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.