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OPINION
East Oregonian
Wednesday, August 3, 2016
Founded October 16, 1875
KATHRYN B. BROWN
DANIEL WATTENBURGER
Publisher
Managing Editor
JENNINE PERKINSON
TIM TRAINOR
Advertising Director
Opinion Page Editor
OUR VIEW
Trump v. Clinton
bad for America
Donald Trump and Hillary
heck voters were thinking.
Clinton, surely two of the most
In some ways it is just a sign
divisive politicians in a generation,
of the times, when partisan rancor
are in all-out attack mode until the
has reached a fever pitch and
November election.
demonizing the
That is bad
opponent is the best
for the country.
to encourage
Both candidates way
Whatever political
voter turnout. In
have high
and cultural divides
other ways it is a
have been dug in the
low-water mark,
unfavorable
last decade, expect
when the best
them only to deepen ratings, meaning candidate each party
during the campaign
muster is the
that no matter could
and into the ¿rst
one that engenders
term of what will
the most fury from
who wins a
assuredly be one of
other side.
majority of the the Through
the most disliked
the
presidents in the
entire
primary
country will be system, only
modern era.
disappointed. about 9 percent of
It has already
started, too. Both
Americans voted for
parties’ conventions
Trump or Clinton.
consisted only of digging ditches
It’s a good reminder that the system
of demarcation and division. Only
for narrowing our presidential
late in the Democratic convention,
choices is a poor one and that few
by former Republicans like Michael voters have a chance to make a
Bloomberg, was there any attempt
meaningful impact on choosing a
to reach out and persuade members
nominee. It’s also a reminder that
of the other party. Trump tried
few people actually step up to the
half-heartedly to cajole disaffected
plate and cast a ballot when they
Bernie Sanders supporters, but was
have the opportunity to.
only able to go a few hours before
You don’t have to search too long
insulting Sanders and wasting that
before you ¿nd interviews of Trump
opportunity.
talking highly of the Clintons, and
It is perhaps understandable
vice versa. The Clintons of course
then that both Clinton and
attended Trump’s last wedding and
Trump have extraordinarily low
their children — Chelsea Clinton
favorability ratings. According to
and Ivanka Trump — are good
RealClearPolitics poll averages,
friends.
only 35 percent of Americans have
It’s enough to make the election
a favorable view of Trump while 58 just seem like a farce, a choice
percent have an unfavorable one.
between two narrow options
Clinton isn’t much better. Using the
orchestrated by a few and only
same data source, 40 percent have
exciting a few. The majority,
a favorable view and 54 percent
disappointed, will go on feeling
regard her unfavorably.
more and more removed from
Therefore no matter who wins,
politics and their country and their
a majority of the country will be
fellow man. The walls will go up,
unable to understand what in the
whether Trump wins or not.
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.
OTHER VIEWS
Retirement plan changes
will bene¿t Oregon longterm
The (Eugene) Register-Guard
A
mericans employed in the private
sector are pretty much on their
own when it comes to ¿nancing
retirement. Company-paid pensions
have all but vanished,
and Social Security
bene¿ts average 1,341
a month. Unless
workers have managed
to accumulate a sizable
pool of savings, their
choices in old age will
be to live in poverty
or stay on the job. A
new program taking
shape in Oregon will
broaden those choices,
and ultimately reduce
the burden on public
services.
The easiest way
to save for retirement
is through employer-
sponsored programs
such as 401(k) plans
that deposit a portion
of each paycheck into an investment
account. The deposits are sometimes
matched by the employer. Workers who
have access to such plans are 14 times
more likely to save for retirement than
those who do not.
But nationwide, 42 percent of
full-time private-sector employees
between the ages of 18 and 64 have no
workplace retirement savings plan. In
Oregon, about half have no access to a
such a plan. That helps explain why 55
percent of households with a worker
between the ages of 55 and 64 have
retirement savings of less than 25,000.
Unless these people act on their own to
set up an Individual Retirement Account
or something like it, they’ll face old age
without savings.
The Oregon Legislature confronted
this problem in 2015 by creating the
Oregon Retirement Savings Plan, which
will begin enrolling workers next July.
The plan will be open to all workers
whose employers do not offer a plan
of their own. It will be administered by
the Oregon Retirement Savings Board,
with the state treasurer as its chairman.
Last week Treasurer Ted Wheeler,
who pushed for approval of the plan,
announced details of how it will operate.
The high points: Enrollment will be
automatic — workers will participate
unless they choose
not to. No employer
contribution will be
required. The savings
rate will be 5 percent,
unless workers choose
to contribute at a higher
or lower rate.
The money will
go into Roth IRA
accounts, which means
that contributions are
made with after-tax
dollars but investment
gains and eventual
withdrawals are
tax-free. Investments
will be tailored to the
age of the worker,
with the objective
shifting from growth to
preservation of capital
as retirement nears, unless the account-
holder chooses a different investment
objective.
Workers who think they can’t
afford to save 5 percent of their pay,
or who prefer to set up their own
savings plans, can opt out of the state
program. But automatic enrollment
has been shown to double participation
in workplace savings plans. And even
low-wage workers in a plan with modest
investment returns can accumulate a
sizeable nest egg over the course of their
working lives.
A majority of states are considering
publicly sponsored retirement savings
plans; Oregon is further ahead than all
but a few. The social bene¿ts will be
broad. Oregon will be a better place
for everyone if fewer senior citizens
are living in poverty and turning
to the government for help with
housing, medical and living expenses.
Americans are increasingly on their
own in preparing for retirement — and
programs like Oregon’s will make
self-reliance easier.
Oregon will be
a better place
if fewer senior
citizens are
living in poverty
and turning to
the government
for help with
housing,
medical and
living expenses.
OTHER VIEWS
Obama’s American idea
T
here is a line from a conversation
a Barry Soetoro, his boyhood name
20 years ago between Barack
in Indonesia, can become a Barry
Obama and photographer
Obama and at last a proud Barack
Mariana Cook that offers an important
Hussein Obama — the country where,
insight into the president: “All my
as Obama said in 2004, a “skinny kid
life,” he said, “I have been stitching
with a funny name” ¿nds his place.
together a family, through stories or
Yet this America, whose fault
memories or friends or ideas.”
lines Obama the hybrid stepped
There was much to stitch: his
across 12 years ago, is perhaps more
Roger
lost Kenyan father, his Indonesian
divided than ever as his presidency
Cohen
stepfather Lolo Soetoro, his unusual
winds down. There was something
Comment
journey through various names and
about Obama’s blackness, his
identities, his black paternal side and
intellectualism, his cool distillation
his white maternal side, his youth in Asia, his
of problems that was intolerable to a wide
adolescence in Hawaii, his student years in
swath of the white working class angered
California and New York, and his coming-
by lost jobs, lost wars, lost security and lost
of-age in Chicago.
pride. These Americans have
What Barack Obama ended
felt left behind. They have
up “stitching together” in
perceived not outreach from
his path to selfhood — the
Obama’s White House but
unifying idea that became
condescension.
his core reference — was the
More than 2.5 million
United States of America. As
members of the American
he said in his keynote speech
armed forces have been
at the Democratic National
deployed to Afghanistan and
Convention in 2004, “In no
Iraq over the past 15 years.
other country on Earth is my
For a signi¿cant number of
story even possible.”
those 2.5 million families,
This was the moment
Obama has failed to honor
Obama emerged onto the
their sacri¿ce because, in his
national stage: “There is not
prudent realism (a “surge”
a black America and a white
in Afghanistan with a date
America and Latino America
certain to end), there is little
and Asian America — there’s
place for the heroic American
the United States of America.”
narrative.
— Barack Obama,
I can still feel the frisson his
I think a lot of this fracture
words stirred in Boston.
At 2004 Democratic was inevitable given the
In the dozen years
National Convention global economic context, and
since, his message has not
domestic political and cultural
changed. It was evident again
realities, within which Obama
in Philadelphia last week as he endorsed
worked. Still, he could not bridge the divide;
Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid. He spoke
perhaps he sharpened it.
of the American values that led his Kansan
Michelle also participated in Obama’s
grandparents and his wife Michelle’s family
1996 conversation with Cook, part of which
to see the children of immigrants as “just as
appeared in The New Yorker in 2009, and
American as their own, whether they wore a
worried that her husband was “too much of a
cowboy hat or a yarmulke; a baseball cap or a
good guy for the kind of brutality” of politics.
hijab.”
Obama talked about how Michelle was at
Obama was at his most uplifting. Because
once “completely familiar” and “a complete
he discovered America, pieced it together
mystery to me in some ways” and how the
after his years overseas, saw it as a newcomer
tension between those two feelings “makes for
might, understood from experience the space
something strong, because, even as you build
it affords for personal reinvention, he brings a
a life of trust and comfort and mutual support,
singular intellectual passion to the American
you retain some sense of surprise or wonder
idea: a nation of immigrants equal before the
about the other person.”
law dedicated to the proposition that among
America has been governed, for almost
their inalienable rights are “life, liberty and the eight years now, by a happy, grounded man
pursuit of happiness.”
who knows how to love a woman. That has
He admonished Donald Trump, the
not been the least of Obama’s gifts to the
would-be savior: “We don’t look to be
nation he stitched together in his personal
ruled.” No, Americans are engaged in “self-
quest.
government.” He was reminding Americans,
We were reminded of that gift last week in
at a critical moment, of the ¿rst words of the
Philadelphia by Obama and Michelle — and
Constitution: “We the People.” Of every color, are reminded every day of Trump’s threat to
creed, sexuality, race, ethnicity are the people
America’s “E pluribus unum — Out of many,
composed: That, for Obama, is America’s
one.” Trump, whose American journey has
strength; it’s what gave him his.
led him only to denigration of Khizr and
In no other nation is tomorrow so vivid,
Ghazala Khan, the Muslim parents of a fallen
yesterday so pale. Where you came from
American soldier, and to this arid conviction:
yields to American rebirth. There is no real
Hatred brings a headline.
America to take back, as Trump insists,
Ŷ
because America’s many-hued reality is a
Roger Cohen joined The New York Times
ceaseless becoming. It is a mosaic in which
in 1990.
“There is not a
black America
and a white
America
and a Latino
America and
Asian America
—there’s the
United States
of America.”
YOUR VIEWS
Despite law, little has changed
on limiting television noise
Of the few things Congress has acted on,
even passed a law about that actually might
make a daily improvement in quality of life
for many Americans, the Commercial Audio
Level Mitigation (CALM) Act seems to be
among the most wished for by the people.
Three years later, there has been no change.
Flaunting the rules, broadcasters have found
no consequence to ignoring federal legislation.
The process of ¿ling a complaint with the
FCC is arduous and apparently designed
to encourage giving up, not ¿nishing the
complaint.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, there
was a commercially available TV that had the
ability to control the audio level internally,
advertised as “smart, very smart.”
A TV sound regulator was also available,
but it required complex hookup and yielded
a dense 60Hz buzz. But the automatic
technology has been available for decades,
and not expensive, either.
What right do big corporations have to
ignore federal regulations and why can’t or
shouldn’t little guys like you and me get away
with Àaunting our own choice regulations"
Thomas L. Farney
Hermiston
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.
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