Editorial Roundup: New York

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

Trump’s Immigration Distraction

Wall Street Journal

April 21

President Trump wants the U.S. economy to reopen soon and take off “like a rocket ship.” Yet now he plans to reduce the human capital necessary for a strong recovery by suspending even more immigration to the U.S.

“In light of the attack from the Invisible Enemy, as well as the need to protect the jobs of our GREAT American Citizens, I will be signing an Executive Order to temporarily suspend immigration into the United States!” Mr. Trump tweeted Monday. On Tuesday he said it will last 60 days. The order’s details haven’t been disclosed, but this looks like a political distraction that could become a major restraint on economic growth if it lasts for any length of time.

One question is why this is necessary even for public-health reasons. Mr. Trump has barred travel to the U.S. from much of the world, and his Administration has stopped processing nearly all new visas for foreigners. Foreign governments have suspended nonessential travel to the U.S. All of this plus mandatory 14-day quarantines for new arrivals should block any new coronavirus surge from overseas.

There’s also no evidence we’ve seen that immigrants are associated with the spread of Covid-19 more than anyone else. Hot spots for infection have broken out in big cities like New York, and in meat-packing plants in the Midwest, where immigrants locate. But the spread there is due to living, working or commuting in close quarters, not to larger infection rates among immigrants.

Mr. Trump’s economic case is even weaker. “Decades of record immigration have produced lower wages and higher unemployment for our citizens, especially for African-American and Latino workers,” Mr. Trump said in a White House statement Tuesday.

But only weeks ago Mr. Trump was boasting about a U.S. jobless rate of 3.5% and record lows for blacks and Hispanics. Legal immigration levels were still running at an annual rate of about one million at the time, and that doesn’t count illegal migrants attracted by the strong U.S. economy. If immigrants steal American jobs, why were there millions of unfilled jobs before the pandemic?

Nearly all of the economic evidence shows that immigrants enhance American growth and jobs. Former Federal Reserve economist Madeline Zavodny, now at the University of North Florida, examined state employment levels and immigration for the National Foundation for American Policy in 2018. States with surges of immigration like Texas and Iowa had low jobless rates. “Having more immigrants reduces the unemployment rate and raises the labor force participation rate of U.S. natives within the same sex and education group,” she found.

Immigrants in this pandemic are providing “essential” work like farm labor, meat packing, food preparation and grocery delivery that are helping the country endure. The New American Economy advocacy group calculates that 3.8 million workers in the food industry are foreign born, and nearly 28% in agriculture. The Trump Administration knows this because on April 20 it eased regulations for H-2A agricultural visas and lifted the three-year maximum on an H-2A stay.

The White House also concedes all this by leaking that Mr. Trump’s order will carve out exceptions for farm and health-care workers. He should unless he wants crops rotting in the fields and Covid-19 patients to go untreated. The foreign-born share of U.S. doctors, nurses and other health workers is roughly 16.5%.

All of which suggests that Mr. Trump’s real calculation here is political. White House adviser Stephen Miller has long wanted to shut down most immigration, legal and illegal. In the coronavirus he may have found his opening. The country is worried, and Mr. Trump’s core supporters will cheer. With his approval rating down, Mr. Trump may feel he needs to return to one of his favorite 2016 themes. You know cynicism is afoot when the White House press secretary cites Paul Krugman as an economic authority on immigration.

But the price of all this may be a slower economic recovery that will hurt the larger public. As Kurt Huffman writes nearby, employers are already having a hard time rehiring some employees who are now making much more in jobless benefits. Democrats will make Republicans vote to extend the extra $600 a week benefit for not working into the autumn. And how “temporary” will Mr. Trump’s immigration ban be as the election approaches?

Beyond the damage to life and livelihood, the greatest threat from the coronavirus are policy mistakes that prolong the economic pain. Democrats want to use the pandemic as an excuse to put government in charge of much more of the private economy. Now Mr. Trump wants to limit America’s supply of human talent. If they succeed, we will wake up in 2021 having defeated Covid-19 but at the high cost of a diminished economic future.

Online: https://on.wsj.com/3buy01b

___

Earth Day, 50 years on

Newsday

April 21

What a nice piece of news: As we mark the 50th anniversary of Earth Day Wednesday, the world’s air is getting cleaner.

But this progress is only symbolic, and most likely temporary, and it has come at a tremendous cost. Because the same force that has shuttered polluting factories and taken countless cars and trucks off roads - the coronavirus - has also killed more than 175,000 people worldwide and wreaked economic havoc as it races around the globe.

The immense attention on the virus has obscured Earth Day, which for a half-century has been dedicated to saving our planet from man’s environmental ravages. If the day sneaked up on you this year, you are forgiven. But you should know that while the environment has received a bit of a reprieve of late, it is still under assault by the Trump administration.

In the weeks leading up to Earth Day, the White House rolled back tougher curbs on automobile emissions, despite its own agencies’ projections that the move would increase premature deaths. The Environmental Protection Agency said it would stop tracking factory and power plant pollution citing, of all things, the coronavirus crisis. The administration also reduced limits on carbon-dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants, and allowed coal companies to dump more debris in streams. And it weakened regulations on oil and coal-fired power plant emissions of mercury and other toxins by changing how the costs and benefits of such rules are calculated in a way that could make it more difficult to regulate other pollutants in the future.

This week, the administration decided against tightening limits on emissions of industrial soot, the nation’s most widespread deadly pollutant, despite recommendations from EPA staff scientists to lower the limits, and finalized a new rule that reduces the number of wetlands and streams protected by the Clean Water Act.

This zeal to reduce regulations will have real consequences. Dirty air and dirty water always do. New evidence even shows a link to COVID-19.

A Harvard study found that a slight increase in long-term exposure to fine particulate air pollution - i.e., soot - increases the likelihood of dying of COVID-19 by 15 percent, a danger best explained by the damage breathing polluted air does to one’s lungs. Another analysis in Italy, Spain, France and Germany found that 78% of COVID-19 deaths occurred in the five regions with the worst air pollution of the 66 that were studied. Here in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic regions, where we all breathe dirty air, communities of color breathe in 66% more air pollution from vehicles than white communities, and those same communities of color have been more at risk of dying from COVID-19.

The coal, gas and oil industries have been the beneficiaries of the White House’s policies. The losers are the American people, whose health and safety the government is supposed to protect. Ponder that during this Earth Day.

Online: https://nwsdy.li/34Z6173

___

People Who Want To See Restrictions Lifted May Have A Reason

The Post-Journal

April 22

It is easy to dismiss those protesting stay in place policies related to COVID-19 as wingnuts, whackadoodles or right-wing conspiracy theorists who don’t understand the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic.

And, surely, there are some who fit that description among those who are flooding big cities and state capitols around the country.

But there are many who aren’t taking part in the protests who are quietly and earnestly waiting to get back to life as they knew it. They aren’t itching to get back to their regular lives because they’re greedy, selfish or too stupid to grasp the enormity of our nation’s situation with COVID-19. And yes, those are some common conceptions being bandied about these days about those who want to see some restrictions lifted.

The same people who felt disregarded four years ago by the political elites from both parties are starting to feel disregarded now. People who have struggled to get by four years are still struggling to get by now. Thanks to complications caused by the COVID-19-driven economic shutdown, getting by has gotten even more difficult. There is a population who is struggling through an overburdened unemployment system that still isn’t servicing everyone who needs help. They see bills piling up while income dwindles. And unlike the federal government, these people can’t print money. There will come a time when their bills come due. More immediately, they are struggling to put food on the table now. They are struggling to provide for their families. That’s why food pantries and soup kitchens are busier now than they’ve ever been.

The lack of a reopening plan and the imposition of another month of staying in place has heightened the economic anxiety many people are dealing with. They need to hear more from their elected officials than society can’t reopen because not enough testing is available. Open-ended platitides are no longer enough for many people to justify the sacrifices they are dealing with. And, to top it all off, when they try to speak up, they are shouted down for being ignorant or greedy or selfish.

This shutdown hasn’t been economically devastating for some who still have their incomes. Try being on the margins and struggling to get your promised unemployment benefits that state lawmakers spoke so eloquently about a month ago. Watch the cupboards slowly get bare while waiting on a federal stimulus check that never seems to show up while federal lawmakers dither over how to send them or whose name ends up on the check. Try telling your children that things will be OK while wondering if your going to be furloughed because your company was waiting on a Payroll Protection Program loan, only to read in the newspaper that the loan program is out of money.

People who want to see restrictions lifted aren’t stupid, scared or ignorant. They are blessed with common sense, and common sense tells them the status quo can’t continue forever.

It’s easy to dismiss people who are starting to chafe at staying home. Show some empathy - they may be chafing for a reason.

Online: https://bit.ly/2x3gvGc

___

Presidential outbursts don’t help the reopening process

The Auburn Citizen

April 19

The economic devastation brought on by the coronavirus pandemic is historic in its speed and severity. People who are talking about the need to get American workplaces running again cannot be dismissed. But the process for restarting the economy also cannot be done carelessly.

There is still a exorbitantly high level of documented infection from COVID-19 in the United States, and the volume of deaths in a short period of time from the disease is alarming. The worst thing we could do is undertake premature, widescale reopenings and wind up back in the same place in a few months.

President Donald Trump said it perfectly on Thursday: “We are not opening all at once, but one careful step at a time.”

Less than 24 hours later, though, that message was obliterated by a series of Trump tweets: “LIBERATE MICHIGAN,” “LIBERATE MINNESOTA,” “LIBERATE VIRGINIA.”

It appeared to be a series of outbursts brought on by protestors in those states, many of them displaying their support for Trump while demanding an end to quarantines, business shutdowns and other social distancing measures that have been put in place to slow the spread of the disease and save tens of thousands of lives.

The Donald Trump who spoke with measured language on Thursday night was a distant memory. And that’s dangerous for our country.

If we are to get back on our feet in a safe, sustainable way, it will be done through the approach envisioned by people like U.S. Rep. John Katko, our central New York congressman, who was named to the bipartisan and bicameral Opening Up America Again Congressional Group on Thursday.

Katko, who supports Donald Trump’s reelection and therefore should be able to get an important message or two across to him, spoke about the challenge this group faces in providing the right guidance to the White House.

“It’s going to be a beast to tackle,” he told The Citizen. “But you got a lot of things to consider and a lot of things in different parts of the country to consider, from farming issues to health care issues to small business issues, there’s a lot to worry about, a lot to figure out what to do.”

That can’t happen if the “LIBERATE” tweets and subsequent fomenting of massive protests continue from the president.

The first step this congressional group ought to take is a message signed by every member to Donald Trump: Stop with the outbursts. They may feel great to parts of Trump’s political base, but they will only lead to further chaos at a time when we require disciplined, calm and intelligent leadership.

Online: https://bit.ly/3buJD8n

___

COVID can teach us to face climate change

Adirondack Daily Enterprise

April 22

The COVID-19 crisis is helping us face ugly realities head-on and realize that sometimes, giant threats require a bigger-than-average responses from all of us as a whole. And climate change is a giant threat.

There are people who argue that the coronavirus is a hoax, or that it’s no worse than the flu. Likewise, there are those who argue that climate change is a hoax, or that it’s nothing we need to worry about. In both cases, these people are wrong - and foolish. To satisfy their own convenience or loyalties, they don’t look at the evidence all around the world. And as the crisis worsens, they don’t do anything to help themselves and the world around them.

Those who deny COVID-19 either don’t know, don’t believe or don’t care that more than 150,000 people have died worldwide - more than 14,000 in New York state alone. The death toll grows daily.

The evidence of climate change is also plain. The Arctic Ocean’s ice covering is melting rapidly. So is Greenland’s ice sheet, as well as Antarctica’s ice shelves and glaciers all over the planet. Ocean temperatures are rising, and ocean salinity is dropping due to all the ice melt. More than half of the coral on our planet’s seas has died off. On land, this past decade was the warmest on record, and the two hottest years on record (records generally go back to the 1800s) were in the last five: 2016 and 2019.

Humans know these things through decades of scientific observation - not just a few studies but countless, redundant ones all over the world. These studies keep echoing each other, telling us the same thing: The planet is warming, and humans are causing it.

When we see signs of winter approaching - days getting shorter, frost killing the tomatoes, snow flurries in the air - we are wise to make sure we have heating fuel and warm clothes and insulation. Likewise, it is common sense to heed the signs of a warming planet and do something - not before disaster strikes, because it’s already upon us, but before it gets worse. Before the deadly wildfires Australia and California recently experienced become more widespread, before the polar ice melt floods our coastal cities.

On the bright side, all the COVID-19 quarantining has led people to drive and fly and otherwise pollute less, and therefore has dramatically improved air quality, as shown in satellite imaging over polluted cities in places such as China and California. This is more evidence that what we humans do affects the environment. That’s why scientists now call our current time period the Anthropocene, the epoch of humans, when human activity is the dominant influence on Earth’s climate and the environment.

This Earth Day, people cannot hold gatherings or rallies, because of the pandemic. Perhaps that’s just as well. These things have not prompted our federal government to action in recent years. This Earth Day, maybe the COVID-19 crisis will get more people thinking about our how we need to deal with crises in general. Maybe it will burn off the fog of comforting illusion and inertia, and get us ready to get real.

It will be a huge lift. Easy half-measures that don’t hamper our bustling economy won’t be enough.

We as a society broke out of out comfort zones to take action about COVID-19 when it became too big and too local to ignore. Likewise, you can bet our business and government leaders will take action when Wall Street is underwater. It is inevitable we will eventually be forced into action on climate change. It will get bad, but it will be less bad if we take bigger steps sooner.

Since human activity caused climate change, and human activity can alleviate it, the responsibility for our planet and all its life forms lies with those of us humans who happen to be alive at this moment in history. We can save ourselves, our future generations and the planet, if we behave in a way that prioritizes long-term consequences over short-term gratification.

The choice is ours.

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

___