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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (June 7, 2017)
OPINION 6A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, JUNE 7, 2017 Founded in 1873 DAVID F. PERO, Publisher & Editor LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager JEREMY FELDMAN, Circulation Manager DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager CARL EARL, Systems Manager Water under the bridge Compiled by Bob Duke From the pages of Astoria’s daily newspapers 10 years ago this week — 2007 Some North Coast residents believe Clatsop County is rushing through the local approval process for the Bradwood Landing liquefied natural gas project. The county announced last week a report on the public safety impacts of the project wouldn’t be complete until the end of July — well after the county planning commission’s public hearing on the Bradwood land use application July 10. Astoria resident Peter Huhtala and the Columbia River Business Alli- ance have asked county commissioners to delay the Bradwood Landing LLC land use application hearing until the report is available for review. Four 2007 Dr. Edward Harvey Awards for historic preser- vation have been announced. Winners are: • Residential award, Ulrich Wendlberger of Munich, Ger- many, for 997 16th St.; • Publicly owned commercial award, The Doughboy Monument; • Privately owned commercial award, Banker’s Suite — Day Spa at 1215 Duane St.: • Outstanding citizen award, Rickenbach Construction. Long Beach, Washington, Peninsula resident Jim Gardner has mem- ories of what he was doing this week in 1944. He was a Quartermas- ter Third Class on board the minesweeper USS Tide, taking part in the D-Day invasion of Normandy. Close to the French coast, Gardner’s vessel hit a mine off Utah Beach after completing a sweep on June 7. 50 years ago — 1967 Top officials of Northwest Aluminum were due to arrive at Clatsop Airport about noon in a Pacific Power & Light Co. air- plane to inspect the 882-acre industrial site near Warrenton where they hope to erect an aluminum reduction plant. Most of us know of the bottom fishing industry’s fight to stay afloat in a flood of foreign imports that are taking the U.S. market. Another important local industry is in the same plight. Clatsop’s 40 mink breeders, who operate a $2 million-a-year indus- try, are joining other Oregon mink breeders in a campaign to persuade Congress that there must be some relief from a flood of duty-free foreign imports. In 1966 imported mink seized 42 percent of the domestic market, mink breeders here report. “The mink industry is doomed unless we can get some relief from Congress,” breeders declare. Grimstad and Vanderveldt and Wullger and Warila will probably begin cleanup and levelling the Warrenton site of Northwest Aluminum’s $140 million aluminum plant next week. Engineering and soil and foundation analysts, along with others, toured the site Thursday and said work would begin as soon as possible to take advantage of the good weather. Thorough inspection was given the mouth of the Skipanon area where bauxite ore will be landed by ships from Australia. 75 years ago — 1942 The Daily Astorian/File The USS Tide sinking off Normandy after hitting a mine June 7, 1944. War burst upon Astoria with dramatic suddenness, as it did on most cit- ies in the United States. There was the shock of Pearl Harbor, the uncer- tain thrill of the first few blacked out nights, when planes were reported over San Francisco and when no one knew when Astoria itself might taste modern war in all its frightfulness and grim drama. But after the first few hectic days Astoria quickly settled into a routine not greatly different from that of peacetime. A person coming into town from the hills, beyond the reach of radio, might not have known that war had come, from all external appearances. But changes were made slowly at first and then with increasing speed as federal rulings marched in a procession that soon began to disrupt civil- ian life. The draft was speeded up, production of automobiles, radios and refrigerators was stopped and many businesses faced ruin, labor supply became short, priorities made replacement of many articles difficult, gas- oline quotas were cut, more men left for shipyards and airplane plants, curbs were put on installment buying, sugar was rationed and ceilings were imposed on prices and rent. On the other hand, the economists might say that the basic economy of the city had not been greatly changed, since the basis of Astoria’s econ- omy is food-production, fishing and dairying; and all attempts will be made to expand, instead of disrupt these lines. Production of timber is likewise essential to the war and important to Astoria. The lawless presidency By DAVID LEONHARDT New York Times News Service D emocracy isn’t possible without the rule of law — the idea that consistent prin- ciples, rather than a ruler’s whims, govern society. You can read Aristotle, Montes- quieu, John Locke or the Declara- tion of Independence on this point. You can also look at decades of American history. Even amid bit- ter fights over what the law should say, both Democrats and Republi- cans have generally accepted the rule of law. President Don- ald Trump does not. His rejec- tion of it distin- guishes him from any other modern U.S. leader. He has instead flirted with Louis XVI’s notion of “L’etat, c’est moi”: The state is me — and I’ll decide which laws to follow. This attitude returns to the fore this week, with James Comey scheduled to testify on Thurs- day about Trump’s attempts to sti- fle an FBI investigation. I realize that many people are exhausted by Trump outrages, some of which resemble mere buffoonery. But I think it’s important to step back and connect the dots among his many rejections of the rule of law. They are a pattern of his pres- idency, one that the judicial sys- tem, Congress, civic institutions and principled members of Trump’s own administration need to resist. Trump’s view of the law, quite sim- ply, violates American traditions. Let’s walk through the major themes: Law enforcement, politicized People in federal law enforce- ment take pride in trying to remain apart from politics. I’ve been talking lately with past Justice Department appointees, from both parties, and they speak in almost identical terms. They view the Justice Depart- ment as more independent than, say, the State or Treasury Depart- ments. The Justice Department works with the rest of the admin- istration on policy matters, but keeps its distance on law enforce- ment. That’s why White House officials aren’t supposed to pick up the phone and call whomever they want at the department. There is a careful process. Trump has erased this distinction. He pressured Comey to drop the investigation of Trump’s campaign and fired Comey when he refused. Trump has called for specific pros- ecutions, first of Hillary Clinton and more recently of leakers. The attorney general, Jeff Ses- sions, is part of the problem. He is supposed to be the nation’s head law-enforcement official, but acts as a Trump loyalist. He recently held a briefing in the White House press room — “a jaw-dropping vio- lation of norms,” as Slate’s Leon Neyfakh wrote. Sessions has pro- claimed, “This is the Trump era.” Like Trump, he sees little dis- tinction between the enforcement of the law and the interests of the president. respected the judiciary as having the final word on the law. Trump has tried to delegitimize almost any judge who disagrees with him. His latest Twitter tantrum, on Monday, took a swipe at “the courts” over his stymied travel ban. It joined a long list of his judge insults: “this so-called judge”; “a single, unelected district judge”; “ridiculous”; “so politi- cal”; “terrible”; “a hater of Donald Trump”; “essentially takes law-en- forcement away from our coun- try”; “THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT STAKE!” “What’s unusual is he’s essen- tially challenging the legitimacy of the court’s role,” the legal scholar Charles Geyh told The Washington Post. Trump’s message, Geyh said, was: “I should be able to do what I choose.” The rule of law depends on a society’s willingness to stand up for it when it’s under threat. This is our time of testing. Team Trump, above the law Foreign governments speed up trademark applications from Trump businesses. Foreign offi- cials curry favor by staying at his hotel. A senior administration offi- cial urges people to buy Ivanka Trump’s clothing. The president violates bipartisan tradition by refusing to release his tax returns, thus shrouding his conflicts. The behavior has no prece- dent. “Trump and his administra- tion are flagrantly violating ethics laws,” the former top ethics advis- ers to George W. Bush and Barack Obama have written. Again, the problems extend beyond the Trump family. Tom Price, the secretary of health and human services, has used political office to enrich himself. Sessions failed to disclose previous meet- ings with Russian officials. Their attitude is clear: If we’re doing it, it’s OK. Citizens, unequal. Courts, undermined. Past administrations have Trump and his circle treat them- selves as having a privileged status under the law. And not everyone else is equal, either. In a frightening echo of despots, Trump has signaled that he accepts democracy only when it suits him. Remember when he said, “I will totally accept the results of this great and historic presidential elec- tion — if I win”? The larger message is that peo- ple who support him are fully American, and people who don’t are something less. He tells elabo- rate lies about voter fraud by those who oppose him, especially Afri- can-Americans and Latinos. Then he uses those lies to justify mea- sures that restrict their voting. (Alas, much of the Republican Party is guilty on this score.) The efforts may not yet have swung major elections, but that should not comfort anyone. They betray the most fundamental dem- ocratic right, what Locke called “the consent of the governed.” They conjure a system in which the benefits of citizenship depend on loyalty to the ruler. Trump frequently nods toward that idea in other ways, too. He still largely ignores the victims of terrorism committed by white nationalists. Truth, monopolized The consistent application of laws requires a consistent set of facts on which a society can agree. The Trump administration is try- ing to undermine the very idea of facts. It has harshly criticized one independent source of informa- tion after another. The Congres- sional Budget Office. The Bureau of Labor Statistics. The CIA. Sci- entists. And, of course, the news media. Trump attacks the media almost daily, and McClatchy has reported that these attacks will be part of the Republicans’ 2018 campaign strategy. Trump has gone so far as to call journalists “the enemy of the people,” a phrase that authori- tarians have long used to paint crit- ics as traitors. “To hear that kind of language directed at the American press,” David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, has said, “is an emergency.” All Americans, including the president, should feel comfortable criticizing the media. (I certainly do.) Specific media criticisms are part of the democratic cacoph- ony. But Trump is doing something different. He demonizes sources of infor- mation that are not sufficiently supportive. He tells supporters that they can trust only him and his loyal mouthpieces to speak the truth. La vérité, c’est moi. The one encouraging part of the rule-of-law emergency is the response from many other parts of society. Although congres- sional Republicans have largely lain down for Trump, judges — both Republican and Democratic appointees — have not. Neither have Comey, the FBI, the CBO, the media or others. As a result, the United States remains a long way from authoritarianism. Unfortunately, Trump shows no signs of letting up. Don’t assume he will fail just because his actions are so far outside the Ameri- can mainstream. The rule of law depends on a society’s willingness to stand up for it when it’s under threat. This is our time of testing.
