Editorials from around Pennsylvania

Editorials from around Pennsylvania

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TURNING LOSS INTO GAIN WITH MARIJUANA POLICY, March 8

According to a piece that appeared a couple of years back in The (Philadelphia) Inquirer, authorities in Pennsylvania were arresting about 21,000 people annually for possession of marijuana, and another 5,500 for growing pot.

The column by Chris Goldstein, an editor at Freedom Leaf magazine, cited a report from the RAND Corp. think tank that estimated it costs $1,266 for the handling of every basic misdemeanor marijuana arrest.

That number jumps to $8,600 for each prosecution of someone accused of growing the plant. Based on those figures, it estimated that Pennsylvania was spending more than $73 million a year on those cases, and that doesn’t include the costs of jail, prison and supervision of those sentenced to probation.

But what if cash-strapped Pennsylvania could not only wipe out those costs, but also reap millions from marijuana?

State Auditor General Eugene DePasquale said the state could earn $200 million a year by permitting recreational marijuana use and taxing it.

At a news conference earlier this week, the auditor general noted that Colorado, with less than half the population of our state, is pulling in about $129 million annually through taxes on the cultivation and purchase of marijuana. In Washington state, that figure is $220 million.

DePasquale isn’t foolish enough to think such a move would find easy sledding in our Legislature, which has never had a reputation for being particularly visionary - or productive, for that matter.

“It is an entirely fair and appropriate question to say, can this ever happen in Pennsylvania?” he said.

In fact, it took years of pleas and protests from advocates before the Legislature finally approved use of medical marijuana in 2016, and that option won’t even be available to those who need it until next year, if all goes well.

“We don’t even have the medical cannabis program up and running yet, so it’s clearly a little premature to jump to the next step,” House Republican spokesman Steve Miskin told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

“While we’re appreciative of the auditor general’s multiple policy thoughts, as Pennsylvania and the nation is facing a serious drug problem, I’m not sure that legalizing a Schedule I narcotic is the best response.”

The Schedule I designation is part of the problem here. Despite more than half of our states having approved medical marijuana use, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, according to the Post-Gazette report, lumps marijuana in with heroin and LSD as drugs that have “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.”

To us, that’s foolish. It seems clear, just from anecdotal evidence, that marijuana does, indeed, have valuable medical applications, and its dangers are much less than those of LSD and heroin.

It’s also our belief marijuana use exacts a lesser toll on our society than the use, or abuse, of alcohol.

And in Pennsylvania, alcohol is not just legal. Its sale is state-sanctioned through our archaic state store system, and our leaders in Harrisburg have seen fit to expand its availability to more outlets, such as grocery stores.

As with alcohol, legal sales of marijuana would be restricted to adults, and it still would be illegal for someone to get high and get behind the wheel of a car.

For those who say that legalizing marijuana would make it easier for kids to get the drug, we would reply that those who are interested aren’t having any trouble getting it now, just as those who want a bottle of vodka can get their hands on it despite the controls inherent in the state store system.

Our state needs to stop wasting millions on arresting, prosecuting and punishing people for possession of marijuana, and it would seem the next logical step is to make its consumption legal, and to tax it for the benefit of all Pennsylvanians.

- (Washington) Observer-Reporter

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TAX SEASON JUST FOR SOME, March 13

There is little doubt that tax reform is a legitimate priority, and that it will get more attention as the April 15 filing deadline draws closer.

A new study by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy demonstrates that any reform must be in multiple directions, rather than in just reducing rates at the top.

President Donald Trump and others often lament that the top corporate tax rate is too high at 35 percent. But the study found that massive tax breaks devised specifically for special interests reduce the effective rate, an average of what corporations actually pay, to about 21 percent.

Researchers examined 258 Fortune 500 companies with $3.8 trillion in profits from 2008 through 2015. It found that 100 of them paid no taxes in at least one of those years and that 18 of them - including General Electric, International Paper, Priceline.com and PG&E - had net tax liability of less than zero for the entire period. That means that they received rebates.

The tax breaks are not uniform. Rather, they reflect effective lobbying by individual industries. The effective tax rate for utilities was just 3.1 percent over the period; it was 11.5 percent for oil, gas and pipeline companies. The only industrial sectors paying more than 30 percent were health care and retail.

So, indeed, the tax system must be reformed, but not simply to reduce a rate than no one pays.

- The (Scranton) Times-Tribune

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SENIORS OFFER WELCOMING MESSAGE TO IMMIGRANTS, March 9

The nation is divided.

Again.

On many issues, not the least of which is immigration.

President Trump this week rolled out a new and improved version of his travel ban, targeting immigrants from several mainly Muslim countries and at least temporarily preventing them from entering the country.

Some are referring to it as Travel Ban 2.0.

It did not cause the havoc and angry protests that accompanied his first executive order, in no small part because this ban will not go into effect until March 16.

His first try was rolled out on a Friday afternoon, causing mayhem at airports and leading to several legal immigrants being turned away or detained for hours.

The push was widely panned, even by Republican members of Congress who generally support tougher immigration standards as part of the war on terror, such as Delco U.S. Rep. Pat Meehan, R-7, and Republican Sen. Pat Toomey. It eventually was halted by court challenges. At least one state, Hawaii, already has gone to court to challenge the latest plan.

Once again President Trump is taking aim at immigrants from predominantly Muslim counties, although Iraq has been removed from the list. Still facing a 90-day ban on new visas are immigrants from Libya, Syria, Iran, Yemen, Sudan and Somalia.

All of which makes what is happening at Mercy LIFE, an adult day center in Sharon Hill, especially noteworthy.

Residents at the facility, part of the Mercy Health System, have been making their own welcome cards for Syrian refugees and their loved ones in response to the travel bans.

Rachel Borders, a recreational therapist at Mercy LIFE, explained the dual nature of the card program, helping both the residents while at the same time giving back to the community.

“Part of the program was helping provide purpose and meaning to people’s lives,” Borders said. “As people get older, they don’t have opportunities to give back or volunteer.”

The program was personal to Amal Abdelfattah, a Mercy LIFE recreational therapist who came up with the idea along with Borders.

“I do know some refugees,” said Abdelfattah, a Palestinian Muslim. “I know a lot of friends who work with refugees. With the Muslim ban happening, I wanted (the refugees) . to feel more comfortable where they are.”

Listen to the words of Mercy LIFE participant LeVera McGee, who took part in the card program. It echoes of the foundation of America as a place where people across the globe aspire to go to in order to taste the one thing they often are deprived of in their homeland - liberty.

That’s why America has always been a harbinger of hope, where men and women arrive in the hope of being free.

“It’s a shame really,” McGee said. “You’d see on TV where grown men, healthy and wise, have a lot to contribute to the world and what they do, they’re suppressed. So they’re coming here and we’re welcoming them.”

Another senior at the center, Corrine Lyle-Wilson, concurred.

“And then they’ll share what they have with us in turn,” she said.

The 50 cards created at the Sharon Hill facility were sent to the Muslim Youth Center in Philadelphia, where they will be distributed to refugee families in the area.

America is a nation of immigrants. We all trace our roots to foreign shores. We all - just a few generations back - have relatives who arrived here in much the same condition and seeking the same things as those who come to our shores today.

We salute the classic American sentiment delivered in the cards created by these savvy seniors, who show the wisdom of their years. They remember that we are in fact the U.S.

Us, together, a melting pot of voices and backgrounds from across the globe interwoven into the American spirit.

Lyle-Wilson had that in mind when she asked Abdelfattah for her expertise in crafting the note she attached to her card.

“I wrote Arabic and then underneath, I wrote the English for the words - Hello. Welcome. Peace.”

If only it was that easy.

- (Primos) Delaware County Daily Times

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U.N. WATCH: EXIT HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL, March 13

The Trump administration says it is reviewing America’s participation in the United Nations Human Rights Council and wants this body to reform its “obsession with Israel.”

Let’s cut to the chase: The 47-member council that includes such human rights “defenders” as China, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela is not going to reform. President Obama joined the revamped Human Rights Council (which replaced the U.N.’s discredited Human Rights Commission) supposedly to reform it from the inside. At least President Bush had sense enough not to step into this reconstituted abomination.

Needless to say, Team Obama failed to reform the council’s anti-Israel bias. But it retained its seat on the council, presumably to pursue worldwide human rights.

That’s laughable when the council, as part of its permanent agenda, devotes a specific item to Israel’s “human-rights violations” while paying lip service to the world’s worst rights abusers.

“Ten years of council practice incontrovertibly indicates that we can expect a small handful of other countries to be subject to a single resolution and that about 95 percent of states can count on none at all,” writes Anne Bayefsky, director of the Touro College Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust. Her National Review analysis is appropriately headlined “Get Out of the Quicksand or Drown.”

There’s no justification for America to sink deeper into the quagmire that is the U.N. Human Rights Council.

-Tribune-Review

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STANDING ON GUARD, March 8

It’s happening. But not the way people thought it would.

In recent weeks, people began streaming from the United States into Canada. But they’re not disappointed Democrats, disgruntled Californians or, for that matter, anyone who might have voted for Hillary Clinton.

The majority of the estimated 3,800 individuals illegally stealing across the world’s longest unprotected border into Canada since Feb. 3 are anxious refugees and undocumented immigrants fearing detention or deportation and seeking asylum.

According to London’s Daily Mail, most of those slipping across America’s northern border this winter are carrying passports from Syria, Somalia, Burundi, Eritrea, Ghana and Sudan, Turkey, Columbia or Mexico. Many obtain tourist visas to the United States then jump into airport taxis and deliver themselves to Canadian border checkpoints where they asked for asylum. Others, laden with luggage still bearing airline tags, walk across fields, wade through ditches and push baby strollers in deep snow from Quebec to Manitoba to elude Canadian border patrols and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Some have lived in the U.S. for years.

When seeking office, then-candidate Donald Trump promised to deport or incarcerate 2 million to 3 million undocumented immigrants with criminal records living in the United States. The surge of asylum seekers has grown since now-President Trump issued his ban temporarily barring travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries. They are now flowing into Canada in response to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s offer to “welcome those in need with open arms and open hearts.”

Since Jan. 1, according to the RCMP in Manitoba, located to the north of North Dakota, almost 200 asylum seekers have braved freezing temperatures and sometimes waist-deep snow to cross the border into Emerson, Manitoba - population 689. An estimated 1,200 have illegally entered Quebec since November, according to the Canada Border Services Agency.

Although border patrol union officials are calling for 1,000 more workers and conservatives in Parliament are calling for a refugee strategy and housing and support service resources are being stressed in rural areas where the crossings are happening, on Saturday Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said, the increase isn’t enough to warrant additional border security measures. But, he said, the government is “following closely” the recent accelerated rate of crossings.

Canada adheres to the Canada-US Safe Third Country Agreement of 2004. In this, any one in the US, which is considered a safe country, cannot request to be admitted into Canada as a refugee. However, refugee status may be requested once the individual is on Canadian soil. Generally 60 percent are accepted.

Border patrols at official border crossings are turning back those who have already made refugee claims in the United States - prompting the increase in illegal entries.

An estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States may now fear for their future. Canada, which has vast, unpopulated spaces and dwindling family sizes, may be looking to a wave of immigrants to fill their nation. But Canada has also not experienced its own 9/11 attack by irrational militants determined to destroy America.

The Nation to the North is free to open its borders to anyone it wants. But to avoid its own Trump-like backlash somewhere down the road, Canada should heed the warnings of their own government officials who are calling for a strategy to cope with these unexpected visitors, as well as the call of the Canadian border patrol to have more workers.

- New Castle News

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