Recent editorials from Florida newspapers:
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July 22
The Miami Herald on unemployment benefits for Americans amid the coronavirus pandemic:
Gov. DeSantis says that he hasn’t been following the debate in Washington over whether to extend federal unemployment benefits to jobless Americans.
That’s OK, we have.
The Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation is set to expire after this week, taking the $600 weekly payments to jobless Americans with it. If reluctant Republican lawmakers in Congress care at all about keeping the U.S. economy buoyed while COVID-19 continues to surge, they will extend the benefits to the many people who were gainfully employed, then suddenly jobless, then employed again and now are out of work one more time.
As the increase in confirmed cases of the coronavirus shows, too many states, Florida, first and foremost, bungled reopening, doing it too early and without the proper hard-nosed mandates requiring everyone to take responsibility for staying safe.
Unfortunately, the possibility that the unemployed might use this princely sum of $600 a week - $2,400 a month - to put off looking for a job, is these lawmakers’ primary concern. Not their inability to feed hungry families, not their inability to pay the rent or buy medication, but not aggressively looking for a job at a time when so many types of businesses still are shut down and, therefore, not hiring.
Yes, a few states with higher minimum wages and that pay out more in unemployment benefits for a longer period of time might make the temporary federal benefit seem like a relative bonus. Arizona, Kansas and Montana are among such states.
Florida, it goes without saying, is not.
But even as DeSantis tries to dodge this debate so as not to be out of step with his mentor, President Trump, he almost seems to be making the case for continued federal benefits:
“I think people should understand that it’s not necessarily just a question of whether you want to work or not, it’s a question of whether all the jobs are going to be there,” he said. “Some of those folks who were laid off, they may not have the ability to go back to some of these jobs.”
Substitute “congressional lawmakers” for “people” and it’s clear that not only should federal benefits be extended. Republican lawmakers, now talking about an across-the-board cut to the $600 weekly payout, should, instead thoughtfully calibrate the benefits so as not to punish those people in low minimum-wage states with low unemployment benefits given for a shorter period of time. Again, Florida can take a bow here.
These are extraordinary times. Americans are up against challenges that, in many cases, government mismanagement exacerbated.
No one’s getting rich on temporary unemployment. Republican lawmakers should agree to extend it, without penalizing recipients, and stop showing contempt for working - and non-working - Americans.
Online: https://www.miamiherald.com/
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July 22
The Florida Times-Union on climate change and coal-fired power plants:
Mark Twain supposedly said there are three kinds of lies, and one of them is statistics.
You can distort any issue by cherry-picking the statistic. When a statistic involves the missing value of human lives, then it’s fair to say that statistic is a lie.
So when it comes to the economic value of coal-fired plants, one important statistic is routinely missing from electric utility comparisons: their health impacts.
Even in an era when climate change is a national issue, it has leapfrogged past health.
Now a new study states that closing coal plants has saved thousands of lives. In most cases, coal is being replaced by natural gas, which burns about 50 percent cleaner than coal. That change has been made chiefly for financial reasons because natural gas prices are dropping thanks mostly to fracking, and natural gas plants are cheaper to operate than coal-fired ones.
In fact, coal accounted for 50 percent of all power supplied in the U.S. in 2005, but that share has dropped to 27 percent in 2017. Coal-fired generation is continuing to drop this year.
Natural gas now represents the single largest electric generation source.
During the years 2005 to 2016, shutting down coal plants saved 26,610 lives, according to a study from Jennifer Burney, associate professor of environmental science at UC San Diego. The study also showed that coal-fired plants resulted in 329,000 premature deaths.
There is an agricultural impact as well. Coal-fired pollution resulted in the loss of over 10 billion bushels of crops like corn and soybeans.
Locally, JEA and its partner Florida Power & Light closed the coal-fired plants at the St. Johns River Power Park for financial reasons. Those units still had useful life.
Also, a study on JEA’s future by McKinsey suggests that JEA should plan for shutting down current coal-fired units.
Florida utilities are adding solar-powered units as their financial benefits become stronger. The main argument against solar involves the cost of backup power, but those costs are plunging as well.
It’s rare to find over 90 percent agreement on anything these days, but 96 percent of owners of electric vehicles would buy another one.
The survey by AAA research shows that 40 million Americans are interested in electric vehicles, yet sales are sluggish.
Concerns have involved price, lack of choice and anxiety over their range. Those concerns were mostly removed once people owned an electric vehicle.
But even more convincing was the bottom-line costs. If maintained according to manufacturers’ recommendations, electric cars cost $330 less per year than gas-powered cars.
Over five years and 75,000 miles of driving, electric vehicles cost 8 percent less than comparable gas-powered cars.
The impact on the environment of electric vehicles varies. If power plants are burning coal, positive impacts are less than plants that use natural gas or solar.
Electric utilities have traditionally used subsidies to encourage consumers. For instance, JEA offers a rebate of $500 or $1,000 for purchase of electric vehicles.
The rebates apply only to JEA residential electric customers. There are other terms and conditions as well. Climate change once seemed like an academic exercise to many Floridians.
But in an era of extreme weather events and historic climate chaos, that is changing. More than two-thirds of Floridians consider climate change a threat to future generations, according to a scientific poll conducted by Florida Atlantic University.
There is a political split. Only 44 percent of Republicans agree that climate change is primarily produced by human activity compared to 59 percent of independents and 70 percent of Democrats.
Younger people expressed more concerns.
For specific events, the concerns increased. Two-thirds are concerned about hurricanes getting stronger.
Hurricanes in recent years have affected large areas, produced record amounts of rain and hit unusual areas like the Northeast.
Online: https://www.jacksonville.com/
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July 21
The Orlando Sentinel on President Donald Trump sending federal law enforcement officers to Portland, Oregon:
There are nations where even law-abiding citizens have good reasons to deeply fear the police. That must not become true of the United States, but warnings have been evident here long before the murder of George Floyd made them impossible to ignore.
It is not white parents, but Blacks and Latinos who feel an urgent need to give their children “the talk” about what to do with their hands and voices during a traffic stop. Profiling of minorities is a well-documented problem.
Abundant federal funds for tactical gear, water cannons and other battleground vehicles have contributed to the militarization of civilian police forces and to what has been described as a “warrior mentality” better suited for combat patrols in Afghanistan, than for cultivating trust in American cities.
Deliberately making matters worse, President Trump has now sent militarized agents from several federal departments to snatch citizens off the streets of Portland, Oregon, ostensibly to protect government property during demonstrations.
And he’s threatening to do it in other cities, namely New York, Philadelphia, Detroit and other urban centers governed by Democrats.
Unlike local police, the agents wear combat fatigues and military helmets and not one stitch or badge of identification. They refuse to identify themselves to the public or tell their victims why they’re being kidnapped. They prowl and transport their victims in unmarked cars with deeply tinted windows.
In a videotaped incident at Portland as glaring as the police murder in Minneapolis, a 53-year-old Naval Academy alumnus was clubbed hard and long enough to break his hand while pepper spray was shot into his face. He had done nothing to provoke it. To America’s shame, this has been seen around the world.
There is no other way to put this: Those are the tactics of storm troopers serving an administration whose disrespect for the Constitution, indeed for all human rights, is total.
One obvious purpose is to promote President Trump’s campaign for re-election, which depends on further dividing Americans with manufactured fears about crime. In most places, crime has actually been declining. Even where it is not, the solution is not an armed federal invasion.
Another object is to see just how far the courts will let him abuse his office. If they do not put a stop to his reign of terror in Portland and allow it to spread to other cities, they will be false to their own oaths of office.
It dovetails with his flat-out lie that Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, favors abolishing the police. Trump doubled down on that during his Fox News interview even as host Chris Wallace, armed with the facts, repeatedly contradicted him. Politifact gave Trump’s claim a “pants on fire” falsehood rating.
Most police, we believe, want to do right by all our communities and be welcomed in them, rather than feared. But training regimes, supervision, disciplinary procedures and many other things need to change.
Something as seemingly minor as how police are uniformed could make a difference. Even the nicest people can be visually intimidating if they are clad head-to-toe in black or midnight blue. Their shirts would not necessarily have to be white. Even lighter shades of blue or green would be an improvement.
But even sensible change comes hard, as Michael Weinstein has found out in the course of his campaign for the Democratic nomination in Florida House District 81.
The Palm Beach Police Benevolent Association, a local union, withdrew its endorsement of him because of his remarks in a candidate questionnaire the Sun Sentinel published online June 26. Here’s what Weinstein wrote about law enforcement reform, all of it quite reasonable:
“Over the years, I have watched this country fight racism from the outside in, instead of the inside out. Meaning, we arrest and punish individual offenders who violate civil rights, but we are not focused on curing the problem. From my perspective we need a three part approach: 1. Mandatory de-escalation training. 2. Demilitarization of law enforcement. Police Officers should have all the proper equipment needed to protect themselves, but that does not necessarily mean wearing fatigues and patrol officers driving unmarked cars. These things can cause distrust and are not necessary for effective law enforcement, and 3. I support the idea of Citizen Review Boards.”
John Kazanjian, the PBA president, told the Palm Beach Post that in terms of de-escalation, “We’re ok with that. But taking away our unmarked cars? That’s the way we do stuff. That’s a no-brainer for us.”
Read closely, however, Weinstein wasn’t necessarily questioning the use of unmarked cars under all circumstances. They’re essential for stakeouts, for example. But if he was suggesting that they shouldn’t be used routinely, he’s right.
Moreover, an unmarked car is hardly the deterrent that a visible police cruiser is.
Weinstein told the newspaper he supports the use of unmarked cars for surveillance, but not community policing, and that “road patrol officers should wear their blues and greens and not combat fatigues.
“SWAT officers and others,” he added, “it’s okay.” But Kazanjian wouldn’t hear any of it. He refused to return Weinstein’s phone calls. He told the Post - and perhaps this is the real issue - that his members oppose any sort of citizen review board.
Police departments need to realize that some reforms have become inevitable. Citizen review boards is one of them.
Another is to take steps to prevent any president from exploiting militarizing civilian police agencies, as President Trump has done at Portland.
If the courts don’t stop him, the people must.
Online: https://www.sun-sentinel.com/
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