VIEWPOINTS
Wallowa.com
Wednesday, August 3, 2022
A5
Intern reû ects on his time at the Chieftain
OTHER VIEWS
Michael Reagan
OTHER VIEWS
Who got
America in H
this mess?
Jack Parry
L
ots of perplexed Americans are ask-
ing the question, “How did we get
here?”
They ask how is it that a rich, power-
ful and generally happy country that was
chugging along so smoothly in the 21st
century has almost overnight become an
economic, social and ideological train
wreck.
It’s a fair question – and the answer has
little to do with the pandemic and the col-
lateral damage we’ve done to ourselves
with lockdowns and the war on COVID.
Today, the country is divided into doz-
ens of red-blue factions who argue bitterly
about everything from federal spending
and abortion to oil pipelines, gun control,
vaccines and “corrective” gender surgery
for 12-year-olds.
The major liberal media have become
shameless lapdogs of the Democrats in
power in Washington, D.C.
Comedians are being canceled for
being incorrectly funny. Future U.S.
Supreme Court justices can’t – or won’t –
deû ne the word <woman.=
Our great and special country has never
been perfect, obviously. For starters, ask
Native Americans, Blacks, women and
gays.
But 2022 America has gone mad – in
every sense of the word. And the person
we can pin much of the blame on is ….
Barack Obama.
In 2008 the sainted liberal from Chi-
cago cruised into the White House on
the ideal of hope and change, his pow-
erful oratory and the promise of a better,
colorblind and more equal future for all
Americans.
But once in oû ce, as his big dreams
evaporated, he lit the û res and fanned the
û ames of much of the political insanity
and negative feelings about America we
are suû ering with today.
For example, Obama was the û rst pres-
ident in my lifetime who openly criticized
speciû c people in the population.
“You didn’t build that” he told busi-
ness people who’ve started successful
companies.
“The police acted stupidly” I think he
said when criticizing the Boston cops who
arrested professor Henry Louis Gates for
“breaking in” to his own house.
The whole “hate the police” theme –
which morphed during the Trump years
into the “Defund Police” campaign –
was essentially sparked by Obama’s atti-
tude about police and his ignoring of the
gang violence wracking cities like his
hometown.
Meanwhile, Obama’s wife Michelle
was the û rst û rst lady to say publicly she
was not proud of America.
And when Barack went oû to tour
Europe, he made it a point to publicly
apologize for America’s past failings.
But it’s now clear that the worst thing
Obama inû icted on the country in the long
run was Joe Biden.
Instead of his many possible but now
forgotten VP picks, Obama chose a long-
time, washed-up, gaû e-prone, <moder-
ate” hack Democrat and failed presiden-
tial wannabe from the who-cares-state of
Delaware.
Sen. “Amtrak” was carrying around a
career’s worth of bad bipartisan baggage.
Friend of KKK alums like Sen. Rob-
ert Byrd, foe of busing for school integra-
tion, plagiarizer, hawkish on wars in Iraq
and other Middle East places, hard guy on
urban crime, mis-handler of the Clarence
Thomas conû rmation hearings 3 Biden
held a bunch of positions that simultane-
ously oû ended or embarrassed his friends
and enemies.
Biden was the booby prize of VP can-
didates in 2008 – and we can thank
Obama for making it possible for Old Joe
to eventually become the booby prize of
American presidents in 2020.
President Biden – who some argue is
really the front man for Barack Obama’s
third term – is a mouthpiece for harm-
ful leftwing energy and environmental
policies that the “Old Joe” of old would
never push.
Sadly, we’re stuck with Biden for two
more years, if he can last that long.
But there’s hope for America to
become great again — again.
In the fall Republicans will retake Con-
gress. Obama’s socialist ideas and neg-
ative attitude about America will die the
political deaths they’ve always deserved.
And we’ll never hear of them again –
until 2024, when Democrats put Michelle
Obama of Martha’s Vineyard at the top of
their ticket.
Yikes.
———
Michael Reagan, the son of President
Ronald Reagan, is an author, speaker and
president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation.
Send comments to reagan@caglecartoons.
com and follow @reaganworld on Twitter.
i, I’m Jack Parry, and I was the
reporting intern at the Wallowa
County Chieftain in Enterprise
this summer.
Over the past two months, I have been
taking notes, awkwardly introducing
myself in public, reading, writing and
talking to people from Elgin to Joseph.
Even though it feels like the summer
has flashed before my eyes, I’ve learned
some pretty valuable lessons during this
experience that I hope will guide me
through the rest of my life.
When I first arrived in Enterprise as
an eager writer, I quickly realized that
my interview experience was extremely
limited. In my brief time as a sports
reporter in my sophomore year of col-
lege, I had only done interviews that
were mandated at the end of games or set
up through other people.
So, I set out to try and improve my
long conversations with sources, and
man-on-the-street interviews. While I
haven’t become a master at walking up
to strangers just yet, sitting down and
chatting with sources has become some-
thing I dearly enjoy.
But whether I was sitting down for an
hour with the Enterprise police chief or
just saying a quick hello on the street,
I always wanted to make sure the peo-
ple of Wallowa County understood I was
going to provide them with the most
truthful and useful information possible.
And the locals couldn’t have been
nicer. To everyone I interacted with
throughout my time, I just want to say
thank you. Thank you for giving me the
opportunity to ask challenging questions,
have real conversations and for showing
me respect.
Another lesson I’ve learned on the job
has been the ability to improve my own
discretion. Working at a newspaper that
has an editor who’s not in the office and
just one other reporter, being indepen-
dent has been crucial while on the clock.
Going out and finding the information
for stories can be a complicated process,
filled with many different plans depend-
ing on the information you get. In the
beginning, I had problems listening to
my instincts, which led to some stories
not turning out the way I pictured them.
It can be scary to trust yourself when
you are writing stories about pertinent
information being read by local people
when you grew up and live right next
to a whole different ocean. On the job
I went to my first rodeo, Fourth of July
Parade and air show. So my gut feeling
was sometimes confused.
However, as I’ve started to go with
my notions more frequently, I’ve noticed
an improvement in my data collection as
pieces to the puzzle become a lot easier
to see.
This leads me to my next skill I’ve
honed over the last few months, the abil-
ity to be creative within the boundaries
of the paper.
Coming from a sports beat report-
ing background, I’ve often experimented
with the style of my journalism, using
the creative writing side of my brain to
illustrate plays or important moments.
After arriving at the Chieftain, I
immediately struggled to adapt to writ-
ing local news articles.
While I may have had some frustrat-
ing realizations to start, I quickly began
to find more and more ways in which I
could be innovative without sounding
repetitive.
Sometimes, it seems like the general
public can turn away from hard news
articles for being boring. But no mat-
ter the topic, my goal has been to pro-
vide the most interesting story possible
with varying sentence structure, eloquent
verbiage and a logical presentation of
information.
This summer I would’ve been lost
without my coworkers, so I want to
thank my editor, Jeff Budlong, for his
leadership after taking over just before I
joined the paper. I also want to thank Bill
Bradshaw and Cheryl Jenkins for keep-
ing me company in the Enterprise office,
and imparting some great wisdom.
Living in La Grande this summer, I
drove to the Enterprise office twice a
week on Oregon Route 82, which was
around 2½ hours roundtrip.
Some people would look at that com-
mute and think that it would be misera-
ble to do, even twice a week, but for me
it was actually the opposite.
Riding on the route each time, I
gasped at the expanding fields of hay
near Imbler, Elgin and Minam, before
bending around mountains and being spit
out into the Wallowa Valley alongside
the beautiful Wallowa River. I looked
around the quaint towns of Wallowa and
Lostine before arriving in Enterprise,
with the sometimes snow-peaked back-
drop of the Wallowas behind me as I
walked into the office, something subur-
ban New Jersey just doesn’t have.
This journey to and from work
showed me that Wallowa County is a
stunning oasis with a tight-knit commu-
nity of passionate and hardworking peo-
ple. This realization inspired me to do
my very best to provide truthful, insight-
ful and sometimes heartwarming stories
to a deserving readership.
Thank you, Wallowa County.
———
Jack Parry is 20 years old and going into
his junior year at the University of Mary-
land as a multimedia journalism major.
Collaboration is lousy management of public lands
OTHER VIEWS
Rick Meis
I
was intrigued by the column Mark
Webb wrote recently about collabora-
tion. He makes common mistakes in
his less-than-accurate description of what
a collaborative should be if they are going
to be done inclusively and eû ectively.
If Mr. Webb believes what he stated
in his opinion piece, he would under-
stand that when it comes to public lands
management, a collaborative would be
unnecessary.
In practice, collaboration has become
a process of playing two sides oû against
each other in order to create enough guilt
in one or more parties that compromise is
reached. The primary problem is that it is
not based on sound science or best avail-
able data, thus eliminating the concept of
best management practices and the long
term needs of the resource to maintain the
natural values of the landscape into the
future.
The use of collaboration has become
a cop-out on the part of public land man-
agers to not have to do the work required
of them in order to achieve good man-
agement decisions. Agency budgets have
been slashed repeatedly making it diû cult
to do a good job, thus making collabora-
tion a fallback tool.
Collaboration has become a process
that gives validity to those whose activ-
ities are either illegal, incompatible or
damaging to public resources. Those
types of activities, using sound manage-
ment principles, should be restricted.
The goal of the normal data- and sci-
ence-driven decision-making process of
land management agencies is to û lter out
input that lacks substance and thus should
not be incorporated into management
decisions.
Public land management decisions
should be made using well-established
legal and regulatory processes. So-called
public interest groups on all sides use it
as a way to raise money and their proû le.
The politically motivated use it to reach
another successful failure by achieving
the lowest common denominator.
Our public lands are integral to main-
taining viable natural ecosystems. The
most guilty players in collaborations
are the so-called environmental groups
who have chosen to defy everything they
claim to stand for in order to curry polit-
ical favor, new donations or something
equally as shallow. It is unconscionable.
These groups should not be selling the
future of our natural heritage down the
river.
High-impact activities, whether indus-
trial or recreational, have intensiû ed to
the point where they’re no longer compat-
ible with long-range goals of agencies to
meet their obligations of conserving the
resource. A collaboration justiû es misuse
of the landscape. Best management prac-
tices, using science and best available
data, should not allow high-impact users
the unlimited access they desire which
squanders public land values.
Collaboration can only work if every-
one agrees that it is about what is best
for the long-term values of the resource.
There are inû nite examples of those enter-
ing into collaborative processes for all the
wrong reasons, thus collaborations give
bad results.
A retired educator and political science
professor wrote that if the future is to be
determined by citizen collaborations, then
a parallel track should be implemented
based on science that would evaluate nat-
ural characteristics of the landscape. This
track should consider the long-term future
of the natural resources and recommend
management actions to protect and main-
tain these values so future generations
will experience a natural landscape as we
did because of the eû orts of those who
have gone before.
Wait! Isn’t that what current laws and
regulations already require of land man-
agers? Isn’t that what groups involved in
collaborations say they believe in?
———
Rick Meis, of Halfway, is a retired
business owner who has been actively
involved in wild land and wildlife issues
in the Northern Rockies since the 1970s.
5 reasons women should consider annuities for retirement
LAYIN’ IT
ON THE LINE
Steve Kerby
I
f you’re a woman in or near retire-
ment, let me ask you this: “How do
you plan to take what you’ve so dil-
igently saved and turn it into a lifetime
stream of dependable, predictable, tax-ad-
vantaged income?”
If you’re like many of us, you probably
don’t have a ready answer to this question.
That’s because you’ve been busy doing
“all the right things.” You’ve been work-
ing, saving, maximizing your 401(k), pay-
ing oû debts, being a caregiver, running
a household, etc. It’s likely you haven’t
really had time to think about what to do
when the time comes to stop working and
live on what you’ve accumulated.
I want to suggest: Take some time to
consider annuities carefully. After spend-
ing time studying this often overlooked,
but powerful û nancial vehicle, I9ve come
to believe that nearly every woman plan-
ning on retiring could beneû t from the fea-
tures found in annuity products.
Here are a few reasons you should con-
sider an annuity when it comes time to
empty your “accumulation” bucket.
• An annuity creates guaranteed income
for life. When you deposit a lump sum
into an annuity, you enter into a contract
with an insurance company in which
the company guarantees you income for
the rest of your life. This will eliminate
a chief concern of many women enter-
ing the retirement phase of their lives,
namely, running out of money too soon.
• Flexibility and customization. Annu-
ities have come a long way in the past
few years, oû ering a full spectrum of
longterm care and inû ation protection
features. No longer are you constrained
to a <one size û ts all= annuity. These
new kinds of annuities now provide for
a new level of customization, safety and
functionality.
• Annuities
provide
predictabil-
ity. Many people, especially those in
their pre-retirement and retirement life
stages, want to know exactly how much
income they will have available when
they retire. If predictability is one of
your top priorities, then an annuity can
provide that.
• Zero maintenance. When you agree
to the terms of the annuity contract,
you’ll be assured of a steady income for
life even if you live for another 50 years
after retiring. An annuity is one of the
few available û nancial products you can
actually “set and forget.” There is noth-
ing to keep tweaking or moving around;
no more crossing your û ngers every
time the market hiccups.
• Tax beneû ts by using an annuity for a
portion of your nest egg allow that por-
tion to grow tax-deferred, just like the
money in traditional retirement accounts.
That means if you don’t take out all the
money for a while, you could see a sig-
niû cant tax reduction in retirement.
There are many other reasons that an
annuity, while it may not be for every-
one, is still worthy of your attention as you
enter retirement. Partnering with an annu-
ity specialist will allow you to examine
these safe money alternatives more thor-
oughly to see if they will work in your par-
ticular situation.
If you’d like to know more about how
women can use annuities to create safer,
saner, more prosperous post-work lives,
email or call me, and I will be happy to
send you educational information to help
you make the right decisions about your
retirement blueprint.
———
As an avid outdoorsman, Joseph and the
Wallowa area have been a big part of Steve
Kerby’s life since 1964. Steve is a Syndi-
cated Columnists member, a national orga-
nization committed to a fully transparent
approach to money management. With over
50 years in the û nancial services industry,
Steve specializes and focuses on each indi-
vidual client’s goals. Visit stevekerby.retire-
village.com or call 503-936-3535 for more.