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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 11, 2017)
OPINION 4A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2017 Founded in 1873 DAVID F. PERO, Publisher & Editor JIM VAN NOSTRAND, Managing Editor 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 After months of wondering if the next season of “Shanghaied in Asto- ria” would perhaps be street theater, or a wandering minstrel show, the Astor Street Opry Company’s board of directors announced at a wrap party Saturday that it had found a new home for the annual musical melodrama. Starting next summer, audiences can sigh with the heroine and boo at the villain in the building that formerly housed Roy’s Maytag, 129 W. Bond St. Astoria’s Valley Bronze Art Gallery has closed its storefront at the corner of 12th and Commercial streets, where unique sculp- ture collections have been on display for the past three years. On Friday, sales manager Malcolm Phinney packed up the artwork from the showroom and loaded it into moving vans to be taken to the Valley Bronze Gallery in Joseph, where the Valley Bronze Foundry makes metal art casting that ranges from small sculptures to multimillion-dollar projects. The 12 years of efforts by various groups in Seaside are being recog- nized by the Oregon Recreation and Parks Association. The Seaside Skate ‘N Ride Park is being awarded the 2007 Design of the Year. The park opened for use in June. “All the things came together and it has really become a focal point in the community,” said Mary Blake, director of Sunset Empire Park and Rec- reation District. “This was a big project for a small community.” 50 years ago — 1967 The Astor family is proud of its ancestor John Jacob Astor and considers founding of Astoria his crowning achievement, Gavin Astor, his fifth generation descen- dant, told 350 people who crowded the new Astor Library for its ded- ication Sunday afternoon. Astor, who came with his wife, Lady Irene, from London for the dedication ceremonies, shared speaking honors with Gov. Tom McCall, who flew from Salem. “We are delighted to share in The Daily Astorian/File Gavin and Lady Irene Astor this library dedication, and con- received Sunday an auto- gratulate all concerned,” Astor graphed copy of the book said. “This is really a lovely “Adventure at Astoria 1810- building.” Astor noted that posting the 1814” during Astor Library dedicatory ceremonies. U.S. flag at Astoria by his ances- tor’s expedition was a major fac- tor in establishing U.S. claims to the Oregon country and giving the United States a Pacific seaboard. A self-styled spokesman for a group of county residents seeking answers to questions about the proposed $152 million Northwest Aluminum plant here accused the Port of Astoria commissioners of a “snow job” that could be removed by them answering the questions. The commission in turn told Eben Carruthers of Warrenton that many of the questions were “silly and a waste of time” while they would attempt to answer those they felt appropriate after research. Carruthers was invited to attend the Port Commission’s meeting Nov. 14, during which answers to the questions will be given. 75 years ago — 1942 An inspection of Lower Columbia towns and highways by Army officers at the request of the Western defense command has exposed glaring weaknesses in local observation of the com- mand’s proclamation ordering a dim-out, it was learned today from the state defense council headquarters. The officers found that in Astoria, “requirements pertaining to cars driving in dim-out zones are not enforced; street lights painted on the seaward side are not blacked out, due to paint peeling off the lights; a large number of lighted windows visible from the sea did not have shades down.” Scientific research is changing the face of the world and of everything we use, Edward F. Flynn, assistant to the vice president and general counsel for the Great Northern Railway Co., told the Astoria Rotary Club Wednes- day. Flynn was introduced by Jack Wright, local manager of the Spokane, Portland and Seattle railway. “It is no doubt safe to say that in a day or two at present, the world is spending as much to carry on its wars as the United States pays out in a year for research. “If, when the war ends we shall spend in our country for research as much in one year as we now spend in one month for war, such great impe- tus will be given industry and the discovery of new sources of power and perfection and production of new medicines that will then be living in a really ‘new world.’ We will then not need to fear that any other nation will defeat us commercially or industrially in any part of the world.” Chief of Police John Acton, acting upon receipt of complaints from motorists who are claiming pedestrians are careless in their travel over city streets in the dim-out, today issued a statement warning both foot and auto travelers that city police are pre- pared to enforce dim-out regulations with an iron hand. “We are getting a good many complaints from motorists regarding this carelessness of pedestrians during dim-outs and wish to caution pedestrians that they must use extra caution in crossing the streets just as well as the drive must be extra cau- tious,” Acton said. Corker told the truth about Trump By MICHELLE GOLDBERG New York Times News Service O ver the past few months, the country has been in a foul sort of trance. Among people who work in politics, Republicans as well as Democrats, it is conventional wisdom that President Donald Trump is stagger- ingly ill-informed, erratic, reckless and dishonest. (He also might be compromised by a hostile foreign power.) But it’s also conventional wisdom that with few exceptions, Republicans in Congress are not going to stand up to him. America’s nuclear arsenal is in the hands of a senescent Twitter troll, but those with political power have refused to treat this fact as a national emer- gency. Thus, even though a majority of Americans consider the president unfit for office, a fatalistic sense of stasis has set in. Credit U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., for momentarily snapping us out of it. On Sunday evening, after a Twitter feud with Trump, Corker gave an interview to The New York Times in which he said publicly what Republican office- holders usually say only privately. Trump, Corker told the reporters Jonathan Martin and Mark Landler, is treating the presidency like “a reality show” and could be setting the nation “on the path to World War III.” Corker has previously said that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Defense James Mattis and chief of staff John Kelly “help separate our country from chaos.” On Sunday, he identi- fied the agent of that chaos. “I know for a fact that every single day at the White House, it’s a situation of trying to contain him,” Corker said of Trump. Now that Corker has done the country the immense favor of acknowledging the obvious, the key question is: What’s next? Corker, despite his culpability in helping to legitimate Trump during the presidential campaign and despite waiting until he’d announced his retirement to speak out, has behaved more patriotically than most of his quietly complicit colleagues. But as Trump continues to tweet threats at a war-ready North Korea, it is not enough to simply hope that the president’s minders can stop him from blowing up the world. Corker, after all, is not a pas- sive spectator; he’s the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “The Congress holds the ultimate power for war,” Jerry Taylor, president of the Niskanen Center, a libertarian think tank, told me. “Though they have more or less delegated that power away to the executive branch, they can take it back.” AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., chairman of the Senate Foreign Rela- tions Committee, chats with reporters in September at the Capitol in Washington, D.C. They could start with a pair of bills introduced by Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Rep. Ted Lieu of California, both Democrats, prohibiting the president from launching a nuclear first strike without a congressional declaration of war. So far, the only Republican to sign on in either chamber is Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina. But given how little faith Senate Republicans have in Trump’s judgment, they have a duty to take up this legislation or develop an alternative. “Increasingly, senators and members of Congress are going to come to the conclusion that there has to be a firewall that is erected so that a single human being cannot impulsively launch nuclear weap- ons,” Markey told me. Corker’s expression of alarm is a reminder that we are teetering on the cusp of horror. Despite its overall record of weakness, Congress has acted on one occasion to curb Trump’s worst foreign policy impulses. In July, Republicans voted overwhelmingly for a bipartisan bill that, among other things, limited Trump’s ability to unilaterally lift sanctions on Russia. Tying Trump’s hands on nuclear weapons would be a far more aggressive step, but it’s one that members of Congress who are mindful of this moment’s profound peril should take. Of course, “should” is the key word here. There are plenty of things that Republicans should do about Trump, including impeaching him for violating the emoluments clause of the Constitution. We’ve grown so inured to Republican politicians’ persistent refusal to put the welfare of the country above their re-election prospects and lust for tax cuts that complaining about it feels banal and naïve. But Corker’s expression of alarm is a reminder that we are teetering on the cusp of horror. He made it clear that Trump’s tweeted provocations of North Korea are impulsive rather than strategic. “A lot of people think that there is some kind of ‘good cop, bad cop’ act underway, but that’s just not true,” he said. We need to take seriously the possibility that Trump might cavalierly start a war that could kill millions of people. It would be a human calamity of inconceivable, history-bending scale, and it would leave America as a hated global pariah. Now that Corker has admitted that Trump cannot be trusted with the power he holds, he and other Republicans have no excuse not to try to take that power away. Taylor, of the Niskanen Center, is in frequent contact with anti- Trump Republicans, and he senses a growing sense of urgency among them. “Having an unstable nar- cissist who is ignorant of politics, policy and foreign affairs with the nuclear codes has probably turned them white as a sheet,” he said. “There is some degree of serious responsibility that they fully realize that they hold.” If so, now would be a good time to show it. WHERE TO WRITE • U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D): 439 Cannon House Office Building, Washington, D.C., 20515. Phone: 202- 225-0855. Fax 202-225- 9497. District office: 12725 SW Mil- likan Way, Suite 220, Beaverton, OR 97005. Phone: 503-469-6010. Fax 503-326-5066. Web: bonamici.house. gov/ • U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D): 313 Hart Senate Office Building, Wash- ington, D.C. 20510. Phone: 202-224- 3753. Web: www.merkley.senate.gov • U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D): 221 Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C., 20510. Phone: 202-224-5244. Web: www.wyden. senate.gov • State Rep. Brad Witt (D): State Capitol, 900 Court Street N.E., H-373, Salem, OR 97301. Phone: 503-986- 1431. Web: www.leg.state.or.us/witt/ Email: rep.bradwitt@state.or.us • State Rep. Deborah Boone (D): 900 Court St. N.E., H-481, Salem, OR 97301. Phone: 503-986-1432. Email: rep.deborah boone@state. or.us District office: P.O. Box 928, Cannon Beach, OR 97110. Phone: 503-986-1432. Web: www.leg.state. or.us/ boone/ • State Sen. Betsy Johnson (D): State Capitol, 900 Court St. N.E., S-314, Salem, OR 97301. Telephone: 503-986-1716. Email: sen.betsy john- son@state.or.us Web: www.betsy- johnson.com District Office: P.O. Box R, Scappoose, OR 97056. Phone: 503-543-4046. Fax: 503-543-5296. Astoria office phone: 503-338-1280. • Port of Astoria: Executive Director, 10 Pier 1 Suite 308, Asto- ria, OR 97103. Phone: 503-741-3300. Email: admin@portofastoria.com • Clatsop County Board of Com- missioners: c/o County Manager, 800 Exchange St., Suite 410, Astoria, OR 97103. Phone: 503-325-1000.
