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.
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