Recent editorials of statewide and national interest from New York’s newspapers:
The Times Herald-Record of Middletown on the state of New York’s school system.
May 3
As schools get ready to bring their annual budgets up for voter approval, it is a good time to revisit the forces that have helped shape this annual exercise in recent years.
The first and most potent force is the state tax cap, something that restrained tax increases to a maximum of 2 percent initially and now, with low inflation, effectively limits most budgets to zero growth. While that inspired the usual talk of gloom and doom in January, a generous increase in state aid from the Legislature calmed things down considerably.
At this point, most schools in the region are adding programs they threatened to cut, proposing increases in staff in critical areas and planning on a budget that would require only the normal majority approval. Only a few with specific challenges and unusual circumstances will have to run the risk of breaking through the cap and soliciting the approval of a supermajority of voters.
This comes at a time when the heated rhetoric of past years also has calmed down when it comes to standardized testing and its relation to any form of teacher evaluation. The opt-out movement is celebrating another year of solid recruitment, securing its place in the educational landscape and ensuring that once the state gets around to any new effort at implementing a standardized curriculum, it will have to overcome this potent political force. Teachers unions, too, can rest for a while as the state retreats from past attempts to link student performance with teacher evaluations.
In short, any attempt to set the bar any higher for students or teachers will start out at a disadvantage.
All of this comes amid news that in any other state, in any other political climate, would be inspiring causes for reform. The Nation’s Report Card released last week showed that instead of making improvements, the nation’s high school student are heading in the wrong direction when it comes to math and not doing much at all when it comes to reading.
Only one-third of the nation’s 12th graders are ready for the academic challenges of college, the report showed. To be more specific, only one quarter were proficient or better in math, only 37 percent ranked proficient or better in reading, meaning that they had a solid grasp of subject material.
On this measure, as on most others, New York students have mediocre results despite the state consistently spending about double the national average per pupil. And that spending figure does not take into account the money that must come in addition to the school budgets, the money that community colleges must spend on extensive remedial programs or the money that students waste after their lack of preparation leads them to drop out in frustration in the first semester or first year.
None of this will be on the ballot when people are asked to approve budgets kept low by the tax cap and this year augmented by increased state aid.
We have created in New York two opposing systems, one which resists evaluation and accountability and one which continues to spend more each year and even more in election years.
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Online:
https://bit.ly/1TKENW0
The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle on the need for state lawmakers to close loopholes that allow people to cheat in politics.
April 30
Catching all of the people who find loopholes that make it easy, or even legal, to cheat in New York politics is one of those nearly impossible tasks. It is a bit like showing up to a multi-car pileup on a speedy interstate armed with a small tube of Neosporin and an assortment box of Hello Kitty Band-Aids. Even super prosecutors such as U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, with their exceptional powers, will never put themselves out of business as they work to stop the bleeding.
But, state lawmakers can do more to make life harder for would-be evil doers to game the system.
Right now, sometimes all these villains need to do is master phrases such as, “I have no personal knowledge of that,” or, “I don’t recall.”
That appears to be what is happening in the current case involving New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, former Monroe County Democratic Committee Chairman Dave Garretson, and former state Sen. Ted O’Brien.
If de Blasio and Garretson schemed to bypass campaign donation limits by channeling large sums of private donations through the county committee directly to incumbent O’Brien to help him win re-election, they have committed crimes. Bif, bam, pow! Their actions steal the power away from average citizens, who are told their votes count. And, that is wrong.
The actual channeling of large sums of private donations through the county committee directly to help an incumbent win re-election is, shazam, a legal bypass of campaign donation limits. Even though it looks the same, without the scheming, Clark Kent can keep his street clothes on.
One would think that, with a state legislature chock full of lawyers, state election law would be better than that.
There are other examples of below average material in New York state’s election laws. This Editorial Board has repeatedly called for the closure of the state’s LLC loophole. So have virtually every good government advocacy group, the state Attorney General, state Assembly representatives, and even Gov. Andrew Cuomo - who rakes in millions of dollars through it.
The loophole lets big corporations circumvent corporate campaign contribution limits by forming “limited liability companies” that are allowed to give much more freely. It is a perfectly legal means of buying influence at the expense of the average citizen, who is supposed to be protected by campaign contribution limits. Corporations don’t even need to pretend they don’t know what they’re doing, like poor de Blasio, Garretson and O’Brien might have to if they were truly in collusion as suspected.
Despite all of the clamor about these problems, there has not been enough political will in Albany to fix them.
It is almost as if, gasp, our state legislators want the laws to be weak and ineffective so they can continue to raise lots of money, do what they want with it, and not offend big donors seeking undue influence. Holy hoodwink, Batman.
Our state lawmakers should not end the current session until they do the right thing.
It will not require super powers, or even tights and a cape, to make elections more fair and leaders more accountable to the people they represent.
They simply need to demonstrate a Superman-like commitment to “truth, justice and the American way.” Close the loopholes, now.
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Online:
https://on.rocne.ws/1STiMEf
The Poughkeepsie Journal on U.S. Senate Republicans’ inaction on President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee.
May 3
President Barack Obama has done his job by picking an imminently qualified judge to serve on the Supreme Court.
Senate Republicans, who like to tout themselves as strict constructionists of the Constitution, should stop their charade and set a confirmation hearing. Otherwise, a full year, if not more, likely will go by before the high court is back up to nine members following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.
Meanwhile, an eight-person Supreme Court is hearing cases involving voting rights, birth control, religious freedom and many other crucial matters. Now the U.S. Senate ought to fulfill its obligation by setting into motion the process to “advise and consent” on the president’s choice, as the Constitution requires. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say the Senate should “ignore a nomination until the president’s term expires.”
Obama has nominated Merrick B. Garland, a consensus-building judge who has served admirably on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit for nearly two decades. He is a centrist, a former prosecutor who sides often with law enforcement but also has a progressive view on matters of environmental protection and freedom of the press. And he has been supported by Republicans before, including U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch who once said there was “no question” Garland could be confirmed to the highest court in the land.
Yet neither Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell nor Chuck Grassley, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is willing to budge.
This inaction could backfire, especially if Republicans do not win the White House in November. Republicans should ask themselves whether they would rather have Garland on the bench or give either Hillary Rodham Clinton or Bernie Sanders the chance to offer their take on the situation.
Politics aside, this is about what’s right and what’s wrong. The Journal has long argued that a president, whether it be a Republican or Democrat, deserves to have his nominee treated with respect and given a fair confirmation hearing by the Senate. That would be true if one of the Republican presidential candidates, including Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, is elected this year.
Twice and by considerable margins, American voters selected Obama as their president. By putting forth a strong and qualified person for the Supreme Court, he is continuing to do his job. The Senate’s failure to act is unconscionable.
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Online:
https://pojonews.co/1NjOX0C
The Daily News on what the Verizon workers’ strike means for the middle class.
April 30
The 36,000 workers who have gone on strike against telecom giant Verizon are front-line troops in the struggle for the preservation of the American middle class.
One of the largest labor-management battles in years, the strike is driven by many of the economic forces that have destroyed good-paying middle-income jobs with decent benefits while pushing the financial benefits up the chain to bosses and shareholders.
Verizon is an enormously profitable company, pulling down $45 billion over the past five years. During the same period, the firm’s stock has climbed almost 40 percent.
Still, it is seeking great power to outsource jobs with non-union labor, along with higher contributions to pensions and healthcare. Call it greed or call it forward thinking by management confronting radical changes in communications plus the need to compete against players with lower cost structures.
Either way, the relative downward track of the workforce is the same when, for example, call center employees see their jobs devalued to wage rates in places like the Philippines.
The strike’s passions mirror the emotions that have made the 2016 presidential campaign the most anger-filled in decades.
Without the desperation unleashed by falling standards of living, Donald Trump would be a blowhard TV personality rather than a blowhard presidential frontrunner, and Bernie Sanders would be the U.S. Senate’s cranky throwback to the 1960s.
Reflecting the rapidly evolving nature of the telecom industry, the strike is America’s largest work stoppage since the unions representing Verizon workers - the Communication Workers of America and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers - walked in 2011.
Distressingly, the two unions are themselves throwbacks to a bygone era.
Labor unions helped create the American middle class - even if only one-third of all workers were unionized at labor’s peak. Today, that number has dropped to 11 percent - and 6.6 percent in the private sector.
Labor’s weakening is also reflected in a steady decline in strikes. Between 1955 and 1970, the U.S. saw an average of 295 major job actions per year - defined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as involving 1,000 or more workers. Since 2000, America’s big unions have mounted an annual average of only 16 such strikes.
It’s hardly a coincidence that labor’s postwar high point coincided with rising wages, benefits and economic security. Now, the last remnants of collective bargaining - and the threat of withholding labor - offer far less muscular buffers against swirling, disruptive currents.
Striking is tough business for all involved - but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do to maintain the value of your labor.
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Online:
https://nydn.us/1TtHEjF
The Wall Street Journal on the challenge of mounting a third-party campaign.
May 2
As Donald Trump gets closer to securing the Republican nomination for President, luminaries of varying illumination are floating the idea of a conservative third-party challenge in November. The thought is more tempting this year than most, but it’s still hard to see how this would accomplish more than electing Hillary Clinton and muddling the message from a Trump defeat.
Readers know our doubts about Mr. Trump, on policy and as an autumn candidate. His nomination still isn’t guaranteed, and the polls show him badly trailing Mrs. Clinton, despite her many flaws. Third-party advocates say the right candidate would give conservatives an honorable alternative to Trump-Hillary. They say a third-party candidate could win enough states to throw the election into the House of Representatives, which would then presumably choose the non-Trump Republican.
This isn’t impossible, but then again it almost never happens. The usual presidential result is that the party that splinters hands the election to the other, more united party. That’s what happened to Republicans in 1912 with Teddy Roosevelt, and again in 1992 and 1996 with Ross Perot. Ronald Reagan won in 1980 despite John Anderson’s third-party run, but the Gipper was the Republican Party nominee while Democrats were divided after Ted Kennedy’s challenge to Jimmy Carter.
Harry Truman won in 1948 despite Strom Thurmond and Henry Wallace breaking from Democrats for third- and fourth-party runs. But Truman was the Democratic nominee, not the challenger, and Democrats were then by far the dominant party. Republicans today are the minority party in voter registration and their approval rating is low.
The exit polls in the primaries show that Democrats are reasonably content with Mrs. Clinton as their nominee, and she should be able to consolidate the vast majority of Democrats behind her. Short of an indictment for mishandling classified information, she’d probably win a large enough plurality in a three-person race to carry enough states and get 270 electoral votes.
Some third-party activists are happy to run the risk of a Hillary victory as long they can guarantee that Mr. Trump loses. But such a motivation won’t sit well with the millions of Republicans who have voted for Mr. Trump. Those voters presumably believe the New Yorker can win in November, but if he doesn’t they need to see the consequences of their primary vote.
The GOP would have a hard enough time recovering from a third-straight presidential loss. The last thing the party needs is an excuse for Mr. Trump and his allies to blame a defeat on a “stab in the back” by other Republicans. That’s a recipe for more civil war and another fiasco in 2020. If Mr. Trump does lose, his voters need to understand that he was the architect of his own demise. Republican voters also need to see that alienating non-whites, women and young people was a losing strategy.
Then there are the down-ballot risks. Advocates say a third-party candidate would motivate GOP voters who might otherwise stay home in November if Mr. Trump is the nominee, and these voters would then support GOP House and Senate candidates.
Perhaps, but it’s more likely that dueling presidential candidates would put House and Senate Republican candidates in a perilous spot. Do they support Mr. Trump or the third-party conservative? If they are forced to choose, they could alienate enough GOP voters to ensure defeat. Consider how gingerly Mike Pence, the Indiana Governor running for re-election this year, handled his state’s GOP primary last week. He said he’s voting for Ted Cruz while also praising Mr. Trump.
GOP incumbents in swing states will be in a tough enough position being asked at every turn what they think about Mr. Trump’s latest rhetorical or policy eruption. Better for them to navigate issue-by-issue around the Trump black-swan candidacy while demonstrating their own convictions and independence.
We’ve been humbled enough by this election year to be wary of making any predictions about November. But if Mr. Trump is the electoral disaster that many Republicans fear, the first priority to minimize the damage is to preserve the GOP House majority. Assuming the Senate majority goes and the Supreme Court too, the House would be the only check on a return to the progressive excesses of 2009-2010. That priority alone is enough to resist the GOP’s third-party temptation.
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Online:
https://on.wsj.com/1W8VPRG
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