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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (July 23, 2016)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Saturday, July 23, 2016 Founded October 16, 1875 KATHRYN B. BROWN DANIEL WATTENBURGER Publisher Managing Editor JENNINE PERKINSON TIM TRAINOR Advertising Director Opinion Page Editor EO MEDIA GROUP East Oregonian • The Daily Astorian • Capital Press • Hermiston Herald Blue Mountain Eagle • Wallowa County Chieftain • Chinook Observer • Coast River Business Journal Oregon Coast Today • Coast Weekend • Seaside Signal • Cannon Beach Gazette Eastern Oregon Real Estate Guide • Eastern Oregon Marketplace • Coast Marketplace OnlyAg.com • FarmSeller.com • Seaside-Sun.com • NorthwestOpinions.com • DiscoverOurCoast.com MIKE FORRESTER STEVE FORRESTER KATHRYN B. BROWN Pendleton Chairman of the Board Astoria President Pendleton Secretary/Treasurer CORY BOLLINGER JEFF ROGERS Aberdeen, S.D. Director Indianapolis, Ind. Director OUR VIEW OTHER VIEWS The dark knight Associated Press Photo Chum salmon navigating through McNeil River Falls in Alaska. Treaty rights require ish Fifty percent of nothing is nothing The ishing rights guaranteed returning in various runs, including the 13 species covered by the to Indians by treaties and court Endangered Species Act. Managers decisions are meaningless if there then determine how many can be are few ish to catch. These “treaty tribes” are entitled to half the caught before the species recover to salmon. But 50 percent of nothing a healthy population. is nothing. Tribal negotiators are There are several suggested increasingly insisting that there be alternatives — even including actual lesh attached no harvest at all. to the bare bones of Chances are good Teams treaty rights. that agencies will As a practical to stick to responsible for prefer matter, this means something pretty the team of agencies close to the status salmon must responsible for quo. But our ensure that salmon must region’s many ensure that salmon salmon prosper nongovernmental prosper through experts — including through a a combination of commercial strategies, such recreational combination of and as hatcheries, ishermen on the strategies. habitat restoration, Columbia River modiications — may have better of hydropower ideas and should operations, predator management promote them. and harvest adjustments. Underlying any approach, we all The current management plan, should bear in mind the principle a result of a federal court ruling, of insisting on a path toward expires Dec. 31, 2017. The states, sustainable salmon recovery, and tribes and feds have started deciding resist squabbling over a share what comes next in terms of harvest in an ever-threatened and too strategies. often diminishing set of salmon It is possible the next harvest runs. Different ishing interests, plan will be essentially identical cooperating together, must to the current one, which is based advocate for actual recovery, and be on stock abundance. This means unsatisied with small percentages of estimating how many ish are small salmon runs. Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East Oregonian editorial board of Publisher Kathryn Brown, Managing Editor Daniel Wattenburger, and Opinion Page Editor Tim Trainor. Other columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions of the authors and not necessarily that of the East Oregonian. OTHER VIEWS Oregon’s public universities shouldn’t meet behind closed doors The (Bend) Bulletin T he presidents of Oregon’s seven public universities — Portland State, Oregon State and University of Oregon, plus four smaller schools in Ashland, Klamath Falls, La Grande and Monmouth — are meeting together regularly behind closed doors. That may, or may not, be legal. At the moment it’s unclear whether the new group is subject to the state’s open meetings law — the Legislature’s lawyers say probably not, though they believe minutes of the group’s session are subject to public disclosure. So far Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum has not weighed in on the subject. Oregon’s system of higher education has undergone dramatic changes in the last few years. Former Gov. John Kitzhaber persuaded lawmakers to replace the state’s old Board of Higher Education with a Higher Education Coordinating Commission in 2011. As part of the change, the individual universities were given more autonomy, including the right to create their own boards of governors. HECC exercises considerable control over the universities despite the changes, to be sure. It decides how much money for higher education to ask lawmakers for every two years. It approves new degrees and academic programs. And, its power extends beyond the universities to community colleges; state-supplied, needs-based inancial aid to students; trade schools; programs aimed at veterans; and more. Given the breadth of HECC’s reach, it’s easy to understand why the public universities want to ensure they approach the commission with a single voice and message. Yet arriving at that message should not be done in secret. The schools, after all, receive millions in taxpayer dollars, and collectively they are the largest supplier of post-secondary education in Oregon. The university leaders should decide to make their meetings public. W elcome to a world without rising just recently among gangs in rules. (I want you to read this certain cities, but America is much paragraph in your super- safer than it was a decade ago. In the scary movie trailer voice.) Welcome irst half of 2015, for example, the number of shootings in New York and to a world in which families are Washington hit historic lows. mowed down by illegal immigrants, in Trump dwells on illegal aliens which cops die in the streets, in which killing our children. Between 2010 and Muslims rampage the innocents and 2014, only 121 people released from threaten our very way of life, in which David the fear of violent death lurks in every Brooks immigration custody later committed murder; that’s about 25 a year. Every human heart. Comment death is a horror, but the number of Sometimes in that blood-drenched police oficers killed each year as a world a dark knight arises. You don’t result of a crime is about 55, in a nation of have to admire or like this knight. But you over 320 million people. The number of police need this knight. He is your muscle and your voice in a dark, corrupt and malevolent world. deaths decreased by 24 percent between 2005 Such has been the argument of nearly every and 2015. The main anxieties in this country are demagogue since the dawn of time. Aaron economic and social, not Burr claimed Spain threatened about crime. Trump surged to the U.S. in 1806. A. Mitchell the nomination on the back Palmer exaggerated the of his supposed business Red Scare in 1919, and Joe acumen, not because he’s a McCarthy did it in 1950. sheriff. By focusing so much And such was Donald on law and order, he leaves a Trump’s law-and-order hole a mile wide for Hillary argument in Cleveland on Clinton. She’ll undoubtedly Thursday night. This was a ixate at the Democratic compelling text that turned convention in Philadelphia on into more than an hour of economic pain. Trump could humorless shouting. It was a dystopian message that found an audience and end up seeming strangely detached. But if Trump is detached from the country, then pummeled it to exhaustion. and uninterested in anything but himself, Will it work? he’s also detached from his party. Trump Well, this fear builds on the sense of is not really changing his party as much as loss that was the prevailing theme of this dissolving it. convention. We heard from a number of A normal party has an apparatus of mothers who lost sons and siblings who lost professionals, who have been around for a brothers. while and who can get things done. But those The argument takes the pervasive people might as well not exist. This was the collection of anxieties that plague America most shambolically mis-run convention in and it concentrates them on the most visceral memory. one: fear of violence and crime. Historically, A normal party is united by a consistent this sort of elemental fear has proved to be belief system. For decades, the Republican contagious and it does move populations. Party has stood for a forward-looking Finally, a law-and-order campaign calls American-led international order abroad and upon the authoritarian personality traits that Trump undoubtedly possesses. The GOP used small-government democratic capitalism at home. to be a party that aspired to a biblical ethic Trump is decimating that, too, along of private charity, graciousness, humility and with the things Republicans stood for: faithfulness. Mitt Romney’s convention was NATO, entitlement reform, compassionate lifted by stories of his kindness and personal conservatism and the relatively open mentorship. movement of ideas, people and trade. Trump has replaced biblical commitments There’s no actual agenda being put in its with a gladiator ethos. Everything is oriented place, just nostalgic spasms that, as David around conquest, success, supremacy and Frum has put it, are part George Wallace and domination. This was the Lock Her Up part Henry Wallace. Trump’s policy agenda, convention. A law-and-order campaign such as it is, is mostly a series of vague and doesn’t ask voters to like Trump and the Republicans any more than they liked Richard defensive recoils: build a wall, ban Muslims, withdraw from the world. Nixon in 1968. This is less a party than a personality On the other hand, there are good reasons cult. Law and order is a strange theme for a to think that this law-and-order focus is a candidate who radiates conlict and disorder. signiicant mistake, that it over-reads the Some rich children are careless that way; they current moment of Baton Rouge, Dallas and break things and other people have to clean up Nice and will not be the right focus for the the mess. fall. ■ In the irst place, it’s based on a falsehood. David Brooks became a New York Times Crime rates have been falling almost without Op-Ed columnist in September 2003. fail for 25 years. Murder rates have been Trump is not really changing his party as much as dissolving it. YOUR VIEWS Development commission should think bigger than downtown Exactly what is the Urban Renewal District and where exactly is it? You would think from the actions of the Pendleton Development Commission, the commission made up of the mayor and city council, it would be the historic downtown area and the river “parkway” between Main and Southwest 10th. It does, however, also include most of the old town south of the river and north of the railroad tracks. With a competent Downtown Business Association in place that actually admits there is a tree and parking problem, I think it’s high time for the PDC to start focusing on the rest of the district. One of the biggest eyesores is all the overhead power lines and iber optic cables that has given the Urban Renewal District the appearance of a third world country. The resurrection of the district should at least include an attempt to move the lines underground when the opportunity arises, when any new construction or major renovation occurs. It never ceases to amaze me that there is such an emphasis to install handicapped accessible curbs at all the new street corners and then pour a new sidewalk with power poles located dead center in the middle. Take a look at the missed opportunities at the new early learning center, both new elementary schools, the new Verizon store and city hall. Even the new cell tower installation near PGG sprouted a new power pole. It might be nice, since “grant seeking” has become such a vital part of city inances, to hit up Paciic Power & Light for a grant to inish installing the missing street lights on both the viaduct and the new overpass. Looks like a win-win situation for PP&L. I, and probably all the residents of the URD, would like to know exactly how much the district’s tax base has increased since an administrator was hired, as those residents are most likely paying the bill. Instead of a city solar farm and perhaps a windmill or two that would reduce or eliminate that $195,000 street light power bill, we get proposals for dog runs and boat ramps that both reduce water quality in our river. What next? Maybe ill that big hole in Community Park. Now there’s a thought. Rick Rohde Pendleton LETTERS POLICY The East Oregonian welcomes original letters of 400 words or less on public issues and public policies for publication in the newspaper and on our website. The newspaper reserves the right to withhold letters that address concerns about individual services and products or letters that infringe on the rights of private citizens. Submitted letters must be signed by the author and include the city of residence and a phone number. Send letters to 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@eastoregonian.com.