Editorials from around New England

Editorials from around New England:

CONNECTICUT

Trump’s words meaningless without change

The Day

Aug. 5

It shouldn’t be news that a president of the United States condemns white supremacists, but it was news when President Trump uttered such words Monday more clearly and emphatically than he had ever done before.

“In one voice our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy,” the president said at the White House in the wake of a Saturday shooting at an El Paso, Texas Walmart. As of Monday afternoon, the rampage had left 22 people dead and dozens injured.

“These sinister ideologies must be defeated,” Trump added.

If they are not followed with a change of demeanor by the president - if he doesn’t stop the inflammatory rhetoric that creates an us-against-them ugliness on the issues of immigration, asylum seekers at the southern border, and policy disagreements - his words will be exposed as nothing but empty, politically expedient rhetoric.

Given this president’s track record, that’s our expectation. Please prove us wrong, President Trump.

In declaring that “this attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas,” a manifesto left behind by the 21-year-old killer, now in custody, mimicked some of the president’s own rhetoric. Trump has likewise labeled the increase in immigrants seeking asylum at the southern border, largely Central Americans, as an invasion.

The manifesto cites the “great replacement” theory prevalent among white supremacists, alleging a campaign to replace Europeans and descendants of Europeans in Europe and the United States with immigrants from the Middle East, North Africa and, in the U.S., Latino countries - somehow for the benefit of a liberal elite.

In an April tweet, President Trump came uncomfortably close to such racist rantings by referencing the “breeding concept” in California’s “sanctuary cities.”

Trump, then, can start by acknowledging his politics of division - his suggestions that a demographically changing America is somehow less American, his statements that those who hold differing views should go back where they come from - is dangerous and can encourage bad actors.

In March the Washington Post referenced a study documenting that in 2016, counties that had hosted political rallies with Trump as the main speaker saw a 226 percent increase in hate crimes over comparable counties that did not host rallies. Political Science researchers at the University of North Texas analyzed data from the Anti-Defamation League.

And, according to the Anti-Defamation League, “Right-wing extremists were linked to at least 50 extremist-related murders in the United States in 2018, making them responsible for more deaths than in any year since 1995 . the year of Timothy McVeigh’s bomb attack on the Oklahoma City federal building.”

Words matter. Tone it down, Mr. President, argue your points on tougher immigration policy without demonizing groups of individuals. Unfortunately, dividing seems to be the Trump strategy to keep his base fired up and supporting him.

Terrorism linked to white nationalism is a growing threat domestically and internationally, and the United States must deal with it as aggressively as it has terrorism tied to radical Islam. If Trump truly wants to defeat this emerging enemy, he must direct our intelligence and law enforcement services to use all resources available, obtaining the warrants necessary to root out those behind the threatening, racist garbage found on fringe, alt-right websites and prosecute them accordingly.

As for the fact mass shootings have become commonplace in this country - on the same day of the El Paso murders, nine people were fatally shot in a Dayton, Ohio nightclub - continued congressional inaction is not acceptable.

The killer in El Paso was armed with an AK-47-style assault rifle, the Dayton mass murderer with a similar weapon, the AR-15. Both had large-capacity magazines. Both these weapons, designed for the purpose of killing many people with relative ease, are illegal to purchase in Connecticut, a result of laws passed after the Sandy Hook Elementary School killings that left 20 first graders and six educators dead in 2012.

There should be a national ban on these weapons.

Knowing, politically, that is not going to happen, can this president and the Republicans at least work with Democrats to enact some basic gun-reform legislation by requiring background checks before the purchase of a gun, regardless of how the purchase is made, and by allowing a reasonable time for the checks, ending the practice of allowing a gun sale to go forward simply because time runs out.

“Why run for Congress if you aren’t prepared to pass laws that make people safer?” asked Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., in the wake of the latest shootings.

Why indeed. To appease the gun lobby, apparently.

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

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MAINE

Kids in foster care being left behind

Kennebec Journal/Morning Sentinel/CentralMaine.com

Aug. 5

Around 20,000 foster kids a year age out of the system. In most cases, whatever help they had been getting is taken away too.

People who were once profoundly failed by their parents are once again left without the guidance, support and protection most of us get from family.

It is a steep cliff - and many former foster kids fall off. There needs to be something to catch them.

A new program coming to Maine could be part of the safety net. The Foster Youth to Independence Initiative, announced last week by U.S. Housing and Urban Development, could extend housing vouchers to as many as 25 former foster children.

Of the kids who age out of the system - rather than, say, those who are reunited with family, or ultimately adopted - 28 percent experience homelessness by age 21, according to the National Youth in Transition Database; in some states, it’s as high as 40 percent.

Such a program has a lot of potential. Twenty-five vouchers means 25 fewer young adults stuck on the street, with all that entails. And targeting a population so prone to homelessness has worked before - just look at the success with veterans.

But kids in the foster system must also be engaged well before they age out. To get to that point, most of them have been shuffled from placement to placement, sometimes into group homes or other institutionalized settings, piling insecurity and disarray on top of whatever trauma and tumult they experienced at their birth home.

As a result, at each point along the way they are in danger of falling behind and out of line with their peers. It sets them up for a tough life. It is very costly to society.

Only about half of foster kids complete high school, compared with 70 percent of their peers. Only about 1 in 5 college-qualified foster youth goes on to post-secondary education, compared to 60 percent of their peers.

By age 26, just 4 percent of kids who aged out of the foster system will earn a college degree. Only half will have a job by 24.

It’s no wonder so many end up homeless. To keep things from getting that far, foster kids need help all along the way.

They need to be prepared for college-level work in high school, not lost in the crowd because they switch schools so often. They need treatment for the mental and behavioral health issues more prevalent in children who go through the foster system.

Without parents to guide them, foster kids need assistance with the college admissions process - everything from finding out about schools to figuring out financial aid. Once in college, they need some sort of replacement for the emotional support usually provided by parents.

Youth in the foster care system face a lot of barriers to a productive, fulfilling life. The appearance of the HUD program in Portland shows that at least some people are thinking about this vulnerable, underserved population. More should follow suit.

Online: https://bit.ly/2YNy4G8

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MASSACHUSETTS

Cities and towns make progress on housing

The Boston Globe

Aug. 1

Good news? On housing? In Massachusetts?

Yes, that’s right. Even here in the land of the $600,000 starter home, a few forward-thinking cities and towns are starting to make progress on what sometimes seems like an intractable problem: the inadequate production of new housing that has sent the cost of renting or buying in Greater Boston into the stratosphere.

It’s way too soon to declare victory - not when the median sale price for a house in Massachusetts is $429,000 and $420,000 for a condo, according to the Warren Group. High prices happen when demand gallops past supply, causing buyers to bid up prices of existing homes to insane levels. In addition to squeezing renters and contributing to gentrification, the skyrocketing price of housing has evolved into a real threat to the region’s economic competitiveness.

“Greater Boston is losing current and potential domestic residents,” warned the Boston Foundation in its annual housing scorecard, “who are voting with their feet to live elsewhere for a variety of reasons.” Just on Tuesday, another report - this one from the real estate website Apartment List - found that only San Francisco has done a worse job than Greater Boston building new housing to respond to demand.

Thankfully, last year 15 cities and towns in Greater Boston made a joint pledge to pick up the pace of new housing construction by permitting 185,000 new housing units by 2030. Collectively, meeting that goal would mean tripling the pace of housing production. Some of the members of the group, called the Metropolitan Mayors Coalition, are doing their part to reach that goal faster than others - but almost all 15 report progress.

Leading the way have been Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville, each of which has set numerical goals for housing production. Boston has been on a building spree and is on track to meet its goal of 69,000 new units by 2030. Cambridge volunteered 12,500 new housing units; and Somerville has said it will build 6,000. Committing to a specific goal is crucial: A hard number creates accountability for officials.

Even outside those three, there’s some impressive municipal-level progress. The Revere City Council approved development on the portion of the former Suffolk Downs racetrack that sits in that city, which will eventually bring in a whopping 2,700 housing units.

In Quincy, 1,500 housing units are under construction, and another 1,030 are either permitted or in the process of receiving permits. Medford has 497 housing units in construction. More than a thousand units are expected in Brookline over the next few years, in part thanks to the state’s 40B housing statute that lets developers bypass local zoning when towns have insufficient levels of affordable housing. Newton has 471 units under construction and another 273 permitted.

Other municipalities are working on plans or reforming zoning bylaws to set the stage for future growth. Austin Faison, Winthrop’s town manager, says that will involve setting a housing production goal. Everett rezoned land near the newly extended Silver Line, setting the stage for development. Braintree is in the process of updating its zoning bylaws that would include provisions for denser multi-family housing.

Arlington experienced a setback when its town meeting rejected an innovative plan to spur denser housing and allow so-called accessory dwelling units. Town manager Adam Chapdelaine said the town was now launching a “more cooperative effort” and would try again, and that the discussion would include coming up with a numerical goal.

The experience in Arlington points to one way the state can help municipalities. Town meetings and city councils require a two-thirds vote to change zoning, which can empower a small minority to thwart reforms needed to encourage housing. Governor Charlie Baker’s housing bill would change that by reducing to one-half the vote needed to change zoning - and deserves legislative approval pronto.

There’s one other way that the state can help, and this one won’t come as a surprise: better transportation. Access to transit can be a key to successful development. For instance, Revere wants a commuter rail stop at Wonderland. Without direct access to any rail service, Everett is banking on buses as part of its development plans.

Cities and towns that are moving forward on housing production inevitably encounter resistance, and they deserve great credit - not just for taking badly needed steps to build housing, but for doing so in a coordinated way. Keeping municipalities on the same page is part of what’s necessary to break down the longstanding barriers to housing in Massachusetts. As Chelsea city manager Thomas G. Ambrosino put it: “Having it be a region-wide effort and everyone rowing toward the same goal makes it easier for us to defend our efforts, because we can tell those who are critical about building that this is a regional need and everyone is in it together.”

Online: https://bit.ly/33iNba1

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NEW HAMPSHIRE

Nursing home crisis is about to get worse

The Concord Monitor

Aug. 4

We’re not saying it’s going to happen, but the warning signs are there: If the state doesn’t increase Medicaid rates to care for the poor, some of the state’s nursing homes will close.

The already critical shortage of low-paid health care workers who help seniors remain at home rather than in a nursing home will increase. More and more families whose members can’t afford to quit work to care for a loved will be forced to ask, “What do we do with grandma?”

The answer, we fear, will be county nursing homes that, if enough private nursing homes closed, could be forced to expand. That means the state, under Gov. Chris Sununu, will have succeeded in downshifting a big portion of its Medicaid expenses to, you guessed it, local property-taxpayers.

New Hampshire’s Medicaid reimbursements, which among a host of services pays doctors to care for the poor and nursing homes to care for indigent senior citizens, are the lowest in the nation. The rates have not been raised across the board in 13 years. Nursing homes are now paid $49 per resident per day less than it costs to care for each elderly resident.

As Brendan Williams, CEO and spokesman for the organization that represents 78 of the state’s long-term care facilities explained in these pages last month, the state of Oregon’s Medicaid rate for nursing home care is more than $100 per day higher than New Hampshire’s rate.

Low rates guarantee low wages. Licensed nurse assistants, the people who bathe patients, help them eat and use the bathroom, must go through 100 hours of training and two police background checks to be certified. Their starting wage is $12 per hour, $3 per hour less than the starting wage of a toll attendant and about the same pay that can be earned bagging groceries.

Last year, Williams wrote, the state lost a net 567 LNAs to other states or better paying jobs. In May, Republican state Sen. Jeb Bradley, a supporter of bills to increase reimbursement rates, told lawmakers that there were 2,000 unfilled health care positions.

Initially, a bill to raise reimbursement rates by 5% in 2020 and 7% in 2021 passed with unanimous Senate support. Those numbers were cut to 3.1% in each of those years, an increase that will barely keep the system afloat but one that’s essential to the survival of adequate long-term care in the state. But Sununu vetoed the budget approved by the House and Senate.

The governor and Health and Human Services Commissioner Jeffrey Meyers opposed the across-the-board Medicaid increase. They favor allowing Meyers’s department to target the aid to where they believe it’s most needed, essentially feeding the starving baby birds that squawk the loudest.

It’s a terrible idea that forces agencies who work in tandem to compete against each other for scraps.

New Hampshire’s population is the second oldest in the nation, behind Maine. The baby boom generation has begun to reach the age when long-term care may be necessary. The state is ahead of many when it comes to providing options, through its Choices for Independence Program, to help people age in place. But the state’s Medicaid rates, which by one estimate are only 58% of the national average, are starving home health care agencies and driving away the health care workers needed to care for its residents.

Governors and lawmakers of both parties have shortchanged Medicaid providers for decades. It’s time for that to end.

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

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RHODE ISLAND

Saving the right whales

The Providence Journal

Aug. 8

Right whales are among the most fascinating and beloved creatures on earth. In adulthood, they can be bigger than a bus, 50 feet long and nearly 70 tons, with enormous heads that measure up to one-third of their length. They use their massive baleen “teeth” to strain plankton and other tiny morsels of food from the ocean. During summer months, they are sometimes seen off Cape Cod and Rhode Island.

It is said that their name comes from their being the “right” whales to hunt in earlier centuries. Their oil was valuable in the West before electricity, and their baleen had multiple uses before plastics, going into everything from buggy whips to women’s corsets. They tend to swim close to the shore and have thick blubber that makes them float after they have been killed, something that facilitated harvesting.

As a result, they were hunted relentlessly in the 18th and 19th centuries, to near-extinction.

But hunting of them was banned in 1949, and both the North Atlantic and North Pacific branches of the species have survived, barely.

Unfortunately, recent news has been alarming.

Of the estimated 411 right whales still living in the oceans today, at least eight have died this summer. Some were struck by vessels, but we don’t yet know what killed the others.

“The species is currently in a steep decline, but there is a tremendous amount of attention and interest in reducing these incidental deaths,” Sean Brilliant, a senior conservation biologist of marine programs at the Canadian Wildlife Federation, told CBS News. “I am optimistic we can stop this decline, but there is a lot of work to do and a lot of tough decisions to make.”

We should do what we can to help the species survive and prosper, both for the sake of these majestic animals and for our human progeny, who would have an opportunity to marvel at and learn from these whales.

While whalers and nation-states are no longer targeting the right whale, these creatures are sometimes killed by vessel strikes or because they are bycatch when commercial fishermen are trying to catch other species.

This week, former Navy officer Walter Wasowski, 73, of Middletown, helped rescue an entangled whale off Rockport, Massachusetts, while a white shark prowled nearby, according to WPRI-12. The whale was ensnared in a buoy line attached to a number of lobster traps.

Political conflicts have arisen over trying to protect the whales. Maine’s congressional delegation, for example, has asked President Trump to block efforts by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to develop regulations to protect the right whale. Their objection: the regulations may interfere with the activities of lobster and crab-pot fishermen, whose lines sometimes ensnare the whales.

Surely, we should strike a balance that protects the whales while preserving fishing.

U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., is among the lawmakers who have proposed the Scientific Assistance for Very Endangered (SAVE) Right Whales Act. The act, which is cosponsored by representatives from Florida and California, would provide government grants to companies, nonprofits and others who research ways to protect right whales and plankton, their primary source of food. The bill would provide funding of $5 million a year for 10 years.

It is not clear that would do the trick, but certainly we must work our hardest to protect this endangered species.

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

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VERMONT

A cruel attempt to cut food support

The Brattleboro Reformer

Aug. 8

It’s ironic that an administration, which has given huge, unnecessary tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires and plays fast and loose with so many laws, rules, facts and norms, wants to end food stamp benefits for 3 million Americans, including thousands of Vermont families.

On July 23, the Trump administration proposed changing how the food stamp program - known nationwide as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and called 3SquaresVT here in Vermont - has been running for more than 20 years.

In addition to Vermont, 39 states now let working families enrolled in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program to access food stamps. In other words, these working families need financial assistance help but have incomes that exceed the federal guidelines to qualify for food stamps. But since large expenses, such as child care and housing, eat up most of their paychecks, these working families find themselves without enough money left over to buy the food they need. On paper, they’re too “wealthy” for food assistance. Now, that’s a rock and a hard place.

But 40 states have seen it right to build a bridge allowing families whose incomes are exhausted by expenses to enroll in SNAP. And they’ve done so for years.

But that’s a “loophole” that skirts SNAP guidelines, the federal government says.

Conservatives rail against the nation’s food stamp program and Congress last year tried to curtail it but it failed in the Senate. In rolling out the Trump administration proposal, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said states “have misused this flexibility without restraint.” The change would save the federal government $2.5 billion, according to Perdue.

“We are changing the rules, preventing abuse of a critical safety net system, so those who need food assistance the most are the only ones who receive it,” Perdue said.

A loophole? Perhaps. An abuse? Hardly. These are families teetering on a fence: They work, but what’s left of their paychecks isn’t enough to pay the expenses that allow them to keep working. Call it what you will, but this “loophole” places a net where safety is needed.

The Vermont Department of Children and Families estimates 5,204 households will lose their SNAP eligibility. That is 13 percent of SNAP’s caseload in Vermont and equates to more than $7.5 million in annual benefits. The changes would affect 4,600 Vermont children who would no longer be eligible for free and reduced school lunches.

Food insecurity experts - such as the executive directors of the Vermont Food Bank and Hunger Free Vermont - call how the program has been administered here and in most states “broad-based categorical eligibility.”

“Categorical eligibility helps 3SquaresVT reach households that are working and may have slightly higher incomes but significant expenses (such as high housing costs, out of pocket medical expenses, and child care costs), or while working and saving a few thousand dollars for expenses like increased heating costs in the winter or a security deposit on an apartment,” John Sayles of the Food Bank and Anore Horton of Hunger Free Vermont wrote in a recent op-ed. “It makes 3SquaresVT even more effective and responsive to the needs of food insecure Vermonters, and is used by most states in the U.S. All of these households still need to apply and meet the same requirements as anyone else in order to receive benefits.”

This year, one in four Vermonters will visit a food pantry or rely on other assistance to feed their families. This number is far greater than those who are eligible for 3SquaresVT, write Sayles and Horton. This “highlights that these programs already don’t do enough to eliminate hunger for many working families.”

Penalizing struggling working families for retaining meager assets is foolish and cruel. It will create a poorer and sicker nation and take money out of the economy, hurting business.

In formulating the bipartisan 2018 Farm Bill, Congress considered and rejected such a rule change. It used to be a conservative principle that those closest to a problem were best equipped to evaluate it. Here, however, we see the federal government attempting to interfere in state efforts to take care of their own residents.

We are now in a 60-day comment period on the proposed rule change that ends on Sept. 23. The Vermont Food Bank and Hunger Free Vermont will be launching and participating in a broad advocacy campaign to preserve 3SquaresVT. Right now, those wishing to can submit comments through the website of the Food Research and Action Center at frac.org.

Online: https://bit.ly/2M93px7