Editorials from around New York

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

The Times Union of Albany on voter suppression occurring in New York.

Feb. 27

The problem with America’s election system isn’t voter fraud. It’s voter suppression - and it happens right here in New York.

That’s right, New York, a blue state that ought to have nothing to do with the kind of Jim Crowe-style tricks like voter ID laws going on in some red states. And yet, New York discourages people from voting, too, albeit in more subtle ways.

To appreciate how insidious the problem is in New York, consider what’s happening right now in Montana.

Montana may have to hold a special election to fill a potential vacancy left by Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke, who has been nominated by President Donald Trump to become the nation’s interior secretary. To save money, the Montana legislature is considering a bill to do the election entirely by mail.

Mostly everyone seemed on board until the state’s Republican chairman, Jeff Essmann, sent an email to party members warning that a mail-in election would “give the Democrats an inherent advantage.” As Mr. Essmann describes it, Democrats would be able to muster college students and members of public employee unions to gather ballots door to door.

Mr. Essmann insists he isn’t trying to block mail balloting, but only arguing for opening polls, as well.

The underlying message is clear, though: Expanding the options for balloting beyond showing up at the polls makes it possible for more people to participate in the democratic process. And that worries people with an interest in controlling who casts a ballot.

This is instructive for New York, where proposals to make voting easier - including greater use of mail-in ballots - seem to wither each year on the vine. New York allows mail-in absentee balloting only for people who meet limited criteria, such as illness or a planned trip out of town.

No-excuse absentee balloting is allowed in 27 states and, contrary to assertions of some politicians - including President Trump - there is no evidence of any widespread voter fraud problem in those states (or anywhere else). There is a problem with turnout, though: Only about 55 percent of eligible American voters went to the polls in 2016, below most developed countries. The result: Barely one-fourth of the electorate voted for the current president.

In New York, where turnout was an anemic 59 percent, various proposals are again on the table. Attorney General Eric Schneiderman put forth an especially comprehensive package that included no-excuse absentee ballots; automatic voter registration; same-day registration; online registration and absentee ballot applications; shorter deadlines before primaries for changing party registration; early voting; and a single day, in June, for all primaries.

This deserves a public debate, on the floors of the Assembly and Senate. Voting rights - which is what easier voting comes down to - is an issue that shouldn’t be decided behind closed doors by state leaders as they haggle over the budget and other legislation. The universal right of New York citizens to vote must not be reduced to backroom horse trading, nor stonewalled for partisan gain.

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Online:

https://bit.ly/2mpcZ1V

The Poughkeepsie Journal on the federal government needing to keep its promise of refuge funding.

Feb. 28

From special education money to Superfund cleanup funds, there are far too many examples where the federal government has brazenly shortchanged localities on long-made promises.

You can add to the list money that is supposed to be coming in through the National Wildlife Refuge Fund.

A Poughkeepsie Journal investigation found that more than 1,000 local governments, including here in the Hudson Valley, are not being fairly compensated for the loss of tax revenue.

Environmental reporter John Ferro discovered that Congress has unfunded localities by $714 million over 35 years, an astonishing figure. And virtually no one has noticed or raised any opposition to this willful neglect.

The money is provided by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to offset lost property tax revenues when lands become part of refuges and are not developed. Eighteen towns, three villages and one county in New York received the refuge payments last year — but not the full amount they are entitled to receive. In some cases, the difference runs six figures; in others, like the Town of Shawangunk, it totals about $10,000 a year.

Congress has not fully funded this program since 1981. Essentially, as land values have gone up, Congress’ appropriations have not kept pace.

The Journal’s findings come on the heels of federal officials quietly finalizing a plan that could have significant ramifications to eastern Dutchess County. They have prepared to buy or otherwise preserve up to 1,500 acres, part of a vision for a “Great Thicket National Wildlife Refuge” that includes six Northeast states.

The plan is noble. Creating such a refuge would better protect dozens of species, songbirds, mammals, reptiles, and other wildlife. The Dutchess lands targeted for protection are part of more than 31,000 acres that could make up the refuge

Neverthless, if history is a judge, the area could get shortchanged financially by the federal government. For instance, the Town of Dover stands to receive nearly $2,000 in federal payments, but, unless Congress lives up to its obligations, the town likely will receive a fraction of that. Eastern Dutchess has struggled to get a firm economic footing, and no municipality can afford to be inadequately compensated by the federal government.

Fortunately, establishing this local refuge will take decades and will include parcels from willing landowners only. As that process begins, federal officials shouldn’t ignore the funding inadequacies any longer. The formula used in these cases must be addressed and updated at once.

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Online:

https://pojonews.co/2lvwiSZ

Newsday on obstruction magnifying the country’s problems.

Feb. 25

We’re taught that civic involvement is a good thing for a democratic society, and that’s true. But too much of a good thing can also be a bad sign.

A populace obsessively focused on politics, battling around the dinner table and marching in the streets, studying up on Supreme Court precedent and possessing a newfound interest in states’ rights, is a very healthy response - to a very serious illness.

No one pays much attention to the workings of a clock that’s ticking along - or a government that is, either. But when politics dominates our interactions rather than kids, jobs, hobbies, friends, worship and backyard barbecues, it means the situation is not OK.

In the past, such impassioned movements to force needed change have worked, even as the institutions of our nation - the media and courts and electoral process - shaped and moderated them. Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s successes in creating a social safety net came after the marches and Hoovervilles and unrest of the people. Our withdrawal from war in Vietnam was, in part, the result of dedicated pro-peace activism that gradually shifted national support away from that conflict. The battle for equal rights for black people was won largely in the streets where Americans marched and fought.

The people speak. The system works. This is our process. But to enact real fixes, it’s necessary to move past angry commotion and come to cooperation.

Seen one way, this moment of unrest has been going on since Donald Trump was elected president more than three months ago. Town halls held by members of Congress across the country are being disrupted by those who are furious at the plans of Trump and want their representatives to oppose him.

In Long Island’s 1st Congressional District, Lee Zeldin became so unnerved by the aggressive public opposition that he canceled a big public meeting scheduled for April in favor of teleconferenced town halls and smaller in-person gatherings.

This national moment of unrest, however, has been going on since Barack Obama was elected in 2008 and his Affordable Care Act spurred widespread public activism starting in 2009. The man Zeldin beat to take the seat, Democrat Tim Bishop, faced angry mobs coming to his events with a coffin as a prop eight years ago.

To his credit, Bishop put up with and facilitated the opposition’s attempts to voice its anger after he took a few weeks to think it through, moving his events to bigger spaces to accommodate the angry crowds. That may have helped him hold his seat in the next two Republican wave elections. But when Zeldin - a Republican state senator with a strong military record, deep roots in the district and unquestionable tea party bona fides - defeated Bishop in 2014, it was related to the larger movement.

And the tea party didn’t limit itself to going after Democrats. Conservative dissidents also took down the careers of many moderate and even conservative Republicans they deemed to deserve that party label “in name only.”

What we are seeing now, as angry liberals take to social media and the streets, is act two of the same unrest - the response, in a deeply divided nation, to the triumph of Trump and the often-dark worldview of his supporters.

The tea party largely managed to immobilize Obama on significant policy issues, making Obamacare the last serious legislative victory of the administration, forcing spending cuts and ending chances for a comprehensive deal to reform immigration.

The two rebellious stances aren’t equal. Blocking immigrants who’ve been contributing to our society for 20 years from gaining legal status is wrong. Fighting to keep the beneficial parts of the ACA, which gave Medicaid to 14 million very needy people and health insurance to millions of others who had been unable to get it, is right. The tea party people were correct in fighting for better jobs and fairer trade deals, and less government corruption, cronyism and incompetence, and the anti-Trump protesters agree.

But there was a huge cost to the full-on obstructionism of the tea party, as there will be to full-on obstructionism of liberals if they pick that path. We lost eight years in which financial crises facing Medicare and Social Security got worse, the nation’s roads and bridges and other infrastructure crumbled further, a lack of immigration reform left 11 million people living in the shadows, and other nations benefited from unfair trade practices. And crony capitalism and corruption still enriched insiders and infuriated everyday Americans.

Most people on either side of this conflict are not marching. And most people support moderate, common-sense solutions to our serious problems. If Trump and Republicans can provide worthwhile solutions on any issue, they deserve to be supported. Where they bring bad ideas, they need to be opposed.

But we have to put the needs of the nation above the culture war. We can’t afford eight more years without progress as the mantle of “the party of no” is handed off from the Republicans to the Democrats.

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Online:

https://nwsdy.li/2ma5Xhb

The Norwich Evening Sun on the presence of bias in news reporting.

Feb. 28

Here is how bias has seeped into the news you receive.

Used to be news was news. Not much coloring to it. Reporters were trained to keep their biases to themselves. And to write news straight. If a reporter colored the news the editors squelched it.

How about opinion? That was left to columnists like me. And to the editorial pages. And to feature articles. Like those of this paper. When you read them you knew you were getting opinion.

This was true of newspapers. And true of TV and radio news.

The news was “A major fire swept through the forest.” News colored to the left was “The forest fell victim to global warming as a fire swept through it.” News colored to the right was “Neglect by green-loving foresters has led to a major fire in the forest.”

It was those colorations that editors purged from news reports. That was then. These days reporters commonly inject their biases into the news. Often in subtle ways.

Used to be if reporters ran a comment from someone on a touchy subject they also ran an opposing comment. In the news, this was: This global warming expert blames the fire on rising temperatures the last few years. However, this forester says poor management by rangers has turned the forest into a tinderbox.

These days we see less of this balance. We often see comments from only one side of an issue.

Used to be big papers covered the major issues of the day. As did the big network news shows. Oh, they were never perfect. They played their favorites. If there was news that made their side look bad, they often minimized their coverage. While they maximized their coverage of whatever made their side look good.

These days too many big news outfits go overboard with this. They utterly ignore stories of major importance. For months. Because they feel those stories will harm their position. Their candidate is accused of corruption? They bury two paragraphs on page 44 with the cooking news. The opposing candidate says the wrong word? They plaster it on page one.

TV news guys do the equivalent.

What do we cover? And what slant will we give it? Those are big questions in big newsrooms. There were times in the recent campaign when the New York Times ran five stories in one day about one candidate. Five! All slanted the same way.

This kind of journalism mistreats readers and viewers. It abuses them. These customers are not dumb. They know. They sense what big media does to the news.

These days Americans tell pollsters they don’t trust their media to tell them the truth. And their mistrust has grown over the last 20 years. Journalists are puzzled by this. They wonder aloud why they have lost ground on the trust front.

Too many journalists doubled up on the crusading courses in journalism schools. The courses that revved them up to change the world. To shove truth in the face of power. And all that stuff.

They should have spent more time on courses that taught them to cover news as news. I don’t know if journalism schools even bother with such courses any more.

Used to be reporters learned stood up to power with solid reporting of facts. This is what happened. Here is who told us. Here are the official figures. Here is the accusation. Here is the denial. Here is one side’s opinion. Here is the other side’s. If you want more opinions, go to today’s editorials.

In that era more people felt they could trust what they read and saw of big news. Those disciplines and standards of journalism have evaporated. Along with the trust people once had for our news industry.

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Online:

https://bit.ly/2m8097g

The Staten Island Advance on President Trump’s banning of certain media outlets from his press briefing.

Feb. 27

Talk about a lack of subtlety.

We know that President Donald Trump has declared war on vast swaths of the media, including the likes of CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post.

But banning CNN, the Times and some other mainstream media outlets from a press briefing, as the administration did last week, just looks like a temper tantrum.

Not that it’s not understandable. These were among the outlets that totally missed how the 2016 campaign was going. That never paid tribute to the fact that Trump’s appeal was real, and that his campaign was resonating with actual voters out there.

These were the outlets that all but declared Hillary Clinton the winner of the White House in the weeks leading up to Election Day. And the outlets that couldn’t hide their shock and dismay when things went the other way.

So you could see how Trump could feel that he has no use for media outlets like this.

But to just ban them outright sends a chilling message and plays into everything bad that opponents already think of Trump. On top of that, all it does is make the banned media outlets into press martyrs. And this at a time when people have a pretty low opinion of the press as it is. Why do anything that generates sympathy for them?

There are so many ways that a pol can get back at the press. Allow them into the press briefing, but don’t take their questions. Or Trump could tell his press operation to ignore email and telephone queries from offending outlets, to bury the queries for a day or a week. And if Trump wanted to stick it to Politico, say, he could leak a good story to The Hill. Play outlets against each other.

In other words, there are so many other ways to handle the situation other than slamming the door in some reporter’s face and making a spectacle out of it. We expect better from our elected officials. We like them to have a little finesse. You know, the rapier and not the club. Speak softly, but carry a big stick. That’s what politics is all about.

But let’s be clear: While Trump is guilty of mismanaging press relations, this isn’t some kind of violation of the First Amendment. The amendment guarantees freedom of the press, meaning that the government can’t shut you down or dictate your content. It doesn’t say anything about guaranteeing access.

And, frankly, maybe some in the Washington press corps should spend less time sitting in briefing rooms being spoon-fed information by various spokespersons and agency functionaries. If the powerful are closing you out, do some good old-fashioned shoe-leather journalism. Develop alternate sources. It was living in the Beltway bubble that led so many big-time reporters and pundits to totally misread last year’s election. You would think that they’d learned their lesson.

Trump has also said he won’t attend the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Maybe now we can do away with the whole thing. This kind of hobnobbing between the press and the powerful is just bad for business. It makes everybody look like they’re just part of one big club. Which is one of the reasons why a lot of people voted for Trump, because they didn’t trust the establishment pols or the establishment media. In fact, they saw little difference between the two. The dinner only reinforces that notion.

Maybe Trump can hold his own dinner at the White House. Invite all the reporters to come and share a meal. It would be interesting to see who he invites and who shows up.

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Online:

https://bit.ly/2lqbXxQ