OPINION
6A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, JULY 25, 2017
Founded in 1873
DAVID F. PERO, Publisher & Editor
LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor
JEREMY FELDMAN, Circulation Manager
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
OUR VIEW
WOTUS rejection
is a victory for
landowners
Y
ou can add our voice to those cheering a decision by the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers to rescind the 2015 Clean Water Rule
meant to define waters of the United States that are regulated
under the Clean Water Act.
WOTUS is on its way out. It’s a victory for landowners against
the power of the administrative state.
The EPA and the Army Corps worked on the rule for a couple
of years in the hopes of reconciling two separate U.S. Supreme
Court decisions in cases involving the Clean Water Act. The object
was to better define what constitutes “waters of the United States,”
which the act gives the federal government authority to regulate.
The language of the rule extended regulation to isolated bod-
ies of water that have a “significant nexus” with navigable waters
of the United States. The rule left it to the bureaucrats to determine
that nexus, and that rightly made farmers and ranchers nervous.
Despite their attempt, the final regulation brought little of the
clarity it purported to provide.
Farm and ranch groups worried, despite the government’s pro-
test to the contrary, the feds would use the opportunity to expand
their authority over “waters,” and therefore adjacent lands, not
previously subject to regulation under the Clean Water Act. Such a
designation could have profound and expensive consequences for
landowners.
Even the Corps had its doubts. Unhappy with the way EPA
wrote the document, it wrote a scathing email to EPA officials
prior to the release of the final draft. Among its complaints was
a contention that in extending regulation to isolated bodies of
water that have a “significant nexus” with navigable waters of the
United States, but defining such bodies as having “no hydrological
connection with navigable waters,” made it unlikely the agencies
could establish a nexus that would withstand a court challenge.
When the rule was released in 2015, a number of states and
industry groups sued. Most notably, one lawsuit was filed by Scott
Pruitt — then attorney general of Oklahoma and now the Trump
administration’s EPA director.
Jurisdictional disputes arising from those lawsuits resulted in
a stay of the rule’s implementation by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court
of Appeals in October 2015. The Supreme Court will take up the
case later this year, but will decide only the jurisdictional issues,
not the merits of the rule’s interpretation of what constitutes
“waters of the United States.”
Fulfilling a campaign promise, President Donald Trump in
February issued an executive order for a review of the rule.
Getting rid of the rule as written is a good first step in reduc-
ing the reach of the administrative state. But that’s not enough,
because it will leave unresolved the ambiguity created by the dis-
parate Supreme Court rulings. Farmers, ranchers and regulators
need clear, unambiguous guidance on the true extent and limit of
the government’s authority.
On that point the next rule must be quite clear.
Grocers right to be
concerned about tax
G
rocers are going on the offensive long before a predicted
tax battle begins, and it’s probably a good thing.
Last week the The Northwest Grocery Association
filed the paperwork to petition for a ballot measure in 2018 to
constitutionally bar taxes on food. The initiative would prohibit
taxes at every point of food sales, from production, process-
ing, wholesale and retail, with the exception of meals served at
restaurants. It would not include alcoholic beverages, marijuana
products or tobacco products.
According to the initiative’s language, it would go beyond
just banning a sales tax — it would prohibit “a gross receipts tax,
commercial activity tax, value-added tax, excise tax, privilege
tax, and any other similar tax on the sale of groceries.”
The association’s action comes as public employee unions
pursue placing a corporate sales tax on the ballot in 2018, a
pared-down version of the ill-conceived Measure 97 gross
receipts tax defeated in 2016. Grocers were a major opponent of
Measure 97.
Under the proposed measure, the food industry would con-
tinue to pay corporate income tax, and the sales of other house-
hold goods and pet food still would be subject to taxes, The cam-
paign will need to collect 117,578 signatures by July 2018 to win
a place on the general election ballot the following November.
Joe Gilliam, the association’s president, said the initiative’s
intent is “just protecting people’s access to food and only food
for human consumption.”
Gilliam is right, food is a necessity and shouldn’t be taxed.
The kook, ‘the Mooch’ and the loot
By CHARLES BLOW
New York Times News Service
O
n Friday, a “president” with
no political experience
brought on a communications
director with no
communications
experience.
Donald Trump
tapped Anthony
Scaramucci, a
Wall Street snake
investment huckster,
to be the new communications
director, a move that caused press
secretary Sean Spicer, who The New
York Times reported “vehemently
disagreed with the appointment,” to
resign.
So, let me get this straight: Spicer
was just fine with regularly walking
out to that podium to spew and spin
Trump’s lies, but hiring “the Mooch,”
as Scaramucci is known, was the
back-breaker? OK, whatever, Sean.
This illustrates best what is wrong
with this communications shop, and
by extension, this administration: No
one is concerned with the truth; they
are only concerned with their own
trajectories.
Nothing about this White House
communications department was ever
about communicating. On the con-
trary, it has always been about decep-
tion, concealment and equivocation.
Informing the public was never the
mission. Flattering Trump was the
mission. But in the end, Trump will
never be satisfied, because successful
communications for him is to get
people to buy his pack of lies, and
that isn’t really working the way it
once did.
Nothing will change with
the arrival of the Mooch
Communications Office because
nothing has changed about the kook
in the Oval Office. (Some may find
that descriptor harsh, but I find no
appellation too coarse to express
my outrage over Trump’s character,
behavior and agenda. If anything, no
word feels grave enough to properly
express it.)
Trump is suffering horrendous
approval ratings, an impotent legis-
lative agenda and his irrepressible
impulse to shove his foot in his
mouth. There is no real way to better
package this disaster.
For that reason, I found this
shake-up far less interesting than
the developments last week about
the inexorably advancing Russia
investigation.
Maybe it’s just me, but I’m
not interested in palace intrigue;
I’m interested in the increasing
possibility of prison and maybe even
impeachment.
Think about all that happened
last week: Donald Trump Jr. and
former Trump campaign chairman
Paul Manafort were invited to testify
in open session before the Senate
Judiciary Committee about that shady
meeting they had in Trump Tower
AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
Anthony Scaramucci, the new White House communications director,
accompanied by newly appointed White House press secretary Sarah
Huckabee Sanders, right, speaks during the daily press briefing at the
White House. Press secretary Sean Spicer resigned earlier in the day.
with a Russian lawyer. And the elder
Trump gave an astoundingly bizarre
interview to The New York Times
in which he publicly slammed his
own attorney general, Jeff Sessions,
for recusing himself from the Russia
investigation and drew a “red line,”
warning that Mueller should not
investigate the Trump family’s busi-
ness dealings.
Reuters reported: “The Russian
lawyer who met Donald Trump Jr.
after his father won the Republican
nomination for the 2016 U.S. presi-
dential election counted Russia’s FSB
security service among her clients for
years, Russian court documents seen
by Reuters show.”
No one is
concerned
with the truth;
they are only
concerned
with their own
trajectories.
The Times also reported:
“Banking regulators are reviewing
hundreds of millions of dollars in
loans made to Mr. Trump’s busi-
nesses through Deutsche Bank’s
private wealth management unit,
which caters to an ultrarich clientele,
according to three people briefed on
the review who were not authorized
to speak publicly.”
The Times report continued:
“Separately, Deutsche Bank has been
in contact with federal investigators
about the Trump accounts, according
to two people briefed on the matter.
And the bank is expecting to even-
tually have to provide information
to Robert S. Mueller III, the special
counsel overseeing the federal inves-
tigation into the Trump campaign’s
ties to Russia.”
Not only did NBC report that
“Marc Kasowitz is no longer leading
the president’s group of private
lawyers,” Politico reported that Mark
Corallo, spokesman for the Trump
legal team, resigned because he “was
concerned about whether he was
being told the truth about various
matters.”
If people on Trump’s legal payroll
are worried that they aren’t being told
the truth, how worried should the rest
of us be? Very, I would venture.
Then there was the Washington
Post report: “Some of President
Trump’s lawyers are exploring ways
to limit or undercut” Mueller’s Russia
investigation, “building a case against
what they allege are his conflicts of
interest and discussing the president’s
authority to grant pardons, according
to people familiar with the effort.”
The Post continued: “Trump has
asked his advisers about his power
to pardon aides, family members
and even himself in connection with
the probe, according to one of those
people.”
I understand the press giving a lot
of attention to the drama of changing
press people, but that doesn’t even
register against the import of what’s
happening on the Russia investigation
front.
All those things that have never
made sense — Trump’s warm-
and-fuzzies for Vladimir Putin, the
mass amnesia about meetings with
Russians by people connected to the
Trump campaign, Trump’s prickly
protectiveness about releasing finan-
cial details and documents, including
his tax returns — must be made to
make sense.
Mueller will not be threatened,
the investigation will not be closed
or constricted and the truth will
be known. Incriminating personal
communications are often hard to
find, but financial records are often
also kept by third parties and tell their
own story.
As they say, follow the money.
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