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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (March 8, 2017)
OPINION 4A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, MARCH 8, 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 A historic landslide above Bond Street that started moving again in early January is creeping a little faster. Three inches of rainfall last week- end caused “significant movement” this week, Astoria Public Works Director Ken Cook said, and made it necessary to close two streets to traffic: Commercial Street between First Street and Hume Avenue, and First Street between Duane and Commercial streets. There are no homes on the city-owned slide site, where about 20 homes were destroyed in January 1954, and others were moved to safer ground. Pause this presidency! Today’s Coast Weekend introduces a new multimedia style of publication. Ever since the debut of that little invention known as the internet, more and more people are getting their news electron- ically. Computers are increasingly the first place people turn to for information and entertainment. Thanks to the vision and enthusiasm of Coast Weekend’s management and staff, the magazine has undergone a meta- morphosis. It’s now a brighter, more colorful and more diverse paper, with an electronic counterpart on the World Wide Web — www.coastweekend.com Washington Congressman Brian Baird has announced his opposition to the Bradwood Landing liquefied natural gas project — citing negative impacts on river commerce, the environment and private property owners as well as a potential burden on local taxpayers as his reasons. The new traffic signal installation at the intersection of Lief Erikson Drive and 33rd Street is scheduled to be turned on Wednesday. 50 years ago — 1967 AP Photo/Andrew Harnik President Donald Trump is applauded as he arrives in the East Room of the White House on Tuesday for a meeting with the House Deputy Whip team. By CHARLES BLOW New York Times News Service T The Daily Astorian/File The Japan Holly, one of a growing fleet of new log carrying freighters operating between Japan and Northwest ports, was at Pier 1 of the port docks loading a full cargo of logs. The city of Astoria’s new IBM bookkeeping machinery, a set of six machines, is now set up and fully operating in city hall. Arthur Hubbell, IBM machine operator for the city, said the set-up is known as a Series 50 installation. It can handle the city’s bookkeeping work and provide detailed records of many other city operations. Machines included are a key punch machine to put information in code into cards; a reproducing punch machine to transmit needed information for a special project to other cards; an accounting machine to accumulate totals, add and subtract; an interpreter to print what information is desired, a sorter which sorts out 450 to 650 cards a minute, and a collator which files groups of cards in numerical order. The recent report from the U.S. Maritime Administration that 11 Victory ships are to be towed from Astoria base to those at Olympia and Suisun Bay is clear evidence that the USMA is proceeding with its plans to abandon Astoria with no regard for the protests by Rep. Wendell Wyatt and Sen. Wayne Morse. This federal agency once used to deny it intended to aban- don Astoria, then admitted it was considering doing so, then tried to do it behind the backs of the Oregon delegation, then promised to review its plans and inform Wyatt, then neglected to do so and resumed its plans for abandonment anyway. Coastal residents Wednesday objected to bills designed to give more beachlands to the state. One of the measures would extend public ownership of beaches from the mean high tide line to the “vegetation line.” The second would provide that title to all future accretions seaward of the high tide line would remain with the state. 75 years ago — 1942 Cannon Beach citizens are entering into civilian defense duties with vigor and enthusiasm, according to officers of the sheriff’s department who conducted fingerprinting for air raid wardens and other defense workers there Monday night. Sheriff Paul Kearney and Deputy Myron Jones finger- printed 93 defense workers or 97 percent of the total defense personnel of Cannon Beach during a three hour session at the Roy Becker place. The Becker place is headquarters for the Cannon Beach emergency hospital. Fingerprinting of Gearhart defense workers will take place Wednesday night at 7:30 upstairs in the City Hall, Kearney said. Schoolchildren of Clatsop County have purchased approximately $3,200 worth of defense savings stamps, Chairman William McGregor of the county defense savings committee reported Friday. he American people must immediately demand a cessation of all consequential actions by this “president” until we can be assured that Russian efforts to hack our election, in a way that was clearly meant to help him and damage his opponent, did not also include collusion with or cover-up by anyone involved in the Trump campaign and now administration. This may sound extreme, but if the gathering fog of suspicion should yield an actual connection, it would be one of the most egregious assaults on our democracy ever. It would not only be unprecedented, it would be a profound wound to faith in our sovereignty. Viewed through the serious lens of those epic implications, no action to put this presidency on pause is extreme. Rather, it is exceedingly prudent. Some things must be done and some positions filled simply to keep the government operational. Absolute abrogation of adminis- trative authority is infeasible and ill advised. But a bare minimum standard must be applied until we know more about what the current raft of investigations yield. Indeed, it may be that the current investigative apparatuses are insufficient and a special commission or special coun- sel is in order. In any event, we can’t keep cruising along as if the unanswered question isn’t existential. Americans must demand at least a momentary respite from — my preference would be a permanent termination of — Trump’s aggres- sive agenda to dramatically alter the social, economic and political contours of this country. America deserves to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that our president is legitimate before he issues a single new disruptive executive order. America deserves to know that he is legitimate before he pursues a program to dismantle Obamacare. America deserves to know that he is legitimate before he pushes through a budget that obscenely expands military spending while making dramatic cuts in other areas. America deserves to know that he is legitimate before the Senate moves forward with confirmation hearings for his Supreme Court nominee. Republicans pitched a fit when President Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland to fill the seat made open by the death of Antonin Scalia, falsely arguing that a presi- dent should not be allowed to fill a vacancy during the last year of his term. Well, it is not at all clear to me that this will not be the last year of Donald Trump’s term, should these investigations reveal something untoward between his regime and Russia. Americans must demand at least a momentary respite from — my preference would be a permanent termination of — Trump’s aggressive agenda to dramatically alter the social, economic and political contours of this country. We have known for some time that the Russians interfered in our election in an effort to favor Trump. What we are learning in recent weeks are the number of Trump advisers and administrative officials who had contact with the Russian ambassador before the election, the frequency of those contacts, and the attempts, at least by some, to conceal those contacts. But we now know, according to reporting by The Washington Post, that Attorney General Jeff Sessions also met at least twice with the ambassador during the campaign — once at the Republican National Convention — and then lied about those contacts under oath during his confirmation hearings. Then this weekend in a series of tweets Trump made a scandalous and completely unsubstantiated alle- gation that Obama had “my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower” in October 2016. He said of his baseless charge, “This is McCarthyism!” and “This is Nixon/Watergate” and called Obama a “Bad (or sick) guy!” This is absolutely outrageous. One of three things is true here: Obama, during the waning months of an eight-year term free of personal scandal, decided to maliciously and illegally tap the phones of the candidate all the polls at the time predicted would lose; a law enforce- ment agency was able to present evidence and convince a federal judge that someone or some group of people in Trump Tower were engaged in illegal activity; or this “president,” who has proved himself a pathological liar, is once again chasing conspiratorial windmills and seeking to detract and deflect from legitimate scandal. Any of these scenarios has the profoundest of consequences. There is a helluva lot of smoke here for there to be no fire. Maybe all of these contacts with the Russians have some benign and believable explanation that escapes me at the moment. Maybe this is just the culmination of an extraordinary series of coincidences. Maybe. I actually hope that’s true. The alternative explanation is nearly unfathomable in its ability to injure our democracy. Whatever the case, we need answers before we simply pretend that there is some sort of political inertia pulling us forward and that the Trump agenda is an inevitable consequence of a suspect election. No! An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released last month found that a majority of Americans believe “Congress should investigate whether Donald Trump’s presiden- tial campaign had contact with the Russian government in 2016.” That’s important, but not enough. Until that investigation is completed, that same majority of Americans must put elected officials on notice that there will be a price to pay if they aid and abet Trump’s agenda before the truth is known. We must all demand without equivocation: Pause this presidency!
