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.
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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\
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Contents copyright © 2015. All rights reserved. Reproduction
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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.