Recent editorials of statewide and national interest from New York’s newspapers:
The Poughkeepsie Journal on tackling corruption in Albany through criminal prosecutions and reforms.
Nov. 13
The timing is impeccable.
Just as former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver stands trial on corruption charges, just as former Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos faces bribery charges, and just as several other former state lawmakers are about to head to prison, comes this news: Another report gives New York government pathetically low marks for ethics.
New York, in fact, received a D- in a national report released last week that focused on transparency and accountability, undoubtedly leaving many in the state wondering how on Earth did New York avoid an F.
The report - done through the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington, D.C.-based news organization, in conjunction with USA Today, a publication by Gannett Co. Inc., which also owns the Poughkeepsie Journal - didn’t focus on criminal convictions. It looked at such things as budgeting practices and lobbying disclosure. Not surprisingly, it deemed New York worst in the U.S. for its state budgeting, criticizing the process that allows the governor and legislative leaders to meet behind closed doors and hammer out a deal. The fixes have long been known. Give rank-and-file lawmakers more power to make a difference. Put term limits on leadership positions. Don’t allow important bills to be bottled up in committees for clearly political reasons.
These structural deficiencies must be remedied, but so must the culture of corruption that has pervaded for too long in Albany. Over the past 15 years or so, nearly 40 state lawmakers have faced ethical or legal charges. In many cases, their downfalls have been connected to business dealings that were supposed to be separate from their “part-time” work as lawmakers that pays them a nearly $80,000 base annual salary.
Take, for instance, the case against Silver. He is charged with using his position to obtain millions of dollars in bribes and kickbacks masked as legitimate income. Specifically, he is accused of accepting nearly $4 million in attorney referral fees in exchange for lining up state grants for a doctor’s research.
But get this: His lawyers argue that what Silver did was not federal crimes but rather “longstanding features of New York state government that the U.S. attorney finds distasteful.”
Wonderful. Fortunately, a jury will get to decide Silver’s fate, but one thing should be abundantly clear to New York’s political leaders: It’s not only the U.S. attorney but the public at large that has grave concerns about how Albany operates. It will take a powerful combination of criminal prosecutions and legislative reforms to strike back, and the public deserves nothing less.
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Online:
https://pojonews.co/1QMP57K
The Jamestown Post-Journal on the New York Lottery and daily fantasy sports in New York.
Nov. 18
Last week brought just the latest reminder that we live in New York state, the land of “do as I say, not as I do.”
Eric Schneiderman, state attorney general, told daily fantasy sports sites FanDuel and DraftKings to stop accepting bets in the state, saying their operations amount to illegal gambling. He drew a sharp distinction between the operations of daily fantasy sports sites and traditional fantasy leagues, which he said were legal partly because they relied on months of smart play over the course of a season. DraftKings and FanDuel contests, he wrote, are about “instant gratification” and involve no long-term strategy.
“Our investigation has found that, unlike traditional fantasy sports, daily fantasy sports companies are engaged in illegal gambling under New York law, causing the same kinds of social and economic harms as other forms of illegal gambling and misleading New York consumers,” Schneiderman said. “Daily fantasy sports is neither victimless nor harmless, and it is clear that DraftKings and FanDuel are the leaders of a massive, multi-billion-dollar scheme intended to evade the law and fleece sports fans across the country. Today we have sent a clear message: not in New York, and not on my watch.”
Of course fantasy sports relies on chance - just ask any fantasy owner who had Tony Romo, Dez Bryant or any injured National Football League star on their roster in September. And it’s obvious that fantasy sports - daily or otherwise - are gambling because one puts up their money with no guarantee of making it back regardless of how much one knows about sports.
We may feel differently about Schneiderman’s actions if New York state didn’t sanction gambling that involves much more chance than daily fantasy sports leagues. The last time we checked, playing the daily lottery takes no skill and relies entirely on luck. The same goes for scratch-off tickets or, frankly, the latest spate of casinos that New York state recently approved.
The key question here isn’t if daily fantasy sports leagues are gambling. The question is how much New York state needs to make before its conscience is clear.
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Online:
https://bit.ly/1SYijzM
The Wall Street Journal on the backlash created by President Obama’s actions in Syria.
Nov. 16
President Obama on Monday assailed the U.S. political backlash against resettling more Syrian refugees, especially Muslims, calling it un-American. Well, maybe he should have thought about that before he decided to do so little in Syria and let Islamic State build a vast terror sanctuary.
“The people who are fleeing Syria are the most harmed by terrorism; they are the most vulnerable as a consequence of civil war and strife,” Mr. Obama said at a news conference in Turkey. “We do not close our hearts to these victims of such violence and somehow start equating the issue of refugees with the issue of terrorism.”
Mr. Obama was reacting to the political stampede, following Friday’s jihadist massacre in Paris, against the President’s decision to accept at least 10,000 of the millions of refugees fleeing Islamic State and Syria’s civil war. Every GOP presidential candidate we’ve heard is now calling for restricting the refugee flow into the U.S. At least 12 Governors are taking steps to bar them from their states, and Congress will vote sooner or later on blocking funds for Syrian refugee resettlement.
What did Mr. Obama expect? It would be nice, and we would prefer, if Americans accepted Syrians the way they have so many war refugees over the decades_from the Jews of Europe, to the Hmong and Vietnamese, to Cubans and Afghans. The West needs loyal Muslims of moderate beliefs to help defeat the radicals; we shouldn’t want to alienate them.
But refugees from those earlier foreign conflicts didn’t include agents who would continue the war on U.S. shores. As France is learning, Islamic State is only too happy to use the Syrian diaspora to plant its agents to kill the French. At least one of the killers on Friday is believed to have migrated from Syria through Greece and into Paris. Nearly all of the other migrants, Muslim and Christian, have no such bloody intent. But can you blame the average American for refusing to volunteer as a next door neighbor?
Mr. Obama was especially harsh on those, like Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz, who say Christian refugees should be a priority. “When some of those folks themselves come from families who benefited from protection when they were fleeing political persecution, that’s shameful,” Mr. Obama said. “That’s not American. That’s not who we are. We don’t have religious tests to our compassion.”
But Messrs. Bush and Cruz are right that Christians are under particular threat from Islamic State. If they aren’t killed for jihadist sport, they must convert to Islam or die. Their daughters are raped and forced into Muslim marriages. Their churches are blown up. The U.S. would have been right to accept and save more Jews from Nazi genocide in the 1930s and 1940s. Syrian Christians are no different today.
The larger point is one we’ve been trying to explain to our progressive friends since the war on terror began. An important reason to accept small infringements on liberty to prevent terrorist mass murder is because the political consequences of failure will be so much worse for liberal values.
Metadata collection or surveillance of mosques or Muslim students doesn’t compare to what a frightened American public might support if a Paris-like event occurred on Rush Street in Chicago or the Mall of America in Minneapolis. The internment camps for Japanese-Americans in World War II were a shameful period in U.S. history, but FDR, a progressive hero, allowed the camps under political pressure after Pearl Harbor.
The same point holds for overseas interventions. Mr. Obama boasts that he has avoided George W. Bush’s Iraq mistake by not intervening in Syria. But doing nothing also has moral consequences. These now include the rise of a terrorist caliphate, the worst refugee flood in Europe since World War II, and the increasing risk of Paris-like killings across the West. Mr. Obama’s foreign policy of liberal nonintervention may lead to the deaths of far more innocents than creating a Syrian safe-zone and destroying Islamic State would have.
If Mr. Obama fought Islamic State with half the vigor with which he delivers moral lectures, he’d find that a much less fearful America would welcome far more refugees.
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Online:
https://on.wsj.com/1SDSK6s
The Plattsburgh Press Republican on ISIS uniting the world against evil.
Nov. 17
The United States, as well as the rest of the civilized world, is horrified by the recent citizen bombings executed by the Islamic State last week.
Our country and most others of influence will now be provoked into action if they hadn’t been already.
Some Americans wonder why we, who have such devastating air power, don’t simply bomb all suspected terror enclaves off the map. The reason is that we respect innocent human life more than we decry the murderers. We will not bomb a nation of innocents in order to get the aggressors.
Nevertheless, last week’s precisely coordinated attacks are rallying most of the world to take the firm action that political differences might have prevented.
Choosing Paris as the victim might have been one of ISIS’s worst decisions. The City of Light is an icon of the West. And the attacks against innocent people were so terrible that all free people, including Americans, will be on their guard and calling for retaliation.
France is America’s oldest ally. Before we were a nation, France was entrenched in warfare with England, the country that was victimizing our citizens’ rights.
We bought the Louisiana Territory during the Napoleonic Era from France and stood by that country in two world wars in the 20th century.
So to witness attacks of the magnitude of the Paris bombings last week is an affront to our patriotism and historical perspective, as well as our own fears.
Now, ISIS says America is next. All Americans will be on alert, and, unfortunately, our way of life may for a time be altered because of the threat. Americans must now be on guard against terrorism in this country.
As Americans, we can’t even imagine that minds could conceive such barbarism. But we’re beginning to realize that ISIS must be stopped. Who else could inspire a unified response from the likes of Russia, England, France and the United States?
Why they would want to provoke us all defies reason. How they could hope to defeat us all is beyond deliberation.
So far, Islamic State has thrived on the recruitment of young, disenchanted and vulnerable minds, a few at a time. But the more outrageous its strategies, the more profound will be the response from powerful nations now forging alliances.
The good in most of the world will never be able to eradicate the bad in some of it. But the good will never yield and will never stop prevailing.
France’s responding bombardment of the perceived capital of the Islamic State and simultaneous arrests of and killings of some of the group’s leaders and members are a first step.
Our heightened vigilance is a second. But be careful not to think of peaceful Muslims when assessing ISIS. Our Muslim citizens deserve the same love and protection accorded all Americans. They are not to blame for the actions of misguided fanatics.
The world is uniting against the barbarism. Such evil as ISIS cannot hope to win out.
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Online:
https://bit.ly/1PA1615
The Schenectady Daily Gazette on freedom of expression and banning Confederate flags.
Nov. 17
Don’t let their spin fool you.
The Confederate flag does not represent Southern heritage. Maybe it once did, just as the swastika once represented optimism and success in Hinduism or as the inverted cross was once a holy symbol of humility.
It’s not that way anymore.
The Stars and Bars represent the darkest period in American history - slavery. That’s it. To bear the Confederate flag today is an act of defiance and repulsion, and tolerant people should abhor it.
But when it comes to banning the sale or display of the Confederate flag, another flag comes into play.
The American flag.
That flag stands for freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of expression.
We in the United States have the right to express ourselves in any way we wish, even if that expression is racist or discriminatory or otherwise offensive.
American philosopher and social justice activist Noam Chomsky once famously said, “If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.”
It’s that dilemma that directors of the Washington County Fair find themselves in as they consider a request by two citizens to prohibit the sale of the Confederate flag and related merchandise at next year’s fair.
Should they succumb to the request on the basis that the flag is a symbol of racism?
They certainly could. They’re not a government entity and they’re not bound by any restrictions on what they can or cannot allow to be sold on their grounds.
If they want to take a stand against racism and the symbol of it, then by all means enact a ban. It might cost them some revenue from vendors, but they will have taken a stand for what’s good and right, and it will be worth it.
But there’s a downside to that decision.
By giving in to anti-flag protesters, the fair directors would be sending a message that they don’t fully honor freedom of expression.
If someone wants to buy a Confederate flag, then why shouldn’t they be allowed to do so? This is America, isn’t it? Home of the free, tolerant of dissenting voices.
How can they allow some people who are offended by the flag to dictate to others how they choose to express themselves?
If you’re a member of the fair board, you’ve got a tough and unenviable decision to make.
Frankly, all this political correctness and suppression of expression is getting a little tiresome and is starting to threaten our basic freedoms.
As a society, we’ve become increasingly intolerant of opposing points of view and increasingly willing to deny people the very right of expression that we claim exclusively for ourselves. To preserve our right to express ourselves, we need to push back against that tide.
If county fairs symbolize a great American tradition, then what greater American tradition should they uphold than the tradition articulated in the very first amendment to the American Constitution?
Do fair administrators believe in freedom of expression, even for people they despise?
Or do they not believe in it at all?
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Online:
https://bit.ly/1NDBquv
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