Editorials from around New York

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

The Poughkeepsie Journal on the need to continue efforts to treat Lyme disease.

Dec. 19

As health officials grapple with the complexities of Lyme disease, federal lawmakers have finally gotten more forcefully into the fight.

But - as with just about everything related to this confounding disease - a drawn-out battle ensued before even the promise of progress could be made.

The mid-Hudson Valley has long been at the epicenter of the struggle. Lyme is a menacing disease, one that affects 300,000 people annually. It can cause chronic pain, fatigue, muscle aches and other health problems that must be confronted. Lyme is generally transmitted through deer ticks, but it can be treated with antibiotics such as doxycycline if detected early.

Unfortunately, that’s where the agreed-upon solutions end. The medical community and regulators have had major disagreements about how to deal with long-term cases of Lyme - and whether such afflictions exist at all.

Clearly, research and funding are imperative to get a true grasp on how Lyme and other diseases interact with other forms of infection. And, clearly, those afflicted and the doctors who treat them need to control their own destinies and not be beholden to the rigid guidelines set up by powerful insurance companies that refuse to cover certain treatments.

To those ends, Congress recently approved the 21st Century Cures Act aimed at addressing these issues. Specifically, the legislation empowers Lyme physicians and patient advocates by including them in a group charged with ensuring coordination among federal agencies to maximize research priorities for Lyme. This is a crucial point. For too long, sufferers and the doctors have been shut out of the decision-making process leading to a long-term strategy. But grassroots groups and advocates kept pushing for a voice.

New York’s congressional delegation, including U.S. Rep. Chris Gibson, R-Kinderhook, and U.S. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, D-Cold Spring, and U.S. Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, both Democrats, were instrumental in getting the legislation approved.

Yet other battles linger. For instance, as a Poughkeepsie Journal investigation has found, profound concerns still are being raised over how Lyme cases are tabulated. In 2009, the state Health Department implemented a way to ease the counting burden on county epidemiologists overwhelmed by thousands of investigations. Consequently, counties like Dutchess and Ulster have fallen far down in the national rankings of case counts - and that can effect funding for research and prevention.

That too bears watching, as does the implementation of the 21st Century Cures Act. It has taken far too long to get recognition and traction in this fight; for the sake of those suffering, there can no let up now.

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Online:

https://pojonews.co/2hcviW1

The Albany Times-Union on the need to make Roe v. Wade a state law.

Dec. 18

The debate over whether or not abortion should be legal in America is about to move from the theoretical to the all-too-real, forcing lawmakers in states like New York to take a clear stand.

The urgency is all the more acute in the state Senate, where Republicans have long played coy on women’s reproductive rights and fractured Democrats have failed to bring this issue to where it belongs - a decisive vote.

The time for playing politics with women’s right starts running out Monday when, barring some last minute surprise, the Electoral College will formally pick Donald Trump as president. On taking office Jan. 20, Trump would be poised to fulfill the promise he made in an October debate: that overturning the landmark 1973 Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision “will happen, automatically” if he would win. He says the issue should be decided state by state.

He’s shown every sign of planning to follow through, issuing a list of 21 potential Supreme Court nominees, all of them considered to be anti-abortion rights.

Trump will be able to tip the current 4-4 ideological balance on the high court almost immediately. One seat on the court has been vacant since the February death of Justice Antonin Scalia, with Republicans who control the U.S. Senate audaciously refusing to hold hearings, much less a vote, on Democratic President Barack Obama’s nominee, federal Judge Merrick Garland.

Abortion rights proponents in New York have pushed for years to codify Roe v. Wade in state law to at least protect a woman’s right of choice in this state. Provisions to do that, and to move abortion statutes from the penal code to health law, formed the 10th plank of the 10-part Women’s Equality Act.

State Senate Republicans, however, stripped that plank from the WEA in a 2015 vote. The closest the abortion issue got to the floor was a vote on an amendment to put it back into the package. The amendment failed.

That’s not the same as a direct vote the issue, which some lawmakers are loathe to face in a state where voters overwhelming support abortion rights. Instead of serious legislative debate, the issue has been relegated to campaign claims full of wild distortions and outright lies.

Many lawmakers, particularly Republicans, have hedged their stance on a woman’s right to choose with the rote answer that “Roe v. Wade is the law of the land.” That tells us nothing about what they would do if Roe v. Wade no longer was the law, or if it was substantially curtailed nationally and women’s reproductive rights were left for states to decide.

It’s time for Republicans to stop hiding behind this non-committal non-position. It’s time for Senate Democrats - the 24 so-called mainstream Democrats, the seven in the Independent Democratic Conference, and lone wolf Simcha Felder, a Brooklyn Democrat who cleaves to Republicans, to put aside their differences for the sake of New York women. That’s especially true of the IDC, whose alliance with the Republicans has effectively enabled the GOP to block this vote.

Long before a time when Roe v. Wade may no longer be the law of the land, it must become the law of New York state.

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Online:

https://bit.ly/2iaAOZo

The New York Times on how additional and improved financial oversight could help avoid a bust in subprime auto lending.

Dec. 21

Congressional Republicans never wanted the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and have been trying to weaken the agency ever since it was created under the Dodd-Frank financial reform law of 2010. They’re likely to intensify their efforts next year with Donald Trump in the White House.

If successful, they will enfeeble an agency that has proved its worth time and again. In the past five years, the bureau has forced lenders to provide $11.7 billion in restitution and relief to 27 million consumers for illegal practices involving mortgages, foreclosures, credit cards, student loans, payday loans and other forms of credit.

In fact, more federal regulation of consumer financial services is needed, not less. A case in point is subprime car loans marketed to people with low credit scores. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York recently expressed “significant concern” over rising delinquencies in such loans; roughly six million borrowers are on the verge of losing their cars. That delinquencies are increasing even as the jobless rate declines suggests that lenders are loosening their standards in order to “qualify” borrowers for more debt than they can afford. In the world of subprime auto loans, which are usually made by nonbank finance companies, interest rates can reach up to 30 percent - an annual rate so high that a lender can turn a profit even when many borrowers default. In addition, lenders, rather than holding on to the loans, which could expose them to losses, often package them into securities and sell them to investors hungry for the high yields they offer. The parallels to subprime mortgage lending are inexact; the mortgage market, for example, dwarfs auto lending. But the similarities, including lending on loose terms to unsophisticated buyers, warrant serious concern.

What can the consumer bureau do? The answer is, not much, and that is a big reason subprime auto lending is so troubling. Congress gave the bureau authority over banks and nonbank finance companies. But it did not give the agency authority over auto dealers. Auto dealers, who tend to be prominent constituents in most congressional districts, lobbied successfully to be exempted from regulation by the bureau. That special treatment has meant relatively weak oversight of auto lending, because many auto loans, though financed by regulated lenders, are arranged by dealers, who often have discretion over most loan terms.

A bust in subprime auto lending, when it happens, won’t shatter the economy as the mortgage bust did. But it will harm millions of Americans. More and better financial oversight could help to avoid this outcome, but Congress is intent on moving in the opposite direction.

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Online:

https://nyti.ms/2hroU9e

The Utica Observer-Dispatch on outlawing tobacco.

Dec. 20

It’s a shame that we have to spend billions of dollars on tobacco prevention and cessation programs.

We know that smoking is addictive. We also know that it kills people in many ways. Cancer. Emphysema. Heart disease. Stroke. Those who manage to dodge the death sentence often suffer a poor quality of life due to smoking’s effects on the human body. And they stink.

We also know that smoking is extremely expensive. Forget the medical bills, just buying those tobacco spikes that eventually are likely to nail you into your coffin will eat up a good chunk of your budget. The average price of a pack of smokes is $10. And because smoking is so addictive, people pay it.

So, we might ask, why not just make tobacco illegal? That’s what a sensible government would do. All that money used to prevent people from smoking and help them quit could be used to research other diseases - childhood cancers, Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis, mental illness, etc. - that innocent victims have little or no control over.

Outlawing tobacco would just make sense.

There’s just one caveat: Greed.

The government makes a ton of money off this destructive behavior. Just like gambling, the government take is enormous. Most of what people pay for a pack of cigarettes is tax that goes to the federal and state governments. New York, for instance, grabs $4.35 per pack in taxes - the highest in the nation.

Yet, they say they’re losing money because people find ways to avoid paying the tax. Last year, the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine estimated that New York was losing about $1.4 billion a year due to the tax evaders. And when they get caught, that costs decent people more money.

Last week, a coalition of public health organizations reported that New York ranks 22nd nationwide in funding programs to prevent kids from smoking and help smokers quit. The report said that New York is spending $39.3 million this year on tobacco prevention and cessation programs, which is just 19.4 percent of the $203 million recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The report said states should do more to fight tobacco use - the nation’s No. 1 cause of preventable death - and help make the next generation tobacco-free.

There’s an easier way to do that.

Outlaw tobacco.

Until somebody has the guts to do that, we’ll continue to spend billions of dollars - often unsuccessfully - trying to keep kids from smoking, then throw more money at the problem trying to get them to quit. And we’ll continue to spend billions of dollars on the health care needed to treat addicts who suffer the horrible effects of tobacco. You’ve seen them in those nasty television ads - the ones with the rotted teeth, swollen gums, blackened lungs and other ugly deformities.

And we’ll continue to watch our loved ones die miserable deaths.

Of course, trying to get legislation enacted to outlaw tobacco is probably a fool’s errand. In addition to the tax money it generates, the politicians reap huge benefits from Big Tobacco by way of campaign contributions. Giving that up would mean actually caring about our kids’ future.

For a nation that claims to be one of the most advanced on the planet, we’re really not very bright. We need to show real leadership in 2017 and put tobacco - not people - in an early grave.

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Online:

https://bit.ly/2hrcnCK

Jamestown Post-Journal on taking politics out of cyber security.

Dec. 19

Cyber security is a critical issue demanding a bipartisan approach, Republicans and Democrats alike agree.

Or at least, they say they do.

But now, in relation to one of the biggest cyber security threats in the world, the issue has become politicized. That needs to end.

At issue is whether Russian government hackers somehow attempted to influence the U.S. presidential election in November.

Some Democrats claim Moscow did just that, helping Republican Donald Trump win the election. Some GOP leaders question that, insisting Democrats are seeing electronic hobgoblins where they do not exist and using them to make excuses for losing in November.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., rejects politics in favor of realism on the issue.

Yes, McConnell agrees, the question of Russian intervention ought to be investigated. “The Russians are not our friends,” he commented this week.

No, they are not. No realistic assessment of our cyber security can ignore the threat from Moscow.

At the same time, politics cannot be permitted to focus cyber security concerns solely on Russia. Hackers from other countries, notably China, are at least as great a threat.

The safety and reliability of U.S. computers and networks is a primary national security worry. Attempting to use it to score political points is foolish and irresponsible - and plays right into the hands of hackers in several countries.

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Online:

https://bit.ly/2hTqotX