OPINION
6A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2017
Founded in 1873
HEIDI WRIGHT, Interim Publisher
JIM VAN NOSTRAND, 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
The National Park Service’s call for a freeze on new designations of
national heritage areas has caused a stir nationally.
But Cyndi Mudge, director of Destination: The Pacific, was quick to
reassure residents this morning that the potential policy change at national
level won’t affect efforts to create a Columbia-Pacific National Heritage
Area.
“It has been such a good thing, they just want a formal program for
designation,” she said.
Mudge said her organization is already following the program recom-
mendations from the National Park Service and heritage area organizers.
After approving just two dozen heritage areas since the early 1980s,
Congress adopted 10 last year. The House signed off on six more last
month, and the wait list is growing.
The biggest tax scam in history
With Jon Englund’s controversial riverfront condominium
project in the works on his property between 15th and 16th
streets in Astoria, another condo going up at the foot of Sixth
Street and others waiting in the wings, some people fear a solid
wall of buildings will line the Columbia River.
Others hail new development on the waterfront as an eco-
nomic boon for the city as fish processing plants relocate to the
Port of Astoria.
With two such opposite viewpoints emerging, city leaders
are undertaking a community visioning process in the hope of
forging a consensus on how to move forward.
The Ford Foundation is considering Astoria as a potential site for test-
ing a new land use planning computer program. It includes a social com-
ponent that focuses on people and their reactions to change as much as on
building, open space, transportation and other components of what plan-
ners refer to as the “built environment.”
Called HDOD for Human Development Overlay District, it uses GIS
(Geographic Information System) to create a three-dimensional computer
model, where land use planning strategies can be implemented virtually
and their effects on a city or neighborhood and its inhabitants tracked in
real time.
For the cities chosen to try it out, the program comes with a Ford
Foundation grant of $100,000 to $150,000.
50 years ago — 1967
The state highway commission is examining the new Ore-
gon beach law to determine whether the site of a proposed 160-
home development at Seaside belongs to the public.
The 22-acre tract was sold to Sunset Cove Corp. by the city
of Seaside for $10,500. A portion of the tract was purchased
from private interests. The firm, headed by William Holm-
strom of Gearhart and Palmerton Development Corp. of Seat-
tle plans to develop Pacific Riviera homesites. Bulldozers and
carryalls are at the site moving sand.
The largest “set” of razor clams ever recorded by Oregon fish commis-
sion biologists occurred on the Clatsop beaches this year. Darrell Demory
of the agency’s Astoria research laboratory staff said sample screening
of beach sands from Seaside north showed an average of 100 small seed
clams for each square yard surveyed.
The number of Russian fishing vessels off the Oregon-Wash-
ington coast was reduced by half last week, according to the
U.S. Bureau of Commercial Fisheries. Only five Soviet craft
were seen off Washington. Fourteen Japanese fishing boats
were counted in the area.
After learning Tuesday that one of his deputy highway engineers was
investigating the million-dollar housing project proposed near the mouth
of the Necanicum River in Seaside, Oregon highway engineer Forest Coo-
per stepped in and said the new beach law does not apply to the property.
75 years ago — 1942
State selective service officials
of both Oregon and Washington
will give favorable consideration
to proposals for deferment of fish-
ermen and key cannery employ-
ees, they informed James Cellars,
who was authorized by packers
and the union to consult with the
officials of the two states.
Summarizing the results of his
The Daily Astorian/File
conferences, Cellars stated that
“1. There is an evident will- An old movie advertisement
ingness on the part of both state for the Liberty Theatre.
offices to cooperate to the full-
est extent possible in maintain-
ing manpower in the Oregon and Washington commercial
fisheries.
“2. The industry and union should take every possible step
to hasten the filing of deferment applications for every fisher-
man and key cannery worker.”
The Astoria headquarters for mileage rationing was swamped today
with last-minute efforts to obtain supplemental gasoline rationing by
truck and commercial vehicle operators on the eve of national mileage
rationing Dec. 1.
Many of the commercial vehicle operators had not received their nec-
essary certificates of war necessity, which are prerequisites to a supple-
mental ration issued from the local office. They were being issued tem-
porary 30-day supplemental rations, however, and the Clatsop County
central rationing board was working hard to stay ahead of the work.
AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
Protesters shout their disapproval of the Republican tax bill outside the Senate Budget Committee hear-
ing room on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., Tuesday.
By PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times News Service
D
onald Trump likes to declare
that every good thing that
happens while he’s in office
— job growth,
rising stock prices,
whatever — is the
biggest, greatest,
best ever. Then
the fact-checkers
weigh in and
quickly determine
that the claim is false.
But what’s happening in the U.S.
Senate right now really does deserve
Trumpian superlatives. The bill
Republican leaders are trying to ram
through this week without hearings,
without time for even a basic analy-
sis of its likely economic impact, is
the biggest tax scam in history. It’s
such a big scam that it’s not even
clear who’s being scammed — mid-
dle-class taxpayers, people who care
about budget deficits, or both.
One thing is clear, however: One
way or another, the bill would hurt
most Americans. The only big win-
ners would be the wealthy — espe-
cially those who mainly collect
income from their assets rather than
working for a living — plus tax law-
yers and accountants who would
have a field day exploiting the many
loopholes the legislation creates.
The core of the bill is a huge
redistribution of income from lower-
and middle-income families to cor-
porations and business owners. Cor-
porate tax rates go down sharply,
while ordinary families are nick-
el-and-dimed by a series of tax
changes, no one of which is that big
a deal in itself, but which add up to
significant tax increases on almost
two-thirds of middle-class taxpayers.
Meanwhile, the bill would par-
tially repeal Obamacare, in a way
that would sharply reduce aid to
lower-income families and raise the
cost of insurance for many in the
middle class.
You might wonder how such a
thing could possibly pass the Sen-
ate. But that’s where the scamming
comes in.
While the underlying structure of
the bill involves raising taxes on the
middle class, the bill also includes
a number of temporary tax breaks
that would, at first, offset these tax
increases. As a result, in the first few
years most middle-class families
would see modest tax cuts.
But the operative word here is
“temporary.” All of these tax breaks
either dwindle over time or are
scheduled to expire at some point;
by 2027 the bill is, as I said, a tax
increase on the middle class used to
pay for tax cuts that mainly benefit
the wealthy.
One way or
another, the
bill would
hurt most
Americans.
Why would anyone write a bill
full of provisions that evaporate over
time? There’s no economic or policy
logic behind it. Instead, it’s all about
trying to have it both ways, making
a safe space for political double talk.
Here’s how it works: If you point
out that the bill hugely favors the
wealthy at the expense of ordinary
families, Republicans will point to
the next few years, when the class-
war nature of the plan is obscured by
those temporary tax breaks — and
claim that whatever the language of
the law says, those tax breaks will
actually be made permanent by later
Congresses.
But if you point out that the bill
is fiscally irresponsible, they’ll say
that it “only” raises the deficit by
$1.5 trillion over the next decade
and doesn’t raise deficits at all after
that — because, you see, those tax
breaks will expire by 2027, so the
tax hikes will raise a lot of reve-
nue. By the way, the claim that mid-
dle-class taxes will rise is crucial
to passing the bill: Only bills that
don’t raise deficits after 10 years can
bypass the filibuster and be enacted
by a simple Senate majority.
The point, of course, is that these
claims can’t both be true. Either this
bill is a big tax hike on the middle
class, or it’s a huge budget-buster.
Which is it? Nobody really knows;
probably even the people who wrote
this monstrosity don’t know. But
someone is being scammed, bigly.
Oh, and ignore claims that tax
cuts for corporations would jump-
start the economy and pay for them-
selves. Of the 42 ideologically
diverse economists surveyed by the
University of Chicago on the impact
of Republican tax plans, only one
agreed that they would lead to sub-
stantial economic growth, while
none disagreed with the proposi-
tion that they would substantially
increase U.S. debt.
So it’s a giant scam. And while
the exact nature of the scam may be
unclear, ordinary American fami-
lies would end up being the victims
either way.
For suppose those temporary tax
breaks did end up becoming per-
manent, so that the budget deficit
soared on a long-term basis. Then
what? You know the answer: Repub-
licans would suddenly revert to the
pretense that they’re deficit hawks,
and demand “entitlement reform” —
that is, cuts in Medicare, Medicaid
and Social Security, programs that
ordinary families depend on. In fact,
they’re already talking about those
cuts — they’ve started the switch
even before getting the suckers to
take the bait.
So will they manage to pull
off this giant con job? The rea-
son they’re rushing this to the Sen-
ate floor without a single hearing,
without a full assessment from Con-
gress’s own official scorekeepers,
is their hope that they can pass the
thing before people figure out what
they’re up to.
And the question is whether there
are enough Republican senators with
principles, who believe that policies
should not be sold with lies, to stop
this bum’s rush.
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