4 A
❘
SATURDAY EDITION
❘ MARCH 26, 2016
Siuslaw News
RYAN CRONK , EDITOR
❘ 541-902-3520 ❘
Opinion
P.O. Box 10
Florence, OR 97439
VIEW FROM UPRIVER
YESTERDAY’S NEWS
Making things work
W ESLEY V OTH
For the Siuslaw News
––––––––––––
I
t is spring, and we — most states and
municipalities — agree to changing our
clocks to shift more daylight to a later
time slot. The better to be outside. Or, use
less electricity for lighting. There are two
things that seem amazing to me about this:
1) People grumble and say the same things
about it I have been hearing all my life (or
at least since I was in junior high school
when it was enacted more or less in its cur-
rent form); and 2) It actually happens, and
we all make the change and move on.
Spring here in Mapleton ushers in a
series of mini and not so mini-events.
Some of these are fleeting, others will
remain at least part way through the sum-
mer. Among the fleeting: the sweet smell of
cottonwood trees leafing out and that
amazing scent the lilacs produce in blos-
som; flowering currant with those unbe-
lievably pink flower bracts; winged ants
flying forth and fern fronds, well, fronding.
And, around for a season: robin song at
dawn, turkey vultures riding the
wind currents; ospreys and ravens
trying to impress their mates with
yet another fancy stick; the surreal
electric green of new leaf.
Local rain gauge folks tell me that
we have passed the three-foot mark;
last year this point wasn’t reached
until the end of September. This heavy
rainfall has caused numerous slides, includ-
ing ones that still have Highway 36 closed
— as I write this — near Triangle Lake,
and North Fork Siuslaw Road closed near
the ridge crest — that one’s been more than
a month. For people who regularly move
back and forth between the separated
points, the alternatives add many miles and
remind us how quickly infrastructure we
depend on can be altered.
I have just finished listening to the audio
version of the book “A Fighting Chance,”
written and read by Elizabeth Warren. I found
the book very compelling, the improbable
story of how a little girl who grew up in small
Oklahoma City suburbs came to be a law pro-
fessor at Harvard and then elected to the U.S.
Senate by the state of Massachusetts, along
the way seeing to the formation of a new gov-
ernment agency — the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau — that works to provide
the same kinds of safeguards regarding finan-
cial documents like mortgages that we have
come to expect for appliances like toasters.
One of her early eye-opening moments
came when she asked a congressman visiting
her law school class about what kind of con-
sumer research had been done in making a
new bankruptcy law. There hadn’t been any.
Together with some of her colleagues she set
out to learn just who was declaring bankrupt-
cy and why. The information she learned led
her to believe consumers were being left out
of consideration, and to work hard against
bankruptcy laws stacked against them; in
2005 the banking industry got what it wanted
anyway.
In the aftermath of the 2008 financial
crisis, she fought to have banks held
accountable, and for a government that
works for the common people, and fights
on their behalf, instead of conducting busi-
ness only for the too-big-to-fail corpora-
tions. It is a fight she continues, a cause
she advocates with both insight and clarity.
As usual, I checked this out from the
library and listened to it as I delivered mail
to this rural community. Driving past hous-
es that have been foreclosed over the past
10 years, the daily evidence of deep finan-
cial discouragement, often carrying mes-
sages from the banks or other creditors for
whom I am frequently compelled to collect
signatures. It is a sobering sight. We need a
government that works for us. Does its job.
I am supporting people who I believe are
part of doing so.
LETTERS
Up in arms
Why is the left up in arms over Donald
Trump? The answer is he poses a threat to the
status quo. The left tried to take Donald’s First
Amendment rights away in Chicago — it
backfired!
Hillary Clinton is being investigated by the
FBI for Benghazi — emails and Clinton
Foundation. No one on the right is being
investigated by anyone.
Bernie Sanders has been preaching open
rebellion from the very beginning and even
more scary is income redistribution. This was
tried in 1917 in Russia. Many, many millions
of people died over that and it failed dramati-
cally.
How could any American support the likes
of Bernie and Hillary?
Martin Cable
Dunes City
MOMENTS IN TIME
The History Channel
On April 1, 1700, English pranksters begin
popularizing the annual tradition of April
Fools’ Day by playing practical jokes on each
other. It’s thought that when the start of the new
year moved to Jan. 1 with the adoption of the
Gregorian calendar, some people unwittingly
continued to celebrate it in late March through
April 1, and they became the butt of jokes and
hoaxes.
On March 30, 1867, U.S. Secretary of
State William H. Seward signs a treaty with
Russia for the purchase of Alaska for $7 mil-
lion. The deal was ridiculed in Congress and in
the press as “Seward’s folly,” “Seward’s ice-
box,” and President Andrew Johnson’s “polar
bear garden.”
On March 31, 1889, the Eiffel Tower is
dedicated in Paris. The Tower was almost
demolished when the lease on the land expired
in 1909, but its value as an antenna for radio
transmission saved it.
On April 3, 1948, President Harry Truman
signs off on legislation establishing the Foreign
Assistance Act of 1948, known as the Marshall
Plan, to aid in the economic recovery of Europe
after World War II.
On March 29, 1951, in one of the most
sensational trials in American history, Julius
and Ethel Rosenberg are convicted of espi-
onage for their role in passing atomic secrets to
the Soviets. They were executed in 1953.
On March 28, 1979, the worst nuclear
accident in U.S. history takes place at the Three
Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania. Due to tech-
nical malfunctions and human error, the reactor
came within an hour of a complete meltdown.
On April 2, 1992, a jury in New York finds
mobster John Gotti, nicknamed “the Teflon
Don” for his ability to avoid conviction, guilty
on 13 counts. FBI official James Fox was quot-
ed as saying, “The don is covered in Velcro, and
every charge stuck.”
(c) 2016 King Features Synd., Inc.
Supreme Court nomination
President Obama has nominated the chief
judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
District of Columbia Circuit, Merrick B.
Garland, for the Supreme Court.
Judge Garland was appointed to the D.C.
Circuit after having clerked for Second Circuit
Judge Henry Friendly and Supreme Court
Justice William Brennan. He left a partnership
in a prestigious D.C. law firm to be an assis-
tant district attorney, after which he became
the top official in the Justice Department
Criminal Division and led the investigations
into the Unabomber, the Oklahoma City and
Atlanta Olympics bombings.
Judge Garland is a respected, moderate,
first-rate jurist with two decades on the feder-
al bench. Nevertheless, he is to be denied even
courtesy meetings with Republican senators
let alone the constitutionally required advise
and consent senate hearing by the Republican-
controlled senate.
Some suggest this is payback for the
rejection of Judge Robert Bork’s nomination
in 1987 by a Democratically-controlled sen-
EDITOR @ THESIUSLAWNEWS . COM
ate. But, that is forgetting that even after the
Senate Judiciary Committee voted against
him 9 to 5, Bork’s name, at President
Reagan’s insistence, went to the Senate floor
for an up-or-down vote where 58 senators,
Democrats and Republicans, voted to reject
the nomination.
Senate Republican leader, Mitch
McConnell, moments after the nomination,
tweeted that the president is trying “to
politicize it for the purposes of the elec-
tion.” Payback or polarized politics, this
Harvard-educated member of the legal
establishment in saner times would have
been the ideal conciliatory nominee if the
Republican leadership were even slightly
open to compromise.
But, they aren’t. Why? Because a public
hearing on Judge Garland’s nomination would
clearly demonstrate that this mainstream nom-
inee is politically unacceptable to the ideolog-
ical base that holds their party hostage only
because he is a centrist.
With the kind of impeccable credentials that
make it virtually impossible for a Republican-
controlled senate to object to Judge Garland’s
qualifications to sit on the Supreme Court, it
appears that polarized politics is trumping
responsible governance.
Arnold Buchman
Florence
A great Western
Thanks to Tim Sapp of TR Hunter Real
Estate and Michael Falter of City Lights
Cinemas for presenting a great Western clas-
sic, “Stagecoach,” on March 17.
Tim was the financial “champion” and
Michael, owner of the movie theater, added to
this showing with his very insightful presenta-
tion about the history of the Western film
genre.
There is more to come — show up for these
other films for your enjoyment and your sup-
port of City Lights Cinemas.
John and Penny Maciolek
Westlake
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Pres. Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, D.C. 20500
Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
FAX: 202-456-2461
TTY/TDD Comments: 202-456-6213
www.whitehouse.gov
Gov. Kate Brown
160 State Capitol
900 Court St.
Salem, OR 97301-4047
Governor’s Citizens’ Rep.
Message Line 503-378-4582
www.oregon.gov/gov
U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden
221 Dirksen Senate Office Bldg
Washington, DC 20510
202-224-5244
541-431-0229
www.wyden.senate.gov
FAX: 503-986-1080
Email:
Sen.ArnieRoblan@state.or.us
U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley
313 Hart Senate Office Bldg
Washington, DC 20510
202-224-3753/FAX: 202-228-3997
541-465-6750
State Rep. Caddy McKeown
(Dist. 9)
900 Court St. NE
Salem, OR 97301
503-986-1409
Email:
rep.caddymckeown@state.or.us
U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio (4th Dist.)
2134 Rayburn HOB
Washington, DC 20515
202-225-6416/ 800-944-9603
541-269-2609/ 541-465-6732
www.defazio.house.gov
State Sen. Arnie Roblan (Dist. 5)
900 Court St. NE - S-417
Salem, OR 97301
503-986-1705
West Lane County Commissioner
Jay Bozievich
125 E. Eighth St.
Eugene, OR 97401
541-682-4203
FAX: 541-682-4616
Email:
Jay.Bozievich@co.lane.or.us