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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
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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.