OPINION
Wallowa County Chieftain
A4
Wednesday, January 16, 2019
Sitting out the shutdown
Q
uestioning the fun-
damental usefulness
of government is
the backbone of some Amer-
ican political factions, nota-
bly including the now sel-
dom-mentioned Tea Party.
Most of these righteous skep-
tics don’t live off the grid in
libertarian enclaves, hatching
anarchist plots. Instead, they
are good people simply won-
dering what the heck all our
taxes and deficits pay for.
No matter whether a U.S.
citizen is anti-government or
not, we all will be increas-
ingly noticing just what gov-
ernment does, now that a sig-
nificant fraction of it has
been turned off by a political
squabble.
Any attempted discussion
of the ongoing partial federal
government shutdown inevi-
tably ignites bitter infighting
between those who believe
President Trump can do no
wrong and those who think
he’s a lightweight conman
doing the bidding of radical
talk-show hosts. However,
here in this mutually reliant
Eastern Oregon enclave so far
removed from the beltway, we
need not and should not resort
to useless finger pointing.
It’s fair to say that nobody
in Washington, D.C., gives
a moment’s thought to local
political analysis in the form
of angry Facebook posts.
What we must do is mit-
igate harm to local people
and assets, while calmly pull-
ing toward future election
results that put an end to these
ridiculous and damaging
shenanigans.
Beyond the stark impacts
of the government shut-
down on some federal work-
ers, this situation threatens to
delay payments to the Sup-
plemental Nutrition Assis-
tance Program, better known
as food stamps. About 18
percent of the population in
Wallowa County is helped
by SNAP.
Around half of these
households include one or
more disabled people, more
than 40 percent include chil-
dren, and around one-third
contain senior citizens.
While this sorry situation
grinds on, we all must do our
best to help with local food
drives, and contribute cash
to food banks so they can
address what is certain to be
a surge in requests for help.
State legislators and agencies
may need to shuffle spending
priorities to ensure our fel-
low citizens don’t go hungry.
Much remains uncertain,
starting with whether the shut-
down will be allowed to go
on for months — as the presi-
dent has suggested. How will
lack of federal salaries and aid
reverberate in the local econ-
omy, as spending on every-
thing from groceries to cups
of coffee begins to dwindle?
Is it time to convene emer-
gency community meetings to
plan responses?
This shutdown, like those
in the past, will eventu-
ally be resolved. It’s likely
most furloughed employ-
ees will receive back pay —
even those who, unlike the
Coast Guard and ICE, aren’t
still actively on duty. But we
should be sure to elect peo-
ple to Congress and the White
House who are prepared to
maturely and sensibly con-
front our national spending
addiction, border protection
and other priorities with-
out resorting to destructive
gamesmanship.
Shutdowns are a ridicu-
lously blunt weapon, when
what we really need are
national leaders ready to
make intelligent decisions.
Climate change and border walls
MAIN STREET
Rich Wandschneider
I
Contributed photo/Blue Mountain Eagle
Out-of-state hunting can extend the season, but planning ahead is important to acquire preference
points.
Road trippin’
his time of year finds most of us snug
on the couch watching football or out
on snowmobiles enjoying the snow.
But if you dream of taking an out-of-state
trip to hunt some day, you need to start plan-
ning now. Hunting in other states does take
some planning, but it really isn’t very diffi-
cult. Many people think out-of-state hunts are
only for that once-in-a-lifetime trophy, but
that doesn’t have to be the case. Quality hunts
for mature animals aren’t difficult to find and
participate in every couple of years if you
play your cards right. They can also be a great
way to extend your season.
For example, Idaho has over-the-counter
deer and elk hunts available. Out-of-state
kids can hunt there almost as cheaply as
hunting here. You could go there every year.
If you faithfully buy preference points in
Wyoming, you could hunt deer, elk or ante-
lope there every four or five years. Mon-
tana is on the spendy side but offers good
hunting opportunities. It takes some time
to build up the points to hunt deer in Colo-
rado, but not long to have enough points to
hunt elk. Also, buying points in Colorado is
pretty cheap.
If you do dream of that monster bull or
buck and keep telling yourself, “Someday,”
you need to start working toward it now.
Many of the trophy units in Utah, Wyoming
or Colorado take 15 or more points to draw.
Start building our points now while you’re
saving your money for the trip. If you have
a kid that loves to hunt, start building points
for them now. Most states offer deep dis-
counts for kids, making it easy to build up
their preference points.
T
SHOOTIN’ THE
BREEZE
Rod Carpenter
Going about it can be a little tricky. The
Oregon regulations make me feel like I need
a lawyer to interpret them. Other states aren’t
any easier, and each has its own unique
quirks. But with some time and effort, it can
be done. There are services like Cabela’s TAG
service that can do it for you. For a fee, of
course. Two magazines I know of that offer
good advice and walk you through the appli-
cation process are Eastmans’ Hunting Journal
and Huntin’ Fool. Neither are cheap, but they
both have great information on each of the
Western states’ drawing systems. You actually
have to subscribe to the magazines to get the
info. Newsstand copies don’t have it.
However you do it, now is the time to
start. Wyoming, Arizona, Utah and Montana
all have deadlines in the first three months
of the year. Start building your points now. I
can’t afford a Utah elk hunt now but hope to
be able when I’ve accumulated my 20 points.
In 10 years, you may have the money, but if
you don’t have the points to get the tag, it isn’t
going to matter.
Rod Carpenter lives in John Day and wrote
this column for our sister paper, the Blue
Mountain Eagle. Email your comments to
shootingthebreezebme@gmail.com.
Rod Carpenter is a husband, father and
hunting fool.
t’s ironic that the people most worried
about illegal immigration—President
Trump included—seem to be most
skeptical of climate change. My own tact
is to skip those loaded words, and just talk
about worldwide drought and its impacts
on conflict and migration.
A couple of years ago I read a book
called The Great Warming, by Brian
Fagan. It’s a chronicle of world his-
tory from about 800 AD to 1300 AD, a
period in which the earth’s temperatures
warmed, my Norwegian ancestors settled
Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland,
and England produced wine grapes. The
population of Europe exploded, but when
Fagan gets to Africa and what would
become the Americas, the picture turns
to drought—and devastation. California’s
live oak tree forests died and the coastal
population was reduced by half. The
Mayan cities with their sophisticated irri-
gation systems collapsed and populations
moved to the countryside—archeologists
continue to find these ancient cities.
Fagan uses interesting techniques
to trace the warming—thousand year
records of wine grape harvest dates, core
sampling in ice, etc. He says that we are
only now beginning to understand the role
of ocean currents and sun activity in the
huge shifts that move earth’s temperatures
and annual rainfalls. In high school and
college in California in the 1950s and 60s,
I don’t remember hearing about El Nino
and La Nina.
When we are talking about weather
and climate impact on migrations, we
don’t need to account for how much of
the changing patterns of temperature and
drought are due to El Nino and other
ocean currents, sun activity, or our own,
human intrusions with fossil fuels and
carbon emissions. What we need to look
at—and acknowledge—is that people
move when they are hungry, and they get
hungry when crops don’t grow—remem-
ber the “Dust Bowl”? They move from
flooded coastlands and burning forests.
They move when they are scared, and
they get scared when resources are lim-
ited and the fight over resources explodes
in insurrection and war.
I spent some time in the Middle East
50 years ago, and think I have some
notion of what goes on their politically,
but I completely missed the connection
between the Arab Spring and drought.
Some people were paying attention.
Wallowa County’s Newspaper Since 1884
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VOLUME 134
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P.O. Box 338 • Enterprise, OR 97828
Office: 209 NW First St., Enterprise, Ore.
Phone: 541-426-4567 • Fax: 541-426-3921
Contents copyright © 2018. All rights reserved.
Reproduction without permission is prohibited.
Henry Fountain wrote in the New York
Times in March 2015 that
An extreme drought in Syria between
2006 and 2009 was most likely due to cli-
mate change, and… the drought was a
factor in the violent uprising that began
there in 2011… Studies… showed that
the extreme dryness, combined with other
factors, including misguided agricultural
and water-use policies of the Syrian gov-
ernment, caused crop failures that led to
the migration of as many as 1.5 million
people from rural to urban areas. This in
turn added to social stresses that eventu-
ally resulted in the uprising against Presi-
dent Bashar al-Assad in March 2011.
A few years ago an exchange student
from tiny Jordan told us that her coun-
try’s population is 10 million, and has
over a million Syrian refugees. Turkey,
the country I lived in, has millions of ref-
ugees from Syria and Iraq. And Europe,
of course, millions more—from Syria,
Afghanistan, Iraq, and from central, east-
ern, and northern Africa. Way back in
2007, the BBC said that there were over
4 million African refugees in Europe, and
the stream of refugees from Africa and
hot, drought stricken areas of the Middle
East continues.
Closer to home, Gustavo Palen-
cio wrote recently for Reuters that “A
severe drought has ravaged crops in Cen-
tral America and as many as 2.81 million
people are struggling to feed themselves.”
He continues: “The drought, which is also
affecting South America, has been partic-
ularly hard on the so-called ‘dry corridor’
of Central America, which includes south-
ern Guatemala, northern Honduras and
western El Salvador.”
Will a wall keep these hungry people
out? From the Great Wall in China to the
Maginot Line in France—a line of con-
crete fortifications, obstacles, and weapon
installations built by France in the 1930s
to deter an invasion from Germany—
walls have not been effective in keeping
hungry people from moving. Germany,
awash in poverty and outlandish infla-
tion, found a savior in Hitler—a man who
promised them “Lebensraum,” room to
live across a wide swath of Europe. Magi-
not did not stop him.
In the real world, countries like ours—
and places like Wallowa County, Ore-
gon—that are lush, best do what we
can to deter world-wide drought, flood
and fire, and encourage accommodat-
ing development in the dangerous, mostly
hot and dry places in the US and in other
countries where people live under the
extreme stresses of heat, drought, flood,
fire, poverty, and human strife. Hungry
and scared, wall or no, they’ll be at our
door.
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