Editorials from around New England

Excerpts of recent editorials of statewide and national interest from New England newspapers:

(Meriden) Record-Journal (Conn.), Nov. 22, 2016

With the Trump Administration taking shape, expect to hear more and more about the so-called “alt-right,” a once-fringe, online political movement which gained national prominence during the combative 2016 presidential campaign.

Donald Trump’s improbable victory over Hillary Clinton on Nov. 8 came thanks, in part, to this alternative right, a group which, depending on one’s point of view, is seen as either a collection of harmless, social media provocateurs, or a dangerous hive of extremists.

The Southern Poverty Law Center describes the alt-right as “a set of far-right ideologies, groups and individuals whose core belief is that ’white identity’ is under attack by multicultural forces using ’political correctness’ and ’social justice’ to undermine white people and ’their’ civilization.”

Columbia Journalism Review, on the other hand, had a different, far-less-pointed take on the alt-right, writing earlier this year:

“Because of the nebulous nature of anonymous online communities, nobody’s entirely sure who the alt-righters are and what motivates them. It’s also unclear which among them are true believers and which are smart-ass troublemakers trying to ruffle feathers.”

Ultimately, history will determine what the alt-right is, or was.

In the meantime, Trump is giving legitimacy to this right-wing political faction.

The president-elect chose Steve Bannon, an alt-right icon, to be chief executive officer of his campaign. Now, with that job completed, Bannon, former head of Breitbart News, a favorite online destination of the alt-right, will serve as President Trump’s chief strategist and senior counselor.

Trump’s decision to put Bannon in the White House met with a great deal of push back, including from Jewish groups, civil rights organizations and even some Republicans.

While Bannon has denied being a white nationalist or an anti-Semite, many in the alt-right, which Trump’s right-hand man helped foment via Breitbart, accept such tags with glee.

This past weekend, a couple hundred alt-righters gathered for a conference in D.C., to celebrate both the election of Trump and the rise of their movement.

Richard Spencer, head of the white nationalist think tank the National Policy Institute, was a featured speaker at the conference.

Among the alt-right celebrity’s proclamations from the podium was this one: “America was, until this last generation, a white country designed for ourselves and our posterity. It is our creation, it is our inheritance, and it belongs to us.”

Spencer continued, saying, “To be white is to be a creator, an explorer, a conqueror.”

As Spencer wrapped up his remarks, several audience members had their arms outstretched in a Nazi salute.

This is chilling stuff.

Even if a small fraction of the alt-right agrees with Spencer’s extreme views, Trump and Bannon would be wise to distance themselves from the entire camp.

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Online:

https://bit.ly/2ffYD0A

The Portland Press Herald (Maine), Nov. 24, 2016

Gov. LePage’s refusal to administer the state’s federally funded refugee resettlement program will do nothing to prevent Maine and the rest of the United States from providing a safe haven for people fleeing war-torn countries. A nonprofit agency will simply step in and fill the void.

Instead, the real danger comes from President-elect Donald Trump, whose anti-refugee rhetoric has given Americans a distorted view of the resettlement program, and whose administration promises to reduce or end it.

As we give thanks for all we have as Americans, and prepare for a season of giving, there is an opportunity to reflect on what it means to be a moral country and the world’s superpower, with the ability to provide sanctuary for people coming from unimaginable circumstances.

LePage notified the federal government in a Nov. 4 letter that he would not administer the refugee resettlement program “until adequate vetting procedures can be established,” joining 13 other states. He went on to misquote the FBI director on the competency of that vetting process, and said Maine has been burdened by an “unchecked influx of refugees.”

Trump used much of the same language, noting during a campaign stop in Portland that “hundreds of thousands of refugees” were streaming into the United States.

But there is no deluge. Maine received 607 immigrants last year. If the state’s population is represented by a capacity crowd at Fenway Park, that’s like adding 17 more people to the bleacher seats.

The U.S. accepted around 85,000 refugees in fiscal year 2016, including a record 38,901 Muslim refugees - in a country of 320 million. Among them were 12,587 Syrians who fled airstrikes, terrorist attacks and starvation at home, then spent months if not years in official or makeshift camps that are dangerous in their own right before being approved for refugee status.

If Trump follows through on his campaign promises, that lifeline would be cut off, based on the fear that the resettlement program raises the possibility of a terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

But a sober look at the program shows that is not the case, certainly not to the degree Trump and LePage claim.

Anyone with an internet connection can look up the particulars of the program, which takes 18 to 24 months and includes multi-agency background checks, in-person interviews and other safeguards. Refugees make up about 10 percent of the immigrants who come into this country, and they are the most thoroughly screened category.

There are some weaknesses, including the reliability of information coming out of some source countries, but opponents calling for “adequate vetting procedures” seem to miss that they are already in place, and that there are far easier ways for someone dangerous to get into the country.

There are 5 million Syrian refugees - half of them children - and the U.S. has taken fewer than 15,000. Congress should address those shortfalls where they exist, but there is no need to bring a halt to the program, not when so much help is needed to quell this enormous humanitarian disaster, and not when the refugee program has had so few failures.

Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, over 800,000 refugees have come to the United States, many from Afghanistan, Somalia and Iraq, not inconsequentially places where the American military has intervened. In all that time, and out of all those people, only five have been arrested on terrorism-related grounds, and none has been involved in an attack.

It is impossible to say that no refugee with terrorism in mind will get through. But we cannot let outsized fear paralyze us while a world in crisis needs our help.

Our country was strengthened by Irish, Jewish and Italian immigrants, as well as by Vietnamese and Cuban refugees who came here fleeing war and dictatorships.

On the flip side, to our lasting shame, hundreds of Jews fleeing Hitler’s Germany were turned away as a threat to national security.

In another trying time, we cannot let that happen. We are better than our prejudices, and stronger than our fears.

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Online:

https://bit.ly/2gqmwQp

The Republican (Mass.), Nov. 24, 2016

“We’re Democrats - they’re for the working people.”

That was the simple, straightforward response that a young Bruce Springsteen received when he asked his mother about the family’s political affiliation.

Those were different times, though. Today, things are not so clear-cut. If more people today felt as did Springsteen’s mother, Democrat Hillary Clinton, and not Republican Donald Trump, would be president-elect. She’d have won Pennsylvania and Michigan and Wisconsin and perhaps even Ohio, states with great numbers of working-class voters who once stood solidly with Democratic candidates.

But in this year’s election, a good number of those voters abandoned Clinton. Many simply failed to turn out. Some chose a third party candidate. Others went to the polls and cast a ballot, but left the presidential race blank. Many, though, did what was once unthinkable: They voted for the Republican candidate, billionaire businessman Donald Trump.

There is no way to know, of course, whether this change was a one-time thing, a singular expression of frustration at the end of a particularly enervating campaign, or if there are many working people who are simply fed up with today’s Democratic Party.

If it’s the latter, than Democrats have their work cut out for them. They’ve got to find a way to talk to working people - whatever their race, whatever their gender, whatever their views on various social issues - in ways that make sense. Anyone who doesn’t agree need look no further than to the party’s lack of success across a wide swath of the nation that’s seen jobs go missing over recent years and decades.

From an economic perspective, Trump’s promises were as empty as an abandoned steel mill in Youngstown, Ohio. Starting a trade war isn’t going to bring jobs back to the decaying communities where they once were so prevalent. And it isn’t going to make America great again.

But throughout the just-concluded presidential campaign, one candidate was talking about jobs, about economic issues, while the other was talking about anything but.

Back in 1992, when then-candidate Bill Clinton pulled the Democrats back toward the political center, he did so by focusing on the economy. He spoke to working people.

He knew that these people were the party’s bread and butter. Democrats need to relearn that lesson.

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Online:

https://bit.ly/2fMsAld

Concord Monitor (N.H.), Nov. 23, 2016

He is 6-3, 240 pounds - handsome, quick and strong. If there was a factory that produced perfect middle linebackers, he would be the blueprint.

At 25, he is in his prime as a professional football player - and his trophy cabinet is filling up quickly: At Boston College, he earned the Bronko Nagurski Award as the nation’s best defensive player, the Butkus Award as the best linebacker, ACC Defensive Player of the Year, the Lombardi Award, the Jack Lambert Award, and on and on. With the NFL’s Carolina Panthers, he was chosen as the 2012 AP Defensive Rookie of the Year and 2013 AP Defensive Player of the Year. He is a three-time Pro Bowler and in February played in his first Super Bowl.

His name is Luke Kuechly, and last week he got his bell rung. That’s the old term people use when athletes at any level become disoriented after taking a shot to the head. It was the Thursday night game - Panthers versus the New Orleans Saints - and Kuechly was his usual dominant self. With less than 5 minutes to go in the fourth quarter, Kuechly was going in for a hit on Saints running back Tim Hightower when their helmets collided. As Kuechly was falling backward, he took a glancing shot to the back of the head from a teammate. The replay didn’t show an obvious injury. In fact, it looked like a run-of-the-mill play, although Kuechly did take the brunt of the contact on the jaw area of his facemask. What happened next was difficult to watch.

Luke Kuechly - 6-3, 240 pounds, handsome, quick and strong - was sobbing to the point of hyperventilation. He looked scared, confused, heartbroken. As he was taken off the field in a cart, he tried to fight back tears as opposing players approached him to offer their support. He looked like a boy in a man’s body.

Kuechly didn’t merely get his bell rung; he suffered his second concussion in two years. His emotional response could have been the result of pseudobulbar affect, which is defined as episodes of involuntary crying or laughing following a traumatic brain injury. Fans who understand the link between concussions and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, could be forgiven for thinking the tears came from the pain of realization.

Last year, there were 271 concussions reported in the NFL. In study after study, Boston University researchers are eliminating any doubt regarding the link between football and CTE. Of the 92 former players who have donated their brains to be examined posthumously (currently the only way CTE can be diagnosed), 87 tested positive for the progressive degenerative brain disease.

Football is an American tradition, from Thanksgiving Day games to the Super Bowl, which is its own national holiday. People are passionate about their teams, and we understand the argument that professional football players are grown men who are paid well for the risks they take. But the game is broken. If the NFL hopes to stay a mainstream sport rather than be a barbaric sideshow, it must do more than make token investments in brain research. It must become a tireless pioneer in the efforts to diagnose and treat those living with CTE; it must prove beyond all doubt that the well-being of its athletes, past and present, is paramount. Its future depends on it.

It was upsetting for fans to watch Luke Kuechly sobbing on Thursday night. We hope wealthy league executives and even wealthier team owners didn’t avert their eyes, as they have done for decades.

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Online:

https://bit.ly/2gnMcvQ

The Providence Journal (R.I.), Nov. 24, 2016

Much of Donald Trump’s agenda as incoming president seems to be of the blow-it-up-and-start-over variety. While voters signaled they wanted change in Washington, smashing something to smithereens without having something better to replace it is rarely a great idea.

Yet there is one sector of federal government that has so exhausted our patience that a total reboot seems warranted: The Department of Veterans Affairs.

The VA, the massive government health and social service organization intended to care for the military veterans who have borne the nation’s battles, is deeply troubled. It has blunted the swords of many a reformer who sought to shake up the bureaucratic culture and better serve veterans. It is starting to seem as if blowing it all up and starting over is a plausible solution to the VA’s myriad problems.

Mr. Trump has promised just such a course.

“We’re going to take care of those wounded warriors and we’re going to take care of our vets better than anybody,” he pledged on the campaign trail, promising to cut wait times, broaden medical services and fire recalcitrant workers in order to better serve veterans.

The VA is a huge agency, with more than 340,000 employees. Its budget, at $160 billion-plus, is the federal government’s second largest. It served almost 6 million veterans last year.

To be sure, a complete restart would invite an appalling level of chaos. It’s not at all certain that a total rebuild would benefit military veterans by helping them see doctors quicker, have their claims reviewed promptly, or receive medical care that’s comparable to the private sector. Reform will have to accomplish these goals.

What is certain is that the VA has become a dysfunctional beast. We have little confidence that any leader, working within the existing system, will be able to transform the VA into the kind of nimble, responsive agency that veterans deserve.

Remember, this is the agency that: created a false appointment system in order to help workers meet internal goals, while doing nothing to get veterans in the door quicker; buried or whistleblowers; can’t seem to fire obstructionist managers; can’t seem to cut its backlog of claims appeals; allows facilities to become grimy and unhygienic, as WPRI-12 reported about parts of the Providence VA hospital this month; blows its construction budgets and seeks to suppress or discount bad news. Even its inspector general’s office, which is supposed to act as an independent auditor of the agency, has been accused of covering up troubling findings.

Mr. Trump is not the change agent most of us expected, but it’s clear that a change agent is what the VA needs.

If any government agency has a sacred mission, it’s the VA. It is vitally important that we serve the health needs of those who sacrifice greatly to defend our nation. While the VA has many dedicated people who want to serve veterans as completely as they can, the bureaucratic superstructure has shown itself to be an impediment to the agency’s mission.

A new approach is what Mr. Trump promised, and the nation should hold him to that.

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Online:

https://bit.ly/2gHc3mE

Caledonian Record (Vt.), Nov. 22, 2016

Immediately following the election of Donald Trump, Franklin Foer wrote a piece for Slate that points out, “We have a president-elect with authoritarian tendencies assuming a presidency that has never been more powerful.”

The following day, First Amendment Champion Glenn Greenwald followed Foer’s lead with some context. “Trump will command not only a massive nuclear arsenal and the most robust military in history, but also the ability to wage numerous wars in secret and without congressional authorization; a ubiquitous system of electronic surveillance that can reach most forms of human communication and activity; and countless methods for shielding himself from judicial accountability, congressional oversight and the rule of law - exactly what the Constitution was created to prevent,” Greenwald wrote.

Then Greenwald explains how we got to this point, pointing a finger squarely at vast Constitutional abuses perpetrated by President Barack Obama.

“His administration detained terrorism suspects without due process, proposed new frameworks to keep them locked up without trial, targeted thousands of individuals (including a U.S. citizen) for execution by drone, invoked secrecy doctrines to shield torture and eavesdropping programs from judicial review, and covertly expanded the nation’s mass electronic surveillance,” Greenwald reminds readers. “Blinded by the belief that Obama was too benevolent and benign to abuse his office, and drowning in partisan loyalties at the expense of political principles, Democrats consecrated this framework with their acquiescence and, often, their explicit approval.”

The bottom line, as Greenwald explains, is that Americans can largely thank Democrats for “the unrestrained set of powers Trump will inherit.”

Greenwald is right, of course, and we wrote dozens of opinions during the Obama Administration warning of the dangers our country faced by a President with a seeming disregard for checks on executive power. Now, we’re afraid, the country is going to see just how terrifying the abuses can get.

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Online:

https://bit.ly/2fMudzr