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.
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