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OPINION
East Oregonian
Friday, December 29, 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
Tip of the hat;
kick in the pants
A tip of the hat to our new neighbors.
You have hopefully met many of them this year, and you definitely
met a few this week. People who moved to one of our Eastern Oregon
communities in the last year have appeared
on our front page all week long, and we will
finish the annual series tomorrow.
The stories are among our favorites each
year, when we get to ask people from all
over the world how they ended up in our
little corner of it. And it always makes us
proud when a consistent through line in
their stories is how kind and welcoming
people here are, and how quickly
newcomers were able to feel comfortable
and included.
Being good hosts of a welcoming nature
is a key attribute in everyone’s life. Not only is being a good neighbor a clear
moral requirement, but it helps us continue to be a growing, blossoming
region. As the saying goes, if you ain’t growing, you’re dying.
Obviously we can’t document everyone who moved to the area, and we
know many others out there who have brought their own individual spice
to the Eastern Oregon stew. We appreciate and welcome all of you, and tip
our hat to everyone who chose our neck of the woods to be your neck of the
woods.
A kick in the pants to these still-snowy streets, especially in
Pendleton.
We include below two photos taken at the same time Thursday in
Hermiston and Pendleton. And while
Pendleton did get a couple more
inches of precipitation on Sunday and
Monday, the condition of the streets
three days after the last measurable
snowfall is night and day.
Night in Hermiston, where you can
see the black asphalt of a clear city
street. And day in Pendleton, as snow
carpets all of the city’s commercial
byways, and remains piled up much
higher along our residential roads.
And we understand that Hermiston was a few degrees warmer and more
than a few degrees flatter.
And we also understand that winter happens, and we enjoy the Eastern
Oregon tradition to delight in the temporary gridlock that comes when
Mother Nature demands her notice. But eventually we all have to get back
to being productive members of society, and Pendleton’s inability to clear its
roads and sidewalks impairs that.
EO photo
The intersection of Southeast Third and East Main in Hermiston Thursday
afternoon.
OTHER VIEWS
The dangers of Trump delirium
T
o travel the liberal byways of
back channels, awful judgment and
social media over recent weeks
outright lies among Trump’s intimates
was to learn that Donald Trump
to present voters with a powerful case
was on the precipice of axing Robert
against his fitness for office.
Mueller and was likely to use the days
But by obsessing over clear
just before Christmas, when we were
“collusion” and insisting on visible
distracted by eggnog and mistletoe, to
puppet strings by which Vladimir
lower the blade.
Putin controlled Trump, we have set
Christmas has come. Christmas has
the bar dangerously high. Mueller’s
David
gone. Mueller has not.
Leonhardt ultimate findings could be plenty ugly
To listen to Nancy Pelosi and other
and still be deemed underwhelming.
Comment
Democratic leaders, the tax overhaul
Our overreach is everywhere.
that Trump just signed into law is no
Some of those social-media threads
mere plutocratic folly. It’s “Armageddon”
forecasting Mueller’s pre-Christmas firing
(Pelosi’s actual word). Their opposition is
went further, envisioning street protests
righteous, but how will millions of voters
that would prompt a brutal response from
who notice smaller withholdings from their
government forces just itching for the chance.
paychecks and more money in their pockets
I spotted the phrase “martial law.”
square that seemingly
Much of the tax-overhaul
good fortune with such
pushback, which painted
prophecies of doom on a
the whole of the legislation
biblical scale?
as an abomination,
Some of these
didn’t acknowledge that
Americans may decide
Democrats themselves had
that the prophets aren’t to
long favored corporate-rate
be trusted — and that the
reductions. Nor did the
president isn’t quite the
ferocious back-and-forth
pestilence they make him
— John McCain, over Trump’s declaration of
out to be.
U.S. Senator, on Donald Trump Jerusalem as Israel’s capital
I’m not minimizing
make clear that many
Trump’s capriciousness or
politicians before him had
cupidity. He could yet fire Mueller, the special proposed the same step. That doesn’t make it
counsel. Some conservatives’ intensifying
prudent, but it does challenge the portrayal of
attacks on the counsel and the FBI are clearly
his decision as some ploy beyond the pale.
grist for that.
The issue here is credibility and not
And the tax bill is indeed a messy, fiscally
giving the president ammunition to discredit
reckless means for Republican lawmakers
opponents as overwrought, ahistoric partisans
to please their donors and crow that they are
in a state of indiscriminate freak-out. When
getting big things done.
we answer melodrama with melodrama, we’re
But the end of the world? Come on. That’s
playing his game, by his rules, and he wins.
not par-for-the-course hyperbole. It’s peculiar- Better to patrol our language and pick our
to-Trump hyperventilation, an understandable
issues, so that crucial areas of focus — the
response to such an indecent president but
demoralization of our diplomatic corps, the
quite possibly a tactical mistake. It could
stacking of the judiciary, the transformation
weaken the odds of hobbling him next fall,
of the presidency into a marketing scheme —
in the midterm elections, and of putting him
aren’t lost in the welter and the whirl.
far behind us in November 2020. And that’s
“I can’t be the car alarm that always goes
where I, for one, want him: in the rearview
off,” John McCain reportedly said to a friend
mirror, growing tinier and tinier as we zoom,
this year, explaining his own strategy for
pedal to the metal, toward a saner, more
tempering Trump. “If I am, I’m not effective.”
dignified horizon.
There’s wisdom in that.
But I worry. When Trump’s opponents
All signs right now point to enormous
react to so much of what he says and does
gains for Democrats in the midterms; I’d
with such unfettered outrage, that howl
be very surprised, based on the country’s
becomes background noise, and it is harder
present mood, if they didn’t take control of the
to make sure that his unequivocally foul
House. But establishing that check on Trump
maneuvers stand out from his debatably
is much too important to be jeopardized
foolish ones. When we constantly conjure the
in the slightest. And our Trump-induced
direst scenarios, we risk looking like ignorable delirium indeed jeopardizes it, pumping
hysterics — and bolstering his grandiose
up his impassioned adversaries at the risk
claims of martyrdom — if events unfold in a
of confusing and alienating dispassionate
less damnable fashion.
Americans in the middle.
Fury isn’t strategy, and there’s no need to
They needn’t be convinced that he’s all
extrapolate beyond the facts already in our
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. But a
possession.
singularly miserable jockey? That’s an easy
Take the inquiries into the Trump
sell. And it’s probably a surer way to eject him
campaign’s dealings with Russia. They could
from the derby.
screech to a halt tomorrow and we’d be left
■
with more than enough evidence of corrupt
David Leonhardt is an op-ed columnist for
business dealings, conflicts of interest, shady
The New York Times.
“I can’t be the car
alarm that always
goes off. If I am,
I’m not effective.”
YOUR VIEWS
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
The intersection of Main Street and Dorion Avenue at roughly the same
time Thursday in Pendleton.
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.
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.
Pendleton’s roads need better
Can’t support Walden, tax plan
As a taxpayer and member of this
community, I would like to know why the city
hall and library parking lots got plowed on
Christmas Day, when they were not open, and
this city cannot plow the streets?
After numerous phone calls and inquiries
about why this city doesn’t plow the streets,
I have come to the conclusion that they do
not want to. I have been told that the city
has a plow but will not plow the streets of
snow because of the numerous complaints
by residents about their driveways being
blocked by snow berms. There is an easy
solution to this problem and that is pile the
snow in the middle of the streets and leave
the intersections open. Lack of snowplowing
slows the response of emergency vehicles.
This just goes to prove that this inept city
management does not care about the city or
its citizens who pay their wages and salaries.
If you remove the snow faster, the streets will
be thawing out faster — less likely to freeze
and have them crumble. Our streets are in
major need of repair because the city has not
taken the time to prevent damage, but they can
build a road to nowhere that no business has
invested in moving to Pendleton.
I would like to request that every person
that reads this letter to the editor call the city
and express your dismay with the action of
not plowing snow off the streets. When the
next election comes around vote, please elect
new people into office for the city council and
mayor positions.
The recent passage of the tax scam,
heralded by our own Congressman Greg
Walden, is really a plan to appease corporate
and filthy rich donors even though it is
reported to increase the deficit by $1.46 trillion
and throw millions off health insurance.
With the puppet strings attached to
those donors for their financial support, we
cannot believe that U.S. Rep. Walden is
really concerned about the middle class or
his Oregon constituents. It appears that our
congressman has become so comfortable
selling out to the Washington special interest
lobbyists that he has accepted his role of being
one of the major puppets in this tax scam
tragedy of epic proportions.
The tax scam tragedy isn’t really about
“tax relief” with a purported benefit of saving
$1,300 a year ($108 per month) for a family
of four, it is a tragedy about a tax scam that
is designed to destroy our health care, our
education system, the middle class, and our
democracy as we know it.
To pay for this tragedy, the selling out
to the filthy rich and corporations, with a
debunked trickle-down economics theory
is not new. It has been tried before. It didn’t
work then and it won’t work now no matter
how good the actors — Greg Walden and the
other Republicans — are at playing their roles.
The short-term “advantages” will cost
the middle class the most, but because Rep.
Walden has sold his vote, he will pay when he
is voted out in November 2018.
Mike Clark
Pendleton
Beverly Sherrill
The Dalles