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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2018
editor@dailyastorian.com
KARI BORGEN
Publisher
JIM VAN NOSTRAND
Editor
Founded in 1873
JEREMY FELDMAN
Circulation Manager
DEBRA BLOOM
Business Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN
Production Manager
CARL EARL
Systems Manager
GUEST COLUMN
Caring for vets should be national duty
Tales of long waits
and poor access to
proper care have
plagued the VA
I
n advance of this year’s Veterans Day, on
Nov. 11, the legions of men and women
who have served in our nation’s military
received some welcoming news: Congress
finally agreed to fund the VA Mission Act,
which since its June passage had been mired
in budgetary disputes.
Announced on Sept.
11 — an appropriate date
— the arrangement sets
aside more than $200 billion
to improve the health care
services provided by the
U.S. Department of Veterans
CHRISTOPHER Affairs.
DALE
Tales of delays and
deficiencies, including long
waits and poor access to proper care, have
plagued the VA since injured vets started
returning from Afghanistan and Iraq follow-
ing 9/11. Last fall — 16 years after the War on
Terror began — the VA was still flooded with
serious complaints about patient care; earlier
this year, concerns about doctor shortages
made headlines.
It’s these issues that the VA Mission Act
seeks to address. The law makes it easier
for veterans to access covered care through
non-VA service providers, who may be more
convenient in terms of expedience, distance or
quality of care.
The law’s primary principle is simple:
Those injured while serving in the military
should not need to jump through hoops for
quality medical care.
The law also provides incentives for
recruiting new doctors to the VA, including
an attractive education debt-relief initiative
and specialized training in afflictions most
likely to impact veterans, such as PTSD and
painkiller addiction.
It’s a terrific start, but the law has short-
comings. For starters, despite settling the
summer-long financial squabble, Congress
failed to deliver a long-term funding solution
for the law’s historically high (though com-
pletely necessary) revenue requirements.
But the law’s greatest disappointment is
AP Photo/Don Ryan
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Portland.
its narrowly defined view of caring for our
injured veterans.
Tens of thousands of men and women
have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan
with permanent physical handicaps and deep
emotional scars — wounds they will be
coping with for the rest of their lives. Many
need assistance outside the doctor’s office,
including finding suitable employment in an
economy that, though humming for many, is
far from ideal for individuals with disabilities,
whose unemployment rate is more than dou-
ble the national average.
Truly comprehensive care would not only
fix the VA but expand it to empower injured
veterans with economic opportunities, peer-
to-peer engagement, and group-centric mental
health programs that utilize injured veterans’
greatest tool for overcoming battle-born
trauma: each other.
Of course, nonprofit organizations like the
Wounded Warrior Project have been offering
these life-affirming tools for well over a
decade. But why should it be up to private
charities to take care of those who battled and
bled for their country?
In a political landscape where we can’t
seem to agree on anything, it’s likely that
anyone — Democrat or Republican — would
be challenged to find a single service provided
by charities like the Wounded Warrior Project
that doesn’t deserve the full financial backing
of the U.S. government.
We shouldn’t have to pull on the heart-
strings, and purse strings, of strangers to
care for wounded war veterans in the United
Water
under
the bridge
Oregonians have voted down a $40 million pro-
posal to preserve the ocean beaches for the public, but
its sponsors say the battle is not over.
“We must turn to the Legislature next session,”
said state treasurer Robert Straub, chief backer of
the measure.
Gov. Tom McCall said he would support the move
to get the Legislature to take whatever steps are nec-
essary to save the beaches, but expressed fear the
Legislature might be reluctant to act now that the
people have voted against the measure to buy what-
ever stretches of beach prove not to be in public own-
ership already.
Compiled by Bob Duke
From the pages of Astoria’s daily newspapers
10 years ago
this week — 2008
With the general election commotion subsiding, county offi-
cials began an official canvass of votes cast in Clatsop County,
where the voter turnout was around 90 percent.
Barack Obama is vowing to be a president for all of Amer-
ica, even those who voted against him.
On the North Coast, Obama and John McCain support-
ers had emotional reactions to the presidential election results.
Clatsop County Democrats expressed relief and joy at Obama’s
victory, while Republicans were full of worry and fear.
Obama cast his election as a defining moment in American
history and an answer to cynicism and doubt about the power
of democracy.
Juvenile chinook salmon swimming down the
Columbia River often turn a corner at Clifton Chan-
nel, about 20 miles upriver from Astoria, and enter the
marshy backwaters that meander through a cluster
of islands, between Bradwood landing and Svensen.
There, they find a slower current, lots of critters to
eat and refuge from predators.
It’s a great place for salmon fry to bulk up for
their journey into the ocean, said fish biologist Cur-
tis Roegner of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration. And research shows about 15 per-
cent of all the out-migrating salmon in the river
choose that back-channel route.
But to get there, the fish have to swim past Brad-
wood landing, where NorthernStar Natural Gas Inc.
of Houston has proposed to build a $650 million liq-
uefied natural gas facility.
Astoria and the North Coast are notable for having two sea-
sons — a cold, dark, rainy season and a mild, rainy season. The
hillsides of the Coast Range, covered with evergreens, provide
few signs of change. But before bundling up for the gray days
of winter and the dark drives home, to and from work, evidence
of fall can be found if you look hard enough.
50 years ago — 1968
Zion Lutheran church, oldest Finnish church west
of the Rockies, celebrated its 85th anniversary Sun-
day, Nov. 3.
States. Their care should be provided, in full,
by the American people.
The VA Mission Act is a step in the right
direction, but we can — and should — go fur-
ther by expanding the definition of what car-
ing for injured veterans means. Our wounded
veterans deserve not only exemplary health
care, but all the tools they need to re-assimi-
late into civilian life despite missing limbs or
shattered psyches. And to provide them what
they are so obviously owed, the wealthiest
country in the world should be relying on
funding, not fundraising.
Christopher Dale of Little Falls, New Jer-
sey, writes on society, politics and sobri-
ety-based issues. This column was written for
the Progressive Media Project, which is run by
The Progressive magazine.
75 years ago — 1943
Brightly lighted streets, with gay store fronts, neon
signs, theater marques, and lights streaming from all
windows, did not seem to be the prospect for Astoria’s
first night after the lifting of the dimout.
The governor, with orders from the western
defense command, has revoked all previous procla-
mations, and unlimited lighting is now permitted,
with but one restriction: that all lights be extinguish-
able within 60 seconds for total blackout.
2008 — Shielding herself from the rain, Joanne Webb
walks through a corridor of colored leaves lining Ex-
change Street near the Astoria Aquatics Center.
The church was founded Aug. 22, 1883 as Finnish
Evangelical church. Present name was adopted Aug.
1, 1942.
County Health Officer Dr. Noel Rawls told the County Wel-
fare Commission an influx of elderly patients from the State
Mental hospital in Salem to the new Seaside Convalescent Cen-
ter will hike the county welfare budget by $5,340 a year.
An estimated 3,000 people saw the annual Lions
Home and Auto show the past three days at Tongue
Point, which Lions officials considered an excellent
turnout considering the facts that the show was held
in the fall rather than the spring for the first time,
and was held at a new location in hanger 3 at the Job
Corps center.
Republican Richard M. Nixon was elected 37th president
of the United States and won an immediate pledge of support
from Democrat Hubert H. Humphrey, the man he narrowly
defeated.
The aluminum industry in the Pacific Northwest is one of
the big reasons why the allies are winning the war — and why
the postwar world will have the advantage of the light metal for
better living.
The full force of “Astoria’s navy,” including
depth bombs, deck guns and finally 500-pound
aerial bombs, was poured on the capsized hulk of a
Longview Bridge and Construction company der-
rick off the Columbia River recently, to remove it as a
menace to navigation.
That a severe shortage of tires for both pleasure and essen-
tial driving is an actual fact was impressed upon a group of local
tire inspectors, taxi owners and drivers, and ration board mem-
bers late last week when they met with Waldo Perry of the U.S.
Tire store and J.H. Hedrick, head of the tire division of the state
OPA in Portland.
Perry, who had just returned from a conference of the
National Association of Independent Tire Dealers, said that tires
must be recapped as many times as the casings will permit and
that driving just be held down to essential. He quoted one of
the conference speakers, Sparks Bonnett, chief of the OPA tire
rationing branch, as saying that “tires on civilian cars are wear-
ing down at a rate eight times faster than they are being replaced
... if this continues, by far the larger number of cars will be off
the road next year.”