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About Wallowa County chieftain. (Enterprise, Wallowa County, Or.) 1943-current | View Entire Issue (April 13, 2016)
A4 Opinion wallowa.com April 13, 2016 Wallowa County Chieftain Liquor initiative has a dirty little secret f it ain¶t broke, don¶t ¿x it. That axiom is apt for the ballot initiative that would move liquor sales out of state-operated stores and into grocery stores. The measure is backed by the grocery industry. Petitioners will soon be gathering signatures. When Washington Voice of the Chieftain voters considered this choice in 2011, it became known colloquially as the Costco Initiative. That’s because Costco largely bankrolled the ballot measure campaign. Oregon is one of 13 states that maintains state-owned stores. They are a considerable moneymaker for state government. How the state would replace that revenue is this ballot measure’s dirty little secret. On the other side of the Columbia River, there is a measure of buyers’ remorse. The variety Washingtonians once saw in their liquor stores is gone. Restaurateurs ¿nd that particularly vexing. And the products cost more. Oregon’s burgeoning industries of craft brewers, distillers and winemakers oppose the initiative, because of what they see coming. Without the Oregon Liquor Control Commission stores, craft distillers would lose their access to a statewide retail network. If liquor is moved into supermarkets, brewers and winemakers will see their shelf space diminished. Grocery stores are a zero-sum game. If a body of new product gains shelf space, other products have less. OLCC stores produce revenue in excess of $200 million that’s used for state and local government services. The grocers’ ballot measure assumes the state Legislature will ¿nd another way to generate that amount of revenue. Good luck. Washington’s Costco Initiative has demonstrated who really wins with proposals such as this. The craft distillers, brewers and wine makers have it right. They will lose, big time. So will consumers. I EDITORIAL Correction The Urban/Rural Exchange program is an OSU Extension Service Program and was started by Maureen Hosty in Grant County, not by Todd Nash in Wallowa County, as reported in an April 6 article. Nash was one of the ¿rst hosts for the program in Wallowa County. USPS No. 665-100 P.O. Box 338 • Enterprise, OR 97828 OI¿Fe 29 1: )irst 6t., Enterprise, Ore. PKone 27 • )Dx 2392 :DOOoZD &oXnt\¶s 1eZspDper 6inFe 88 Enterprise, Oregon M EMBER O REGON N EWSPAPER P UBLISHERS A SSOCIATION P UBLISHER E DITOR R EPORTER R EPORTER N EWSROOM ASSISTANT A D S ALES CONSULTANT G RAPHIC D ESIGNER O FFICE MANAGER Marissa Williams, marissa@bmeagle.com Scot Heisel, editor@wallowa.com Stephen Tool, stool@wallowa.com Kathleen Ellyn, kellyn@wallowa.com editor@wallowa.com Jennifer Powell, jpowell@wallowa.com Robby Day, rday@wallowa.com Cheryl Jenkins, cjenkins@wallowa.com P UBLISHED EVERY W EDNESDAY BY : EO Media Group 3erioGical 3oVtaJe 3aiG at (nterpriVe anG aGGitional mailinJ of¿ceV Subscription rates (includes online access) Wallowa County Out-of-County 1 Year $40.00 $57.00 Spending time with cousins a great roadmap for life My son and I took six kids/grandkids to California’s redwoods over spring break — a 10-year-old, two elevens, two ¿fteens and a sixteen four boys and two girls. His wife had to work, so it was the two of us, two cars and the six kids — brothers, sisters, cousins. Growing up, I spent a lot of time with uncles, aunts and cousins. In Minnesota, I was the ¿rst nephew on my father’s side and thus the oldest as new cousins and siblings came along. That meant special treatment: a “money tree” at Itasca State Park, carefully primed by the uncles so that when I shook it pennies and dimes fell to the ground three weeks with Un- cle Al, without parents, at his “Hideout” resort on Island Lake, where I learned to thread a minnow on a hook and caught my ¿rst walleye and from a new un- cle, a baseball autographed by Marty Marion, then shortstop of the St. Louis Cardinals. As siblings and cousins came along, I had to learn to share the stage. But I was oldest and king of the Sun- day picnic and Christmas Eve get-to- gethers until we moved to California, where maternal uncles had kids my age. I went from king to compatriot, as we older cousins put salt in the sugar bowl for the younger ones, and eight siblings/ cousins traveled together in two station wagons with four parents pulling two travel trailers through Yellowstone and the Black Hills on the way to Minnesota roots. The four of us in my nuclear family each got a summer month in Minnesota with Uncle Al. I was 15, and they gave me the keys to an old Buick to get me MAIN STREET Rich Wandschneider and a small aluminum boat to the lake — little Lengby had no police force, and careful families entrusted kids my age to drive in town. Uncle Al is gone. I have not seen most of the cousins for years. I get reg- ular Minnesota Christmas messages and wedding invitations from Al’s kids, keep- ing me involved, however minimally, in the family. But I remember. Remember something special about these relationships. You don’t have to have a 4.0 gpa, be a super jock, sign up or pay an entry fee to be a cousin or a neph- ew. Uncles, aunts and cousins just are. And they are yours. You might grumble that one cousin is mean or that another pays you no mind, but you have to work it out. Parents and grandparents insist on the visits, so you learn to negotiate, for- give or forget — or just to get along. I thought about this as the eight of us made our way from Portland to Cres- cent City and then Eureka and the Val- ley of Giants. We stopped to measure ourselves against the trees — even cool teenagers can be impressed by the old monsters — to eat clam chowder and sushi, ¿nd star¿sh in tide-pools, swim in a very cold ocean (kids can do that) and visit the Oregon Caves. And at night we crammed into a couple of motel rooms and sat in the hot tub, swam and played in the pool. I think that we, as a society, have not learned to live in small families. It’s only been a couple of generations. I am not advocating six and eight kids per family, but we need to think about what we’ve lost and make it up in other ways. Two adults and six kids in two cars is easier than one adult and two kids in one car. Siblings and cousins ¿ght and rear- range alliances, but generally work their way through things without adult referee- ing. And because they know that they’ll still be cousins tomorrow, there is not as much posturing and the competition and the grudges are short-lived. When there is a gaggle of kids in a house, you learn to negotiate, and when siblings are a pain, there might be a cous- in to commiserate with. Cousins — espe- cially those just a little older — are good at teaching a new dance or making sure you know the right music. Cousins teach you that you don’t have to be best friends or lovers to get along. And cousinhood is safe territory, with limits — unlike smart- phones, texting, face-timing and porn videos — to learn to negotiate gender. Fi- nally, right or wrong, the six of you have to get along or a parent or older cousin will set you straight — not much room for “child entitlement” and helicopter parenting with aunts, uncles and cousins. But maybe the most important les- son of cousinhood is that not everything in life is a choice, especially not your choice, you lonely only child with no cousins. Sleep on that one. &oOXPnist RiFh :DnGsFhneiGer OiYes in Joseph. Government agencies want more and more It seems that every government agency wants more and more money. For what? More to create useless programs that hire yet more government workers? Putting in place programs that help nobody? How about wasting millions of dollars every year, when May and June roll around, to make sure the whole budget is spent — because if it isn’t needed and used, de- partments won’t get the same amount the following year, let alone an increase. Yet government needs more money, always. It seems this wanting more money has not escaped the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife. Once again, they have slid in a little charge that I suppose many people see as not a big deal. We Oregonians were promised many years ago that if we lived in Oregon 50 consecutive years and were 65 years old we could, after all the years of paying to purchase licenses and tags, get our license for free. It was called a Pioneer license and was available only to those who met this once-in-a-lifetime criteria. So, after all the years of purchasing and support- ing Fish & Game, we were supposed to be rewarded in our retirement years with a free license. Last year, I was rewarded with a free license, as promised. Along comes 2016. Oh wait, it is $6 this year. Not free like last year? Why is it $6 all of a sudden? In my opinion, if y’all don’t say something right this minute about this little charge for your supposed “free” li- LETTERS to the EDITOR cense, you will be sorry. After the charge is slipped in, what happens next? Once a charge is established, you will begin to see that go up in price, just like they all have done before. Pretty soon, you’re paying $100 for your “free license”. Say something now! Doug Dutton Joseph Congress’ version of resiliency I had the opportunity to attend a For- est Resiliency Project meeting. I was surprised to ¿nd this program had kicked off at least two years prior to the federal act of a similar name. After all, how often can you come up with a title like “Forest Resiliency?” After reviewing the House Bill 2647, the “Resilient Federal Forests Act of 2015” the title is a reÀection of the USFS program) authored by Rep. Bruce Westerman of Arkansas, I was really cu- rious to see how this was implemented. The USFS program is all about wild¿re suppression and forest health through diverse scenarios. Whereas the congres- sional version of “forest resiliency” is clearly about providing corporate log- ging interests access to our forests by re- moving inconvenient obstacles. Included are exclusions from EPA requirements, rules of bonding for costs of litigation before court action and re- duction in the number of members for advisory committees. The bill reduces or eliminates oversight of logging activities in our national forests. This is a very bad bill for the public and it has been approved by the House of Representatives, sent to the Senate and is currently in the Committee on Agricul- ture, Nutrition and Forestry. We must consider why our represen- tatives would approve such a biased bill. David Ebbert Enterprise Puppet marionette With the political election battles and dirt Àying for the of¿ce of U.S. president and others, it has occurred to me that it is not beyond comprehension that Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump and other of their ilk are being controlled by unseen, unknown sources who are pulling strings for their own bene¿t and, indeed, cheapening and degrading the of- ¿ce of president — much to the delight of our country’s enemies, both foreign and domestic. Alfred Jones /eZiston 6XEsFriptions PXst Ee pDiG prior to GeOiYer\ See the Wallowa County Chieftain on the Internet www.wallowa.com facebook.com/Wallowa | twitter.com/wcchieftain POSTMASTER — Send address changes to Wallowa County Chieftain P.O. Box 338 Enterprise, OR 97828 Contents copyright © 2015. All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission is prohibited. Volume 134 Where to write Washington, D.C. U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D — 516 Hart Senate Of¿ce Building, Washing- ton D.C. 20510. Phone: 202-224-5244. E-mail: wayne_kinney@wyden.senate. gov Web site: http://wyden.senate.gov Fax: 202-228-2717. U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, D — 313 Hart Senate Of¿ce Building, Washing- ton D.C. 20510. Phone: 202-224-3753. E-mail: senator@merkley.senate.gov. Fax: 202-228-3997. Oregon of¿ces include One World Trade Center, 121 S.W. Salmon St., Suite 1250, Portland, OR 97204 and 310 S.E. Second St., Suite 105, Pendleton, OR 97801. Phone: 503-326-3386 541-278- 1129. Fax: 503-326-2990. U.S. Rep. Greg Walden, R — (Sec- ond District) 1404 Longworth Build- ing, Washington D.C. 20515. Phone: 202-225-6730. No direct e-mail be- cause of spam. Web site: www.walden. house.gov Fax: 202-225-5774. Med- ford of¿ce: 14 North Central, Suite 112, Medford, OR 97501. Phone: 541- 776-4646. Fax: 541-779-0204.
