Good Read

Tom, I had sent this to your old, but no good, email address, so perhaps this will now get to you--Art ---

On Tue, 4/12/11, Art wrote: From: Art Subject: Re: Letter to the Editor (online form) To: "Elleda Wilson" Date: Tuesday, April 12, 2011, 12:54 PM Dear Ms. Wilson, Here’s your reply to my inquiry as to why my letter (shown way below) was not published: "Dear Mr. Hyland, Our county reporter, Katie Wilson, reviewed the letter, and it was not published because it contained a few problem areas: 1) We were unable to verify that the commission was meeting secretly 2) and the Planning Commission was on the meeting agenda" I fully recognize that the paper has a right to do whatever it wishes with regard to publishing what gets into print. But really, do you actually believe what you wrote to me? For you to reply, on behalf of the paper, " We were unable to verify that the commission was meeting secretly," might be something quite interesting for the Daily Astorian to share with its readers. Rather than allowing a mere reader such as me to opine that they met in secret, why don’t you come right out and tell your readers that you can’t verify that the commission met in secret about the planning commission decision so that your readers can more fully contemplate the possibilities. That I claimed the commission made their decision in secret is indeed a claim that I made and make. That's what I believe. I don't have the resources of a prosecuting attorney (nor apparently do you) to ferret out what did or did not happen prior to the public meeting, but the dialogue at the meeting was so sparse and ill-explained that the decision looked clear to almost everyone it had been well-discussed in private. But of course that just remains my humble opinion, one your editor thinks needs filtering from public view. If letters to the editor are not supposed to be opinion pieces but must be written based upon 100% factual evidence, they wouldn't be letters of opinion. Please refer to just about any opinion article of Paul Krugman's and you'll find so many factual, provable errors--not just ones "unable to verify,"--that none of his pieces would have been allowed to make it to print if you applied the same standard you applied to my letter. I would understand your argument to me if you were editing a news story; I didn’t know my letters had become the equivalent of one of the paper’s regular correspondents’ submissions. As for your no. 2 rationalization for not printing my letter--"the Planning Commission was on the meeting agenda,--tell me, was it put on as an action item? And, why did Commissioner Roberts not know it was on the agenda? Your paper is pathetic in so many ways, not the least of which is its willingness to ignore, TO ITS DETRIMENT, roughly half of the population it could serve by virtue of its editorial biases. Claim what you do that the paper's revenues are okay, you know they are not. They could be considerably improved if the paper weren't so biased that conservatives routinely mock it, and virtually none subscribe to it. It doesn't have to be that way. You can have both political spectrums engaged, producing a paper all parties would want to read (and in which more advertisers would want to be seen), but for reasons I cannot fathom, you (well, Forrester actually) wishes to be different. His father ran the paper much differently, and much smarter, but that’s just my opinion; I didn’t fact-check that statement, so we’ll keep that between you and me. If the nation, state and county weren't so important to me, I wouldn't care one wit what you or the paper think or do, but I do care about the nation, state and county. So I do care what you think and do. Yet you and the paper’s editors treat me and so many other conservatives like some sort of pariah. That says a lot more about you and your editors than it does about conservatives or me. Sincerely, Art Hyland my March 25 letter to the editor: Editor, Daily Astorian Single-issue commissioners spell trouble for Clatsop County

The sudden action taken by the majority of the Clatsop County Commissioners to remove all Planning Commission members is just the latest example of ill-conceived decisions made by this board in secret prior to public meetings. They don’t want the public to witness their debate or rationalization, nor even who originates a measure upon which they take action. Even ordinary public notice isn't considered important to this bunch. To this group it doesn't matter that decisions other than personnel and contract matters must be conducted and decided in open, public meetings. The legal weight behind this state rule is based upon functional as well as moral purposes: to purposely restrain corruption in government. That this commission is blatantly willing to ignore this rule means Clatsop County is now controlled by single-issue extremists who have virtually no regard for the public they serve, and are daring its citizens to stop them. It will be simultaneously interesting and depressing to see how county staff and departments operate under this kind of supremacy. The county manager will be spending lots of ;time conferring with legal counsel at the expense of all other department business. Current, potential and routine county business will all suffer because of the issue blinders worn by these commissioners. I’s a sad time for Clatsop County. I expect the next move by this regime will be to flee, to another county, or perhaps another state in their efforts to sidestep the normal processes of governing. That seems to be the latest government model by their political relatives in other states, so look for that decision soon. Art Hyland Art- I love that you fight the good fight but there is no way the paper would publish your letter. To do so would imply that what you are saying is factual instead of supposition because you don’t qualify the statement. I find it odd that they are fact-checking letters from the public now. How did all that garbage about LNG get published? I find it amusing that their response suggests they checked anything. Are they suggesting that Katie called someone on the gang of four and asked them if they had a secret meeting? Probably. I wonder if she asked if there was some other method they reached consensus. Emails? No, too smart for that. They wouldn’t leave that kind of trail. It would be interesting to see how often they get together in groups of two..say, over lunch at the Blue Scorcher, or a quick beer after the official meeting. It’s even possible they are meeting on Ted Thompson’s boat to get their marching orders directly from Larry Taylor. Who knows? tpf