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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 8, 2018)
A4 East Oregonian Saturday, December 8, 2018 CHRISTOPHER RUSH Publisher KATHRYN B. BROWN Owner DANIEL WATTENBURGER Managing Editor WYATT HAUPT JR. News Editor Founded October 16, 1875 OUR VIEW Postal Service a necessary service T he U.S. Postal Service is an essential part of American life, and especially here in rural Oregon. Its financial troubles in the last decade, while under- standable, are a serious concern and require serious action. A federal task force, established in an executive order by President Trump, on Tuesday published a report looking at USPS and suggest- ing a route to sustainability. Because, frankly, the current plan will not work. Since 2007, the Postal Service has lost $69 billion, and is expected to lose tens of billions more in the coming decade. Its problems aren’t a surprise. Peo- ple are mailing fewer letters every year as technology offers alternative means of communication. Cellular text messaging alone — the ability to send a quick note to far-off friend or relative that they can read at their convenience — makes the hand-writ- ten letter seem obsolete. Add the ability to include pictures and vid- eos, and share it all with your entire family tree at once, and it’s no won- der the local postal carrier has less in their bag than a decade ago. On top of that, pension costs are taking their toll and will only get more burdensome. It’s the same problem facing other public entities like schools and governments. The study does mention the impor- tance of postal service in rural areas, which we’re glad it recognizes. About a third of all mail is delivered to rural areas, despite the fact that only about 20 percent of the popula- tion lives there. That points to the fact that we are more reliant on the service than those who live in big cities. And for some, the daily mail is the best connection to the outside world. Not only does it deliver a newspaper and letters, there are often checks, bills and even med- ication. It’s a concept that is likely lost on the vast majority of urban dwellers, many of whom are accus- tomed to high-speed internet and a 24-hour pharmacy around the corner. The report’s timing is interesting as the Postal Service was closed the next day — Wednesday, Dec. 5 — to honor late president George H.W. Bush. It’s been common practice to suspend mail delivery and other fed- eral agencies to honor the deaths of former presidents. On Thursday the carriers worked to play catch-up with all the holi- day mail. If there’s one time of year where it’s easy to see the value of the Staff photo by E.J. Harris Mail carrier Diane Barton delivers mail to a cluster of mailboxes Thursday on Southeast Cassens Court in Hermiston. mail service, this is it. It’s the month of Christmas cards, which make the trip to the mailbox extra special, and packages. In order to keep delivering that mail, the study suggests USPS raise prices on package delivery. It’s a good idea because it embraces changes in technology — using the boom in online shopping to stabi- lize revenue. The Postal Service remains the best option for getting an Amazon purchase to a front door anywhere in the country, and the USPS should leverage that service. It makes far more sense than inch- ing up the price of a stamp for letter delivery. We need the Postal Service, and we need it to be consistent. It’s clear that change must come, and we hope that change means an aggressive pur- suit of new revenue and an embrace of emerging technology. OTHER VIEWS The deadly soul of a new machine the host who rebels in the television series “Westworld.” Shelley’s concerns were raised at the ry to imagine the last 11 minutes of peak of the Industrial Revolution, when the Western world was transformed from sleepy Lion Air Flight 610 in October. The agricultural societies into a frenetic age of plane is a new machine, Boeing’s factories, machines and overcrowded cities. sleek and intelligent 737 Max 8, fitted with All the helpful inventions also pro- an advanced electronic brain. After duced mass dislocation, life-killing takeoff, this cyberpilot senses that pollution, child labor and — as per something is wrong with the angle the invention of the cotton gin in of ascent and starts to force the jet- liner down. the American South — an expan- sion of human enslavement. A tug of war follows between Today we are close to creat- men and computer, at 450 miles ing a human brain inside a com- an hour — the human pilots trying puter — an entirely new species. to right the downward plunge, the T imoThy In his book “Sapiens,” Yuval Noah automatic pilot taking it back from E gan Harari takes us through a mostly them. The bot wins. The jetliner COMMENT upbeat tour of humanity since the crashes into the Java Sea. All 189 cognitive revolution of 70,000 onboard are killed. years ago. At the end of the book — our And here’s the most agonizing part: The time — he warns about the new being, the killer was supposed to save lives. It was a cyborg now taking shape in a lab near you. smart computer designed to protect a grav- ity-defiance machine from error. It lacks The CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, judgment and intuition, precisely because hit a similar cautionary note at the compa- ny’s recent annual shareholder meeting. Big those human traits can sometimes be fatal in guiding an aerodynamic tube through the Tech, he said, should be asking “not what computers can do, but what they should do.” sky. It’s the “can do” part that should scare We still don’t know the exact reason the you. Facebook, once all puppies, baby pic- pilots of that fatal flight couldn’t disable tures and high school reunion updates, is a the smart system and return to manual con- trol. It looks as if the sensors were off, insti- monster of misinformation. And Facebook’s gating the downward spiral. A report by the creator is more clueless than Dr. Fran- kenstein about the dangers of what he has Federal Aviation Administration in 2013 unleashed on the world. found that 60 percent of accidents over a Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, has decade were linked to confusion between glibly assured us that building advanced pilots and automated systems. artificial intelligence systems will root out But it’s not too much of a reach to see the hate speech, lies and propaganda passed Flight 610 as representative of the hinge in among the 2 billion active users of Face- history we’ve arrived at — with the bots, book. But fake news — whether gossip the artificial intelligence and the social shared by family members or the toxic kind media algorithms now shaping the fate of spread by Russians in basements — is the humanity at a startling pace. mother’s milk of Facebook. The AI may Like the correction system in the 737, only make it easier for mass manipulation. these inventions are designed to make life In that sense, Facebook is headed for its easier and safer — or at least more profit- able for the owners. And they do, for the own crash into the sea. Driverless cars will soon be available for most part. The overall idea is to outsource ride-sharing in the United States. If they can certain human functions, the drudgery and reduce the carnage on the roads — more things prone to faulty judgment, while retaining master control. The question is: At than 70 million people killed and 4 bil- lion injured worldwide since the dawn of what point is control lost and the creations the auto age — this will be a good thing. take over? How about now? Except that this year a bot-car killed a It was exactly 200 years ago that Mary woman in a crosswalk in Arizona, and oth- Shelley published a story of a monster who ers have been slower than humans to react. is still very much with us. Her book “Fran- kenstein” is about the consequences of man There shouldn’t be any rush — except from the profit drivers at the ride-sharing compa- playing God. You can see permutations of the monster, a not-unsympathetic patchwork nies — to hand over the steering wheel to a driver without a heartbeat. of human parts, in characters like Dolores, By TIMOTHY EGAN New York Times T OTHER VIEWS of Oregon politics. The great major- Oregon politics leave us nature ity of Oregon voters live within just a few miles of the Willamette River. The votes feeling helpless I was very sad to see this far left lib- eral Kate Brown re-elected recently. Dis- appointed we will continue to suffer from her ridiculous stand on immigration and on the embarrassing sanctuary status she has championed for Oregon. She is proud of the fact that she has engineered some 15 lawsuits against the federal government, which is trying hard to enforce immigration law. Brown defies that. We saw the results of this attitude as the ultra-radical and terrorist group known as Antifa surrounded the ICE headquarters in Portland. Believe it or not, Brown’s new $22.6 billion general fund budget includes $2 million for legal counseling for illegal immigrants in Oregon. Get that? Legal counseling for illegal immigrants — isn’t that an oxymoron? So our tax money is now going to pay legal fees to help Kate Brown defy federal laws (15 lawsuits she has filed against the government) and to support illegal aliens (legal counseling). Also, after running one of the most expen- sive — well funded — campaigns in Ore- gon history, now she has decided to offer a constitutional amendment limiting fund- ing of future Oregon elections? She didn’t mind spending a horrendous amount of money to get re-elected, but she doesn’t want anyone else to. I remind the good people of Eastern Oregon of a graph that really expressed the 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. and feelings and opinions of us here in Eastern Oregon don’t count for much on major issues like illegal immigration. Feel a little helpless? I sure do. David Burns Pendleton New education funding is encouraging sign With the 2019 legislative session just around the corner, I was encouraged last week to see Gov. Kate Brown’s proposed education budget and hear her call to raise new money to invest in our students. For nearly three decades we have under- funded schools and left our local school boards, such as the Pendleton School Board on which I serve, scrambling every year to make do with ever-scarcer resources. It is so refreshing to finally hear a meaningful proposal to fund our schools in a way that will allow our children a chance to reach their potential. I salute the governor’s vision and call on our elected legislators to find a way to reverse the downward spiral of underfund- ing our schools. The Joint Interim Com- mittee on Student Success is working on a blueprint to pay for a high-quality educa- tion system, and we cannot let this opportu- nity get away from us. Dale Freeman, board chairman Pendleton School District 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 9780, or email editor@eastoregonian.com.
