Editorials from around New England

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

The (New London) Day (Conn.), Nov. 1, 2016

On one thing, Republican and Democratic party leaders agree; the Justice Department needs to provide more information, and soon, about how serious or not are the revelations concerning newly discovered emails tied to former Secretary Hillary Clinton and the private server she used during her time leading the State Department.

This publication shares that opinion.

On Friday, FBI Director James Comey sent a brief letter to Congress about a review of more potential Clinton-related emails, found during a separate investigation. At the time, Comey said his agency did not have enough information to evaluate their significance.

Comey has faced strong criticism from Democrats for revealing the investigation related to their party’s nominee so close to the presidential election. By tradition the Justice Department, under which the FBI operates, does not comment on matters under investigation until and unless it is prepared to bring an indictment. It is particularly cautious in not letting word of a probe potentially influence an election.

Yet Comey was in a uniquely difficult position. In July he had announced to the world that his office had completed its investigation into Clinton’s use of the private server. He called Clinton’s actions “extremely carless,” but concluded they did not constitute criminal behavior. If Comey had kept under wraps the fact that the investigation had reopened - even on a very limited basis - he could have been seen as participating in a coverup, had the information about more emails become public. Inaction can influence an election, too.

The problem is that the FBI does not conduct investigations under a deadline. Now it faces one. Voters deserve to know in short order if this is a five-alarm development or a false alarm.

“Your disclosure did not go far enough,” wrote Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, in a letter to Comey on Monday. “Your letter failed to give Congress and the American people enough context to evaluate the significance or full meaning of this development.”

On Saturday, several Senate Democrats, including Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, sent a letter seeking more information.

“The American people deserve more disclosure without delay regarding the FBI’s most recent announcement. Anything less would be irresponsible and a disservice to the American people,” the letter states.

Adding to the bizarreness of the entire affair is that the emails were discovered on the laptop of former Rep. Anthony Weiner, he of sexting infamy. He is the estranged husband of close Clinton aide Huma Abedin.

Just when it appeared this election could not get any odder, it has.

___

Online:

https://bit.ly/2f7lDOs

Portland Press Herald (Maine), Nov. 3, 2016

Researchers in Maine are working on innovative ways to use wood fibers. Entrepreneurs are developing products and seeking out new, evolving markets.

Those actions don’t have the immediate impact of layoffs at a mill, nor do they hold the same grasp over our attention. But it is important that we recognize them as part of the transitioning forest products industry, and it’s vital that we elect officials who see the promise in this new wave of wood-based technologies.

No doubt, the transition has been painful. The latest bad news came Tuesday, when Verso announced it was shutting down a papermaking machine at the Androscoggin Mill in Jay, laying off 190 workers, one-third of a workforce that just last year lost another 300 employees. That brings the tally to more than 2,300 jobs lost in the paper industry since 2011, including the closure of five mills in the last two years.

That has devastated communities, not only because of lost mill jobs, but also in the effect on related businesses, such as logging and transportation, as well as on the stores, restaurants and cafes that depend on mill workers’ business.

Beyond that, these communities in many ways have been defined by their nearby mill and the way it connects their residents.

With each closure and round of layoffs, that is being lost, and it is going to be difficult to regain. Some mills are making the right investments and they may survive, even flourish. But not with the same number of employees.

One way or another, the time with mills as such a dominating presence is coming to an end. The next wave of the forest products industry won’t look like the one before it, and we shouldn’t expect it to.

Instead of one mill employing a large segment of a community’s population, and driving the economy of a region, picture a series of smaller niche mills peppering central, western and northern Maine, developing, producing and selling products like bio-based fuels, flooring and gunstocks, as some successful businesses already are.

There is potential, too, in the use of cellulose nanofibers - the building blocks of wood - to make materials such as foam insulation, as one Maine startup is doing. Wood can be used as an additive to make new plastics and chemicals, or to strengthen construction materials, with an untold number of applications.

That is the kind of work being done at the Advanced Structures and Composites Center at University of Maine, a facility with 180 employees and about 500 clients worldwide. It derives 95 percent of its funding from outside Maine, showing how homegrown innovation can draw wealth to this state.

By no means are these advancements an excuse to forget about Maine’s paper mills. Despite the recent losses, they are still major employers, and they have a place in the state’s economy of the future, as long as their out-of-state, and often out-of-country, ownership makes the correct investments.

The communities that have suffered losses, too, have to be considered. State policies that lessen the blow to property taxes and school funding that communities suffer when mills lose value are necessary, and retraining, such as what is done through the federal Trade Adjustment Assistance program, have to be supported and coordinated through the state’s adult and continuing education programs.

But as we respond to another round of mill layoffs, it pays to remember that the forest products industry has a bright future in Maine, as long as we make it that way.

___

Online:

https://bit.ly/2fpio1i

The (Springfield) Republican (Mass.), Nov. 1, 2016

If you believe that our ongoing presidential campaign has been strange beyond all compare, that it’s a singularly odd bit of political theater, like nothing before and (hopefully) like nothing ahead, then you’ve likely not been following the doings in Iceland.

There, a bunch of pirates just got themselves elected to the world’s oldest parliament.

Really.

The Pirate Party, a collection of anarchists and hackers, had been expected to perform very well in Saturday’s balloting. Some pre-election polls even had the Pirates coming out on top. And while that did not come to pass, the most-unlikely group managed to garner about 15 percent of the vote, placing it third, ahead of four other parties.

Whether the Pirates wind up being part of a governing coalition is still to be determined. Whether the Pirates grow in numbers, and power, or eventually just fade away, is also still to be determined. But they are on the job at the moment.

A parliamentary government, of course, is a different animal from our own kind of democracy. No one expects to see a newly formed Pirate Party soon holding seats in the U.S. Congress.

But still, people will look at the Pirates and their supporters, ascribe their successes to some sort of general unhappiness with the situation at hand, and endeavor to make a more-or-less direct comparison with the ascension of reality TV star Donald Trump in the United States. Trump, they’ll note, played on people’s economic fears. So too, at least to a point, did the Pirates. The Trumpkins, like those who backed the Pirates, were tired of the status quo and wanted to knock over the apple cart.

The comparisons will go on and on, but they should, and can, go only so far.

Because Iceland isn’t America. With a total population of about 332,000, the entire island nation contains roughly 70 percent of the population of Hampden County. Look for Iceland’s place on a list of the world’s top 100 nations ranked by annual gross domestic product, and you’ll be searching in vain - it comes in 112th. Iceland has no standing army.

But it’s got the Pirate Party.

And that, like the Norse legends of yore and Bjork’s music today, is interesting in its own right.

___

Online:

https://bit.ly/2ekzC2k

The (Nashua) Telegraph (N.H.), Oct. 27, 2016

The New York Giants on Tuesday made the right decision in cutting kicker Josh Brown in light of his long-standing history of domestic violence.

Now, the NFL owners should follow and terminate Commissioner Roger Goodell for turning a blind eye yet again to issues surrounding domestic assault and spousal violence in his league.

It wasn’t that long ago Goodell initially buried his head in the sand during the domestic violence case against then-Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice, later admitting to the slip-up and declaring, “We have to do better.” The stiffer action, of course, came after video surfaced of Rice striking the victim and knocking her to the ground.

“My disciplinary decision led the public to question our sincerity, our commitment, and whether we understood the toll that domestic violence inflicts on so many families,” Goodell wrote in a letter to all NFL owners in 2014. “I didn’t get it right. Simply put, we have to do better. And we will.”

As domestic violence continues to be a scourge on America, Goodell sat on his hands as the charges surrounding Josh Brown became very clear. And Goodell botched another case.

So Goodell fumbles the Rice incident, passes on any action regarding San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s refusal to stand for the national anthem and takes a wishy-washy approach to Brown, but continues his vendetta against New England Patriots star Tom Brady for conduct detrimental to the game for his alleged role in removing a tiny amount of pressure from the footballs.

Oh, the irony.

The commissioner lost his credibility following his months-long Brady witch hunt, ignoring cases such as Brown, who was only suspended one game to Brady’s four on less involvement in suspected wrongdoing. This has been a larger detriment to the country’s most popular game.

Is there any doubt that TV ratings have dropped faster than the Cincinnati Bengals’ playoff hopes?

Sure, the presidential race has been more hard-fought than any battle on the gridiron, and a serious dip in exciting match-ups has made most NFL games unwatchable - a touchdownless tie during a marquee “Sunday Night Football” game between Seattle and Arizona? - for the casual viewer.

According to the Los Angeles Times, “Thursday Night Football” is down 18 percent from last season, NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” has taken a 19 percent hit, and ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” is down an eyebrow-raising 24 percent compared with last year.

Maybe fans are upset with Kaepernick, maybe everyone is tired of watching boring teams play gaffe-prone games - or maybe we’re just tired of seeing the NFL fail to correct its biggest blunder.

Goodell has mishandled every major scandal the league has faced during his tenure, from Rice to Deflategate to the lonely kicker Brown, and now we’re seeing the consequences of those errors. It’s time for the owners to recognize that his bungling has led to a lack of credibility with the fans and sponsors and he should not be allowed to continue to head the NFL.

To protect the shield, they have to sack Goodell.

___

Online:

https://bit.ly/2ekB9pf

The Providence Journal (R.I.), Oct. 28, 2016

In the recent fraught history of global immigration policy, political turmoil and cooperation between the Muslim world and the West, one of the sillier chapters has drawn to a close.

In case you’re not tracking European free speech cases closely, here’s what happened:

A German comic, Jan Bohmermann, in March recited a satirical poem on German television that mocked Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Actually, “mocked” is too mild a word. The comedian offered profane and insulting verse about Turkey’s increasingly authoritarian head of state in which he suggested Mr. Erdogan consorts sexually with goats and watches pornography featuring children. Mr. Bohmermann explained later he was trying to show the Turkish leader the difference between legitimate criticism and groundless insults.

Mr. Erdogan, no advocate for freedom of expression in the best of times, nevertheless took offense. He called for German authorities to prosecute Mr. Bohmermann under a German law that criminalizes insults to foreign heads of state. Germany, to the ire of many of its citizens, agreed to do so. For good measure, Mr. Erdogan also sued Mr. Bohmermann in civil court in Germany.

Bear in mind, this was during a time when European leaders, especially German chancellor Angela Merkel, desperately wanted Turkey’s cooperation in dealing with the Syrian refugee crisis. They had struck a deal with Turkey in March calling for the country to take back refugees who had fled Turkey for Greece, while promising to accept more refugees directly from Turkey and paying Mr. Erdogan’s government $3 billion. Mr. Erdogan seemed to regard Europe’s eagerness for a deal as a sign of weakness he could exploit. He threatened, for example, to abandon the arrangement if Europe wouldn’t grant Turks visa-free travel privileges.

This month, German prosecutors dropped the legal case against Mr. Bohmermann. They concluded the comedian was correct when he argued last spring that his poem was an exaggeration that “any listener should immediately recognize … was a joke or a piece of nonsense.” There was nothing criminal about the poem, they decided.

Turkey is not amused by this latest development. Pro-Erdogan newspapers in Turkey have called dismissal of the prosecution “a scandal.”

It’s not a scandal.

The comedian was silly and provocative, as he set out to be.

The Turkish president was outraged that he couldn’t jail Mr. Bohmermann, as he has done to so many critics and suspected critics in Turkey. In fairness to Mr. Erdogan, he did recently survive a coup attempt by members of the Turkish military. Mr. Erdogan responded to the bungled takeover attempt by declaring and extending a state of emergency and by ordering a sweeping purge of people suspected of being disloyal, including teachers, police officers and journalists.

Turkey and Europe - and the United States - have many issues to work through, from immigration policy to civil rights for Turks. But the jawboning and teeth gnashing about a satirical poem on German television was a mere sideshow that never should have gotten this far. The entire episode tarnished Mr. Bohmermann, Mr. Erdogan and Ms. Merkel, who seemed to place a greater premium on mollifying Mr. Erdogan than on defending a German citizen.

Mr. Erdogan’s civil suit against Mr. Bohmermann continues. Mr. Erdogan’s crackdown on Turkish dissenters also continues. The Syrian refugee crisis also continues.

And now, the goodwill that will be needed to resolve these thorny problems is even scarcer than before.

And that is no joke.

___

Online:

https://bit.ly/2dZREbt

The Brattleboro Reformer (Vt.), Oct. 31, 2016

In just the past week, we have had three depressing news items come before us.

UNICEF released a study indicating that 600,000 children die each year from air pollution.

That is a child dying every 52.6 seconds.

The World Wildlife Fund released a report saying that we will have lost two-thirds of our wildlife in the fifty years ending 2020, and the greatest causes of that loss can be traced to our use of fossil fuels.

The American Lung Association’s California chapter released a study that gives the cost of medical problems stemming from the use of fossil fuels for powering transportation. Vermont was one of the 10 states studied. It says we lose about $300,000,000 per year because of diseases resulting from our use of gasoline and diesel oil. That is about $480 per person per year, with the costs are mostly hidden in medical insurance and taxes. We might reflect on human suffering from asthma, lung cancer, emphysema and other diseases caused by fossil fuel use.

None of these facts surprised me, because I research the news daily for a blog and had seen similar information.

The WHO and IEA indicate we lose another person to outdoor air pollution about every 10 seconds, worldwide, a rate comparable to our losses of military personnel during the Second World War. Estimates of financial losses due to fossil fuel use ranged from $250 to $1,000 per person, per year, worldwide, based on sources ranging from the WHO to financial institutions.

The Audubon Society had said we could lose 50 percent of our bird species in North America because of our misuse of fossil fuels, and the WWF scientists said we will lose another species to extinction every ten minutes, until we get deal with climate change.

Given the nature of the problems, I find it astonishing that people actually attempt to prevent wind power, solar power, and other solutions from being put in place.

A lot of misinformation has been circulated about solar and wind power. Much of that has been used to frighten people to lend support to opposing them, and possibly other forms of renewable energy. Today, thousands of people in this country live in wind farms quite happily, finding the positions of Vermonters who oppose wind power amusing, at the least. Real-world installations show that wind power and solar on a power grid do not reduce reliability, and in fact improve it. The wind provides the least expensive we have, according to the DOE.

There are major areas of the world that get their electric power entirely from renewable sources.

Costa Rica is one, as are two of Germany’s sixteen states. Portugal, Scotland, and Denmark are among the countries that have gone for at least one day without fossil fuels for electric power. The misinformation, however, gives comfort to the fossil fuels industries.

For the sake of the environment and our own health, we need solutions to the problems caused by fossil fuels.

___

Online:

https://bit.ly/2exeDa8