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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (March 22, 2017)
OPINION 6A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, MARCH 22, 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 The 30-year-old time capsule found in Cannon Beach contained every- thing from United States bicentennial commemorative coins to a pair of rusty nail clippers. “Somebody surmised that people literally took things out of their pock- ets at the ceremony,” City Manager Rich Mays said. “We can’t figure out why a nail clipper would be in there.” The time capsule burial was one of many events to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the United States in 1976. The discovery of the capsule comes as Cannon Beach is celebrating its 50th anniversary as an incorpo- rated city. Cannon Beach resident Sally Stevens was in sixth grade when the cap- sule was buried and was author of the message placed inside. “America. We can’t give you a better birthday gift than you’ve given us — freedom!” The landslide above Bond Street in Astoria crept slowly for- ward for most of the weekend, then picked up speed. “Between last night and this morning there was significantly more movement in the center,” Astoria City Manager Paul Ben- oit said this morning. He said there was a 5-foot drop overnight in the forested area between First and Commercial streets and Hume Avenue. A rare, collective effort to stabilize groundfish prices, the vast majority of trawlers on the West Coast have kept their boats tied up since March 1. About 100 trawlers in Oregon, Washington state and California — including 23 from the Astoria-Warrenton area — stopped fishing in response to a bout of what they consider unpredictable and unreasonably low price offerings from processors. Trawling is a method of fishing that involves towing trawl nets along the sea floor to catch fish such as black cod, Petrale and Dover sole. “The situation began in February when some of the fish companies uni- laterally decided to lower the price they were paying to U.S. boats,” said Pete Leipzig, executive director of the Fisherman’s Marketing Association. “In some cases this occurred while they were out fishing.” 50 years ago — 1967 The river tanker Service, which Standard Oil Co. has oper- ated on the Lower Columbia River for many years, is going out of service this spring, with the Astoria Bridge and improving roads making it possible to serve by tanker truck various areas previously accessible best by tanker boat. The Service, built in 1954, and a predecessor also named the Service, have been running up and down the Columbia from its mouth to Oak Point, Wash., to marine service stations, fish receiving stations, contractors quarrying rock, dredges and other users for many years. But the demand for petroleum products on the river has slowly dwindled. The fishing industry is now cut to a total of fewer than 90 days a year, and construction of new roads has made other consumers accessible by truck. A spring storm Wednesday and Thursday morning caused moderate damage in Clatsop County, halted shipping across the Columbia River Bar but did not stop three young men from surfing at the Seaside cove. Most spectacular storm damage was collapse of the old Van Camp fish meal plant in Warrenton. Wind blew over the waterfront building, crushing several trailers and boats stored inside. Fifty years ago: from Evening Budget, March 24, 1917 — Army engineers said the Columbia River north jetty would be finished about mid-June, only 200,000 tons of rock remaining to be placed of the 3 million tons required. This would complete the government’s $17 million project started in 1885. 75 years ago — 1942 The City Commission Monday night took action to get in line with defense housing efforts for Asto- ria, adopting an ordinance sus- pending portions of the building code for duration of the emergency to permit substitution of other ade- quate materials for certain critical materials not specified in the code. The ordinance empowers the city building officials to permit use of substitutes for materials on the war production board’s critical list — provided the building official is satisfied that the substitute materi- als are adequate. A fairly optimistic picture The Daily Astorian/File Photo of conditions in Astoria in The comeback of the bicycle, re- the event of an air attack was ported making progress in other painted for Rotarians at their cities as result of tire and gaso- luncheon meeting Wednes- line restrictions, is slow in Asto- day by John Wicks, Astoria ria. One of the first institutions architect. to put a bicycle to use was the Wicks said that the fire of Astoria-Budget, which obtained 1922, a disaster at that time, a “staff car” for its news and ad- paved the way for greater vertising departments. Troyer safety in war time because Thompson, advertising manager, structures of a more perma- tries out the bike in this picture. nent type were erected to replace the wooden buildings, concrete streets and sidewalks were laid and firewalls were built in new buildings, all of which make the downtown district fairly safe from devastating fires. All the president’s lies By DAVID LEONHARDT New York Times News Service T he ninth week of Donald Trump’s presidency began with the FBI director calling him a liar. The director, the very complicated James Comey, didn’t use the L-word in his congressional testimony Monday. Comey serves at the pleasure of the president, after all. But his meaning was clear as could be. Trump has repeatedly accused Barack Obama of wiretapping his phones, and Comey explained there is “no information that supports” the claim. I’ve previously argued that not every untruth deserves to be branded with the L-word, because it implies intent and somebody can state an untruth without doing so knowingly. George W. Bush didn’t lie when he said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and Obama didn’t lie when he said people who liked their current health insurance could keep it. They made careless statements that proved false (and they deserved much of the criticism they got). But the current president of the United States lies. He lies in ways that no American politician ever has before. He has lied about — among many other things — Obama’s birthplace, John F. Kennedy’s assas- sination, Sept. 11, the Iraq War, ISIS, NATO, military veterans, Mexican immigrants, Muslim immigrants, anti-Semitic attacks, the unem- ployment rate, the murder rate, the Electoral College, voter fraud and his groping of women. He tells so many untruths that it’s time to leave behind the textual parsing over which are unwitting and which are deliberate — as well as the condescending notion that most of Trump’s supporters enjoy his lies. Trump sets out to deceive people. As he has put it, “I play to people’s fantasies.” Caveat emptor: When Donald Trump says something happened, it should not change anyone’s estima- tion of whether the event actually happened. Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t. His claim doesn’t change the odds. Which brings us to Russia. Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential campaign was an attack on the United States. It’s the kind of national-security matter that a president and members of Congress swear to treat with utmost seriousness when they take the oath of office. Yet now it has become the subject of an escalating series of lies by the president and the people who work for him. As Comey was acknowledging on Monday that the FBI was inves- tigating possible collusion between AP Photo/John Minchillo President Donald Trump speaks during a rally at the Kentucky Expo- sition Center Monday in Louisville. Russia and the Trump campaign, Trump was lying about it. From both his personal Twitter account and the White House account, he told untruths. He tells so many untruths that it’s time to leave behind the textual parsing over which are unwitting and which are deliberate — as well as the condescending notion that most of Trump’s supporters enjoy his lies. A few hours later, his press sec- retary, Sean Spicer, went before the cameras and lied about the closeness between Trump and various aides who have documented Russian ties. Do you remember Paul Manafort, the chairman of Trump’s campaign, who ran the crucial delegate-count- ing operation? Spicer said Manafort had a “very limited role” in said campaign. The big question now is not what Trump and the White House are saying about the Russia story. They will evidently say anything. The questions are what really happened and who can uncover the truth. The House of Representatives, unfortunately, will not be doing so. I was most saddened during Comey’s testimony not by the White House’s response, which I’ve come to expect, but by the Republican House members questioning him. They are members of a branch of government that the Constitution holds as equal to the presidency, but they acted like Trump staff members, decrying leaks about Russia’s attack rather than the attack itself. The Watergate equiva- lent is claiming that Deep Throat was worse than Haldeman, Ehrlichman and Nixon. It fell to Adam Schiff, a Democratic representative from Southern California, to lay out the suspicious ties between Trump and Russia (while also hinting he couldn’t describe some classified details). Schiff did so in a calm, nine-minute monologue that’s worth watching. He walked through pro-Putin payments to Michael Flynn and through another Trump’s aide’s advance notice of John Podesta’s hacked email and through the mys- terious struggle over the Republican Party platform on Ukraine. “Is it possible that all of these events and reports are completely unrelated, and nothing more than an entirely unhappy coincidence? Yes, it is possible,” Schiff said. “But it is also possible, maybe more than pos- sible, that they are not coincidental, not disconnected and not unrelated, and that the Russians used the same techniques to corrupt U.S. persons that they have employed in Europe and elsewhere. We simply don’t know, not yet, and we owe it to the country to find out.” Comey, as much as liberals may loathe him for his 2016 bungling, seems to be one of the few public officials with the ability and will- ingness to pursue the truth. I dearly hope that Republican members of the Senate are patriotic enough to do so as well. Our president is a liar, and we need to find out how serious his latest lies are. 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. 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