ad campaign in which models in bikinis wrapped their lips around fleshy, gooey cheeseburgers, giving a whole new meaning to the phrase “food porn.” One ad had a woman whose bare breasts were obscured by melons. Oh, the wit! Say what you will about DeVos, she never suggested that geometry be taught by Chippendales dancers doing things with protractors that Pythagoras never envisioned. Nor did she spout anything along the lines of Puzder’s responses when he was asked about the prospect of joining Trump’s cabinet. He speculated that it would be “the most fun you could have with your clothes on.” I like to think that years from now, we’ll be so far past this messy and terrifying moment that we’ll look back wistfully at the parlor games it gave us, chief among them Who’s Your Nightmare Nominee? I’ve been in groups that passed many apocalyptic hours this way, though the conversation did grow redundant: Flynn, DeVos, Rick Perry, Flynn, Ben Carson, Flynn, Flynn, Flynn. Well, the Flynn nightmare is over. It lasted all of 24 days. It wouldn’t have lasted one if our president cared about the most important kinds of vetting. LETTERS WELCOME Letters should be exclusive to The Daily Astorian. We do not publish open letters or third-party letters. Letters should be fewer than 350 words and must include the writer’s name, address and phone numbers. You will be contacted to confirm authorship. All letters are subject to editing for space, grammar and, on occa- sion, factual accuracy and verbal verification of authorship. Only two letters per writer are printed each month. Letters written in response to other letter writers should address the issue at hand and, rather than mentioning the writer by name, should refer to the headline and date the letter was published. Dis- course should be civil and people should be referred to in a respectful manner. Letters referring to news stories should also mention the headline and date of publication. The Daily Astorian welcomes short “in gratitude” notes from readers for publication. They should keep to a 200-word maxi- mum and writers are asked to avoid simply listing event sponsors. They must be signed, include the writ- er’s address, phone number and are subject to condensation and editing for style, grammar, etc. Submissions may be sent in any of these ways: E-mail to editor@dailyastorian. com; Online form at www.dailyasto- rian.com; Delivered to the Astorian offices at 949 Exchange St. and 1555 N. Roosevelt in Seaside. Or by mail to Letters to the Editor, P.O. Box 210, Astoria, OR 97103
