OPINION
6A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, MARCH 21, 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
OUR VIEW
Another trauma
for downtown
J
.C. Penney’s pending departure from downtown Astoria
is an earthquake. Announced last Friday, the company
plans to close some 138 locations, including five of their
14 stores in Oregon. They also include Three Rivers Mall in
Longview, Washington, and downtown Portland.
If Astoria were an isolated closure, we might surmise that
Penney’s sees Wal-Mart coming into our market. But it is clearly
part of a larger picture of a venerable retailer searching for its
footing in a world increasingly moving to Amazon shopping.
If we are going to be hard-headed about this, we cannot
waste much time in grief. The only question that matters now is:
What’s next? In other words, the prospect of a large empty space
in the 1200 block of Commercial St. raises the opportunity to
bring something new to downtown.
Unlike many mall locations, Penney owns its Astoria prop-
erty. Some 35 years ago, Sion Wentworth of Astoria – then a
retired J.C. Penney executive – told the editor of this newspaper,
J.W. Forrester, that the
Astoria store had one of
the chain’s highest sales The demographics
per square feet of the
of Astoria, Clatsop
store.
Many Astorians will County and the
miss our Penney’s. The Long Beach
store featured a broad
array of goods — from Peninsula are
more interesting
children’s clothing to
bedding and housewares to retailers today
– at affordable prices.
than they were
The challenge to
Astoria business peo-
just a decade ago.
ple is to find a successor
for the space. Years ago,
Chester Trabucco tried to lure Trader Joe’s to downtown Astoria.
That is probably worth another try. At the same time, there is a
new generation of entrepreneurs out there, looking for locations
in small towns. For instance, downtown Enterprise, Oregon, is
home to Wild Carrot Herbals, which occupies a large space with
a manufacturing facility and a retail store that displays its line of
lotions and cosmetics.
The demographics of Astoria, Clatsop County and the Long
Beach Peninsula are more interesting to retailers today than they
were just a decade ago.
In the parlance of death and dying, our business and civic
leaders cannot spend too much time in the anger phase. The J.C.
Penney closure presents an opportunity that should be pursued.
Ensure private responsibility
for vessel disposals, cleanups
T
he sinking of the Antarctic research ship Hero at Bay
Center, Washington, is a regrettable loss of a historically
significant vessel. It also is the latest of many examples of
how maritime fixer-uppers can morph into problems for neigh-
bors and taxpayers.
To live in any ocean-dependent community is to become
familiar with the phenomenon of orphaned, neglected and aban-
doned watercraft. Once someone’s pride and joy — or at least a
valuable tool — recreational and commercial vessels all eventu-
ally become worn out and obsolete. As in the case of the Hero,
sinking has the potential of releasing diesel, lubricants and other
chemicals into the water.
A single drop of petroleum can make 25 quarts of fresh water
unfit for human consumption. Our region’s important shellfish
industries are especially vulnerable to this kind of pollution.
Washington and Oregon each have state programs to deal
with abandoned and derelict vessels. After years of chronic
underfunding, Washington’s Legislature allocated $4.5 million in
the 2013-15 spending period to catch up with removing several
large vessels on the verge of becoming big problems. In general,
however, there is never enough money to keep up with this prob-
lem in either state.
Speaking about the issue in 2013, a state official in
Washington said, “We need to find a way to keep these vessels
from being abandoned in our waterways, and that means holding
owners accountable. Too many people get in over their heads,
and their dreams of ship renovation or making money from scrap
become a nightmare for the citizens of this state and the marine
environment.”
Recognizing that it costs less to avoid pollution than to clean
it up during the course of an emergency, our states need to do
more to encourage private responsibility via voluntary vessel
turn-ins, tax credits and expedited permitting for private disman-
tling and disposal.
“A hole in the water into which you pour money” is a famous
definition of a boat. To the maximum extent possible, we must
ensure taxpayers are not the ones doing the pouring.
America’s epidemic of infallibility
By PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times News Service
T
wo weeks after President
Donald Trump claimed,
bizarrely, that the Obama
administration had wiretapped
his campaign,
his press secre-
tary suggested
that GCHQ
— Britain’s
counterpart to the
National Security
Agency — had done the imaginary
bugging. British officials were
outraged. And soon the British
press was reporting that the Trump
administration had apologized.
But no: Meeting with the chan-
cellor of Germany, another ally
he’s alienating, Trump insisted that
there was nothing to apologize for.
He said, “All we did was quote a
certain very talented legal mind,”
a commentator on (of course) Fox
News.
Was anyone surprised? This
administration operates under the
doctrine of Trumpal infallibil-
ity: Nothing the president says is
wrong, whether it’s his false claim
that he won the popular vote or his
assertion that the historically low
murder rate is at a record high. No
error is ever admitted. And there is
never anything to apologize for.
OK, at this point it’s not news
that the commander in chief of the
world’s most powerful military is
a man you wouldn’t trust to park
your car or feed your cat. Thanks,
Comey. But Trump’s pathological
inability to accept responsibility
is just the culmination of a trend.
American politics — at least on
one side of the aisle — is suffering
from an epidemic of infallibility, of
powerful people who never, ever
admit to making a mistake.
More than a decade ago I
wrote that the Bush administra-
tion was suffering from a “mensch
gap.” (A mensch is an upstand-
ing person who takes responsibil-
ity for his actions.) Nobody in that
administration ever seemed will-
ing to accept responsibility for pol-
icy failures, whether it was the
bungled occupation of Iraq or the
botched response to Hurricane
Katrina.
Later, in the aftermath of the
financial crisis, a similar inabil-
ity to admit error was on dis-
play among many economic
commentators.
Take, for example, the open let-
ter a who’s who of conservatives
sent to Ben Bernanke in 2010,
warning that his policies could lead
to “currency debasement and infla-
tion.” They didn’t. But four years
later, when Bloomberg News con-
tacted many of the letter’s signato-
ries, not one was willing to admit
having been wrong.
By the way, press reports say
that one of those signatories, Kevin
AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta
FBI Director James Comey and National Security Agency Director Mi-
chael Rogers, right, prepare to testify on Capitol Hill in Washington,
D.C., Monday before the House Intelligence Committee hearing on al-
legations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Hassett — co-author of the 1999
book “Dow 36,000” — will be
nominated as chairman of Trump’s
Council of Economic Advisers.
Another, David Malpass — the for-
mer chief economist at Bear Stea-
rns, who declared on the eve of the
financial crisis that “the economy
is sturdy” — has been nominated
as undersecretary of the Trea-
sury for international affairs. They
should fit right in.
Nothing the
president
says is wrong,
whether it’s his
false claim that
he won the
popular vote or
his assertion
that the
historically low
murder rate
is at a record
high.
Just to be clear: Everyone
makes mistakes. Some of these
mistakes are in the “nobody could
have known” category. But there’s
also the temptation to engage in
motivated reasoning, to let our
emotions get the better of our crit-
ical faculties — and almost every-
one succumbs to that temptation
now and then (as I myself did on
election night.)
So nobody is perfect. The point,
however, is to try to do better —
which means owning up to your
mistakes and learning from them.
Yet that is something that the peo-
ple now ruling America never, ever
do.
What happened to us? Some of
it surely has to do with ideology:
When you’re committed to a fun-
damentally false narrative about
government and the economy, as
almost the whole Republican Party
now is, facing up to facts becomes
an act of political disloyalty. By
contrast, members of the Obama
administration, from the president
on down, were in general far more
willing to accept responsibility
than their Bush-era predecessors.
But what’s going on with Trump
and his inner circle seems to have
less to do with ideology than with
fragile egos. To admit having been
wrong about anything, they seem
to imagine, would brand them as
losers and make them look small.
In reality, of course, inability to
engage in reflection and self-crit-
icism is the mark of a tiny, shriv-
eled soul — but they’re not big
enough to see that.
But why did so many Ameri-
cans vote for Trump, whose char-
acter flaws should have been obvi-
ous long before the election?
Catastrophic media failure and
FBI malfeasance played crucial
roles. But my sense is that there’s
also something going on in our
society: Many Americans no lon-
ger seem to understand what a
leader is supposed to sound like,
mistaking bombast and belliger-
ence for real toughness.
Why? Is it celebrity culture? Is
it working-class despair, channeled
into a desire for people who spout
easy slogans?
The truth is that I don’t know.
But we can at least hope that
watching Trump in action will be
a learning experience — not for
him, because he never learns any-
thing, but for the body politic. And
maybe, just maybe, we’ll eventu-
ally put a responsible adult back in
the White House.
WHERE TO WRITE
• U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici
(D): 2338 Rayburn HOB, Washing-
ton, D.C., 20515. Phone: 202- 225-
0855. Fax 202-225-9497. District
office: 12725 SW Millikan Way,
Suite 220, Beaverton, OR 97005.
Phone: 503-469-6010. Fax 503-326-
5066. Web: bonamici.house. gov/
• U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D): 313
Hart Senate Office Building, Wash-
ington, D.C. 20510. Phone: 202-224-
3753. Web: www.merkley.senate.gov
• U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D):
221 Dirksen Senate Office Building,
Washington, D.C., 20510. Phone:
202-224-5244. Web: www.wyden.
senate.gov
• State Rep. Brad Witt (D):
State Capitol, 900 Court Street N.E.,
H-373, Salem, OR 97301. Phone:
503-986-1431. Web: www.leg.state.
or.us/witt/ Email: rep.bradwitt@
state.or.us
• State Rep. Deborah Boone (D):
900 Court St. N.E., H-481, Salem,
OR 97301. Phone: 503-986-1432.
Email: rep.deborah boone@state.
or.us District office: P.O. Box 928,
Cannon Beach, OR 97110. Phone:
503-986-1432. Web: www.leg.state.
or.us/ boone/
• State Sen. Betsy Johnson (D):
State Capitol, 900 Court St. N.E.,
S-314, Salem, OR 97301. Telephone:
503-986-1716. Email: sen.betsy john-
son@state.or.us Web: www.betsy-
johnson.com District Office: P.O.
Box R, Scappoose, OR 97056. Phone:
503-543-4046. Fax: 503-543-5296.
Astoria office phone: 503-338-1280.
• Port of Astoria: Executive
Director, 10 Pier 1 Suite 308, Asto-
ria, OR 97103. Phone: 503-741-3300.
Email: admin@portofastoria.com
• Clatsop County Board of Com-
missioners: c/o County Manager, 800
Exchange St., Suite 410, Astoria, OR
97103. Phone: 503-325-1000.