OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, MARCH 27, 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
Fishermen should
look for smart
ways to survive
A
s spring Chinook salmon congregate in the ocean around
the mouth of the Columbia River in anticipation of their
ancient migration to upriver spawning grounds, this
spring also sees a swirling conglomeration of politics in Oregon
and Washington state over how to allocate salmon among differ-
ent interests.
In some ways nothing new, in other respects the fight over
salmon is rising to a higher pitch. Increasingly involving elected
leaders, the outcome is becoming even less predictable. Also
unclear is where a majority of Oregon and Washington state vot-
ers stand on the issue.
The key point of recent news in the matter is the Oregon Fish
and Wildlife Commission’s unanimous vote to curtail gillnet fish
harvests, altering an earlier decision that was more favorable to
commercial fishermen. Bullied into the decision by Gov. Kate
Brown, the commission backed away from its earlier acknowl-
edgment that the states have so far failed to keep a promise made
by the Oregon Legislature to ensure the continuing economic
viability of the commercial fleet. Alternative fishing methods
have proven ineffective, alternative fishing grounds are in short
supply, and money has been slow to arrive to aid transition away
from the decadeslong gillnetting tradition.
Commission members still held with some concessions to gill-
netters, attempting to allow their use in upstream zones of the
Columbia River to harvest fall Chinook. Oregon commissioners
also would permit tangle nets — alternative gear that allows fish-
ermen to sort between hatchery and naturally spawned salmon,
returning the latter to the water with a better chance of survival.
Oregon also wants the commercial share of fall Chinook to be 30
percent, compared to 25 percent in Washington waters.
Washington’s regulators promptly rejected all this, leaving
regulations for the shared water body in ambiguity. The unde-
niable bottom line, though, is that 70 to 80 percent of harvest-
able fish — depending on the season — are allocated to sport
fishermen.
The Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission’s intransi-
gence has not gone unnoticed in the Washington Legislature,
where a key Senate committee chairman is proposing a thorough
overhaul of Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife man-
agement. Calling it an agency in crisis, the Republicans who lead
the Washington Senate want to protect hatchery operations — a
step that would reverse the agency’s current inclination to with-
draw from the region’s longstanding practice of augmenting nat-
ural runs with hatchery fish. These fish are central to both the
commercial and sport fisheries.
Fish and wildlife agencies in both states face budget problems,
driven in part by a generational decline in the numbers of people
buying hunting and fishing licenses. Washington has planned a
major fee increase, something the state Senate legislation would
roll back, in part by giving the agency $5 million more in dedi-
cated funding in the
next two-year bud-
This chaos and
get cycle. Oregon is
in even worse straits,
enmity among
with a task force last
people who are all,
year seeing a need for
in their separate
an additional $43 mil-
lion a year in taxes to
ways, zealous
support agency con-
supporters of
servation programs,
maintenance and
salmon is highly
outreach.
counterproductive.
Underlying all
this controversy and
strife is the fact that salmon struggle more and more against
erratic rainfall and a warming ocean that is drastically altering
the survival equation. Returns are predicted to be impacted by
the warm-water/low-nutrition waters young salmon encountered
when they hit the Pacific in “The Blob” years of 2014 to 2016.
This chaos and enmity among people who are all, in their sep-
arate ways, zealous supporters of salmon is highly counterpro-
ductive. It is tempting to suspect that the real goal of those who
sew this discord is to wreck once-effective alliances among dif-
ferent fishing groups, perhaps to ease industrialization of the
Columbia River or to avoid costly conservation measures. How
much easier would life be for big-money interests if salmon sim-
ply went extinct, or at least became only a hobby for a diminish-
ing number of voters?
All who care about salmon, for whatever reason, will do well
to remember that there are figuratively “bigger fish to fry” in
this struggle. Recreational fishermen would do well to remem-
ber there is no one more passionate and expert in the ways of
salmon than the gillnetter who spends endless nights on the river.
And commercial fishermen must count the number of votes rep-
resented by sportfishermen and conservationists, and continue
looking for smart ways to survive in a changing world.
The Trump Elite: Like
the old elite, but worse
By DAVID BROOKS
New York Times News Service
L
egislation can be crafted
bottom up or top down. In
bottom up you ask, What
problems do voters have and
how can they be
addressed. In top
down, you ask,
What problems
do elite politicians
have and how can
they be addressed?
The House Republican health
care bill is a pure top-down doc-
ument. It was not molded to the
actual health care needs of regu-
lar voters. It does not have sup-
port from actual American voters or
much interest in those voters. It was
written by elites to serve the needs
of elites. Donald Trump vowed to
drain the swamp, but this bill is pure
swamp.
First, the new Republican estab-
lishment leaders needed something
they could call Obamacare repeal
— anything that they could call
Obamacare repeal.
It became clear as the legislative
process rushed forward that there
was no overarching vision in this
legislation on how to reform health
care or even an organizing thought
about how to improve the lives of
voters. There was no core health
care priority that Republicans iden-
tified and were trying to solve.
There were just some politicians
who wanted a news release called
Repeal.
Second, Donald Trump needed a
win. The national effects of that win
seemed immaterial to him.
His lobbying efforts for the leg-
islation were substance-free. It was
all about Donald Trump — provid-
ing Trump with a pelt, polishing a
credential for Trump. His lobby-
ing revealed the vapidity of his nar-
cissism. He didn’t mind caving to
the Freedom Caucus on Wednesday
night on policy because he doesn’t
care about policy, just the public-
ity win.
Third, the bill was crafted by
people who were insular and near-
sighted, who could see only a Wash-
ington logic and couldn’t see any
national or real-life logic.
They could have drafted a bill
that addressed the perverse fee-
for-service incentives that drive up
health costs, or a bill that began
to phase out our silly employ-
ment-based system, or one that
increased health security for the
working and middle class.
But any large vision was beyond
the drafters of this legislation. They
were more concerned with bend-
ing, distorting and folding the bill
to meet the Byrd rule, an arbitrary
congressional peculiarity of no real
purpose to the outside world. They
AP Photo/Cliff Owen
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Rep. Greg
Walden, R-Ore., one of the stewards of the Republican health care
legislation, carries a binder labeled “Essential Health Benefits” as
he leaves the Capitol Hill office of House Speaker Paul Ryan Friday.
were more concerned with what this
internal faction, or that internal fac-
tion, might want. The result was a
pedantic hodgepodge that made no
one happy.
In 24 hours of ugly machina-
tions, the Trump administration was
willing to rip out big elements of the
bill and insert big new ones, without
regard to substance or ramification.
So the
Republicans
have the
politics driving
the substance,
not the other
way around.
The new elite
is worse than
the old elite —
and certainly
more vapid.
House members were rushed to
commit to legislation even while
major pieces of it were still in flux,
when nobody had time to read it,
when the Congressional Budget
Office had no time to score it, when
the effect on health outcomes of
actual Americans was an absolute
mystery.
As the negotiating process has
gone on, you’ve seen rank-and-
file House Republicans caught
between the inside game and the
outside game. The logic of the
inside game says vote for the bill.
Support Speaker Paul Ryan. Don’t
defeat a Republican president. But
the outside game screams: Oppose
This Bill. It’s bad for most voters,
especially Republican voters. And
nobody likes it.
I opposed Obamacare. I like
health savings accounts, tax cred-
its and competitive health care
markets to drive down costs. But
these free-market reforms have to
be funded in a way to serve the
least among us, not the most. This
House Republican plan would
increase suffering, morbidity and
death among the middle class and
poor to provide tax cuts to the rich.
It would cut Medicaid benefits
by $880 billion between now and
2026. It would boost the after-tax
income for those making more than
$1 million a year by 14 percent,
according to the Tax Policy Cen-
ter. This bill takes the most vicious
progressive stereotypes about con-
servatives and validates them.
It’s no wonder that according to
the latest Quinnipiac poll this bill
has just a 17 percent approval rat-
ing. It’s no wonder that this bill is
already massively more unpopu-
lar that Hillarycare and Obamacare,
two bills that ended up gutting con-
gressional majorities.
If we’re going to have the rough
edges of a populist revolt, you’d
think that at least somebody would
be interested in listening to the peo-
ple. But with this bill the Republi-
can leadership sets an all-time new
land speed record for forgetting
where you came from.
The core Republican prob-
lem is this: The Republicans can’t
run policymaking from the White
House because they have a mar-
keting guy in charge of the fac-
tory. But they can’t run policy from
Capitol Hill because it’s vision-
less and internally divided. So the
Republicans have the politics driv-
ing the substance, not the other
way around. The new elite is worse
than the old elite — and certainly
more vapid.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
‘Trail of Surprises’
really enjoy my morning jaunts
on what I call my “Trail of Sur-
prises.” It was a very cold and
windy morning, as again I entered
the Warrenton River Trail at Sev-
enth Place and Main Avenue. The
trail was covered with frost and
broken branches from the gusting
winds. It made it like a mini obsta-
cle course.
As I moved gingerly down the
trail, I glanced up at a tall fir tree.
I
Its branches were waving to and
fro, and they seemed to be saying,
“Blow, ye mighty wind, blow. The
harder you blow, the deeper my
roots will grow.”
As the wind continued to nip
at my cheeks and my hands (even
in gloves, they were starting to
ache), I thought what a message
the tree was sending to me. When
troubling winds blow in our lives
— sickness, sorrow, challenges,
all seemingly too tough to face —
these winds were designed not to
destroy us, but to strengthen us,
sending deeper our roots of faith
and belief.
If our lives were never chal-
lenged by the troubling winds of
life, why would there be a need
for faith and belief? So blow, ye
mighty winds of life, blow, that the
roots of our faith and belief might
even deeper grow. So I thank you,
my “Trail of Surprises,” for the
message you have given to me.
JIM BERNARD
Warrenton