Editorial Roundup: New York

Recent editorials of statewide and national interest from New York’s newspapers:

Why are more than a third of local families struggling to get by?

The Post-Star

March 1

The most important story we read in some time ran on the front page of last Sunday’s newspaper.

A longtime freelance writer, Evan Lawrence, took a close look at the challenges facing food pantries around the region.

While the general consensus is that the United States has a roaring economy where anyone can find a job, and the stock market sets new records seemingly every day, that’s not the world local food pantries are seeing.

“The perception is that the economy has gotten better and the need has dropped (for food pantries),” Pastor Jim Bartholomew told Lawrence. “The economy hasn’t improved for everyone. People who were struggling in 2008 are still struggling.”

Lawrence reported that local food pantries are reporting greater need, mostly from seniors and families, while donations have dropped.

Loaves and Fishes Cambridge Food Pantry, which is run by Bartholomew, says it serves 135 families a week.

“They’re food-insecure due to $10 and $11 an hour wages,” Bartholomew said. Others refer to them as the working poor.

Comfort Food Community in Greenwich also reported seeing its donations drop.

Its executive director, Devin Bulger, believes that recently passed tax reform, the upcoming presidential election and other environmental emergencies have all contributed to a reduction in donations.

Because the standard tax deduction was doubled during the 2017 tax reform, fewer people are itemizing their tax returns. Bulger believes that discourages many from making a donation that was part of their tax strategy.

Obviously, that is not an impact Washington politicians intended.

He also believes that international disasters like the earthquake in Puerto Rico and fires in California and Australia have people writing checks elsewhere. He even believes that many might be choosing to donate to political candidates they feel passionate about rather than the local charities.

“If people have a finite amount of money to donate, political campaigns can siphon funds away,” he said.

We wondered if there might be a fourth reason. We wondered if the constant drumbeat of how great the economy is might lead many to believe that the need for food pantries has diminished.

Comfort Food serves 100 families and another 20 at a satellite center at the Cossayuna firehouse.

We hope you are startled by those numbers. We know we were.

These are people who struggle to get enough to eat during the week.

A third of them are children.

Another third are the elderly.

We are sure you have often heard that there is a significant number of families living paycheck to paycheck, who are just one $400 unexpected bill away from being in trouble.

“Duane Vaughn, director of the Tri-County United Way in Warren, Washington and northern Saratoga counties, said they are seeing a rise in families who may need the food pantry services just once a year because of an unexpected car repair bill or medical expense.

“People have less of a reserve to tide them over,” Vaughn told Lawrence.

Those types of people now have their own acronym – ALICE – asset limited, income constrained and employed.

Essentially, they are above the federal poverty level, so they don’t qualify for most social services programs.

But here is what you really need to remember.

Lawrence reported that 35 percent of households in Warren County and 42.5 percent of households in Washington County are either in the ALICE or poverty level categories.

That’s a lot of people not making it in this great economy.

So if you neglected to write your check this year, it might be the time to reconsider contacting one of the 17 food pantries that operate in Warren, Washington and northern Saratoga counties.

And if you were planning to make a political donation, you might want to consider putting your money where it might do more immediate good for people in trouble.

Online: https://bit.ly/3amnGHo

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Experts, not politicians, must advise public on coronavirus

The Auburn Citizen

March 1

Coronavirus is a real global threat, and it’s arrived in the United States. It will almost certainly spread around the world and throughout the nation. But like the seasonal flu that infects people every year, this new disease will not wipe out the population.

That’s the general consensus you will get if you stick with public health and infectious disease experts as your primary sources for information on this situation. The federal Centers for Disease Control and the state and county health departments are the agencies best-suited to talk to the public about this matter.

But if you turn to politicians, especially at the nation level, you’ll get a cloudy confusion of dangerously inaccurate and/or exaggerated statements. For example, the president of the United States told a rally of his supporters on Friday night that coronavirus was the latest hoax meant to damage him politically.

We’re well past the point in Donald Trump’s presidency where we can expect much in the way of response by elected officials to that terribly ill-advised statement that doesn’t just reflect the same old political divisions.

That’s why we urge our readers to make sure that they are being both diligent in their pursuit of information on coronavirus and rational in their approaches to dealing with it. You can’t ignore it, but you shouldn’t wrap yourself in a bubble or shout about the end of days in the streets.

At this point, it really comes down to the basic common sense health that professionals have long advised us to use. Practice good hygiene; hand-washing is vital, cough into your elbow, etc. If you’re sick, see your doctor and follow their advice. Don’t go to work or school if you’re ill.

It’s sad that we’re at a point in our nation’s history when political divisions are clouding the ability for the public to get clear, accurate information and advice from our elected officials. But the reality is that’s true.

It’s up to the public to be smart and deal with it by turning to the experts. We’ll continue to do our best to provide coverage on this story that reflects what those experts are saying, and not on crazy conspiracies and political rhetoric attached to it.

Online: https://bit.ly/2THDvlc

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Voters to the rescue: Democrats send a resounding pro-Biden message

The New York Daily News

March 4

Tuesday was a very good day. In the nick of time, Democratic voters, bucking the haranguing far left that often dominates debate, made a powerful statement where it counts, at the polls - turning out in large numbers to consolidate behind Joe Biden as the standard-bearer of a sensible but still progressive vision of the future that has a fighting chance to take down Donald Trump in November.

In the process, they dispatched with Mike Bloomberg’s fantasies of swooping in as a savior and capturing the party with the help of a bottomless personal fortune. After a lame showing, Bloomberg was right to quit and line up behind Biden Wednesday morning. He’ll reorient that money and digital persuasion machine on beating Trump and, we hope, improving Democratic prospects in the Congress.

The nomination is far from sealed; Bernie Sanders and his supporters remain a formidable force. Biden will have to keep his ground game sharp and, through strong debate performances, reassure those worried that his scattered way of speaking is just who he’s always been, not the advancing effects of old age.

But count it as healthy indeed that the party seeking to unseat a dangerous and unethical president now won’t, by virtue of fragmenting its own sane center, back into supporting Sanders’ utterly ungrounded promises, which are doomed to drag down down-ballot candidates and consign Democrats to the fate of British Labour, which Corbynism carried over the cliff in December.

Tuesday, in wildly different states from the South to the Midwest to the Northeast, Democrats said they do not want to spend $60 trillion-plus on new federal programs. They do not want to ban all fracking, decriminalize illegal border crossings, wipe away all student loan debt and abolish all private health insurance.

The young people whose frustrations have fueled Sanders’ rise deserve realistic proposals for fixing the problems that fuel their passions, and a chance at making it into the middle class without being forced into bankruptcy by their college debt and medical bills.

The nation must not wind up with a choice between a divisive demagogue who resonates with one fringe and an uncompromising zealot who riles up the other. It needs sanity, competence, decency and the possibility of unity to prevail. That’s what Joe Biden is offering.

Online: https://bit.ly/38osevA

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We Are Ignoring One Obvious Way to Fight the Coronavirus

The New York Times

March 3

The Federal Reserve did what it could Tuesday to offset the growing economic impact of the coronavirus by announcing a supersize reduction in its benchmark interest rate - the first time the Fed has acted between its regularly scheduled meetings since the financial crisis in 2008.

But the Fed is ill equipped to limit the effect of a global pandemic alone. Lower interest rates may eventually soothe financial markets and help to hold down borrowing costs, but the Fed can’t speed the reopening of Chinese factories or reverse Facebook’s decision to cancel an annual developers conference that last year brought 5,000 visitors to San Francisco.

“A rate cut will not reduce the rate of infection. It won’t fix a broken supply chain. We get that,” Jerome H. Powell, the Fed’s chairman, conceded at a news conference on Tuesday.

The real work falls on the rest of the government. The first step should have been simple: ensuring that testing for the coronavirus was readily available and, better yet, free. But even after weeks of lead time for the virus’s inevitable arrival, access to testing remains woefully inadequate as the domestic death toll rose to nine on Tuesday.

At this point, the crisis also demands unorthodox solutions. To restrict the spread of the coronavirus, the government needs to put limits on commerce. The best way to protect people, and the economy, is to limit economic activity. That is an unfortunate but inescapable truth. Public health officials will need to impose quarantines, businesses will need to cancel meetings. And most of all, the problem now and going forward is making sure that sick workers stay home. That means not forcing employees to choose between penury and working while coughing.

Congress can help by mandating that workers receive paid time off if they fall ill, or if they need to care for an ailing family member. Such a policy is necessary both to impede the spread of the virus and its economic harm. Roughly one-quarter of workers in the private sector - about 32 million people - are not entitled to any paid sick days. Absent legislation, they face a choice between endangering the health of co-workers and customers and calling in sick and losing their wages and perhaps also their jobs.

The current system is practically devised to spread infectious disease. Among the people least likely to have paid sick days, and therefore most likely to work through illness, are low-wage service workers like restaurant employees and home health care aides. (Those workers also are less likely to have health insurance, which compounds the problem.)

Most developed nations require employers to provide some form of paid sick leave, and the United States should do so, too. Some states already mandate sick leave, and a recent study found that the adoption of such laws reduced cases of influenza by 11 percent in their first year. Whatever the course of the coronavirus, mandatory sick leave for American workers would improve the lives of families and insulate the economy against pandemics.

If Congress cannot bring itself to do the right thing, however, it still could help by mandating sick leave specifically for this coronavirus. A 2013 study of workers in Allegheny County, Pa., estimated that allowing them to take up to two paid “flu days” would have reduced workplace transmission of the flu by roughly 39 percent.

Employers sometimes argue that sick leave policies encourage malingering. But studies show that even accounting for workers who play hooky, society still benefits.

The government could defray the cost of emergency sick leave for employers, for example by allowing businesses to claim a one-time tax credit. There is also a good case for providing broader help, particularly to smaller companies that cannot easily weather a loss of revenue.

The Italian government, for example, announced Sunday that it would issue tax credits to businesses that reported declines in revenue of 25 percent or more - in effect shifting the losses from private balance sheets to the government’s balance sheet.

Also seeking to help smaller businesses, the Chinese government has announced that banks can defer the receipt of loan payments from smaller companies that were due during the first half of the year without being required to report such loan payments as overdue. In hard-hit Hubei province, the leniency applies to larger companies, too.

The Trump administration so far has shown little interest in tailored responses. President Trump reacted to the Fed’s announcement by demanding further rate cuts. He has insisted that the United States should have the world’s lowest interest rates; the European Central Bank’s benchmark rate currently sits below zero, at -0.5 percent.

Mr. Trump also has said that Congress should pass a payroll tax cut.

If the federal government fails to contain the spread of the coronavirus, and the economic outlook darkens, such a broad-based stimulus may well become necessary. But targeted policies - like sick days - are likely to remain the most effective form of response.

Online: https://nyti.ms/2wtxdOe

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The Lessons of Idlib

The Wall Street Journal

March 3

After nine years of civil war, Syria doesn’t get much attention these days. But a Russian-Syrian military offensive in Idlib province is a reminder that the broken country’s problems seldom stay within its borders.

In December the Russia-backed Assad regime began a push to retake Idlib, the country’s last opposition-held province. Turkey has fought a lonely fight against the offensive, which has taken a terrible toll on civilians and has become bloodier in the past week. Last Thursday the regime killed more than 30 Turkish soldiers-the most casualties in a day since Ankara entered the conflict in 2016. The Turks have been retaliating, and it’s unclear how the offensive will end.

Already some one million refugees-the biggest displacement in the war-have headed toward the Turkish border. This is a political and practical problem for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose country is losing patience with the roughly four million refugees it already holds. In 2016 Mr. Erdogan cut a deal with the European Union to house these migrants, but he occasionally threatens to unleash them on Europe.

He finally might make good on the threat. At least 13,000 migrants arrived at Greece’s border with Turkey over the weekend, and Bulgaria said it would step up patrols along its border with Turkey. Mr. Erdogan, no stranger to alienating his closest allies, could send more refugees absent military support for his troops in Syria and more financial help for the refugees already in his country.

“We stand by our NATO Ally Turkey,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement Friday. “The Assad Regime, Russia, Iran and Hizballah must cease their ongoing attacks in Idlib.” A State Department official said Washington would help its ally, but “this will not involve military moves by American units.” Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Monday that he had told his Turkish counterpart “that Russians aren’t always good partners.” But when asked if the U.S. would provide air support for the Turks, he simply replied “no.”

Europe should do more in any case. The EU’s borders will be the most pressured by another refugee wave. The problem is that the Continent’s outdated and under-funded militaries have little ability to change facts on the ground in Syria.

Mr. Erdogan has spent the past few years ignoring protests from the U.S. while buying Russian anti-aircraft missiles and cozying up to Russia’s Vladimir Putin. The Idlib offensive, which breaks the 2018 Sochi cease-fire agreement between Turkey and Russia, is Mr. Erdogan’s Russian reward. Idlib’s chaos, civilian deaths and refugees illustrate what will become more common as the U.S. retreats from its post-World War II global role.

Turkey is playing an important if imperfect role in Syria, and it deserves help from its allies. In recent days Turkey has exposed the weakness of Syrian air defenses, and the U.S. and other allies should assist from the air to help stop the Assad offensive. Yet the Western response so far has been lacking, while Mr. Erdogan plans to meet Mr. Putin on Thursday. Turkey is a fickle ally, but NATO is losing a chance to show it is a more reliable friend than Russia.

Online: https://on.wsj.com/2IlR98A

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