Editorials from around New York

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

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The Post-Star on the need for candidate debates.

Oct. 25

Debate-ducking seems to be the sport of the season here in New York, but it’s not a very sporting way to conduct a political campaign.

We were disappointed that our incumbent congresswoman, Republican Elise Stefanik, did not agree to attend a debate before a live audience or a public forum with her opponents - Democrat Tedra Cobb and Green Party candidate Lynn Kahn. But she did agree to three in-studio television debates, which is a lot better than other incumbents and favorites have done.

Candidates have an obligation to engage in free and fair public debates, even if they are incumbents and even if they are favorites to win.

Republican incumbent Assemblywoman Betty Little of Queensbury, for example, avoided a debate with her Democratic challenger, Emily Martz of Saranac Lake, for so long that the League of Women Voters gave up on it.

Other incumbents, such as Gov. Andrew Cuomo and U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, both Democrats, have been shamed into making token appearances at a single, late debate. Gillibrand’s will be all of half an hour long.

You may never have heard of these candidates’ opponents - Republicans Marc Molinaro for governor and Chele Farley for U.S. Senate - or if you’ve heard of them, you probably don’t know much about them, and that is the point.

Their name recognition is low, and their chances of winning are slim, and these circumstances constrain their ability to raise money. A public, televised debate offers them a rare chance to state their case and inform the public without having to spend a lot of money.

The problem here is an inability to see the big picture, or to put it less charitably, a willingness to put personal political advantage above the public interest. Incumbents avoid the free and open exchange of views that informs voters and bolsters our democracy for one selfish reason - they believe they will win anyway.

In the attorney general’s race, neither candidate is an incumbent, but Democrat Letitia James, the favorite, is still talking about ducking a debate with Republican Keith Wofford. Many voters - especially upstate voters - have never heard of either candidate, so you would think a debate would be imperative. But the cold political calculus for James is that, because New York has more registered Democrats, she will win a battle of unknowns.

Democracy depends upon an informed electorate, and to have that, political candidates must campaign with a measure of good faith. They must sometimes agree to take part in events, such as public debates, that serve the public good, even if those events won’t necessarily help their campaigns.

In sport, athletes and teams want to play the best, because they want to prove they are the best. In politics, to the great misfortune of the citizens and the country, all notions of fair play have been sacrificed to the god of victory. Winning has become the only thing, and that makes losers of us all.

Online: https://bit.ly/2yHx1JC

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The Poughkeepsie Journal on the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting.

Oct. 31

At a synagogue in Pittsburgh Saturday morning, a deranged, hate-filled gunman claimed the lives of 11 innocent people, telling police later, “I just want to kill Jews.”

At a synagogue in Poughkeepsie Tuesday night, people from all walks of life - and of all types of faiths - came together to reclaim their right to be at peace, to fight for justice and to counter this barbaric intolerance that must not stand.

For the hundreds in attendance at the packed Temple Beth-El in Poughkeepsie, the community event was both powerful and therapeutic. It featured religious leaders of various faiths, all coming together to heal and unify the community in a time when divisiveness seemingly pervades the land.

Within the last week, acts of political, racial and ethnic hatred have included pipe bombs to numerous critics of President Donald Trump; the killing of two African-Americans at a grocery store by a white gunman who couldn’t force his way into a predominantly black church; and the massacre at the synagogue - the most deadly anti-Semitic attack in American history.

While right-wing fanatics seek to perpetuate fear of immigrants coming to this country, homegrown haters are being fueled in part by inflammatory political rhetoric and strident comments on social media. And plenty of people have had enough. Around the country, people have gathered to denounce hate, standing up and refusing to be silenced by those who perpetuate racism and violence.

The solidarity vigil in Poughkeepsie was held by the Jewish Federation of Dutchess County and the Dutchess County Interfaith Council. The interfaith council was formed in the early 1970s to bring different religions together to work on common causes: race relations, hunger, social justice, etc. It has created a network (a religious infrastructure, if you will) that is completely necessary to have the type of moving, encompassing vigil held Tuesday night. Attendees had a chance to hear not only from various rabbis in the area but from Peter Byrne, a bishop at the Archdiocese of New York, and from Badar Usmani, the imam at the Mid-Hudson Islamic Association.

“This coming together must be the prevailing message,” said Rabbi Daniel Victor of Temple Beth-El.

Eleven candles - one for each victim - were placed on a table next to the speaker podium, and, later, their names were read aloud, along with anecdotes about them. Those killed in the house of worship were Daniel Stein, 71; Joyce Feinberg, 75; Richard Gottfried, 65; Rose Mallinger, 97; Jerry Rabinowitz, 66; brothers Cecil Rosenthal, 59, and David Rosenthal 54; husband and wife Bernice Simon, 84 and Sylvan Simon, 86; Melvin Wax, 88; and Irving Younger, 69.

They were all slaughtered in a senseless act of violence carried out by a man devoid of reason and consumed by hate. But, in Poughkeepsie on Tuesday, people with hope and faith collectively pushed back. And anyone looking for a way forward - seeking strength through others and needing to be nourished by something good - could find it in that room.

Online: https://bit.ly/2SA5aDq

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The Leader-Herald on New York’s candidates for attorney general.

Oct. 31

Voters are likely not very familiar with New York’s five candidates for attorney general. The easy part about the choice is that they differ so greatly in what they would confront that your priorities might determine your pick.

The three qualified candidates, in our mind, are Letitia James (Democratic, Working Families, Independence), Keith Wofford (Republican, Conservative) and Michael Sussman (Green). Also running are Christopher Garvey (Libertarian), a patent lawyer who has lost seven races in the past (three for Suffolk County district attorney and one each for judge and governor), and Nancy Sliwa (Reform), an animal rights activist who recently married the leader of the beret-clad anti-crime activist Guardian Angels.

Qualifications aren’t really a deciding factor among the leading three, who all have strong resumes. James is New York City public advocate and a former city council member. Wofford rose from a working-class Buffalo home to graduate from Harvard and Harvard Law and become a millionaire partner in a huge New York City law firm. Sussman, also a Harvard Law grad, has had a major impact over 40 years as a crusading lawyer for racial justice and the environment - most famously in winning a case that forced Yonkers to desegregate its public housing and zoning, and thus its school districts.

It comes down to what you want investigated and prosecuted, because these candidates are vastly different in their priorities.

James has promised above all to go after President Donald Trump’s administration, monitoring and investigating anything questionable he does or has done related to his home state of New York.

Wofford has pledged to go after corruption in state government, such as we have seen with allies of Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the former leaders of the state Assembly and Senate, as well as many lawmakers.

Sussman, a former Democrat, wants to vigorously prosecute corruption in Albany, too, but also push harder to uphold environmental, health and other public-interest laws.

It is pretty much guaranteed that James will not go after Albany much because she has a huge conflict of interest. She is Cuomo’s hand-picked choice for AG, a job he once held. He is a hard-core partisan and is unlikely to give patronage without getting something in return.

For years, we saw AG Eric Schneiderman do nothing in the face of blatant Albany corruption. It was shameful to see him turn a blind eye to the crimes of his fellow Democrats while viciously going after Republicans in Washington. His willful negligence of the AG’s important role as a check and balance did great long-term damage to both New York’s national reputation and the faith of New York residents in their government. And he didn’t even have the obvious obligation to Cuomo that James does.

Would Wofford give his fellow Republican president a free pass the way James might to Cuomo? It’s not going to be his top priority, but he says he will investigate and sue whenever it is called for. He’d better, because we already know it is called for in many cases. Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency has willfully ignored clean air regulations that protect Adirondack waters and forests as well as people’s health. The New York AG’s office has long been an important protector for us, suing the federal government when it lets polluters bypass the law.

Also, a deep New York Times investigation recently revealed that the Trump family spent decades working to avoid paying taxes in New York City, thus keeping millions that legally should have gone for public use. This is a newspaper investigation, not a legal one, but the evidence it dug up is so abundant that it clearly needs to be taken up by New York’s next AG. James is eager to do so; Wofford is uncertain.

Also, the AG plays an important role in policing the world’s financial hub on Wall Street. Would Wofford, who has been engaged with that world as a lawyer, have the guts to vigorously uphold fairness and keep consumers and taxpayers from getting ripped off?

He has allegiances as well. His firm has represented Purdue Pharma, a maker of opioid drugs, and he represented Knighthead Capital Management, a hedge fund criticized for how it managed Puerto Rico’s debt after Hurricane Maria. He says that if elected he will cut ties to his firm and put any winnings from opioid drug suits toward addiction treatment.

Sussman points to his extensive court experience in the kind of public-interest cases he says the AG ought to be pursuing, in contrast with Wofford’s career path in corporate law and James’ steps up the political ladder.

“If I get the position, against all odds, then I would use the office and the lawyers in that office, 672 of them, to the fullest extent I could do enforce the laws I see in New York that deal with discrimination and environmental degradation, health threats,” he told the Gotham Gazette.

He does have a black mark on his record: In 2002 his law license was suspended for a year in New York and Massachusetts for “multiple instances (of) commingling personal and client funds,” the New York Post reported in 2014.

These are things to consider before you vote. We have not met any of the candidates, but we lean toward Sussman as a check and balance on both the state and federal government, and as an experienced protector of the environment and the vulnerable.

But the victory will probably go to one of the major-party candidates. If Wofford wins, we urge him to realize that he will leave a poor legacy if he does not prosecute federal and big business misdeeds as well as those in Albany. And if James wins, we urge her to serve the people, not the governor, open her eyes to corruption in the capital and act to fight it.

Online: https://bit.ly/2PvZeg0

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Newsday on President Donald Trump’s rhetoric and recent violent incidents.

Oct. 29

Our country is in a dark place. The rabbit hole of hatred through which we are descending keeps getting deeper.

Last week, three Americans targeted three sets of people for death. A Florida man was charged with mailing 14 pipe bombs to Democratic leaders and critics of President Donald Trump. A Kentucky man fatally shot two black senior citizens at a supermarket after he failed to open the locked doors of a black church, officials said. A Pennsylvania man federal officials say wanted to “kill Jews” shot 11 people dead in a Pittsburgh synagogue.

The nation is on edge. Unlike his predecessors, Trump neither can nor will play the role of comforter or uniter. So we no longer ask him to do that.

Trump didn’t direct any of these horrible attacks to happen. But he has created a climate that has motivated the unleashed and the unbalanced. The president must take responsibility for his words. Yet, his need to demonize is unabated. On Monday, he tweeted, “The Fake News Media, the true Enemy of the People.” He echoed a phrase even Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev banned because it was used by tyrant Josef Stalin to justify killing those who disagreed with him.

Trump, who plans to visit Pittsburgh Tuesday, was right to call the most recent attack evil. But he also has called Democrats and the media evil. The symmetry is disturbing. Hating the media is now normalized. Reporters are harassed at Trump rallies. It’s not about us; it’s about discrediting institutions that would hold him in check.

It’s not just Trump. His right-wing media apologists also fan the flames, like the Fox News Channel hosts who worry that migrants in the Central American caravan will bring diseases into the country, even as they themselves spread the diseases of fear and bigotry. Also damaging is the malevolent ignorance of those who use social media to claim that the pipe bombs Cesar Sayoc is charged with sending are fake, that Sayoc’s van with its pro-Trump and anti-Democrat stickers was fake, that it was all a Democratic plot, even the synagogue killings.

This nation faces a reckoning. That inevitably will include the regulation of online platforms. Agitated Americans once were checked by society, by their families and by religious institutions. As those structures break down, social media indulges their fears, stokes their conspiracies and emboldens them to act. The norms that used to constrain people’s worst impulses are collapsing.

Now we cry after each deranged act that this is not who we are. But it is. Sadly, this violence always has been part of our nation’s fabric. Something in our culture allows these strains of hatred to live and, at times, flourish. We’re seeing that now, it’s ugly, and it, too, must be confronted.

Online: https://nwsdy.li/2yKCZcG

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The New York Times on a proposed carbon tax in Washington state that could influence the rest of the U.S.

Oct. 29

Will voters in Washington State breathe new life into the idea of taxing carbon emissions? Plenty of people worried about the earth’s future certainly hope so.

Climate scientists and economists have long argued that the single best way to slow global warming is to put a price on greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels and raise that price over time, thus creating a sensible market incentive to reduce emissions and invest in cleaner energy sources. Carbon pricing was also high on the list of urgent recommendations of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which warned in a major report this month that without swift action to control emissions the world will begin suffering global warming’s worst consequences - including, but not limited to, the displacement of millions of people by drought and sea-level rise - as early as 2040, much sooner than previously forecast.

It is thus encouraging that in this time of torpor and climate denial at the highest levels of the federal government, voters in the state of Washington will soon be given the chance to adopt, by initiative, a carbon pricing plan that would charge polluters like refineries a fee for emitting greenhouse gases. This would be what economists call a Pigovian tax, after the British economist Arthur Pigou. In this case, the fee would factor in the now unaccounted for costs of more frequent and intense hurricanes, wildfires, droughts and other natural disasters linked to climate change. In the words of George Frampton, a senior environmental adviser to Bill Clinton and co-founder of a group that favors carbon taxes, Partnership for Responsible Growth, it’s an overdue stab at “honestly pricing carbon,” which industry has until now been able to hurl into the atmosphere pretty much for free.

Polling so far suggests a close vote. Opponents of the measure, including such big oil companies as BP and Chevron, have raised more than $25 million to get people to vote no; in addition, Washington voters soundly defeated a carbon tax the last time it appeared on the ballot, in 2016. But other powerful forces, including Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg, the former New York mayor, have ponied up in support this time.

If the proposal, Initiative 1631, wins - as we hope it does - the result could ripple beyond Washington’s boundaries. No state can match California’s impressively broad suite of clean-energy programs, but the initiative, if successful, could catapult Jay Inslee, Washington’s governor, into the climate leadership role long occupied by the outgoing California governor, Jerry Brown. More important, it could provide a template, or at least valuable lessons, for other states to follow; and (let’s dream for a moment) it might even encourage Congress to take action on a national program.

Initiative 1631 is substantially different from the measure that failed spectacularly two years ago, and which Mr. Inslee voted against. That measure was advertised as revenue-neutral (meaning no net gain to the government). The money raised through carbon taxes would have been mostly returned to state residents through a reduction in the sales tax. This was intended to appeal to conservatives who didn’t want the tax to underwrite new government programs, but it turned out that many conservatives, like a lot of others, wanted real programs for their money, not just a tax shift.

Initiative 1631 aims to do that. On the revenue side, it would impose a $15 per metric ton fee on carbon emissions starting in 2020, increasing by $2 per year until the state’s 2035 carbon reduction goals are met. The state estimates that the levy would generate $2.2 billion in its first five years. The initiative’s supporters say that gasoline prices would rise about 13 cents a gallon in 2020, and would, overall, cost most citizens about $10 a month.

As for spending the money, about 70 percent of the proceeds would be invested in projects to accelerate the state’s transition from fossil fuels - public transportation, energy efficiency, wind and solar plants, and so on - and the rest on protecting forests and streams and shielding low-income ratepayers from higher electricity bills. There are exemptions - for the state’s only operating coal-fired power plant, which is scheduled to close in 2025, and for the state’s largest employer, Boeing, which competes in foreign markets. All in all, the initiative covers about 80 percent of Washington’s climate-warming emissions.

Groups that opposed the 2016 initiative, like the Sierra Club, have flocked to this one. As David Roberts has noted in Vox, “Tying the revenue from a dirty-energy tax to clean-energy investments is intuitively appealing.” He has also noted, however, that carbon pricing is no cure-all.

The dream among many carbon-pricing enthusiasts is that a smoothly functioning carbon tax will eliminate the need for messy government regulations like those imposed by the Obama administration after Congress failed to pass a cap-and-trade program. Carbon pricing would help, and could do wonders to drive private investment toward cleaner energy. But it won’t eliminate the need for government involvement; as the I.P.C.C. report made clear, rapidly decarbonizing a global economy is a gigantic undertaking, and will require government involvement and an array of responses.

And in the meantime, of course, and indeed into the foreseeable future, all present strategies to reduce emissions must continue, including the kinds of things Mr. Trump refuses to do - build out the electric vehicle fleet, reduce emissions from power plants, clamp down on methane pollution from oil and gas wells.

As of now, about 40 governments around the world, including the European Union and California, have put a price on carbon, some through cap-and-trade programs, with an average price per ton of $8, nowhere near the level the I.P.C.C. thinks necessary (at least $135 a ton by 2030, if not much higher) to cause meaningful reductions. But lately the idea of carbon taxes is showing signs of life in many parts of the world. Portugal launched a carbon tax in 2015, and Chile followed in 2017, and just last week Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister, announced a sweeping plan to tax industrial emitters.

A yes vote in Washington State would add further momentum - and possibly focus a few minds in the other Washington.

Online: https://nyti.ms/2AzwURy

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