Editorials from around New York

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

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The New York Daily News on getting empathy from President Trump

Nov. 20

California: oh, the agony. Oh, the insults.

It is bad enough that the worst fire in the state’s history has done cataclysmic damage, killing 80 souls, leaving another 1,000 still missing and reducing 12,000 properties to ash.

Then came the President, whose job at such an awful moment, while first responders do what they must do, is to offer solemn condolences and expressions of national resolve.

First, Trump threatened to withhold aid if the state’s forest management isn’t overhauled. (The fire started in a National Forest; the federal government oversees these.)

Sunday, he said the key to preventing future tragedy is to follow Finland’s lead and “spend a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things.” Finns replied with a well-known Finnish expression: What the hell are you talking about?

Americans should be grateful for all the professionals capable of expressing empathy and delivering timely relief. The President just doesn’t happen to be one of them.

Online: https://nydn.us/2FCNu7F

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The Times Herald-Record on tax transparency

Nov. 20

Our state senator, James Skoufis, newly elected in the 39th district, raised an issue last week that he really should pursue once he gets to Albany.

How should taxpayers subsidize business?

The inspiration for his intervention was the news that the Orange County Industrial Development Agency was getting requests for help from two developers who plan on adding hotels in the region. As he noted, we seem to have a lot of hotels already and it is no mystery why. Tourism is up, government spending to lure tourists is rising in tandem and the region is frequently being mentioned in national and international stories about great places to visit.

Those who plan on building more hotels know this. That’s why they want to take advantage of a booming market. So Skoufis raises a good point when he wonders aloud whether taxpayers really need to become partners in this enterprise, contributing a hefty amount of tax dollars for a return on investment that is hard to quantify.

His criticism comes at a good time. The IDA already is under scrutiny for providing tax subsidies to a business that had begun construction and hired extra workers. And that project pales in comparison with what is most likely the largest tax subsidy of them all, the $2 or $3 billion that New York state and city are chipping in to lure Amazon’s new half-a-headquarters to Long Island City in Queens.

In an era when transparency seems to be the promise and goal of many a politician and elected leader, there is nothing more opaque than the way businesses get subsidies from people who neither have a chance to weigh in on the transaction nor see any reliable accounting.

Consider Start-Up New York, Gov. Cuomo’s signature program to trade tax breaks for jobs and investments. We know that the state spent at least $50 million on promotions, especially the ads you could not help but see on television boosting the governor as much as his program. And the payback for that investment has been a few hundred jobs.

In most cases, we have no idea how many jobs these giveaways create because nobody keeps track. If Skoufis really wants to make a difference, that’s where he should start.

True transparency on this issue would require two elements.

The first is a public and continuing accounting of the return on investment. Businesses know to the penny how much they take in from taxpayers, how many people they hire, how much those employees make. We, the unwilling silent partners, deserve to know what the owners know.

The second concerns the amount our officials are giving away on our behalf. If we are going to be on the hook for a few billion dollars, if Andrew Cuomo and Jeff Bezos know the estimates, then we should know as well.

Imagine if that figure had been common knowledge before the deal was made. Imagine if people in Orange Country had known that Legoland was getting $25 million or more.

People still might support these expensive deals, but they would do so knowing what they involved before it is too late.

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

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The Albany Times Union on the internet needing rules

Nov. 19

Revelations at Google and Facebook show disturbing deceptions.

Government must regulate the companies as a matter of both individual and national interest.

Americans would rightly be incensed if their government were gathering information on them on the scale that companies like Facebook and Google do. But few of us seem much concerned that private enterprise is doing this on a scale beyond anything dictators or advertising executives dreamed of just a few decades ago.

Maybe that’s because it’s all free, and users even get something in return - social networking, easy shopping, kitten videos. Perhaps these enterprises seem too big to comprehend, much less figure out how to reasonably regulate. Or maybe users have adopted a laissez-faire view of an unfettered internet.

Whatever it is, that mindset needs to change. The enormous influence of companies like Facebook might not be so bothersome if they behaved ethically. But as we’re learning more and more, that’s not always so.

Google, for example, was found to be tracking the movements of cellphone users even when they turned the feature off on their phones.

And as if Russian exploitation of Facebook’s platform to influence the 2016 election was not bad enough, The New York Times details how Facebook went to great lengths to downplay it. It even hired a political consulting firm to help it discredit critics, in some cases with its own disinformation.

Russia going to such trouble to interfere in a U.S. election is one thing; an American company trying to keep that secret is quite another. That alone bears Congress’ scrutiny.

We realize this is not as simple as, say, mandating airbags in cars. The internet is a bastion of free speech, particularly on social media platforms like Facebook, which reported nearly 1.5 billion daily users in September. The speech ranges from the benign - like personal celebrations or rants on life and politics - to the malignant - such as the state-sponsored disinformation campaign by Russia in our elections or the Myanmar military’s use of Facebook to incite genocide of Rohingya Muslims. And there is plenty of gray space in between.

Americans shouldn’t tolerate infringement of free speech absent a clear and present danger. When nations and rogue actors have figured out how to weaponize free-speech platforms, the danger is clear.

As sensitive a task as it may be, it is time Congress engages in an earnest debate over what minimum standards companies like Facebook and Google should operate under. We offer a few for starters: They should be vigilant for disinformation, and diligent in curtailing it; they should give users the option to keep their data private and not be spied on or tracked; and they should be transparent about problems like data breaches, sabotage or manipulation that could compromise personal privacy or the national interest.

That’s all easier said than done, of course, when one is talking about changing a business model that last year brought Facebook over $40 billion in revenue, or about regulating a virtual gathering place in which one-fifth of humanity interacts daily. Facebook and other massive enterprises like Google and Twitter may seem almost too big to regulate. It’s becoming increasingly apparent, though, that they are too big not to.

Online: https://bit.ly/2Ab7U1z

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The Post-Journal on the new leadership in Albany

Nov. 18

We have long placed great trust in the state Senate to be a necessary speed bump on the costly policies proposed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the state Assembly.

The Nov. 6 election removed the speed bump and built a Democratic Party drag strip from Buffalo to Albany.

The news is particularly bad for Chautauqua County. State Sen. Catharine Young, R-Olean, has worked her way into key leadership positions in the state Senate, which helped give the county a greater voice on state issues. It will be interesting to see how rural counties like Chautauqua and Cattaraugus counties fare when it comes to school and infrastructure funding with so much of the state’s decision-making power centered downstate. It was a struggle dealing with upstate issues even with Republican control of the state Senate. We shudder to think that things could actually get worse.

To his credit, some items on Cuomo’s list of priorities include things most reasonable people can agree should happen. New York needs ethics reform. The bail system in New York needs to be reformed, though not at the expense of public safety. Some voting reform is certainly worth discussion, though we hope Cuomo starts small.

Other items the governor mentioned shortly after the election, on the other hand, will be a bitter pill to swallow. The DREAM Act, which gives tuition assistance to college students brought to the country illegally when they were children, seems likely to happen. The “Flag” bill, which would allow a teacher or family member to petition a court to have weapons confiscated from a person who may be dangerous or emotionally disturbed, also seems a safe bet to become law.

The New York Health Act has been passed before in the state Assembly and we’re sure it will be a talking point come January. The act would ban private insurance, eliminate all insurance options and force both employers and employee to pay huge tax increases and is sure to be a talking point come January despite an independent analysis that shows the cost could exceed $226 billion - or roughly 450 percent more than current state income tax projections.

We know the types of legislation that will be making news. No one knows if state government will run like children let loose in the world’s biggest candy store or if someone in power will act like an adult. For months, voters heard about the coming of a blue wave. It hit New York - and now the best we can hope is that we don’t all drown in the next two years.

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

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The Wall Street Journal on reducing drug prices

Nov. 19

Did you hear that the Trump Administration has saved Americans $26 billion on prescription drugs? Probably not, and one person who seldom mentions it, oddly enough, is President Trump. A report from his own White House shows how faster approvals at the Food and Drug Administration are lowering prices.

The FDA has over 20 months of the Trump Administration approved an astounding 1,617 generic drugs, which are identical to branded versions but sold at commodity prices after patents expire. That works out to 81 a month on average - an 17 percent increase over the preceding 20 months. The Council of Economic Advisers in October tried to tally the savings from new entrants: $26 billion.

What’s remarkable is that FDA is speeding up even as fewer patents are expiring. The reason is Commissioner Scott Gottlieb’s prescriptions: clearing out an application backlog, putting priority on drugs where competition is limited, and more. The market for generics can respond to policy changes with some speed because copying a drug is much less onerous than new drug discovery and approval.

For all the talk of wondrous European health care systems, the American generics system is the envy of the world. Nine in 10 prescriptions in the U.S. are cheaper generics, which saved $265 billion last year. Compare that with 70% in Canada and less than half in many European countries. The U.S. pays big for breakthroughs but eventually prices fall as competition arrives. Europe enjoys less price discipline.

The White House also notes that “as of August 2018 the relative price of prescription drugs was lower than in December 2016,” which is a dose of reality to anecdotes about skyrocketing costs. Important too is the point that patients also “save” from expensive new therapies in the form of extended and improved lives. Affordability is an issue only if a drug exists.

No past Administration can boast this record of lowering prices without disrupting medical innovation. Yet President Trump is threatening to blow up this progress with his fixation on importing European price controls.

Democrats want to set up a “price gouging” agency that would have roving authority to investigate and fine drug companies that are behaving in ways Democrats don’t like. Their model is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Then again, Mr. Trump has rolled out his own demagoguery at pharma executives. The Administration’s record reveals that the better treatment is more competition.

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