Editorials from around New York

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

___

The Poughkeepsie Journal on New York state’s primary election in September

July 24

It’s no secret that New York usually ranks close to the bottom when it comes to voter turnout - and the numbers are particularly abysmal for primaries and elections held when there is no presidential race on the ballot.

So brace yourselves: Things are bound to get even more confusing during the September primary, even though New York lawmakers have had a slew of opportunities and options to prevent more problems. This year, the state primary is not going to be held on a Tuesday as usual but on a Thursday - Sept. 13 specifically. There are reasons for the switch. The Tuesday of the first full week after the Labor Day holiday is Sept. 11, which marks the anniversary of the terrorist attacks and also falls on the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah.

So, out of deference, lawmakers decided to move the primary to that following Thursday. Yet lawmakers could have done something more profound and sensible, such as moving the primary back to align it with the federal one held in June. Holding both primaries in June would have saved taxpayers at least $25 million in election costs. It also would have given the winners of those contests more time to prepare and campaign for the November general elections. New York has held primaries in September for the last 40 years or so, but the federal government interceded at one point, saying the congressional contests should be held earlier. Federal officials have cited the lack of time between the September date and the November elections for absentee ballots - particularly overseas military ballots - to be mailed and returned. As is, New York allows absentee ballots only in certain instances, such as being in the military, not because voting might present a hardship on that day due to work or family or other considerations.

In this day and age, voting shouldn’t be this difficult. For instance, New York is one of only 13 states where people cannot vote early. Expanding this right would make it easier for people with work or school obligations to make it to the polling booths. Over the years, good-government groups and other reform-minded organizations have offered many solutions to increase voter turnout, and New York has ignored them all. Those suggested changes run the gamut from allowing early voting and same-day registration, to lengthening registration deadlines and making it possible for people to update their information electronically.

Instead, the state relies on an archaic system and, this year, throws into the mix the move from the traditional Tuesday vote to one on a Thursday for the primary. This likely won’t help matters. The push for more enlightened policies in the future must continue.

Online: https://pojonews.co/2mEpRzo

___

The Rome Daily Sentinel on malaria

July 22

We understand that most of our readers - like most Americans - probably aren’t following news out of Paraguay. But there is a development out of the landlocked South American country that should give all of us good cheer and that highlights the importance of American engagement in global health initiatives.

Last month, Paraguay announced that it eliminated malaria, a disease spread by mosquitoes and that once ravaged the United States. This news marks Paraguay as the first nation in the Americas to eradicate the deadly disease within its borders since Cuba did so in 1971.

Paraguay didn’t win this fight alone. The World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have lent assistance for years, something both organizations do around the globe.

In fact, America’s fight with malaria dates back more than a century, from at least the time U.S. military forces began being stationed regularly in Cuba after it became an American protectorate following the Spanish-American War in 1898. The fight against malaria soon came home as the military joined with 13 states where the disease was then endemic.

When the U.S. stood up the CDC in Atlanta 72 years ago this month, under the name Communicable Disease Center, malaria control was its primary target.

By 1951, after spraying millions of homes throughout the South, malaria was eradicated in the U.S.

Ever since, the CDC’s anti-malaria program has focused on helping fight the disease’s spread overseas.

Paraguay’s success is particularly noteworthy because the disease is surging elsewhere in the Americas. According to the latest World Malaria Report, issued in November, nine nations in the Americas saw malaria cases jump by 20 percent or more in 2016. That’s no small matter for a disease that killed approximately 445,000 people worldwide that year - many of them children.

The lesson we draw from Paraguay’s success is that it may seem hopeless at times, but it is actually possible to make headway against diseases that have long vexed vulnerable populations. And that lesson is particularly import to ingrain in our thinking because as the world shrinks with increased global travel, diseases can more easily jump borders and even regions. Asian bird flu, swine flu and Ebola are just a few that have put Americans at risk.

The world is getting smaller. Diseases are getting more mobile, and our best protection remains the enormous efforts undertaken by agencies like the CDC, our nation’s research universities and, yes, international partners who engage these diseases in remote locales.

It’s valuable, if expensive and often painstakingly slow, work. But in the end, it can also be successful. Thank you, Paraguay, for reminding us that it is possible to imagine a world free of some of the most deadly diseases.

Online: https://bit.ly/2LPD7vQ

___

The Times Herald-Record on Marc Molinaro’s fracking plan

July 24

Politicians should not talk about things they don’t understand. Case in point - Republican Marc Molinaro’s support of hydraulic fracturing in New York as part of what he calls a “closely monitored” test program in the Southern Tier.

You know why he is doing this. The person most often associated with the state’s fracking ban is Gov. Andrew Cuomo, his Democratic opponent in this year’s election. For those who do not want to look too deeply into the issue, fracking has always been an attractive bright shiny object, offering energy independence and revenue with manageable environmental challenges.

In truth, it is very hard to frack without having many serious detrimental effects, including earthquakes and water pollution.

The state Health Department made the plausible case in 2014 that there was no way to provide adequate safeguards based on experiences in other states. Since then, the state’s focus has been on a shift to renewable resources, to investments in solar, air and hydro that would take the place of plants fed by any fossil fuels, including the gas that fracking produces. Investing in one means not investing in the other.

Molinaro is misleading people, and perhaps misleading himself, if he believes that a small-scale experimental operation would provide any information that would be relevant to fracking on a scale that might make economic sense.

The danger from fracking does not come from a few sites located far away from populated areas. It comes from the enormous impact that industrial-scale fracking has on the underground aquifers vulnerable to pollution. It comes in the well-documented dangers to wells and other local water supplies that those aquifers supply. And it come in even more dangerous forms in the need to create a massive infrastructure to treat the millions and millions of gallons of wastewater that fracking requires to break rock layers far below ground and then bring the fuels up.

A small convoy of tanker trucks might be able to cart away that waste water from a small experimental site. But for fracking to be worthwhile to those who want to invest, the scale would have to be enlarged to the point where treating the wastewater would be prohibitively expensive.

The Southern Tier, where Molinaro would try this experiment, is too densely populated to allow any room for error and as the number of sites increases, so do the potential detrimental effects.

Having studied and voted on this issue when he was in the Legislature, Molinaro knows or should know all this. That indicates that the proposal is more political than anything else, an attempt to get votes from those who are dissatisfied with Cuomo over the fracking ban. But those people already are not inclined to re-elect the governor, making this a wasted effort that only exposes Molinaro’s desperation as polls show him so far behind that he is not likely to catch up and donors reading those polls hold back, leaving him at even more of a disadvantage.

It’s still early, but so far the main component of Molinaro’s campaign seems to be that his is not Andrew Cuomo, something all of us already knew.

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

___

The New York Post on the New York Daily News

July 23

Monday’s mass layoffs at the Daily News are bad news for New York: This town needs more good reporters, not fewer.

The numbers are brutal: a newsroom staff slashed in half; no staff photographers at a place that long billed itself as “New York’s Picture Newspaper.” A sports department down from 34 people to just nine - how can a New York tabloid survive with that?

Yes, the News has been The Post’s competitor for decades, and the rivalry’s often turned bitter. But rivalry has its joys as well: Even getting beaten to a story is an inspiration to do better next time.

Not to mention the family dynamic: Many of our best people have come over from the News, and many of the folks who lost their jobs Monday are Post veterans and friends.

So we shook our heads when the paper was sold for $1 last September, and crossed our fingers on hearing rumors that Monday’s bloodbath was coming.

We sincerely hope the remaining staff can find a way to turn things around. We want to beat the News, but not like this.

Online: https://nyp.st/2uL2GrA

___

The Wall Street Journal on the Trump administration’s farm bailout

July 24

Hours after President Trump tweeted on Tuesday morning that “tariffs are the greatest!,” his Administration announced a $12 billion aid package for American farmers to offset the harm from the Trump trade wars.

If you’re confused, join the White House. The Trump Administration is trying to fix an economic problem of its own making by putting the victims on the federal dole. Perhaps this is what White House trade adviser Peter Navarro meant when he said the trade harm was merely a “rounding error.”

In May the U.S. imposed tariffs on steel (25 percent) and aluminum (10 percent) using a preposterous claim of harm to national security. Earlier this month it put new duties on $34 billion of imports from China. It has also been threatening to blow up NAFTA. Canada, Mexico, the European Union and China have retaliated by imposing new tariffs of their own on exports they know are crucial to U.S. producers, and by strengthening trade relationships with suppliers from other countries.

This is hurting U.S. businesses, and nowhere more than in highly efficient U.S. agriculture. American farmers need access to foreign markets for output they can’t sell domestically. When their exports get hit with higher tariffs, they become less competitive against growers that don’t face those tariffs.

The upshot is a glut of American food, from soybeans to pork, beef and corn - and falling farm prices. The right solution would be to end the trade war and restart the flow of American products to foreign customers.

Instead the USDA announced it will use the Commodity Credit Corporation, born in the Great Depression, to buy surplus farm goods that are driving down commodity prices. Tapping the CCC means that the program doesn’t need congressional authorization. If the surpluses are never sold, the losses will be piled on taxpayers at a later date.

But don’t worry: U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue says this is only a “short-term solution.” Tell that to the farmer who took years to cultivate a customer a half a world away. As Nebraska Republican Senator Ben Sasse put it, “This administration’s tariffs and bailouts aren’t going to make America great again, they’re just going to make it 1929 again.”

The Iowa Corn Growers Association said on Tuesday that, given the circumstances, the government ought to help. But it added: “Ultimately, resolving trade differences and repairing relationships with our trading partners must be our top priority because much of the demand for our corn lies outside our state and our country’s borders” and so “fair and open trade remains the key.”

American farmers won’t prosper on welfare. They need access to customers abroad. Mr. Trump may think that his farm tariff bailout will get Republicans past the November election, but sooner or later bad economic policy becomes bad politics.

Online: https://on.wsj.com/2JSEgAV