Editorial Roundup: Excerpts From Recent Editorials

Excerpts from recent editorials in newspapers in the United States and abroad:

Feb. 14

San Francisco Chronicle on airline ticket pricing:

Baffled and bewildered travelers are getting a break this month, but airlines want to take it away. A welcome federal rule for more disclosure of fares faces industry opposition and a challenge from airline allies in Congress.

The subject is a familiar one for frazzled ticket buyers: What is this trip really going to cost? Airlines and travel websites often list teaser rates to lure consumers. Left out are hefty federal taxes and fees that can add $20 to $40 to the final price of a typical ticket. These extra charges are tacked on to the bill, often after a traveler has arranged a trip that’s hard to reschedule.

Beginning this month, federal transportation authorities are cracking down on the deceptive practice. Airlines and ticket selling websites are required to include the federal fees and taxes in the basic ticket price. This way a traveler gets a better idea on the true price of a ticket at the start.

The rule by the Department of Transportation was meant to level the competitive playing field and give consumers fairer price quotes. But several airlines — Spirit, Allegiant and Southwest — sued to stop the move. Also, Rep. Tom Graves, R-Ga., has filed legislation to repeal the federal rule. …

Making ticket prices fair and understandable shouldn’t be controversial. The move isn’t designed to punish the airline industry, which suffered through price wars, fuel increases and a travel drop-off during the economic downturn. This rule is all about full disclosure to a consumer in the maze of airline ticket prices. …

Washington is doing its job by protecting travelers from unfair airline pricing. Giving consumers more information in a confusing marketplace is a goal worth supporting.

Online:

http://www.sfgate.com

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Feb. 9

The Daily Freeman, Kingston, N.Y., on a proposed Eisenhower memorial:

Another effort to honor a great American in our nation’s capital, another memorial controversy.

Wasn’t it just last year that we were debating the merits of a new District of Columbia memorial to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.?

Now, with a quick rewind to the 1940s and 1950s, there’s a dustup over the approved design for an official memorial on the Washington Mall to Dwight D. Eisenhower.

As recounted by The New York Times, the dispute sets the Eisenhower family against the renowned architect Frank Gehry, known worldwide for his innovative design of buildings…

Gehry has designed a memorial intended to evoke from viewers some sense of the remarkable journey made by the self-described “barefoot boy” of Abilene, Kan., as he grew to become commander of the Allied forces in Europe and president. …

Some, however, are not impressed.

The family resents the centrality to the memorial of Eisenhower as a youth. …

Accordingly, the family has asked for a delay in the project, which was to break ground this year and be completed in time for dedication on Memorial Day 2015. In the end, they seek to remove the youth as organizing principle.

Well, sometimes it seems the only monument that would not meet opposition would be those that follow in the images of the safe and familiar.

Maybe a statue of Ike in a colonnaded, marble building — think Lincoln and Jefferson memorials — would get everyone on board.

Then again, been there, done that. …

Online:

http://www.dailyfreeman.com

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Feb. 12

The Herald-Times, Bloomington, Ind., on grading Congress:

Congress recently received an overall grade of C-minus from 40 top academic experts who make it a habit to study that legislative body.

In the old days a C was considered average, so a C-minus would be slightly below average. And “slightly below average” is simply too high a grade for the poor-to-failing effort of the Congress in 2011.

The grade came from a survey conducted by the Center on Congress at Indiana University. …

Comments by Ted Carmines, an IU political scientist who was lead author on the survey, suggested he thought the overall grade was too high with this blunt criticism of Congress:

“Congress came close this year to total failure in its main functions of making laws and being a governing branch,” he said. “That view wasn’t shared by all the experts, but, overall, the grades are quite low. This was a severe assessment of Congress.”

The grade inflation came in part because the experts gave Congress good grades on “making its workings and activities open to the public” and “making a good effort to be accessible to their constituents.” In other words, they were good at showing people how inept they were and in meeting with people to try to explain themselves. …

Online:

http://www.heraldtimesonline.com

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Feb. 13

The Iola (Kan.) Register on Obama and contraceptives:

On Feb. 10 the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said it could not accept President Barack Obama’s compromise solution to the flap over contraceptives provided for women employees of Catholic hospitals, universities and other non-church organizations administered by the Catholic church.

The administration passed the buck to the insurance companies.

The companies would be required to provide contraceptive coverage for female employees for no additional cost so that the church-related entities would not be required to pay an additional fee. The companies would be willing to do so, administration spokesmen explained, because pills are cheaper than paying for additional pregnancies.

The bishops said that was not enough. They pointed out some of the institutions involved were self-insured and would wind up paying the additional cost. If they had an alternative compromise in mind, it was not made public.

Obama apparently has agreed it is not acceptable for the government to require a church-governed institution to act against its core principles. His administration, therefore, was willing to take the churches off the hook and let the insurance companies provide the coverage.

What the administration was not willing to do was to deprive women — of any church affiliation — access to birth control medication and services.

The ball is now in the bishops’ court. If they can’t accept the administration’s proposal, they should make one of their own. To be acceptable, it should take into consideration the moral and medical reproduction decisions that today’s women of all religious faiths have made and continue to make.

Online:

http://www.iolaregister.com

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Feb 14

The Pueblo (Colo.) Chieftain, on Obama’s budget proposal:

President Barack Obama unveiled his latest budget that is loaded with deficit spending and tax increases on the wealthy but avoids tough choices on the soaring costs of entitlements.

The president’s budget request to Congress forecasts a deficit of $1.33 trillion in the current fiscal year — even higher than expected — and calls for at least $1.5 trillion in tax hikes over the next decade. By including $350 billion in short-term stimulus spending, Obama is submitting a plan that is ready-made for his re-election campaign.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, said, “He has put out budgets that lead to a death spiral. His budgets have never added up, and he has a propensity to use it as a very powerful campaign tool.” …

What the president is attempting to do is enlarge the entitlement society, for he fails in his budget proposal to attack the financial time bombs that are Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. …

Takers get more than makers: Individuals received on average $32,748 worth of benefits annually in 2010, the most recent year for which full data is available. By comparison, the average personal disposable income of tax-paying Americans was $32,446.

More takers mean more costs for taxpayers: An estimated 67.3 million people in America depended on government for food stamps, retirement income, health care, job training and a host of other benefits. …

French political historian, Alexis de Tocqueville, said that the American republic will last only “until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury.” With his budget plan, President Obama hopes that the takers will propel him back into office this November.

Online:

http://www.chieftain.com

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Feb. 13

Marietta (Ga.) Daily Journal on new smoking study:

Add more ammunition to the arsenal of anti-smoking efforts with the latest report on secondhand smoke from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

According to researchers, more than 1 in 5 high school and middle school students are passengers in cars while others are smoking.

The study, based on national surveys in schools, and released by the CDC on the Internet Feb. 6, reports that over 22 percent of teens and preteens were exposed to secondhand smoke in cars in 2009.

People quit smoking for all sorts of reasons, most often because of health concerns, either their own or those of loved ones. Smokers know their habit isn’t healthy. But outlawing a legal activity isn’t as much of a deterrent as some might like to believe.

It just turns ordinary citizens into pariahs, “socially unacceptable” and condemned for their habit while others practice their own distasteful — and potentially dangerous — habits without the scorn of friends, family and even strangers. …

A parent who smokes with children in the car, according to current evidence, is jeopardizing the children’s health. Why would a parent who is normally sometimes overly concerned about the sniffles not understand the danger? Thus the CDC study is properly advising against the practice. The study authors, with all good intentions, have encouraged all states to follow the lead of a few that have banned smoking in a vehicle when a child is present.

Attempts at prohibition didn’t work with alcohol. And let’s be honest: It hasn’t worked with drugs. Why would we expect it to work with tobacco?

Education would be a more worthy effort, if we spent as much time — and funding — on discussion as we spend trying to dictate individual behavior.

Online:

http://www.mdjonline.com

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Feb. 12

Tampa (Fla.) Tribune on federal transportation bill:

The new transportation bill in the U.S. House is being attacked by conservatives, liberals, moderates, transit advocates, bicyclists and environmentalists, to name a few.

The House bill would eliminate the longstanding share of the fuel tax allocated for buses and trains. Related funding bills would open sensitive coastal areas to oil drilling. The plan ends set-asides for sidewalks and trails and lets highways gobble up the 20 percent long reserved for transit, yet total transportation spending would continue to add to the federal debt.

There’s not much good to say about the bill except that it contains no pet projects. Another transportation bill coming out of the Senate, while far from perfect, also contains no earmarks and is preferable in almost every way. But it too spends in the red. …

The tough challenge Congress faces in transportation is to find enough revenue, directly related to the traveling public, to produce a balanced bill. There was much room for improvement at a time when cars are getting better mileage and fuel taxes are inadequate. The interstate highway system is old and in need of repairs and modernization.

The bill takes a scattershot approach. Among its funding sources are higher taxes on inherited retirement accounts and a pay cut for federal employees to help pay for their pensions. Those might be worthy ideas, but they complicate a straightforward question: Why shouldn’t users of the transportation network pay their own way? …

Online:

http://www2.tbo.com

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Feb. 13

Chicago Sun-Times on cameras in the U.S. Supreme Court:

Every good reason for cameras in the courtroom holds true when it comes to our nation’s highest place of jurisprudence, the Supreme Court — and almost none of the arguments against cameras still hold.

It can’t happen too soon.

A bipartisan bill approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee, sponsored by Democrat Dick Durbin of Illinois and Republican Charles Grassley of Iowa, would require TV coverage of all of the court’s open sessions unless the justices decided by majority vote that it would violate due process rights of those before the panel.

What a wonderful civics lesson this would offer every American: to watch the court’s nine justices probe and parry the law and constitutional principles, their deliberations unfiltered by reporters or transcripts.

Just last month, we wrote in favor of allowing cameras in the lower courts, but we acknowledged drawbacks. Witnesses might hesitate to come forward. Lawyers might showboat. The accused might become celebrities — or pariahs.

But none of this applies to the Supreme Court. No lawyer, under the gaze of nine stern justices, would dare showboat. There would be no witnesses. No accused. Just discussion and debate at the highest level. And if some members of the court struck us as sharper or duller than others, that would be good to see, too.

This is a proposal that deserves to sail through Congress.

Online:

http://www.suntimes.com

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Feb. 15

London Evening Standard on Britain and the eurozone crisis:

The one comfort for the British government after the most recent dismal unemployment figures — at 2.67 million, the highest since 1994 — is that the outlook is no less vile elsewhere. France, whose economy grew last year, has a rate just under 10 percent, higher than our 8.4 percent.

But that still leaves the government with hard questions to answer about its economic strategy. The combination of deficit reduction with a massive program of quantitative easing — pumping new money into the banks – may keep interest rates low but as a means of stimulating growth it is a good deal less successful than ministers hoped. The Governor of the Bank of England said that growth prospects here were partly dependent on eurozone debt reduction. That’s not much comfort, given the latest crisis in Greece. …

It would be in everyone’s interests if Greece were given funding to meet the repayment on its next bond redemption in March but that would not be the end of the matter. More bailouts will follow. Granted, the country’s creditors, notably France and Germany, are not just bailing out Greece but their own banks, which have large amounts of Greek debt, but patience is wearing thin. BNP Parisbas has written down the value of its Greek debt by 75 percent; others will follow.

Online:

http://www.torontosun.com

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Feb. 15

The Australian, Sydney, on Greek austerity measures:

As Greek Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos noted, Greece’s parliament opted for “the bad to avoid the worst”, voting for austerity measures to help stave off bankruptcy — for now.

In a nation of 10.7 million people, the package will drastically cut pensions, reduce the minimum wage by 22 percent and eliminate 150,000 public sector jobs by 2015. There was no realistic alternative. … Greece has endured four years of recession that has seen unemployment soar to 20 percent and youth unemployment to 48 per cent. But a messy default would open the way to greater instability and misery, a mass exodus of investment, widespread business failures and the loss of savings.

After decades of mismanagement and cradle-to-the-grave welfare doled out from borrowed funds, Greece’s predicament is a stark reminder to other nations about the importance of tight fiscal policy and the need for banks and financial institutions to be well run and regulated to avoid the need for bailouts by taxpayers. Moody’s warnings to Britain, France and Austria that their AAA credit ratings are in jeopardy, and its downgrading of Italy, Spain, Portugal and others, was another reality check, indicating that no end is in sight for the European debt crisis. …

The option of Greece returning to the drachma, and other stricken economies including Ireland and Portugal exiting the euro through an orderly process yet to be devised, is being increasingly canvassed by economists and politicians in European capitals. Such a shift might be inevitable or even advisable, but it would be no panacea for any nation’s woes… Those calling for a fresh emphasis on growth and who argue that austerity alone will not solve the crisis have a point. Such growth, however, must flow from productive enterprises, innovation, hard work and exports, not government stimulus from further borrowings.

Online:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au

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Feb. 9

Arab News, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on Palestinian unity:

The revived accord between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas puts Palestinian unity back on track and therefore is most welcome. Without it, there is no hope of progress or peace. But no one should imagine that from here on in, the task will be easy.

The new deal follows on from last May’s agreement in Cairo, where both sides seemed on the brink of coming together. That process floundered because Hamas rejected Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ choice of Salam Fayyad as prime minister in the new coalition administration. Fayyad, who has very effectively restructured the security forces on the West Bank, has now been dropped from the ticket.

For his part, Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal has accepted Abbas as head of the coalition government whose full makeup will be announced in Cairo on Feb. 18. In this position Abbas will oversee elections across Palestine, elections in which he has pledged not to stand again for the presidency. …

If the new Palestinian coalition can hold together until presidential and parliamentary elections are conducted among all Palestinians at some point this year, then whoever wins will have received a democratic mandate which the outside world cannot ignore a second time. It was Washington’s purblind refusal to accept the Hamas victory in 2006 that compounded Palestine’s tragedy and also exposed President George W. Bush’s enthusiasm for democracy as the hypocritical sham that it was.

The internationally accepted two-state solution, to which even the Israelis are nominally committed, can only come about when there is unity among the Palestinians. … It is time to stop the awful, self-inflicted wounds on the country’s legitimate ambitions for statehood.

Online:

http://www.arabnews.com