Recent editorials from Alabama newspapers:
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April 9
Times-Journal of DeKalb says recent tariffs on imported newsprint is bound to impact the industry:
Newspaper printing and publishing are the latest victim in America’s ongoing trade war with friends and foes.
New tariffs on aluminum and steel and products from China are getting a lot of media coverage, but a similar threat exists in the publishing world.
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The paper that you are reading now is directly threatened by tariffs onto the imports of newsprint from Canada. These range from duties as high as 32 percent.
According to the News Media Alliance, the tariffs started with a newspaper mill in the Pacific Northwest called NORPAC. In August 2017, NORPAC petitioned the United States Department of Commerce to begin applying tariffs to newsprint imported from Canada. They claimed the imported paper was harming the U.S. paper industry at large. NORPAC is acting in its own interest here.
NORPAC is a small mill in Washington state. No other U.S. mill is supporting North Pacific, and the reason why is simple. The industry knows tariffs will cause damage to newspapers and ultimately reduce the demand for newsprint.
The Times-Journal is an important part of your community. We have served DeKalb County for nearly 140 years, and we plan to be here for 140 more.
These tariffs directly affect our community’s ability to get its newspaper. Community newspapers around the United States will feel a hit from this.
In the past month, the Times-Journal has been able to provide its readers with comprehensive content from around the county with special editions in addition to our regular news coverage. New tariffs would make this near impossible in the future.
According to The Daily News in Galveston, Texas, a sister publication of the Times-Journal, more than 60 organizations with stakes in the future availability and price of paper have formed a coalition to fight back against these unnecessary and harmful impediments to free trade.
The coalition summed up its argument:
We are printers, publishers, paper suppliers and distributors that represent mostly small businesses in local communities that employ more than 600,000 workers in the United States.
We have joined together to fight proposed government tariffs on newsprint that have been initiated by petitions filed by a single newsprint mill, NORPAC, an outlier in the industry that is owned by a New York hedge fund, with no additional pulp or paper operations in the United States or globally.
The proposed tariffs will force our member companies to cut jobs not only at newspapers, commercial printing, and book publishing operations, but throughout the supply chain, such as paper manufacturers, ink suppliers, fuel producers and equipment manufacturers.
Our country’s trade laws should not be manipulated by one company in a way that will have a detrimental impact on American jobs throughout our economy.
Nobody else reports on your community the way the Times-Journal does and has for more than a century.
These tariffs will make a difficult business even harder.
Online: http://times-journal.com
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April 11
Decatur Daily says Gov. Kay Ivey owes it to voters to debate her opponents:
The Republicans are having a race to see who will be their party’s nominee for governor come the Nov. 6 general election. And they’d like to debate the issues among themselves before the June 5 primary - all of them, that is, except the current occupant of the Governor’s Mansion.
Having become governor once without the hassle of running for the office, Gov. Kay Ivey seems intent on doing so again. Two Republican debates are scheduled for this month, but Ivey already has RSVP’d her non-attendance. She has other official engagements, according to her campaign spokeswoman, Debbee Hancock.
Ivey’s challengers, naturally, are accusing her of ducking them.
“Kay Ivey has never been elected governor. I think she owes it to the people to answer their questions and make herself available, even if it means working extra hours in a day,” said candidate Scott Dawson, an evangelist who has collected the endorsements of celebrity evangelicals Rick Burgess and Bubba Bussey, of the “Rick and Bubba” radio program, and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.
Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle, widely seen as Ivey’s chief rival for the Republican nomination, expressed similar sentiments.
“I’ve extended an invitation to her to join us in sharing our vision with the people of the state of Alabama. I’ve always believed people make time for things that are important to them,” Battle said. “The people of Alabama are important to me, and sharing my plan for this state with them is important to me.”
The GOP field also includes state Sen. Bill Hightower and Michael McAllister. On the Democratic side, the candidates are former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Sue Bell Cobb, Chris Countryman, James C. Fields, Tuscaloosa Mayor Walter Maddox, Doug Smith and Anthony White.
If Ivey continues avoiding debates, that’s understandable. She assumed office when her predecessor, Robert Bentley, left in disgrace. She has all of the advantages of incumbency without voters having ever vetted her for the job. That means she has a high profile, wide name recognition, the ability to generate publicity at the drop of a press release and, most importantly, looks pretty good when compared with the guy who held the office before her. Alabama voters are also used to filling in the bubble beside her name, having previously elected her state treasurer (twice) and lieutenant governor.
There’s been no polling in the governor’s race so far, but Ivey has a sizable lead in the money race.
Campaign finance reports filed last week show Ivey has raised nearly $3.2 million, while Battle has raised $1.8 million, Hightower $860,847 and Dawson $731,782 (not counting the in-kind value of his celebrity endorsements).
If Ivey thinks she can cruise to victory, then she has little to gain by debating and potentially everything to lose if she suffers an attack of gaffes. That sort of thinking four years ago is why then-incumbent Bentley never debated Democratic candidate Parker Griffith, who accused Bentley of ducking him and lugged around a huge rubber duck to make his point. Bentley defeated Griffith soundly, and then went on to infamy.
Ivey may feel no need to debate, but she does the voters of the state a disservice by trying to coast to the nomination. There is much in her record she could tout, including bringing some much-needed stability to state government after the Bentley debacle. She and Battle can both claim credit for the Toyota-Mazda plant coming to Limestone County - and argue about who deserves more of it. But she also needs to answer questions, about signing contested ethics legislation last week and her handling of the state’s prepaid tuition program as state treasurer, for example.
Ultimately, ducking debates doesn’t mean ducking one’s opponents; it means ducking voters. After the Bentley saga, voters deserve better than that. Ivey should debate.
Online: http://www.decaturdaily.com
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April 10
Dothan Eagle says allegations about former U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore are finally where they belong:
Considering the depth of ugliness plumbed during an intensive campaign ahead of last fall’s special election to replace Attorney General Jeff Sessions in the U.S. Senate, it should surprise no one that the acrimony continues in civil court.
Leah Corfman was the first woman to accuse twice-removed Alabama Chief Justice and defeated U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore of sexual misconduct while she was 14 and he was a 32-year-old prosecutor in Etowah County. Several other women later came forward with similar allegations. The development undermined the momentum of Moore’s campaign, and the candidate lashed back against his accusers.
Within a few weeks of the election, which Moore lost to Democrat Doug Jones, Corfman filed a defamation suit against Moore, alleging he and his campaign maligned her with accusations of immorality and making false statements.
Now Moore has countersued on the same grounds.
“Leigh Corfman knowingly, willingly and maliciously made statements she knew to be false to the Washington Post with the intention and knowledge that such statements would damage the reputation of Mr. Moore,” attorneys for Moore wrote.
The conflict is now in its proper place - the court system. And it’s the good fortune of the people of Alabama that Moore is no longer a public official, so the open-ended cost of litigation won’t be footed by taxpayers.
Still, many Alabamians will watch these cases with interest, as Moore maintains a strong following in the state, and the controversy raised during the campaign was significantly polarizing.
Online: http://www.dothaneagle.com
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