Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Excerpts from recent editorials in newspapers in the United States and abroad:
April 30
The News and Observer, Raleigh, N.C., on the presidential candidates and their plans to deal with high gas prices:
All of a sudden there's some daylight between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on an everyday pocketbook issue. She's for a summer-long fuel tax holiday; he says suspending the federal per-gallon tax would be shortsighted.
The Democratic presidential candidates are in a high-octane chase for North Carolina's 115 pledged delegates in Tuesday's primary election. But on the tax holiday idea they're both eating John McCain's dust. Earlier this month the Republican nominee-in-waiting urged a halt in federal fuel taxes (18.4 cents per gallon on gasoline and 24.4 cents on diesel) from Memorial Day to Labor Day. ...
McCain's proposal, however, was widely panned -- with good reason. Lowering pump prices this way would simply accelerate demand and the need to import oil. Plus, fuel tax receipts help fund road and bridge repairs. ... Countless Americans, rightly suspicious of oil companies, fear that any tax cut would be followed, in the blink of an electronic sign, by an offsetting price hike. ...
Three candidates, three different stances. All fueled by frustration at high prices (which are mainly a function of the record price of oil on world markets), political calculation and -- let's hope -- an underlying realization that energy policy, at least once election season is over, is more complicated than this.
In the longer run, conservation and energy independence, which all three candidates tout, depend on consistent price signals to consumers, producers and innovators. Tax policy should encourage diversified energy supplies and efficiency. The fuel tax holiday plan does neither. It is short-term and sends the wrong signal. ...
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On the Net:
http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/editorials/story/1054991.html
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April 24
Houston Chronicle, on military recruits with felony records:
As the conflict in Iraq enters its fifth year with no end in sight, the capability of the country's armed forces is being challenged by extended combat assignments. ..
In a disturbing sign that standards are being lowered to fill the ranks, the number of felons granted waivers to serve in the Army more than doubled this year from last, rising to 511 from 249. Even the Marine Corps, whose slogan is "The few, the proud, the Marines," accepted 350 recruits with felony records last year, a jump from 208 in 2006.
Offenses waived included convictions for armed robbery, arson and burglary. Both services also granted increases in the number of waivers for misdemeanors. ...
One reason recruiting highly qualified young people for the armed forces has become so difficult is that they see the unfair and seemingly endless demands placed on our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan while the general public sacrifices little. Previous hit-or-miss treatment of wounded veterans after they returned home gives little assurance to prospective recruits that they will receive the best medical care their country can offer should they become disabled.
The United States must maintain and expand a military of the highest quality. Lowering the standards for recruits to include convicted criminals is not the way to achieve that goal. ...
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On the Net:
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April 27
Montrose (Colo.) Daily Press, on news analysts and the Iraq war:
"Expert analysts," often labeled as nothing more, get a lot of TV play time these days. They spend hours every day shaping public opinion ... in a coherent, deliberate effort to deliver a White House-version of the Iraq war.
The regular viewer might not recognize this though, because underneath the mainstream-media broadcasts of glistening, respectable faces are simply the men's titles and the words "military analysts." Internal Pentagon documents repeatedly referred to these analysts as "message force multipliers" or "surrogates." ...
Media are responsible for disclosing potential conflicts of interest, particularly when the same talking heads repeatedly appear on the same shows. ...
Let's expect news outlets to disclose the interests of their analysts so that we may form our own opinions and let's not follow "experts" blindly.
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On the Net:
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April 30
Chicago Sun-Times, on Indiana's voter identification law:
The U.S. Supreme Court this week upheld Indiana's voter identification law, considered the strictest in the nation. It requires voters to show government-issued photo identification, such as a driver's license or a passport.
The law may help prevent fraud, but it comes at too great a cost. A swath of the population risks being disenfranchised, including the poor, the elderly, the disabled and minority and young voters who are less likely to have an up-to-date photo ID or any ID at all.
Almost one in five 18- to 29-year-olds does not have a photo ID with a current address on it, according to a poll by Rock the Vote, which is working to mobilize young voters. Another study estimated that 6 percent to 10 percent of voting-age citizens don't have a valid ID. ...
We must protect the integrity of the ballot, but no one should be left out. The ruling could hurt both Obama, with strong support among youths and African Americans, and Clinton, who draws large numbers of elderly and Hispanic voters, in the Indiana primary next week.
With the vote just six days away, we urge Indiana citizens to get IDs now. Make your vote count.
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On the Net:
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April 29
The Press of Atlantic City, on corporate sponsorship and state parks:
In an effort to find alternatives to the proposed closing of nine state parks to save $4.5 million in a state that's going broke, the state Department of Environmental Protection is sending up this trial balloon: Corporate sponsorships of the parks.
The DEP deserves credit for trying to find creative ways to avoid closing parks or curtailing activities like camping or swimming. Everything should be on the table. But some things need to be quickly swept off that table _ like this idea.
People go to state parks to escape the very thing that corporate sponsorship would bring to the parks. You go to a state park to camp out in the woods, to swim in a lake, to hike a trail. To enjoy the natural _ read: noncommercial _ world. No one wants to come around a bend in a trail, dappled sunlight shining through the treetops, soft pine needles and sand beneath your feet, only to discover ... a sign for a bank.
It's a delight that the overcrowded, overdeveloped state of New Jersey has the wonderful parks that it does have. Let's treat them as the natural treasure they are. ...
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On the Net:
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April 23
Jacksonville (Ill.) Journal-Courier, on the Pope's visit:
The salient impression most Americans have of Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the United States is likely the attention he paid to the clergy sexual abuse scandal that has rocked the Roman Catholic Church in the United States (and in other countries, as well).
He brought the topic up unbidden at almost every stop along the way, from interviews on the plane from Rome to his final Mass at Yankee Stadium. Perhaps his most important act, undertaken outside the view of pervasive television cameras, was meeting with a group of victims of abuse. This was undoubtedly an important pastoral function for America's 65 million Roman Catholics, at a time when the church is suffering from a decline in attendance and a shortage of priests in an increasingly secular culture.
Whether it will or should satisfy victims of clergy abuse, who would like to see at least a few bishops disciplined who were passive or complicit by quietly transferring the accused priests, is up to the parties involved. ...
Nonetheless, we were mildly disappointed that he did not speak out more forcefully about the war in Iraq, which the Vatican rightly condemned from the beginning. ...
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On the Net:
http://www.journal-courier.net.
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April 30
The New York Times, on Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., and Presidential candidate Barack Obama:
It took more time than it should have, but on Tuesday Barack Obama firmly rejected the racism and paranoia of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., and he made it clear that the preacher does not represent him, his politics or his campaign.
Senator Obama has had to struggle to explain this relationship ever since a video surfaced of Mr. Wright damning the United States from his pulpit. Last month, Mr. Obama delivered a speech in which he said he disapproved of Mr. Wright's racially charged comments but said that the pastor still played an important role in his spiritual life.
It was a distinction we were not sure would sit well with many voters. But what mattered more was the speech's powerful commentary on the state of race relations in this country. We hoped it would open the door to a serious, healthy and much-needed discussion on race.
Mr. Wright has not let that happen. ...
If Mr. Obama is the Democratic presidential nominee, we fear that there will be many more such commercials. And Mr. Obama will have to repudiate Mr. Wright's outbursts many more times.
This country needs a healthy and open discussion of race. Mr. Obama's repudiation of Mr. Wright is part of that. His opponents also have a responsibility to repudiate the race-baiting and make sure it stops.
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On the Net:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/30/opinion/30wed1.html?_r1&orefslogin
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April 28
The Daily Sentinel, Grand Junction, Colo., on the reaction to the New York police case:
The year is 2008, and, as such, there is no issue in which race is not a factor.
Even when it makes no sense whatsoever.
Witness Friday's acquittal of three New York City police detectives on charges in connection with the slaying of Sean Bell, an unarmed black man whom the three gunned down in a hail of 50 bullets at Bell's bachelor party.
We'll leave it to you to decide whether the acquittal was the correct call. We didn't listen to all the testimony and didn't read the appropriate law. We'll assume the judge did so and arrived at the correct verdict. Reasonable people might disagree. ...
But we will take great exception to this comment, delivered moments after the verdict was announced:
"This case was not about justice," said Leroy Gadsden, police/community relations committee chairman of the Jamaica Branch NAACP. "... This court, unfortunately, is bankrupt when it comes to justice for people of color."
We beg to differ. There is nothing in the record indicating race had any bearing in this case. And we don't quite understand that logic when two of the defendants were African-American.
Disagree with the verdict if you want. But leave the race card on the table.
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On the Net:
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April 30
The Independent, on the price of oil:
Night follows day and, when the price of oil rises, so do the profits of the oil companies. That is the context we should bear in mind when we read about Shell and BP's record profits this year. ... If your business is selling something that everyone seems to want, your profits will go up. ...
The immediate question is what, if anything, governments should be doing about these stellar profits. One answer is a "windfall" tax. Whenever the oil majors report vast earnings, they are met with demands for such a levy. This is understandable. It is not as if these companies have increased their productivity or become vastly more efficient in the past year. ...
Yet a windfall tax would do more harm than good in the long term. Taxation should be transparent and predictable. If governments run around slapping taxes on industries that benefit from rising commodity prices, investment will eventually suffer. We should remember, too, that it is in the interests of the planet that the price of heavily-polluting fossil fuels remains high so as to encourage conservation and investment in cleaner forms of energy. ...
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On the Net:
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April 28
Asahi Shimbun, Tokyo, on the U.S. and Iran:
Last September, Israeli forces bombed and destroyed a facility in a desert in Syria. At the time, neither Syria nor Israel made it clear what the building was, and the United States also remained silent.
The U.S. government has now revealed what happened in this mysterious incident. The Americans say the building was a nuclear reactor that Syria was secretly constructing, with the help of North Korea, to produce weapons-grade plutonium.
The United States released photographs of the bombed-out building and its interior, which showed what appeared to be a nuclear reactor. It looks nearly identical to the graphite-moderated nuclear reactor in North Korea.
There is also a picture that allegedly shows high-ranking nuclear development officials from both North Korea and Syria standing side by side.
How in the world did the United States manage to get hold of a picture like that? This amazing feat sounds like something out of a spy novel. ...
If this disclosure is really true, then it is glaring evidence that nuclear proliferation is a real threat to the world. ...
North Korea owes the world explanations about its connection with Syria and its uranium enrichment program. To gain such details, the United States should carefully, and to good effect, play its bargaining chip of taking North Korea off the list of sponsors of state terrorism. ...
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On the Net:
http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200804280054.html
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April 28
Jerusalem Post, on the food crisis:
It surprises and humbles when a crisis comes, seemingly, out of nowhere, to upset the agenda we thought we had set for ourselves, our businesses or our government.
Such is the case of the global food crisis, which the UN World Food Program has termed a "silent tsunami." Globalization has created a degree of interdependence never previously imagined. Whether we like it or not, the world is ever more integrated politically, culturally and economically.
We are now learning more about rice then, perhaps, we ever cared to. How many of us knew that Thailand was the world's biggest rice exporter and the source of most of Israel's supply? And who would have imagined that 225 million people a year could be fed on the six percent of Asian rice lost each year to rats?
More significantly, experts say that there is no sudden shortage, but rather a steadily mounting demand. Rice consumption has risen 40% in three decades, according to the UN. ...
Nothing makes people more jumpy than telling them not to panic - and yet, objectively, there's nothing to panic about. Sure it's regrettable that food prices are rising, but the government should not be stampeded into precipitous actions that might upset market forces in a way that does more harm than good. At the same time, we do want the government to scrutinize developments and, if necessary, sensibly target financial assistance through the National Insurance Institute to those most hard-hit by higher food prices. ...
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On the Net:
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April 30
Taipei (Taiwan) Times, on Earth Day:
Just one week after Earth Day, it seems as unlikely as ever that much is in the works to achieve the environmental goals our leaders so often tout.
Earth Day brought plenty of discussion in political circles about what the individual can do to conserve energy, but too little talk about the role of the government and even less about the responsibilities of business.
The single most important voice on Earth Day was president-elect Ma Ying-jeou, the one person who will have the most sway over the next four years to kick-start national environmental efforts that until now have been a farce.
But while Ma has set frantic timetables for opening up to Chinese tourists, launching cross-strait flights, passing the budget for his iTaiwan infrastructure projects and addressing investment caps for businesses operating in China, he has hardly shown the same impetus to get environmental goals out of the starting gate. ...
The risk is very real that Ma, whose party has not been very keen to pass the EPA's proposed emissions bill in the legislature, will be perfectly content to maintain the nation's "green" efforts at the level of token measures. ...
Ma has always been a charmer, but saving the environment will require someone willing to rock the boat and make enemies. After all, everyone seems to agree something must be done, but no one is interested in making sacrifices. Yet the second economic miracle Ma is pursuing must seek to teach us the worth of our environment and treat sustainability as a pillar of high living standards that cannot be compromised.
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On the Net:
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2008/04/30/2003410607
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