Editorials from around Pennsylvania

Excerpts of recent editorials of statewide and national interest from Pennsylvania’s newspapers:

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MCDONALD’S DECISION JUSTIFIED

Management of the McDonald’s restaurant near Station Medical Center acted within its rights Friday in banning young people under the age of 18 from the restaurant interior and the eatery’s property outside if they are not accompanied by an adult.

The need for the unfortunate action stemmed from disturbances last Wednesday and Thursday following the end of Altoona Area School District classes.

During the latter episode, the restaurant’s owner was attacked by several young people…

Other establishments should follow the lead of the Station Medical Center area eatery if they, too, become targeted with similar disrespectful, unruly and dangerous behavior.

Most of the young people involved in the McDonald’s incidents probably wouldn’t have had such misguided “courage” if they weren’t part of what accurately can be described as a gang mindset.

A business shouldn’t have to limit its availability because of such conduct. However, without a guarantee that the youths’ parents would be acting to curb further examples of what occurred last week, the restaurant’s decision makes sense.

Others restaurant patrons should not have to deal with such intimidating circumstances; indeed, the restaurant might even lose some business from right-thinking customers because of fears stemming from last week’s incidents…

-Altoona Mirror

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MAN,IT’S HARD JUST TO LIVE, April 29

The through line for the protests sparked in these and other cities, in a history that spans well over 50 years, is not civil rights, or racial tensions.

It’s police brutality.

Questionable arrests, mistreatment or killing of blacks in the past year by police officers in Ferguson, New York and Baltimore were the same sparks that launched the seminal protests of 50 years ago in Detroit, Watts and other places, which fed the larger civil-rights movement…

Yesterday, gang members stood with Baltimore City Council to plead for an end to the rioting, according to a report in the Baltimore Sun. One gang member said: “I need a job. Most of the youths need a job. We need help. It ain’t right what people was doing, but you have to understand. Some people are struggling…”

While police behavior may be at the center of these events, and we can and must respond with better leadership and training, it’s also true that police are not a special class of racists running the streets. Police are simply proxies for the larger society. We are Michael Brown. We are Eric Garner. We are Freddie Gray.

But we are also Officer Darren Wilson. We are Officer Daniel Pantaleo. We are the police.

-Philadelphia Daily News

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CRIPPLING CONCLUSION

That devastating conclusion contained in a report from a grand jury investigating leaks from the Attorney General’s Office deals a crippling blow to the credibility of Pennsylvania’s top law enforcement official…

The case against Kane is rooted in allegations she illegally leaked secret grand jury information in an effort to embarrass a critic. Frank Fina is a former state prosecutor who headed up a sting operation that snared Philadelphia Democrats allegedly accepting bribes. Kane, also a Democrat, quietly dropped the case soon after she took charge of the Attorney General’s Office. When that story broke, Kane said the probe was poorly run, tainted by racism and could not be successfully prosecuted…

Exacerbating the issue are the findings that Kane leaked secret grand jury information to embarrass Fina for failing to file charges in an earlier corruption case. The leaked documents purportedly paint a picture of Fina not aggressively pursuing the case.

That finding led to recommended criminal charges that Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vitri Ferman is now considering. But there’s more on Ferman’s plate.

A three-judge panel has ordered Ferman to investigate whether Kane engaged in retaliation and thereby violated a judge’s order when she fired a state prosecutor who testified against her in the leak probe…

- Bucks County Courier Times

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IMMEDIATE ACTION NEEDED ON NEPAL

Nearly a million children in and near Nepal are in “urgent need” of humanitarian aid because of the massive earthquake on Saturday, UNICEF said yesterday.

By the time you read this, an army of rescue and humanitarian workers from throughout the world will be laboring to help victims of the earthquake. An 88-member search and rescue team from the United Arab Emirates was in Nepal. Israel had dispatched a 260-member search, rescue and medical team. Volunteers from British charities were in the air on their way to Nepal. That is a small sampling of global response…

Sympathy and small teams able to offer little more than advice are inadequate. People are dying right now because of the earthquake. More will perish unless real help gets to Nepal quickly.

Unfortunately, U.S. response to disasters, both domestic and foreign, too often is managed in a bureaucratic fashion - while other countries react swiftly and decisively.

This is nothing new and it has nothing to do with partisan politics. It is simply in the nature of a gigantic bureaucracy to worry more about complying with sometimes irrelevant rules and regulations than helping victims of disasters, whether domestic or foreign…

- The Lewistown Sentinel

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BUDGET CUTS NO EXCUSE; IRS MUST BE ABLE TO AID TAXPAYERS

IRS Commissioner John A. Koskinen blamed $1.2 billion in budget cuts since 2010 and another $1.2 billion spent implementing the Affordable Care Act for a cut in taxpayer services that meant millions of callers during the recent filing period were unable to get the help they needed.

But during the same time period, according to a House Ways and Means Committee report, the agency continued to pay bonuses to employees, including $60 million last year alone.

It is absolutely unacceptable to reward workers with bonuses when more than 8 million taxpayers had their calls disconnected by the IRS phone system, and 60 percent of those whose calls were not dropped were unable to talk to a person. And those who did get through had to wait on hold for an average of 30 minutes…

Koskinen contended that the budget cuts were an effort by Republicans in Congress to starve the IRS of funds so that it would not be able to implement Obamacare, as the law requires.

He said the agency requested a total of $600 million over the past two years for computer upgrades to deal with the new laws…

-Reading Eagle