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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 21, 2017)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Tuesday, November 21, 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 Let’s help each other cope with the perils of aging America’s growing population of older people is often in the news. Nationwide, an estimated 10,000 Baby Boomers retire every day. And although many have years of good life ahead, there’s no getting around the fact that eventually we all need an increasing level of assistance. Since different generations of families often now live far apart, there is more need for locally provided aid, especially in relatively isolated areas like ours. Physical isolation is a fact of life in rural America. The percentage of Umatilla and Morrow County residents living alone increased considerably from 1990 to 2010, when the last formal census was conducted. And the percentage of people 65 and older jumped by more than 11 percent in Umatilla County from 2000 to 2010 alone. People power As we consider our aging population, especially those who become afflicted with dementia and/or Alzheimer’s, we know some who are fortunate to have a robust and caring group of friends. This undoubtedly helps people remain independent at an age when others might have been forced to move in with family or seek a professional care setting. Neither option is easy. What used to be called “old folks homes” are few and far between, victims of a changing labor market, more stringent regulations and other factors. At the same time, a lot of seniors are understandably reluctant to leave familiar and well-loved settings. Few want institutional care or to inconvenience family members. Rural places — including much of Eastern Oregon — have to do an ever-better job of creating and supporting informal networks of people to watch out for one another. Faced with astronomical increases in elder-care costs, governments at every level must support such hometown efforts by adding visiting nurses, coordinators, mentors and trainers. Ensuring that most seniors remain safe and content in their own homes will be expensive, but might be only a small fraction of what institutional care could total. Emergency response There are strengths and weaknesses to the “Silver Alerts,” which are issued for people who are older than 60, suffering from dementia, and known to be driving. When a vulnerable adult goes missing, local police can choose to alert state authorities. Alerts can then be shared between law enforcement agencies, the media and citizens who have signed up for notifications. Yet its main tools — illuminated signs on highway overpasses and text messages to cellphones — aren’t adapted to sparsely populated areas. At best, perhaps issuing an alert can inspire more intense on-the-ground efforts near a missing person’s home. Volunteer search and rescue groups might be key in some future local lost-person case. It’s possible to imagine a phone-tree system that would essentially create a posse to fan out and walk every trail and road looking for clues to the missing person. Planning and prevention Planning and coordination in the early stages can prevent tragedy later on. Relatives should make sure friends, neighbors and church members know whom to contact in an emergency involving a person whose memory is lapsing. It’s also helpful to have people check in on a consistent, predictable schedule. ID bracelets and GPS navigation devices for affected people who are still driving can make relocating and identifying them much more likely. As a society, we must not try to pretend these issues won’t become more common in the years just ahead. Ours is a place with a proud tradition of self-help, but that doesn’t mean we should allow anyone to be forgotten or go without the care they obviously need. OTHER VIEWS America is now an outlier on driving deaths T his week, millions of Americans cars, because trusting your life to a will climb into their cars to visit computer — allowing it to hurtle you family. Unfortunately, they will down a highway — can feel a little have to travel on the most dangerous crazy. But the status quo is crazier, and roads in the industrialized world. the rest of the world refuses to accept It didn’t used to be this way. A it. generation ago, driving in the United We don’t need to wait for the arrival States was relatively safe. Fatality rates of futuristic self-driving machines here in 1990 were roughly 10 percent David to do better. Other countries have lower than in Canada and Australia, Leonhardt systematically analyzed the main two other affluent nations with a lot of causes of crashes and then gone after Comment open road. them, one by one. Canada started a Over the last few decades, however, national campaign in 1996. other countries have embarked on evidence- “The overwhelming factor is speed,” says based campaigns to reduce vehicle crashes. Leonard Evans, an automotive researcher. The United States has not. Small differences in speed The fatality rate has still cause large differences in fallen here, thanks partly to harm. Other countries tend safer vehicles, but it’s fallen to have lower speed limits far less than anywhere else. (despite the famous German As a result, this autobahn) and more speed country has turned into cameras. Install enough a disturbing outlier. Our cameras, and speeding vehicle fatality rate is about really will decline. 40 percent higher than But it’s not just speed. Canada’s or Australia’s. The Seat belt use is also more comparison with Slovenia common elsewhere: One is embarrassing. In 1990, in seven American drivers its death rate was more still don’t use one. In other than five times as high as ours. Today, the countries, 16-year-olds often aren’t allowed Slovenians have safer roads. to drive. And “buzzed driving” tends to be If you find statistics abstract, you can considered drunken driving. instead read the heart-rending stories. Erin Here, only heavily Mormon Utah has Kaplan, a 39-year-old mother in Ashburn, moved toward a sensible threshold, and the Virginia, was killed in a September crash liquor and restaurant lobbies are trying to stop that also seriously injured her three teenage it. children. They and their father are now The political problem with all of these heroically trying to put their lives back steps, of course, is that they restrict freedom, together, as The Washington Post has detailed. and we Americans like freedom. To me, the Had the United States kept pace with freedom to have a third beer before getting the rest of the world, about 10,000 fewer behind the wheel — or to drive 15 mph above Americans each year — or almost 30 every the limit — is not worth 30 lives a day. But I day — would be killed. Instead, more people recognize that not everyone sees it this way. die in crashes than from gun violence. Many Which is part of the reason I’m so excited of the victims, like Erin Kaplan, were young about driverless technology. It will let us and healthy. overcome self-destructive behavior, without I was unaware of this country’s newfound having to change a lot of laws. A few years outlier status until I recently started reporting from now, sophisticated crash-avoidance on the rise of driverless cars. I’ve become systems will probably be the norm. Cars will convinced they represent one of the biggest use computers and cameras to avoid other changes in day-to-day life that most of us will objects. And the United States will stand experience. Within a decade, car travel will to benefit much more than the rest of the be fundamentally altered. “This is every bit as industrialized world. big a change as when the first car came off the Until then, be careful out there. assembly line,” Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan ■ told me. David Leonhardt is an op-ed columnist for Many people remain afraid of driverless The New York Times. Our vehicle fatality rate is about 40 percent higher than Canada’s or Australia’s. OTHER VIEWS Farmers, ranchers need NAFTA Lincoln (Neb.) Journal Star ith the fifth round of negotiations on the North American Free Trade Agreement set to begin Thursday, Nebraskans whose livelihoods are in or tied to agriculture have reason to be nervous. Uncertainty surrounding the fate of the pact between the United States, Canada and Mexico — from which President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to withdraw, possibly as a last-ditch bargaining chip — has caused Mexican buyers to begin searching for other sources in case they lose access to the American producers they’ve long trusted. If Trump truly wants to put America first, as he reiterated during his recent visit to Asia, he’d be best served by doing so in a manner that protects the financial interests of America’s farmers and ranchers, whose output benefits the country as a whole — particularly at a time of strain in their industry. Canada and Mexico have been the biggest customers of American farm commodities, with The Washington Post reporting agricultural exports more than quadrupled from $8.9 billion in 1993 to $38.1 billion in 2016. For as much as Trump frets about and equates a trade deficit as being unfair, giving short shrift to agriculture would only compound matters. Nebraska alone recorded a $2.8 billion trade surplus in 2016, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, with $6.4 billion in goods exported — more than W Florida Department of Elder Affairs The Silver Alert program is more useful for finding missing senior citizens in urban areas, where signs can reach many motorists, than in rural areas like ours. 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 Starkey wolf killing needs thorough investigation The wolf shot and killed near Starkey Experimental Station Nov. 2 deserved a thorough investigation before Union County’s District Attorney gave the story any credence. The hunter’s claim of self-defense goes against all science regarding wolf behavior in North America. These facts should have triggered serious skepticism and a thorough investigation before conclusions were drawn. Giving this hunter what appears to be a pass sends the wrong message to everyone. Little Red Riding Hood and the three little pigs are wrong. Now that wolves are being given a second chance around the West there is a need to educate the public, not perpetuate false fears. The greatest danger to human safety during hunting season is hunters themselves. There are numerous incidents annually of hunters killing or injuring themselves or innocent bystanders. The Starkey wolf was as innocent as the woman in Maine shot and killed Nov. 3 by a hunter while walking on her own property. The hunter’s story about being attacked by a wolf has to be rescinded and replaced with factual, scientific information about wolf and human interactions. In nature, wolves do not attack humans. The wolf situation is rough enough with rancher issues about predation. This shooting must be readdressed to bring some truth and justice to this tragic killing. Mary McCracken La Grande half sold to Canada and Mexico — compared to $3.6 billion in imports. Without the market access that currently exists for Canada and Mexico, the current slump in U.S. agriculture would be even worse. High supply has depressed commodity prices; NAFTA has served a critical role in mitigating it, at least somewhat, by making it easy to export within the continent. And, in a state where agriculture supports one in four jobs, the timing to potentially pull the rug out from the leading industry couldn’t be worse. Nebraska’s personal income has declined by 0.3 percent through the first two quarters of 2017, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts. The country as a whole, meanwhile, has seen 1.3 percent growth in that time. Among the 10 states to see declines, seven are in the central U.S.; Colorado and Missouri are the only states bordering Nebraska to report growth. This spring, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue convinced Trump not to withdraw from NAFTA by showing him an electoral map, Politico reported. With farm and ranch country being among the president’s most loyal strongholds, a move to leave the pact could endanger the livelihoods of many who supported Trump. With only two more rounds of negotiations scheduled, the upcoming meeting carries significant weight for Nebraska and the Midwest — and the president must heed their concerns about the potential damage a senseless exit would do to agriculture. The timing to potentially pull the rug out from the industry couldn’t be worse.