ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) - The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle on U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara as a potential successor to Attorney General Eric Holder.
Oct. 7
As Manhattan U.S. Attorney the past five years, Preet Bharara has shown he has no tolerance for lawbreakers, injustice and those who misuse their authority - qualities that make him well suited to become the nation’s next attorney general.
Few know that better than Sen. Chuck Schumer, who once relied on Bharara as his chief counsel. The senior New York senator shouldn’t hesitate to lobby President Obama, who is looking for a successor to Eric Holder, who announced his resignation last month as the nation’s longest serving attorney general in recent decades.
In fact, many of Holder’s priorities are aligned with the way that Bharara has run the Manhattan federal prosecutor’s office. Like Holder, he has also focused on national security, cybercrime and civil rights.
Bharara, who would become the first Indian-American to serve in the cabinet if tapped by Obama, zealously sought the extradition of radical cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri from the United Kingdom on charges of conspiring with members of al-Qaeda to kill U.S. nationals and attack U.S. interests abroad. They were later convicted.
Look, too, at how Bharara has gone after corruption. Last year he won the indictment of former Democratic Senate Leader Malcolm Smith and New York City Councilman Dan Holloran on corruption and conspiracy charges. Smith, with Holloran’s help, was accused of trying to bribe Republican leaders with $75,000 to allow the veteran state senator to run as a Republican for mayor of New York City last fall.
More recently Bhahara has distinguished himself for his backbone. Ask Wall Street. In this area he actually surpassed Holder in efforts to hold Wall Street big shots accountable for their abuses. Bhahara also has made it clear that he will continue to pursue Albany investigations left unfinished by Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s abrupt dismantling of his Moreland Commission on corruption in Albany earlier this year.
While it’s hard to equal the work done by Holder in the area of civil rights, Bhahara has proven he isn’t shy about standing up to injustice wherever he finds it. Just last month the federal prosecutor warned he may take legal action to force New York City to fix problems in its youth jails. Bhahara’s review of the city’s 10-jail facility found them controlled by guards who rule through “rampant use of unnecessary and excessive force.”
Bharara has the kind of record both sides of the aisle should have little difficulty backing.
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Online:
https://goo.gl/iqF4zh
The Adirondack Daily Enterprise on the Nov. 4 referendum on changing the system for redrawing election districts.
Oct. 4
On Nov. 4, voters will have the opportunity to change the way New York state draws its election districts. Proposition No. 1 would replace the current system - allowing the majority party in the state Assembly and Senate to draw up and approve its own districts once every 10 years - with a 10-member panel: eight of them appointed by the Assembly and the Senate, and the final two chosen by the first eight.
The panel would begin to offer redistricting plans for approval by the Assembly and Senate in 2022.
But the proposition would still give the final say on new election districts to the Assembly and the Senate, which, after rejecting two plans from the appointed panel, would have the power to adjust the districts themselves.
Some claim the new panel would be independent, but state Supreme Court Justice Patrick McGrath of Troy offered some clarity. He ruled Sept. 17 that proposition No. 1 cannot tell voters the redistricting commission it proposes to create would be independent. McGrath’s ruling said the appointed panel essentially would serve as a proxy for the dominant political forces in the state Legislature. The setup would undermine the purpose of the reform, which is to end a system that allows lawmakers to choose their own voters.
We agree with McGrath’s ruling. New York state’s democracy needs more independence from both of its major political parties than proposition No. 1 seems capable of providing. Voters hungry for any kind of change in Albany may approve the measure, but at least they won’t do so under any false belief the ballot initiative is providing an independent reform.
We recommend voting no on Proposition No. 1 and demand our leaders give us something better than this half-baked imitation of what they know would be truly just.
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Online:
https://goo.gl/5Z1kTH
The New York Times on the U.S. government and health care system’s reaction to the Ebola epidemic.
Oct. 7
The widening Ebola epidemic in West Africa - combined with the fears generated by an Ebola patient who carried the virus to Dallas - have led to calls for the United States to screen travelers when they reach American airports. That is a reasonable defensive tactic if done judiciously, although it is unclear if that would have stopped the Liberian man, who carried the virus to Dallas before developing symptoms.
The American health care system needs to react with greater vigilance when cases do reach this country. It is incredible that doctors in a Dallas hospital reportedly made no effort to ascertain the patient’s travel patterns, and there were delays in cleaning the Dallas apartment where he had been staying, disposing of the medical waste and moving other residents of the apartment to a safer location.
Top American health officials are strongly opposed, with good reason, to take the more extreme step of banning all travel to the United States from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, where the epidemic is concentrated, as several prominent Republicans, like Louisiana’s governor, Bobby Jindal, have recommended. That could actually hamper the battle to contain the epidemic abroad - the first line of defense against the disease - in part by leaving Americans who are risking their lives to contain the epidemic stranded in Africa with no way to return home. If volunteer workers can’t return home, they may elect not to go in the first place, thus weakening the fight against the epidemic.
Currently, air travelers are screened in West Africa before they are allowed to board planes leaving their countries. Their temperatures are checked, and they must fill out a detailed questionnaire asking if they have various symptoms, such as fever, headache or vomiting, and if they have had any contact with Ebola patients or other possible exposures. The questionnaire is comprehensive, well designed and useful - assuming travelers answer honestly.
Thomas Eric Duncan, who took the virus to Dallas, did not answer honestly. He had no temperature when he left Liberia or when he first arrived in Dallas. But he lied on a questionnaire. When asked if he had been exposed to anyone with Ebola, he answered no, even though he had carried an Ebola victim shortly before she died. He is now in critical condition in a Dallas hospital. So far, none of the people he had close contact with have developed symptoms.
There is room to improve the screening in West Africa, where government officials and workers are often incompetent and in some cases unable to use the temperature devices they have been given. Still the system seems to be working. Though the epidemic has been growing since it was first identified in March, only one case, Mr. Duncan’s, has reached the United States, while scores of people have been blocked from boarding planes.
Even so, it makes sense to add another layer of protection at airports in this country. Travelers from West Africa could be asked to fill out an additional questionnaire, on which they might be less tempted to lie since they will already have reached American soil. Verbal questioning could further probe whether a passenger is likely to be infected. Until the epidemic in West Africa is controlled, it remains possible, even likely, that another Ebola case would reach this country. The American health care system should be prepared to move quickly, treat the victim and trace and isolate all people the patient had contact with. Bungled responses like the one in Dallas are simply unacceptable.
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Online:
https://goo.gl/X975Ve
The Times Union of Albany on oil train safety and regulation
Oct. 6
Federal and state regulators trying to grasp the downside of the booming crude oil business need look no further than the Capital Region to get a sense of the trepidation over the rail and oil industries’ continuing lack of regard for public safety and health.
The oil industry has its foot jammed on the gas to the point that the landscape around it is blurred. Boosted by a flood of shale oil, the U.S. has become the world’s top producer of crude oil and liquids separated from natural gas, according to Bloomberg News. And the rail industry is riding this wave, hauling more than 15,000 carloads of crude oil and petroleum weekly this year, half again as much as it hauled in 2006, says the International Business Times.
With this boom has come increased threats to public safety and health. There have been eight significant accidents, including the Lac-Megantic, Quebec, disaster last summer in which 47 were killed and a small downtown was flattened.
Downtown Albany is ringed by tank cars filled with potentially explosive crude; high-hazardous trains whip through many of our communities. The surge through the Port of Albany and on the Capital Region’s freight lines has grown to 2.8 billion gallons.
The federal Department of Transportation proposed new rules in July to make the crude oil industry safer. But bureaucracy is slow, and the rail and oil industries are behaving as if they know it, squeezing in every under-regulated moment on this dangerous crude oil wave. According to an Associated Press report last week, the industries are urging federal regulators to give them up to seven years to make the crude oil industry safer.
And change won’t speed up without efforts like that initiated last week by Albany County Executive Dan McCoy and Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan, urging Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx to use his authority to:
- Limit speeds on high-hazard trains passing through local cities.
- Order rail companies to immediately provide more advance information to local responders.
- Order local companies to only accept shipments from retrofitted or newer, safer models of tank cars.
- Require crude oil be treated to make it more stable and less flammable before being shipped.
- Mandate new safety standards even on trains with fewer than 20 cars.
- Mandate automated braking systems for rail companies now.
- Require financial guarantees from rail oil carriers to compensate local authorities after accidents.
Environmentalists also stepped up last week, accusing the state Department of Environmental Conservation of inadequately safeguarding residents around Albany’s port. They said a full environmental review of crude oil operations is needed, which DEC, surprisingly, has not required.
Powerful voices from our area are straining to be heard over the engines of the rail and oil industry. We urge regulators to tune in.
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Online:
https://goo.gl/m3UKzi
The Oneonta Daily Star on the retirement of Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter.
Oct. 1
The sports world is going to miss Derek Jeter.
Amid all the well-deserved accolades for Jeter’s standout baseball career with the Yankees were many marveling about how he managed to thrive in New York’s often-frenzied media environment without even one incident calling his character into question.
But for those with long memories, there actually was one minor hiccup, but in typical Jeter charmed-life fashion, even that was turned into a positive.
The late George Steinbrenner was the Yankees’ volatile owner back in 2003, known for firing managers, rehiring them and firing them again seemingly at his whim at the time. He also wasn’t shy about sometimes brutally calling his players out for sins real or imagined.
In 2003, Steinbrenner opined that Jeter - then and now a bachelor - was partying too much and not paying sufficient attention to baseball. Jeter, proud of his work ethic, was outraged.
The result: A classic television commercial for VISA credit cards that begins with Steinbrenner in his office berating a calm Jeter and ending in a nightclub with Jeter on a conga line . and Steinbrenner dancing at the end of it.
Jeter has been honored in ballparks all over the country this year, culminating in a storybook game-winning hit Thursday in the bottom of the ninth inning of his last game at Yankee Stadium and a laudatory pre-game Red Sox ceremony before a cheering, sold-out Fenway Park throng in Boston for the final game of his career Sunday.
“I don’t know many people who could have united this crowd,” Yankees manager Joe Girardi said. “There’s so much history here, and there have been a lot of ugly things happen, things you wouldn’t want people to see. But today it felt like it was all one team.”
“Derek has been the benchmark for character and class in a baseball uniform,” said Tampa Bay Rays All-Star Evan Longoria. “He has inspired a generation to play baseball the way it was meant to be played.”
Even as Cooperstown eagerly awaits Jeter’s all-but-certain induction into the Hall of Fame in 2020, we hope that the class with which he played the game echoes longer in the athletic pantheon than the memory of his many on-field exploits.
On Sunday - the same day Jeter retired - New York Jets quarterback Geno Smith responded to a heckling fan with a two-word profane epithet. Far worse, the recent horrid and indefensible incidents in the National Football League involving domestic violence have been well-documented.
And next baseball season, the Jeter-less Yankees will welcome back Alex Rodriguez, the baseball poster child for cheating, lying and use of illegal performance-enhancing drugs.
Derek Jeter will certainly miss baseball . but the sports world figures to miss him a lot more.
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Online:
https://goo.gl/pKUONP
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