Editorials from around New England

Editorials from around New England:

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CONNECTICUT

No disguising ugliness of Trump comments

Connecticut Post

July 17

Even at this late date, four years after he launched his presidential campaign in a spasm of xenophobia, there’s a desire on the part of many Americans to believe that racism from the president of the United States is something other than it appears to be. Surely he must have been misunderstood or taken out of context.

That desire rests on the notion that the country’s highest office should be held by someone who seeks to unite people, rather than divide them.

But there’s no sugarcoating the latest round of ugliness. President Donald Trump, using the Twitter feed that has long been his preferred method of communication, made explicitly racist statements last weekend in attacking four women of color who serve in the U.S. House of Representatives.

“Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” he said, referring to Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.; Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.; Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich.; and Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass.

Of the four, only Omar was not born in this country. She was a Somalian refugee who came to the United States with her family in the early 1990s. She is every bit as American as any other citizen. The other three were all born in the United States. They aren’t “from” anywhere other than this country. Pressley, of Massachusetts, is not a child of immigrants or even a grandchild of immigrants.

But she is black. The nonwhiteness of the four congresswomen is what sets them apart and provokes the president’s ire, and there is simply no question his statement was racist and sexist. Nothing he or his supporters have said since changes that fact.

“He is saying that if you’re black or Hispanic, no matter where you’re born, you’re not really American,” Sen. Chris Murphy said. “It’s just naked, disgusting racism.”

“It’s racist. There’s no other way to describe it,” said Rep. Jahana Hayes, the Fifth District Democrat who last year became the first black woman to represent Connecticut in Congress.

Rep. Jim Himes, who actually was born in another country, made the same point. “Unlike the Democratic congresswomen (Trump) attacked today, I actually am a foreign-born member of Congress. But I’m a white male of European descent, so there’s no chance he’ll attack me,” the Fourth District congressman said.

Rather than disbelief at the president’s racism, the real danger is becoming numb to it. It’s been a near-constant barrage of divisive and hateful commentary from Trump ever since he rose to prominence in national politics by questioning the citizenship of the nation’s first black president.

That’s why it’s important to call his statements what they are - hateful and racist. The history of the United States on race relations is fraught, but we must always attempt to be better than we have been. Unless we’re willing to clearly condemn the indefensible, no matter where it comes from, we have no chance to move forward as a society.

Online: https://bit.ly/2xQ6WXZ

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MASSACHUSETTS

Justice John Paul Stevens exemplified different era

The Republic of Springfield

July 18

After former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens died on Tuesday, media reports of his passing widely described him as the longtime leader of the high court’s liberal wing. This was true enough, of course, but for those not versed in the ins and outs of the high court over time, it told only a small portion of the story.

One can imagine someone on the younger side, an individual who knows a little about today’s hyper-partisan court, assuming that Stevens had been some sort of lifelong liberal, undoubtedly having been named to the court by a Democratic president.

The truth, though, is a very different story indeed.

Stevens, who lived to be 99 years old, was named to the Supreme Court in 1975 by President Gerald Ford. He was a moderate Republican, back in a time when such creatures still roamed the Earth. Stevens was confirmed in the Senate in December 1975 by a vote of 98-0.

Though Stevens began his tenure on the high court as a sometime conservative, he was no one’s ideologue. Rather, he often forged his own path. But over the years, as the Supreme Court moved rightward, Stevens slid to the left. By his retirement in 2010, his transformation had been complete.

At a 2005 symposium at Fordham University Law School marking his 30th year on the Supreme Court and his 35th as a judge, Stevens said his change in attitude had come about naturally. “I know that I, like most of my colleagues, have continued to participate in a learning process while serving on the bench,” He said. “Learning on the job is essential to the process of judging,” he added. “At the very least, I know that learning on the bench has been one of the most important and rewarding aspects of my own experience over the last 35 years.”

Though one would hope that a current member of the Supreme Court might one day make a similar statement after a long tenure as a judge, pointing to the natural learning process as having been responsible for his or her evolution, such a wish seems little but fantasy, at least at the moment.

Imagine, say, either Associate Justice Clarence Thomas or Sam Alito, each a dyed-in-the-wool conservative who is about as immovable as the Supreme Court building itself, changing over time and chalking his new stance up to having learned on the job. Don’t hold your breath.

The Supreme Court that Stevens left in 2010 was a far cry from the one he had joined in 1975, and not only because of the rightward shift it had undergone over those decades. It had also become more predictable, more ideological, another partisan branch of our federal government.

Perhaps no decision better summed up the changed landscape than the court’s 5-4 ruling in the case that halted the recounting of votes in Florida in the overtime 2000 election that pitted Republican George W. Bush against Democrat Al Gore. That decision, with the five conservative justices in the majority, handed the keys to the Oval Office to Bush. In his dissent, Stevens wrote: “Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year’s Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.”

Online: https://bit.ly/2M0X1Ho

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MAINE

Victims are too often being forgotten in Epstein case

The Bangor Daily News

July 14

President Donald Trump’s labor secretary, Alex Acosta, resigned Friday amid growing questions about his handling of the case of Jeffrey Epstein, the rich and well-connected financier who pleaded guilty to prostitution charges a decade ago. As the U.S. attorney in Miami, Acosta agreed to a watered-down plea deal, and his office did not notify Epstein’s victims of the agreement.

Questions have lingered about why a prosecutor would cooperate so much with a criminal like Epstein. And then new sex trafficking charges were brought against Epstein last Monday by federal prosecutors in New York. They allege that dozens of girls, some as young as 14, were brought to Epstein’s homes in New York and Florida where they provided massages that progressed to sexual abuse, including rape. The girls were paid to recruit more girls to come to Epstein’s houses.

“In this way, Epstein created a vast network of underage victims for him to sexually exploit, often on a daily basis,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York said in a news release.

Faced with a similar indictment in Florida in 2007, Epstein accepted a plea agreement that kept the extent of his alleged crimes secret and mostly kept him out of prison. He was allowed to serve his sentence in a private wing of the county jail and even then was allowed to leave jail up to 12 hours a day, six days at week to work at his office, a violation of sheriff’s department rules that prohibited work release for sex offenders like Epstein.

This is the deal that Acosta defended and then resigned over.

It is also a deal that highlights how the legal system too often fails victims of sex crimes.

Acosta’s office wasn’t alone in failing to ensure that Epstein met the full consequences for his crimes.

In 2011, a prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office argued - against the recommendation of the New York Board of Examiners of Sex Offenders - that Epstein should not have to register as a top-level sex offender. The prosecutor, Jennifer Gaffney, asked a judge to reduce Epstein’s sex-offender status to the lowest possible classification, The New York Times reported. This would have stopped him from being listed as a sex offender for life and would have limited publicly available information about him. The request was denied.

As a registered sex offender, Epstein was required by law to report in person to the New York Police Department once a year and to notify the department of his address every 90 days. Failure to do so can result in jail time. Epstein did neither and the NYPD did not enforce the requirements, the New York Post reported.

In fact, Epstein largely escaped scrutiny until the Miami Herald published a series of stories about his crimes last year. Investigative reporter Julie K. Brown doggedly pursued his victims and law enforcement officials to build a detailed timeline of Epstein’s actions and how he avoided stronger legal penalties.

“This is the story of how Epstein, bolstered by unlimited funds and represented by a powerhouse legal team, was able to manipulate the criminal justice system, and how his accusers, still traumatized by their pasts, believe they were betrayed by the very prosecutors who pledged to protect them,” Brown wrote in the first story in the series called “Perversion of Justice.”

“I don’t think anyone has been told the truth about what Jeffrey Epstein did,” one of those accusers, Michelle Licata, now 30, said in the story. “He ruined my life and a lot of girls’ lives. People need to know what he did and why he wasn’t prosecuted so it never happens again.”

Licata’s plea resonates well beyond the Epstein case.

Sexual assault is one of the most underreported crimes. There are myriad reasons that victims don’t come forward. Fear of not being believed is a significant one, but so too is a belief that nothing will be done about it.

Out of every 1,000 rapes, only 310 are reported to police, and of these, only 57 lead to arrests, according to Department of Justice figures. Of those arrests, only 11 of the cases will be referred to prosecutors, with only seven resulting felony convictions, and only six perpetrators go on to serve time in jail.

In the face of these numbers, it is even more distressing that prosecutors, like Acosta, would cooperate with an abuser like Epstein to so minimize the consequences of his crime. Our justice system must put the lives of victims ahead of those of perpetrators, no matter how well-connected they are.

Online: https://bit.ly/2LYj4OH

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NEW HAMPSHIRE

Protecting vulnerable seniors from abuse

Foster’s Daily Democrat

July 13

“By 2020, the U.S. Census predicts 20 percent of New Hampshire’s 1.3 million residents will be 65 years or older, up from 13.5 percent in 2010,” notes Cheryl Steinberg, director of New Hampshire Legal Assistance’s Senior Law Project.

While there are many reasons to cheer this increased longevity, it also brings with it some challenges that need to be addressed.

A bill passed by both the House and Senate and awaiting Gov. Chris Sununu’s signature addresses one of those challenges, the financial exploitation and abuse of senior citizens, especially those who are most vulnerable due to physical or mental impairment such as Alzheimer’s disease, which affects more than 25,000 men and women in the state.

State Rep. Renny Cushing, D-Hampton, is the prime sponsor of House Bill 696, which gives seniors who believe they are being financially exploited the ability to receive emergency legal protection while the courts sort out the facts of the case. That emergency relief includes ordering someone to stop taking a senior’s property against their wishes.

In 2014, recognizing the financial exploitation of seniors was a growing problem, the Legislature created criminal laws so that those who took advantage of seniors can be prosecuted. Unfortunately, while these laws are sometimes able to get justice after the fact, they do not empower police, the courts and other protective agencies to stop the exploitation before damage has been done.

Cushing’s bill, HB 696, does just that.

As Steinberg explained in a letter to the House Criminal Justice Committee, which Cushing chairs, “While criminal prosecution is vitally important in combating financial exploitation and other forms of abuse, it does not give the victim the opportunity to take immediate action to stop the abuse, preserve assets, or recoup damages incurred from abuse.”

In this same letter, Steinberg notes the bill has been supported by a wide range of stakeholders including the New Hampshire attorney general’s office, AARP-NH, the Alzheimer’s Association, the NH Bankers Association, the NH Chapter of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys and the Disability Rights Center-NH.

“When someone has been financially exploited, their money is gone and it is very difficult to get it back,” said Douglas McNutt, associate state director of AARP-NH. “As this bill provides a mechanism to quickly stop the abuse, HB 696 will be a significant tool to protect against financial exploitation and preserve people’s independence.”

Cushing, Steinberg and Portsmouth Police Detective Rochelle Jones visited our editorial board this week to explain the importance of the bill, in the face of a misinformation campaign by those who are trying to frame it as a gun confiscation bill.

“The bill is an essential new tool to help strengthen our state’s response to this ever-growing problem,” said Detective Jones, who also serves as the Portsmouth PD’s senior services liaison. “It is our duty as a community to protect those who cannot protect themselves.”

For the record, House Bill 696 is not a gun confiscation bill, and there is not united opposition to the bill among Second Amendment rights groups in the state. In fact, the bill does not even mention guns (a reference was removed at the request of gun rights stakeholders).

We urge Gov. Sununu to ignore the politically motivated distortions about the bill and to focus on the facts of the very real protections it will provide to our vulnerable seniors. We urge Gov. Sununu to sign House Bill 696.

Rep. Cushing put it well: “The governor cares about vulnerable people. By passage of this bill, it takes a large step forward to making sure that our elderly and vulnerable population is not exploited.”

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

___ RHODE ISLAND

Stealing from U.S. companies

The Providence Journal

July 13

The United States has entered a trade war with China, a communist dictatorship that uses unfair trade practices to help create an enormous trade imbalance with America.

President Trump announced that last year’s tariff of 10% on Chinese goods, roughly about $200 billion, would increase to 25% in May. He also initiated an executive order banning U.S. companies from using telecommunications equipment made by sources potentially posing a national security threat - specifically targeting China’s Huawei Technologies. In retaliation, Mr. Xi announced in June an increase of tariffs on $60 billion worth of U.S. goods.

It is obvious that China greatly needs trade with the United States to sustain its economic growth and build up its military. A deal of some sort is thus probably coming.

But the administration must do more than wildly exaggerate the virtues of any agreement, something Mr. Trump is prone to do. It is vital to the future of U.S. businesses that it actually use this process to pressure China to reform its business practices.

A July 3 story by Tom Benning of the Dallas Morning News offers one of countless examples of what American firms are up against.

HKS, a large architecture firm in Dallas, won a high-profile competition to design the centerpiece of the 2014 International Horticultural Expo in Qingdao. This is a coastal city in China with more than 9 million residents.

For a time, HKS tried to work out the required financial deal with Qingdao officials. Then, abruptly, the Chinese officials “cut off negotiations without explanation or compensation.”

But that was not the end of the story.

The expo went on as planned - but with a striking inclusion. According to Ralph Hawkins, HKS’s then-chairman emeritus, the venue “featured a pale facsimile - ripped off by a local design institute - of the firm’s plans for a striking conservatory filled with lush biomes.”

The Chinese city effectively stole the designs without paying for them.

“There’s nothing we can do,” Mr. Hawkins explained. The company had made money working in China in the past. But every attempt carries a serious risk. The “lack of rule of law” means that American businesses “basically have no recourse against anybody.”

Lance Josal, a Dallasite who once worked for Mr. Hawkins and recently retired as CEO of the international architecture firm CallisonRTKL, agrees.

“That happens all the time,” Mr. Josal said. His company had three offices in China, and said that, while doing business can be “lucrative and very successful, … the rules in China can be manipulated or broken.”

Mr. Hawkins, who retired in 2014, supports the president’s efforts to change the way U.S. companies do business with China.

“In the long term, if the tariffs could bring us to the table to negotiate some of these items, everybody would be for it - believe me,” he told the Dallas Morning News. “Because it is unfair.”

Trade wars are fraught with peril. They can damage U.S. industries and consumers that depend on cheap goods from overseas. Free trade is better than government interference in a market.

But the U.S. market remains an extremely important one for other countries. For years, China has been taking advantage of America, particularly in stealing the intellectual property of U.S. companies. That has damaged our economy badly.

We hope the ongoing struggles with China will help create a more level playing field and fairer practices.

Online: https://bit.ly/2Y0tXSL

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VERMONT

Scott stands up to Trump; is it time to walk away?

Brattleboro Reformer

July 18

It’s been disquieting to witness Republicans who should know better remaining silent on President Donald J. Trump’s most recent open display of racism and misogyny. It’s been mindboggling to see some supporting his hateful words.

With that in mind, Gov. Phil Scott’s public rebuke of Trump on Wednesday is welcome, even if he stopped short of taking his criticism to its logical conclusion and leaving the party.

Trump, speaking of U.S. Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D.N.Y.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) said Sunday on Twitter that the four Congresswomen of color “originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe” and they should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”

Five days later, Scott, at his media availability at the Statehouse, spoke out.

“I find these statements offensive, racist and certainly not what we expect from the leader of the greatest country in the world,” Scott said. “Words matter and we’ve seen the same rhetoric used throughout history to discriminate, degrade and divide.”

“I’m not trying to lead the GOP on this. I’m trying to stand up for what I believe,” he added. “I think we all have an obligation to step up and call it out for what it is.”

Scott joins Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan and Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, both Republicans, in criticizing Trump’s statements.

Trump’s tweets represented an historic low moment for the presidency. But that did not stand long as his new low; Trump then turned his full focus on Rep. Omar, who came to this nation as a refugee from Somalia when she was 6 years old.

Rep. Omar was freely elected by the voters of the Minnesota 5th Congressional District with 78 percent of the vote in the general election. Whether she represents that district in Congress is the voters’ decision, and no one else’s.

But Rep. Omar does not agree with Trump on anything. Trump, ever the narcissist, conflates opposition to his policies to a lack of patriotism. He’s gotten his minions to go along with that misguided logic. And Rep. Omar is black, a woman, and a Muslim - making her, in Trump’s eyes, a target.

As if on cue, following Trump’s wild, accusatory rant against Omar on Wednesday night in Greensboro, N.C., a crowd of his followers chanted “send her back.”

It was as ugly a moment as American politics have ever seen.

Two years ago, when Trump was a candidate for the Republican nomination, party members called him out for bigoted comments. Now, there is largely silence, and it is deafening.

Very few Republicans have been willing to publicly distance themselves from Trump. To his credit, Scott has been among those willing to do so, most notably when he signed gun safety legislation in 2018. But he equivocated somewhat when asked if Trump is a racist.

“I don’t know him well enough to know whether they were racist and that’s the way he feels,” Scott said. “But again, does it really matter? The words are there, so whether it’s something he believes or something that he’s using for a politically strategy, both are equally bad from my standpoint.”

It would have been better if Scott stated the obvious - that Trump is indeed a racist, a fact proven by his words and deeds - and declared himself an independent.

The Republican Party has no credible mandate to lead this country so long as is misled by a race-baiting bully. There’s no reason why Scott should wait for the next outrage. Perhaps it’s time for him, and for all Vermont Republicans who see Trump for who and what he is, to abandon ship and chart a better course for themselves as a group.

But this cannot begin and end with Scott. It’s up to every other Vermont Republican, from town committees to state representatives and senators and party leaders, to follow the Governor’s example and stand for the principles of equality upon which Vermont was founded.

Vermont voters will surely remember next November which of their elected leaders stood tall when the very essence of this country - the idea that all are equal under the law - came under attack.

Online: https://bit.ly/2YcZ8OI