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OPINION
East Oregonian
Tuesday, September 26, 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
Protect your credit
like your home
Data breaches like the one
reported by credit-reporting
company Equifax are a great
calamity of modern life. The ancient
Egyptians had swarms of locusts; we
have plagues of identity thieves and
computer hackers. Nowadays we
aren’t totally at the whim of nature
or some capricious higher power, but
we do have to actively protect our
own interests.
In the case of Equifax, the breach
lasted from mid-May through July.
The hackers accessed people’s
names, Social Security numbers,
birth dates, addresses and, in some
instances, driver’s license numbers.
They also stole credit card numbers
for about 209,000 people and dispute
documents with personal identifying
information for about 182,000
people, according to the Federal
Trade Commission. You can visit
www.equifaxsecurity2017.com for
more information and to perform a
basic check on whether your data is
known to have been compromised.
This was, of course, far from the
first time a company or agency has
lost control of private confidential
information. Yahoo, Target and
others have been in the news when
electronic burglars have blown holes
in Internet security and made off
with information that can be used to
set up fraudulent credit cards, empty
bank accounts, divert tax refunds
and commit other forms of theft.
It bears remembering that
companies on the receiving end
of computer hacks are victims
themselves, incurring great costs and
loss of trust.
At the same time, however,
these companies bear comparison
to a bank that didn’t employ good
enough security guards or a strong
enough vault for our money. After
all the breaches of recent years,
it is angering and dispiriting to
learn a company set up to make
money by policing the credit of
individual Americans itself became
the instrument that could allow
criminals to wreck our credit.
Lawsuits will inevitably arrive at
a fuller understanding of how this
happened and whether it should have
been possible to avoid it. In technical
legal terms, a major question will be
whether companies owe consumers
a fiduciary duty to fully safeguard
our information. Most of us would
argue they do.
In the meantime, we clearly must
all become more active participants
in protecting our own financial
interests. Just as every responsible
parent cautions young-adult children
to guard debit and credit cards as if
they were actual cash, we all must
treat our credit lines and financial
facts in the same way — like cash
that can be stolen if we aren’t
vigilant.
Having credit that some criminal
can wreck is a decidedly modern
“first-world problem” — in other
words, a nuisance we’re highly
privileged to possess. Even half a
century ago in America, such easy
access to credit was unheard of.
And in much of the world, it still
doesn’t exist. In essence, most of us
have a nearly forgotten slush fund of
hypothetical money floating around
for thieves to grab when we aren’t
watching.
We each should treat the Equifax
incident as a spur to revamp
management of our credit assets.
The Washington Post offers some
concise advice on how to freeze (and
unfreeze) your credit in such a way
as to keep others from tapping it.
Other necessary steps include
becoming more knowledgeable
about passwords and the security
questions financial institutions
commonly use to establish people
are who they say they are. For
example, a genealogy blogger has
described how publicly accessible
online family trees can provide
scammers with many answers to
commonly asked security questions,
such as your mother’s maiden name.
Responding to all this is a
hassle, one that most of us assumed
we didn’t need to deal with. But
we obviously can’t trust private
corporations — or possibly even
public agencies — to treat our
private information as cautiously
as they should. Congress and state
lawmakers should hold corporate
feet to the fire to make rights,
responsibilities and penalties
completely clear. And each of us
must acknowledge and act upon the
knowledge that our credit requires
careful ongoing management.
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.
YOUR VIEWS
Respect is a two-way
street, even on
Pennsylvania Avenue
I always adhered to the idea that
there is an obligation for the citizens
of this country to respect the person in
the office of President of the United
States, regardless of your view on the
politics of the moment or whether you
voted for that person or not. The flip
side of that belief is the person in the
position of President is obligated to
respect the citizenry that elected him/
her, and also respect the institutions
through which he/she was elected. Now,
I feel an overwhelming current of open
disrespect emanating from our President
directed at any person, any group, or
any entity that does not agree with him.
That is not how you get work done.
The adversarial politics of our
leadership through the past decade has
been destructive. It is exacerbated by
the time wasters of petty name calling
and temper tantrum over trivial matters,
a habit now embodied routinely by
the current President. I believe the
Office of the President sets the tone
for our nation. If we use trash-talk
to insult others; nations, institutions,
or individual citizens, we should be
prepared to get trash-talk back. When
we use that technique to isolate groups
of our citizens, we will not only get that
back in verbal form, but also in the form
of protest. Then we are threatened by
upheaval from domestic conflict.
I understand media bias, but I
also see inconsistent and incorrect
messages coming from our White
House. Assurance does not come from
assertions that are obviously false,
even if they are of little consequence,
like the number of people attending
an assembly. I caution elected officials
against becoming The Emperor’s Men
admiring the Emperor’s New Clothes.
Saying it is true does not make it truth.
The greatness of this nation comes
through working to find common
ground. When we lose that, we lose
our unity and become a nation of
separatists.
The most efficient way to collapse a
nation is to:
• take away or reduce access to
information (discredit the media; release
inconsistent or vague information),
• isolate and reduce the power
structure (malign judiciary; implement
nepotism; reduce or ‘confuse’
communication between lawmakers and
citizens),
• alienate neighbors and partners,
• assign negative stereotypes to large
segments of the population (support
discrimination based on religion,
national origin, race, color, or sex),
• devalue diverse opinion become
ego- and ethno-centric.
Lynn Robertson
Pendleton
OTHER VIEWS
Want geniuses?
Welcome immigrants
M
fields. The MacArthur grants
aybe “some are rapists,” in
cover the humanities, too; the past
Donald Trump’s nasty words.
decade’s winners include such
But many are geniuses. Just
celebrated writers as Junot Díaz,
ask the MacArthur Foundation, which
born in the Dominican Republic;
responded to our president’s frequent
Edwidge Danticat, born in Haiti; and
demonization of immigrants, including
that infamous phrase, by doing a little
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of
math.
“Americanah,” born in Nigeria.
Every year since 1981, the
José Quiñonez, named a genius
Frank
foundation has bestowed so-called
last year for his pioneering work in
Bruni
financial services, was born in Mexico,
genius grants on more than 20 of the
Comment
the country vilified in Trump’s
country’s most accomplished and
“rapists” remark. He told me that he
promising scientists, scholars, artists
and his siblings immigrated illegally in 1980,
and writers. These awards are a huge deal,
after their mother died, to live with relatives in
trumpeted in the media and worn with pride
forevermore. And the winners, typically in the San Jose, California. He was 9.
He studied hard and got a master’s degree
middle of their careers, get $625,000 each.
from Princeton. He said that his four siblings,
Of the 965 geniuses (or, more properly,
like him, have good jobs, two as high school
MacArthur fellows) to date, 209 were born
outside the United States, according to Cecilia teachers. Long before Trump’s campaign, he
heard and cringed at complaints that Mexican
Conrad, who leads the fellowship program.
immigrants were criminals, freeloaders.
That’s 21.7 percent. The 2010 census
“Especially early on, I began to believe:
determined that less than 13 percent of the
Maybe I was lazy, maybe I was broken?”
U.S. population is foreign-born.
said Quiñonez, 46, who
Conrad wondered
now lives in Oakland,
whether MacArthur
Immigrants or the
California. “But there
fellows are anomalies.
something in our
They’re not. She looked
children of immigrants was
family that helped us
back over the past 3
reject that narrative. We
½ decades — which
have founded or
fought back against that
is the life span of the
co-founded nearly every narrative. I never allowed
fellowships — to see
it to seep into my soul.”
who’d received other top
legendary American
It’s possible that the
honors given only to U.S.
bounty of immigrants
citizens and residents.
technology company,
won MacArthur
She found that
including Google, Intel, who’ve
grants demonstrates
immigrants were
overrepresented
Facebook and Apple. some predisposition
among foundation
among the winners of
executives toward certain
the Pulitzer Prize for
life stories and a desire to promote people who
music, of the National Humanities Medal and
have been overlooked and underappreciated.
especially of the John Bates Clark Medal,
Some critics of the foundation have asserted
which recognizes brilliant U.S. economists
that.
under the age of 40. Thirty-five percent of
But it’s worth noting that if the foundation
these economists were foreign born, including
took into account children of immigrants as
people from India, Turkey and Ukraine.
well as immigrants themselves, the percentage
The far-right paranoiacs and scaremongers
who pressured Trump to end DACA (Deferred of its geniuses that reflects the benefits of
immigration would be higher than 21.7. It’s
Action for Childhood Arrivals) hate to
also worth noting that for most of the grant’s
acknowledge what we reality-moored types
history, foreign-born people constituted less
understand: Many of our country’s finest
than 10 percent of the U.S. population.
minds and brightest ideas are forged when
The immigrants who’ve won MacArthur
dreamers from elsewhere encounter an
unfamiliar place with unimagined possibilities. grants include refugees, and I spoke with one,
There’s a creative spark in that convergence. It An-My Lê, 57, who fled Saigon as a teenager
at the end of the Vietnam War. She finished
has powered American greatness.
high school in Sacramento, went to college
That’s the moral of the MacArthur
at Stanford, got graduate degrees there and at
Foundation’s math, which it shared first with
Yale, and drew acclaim for photography with
The New York Times. That’s also the moral of
the Nobel Prizes. According to an analysis late war and military themes. Her work has been
exhibited at the country’s most prominent
last year by Adil Najam, a Boston University
museums. She lives in Brooklyn and teaches
professor: “Since its inception in 1901, the
at Bard College in upstate New York.
Nobel Prizes and the Prize in Economic
I asked her what she made of immigrants’
Sciences have been awarded 579 times to
prevalence among MacArthur geniuses. “I
911 people and organizations. The U.S. alone
think most of us feel very lucky to be here, so
has had more than 350 Nobel winners. More
we work extremely hard,” she said. “I think
than 100 of these have been immigrants and
individuals born outside of the United States.” maybe trauma is part of what drives us.” She
added that in terms of innovation, “Having
If immigrants to the United States were
the different perspectives, having the different
considered their own country, Najam wrote,
life experiences, makes you see things
their tally of Nobels would exceed that of
differently.” Fresh ideas and great art are often
every country but the United States.
An article about immigrants in The Atlantic born that way.
Conrad, the MacArthur Foundation
just a few years ago noted that the four
executive, said that in all the debate lately
U.S.-based physicists who sounded the 1939
about how many immigrants our country
warning about nuclear weapons that led to
needs for jobs of varying skill levels, she
the Manhattan Project were born outside the
hears too little about the ambient impact of
United States. The article went on to point out
that “immigrants or the children of immigrants immigrants on the United States’ creative
climate. “They have certain attributes,” she
have founded or co-founded nearly every
told me. “They are risk takers.” And their
legendary American technology company,
thinking and discoveries are nourished by “the
including Google, Intel, Facebook, and of
course Apple (you knew that Steve Jobs’ father experience of dislocation, of navigating a new
culture and a new set of norms,” she said.
was named Abdulfattah Jandali, right?).”
They come with a sort of hunger and a
And Jennifer Hunt, a professor of
kind of gaze that don’t subtract from what
economics at Rutgers University, has done
those of us already here have but, instead,
research showing that among graduates of
add to it. They give us insights, inventions,
U.S. colleges, immigrants are twice as likely
art. Embracing their genius is the genius of
to receive patents as native-born Americans.
America.
Her research further suggests that this doesn’t
■
come at the expense of native-born Americans
Frank Bruni, an Op-Ed columnist for
but in fact stimulates their innovation, too.
The New York Times since June 2011, joined
“You’re bouncing ideas off each other,” Hunt
the newspaper in 1995 and has ranged
told me.
broadly across its pages. He has been both
Her findings speak to the oft-charted
a White House correspondent and the chief
success of U.S. immigrants in STEM
restaurant critic.
(science, technology, economics and math)
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 daytime phone number. The phone number will not be published. Unsigned letters will not be published. Send
letters to managing editor Daniel Wattenburger, 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@eastoregonian.com.