Editorials from around Pennsylvania

Editorials from around Pennsylvania:

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FOOD FOR LIFE: A GLOBAL REPORT DESCRIBES THE DEPTH OF MALNUTRITION, Oct. 14

The 2015 Global Nutrition Report, produced by an independent group of international stakeholders, contains at least two compelling figures.

The first is that, in an era of great technological progress, the world has an estimated 1 billion malnourished people. The second is that 1.3 billion tons of food are wasted each year, enough to feed 3 billion people- indeed, everyone who is hungry with plenty left over.

It’s an appalling picture, one that speaks to the uneven distribution of wealth in the world and one that challenges those who have to find better ways of helping those who have not.

The report was funded by numerous sources, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, the European Commission and the governments of Canada, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States.

In the United States, where overeating is a common problem, most people have access to more food on a daily basis than they need. Americans, at home or in restaurants, throw away tons of uneaten food every day. The challenge is to find some method of transferring such excess nourishment to those in need.

It can be done locally, through institutions such as the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank. It is also possible to donate money to food banks and other organizations that try to meet the needs of the hungry. Many international aid organizations also make good use of donations that try to attack the problem.

The real health burden of malnutrition is borne by the poor of this world, who live in countries such as Haiti, South Sudan, Bangladesh and the Central African Republic. It is ironic that the need is most severe in the places that are hardest to help, given wars, corruption and hostile geography.

But none of these vexing realities excuse those around the world with plenty to eat from striving to help those who are malnourished.

- The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

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CORRUPTION’S HIGH PRICE GOES BEYOND LEGAL FEES, Oct. 13

Pennsylvanians have paid more than $2.8 million for defense lawyers since 2011, mostly in cases involving corruption that sent lawmakers to jail, according to an Associated Press report this week. Legal fees often went to lawyers for General Assembly members or legislative staff who were called as witnesses, not suspects. All such payments end when a staffer or member is charged with a crime. Senate Democrats and Republicans did not disclose to The Associated Press the names of all of those receiving taxpayer-financed attorneys, and documents provided were heavily redacted.

Corruption has many costs- most importantly a loss of trust in public institutions.

The Legislature surely is one such body. If its mandates- for example to quit texting while driving (Pennsylvania law since 2012) -appear reasonable and just, they are more likely to be obeyed.

All the better if the crafters of those laws seem just and legitimate. If they don’t, cynicism can develop (“I bet those lawmakers text and drive”).

Fortunately, Pennsylvanians behave better than their top elected officials have in recent years. Otherwise, we might have been plunged into lawlessness.

Scandals involving the use of taxpayer-financed computers and staff for political purposes sent the Legislature’s top elected officials to prison, among them two former state House speakers, Republican John Perzel and Democrat Bill DeWeese, and Bob Mellow, the state Senate’s former Democratic leader.

A top prosecutor in the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office told a joint House committee in 2012 that restitution ordered by the courts in those legislative scandals totaled more than $4.8 million. The total includes Perzel’s $30,000 in fines and $1 million in restitution, and DeWeese’s $25,000 in fines and $117,000 in restitution.

That hardly pays for the damage done to the image of the House- or to the halls of the Capitol, where the plaques beneath the convicted speakers’ portraits now note their convictions. But at least it can be counted against the $2.8 million spent on lawyers paid for others who worked in the Capitol- often innocent of any corruption themselves but fearful of being questioned about what they might have seen their bosses doing.

It makes sense for the public to pay for attorneys for those not guilty of corruption but who, in their public duties, might have witnessed actions that amount to corruption.

The remaining issue is Senate officials’ refusal to come clean on the full list of those who received taxpayer help in paying their attorneys’ fees. If all was on the up-and-up, those names should be made available without shame. If not, then there is a bigger problem than a breach of the spirit of Pennsylvania’s Right-to-Know Law (which, shamefully, does not apply to the Legislature).

Until Senate officials release the names of those provided legal help on the taxpayers’ dime, and do so with as little redaction as possible, the black mark of corruption will continue to hang over the Capitol.

Senate leaders should lift this cloud.

- LNP

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SAVE PERKINS LOAN PROGRAM, Oct. 14

Congressional Republicans might be able to make a case for eliminating federal student loan programs, but there is no justification for targeting programs designed to help the poorest students.

Led by Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Senate Republicans recently allowed the 50-year-old Perkins Student Loan program to lapse Oct. 1. Nationwide, about 500,000 of the lowest-income students each year take out about $1.2 billion in Perkins loans through 1,500 participating colleges. The loans are at 5 percent interest and have longer repayment deferral periods than other federal student loans.

In Pennsylvania, about 40,000 students at more than 100 schools received about $70 million in loans last year. As noted recently by Wilkes University President Patrick Leahy, access to Perkins loans will determine whether many students are able to remain in school. He said that 155 of Wilkes’ first-year students rely at least partially on Perkins loans.

College affordability is one of the pressing issues of modern times. It’s one thing to complain about a particular program, but quite another to cut off students. Congress should restore the program.

- The (Scranton) Times-Tribune

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IT’S NOT ALL OR NONE WHEN IT COMES TO GUN RIGHTS, BUT THEY SHOULDN’T BE EASY TO GET AND LIMITS ARE NEEDED, Oct .12

The reaction by patrons at last week’s Harrisburg Gun and Knife Show regarding recent shootings in the United States was predictable.

Don’t blame the guns, PennLive’s Matt Miller reported that attendees said. They are inanimate objects.

Don’t add more gun laws, the argument goes. Lawbreakers will get them anyway.

Don’t consider gun violence one of the major issues in national politics. The media are overplaying it, and the statistics are skewed.

It’s always something else, never the guns.

The problem with the “inanimate object” argument is that guns were invented for one purpose: to kill. The main purpose of cars is not to kill, yet gun rights backers try to blur the argument by saying that cars kill people, but no one is trying to get rid of them. It’s not an apt argument. In fact, there is little logic in it at all.

The problem with the “inanimate object” argument is that guns were invented for one purpose: to kill.

Killing with a firearm serves a purpose when it comes to hunting. And we know that people shoot for sport without trying to kill. But that doesn’t change the reason guns were invented.

We don’t want to go down a rabbit hole by deconstructing the wording of the Second Amendment. But we will state it in its entirety: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Read each of the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution and it is very clear that, while we like to think of our Founding Fathers as advanced thinkers, they clearly were writing to address issues specifically important to them at that time. They wanted to ensure that what happened under British rule was not going to reoccur. That’s why some of the amendments seem a bit out of place now. The Third Amendment, for example, prohibits the quartering of soldiers in private homes during peacetime. We also don’t have a militia even close to the sense that the Founders wrote about in the Second Amendment. Times change.

While the Bill of Rights should remain a cornerstone of our country, the U.S. Constitution is also a living document. It is not untouchable.

We are not advocating a change to the Bill of Rights. But the absolutism that permeates both sides of the debate ensures that we will make little progress on this issue.

Any time anything close to a restriction on gun rights is put forth, it’s taken to the extreme, that the government is coming after all of your guns. It’s simply not true.

The problem now is that we have several hundred years of living in a gun culture, likely stronger here than any other country in the world. It won’t change overnight.

It would be nice that when a shooting happens, the guns-rights supporters’ first response would not be to blame the situation, blame the shooter’s mental state, or blame the media or elected officials for trying to politicize the situation.

They are quick to say that mental illness plays a key role in these mass shootings. However, mental illness is obviously not a factor in all shootings. We are surprised that there are not more instances like that of last week, when a concealed pistol license holder fired multiple shots at a shoplifter in a Home Depot parking lot in Auburn Hills, Michigan. Or in South Carolina, where a 2-year-old boy found a gun inside a car and shot his grandmother in the back while she was driving.

This is not an easy issue. We don’t have a solution.

We do know this. Most firearms should be legal to own and use. But how many weapons does a private citizen need? How powerful should they be? There absolutely should be a waiting period to buy a gun, and a background check done properly and thoroughly is a must.

We respect gun owner rights, but that right doesn’t trump all other public safety concerns. That wasn’t the intent of the Second Amendment.

- The (Harrisburg) Patriot News

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HARD WAY TO LEARN, Oct. 14

There’s an old Marvin Gaye song called “Inner City Blues” in which the soul singer comments on all the bad things in life that “make me wanna holler and throw up both my hands.” Surely Philadelphians must feel that way about their poorly funded, understaffed schools.

Making matters worse are the well-intentioned responses to the district’s litany of calamities that too often fall flat on their face. Add to that list a plan to improve the daily teacher vacancy rate by hiring a private company to provide substitute teachers.

It seemed like a good idea when the district signed a $34 million contract with Cherry Hill-based Source4Teachers, which had a positive record in smaller districts like Camden’s. But the job of providing enough substitute teachers for Philadelphia’s public schools has proven to be too big for the company. It has not met the goals in its contract, and schoolchildren are suffering as a result.

Source4Teachers promised to provide 75 percent of the substitutes needed every day by September. That sounded great compared with the average 60 percent rate at which the district had been able to fill vacancies. But when the school year began, Source4Teachers had substitutes for only 11 percent of the vacancies.

There has been little improvement since then. Source4Teachers reported Friday that it had substitutes for only 19 percent of the classrooms that needed them. Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. has been scrambling to fill the breach by putting administrative staff and others in classrooms, but that is only a stopgap.

It’s time for the School Reform Commission to take steps to terminate the contract with Source4Teachers. It shouldn’t be done abruptly, which would be even more disruptive to learning. But it makes little sense to keep paying for something that shows no sign of ever working. The district should either reinstitute the old system- which, as bad as it was, worked better than Source4Teachers - or come up with a better idea.

Source4Teachers has been given until the end of October to achieve a 75 percent fill rate, with a 90 percent goal by January. But the district can’t afford to wait until the school year is half over to begin moving in a different direction. The level of learning in too many classrooms is already low. Imagine those classrooms without proper staffing.

The worst miscalculation in hiring Source4Teachers was the belief that it could spend less than the district but have more success placing substitutes in some of the most challenging educational settings in America. SRC member Bill Green said last month that the contract wasn’t about saving money; it was about providing more teachers to the classrooms that needed them. That being the case, the numbers show it’s time to try something else.

- The Philadelphia Inquirer

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