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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 8, 2016)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Saturday, October 8, 2016 Founded October 16, 1875 KATHRYN B. BROWN Publisher DANIEL WATTENBURGER Managing Editor TIM TRAINOR Opinion Page Editor MARISSA WILLIAMS Regional Advertising Director MARCY ROSENBERG Circulation Manager JANNA HEIMGARTNER Business Ofice Manager MIKE JENSEN Production Manager 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 OUR VIEW Five choices, only four chairs After a major shakeup four years ago, it seems the tone of Hermiston politics is back to where it was before. In the at-large city council election of 2012, when four seats were up for grabs, a ield of eight candidates iled for the job. There was displeasure about the handling of former police chief Dan Coulombe, who resigned in February of that year after 13 months of paid leave and was found by an outside investigator to have fostered a culture of fear within the department that went unaddressed for years. On top of that, there was frustration about a city council that met for just a few minutes every other week to perform the perfunctory duties of a public body, but didn’t discuss, much less disagree, on any aspect of the city’s operation. A recall was attempted in 2012 against half the council and the mayor, but failed. In the November election four newcomers made the case that change was needed, and two — John Kirwan and Doug Primmer — were elected to the council. The culture shifted. Council meetings became a more potent discussion of the city’s path forward. Manuel Gutierrez New committees formed to get the public involved with the process. New initiatives and ideas were publicly championed and debated by councilors instead of merely approved by them. But as much as things are different, at least one thing is back to the way it was: our at-large election is a choice between ive people — four incumbents and one newcomer. In the three elections prior to 2012, the ballot also included just four or ive options for four seats. Voters will be asked to select four of the ive, effectively making this an odd-man-out ballot. The East Oregonian editorial board sat down with the ive candidates this week, but didn’t feel any of the candidates rose to the “must-elect” category, or earned the “don’t elect” tag. So instead of endorsing which four to put on the council — or which candidate to toss — we’ll give a brief synopsis of each and how they would it on the Rod Hardin council if elected. • Manuel Gutierrez has become an important voice on the council as a surrogate for poor citizens, often asking aloud at meetings what the effect of new costs and fees will have on those with small or ixed incomes. He said he believes the city has been warranted in its aggressive approach to development in the last four years with projects such as the Eastern Oregon Trade and Event Center, Harkenrider Center and Northeast Oregon Water Association. If you’re looking out for the little guy in this growing city, Gutierrez is your man. • Rod Hardin is the longest serving councilor. He is looking to take on one last term to complete the transition from former city manager Ed Brookshier to Byron Smith. He’s deeply knowledgeable and widely John Kirwan connected (nearly three decades on the council will do that), and said he is concerned that if too many councilors had individual agendas it would bring a stalemate to the “team.” But he was also silent member of that “team” when Hermiston government was facing serious problems. If you’re looking for experience, plenty good and some bad, Hardin should get your vote. • John Kirwan came onto the council ready to tangle, and for the irst part of his term butted heads as he learned the process. But as he has developed in his seat, Kirwan has been more careful to pick his battles and learned to work as part of a team while maintaining a unique viewpoint. He said the next nine months are crucial to EOTEC’s success, and he wants the city to be a more active and engaged participant Doug Primmer in that process. If you want a more hands on and impassioned approach to city governance, Kirwan its the bill. • Doug Primmer represents the everyman, and goes out of his way to set aside personal views for what the voters want. For instance, despite his wariness about marijuana, he agreed to put retail sales to the voters this fall. He told us he wants to make the city what people want it to be. He’s most proud of the city’s planned bus agreement with Kayak coming in January, and the fact that he has only missed two council meetings in four years. If you’re looking for that kind of show-up- and-do-the-job ethic, Primmer is your man. • Mark Gomolski is the newcomer to the ield, and to Hermiston. He spent his career in government in Chicago and surrounding Cook County and retired to Hermiston in 2015, quickly joining the political arena here as Umatilla County Commissioner Bill Mark Gomolski Elfering’s campaign manager. He indicated he’s more than willing to vote against the majority. Gomolski said he voted against the West Umatilla County Fire District consolidation in the spring, and said he has serious questions about the recently approved city bus service and another Hermiston schools bond. If you’re looking for a councilor who is somewhere on the spectrum between contrarian and cynic, Gomolski its. 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 Intimacy for the avoidant O ver the past generation there by the web. seems to have been a decline “By rapidly substituting virtual in the number of high-quality reality for reality,” Sullivan wrote, “we friendships. are diminishing the scope of [intimate] In 1985, most Americans told interaction even as we multiply the pollsters that they had about three number of people with whom we conidants, people with whom they interact. We remove or drastically could share everything. Today, the ilter all the information we might majority of people say they have about get by being with another person. We David two. In 1985, 10 percent of Americans Brooks reduce them to some outlines — a said they had no one to fully conide Facebook ‘friend,’ an Instagram photo, Comment in, but by the start of this century 25 a text message — in a controlled and percent of Americans said that. sequestered world that exists largely All of this has left people wondering if free of the sudden eruptions or encumbrances technology is making us lonelier. Instead of of actual human interaction. We become going over to the neighbor’s house, are we each other’s ‘contacts,’ eficient shadows of sitting at home depressingly suring everybody ourselves.” At saturation level, social else’s perfect lives on media reduces the amount Facebook? of time people spend in Over the past decade, the uninterrupted solitude, best research has suggested the time when people can that no, technology and excavate and process their social media are not making internal states. It encourages us lonelier. These things are social multitasking: You’re tools. It’s what you bring with the people you’re to Facebook that matters. with, but you’re also Socially engaged people monitoring the 6 billion use it to further engage; other people who might be lonely people use it to mask communicating something loneliness. more interesting from far As Stephen Marche put away. It lattens the range of it in The Atlantic in 2012, emotional experiences. “Using social media doesn’t As Louis C.K. put it in a TV appearance, create new social networks; it just transfers “You never feel completely sad or completely established networks from one platform to happy. You just feel kinda satisied with your another.” But recently, people’s views of social media products. And then you die.” Perhaps phone addiction is making it harder have grown a bit darker. That’s because we seem to be hitting some sort of saturation level. to be the sort of person who is good at deep friendship. In lives that are already crowded Being online isn’t just something we do. It has and stressful, it’s easier to let banter crowd out become who we are, transforming the very emotional presence. There are a thousand ways nature of the self. online to divert with a joke or a happy face Earlier this year, Jacob Weisberg had a emoticon. You can have a day of happy touch ine essay in The New York Review of Books points without any of the scary revelations, reporting that, according to a British study, or the boring, awkward or uncontrollable we check our phones on average 221 times a moments that constitute actual intimacy. day — about every 4.3 minutes. When Montaigne was describing the A decade ago almost no one had a smartphone. Now the average American spends accumulating intimacy he enjoyed with his best friend, he described an emotional interaction 5 1/2 hours a day with digital media, and the that was full and progressive: “It was not one young spend far more time. A study of female special consideration, nor two, nor three, nor students at Baylor University found that they four, nor a thousand; it was some mysterious spent 10 hours a day on their phones. quintessence of all this mixture which A lot of this trafic is driven by the fear possessed itself of my will and led it to plunge of missing out. Somebody may be posting something on Snapchat that you’d like to know and lose itself in his; which possessed his whole will and led it, with a similar hunger, and a like about, so you’d better constantly be checking. impulse, to plunge and lose itself in mine.” The trafic is also driven by what the industry When we’re addicted to online life, every executives call “captology.” The apps generate moment is fun and diverting, but the whole small habitual behaviors, like swiping right or liking a post, that generate ephemeral dopamine thing is profoundly unsatisfying. I guess a modern version of heroism is regaining control bursts. Any second that you’re feeling bored, of social impulses, saying no to a thousand lonely or anxious, you feel this deep hunger to shallow contacts for the sake of a few daring open an app and get that burst. plunges. Last month, Andrew Sullivan published a ■ moving and much-discussed essay in New York David Brooks became a New York Times magazine titled “I Used to Be a Human Being” Op-Ed columnist in September 2003. about what it’s like to have your soul hollowed The average American spends 5 1/2 hours a day with digital media, and the young spend far more time. YOUR VIEWS Trump’s immigration policies would make country safer Donald J. Trump in his campaign for president has identiied illegal immigration and the crimes committed by illegal immigrants as signiicant problems facing our country. Trump has an immigration plan centered on national security and public safety. Any concerned citizen voter who wants to validate Trump’s stand on illegal immigrant crime can simply go to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons inmates statistics website and add up the most recent numbers on inmate citizenship. It indicates 42,401 prisoners in the federal prison system were foreign nationals; that’s over 22 percent of federal prison population. In the federal prison system there were 28,264 Mexican nationals incarcerated; they were 66.7 percent of the foreign nationals in federal prisons. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons breaks down the federal prison population into 13 types of offenses. Federal prisons had 15,990 inmates, 8.8 percent, incarcerated for immigration crimes. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has two components, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection that are at the forefront of enforcing federal immigration law. Two groups, the National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council, the union of ICE oficers, and the National Border Patrol Council, the union of CBP Agents, have endorsed Donald J. Trump for President of the United States of America. David Olen Cross Salem Oregon residents should receive Oregon TV stations As a subscriber to a satellite television provider in Wallowa, my “local” stations come from Spokane. This provides me with zero information as to what is important in Oregon. If not for OPB radio, not TV, I would get no information concerning what is happening in my state. I have looked to elected oficials and others that I thought were in position to do something to ix this but have only been disappointed. Two questions: Am I the only person effected by this blackout who cares? And what is it going to take to get this corrected? Roger Eagan Wallowa LETTERS POLICY: The East Oregonian welcomes original letters of 400 words or less on public issues and public policies for publication. Submitted letters must be signed by the author and include the city of residence and a daytime phone number. Send letters to 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@eastoregonian.com.
