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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (July 6, 2018)
Page 4A East Oregonian Friday, July 6, 2018 CHRISTOPHER RUSH Publisher KATHRYN B. BROWN Owner DANIEL WATTENBURGER Managing Editor TIM TRAINOR Opinion Page Editor Founded October 16, 1875 Tip of the hat, kick in the pants Tip of the hat to all of the wonderful Fourth of July celebrations in Eastern Oregon — and the people who celebrated safely and (mostly) fire-free. From Ione to Hermiston and Stanfield to Pendleton, Eastern Oregon puts on a really good show for America’s day of independence. For most adults it includes fireworks, barbecues and Budweisers aplenty — and dips in pools and rivers to cool off from the heat. But because that heat always seems to coincide with the Fourth, our love of fireworks, beers and barbecues can be a dangerous combination. It requires us to keep our wits about us, burn only legal fireworks, and keep all kinds off of pubic lands. We did pretty good this year. There was a small fire on Pendleton’s south hill Thursday night, and another in Hermiston just after the big show off the Butte. No major property was damaged, and no major injuries were reported. All in all, we call that a success. So we tip our hat to everyone who tipped their hat to our great country, and to those who did it in a safe and respectful manner. A tip of the hat to Rylee Palmer, the Heppner fourth-grader who won a national first-place prize in the “Character Counts!” essay and drawing contest. Palmer’s win came with a $250 prize, a schoolwide assembly and her work prominently displayed on Heppner’s Main Street at Murray’s Drug. While those are all wonderful accomplishments, we hope Rylee’s essay, which centered around how to be a good citizen, has an even bigger Staff photo by E.J. Harris Marina Jordan, left, and Christina Jones wear patriotic themed outfits while watch- ing the Fourth of July Parade on Wednesday in Pendleton. impact. May it inspire her family, schoolmates and neighbors to pitch in to help the community. We’ll let Rylee make her pitch: “Being a good citizen doesn’t just mean you help yourself, it also means you help your friends, family and community. Look at the world around you. You could probably look at the first thing you saw and help it. Helping clean the environment is an easy way of being a good citizen. Helping the elderly is a the next step in becoming a good citizen. But, the most important thing about being a good citizen is that you are a friend. In my picture, there are friends playing, people picking up trash and someone helping the elderly.” We tip our hat to her. OTHER VIEWS To hackers, we’re Bambi in the woods I YOUR VIEWS Old Emigrant Road curls down Cabbage Hill It was a pleasure to read the editorial by Chris Rush on Eastern Oregon. My bird-watching ladies and I go out every Wednesday to seek birds, wild flowers, and enjoy the fantastic scenery in Eastern Oregon. I was also happy to notice Chris included my hometown of Joseph in his travels. When I grew up there, it was a small ranching community but now is an art center. My mother was an artist so I believe she would approve of the “new Joseph.” I suppose it is the school teacher in me, but I can’t help but make one correction to Chris’s editorial. The area called Poverty Flat is more south of Deadman Pass. The old road that winds down the hill is “Old Emigrant Road.” This road was known locally by many and still is often called Cabbage Hill. I always thought it was because the road wound around the hill like a cabbage, but learned later it was named after the wonderful cabbage raised near the top of the hill. People in the valley often made the trip up the mountain in late summer to buy the excellent cabbage. Much of the crisp cabbage was sliced into crocks for sauerkraut for winter meals. Eastern Oregon hasn’t changed that much since the wagon trains trekked down the mountain. My hope is it will retain its wild beauty, with many birds and animals to enhance it, for future generations to enjoy. June Whitten, Pendleton An informal survey on Pendleton’s problems The following is based on conversations in my daily travels around our city — opinions expressed by local citizens. Without citing any specific accomplishments, the Pendleton City Council met behind closed doors and awarded our city manager an eight percent salary increase based not on any notable accomplishments, but on parity with other city managers in our local area. Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East Oregonian editorial board. Other columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions of the authors and not necessarily that of the East Oregonian. At the same city council meeting, the recreations director was introduced and gave a brief summary of her education and employment history prior to her appointment to our Parks and Recreation Dept. Her job performance as director has been superb. This is that same individual that was banished to an obscure office at one time when the city manager attempted to give away our Recreation Center. This same city manager, acting as the Pendleton Development Commission executive director, approved a $10,000 grant to a new restaurant for job creation, only to have it close shortly after receiving the check. Again, acting as the PDC director, he recommended a $100,000 grant to a business for construction of a new facility whose owners admitted after construction was complete that they really didn’t need the money. Again, as PDC director, he supported a $10,000 demolition grant to replace an old turn- of-century house with a new duplex that itself did not fit the architectural style of the historic district, only to end up with a doublewide trailer. That same city manager continues to push for additional financial support of the Pendleton Heights contractor that left the city holding a bag of unpaid debt. Were these missteps all the fault of the city manager? Perhaps not, but the ultimate responsibility rests with his position. This all sounds pretty negative and I’ve been criticized more than once for not mentioning the positive, so here goes. The financial turnarounds of the airport and the convention center could have been mentioned by the mayor and council, but weren’t. That credit had already been given to those individual managers, so the council’s decision to eliminate written comments on his evaluation really makes no sense. The fact that the salary of the chief of police, a position that requires putting oneself in harm’s way, would exceed the city manager’s holds no water when you consider that the governor of Oregon’s salary doesn’t make it into the top 20 of state of Oregon employees. Parity? The survey says hogwash. Rick Rohde, Pendleton f you’re worried about Department and White House computer systems in 2014, National terrorism, here’s a bigger threat Security Agency specialists tried to lose sleep over: an all-out to uproot them — and the hackers cyberattack. fought back. “It was basically hand- Suddenly, the electricity goes out to-hand combat in a network,” Rick at the office. Cellphone networks Ledgett, a senior NSA official, told and the internet have also gone Sanger. black, along with subways and Nicholas Cyber is the “perfect weapon,” trains. Kristof in Sanger’s formulation, because The roads are jammed because Comment attackers typically get off scot-free. traffic lights aren’t working. Credit If North Korea had responded to cards are now just worthless bits of plastic, and ATMs are nothing but hunks of the Sony Pictures movie “The Interview” by blowing up cinemas, it might have faced metal. Gas stations can’t pump gas. a strong response. Instead, it hacked into Banks have lost records of depositors’ Sony’s system, destroyed computers and accounts. Dam floodgates mysteriously paralyzed the company. In both the Sony open. Water and sewage treatment plants and Democratic Party attacks, the hackers stop working. enlisted the American news media to People can’t reach loved ones. Phone magnify the damage; we in the media were systems are down, so 911 is useless. used, and we should reflect on that. Looters roam the streets. Food and water Later, North Korean hackers pilfered soon run out in the cities. $81 million from the Bangladesh Central And that’s just the first week. Bank (they might have gotten away with Security experts have nightmares like almost $1 billion, but someone misspelled that. Countries like Russia and China “foundation”). For all this, North Korea have implanted malicious software in the faced no significant punishment. American electrical grid, nuclear power Sanger writes that U.S. officials debated plants and water systems to have the whether to punish Vladimir Putin for his capacity to mount such attacks — and we hacks by exposing his links to oligarchs, have done the same to them. Indeed, the or even by making some of his money U.S. prepared an extensive plan, Nitro disappear. But Barack Obama balked, Zeus, to unplug Iran through cyberattacks, fearful of what Putin might do next, and but in the end we never implemented it. Donald Trump has also dithered. These are some of the issues explored Gen. Paul Nakasone, head of the in an important — and deeply sobering U.S. Cyber Command, was asked in his — new book about cyberwarfare, “The confirmation hearings this year what our Perfect Weapon,” by my Times colleague adversaries think will happen if they attack David Sanger. I’ve known Sanger since us in cyberspace. “They do not think much we joined our college newspaper together will happen,” he replied. “They don’t fear at the beginning of freshman year, and us.” he has spent the decades since exploring As Sanger writes, “Deterrence is not the intersections of technology and working in the cyber realm.” Why wouldn’t international security — and trying to alert Putin interfere in our 2018 midterms since us to our vulnerabilities. we’re both vulnerable and not serious about The risks aren’t just of a cyber-Pearl responding? Harbor but also of a full spectrum of We need to establish a cost to attacks. The Russian hack of Democratic cyberattacks and help establish norms for emails should have been a wake-up call. cyber — a Geneva Convention for hacking. A senior FBI official told Sanger: “These The problem is that the U.S. also uses DNC guys were like Bambi walking in the cyberwarfare (to destroy Iranian centrifuges woods, surrounded by hunters. They had and, apparently, North Korean missiles), zero chance of surviving an attack. Zero.” and we don’t want to constrain ourselves. Even after the attacks we didn’t learn, Meanwhile, we are becoming ever more and much of the U.S. is still like Bambi. vulnerable, partly because daily life is The Russian hack of the U.S. elections in becoming more dependent on computers, 2016 should have us on our toes for 2018, but the Trump administration has done little and partly because cyberoffense is far ahead of cyberdefense. The U.S. started to prepare to fight off new hacking. with a huge advantage, but Russia and Sanger describes a Russian cyberattack China have nearly caught up, and Iran and on the Ukrainian electrical grid shortly North Korea don’t seem far behind. before Christmas 2015. Operators of In the 1990s, we were too complacent the grid were bewildered: Nothing they about the risks of terrorism; it took the clicked on their computers had any effect, twin towers collapsing to galvanize us. In and cursors dashed across their screens the world of cyberspace, we’re still too to disconnect circuits and delete backup complacent: Let’s stop playing Bambi! systems. Finally, the hackers disconnected ■ the backup electrical system, so that the Nicholas Kristof grew up on a sheep and operators in the control room were literally cherry farm in Yamhill. A columnist for The in the dark. New York Times since 2001, he won the Hackers are increasingly brazen. Pulitzer Prize in 1990 and 2006. When Russian hackers infiltrated State 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. 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.
