OPINION
6A
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
E
ach week we recognize those people and organizations
in the community deserving of public praise for the good
things they do to make the North Coast a better place to
live, and also those who should be called out for their actions.
SHOUTOUTS
Luke Whittaker/EO Media Group
Approximately 160 people representing various Clatsop County
businesses attended the CEDR event held at Seaside.
• Clatsop Economic Development Resources award win-
ners who were announced at CEDR’s annual meeting ear-
lier this week at the Seaside Civic and Convention Center. The
Small Business Entrepreneurship winner was Steve Sinkler,
owner of The Wine Shack & Provisions 124, while LEKTRO
and its owner, Eric Paulson, were honored for Large Business
Entrepreneurship. Ruth Swenson, manager of the Hillcrest
Inn, was recognized along with the company for Outstanding
Customer Service, and the Visionary award went to Jim DeFeo,
owner of Astoria Coffeehouse & Bistro, Cargo and Carruthers. In
the Small Business Service to the Community category, CEDR
recognized Kathleen Deland Peterson, owner of KP Graphics,
and Contractor John Nelson and Coaster Construction received
honors in the Large Business Service to the Community category.
Technological Advancement honors went to Mark Gustafson
and Gustafson Logging, while the Job Creation award went to
Jim Prinzing and the Pelican Pub & Brewery. Martin Hospitality
and its chief executive officer, Ryan Snyder, were recognized for
Economic Impact in the community.
• Organizers and volunteers of the eighth annual Pouring at
the Coast craft beer festival last weekend in Seaside that was pre-
sented by the Seaside Chamber of Commerce. The event attracted
craft beer brewers from across the region and the Northwest,
and as far away as Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Chamber Executive
Director Brian Owen said there were 32 vendors and 1,068 attend-
ees with attendance up 20 percent from last year. The festival’s
proceeds fund chamber programs and other events, he said. The
festival’s People’s Choice winner was Wild Ride Brewing, of
Redmond, for its Nut Crusher Peanut Butter Porter, the second
consecutive year the beer has won and third consecutive year the
Wild Ride Brewery has taken the People’s Choice award home.
• Clatsop County management and local members of
the American Federation of State, County and Municipal
Employees Union Local 2746 for coming together to co-spon-
sor an American Red Cross blood drive last month. The drive col-
lected 45 pints of blood, two pints more than the event’s goal, with
donations from 47 people including 11 first-time donors. The blood
drive was organized by Lisa Lindberg, a property appraiser in the
county Assessment and Taxation Department and a union member.
• Hampton Affiliates, Warrenton plant manager Lois Perdue
and Cliff Tuttle of the plant’s special projects team, who were
honored by the Astoria School District Board earlier this month.
The school district has partnered with Hampton Affiliates to obtain
a Career and Technical Education grant for more than $280,000
through the Oregon Department of Education that provides
Astoria High School students with technology and engineering
skills. Hampton Affiliates has also created a summer internship
program for four to six AHS students.
CALLOUTS
• Telephone scammers who supposedly represent a sports
media company who have been contacting local businesses
soliciting advertisements for the Astoria High School Athletic
Department. In the scam, the callers are contacting local busi-
nesses and asking if they would like to advertise in the school’s
2017 Fall Sports Poster. If the business agrees, it is sent an invoice
with instructions on how to send payment. The supposed com-
pany the callers represent is no longer in business, according to the
Better Business Bureau. Police urge residents to use caution with
any telephone solicitation, and warn that with tax season nearly
upon us there will likely be an increase in scam calls supposedly
from the IRS. The IRS website has information and tips on how to
avoid falling victim to such scams.
Suggestions?
Do you have a Shoutout or Callout you think we should know about? Let
us know at news@dailyastorian.com and we’ll make sure to take a look.
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, MARCH 24, 2017
American democracy:
Not so decadent after all
By CHARLES
KRAUTHAMMER
Washington Post Writers Group
W
ASHINGTON — Under
the dark gray cloud, amid
the general gloom, allow
me to offer a ray of sunshine. The
last two months
have brought a
pleasant surprise:
Turns out the
much feared, much
predicted withering
of our democratic
institutions has been grossly exag-
gerated. The system lives.
Let me explain. Donald Trump’s
triumph last year was based on a
frontal attack on the Washington
“establishment,” that all-powerful,
all-seeing, supremely cynical,
bipartisan “cartel” (as Ted Cruz
would have it) that allegedly runs
everything. Yet the establishment
proved to be Potemkin empty. In
2016, it folded pitifully, surrendering
with barely a fight to a lightweight
outsider.
At which point, fear of the
vaunted behemoth turned to con-
tempt for its now-exposed lassitude
and decadence. Compounding the
confusion were Trump’s intimations
of authoritarianism. He declared
“I alone can fix it” and “I am your
voice,” the classic tropes of the dem-
agogue. He unabashedly expressed
admiration for strongmen (most
notably, Vladimir Putin).
Trump had just cut through the
grandees like a hot knife through
butter. Who would now prevent
him from trampling, caudillo-like,
over a Washington grown weak and
decadent? A Washington, moreover,
that had declined markedly in
public esteem, as confidence in our
traditional institutions — from the
political parties to Congress — fell
to new lows.
The strongman cometh, it
was feared. Who and what
would stop him?
Two months into the Trumpian
era, we have our answer. Our checks
and balances have turned out to be
quite vibrant. Consider:
1. The courts.
Trump rolls out not one but two
immigration bans, and is stopped
dead in his tracks by the courts.
However you feel about the merits
of the policy itself (in my view,
execrable and useless but legal)
or the merits of the constitutional
reasoning of the 9th U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals (embarrassingly
weak, transparently political), the
fact remains: The president proposed
and the courts disposed.
‘The good
news is that
the checks and
balances are
working just
fine.’
Trump’s pushback? A plaintive
tweet or two complaining about the
judges — that his own Supreme
Court nominee denounced (if
obliquely) as “disheartening” and
“demoralizing.”
2. The states.
Federalism lives. The first
immigration challenge to Trump
was brought by the attorneys
general of two states (Washington
and Minnesota) picking up on a
trend begun during the Barack
Obama years when state attorneys
general banded together to kill his
immigration overreach and the
more egregious trespasses of his
Environmental Protection Agency.
And beyond working through
the courts, state governors —
Republicans, no less — have been
exerting pressure on members of
Congress to oppose a Republican
president’s signature health care
reform. Institutional exigency still
trumps party loyalty.
3. Congress.
The Republican-controlled
Congress (House and Senate) is
putting up epic resistance to a
Republican administration’s health
care reform. True, that’s because of
ideological and tactical disagree-
ments rather than any particular
desire to hem in Trump. But it does
demonstrate that Congress is no
rubber stamp.
And its independence extends
beyond the perennially divisive
health care conundrums. Trump’s
budget, for example, was instantly
declared dead on arrival in Congress,
as it almost invariably is regardless
of which party is in power.
4. The media.
Trump is right. It is the opposi-
tion party. Indeed, furiously so, often
indulging in appalling overkill. It’s
sometimes embarrassing to read the
front pages of the major newspapers,
festooned as they are with anti-
Trump editorializing masquerading
as news.
Nonetheless, if you take the view
from 30,000 feet, better this than a
press acquiescing on bended knee,
where it spent most of the Obama
years in a slavish Pravda-like thrall.
Every democracy needs an opposi-
tion press. We damn well have one
now.
Taken together — and sus-
pending judgment on which side is
right on any particular issue — it is
deeply encouraging that the sinews
of institutional resistance to a poten-
tially threatening executive remain
quite resilient.
The anti-Trump opposition
flatters itself as “the resistance.” As
if this is Vichy France. It’s not. It’s
21st-century America. And the good
news is that the checks and balances
are working just fine.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Port shuns fishing fleet
pen letter to the Astoria Port
Commissioners: I am a career
professional commercial fisherman.
I just purchased my 59th Oregon
commercial fishing license. I have
lived in this community all my life
and paid property taxes, state taxes
and licensing fees in this state and
community for the last 55 years.
I have built four new boats in the
surrounding area, and I have owned,
operated and outfitted over 50 boats
in my fishing career. I spent hun-
dreds of thousands of dollars in this
community. I am a lightweight com-
pared to some of the multimillion
dollar fishing operations in the com-
munity that some gillnetters own.
I have delivered into Astoria,
Warrenton and Chinook and Ilwaco,
Washington, seafood products from
almost every fishery on the coast. I
have fished off the coast and inland
waters of Alaska, California, Ore-
gon and Washington. I have traveled
throughout these states for 58 years,
plus I have traveled through Canada,
and have run boats from San Fran-
cisco to the Bering Sea.
When I was asked to write this
letter, I sat down and started writing
down all the ports, harbors, small
fishing communities, fuel docks and
harbors I took shelter in to protect
from storms, for fuel, and deliver-
ing products into these communities.
There are 67 of such harbors and
ports that I have been in throughout
my career. But I have always oper-
ated out of Astoria and Warrenton.
As a commercial fisherman, I
have employed hundreds of fisher-
men for deckhands and have spent
hundreds of thousand of dollars in
shipyards in this community and
surrounding areas. I have deliv-
ered over $1 million worth of prod-
uct within this community on a 5-1
ratio.
I heard that I might be called one
of Bill Hunsinger’s cronies although,
I disagree with Bill a lot of the time,
and have throughout the last 50
years we have worked around each
other. But, on this issue. Bill and I
stand shoulder to shoulder.
I understand that the president of
the Port Commission does not want
to sign a letter supporting the gill-
net fishery, but that does not surprise
me one bit about the Port of Astoria.
They treat every fishery in the com-
munity equally, including the drag-
gers, shrimpers, tuna boats, trollers,
crabbers and longliners. This is why
95 percent of the commercial fishing
fleet is moored in Warrenton. You go
where you are treated better.
In the 67 ports and harbors that I
O
Edward Stratton/The Daily Astorian
Pier 2 at the Port of Astoria.
have been in, the attitude of the Port
of Astoria, in its infinite wisdom,
has shunned the commercial fish-
ing fleet as a whole. It has the least
facilities of any port, including stor-
age and room to tie up commercial
boats. It is not about the hard work-
ing employees of the Port, they treat
you with respect and friendship. I
hear that tourism is more important
than commercial fishing, does that
mean that if there are gillnet boats
in mooring basins in Astoria that the
tourists will not come?
I want to cite an experience I had
two years ago in Homer, Alaska,
just to give the Port an example
that you can walk and chew gum at
the same time. I have never experi-
enced, or seen a busier port in my
career, than what I saw in Homer. I
witnessed thousands of sport boats,
a huge charter fleet for sports fish-
ing, a huge gillnet fleet operating
with purse seiners, halibut boats
and processors. I have never been
in a better-run port — it is clean and
excellently maintained. In addition,
where the commercial boats deliver
their products, it is clean, and the
commercial side of the port is run
excellently.
This is my point: When you
walk up the dock, and get your feet
on land, you see thousands of tour-
ists, hundreds of little 10-foot by
20-foot shops of all varieties and ter-
rific restaurants to accommodate the
tourists. It is so crowded you can
barely walk across the street because
of tourism traffic. About 200 yards
from the port there are about 300
campers. The place is absolutely
alive with commercial fishing boats,
sports boats and tourists, all coexist-
ing and booming with activity.
To imply that you have to get
rid of commercial fishing boats to
have tourism is ignorant, and the
people of Astoria need to under-
stand that and the governor of Ore-
gon should acknowledge and under-
stand that when you attack one of
us, you attack us all. There is a clear
and present danger in this country
that there is a war against the com-
mercial seafood industry, and that 99
percent of the commercial fishermen
feel this way, but that is for another
time and another discussion.
For myself, I take a fierce pride
in being a commercial fisherman,
and no governor, legislator, port
commissioner or fishery is going to
make me bow my head. I stand with
all the fishermen and fisheries on the
coast, and I am proud to have them
as my friends.
GARY MARINCOVICH
Astoria
Trump’s moves
am reading “Sapiens” by Yuval
Noah Harari. It was on The New
York Times best seller list a few
months ago. It is a fantastic book
that gives a beautiful and brief over-
view of the history of mankind.
Among many other things,
Harari discusses different types of
governments and financial systems.
He compared monarchies, commu-
nism, socialism and capitalism. They
all had either their time, their virtues,
or their downfalls. He pointed out a
particularly poisonous type of gov-
ernment, and that was when govern-
ments did the bidding of big money
in a particularly horrendous way.
He gave many examples, but one
you may remember from your high
school history class was the Opium
Wars. That was when England used
the force of their military to force
China to buy their opium.
I am left wondering what is on
Trump’s mind when he wants to tear
up all trade agreements, drastically
reduce funding for the State Depart-
ment, and put so much money into
the military.
JEAN HOOGE
Astoria
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