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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (June 20, 2017)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Tuesday, June 20, 2017 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 Office Manager MIKE JENSEN Production Manager OUR VIEW Zinke, Perdue listen and break tradition Farmers and ranchers throughout of hope and change as it applied to the West are accustomed to periodic rural issues. visits from cabinet officials from You don’t fly 2,500 miles to tell Washington, D.C. These tours have a crowd that nothing is going to been standard operating procedure for change. administrations of both parties since No surprises here. before the New Deal. We’d be willing to write it off as So it wasn’t surprising when business as usual, a harmless, fairly Secretary of Agriculture Sonny upbeat encounter that carried with it Perdue and Interior no real expectations. Secretary Ryan Zinke But, they also did It’s not just visited Idaho together something a little June 2. something farmers and different, Bigwigs from they’re still talking ranchers who about in Idaho. Washington always come to town for In a closed-door are talking. a reason, usually meeting with 10 to deliver the producers before the administration’s talking points as they Boise State event, Perdue and Zinke relate to a particular audience. didn’t make speeches. They listened. And Perdue and Zinke followed “They just didn’t have an agenda. tradition. They came to Boise State They truly wanted to listen to us,” University to vow that their two said Aberdeen potato farmer Ritchey departments will partner closely Toevs. “It was a pro-producer with states and communities on land meeting. It was a completely different management and other issues. experience than I’ve ever had.” It’s not just the farmers and “We’re here to make that ranchers who are talking. Gov. Butch commitment to you today,” Perdue Otter, a seasoned political hand who said. “We’re (here) talking direct, has attended these kinds of events for eyeball-to-eyeball. We’re going to years, was surprised. make a (change) in the way we do “They sat there for a solid hour and business.” listened to 10 different producers,” Of course they are. Everyone, Otter told the Capital Press. “In every Democrats and Republicans, case, both the secretaries ended up promises big changes, something with one question — ‘What can we new and better. For eight years Tom Vilsack, an affable Iowan who served do to help you?’ That’s refreshing.” Indeed. It will be even more as President Obama’s ag secretary, brought the administration’s message refreshing if they deliver. 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. CULTURE CORNER Nautilus Magazine Rock climber Alex Honnold allowed neuroscientists to map his brain — to surprising results. A peek inside Alex Honnold’s brain orget what the commercials tell you: Alex Honnold is the most interesting man in the world. He recently free climbed El Capitan, the vertical cliff in Yosemite National Park. Free climbed, as in without a rope. Or a net. Or help from anyone else. His accomplishments have been profiled earlier this month in the The New York Times and The New Yorker magazine, and his El Capitan feat will soon be immortalized in the pages of National Geographic. But now is a good time to look back at this August 2016 article from Nautilus, where Honnold allowed neuroscientists a peek into how his F mind works. Is his brain broken? Is it missing something essential that keeps the rest of us alive? Or is it advanced far beyond his fellow man, allowing him to accomplish what we would never try? We won’t give away too much, but the results are fascinating. So, too are the quotes from Honnold and hearing him describe how and why he does what he does. If you have a mountain to climb in your life — literal or metaphorical — reading about how the very best get to the top can be very revealing. Find it by typing “Alex Honnold + Nautilus” into Google. — Tim Trainor, opinion page editor of The East Oregonian OTHER VIEWS Only mass deportation can save America I n the matter of immigration, mark demographic death spiral that now this conservative columnist down confronts Japan. as strongly pro-deportation. The Bottom line: So-called real United States has too many people Americans are screwing up America. who don’t work hard, don’t believe in Maybe they should leave, so that God, don’t contribute much to society we can replace them with new and and don’t appreciate the greatness of better ones: newcomers who are the American system. more appreciative of what the United They need to return whence they States has to offer, more ambitious Bret came. Stephens for themselves and their children, and more willing to sacrifice for the future. I speak of Americans whose Comment families have been in this country for a In other words, just the kind of people few generations. Complacent, entitled we used to be — when “we” had just and often shockingly ignorant on basic points come off the boat. of American law and history, they are the OK, so I’m jesting about deporting “real stagnant pool in which our national prospects Americans” en masse. (Who would take risk drowning. them in, anyway?) But then the threat of On point after point, mass deportations has America’s nonimmigrants been no joke with this are failing our country. administration. Crime? A study by the On Thursday, the Cato Institute notes Department of Homeland that nonimmigrants are Security seemed prepared incarcerated at nearly to extend an Obama twice the rate of illegal administration program immigrants, and at more than known as Deferred Action three times the rate of legal for Childhood Arrivals, ones. or DACA, which allows Educational achievement? the children of illegal Just 17 percent of the finalists in the 2016 immigrants — some 800,000 people in all — Intel Science Talent Search — often called the to continue to study and work in the United “Junior Nobel Prize” — were the children of States. The decision would have reversed one U.S.-born parents. At the Rochester Institute of Donald Trump’s ugly campaign threats to of Technology, just 9.5 percent of graduate deport these kids, whose only crime was to students in electrical engineering were have been brought to the United States by nonimmigrants. their parents. Religious piety — especially of the Yet the administration is still committed Christian variety? More illegal immigrants to deporting their parents, and on Friday the identify as Christian (83 percent) than do DHS announced that even DACA remains Americans (70.6 percent), a fact right-wing under review — another cruel twist for young immigration restrictionists might ponder as immigrants wondering if they’ll be sent back they bemoan declines in church attendance. to “home” countries they hardly ever knew, Business creation? Nonimmigrants start and whose language they might barely even businesses at half the rate of immigrants, and speak. accounted for fewer than half the companies Beyond the inhumanity of toying with started in Silicon Valley between 1995 and people’s lives this way, there’s also the 2005. Overall, the share of nonimmigrant shortsightedness of it. We do not usually find entrepreneurs fell by more than 10 percentage happiness by driving away those who would points between 1995 and 2008, according to a love us. Businesses do not often prosper by Harvard Business Review study. firing their better employees and discouraging Nor does the case against nonimmigrants job applications. So how does America end there. The rate of out-of-wedlock births become great again by berating and evicting for U.S.-born mothers exceeds the rate for its most energetic, enterprising, law-abiding, foreign-born moms, 42 percent to 33 percent. job-creating, idea-generating, self-multiplying The rate of delinquency and criminality and God-fearing people? among nonimmigrant teens considerably Because I’m the child of immigrants and exceeds that of their immigrant peers. A recent grew up abroad, I have always thought of the report by the Sentencing Project also finds United States as a country that belongs first evidence that the fewer immigrants there to its newcomers — the people who strain are in a neighborhood, the likelier it is to be hardest to become a part of it because they unsafe. realize that it’s precious; and who do the most And then there’s the all-important issue to remake it so that our ideas, and our appeal, of demographics. The race for the future may stay fresh. is ultimately a race for people — healthy, That used to be a cliché, but in the Age of working-age, fertile people — and our Trump it needs to be explained all over again. nonimmigrants fail us here, too. “The increase We’re a country of immigrants — by and for in the overall number of U.S. births, from 3.74 them, too. Americans who don’t get it should million in 1970 to 4.0 million in 2014, is due get out. entirely to births to foreign-born mothers,” ■ reports the Pew Research Center. Bret Stephens won a Pulitzer Prize for Without these immigrant moms, the commentary in 2013. He began working as a United States would be faced with the same columnist at The New York Times in April. On point after point, America’s nonimmigrants are failing our country. YOUR VIEWS Boutique an improvement over previous airline Taking four flights between Pendleton and Portland on Boutique Air has been a smooth experience — consistently good quality and no-muss, no fuss among agents or pilots. Boutique service is more professional than that of SeaPort Airlines, which preceded Boutique. Boutique has a first-rate terminal building just yards from the long lineup of airlines at Portland International. And travelers going just to Portland are not subject to body searches. Seats in the eight-passenger cabin are an improvement over the SeaPort seating. Flights I have taken have been mostly full. I appreciate the Boutique schedule: three flights daily Pendleton-to-Portland and three daily Portland-to-Pendleton. Boutique is supported partly by federal funds servicing rural parts of the country, and the amount of support depends partly on numbers of seats sold. This airline does not meet all of Umatillla county’s transportation needs, but it is an important service. Mike Forrester 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.
