OPINION
6A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, MAY 3, 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
Cartwright Park, a small neighborhood park in Seaside, enjoyed a
facelift over the weekend.
The city of Seaside, in conjunction with the Sunset Empire Park and
Recreation District and Hood to Coast, began updating Cartwright Park
Saturday thanks in part to a $17,000 grant from Hood to Coast.
“Hood to Coast realized they wanted to give something back to the
community of Seaside,” said Mary Blake, general manager of the Sun-
set Empire Park and Recreation District. “So, last year they initiated a
fee of $1 per runner and gave that money to Seaside.”
Chinook School is a tarnished treasure awaiting new life
in that Washington town. Rebirth began last week when the
Port of Chinook signed a 33-year lease with Friends of Chi-
nook School, a nonprofit group whose mission is restoration
of the historic schoolhouse.
The eagles have landed — again.
Bald eagles usually mate for life. Every spring for the last several
years, the same pair of bald eagles has returned to a nest in the crotch of
a tall Sitka spruce near the Astoria water tower to raise another chick.
And every year, Georgia Forrester is watching for them from her
home across the street.
This year they were right on schedule, arriving at the same time as
last year. On March 15, she saw them fly up into the tree tops to mate.
50 years ago — 1967
Treasure hunter Tony
Mareno of Salem was
spurred on over the weekend
by discovery of metal 5 to 6
feet under sand and rocks at
Neahkahnie beach.
An 8-inch spike and an
L-shaped rod were found
where Mareno has been dig-
ging for a week to find the
legendary Spanish trea-
sure. Also found in his dig-
gings were several pieces of
wood that appear to have
been shaped by men. One is
similar in shape to awl, but
larger.
Local residents who were
skeptical at first were begin-
ning to believe that maybe
Mareno has found the Neah-
The Daily Astorian/File
kahnie treasure. Skeptics Lightship 88, the old Columbia,
have seen treasure hunters moved from the Port of Astoria
come and go over the years. docks to its permanent home at
the new 17th Street Dock Thurs-
Friday will mark the 90th day morning. The lightship will
anniversary of the First Presbyte- share the dock with the cutter
rian Church in Astoria.
Yacona, at left.
Prior to 1877, those of the
Presbyterian faith living in Astoria and vicinity were connected with
the Clatsop Plains church, said to be the oldest Presbyterian church,
and one of the oldest Protestant churches west of the Rocky mountains.
On May 5, 1877, Presbyterians gathered in the schoolhouse in
Uppertown to meet with Dr. A.L. Lindsay of Oregon Presbytery, for
purpose of organization of the First Presbyterian Church of Astoria.
City Council Monday night said “no” to a Blue Ridge
condominium request for fire protection. It was the second
request for Astoria services turned down. First was for annex-
ation to the city.
Prime reason for defeat of the proposal was lack of fire
department personnel, as stated by Fire Chief Arni Rautio,
and feeling expressed by most of council members that pro-
tection of Astorians should come first.
Fifty years ago: From Evening Budget, May 3, 1917 — The weather
station here reported the wettest April in many years with rainfall mea-
suring 9.8 inches. There were only 10 days of the month during which
the sun shone briefly.
75 years ago — 1942
The old argument over employment of married women
as teachers came to the fore again at the school board
meeting Tuesday night, as Superintendent Arle C. Hamp-
ton informed the board that it would be extremely difficult
to maintain a good teaching corps during the war years if the
rule was left intact. Several of the key teachers in the staff
intend to be married this summer and would automatically
lose their positions under present rule, he told the board qual-
ified applicants for teaching positions this year have been
very few.
After considerable argument a motion was carried to the
effect that women teachers now on the staff who get married
during the war shall have the right to apply to the superin-
tendent to continue as war emergency teachers for the dura-
tion of the war.
If the Navy accepts James F. Hensley of Warrenton as a
construction specialist in Portland today, the father of eight children will
follow three of his sons into service of their country, it was revealed
today.
On the power of being awful
By PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times News Service
T
he 100-day reviews are in,
and they’re terrible. The
health care faceplants just
keep coming; the administration’s
tax “plan” offers
less detail than
most supermarket
receipts; Trump
has wimped out
on his promises to
get aggressive on
foreign trade. The gap between big
boasts and tiny achievements has
never been wider.
Yet there have, by my count,
been seven thousand news articles
— OK, it’s a rough estimate —
about how Trump supporters are
standing by their man, are angry at
those meanies in the news media,
and would gladly vote for him all
over again. What’s going on?
The answer, I’d suggest, lies
buried in the details of the latest
report on gross domestic product.
No, really.
For the past few months,
economists who track short-term
developments have been noting a
peculiar divergence between “soft”
and “hard” data. Soft data are things
like surveys of consumer and busi-
ness confidence; hard data are things
like actual retail sales. Normally
these data tell similar stories (which
is why the soft data are useful as a
sort of early warning system for the
coming hard data.) Since the 2016
election, however, the two kinds of
data have diverged, with reported
confidence surging — and, yes, a
bump in stocks — but no real sign
of a pickup in economic activity.
The funny thing about that
confidence surge, however, was that
it was very much along partisan
lines — a sharp decline among
Democrats, but a simply huge rise
among Republicans. This raises
the obvious question: Were those
reporting a huge increase in opti-
mism really feeling that much better
about their economic prospects, or
were they simply using the survey
as an opportunity to affirm the right-
ness of their vote?
Well, if consumers really are
feeling super-confident, they’re
not acting on those feelings. The
first-quarter GDP report, showing
growth slowing to a crawl, wasn’t
as bad as it looks: Technical issues
involving inventories and seasonal
adjustment (you don’t want to
know) mean that underlying growth
was probably OK, though not great.
But consumer spending was defi-
nitely sluggish.
The evidence, in other words,
suggests that when Trump voters
say they’re highly confident, it’s
more a declaration of their political
identity than an indication of what
they’re going to do, or even, maybe,
what they really believe.
May I suggest that focus groups
and polls of Trump voters are pick-
AP Photo/Susan Walsh
President Donald Trump walks from the Rose Garden back to the Oval
Office of the White House Tuesday following a presentation ceremony of
the Commander-in-Chief trophy to the Air Force Academy football team.
ing up something similar?
One basic principle I’ve learned
in my years at The Times is that
almost nobody ever admits being
wrong about anything — and the
wronger they were, the less willing
they are to concede error. For
example, when Bloomberg surveyed
a group of economists who had pre-
dicted that Ben Bernanke’s policies
would cause runaway inflation, they
literally couldn’t find a single per-
son willing to admit, after years of
low inflation, having been mistaken.
In a perverse
way, Trump’s
sheer
awfulness
offers him
some political
protection:
His supporters
aren’t ready, at
least so far, to
admit that they
made that big a
mistake.
Now think about what it means
to have voted for Trump. The
news media spent much of the
campaign indulging in an orgy of
false equivalence; nonetheless, most
voters probably got the message that
the political/media establishment
considered Trump ignorant and
temperamentally unqualified to be
president. So the Trump vote had a
strong element of: “Ha! You elites
think you’re so smart? We’ll show
you!”
Now, sure enough, it turns out
that Trump is ignorant and tempera-
mentally unqualified to be president.
But if you think his supporters will
accept this reality any time soon,
you must not know much about
human nature. In a perverse way,
Trump’s sheer awfulness offers
him some political protection: His
supporters aren’t ready, at least so
far, to admit that they made that big
a mistake.
Also, to be fair, so far Trumpism
hasn’t had much effect on daily life.
In fact, Trump’s biggest fails have
involved what hasn’t happened, not
what has. So it’s still fairly easy for
those so inclined to dismiss the bad
reports as media bias.
Sooner or later, however, this
levee is going to break.
I chose that metaphor advisedly.
I’m old enough to remember when
George W. Bush was wildly popular
— and while his numbers gradually
deflated from their post 9/11 high,
it was a slow process. What really
pushed his former supporters to
reconsider, as I perceived it — and
this perception is borne out by
polling — was the Katrina debacle,
in which everyone could see the
Bush administration’s callousness
and incompetence playing out live
on TV.
What will Trump’s Katrina
moment look like? Will it be the
collapse of health insurance due to
administration sabotage? A reces-
sion this White House has no idea
how to handle? A natural disaster
or public health crisis? One way or
another, it’s coming.
Oh, and one more note: By 2006,
a majority of those polled claimed
to have voted for John Kerry in
2004. It will be interesting, a couple
of years from now, to see how many
people say they voted for Donald
Trump.
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