Editorials from around Pennsylvania

Editorials from around Pennsylvania:

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PANAMA PAPER CHASE: A KLIEG LIGHT SHINES ON THE SHELL COMPANY ECONOMY, April 6

The leak of 11.5 million documents from the law firm Mossack Fonseca has revealed the financial operations of some major world leaders, with names of the Americans involved still to come.

Mossack Fonseca is based in Panama, for decades a beehive of shady dealing. The law firm has an office in Las Vegas and representatives in Wyoming and Florida and many other countries. Its specialty is creating shell companies, with undisclosed owners, designed to evade taxes and launder money. One of the favorite locations for its “companies” is the British Virgin Islands, which does not have the same tax laws as the United Kingdom.

It is judged that the “Panama Papers” were obtained by hackers or through someone inside Mossack Fonseca. They were delivered to a German newspaper, Süddeutsche Zeitung, which partnered with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and other media outlets.

Names already implicated in the activities of the law firm and its shadow companies include Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Syrian President Bashar Assad through a cousin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and British Prime Minister David Cameron through his late father. Iceland Prime Minister Sigmundur Davio Gunnlaugsson, involved through his wife, is the first casualty of the affair; he resigned Tuesday under immediate public pressure.

Activities that may have been financed by the anonymous companies created by Mossack Fonseca include North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and ammunition and fuel for Syria’s government forces. Numerous banks appear to have been involved, including HSBC.

No American banks, companies or individuals have yet been named, but some 370 journalists from 76 countries are studying the documents and more revelations are expected shortly. Creating offshore shell companies is not in itself illegal. The laws of some states, including Delaware, Nevada and Wyoming, are loose on such matters. What is illegal is tax evasion and money laundering. What is potentially especially interesting at this point is that the revelations of Mossack Fonseca’s clients come in the middle of the U.S. presidential election campaign.

Americans will be fascinated to see what U.S. names emerge in coming days.

- The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

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WOODROW WILSON LIVES ON AT PRINCETON, April 4

Woodrow Wilson will not be banished from Princeton University.

After facing demands by some students late last year that Wilson’s name and image be removed from programs and buildings at the Ivy League institution because of racist views he held, the university’s board of trustees announced Monday that the 28th president of the United States and 13th president of Princeton will remain a presence there. At the same time, the board asserted that steps will be taken to put Wilson and his legacy in the proper historical context and efforts to make the New Jersey campus more diverse and inclusive would be intensified.

The Princeton board struck exactly the right note in this dispute.

Yes, Wilson espoused racist views in his public life, views that we now look on as hopelessly bigoted and backward- he segregated the federal workforce, sang the praises of D.W. Griffith’s nakedly white-supremacist movie epic “The Birth of a Nation” and did not believe that African-Americans should be granted full citizenship. These are obvious stains on his legacy.

But Wilson also appointed Louis Brandeis to the U.S. Supreme Court, the first member of the Jewish faith to reach the nation’s highest court; fought for the right of women to vote; and was an avid campaigner for the League of Nations, a United Nations forerunner.

The committee considering whether to strip Wilson’s name and image from Princeton noted that “There is considerable consensus that Wilson was a transformative and visionary figure in the area of public and international affairs…” and that “contextualization is imperative” when approaching Wilson. Moreover, “Wilson, like other historical figures, leaves behind a complex legacy of both positive and negative repercussions, and that the use of his name implies no endorsement of views and actions that conflict with the values and aspirations of our times.”

Had Wilson’s name and likeness been erased from Princeton, it would have been a triumph for the hypersensitive souls who try to enforce political correctness on many college and university campuses. These students, and some of their professors, wallow in narratives of perpetual victimhood, constantly on the lookout for “microaggessions” that could be lurking around every corner- it will come as a shock to many that opening a door for another person could indeed be construed as a “microaggression.” They also insist that “safe spaces” be established for students who want to be cushioned from viewpoints or concepts that might upset their delicate psyches. It’s supremely silly, an absurd fad that will almost certainly run its course in a couple of years.

Remember the students at Oberlin College in Ohio who, a few months back, argued that serving General Tso’s chicken in the dining hall with steamed rather than fried poultry was an offensive act of cultural appropriation?

We can only hope that one day they will look back on their distress over the college’s menu with the same embarrassment that other people have when they recall their fraternity or sorority hijinks.

In the meantime, close to a century after he departed from this life, the debate over Wilson’s legacy will go on at Princeton and elsewhere.

- The (Washington) Observer-Reporter

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’16 BUDGET WON’T SOLVE PROBLEM, April 5

Lawmakers led by House Republicans celebrated as a victory for taxpayers Gov. Tom Wolf’s decision to let their 2016 budget become law without his signature.

It is likely to be a Pyrrhic victory, however. The budget contains no tax increase for which lawmakers would be accountable in this legislative election year. But it ensures millions of dollars in local school property tax hikes as the price for that evasion of responsibility.

As at least three financial rating agencies quickly reported, the lawmakers’ irresponsible conduct maintains a growing state structural deficit of about $2 billion and does not address the runaway public pension costs that are the primary fiscal problem for the state government and all 500 school districts. The budget simply defers a resolution.

Wolf’s budgetary priorities for the 2016-17 fiscal year were helping school districts deal with the financial pressures created partially by the failure to reform the pension system and to resolve the structural deficit. He proposed significant state-level tax restructuring, increases in sales and income taxes and a long-overdue modest tax on natural gas extraction.

Senate Republicans were willing to compromise, but House Republicans stonewalled.

Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and PNC Financial Services Groups, the Wall Street ratings agency, all found the budget falling well short of what is needed to correct state finances.

S&P correctly identified the true problem: “The magnitude of the projected budget gap is not insurmountable, in our view, and is not tied to tax base fundamentals,” it wrote. “… The state’s fiscal issues lie in lack of political will to solve them in a timely manner.”

Until House Republican lawmakers start serving the needs of the commonwealth rather than their own political preservation, the problem will continue.

- The (Pottsville) Republican-Herald

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PENNSYLVANIA LAWMAKERS: VICTIMS OF CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE DESERVE TO HAVE THEIR DAY IN COURT, April 3

If only “Spotlight” was a fictional creation of Hollywood, and not the all-too-real story of the Catholic Church’s systematic pattern of hiding priestly child sexual abuse.

If only the story told by The Boston Globe pertained only to Boston, and not to Philadelphia, and Milwaukee, and Los Angeles, and Altoona-Johnstown, and dioceses across the globe.

Unfortunately, wishing doesn’t make it so.

“Spotlight” highlighted just how essential newspaper journalism can and should be. It showed how the unglamorous work of poring through documents, filing Right-to-Know requests and doggedly pursuing sources can yield a story that changes institutions and, more importantly, people’s lives.

The Boston story told in “Spotlight” is playing out now in the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown.

And the story about how the Catholic Church wields its power will play out this week in Harrisburg, as the state Legislature considers reforming Pennsylvania’s statutes of limitations for cases of child sexual abuse.

Advocates for victims of child sexual abuse have been pressing for such reform for years, arguing that it can take years, even decades, before victims of such abuse are ready to come forward, and so they must be given the time to do so.

Their efforts have been blocked largely by the Insurance Federation of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference, the public affairs arm of Catholic dioceses in this state.

The church will not oppose any legislation to eliminate “the criminal statute of limitations, just as we did not oppose legislation in 2006 that increased the criminal statute of limitations to age 50,” said Amy Hill, spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference, in an email to LNP.

It appears, however, that the church will oppose any legislation that seeks to eliminate the civil statute, which now holds that victims only have until they turn 30 to file a civil case.

Hill said that in civil cases, “anyone can file a suit,” and cases “can be filed against third-party organizations that benefit children even if the alleged perpetrators are deceased or there is little evidence to make a case. Defending these lawsuits costs millions in legal costs, even if no allegation is ever proven, and still no abusers will go to jail.”

She added: “It is particularly burdensome for these organizations if they have to defend cases retroactively.”

And sadly, there you have it.

The church has established a stringent zero-tolerance policy on child abuse, and now requires that any such abuse be reported to law enforcement, rather than be handled within the church, as it used to be.

We’re encouraged by these changes, and by the church’s emphasis now on protecting the child and not the institution.

But there are numerous victims of child sexual abuse in past decades who deserve their day in court, should they choose to ask for it. And by lobbying against giving victims that opportunity, the church once again appears to be placing its own interests before those of the child sexual abuse victims who have suffered great and lasting harm.

Past victims include state Rep. Mark Rozzi of Berks County, who writes persuasively in today’s Perspective section about the need to eliminate both the civil and criminal statutes of limitations and- crucially -to open a window to allow past victims to bring civil suit.

And they include Maureen Powers, the retired CEO of YWCA Lancaster, who wrote movingly in LNP on March 6 of her own experience of being sexually molested by a prominent priest in the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese when she was between the ages of 12 and 14.

“Making the child sexual abuse statute of limitations reform retroactive would serve justice, especially in cases of deliberate, institutionalized cover-up such as has occurred in the Catholic Church,” Powers told LNP in an email last week.

The Altoona-Johnstown diocese, she noted, “callously allowed more than 50 priests to molest children with impunity for 40 years,” and “should be brought to justice. It is unlikely they will be unless the new law is retroactive. There is no statute of limitations on the damage done to the victims/survivors.”

She knows this, of course, not only because of her own abuse at the hands of a trusted priest, but as someone who led the YWCA- an organization that serves sexual abuse victims -for decades.

We urge our lawmakers, as they consider statute of limitation reform, to keep their focus on the victims of child sexual abuse, past and present.

The church and other institutions- public and private -must be held liable for their failures, even past ones, to protect children.

We understand that this will mean real costs for the insurance industry, too. But as Kristen Houser of the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape says, “victims should have the right to try to recoup some part or form of what was stolen from them as children in front of the financial concerns of major corporations who are in the industry of profiting from risk.”

- LNP

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VILLANOVA WIN FEEDS CITY HUNGRY FOR CHAMPIONS, April 6

Villanova’s stunning victory in the NCAA tournament couldn’t have come at a better time for a city that hasn’t had a sports championship in eight years. Even better was the way the Wildcats beat favored North Carolina- on a buzzer -beating shot by an unexpected hero.

With less than five seconds left in the game, senior guard Ryan Arcidiacono took the inbound pass and raced upcourt. Surely he would drive to the basket or pull up for a jumper, most fans thought. That’s what a team’s best player does.

But Arcidiacono instead relied on what took the Cats to the Final Four in the first place: teamwork. He flipped the ball to junior forward Kris Jenkins, who drained a three-point shot to break a 74-74 tie and win the game.

Being on the same day that Sixers great Allen Iverson was named to the Basketball Hall of Fame made the championship sweeter. The Wildcats also made a strong statement about collegiate athletics by fielding a team led by upperclassmen, including senior center Daniel Ochefu.

The role of sports in America today is perhaps too big. People invest their hearts, souls, and cash in pro and college teams that too often repay them with disappointment. But winners like Villanova make all the disappointments seem trivial.

- The Philadelphia Inquirer

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