Editorial Roundup: Excerpts from recent editorials

Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:

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Sept. 13

The New York Times on Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and the poor:

Poverty in the United States is deeper than in all other wealthy nations. Yet neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump has a specific anti-poverty agenda.

There have been notable improvements in three crucial measures of economic well-being: income, poverty and health insurance coverage. On Tuesday, the Census Bureau announced that all took a sharp turn for the better in 2015, the first time since 1999 that the three measures improved in the same year.

The question now is whether the new data will inspire a deeper discussion about how to keep making progress. According to the report, the official poverty rate fell from 14.8 percent in 2014, or 46.7 million people, to 13.5 percent in 2015, or 43.1 million people, the largest annual percentage-point drop since 1999.

Although Mrs. Clinton has talked more about families, women, children and working Americans than about the poor, there is much within her economic program that would help those in or near poverty. She supports raising the federal minimum wage to $12 an hour ($15 is a better goal) and would increase investment in Early Head Start and child care subsidies.

Some of Mrs. Clinton's other proposals, like those on housing, have received less attention but could do a lot to help the poor. She would increase affordable housing by including more cities in the Obama-era project to rehabilitate housing in Detroit and other areas hard hit by the recession; strengthen the federal program for low-income housing vouchers; and increase tax incentives for new development of affordable rental housing.

Mr. Trump has said that more jobs will help cure poverty - which no one disagrees with. His promises to create jobs, however, are hollow. Historical evidence and economic analysis indicate that his agenda - less trade, less immigration and huge tax cuts for the wealthy - would harm job growth. Even his recent attempts at a middle-class agenda, including subsidies for child care, and paid maternity leave have been fatally flawed. The former skews toward high-income earners and the latter relies on states to come up with the money.

The failure to talk frankly about poverty is especially regrettable in light of this week's Census Bureau report. As the figures show, we know what works. The path forward is clear.

For example, the largest income gains in 2015 were among Americans at the bottom of the income ladder. Those gains reflect job growth, which has been supported by the Federal Reserve's low interest-rate policy; the Fed should stay the course until the job market has returned to full health. The income gains also reflect minimum-wage increases in many states and cities, which have laid the foundation for the federal government to follow suit.

The data also illustrate how much worse conditions would be without existing federal programs. Using the "supplemental" measure of poverty that is more nuanced than the official measure, the poverty rate in 2015 was 14.3 percent. Without Social Security, it would have been 22.6 percent, with nearly 27 million more people in poverty. Without the earned-income tax credit and low-income provisions on the child tax credit, the rate would have been 17.2 percent, adding 9.2 million people. Without food stamps, the rate would have been 15.7 percent, adding 4.6 million people.

The statistics give the candidates all the evidence they need to make the case to voters that anti-poverty policies work. Mrs. Clinton, to her credit, has ideas on how to improve the lives of the poor. Turning those ideas into law, however, will require broad support from the public and Congress. The time to start that campaign is now.

Online:

http://www.nytimes.com/

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Sept. 13

The London Evening Standard on the resignation of David Cameron:

David Cameron is only 49 and has been an MP for just 15 years. Yet he has decided to retire from parliament on the basis that "as a former Prime Minister it is very difficult ... to sit as a backbencher and not be an enormous diversion and distraction from what the Government is doing". Certainly, if he were to turn into an Edward Heath figure, perpetually resentful at being supplanted, he would not have added greatly to the deliberations of the Commons but that wasn't a given. He could have added usefully to parliamentary debates on a variety of subjects on the basis of his experience, including his mistakes. His decision to resign as an MP is not just an about-turn from his commitment to his constituents in his resignation speech; it demonstrates a want of respect for the House of Commons in which elder statesmen - even youthful ones - are valuable members.

Certainly, Mr. Cameron will not find it difficult to find other employment, including writing his memoirs; he has said he wishes to continue to contribute to public life, and he can of course still do so. Yet his refusal to participate in these debates as an MP, however awkward that would be, is a loss to parliament and will mean that he loses a useful grounding in the concerns of ordinary voters. Tony Blair's repudiation of the Commons to embrace a career as an adviser to governments and highly paid speechmaker served only to diminish his standing.

Mr. Cameron is said to be ill at ease with his successor's move to reintroduce at least some grammar schools, even though the arguments against grammars could be made with even greater force against private, fee-paying schools which many Tories use for their children. Yet it would be possible to keep a judicious silence on those questions on which he would be at odds with his successor, and reserve his contributions for questions about which he could add a great deal. He may yet do so from the Lords; we hope so.

Online:

http://www.standard.co.uk/

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Sept. 13

The Miami Herald on presidential candidates' medical records:

The squabble over Hillary Clinton's pneumonia underlines the need for full medical disclosure by presidential candidates.

Ms. Clinton is 68 and Donald Trump is 70. That's not a disqualifying age for someone who seeks the job these days. But the public has a right to know whether they have the stamina and physical fitness to withstand the challenging demands of the office they seek.

Ms. Clinton did wrong by failing to disclose last week that she had been diagnosed with pneumonia - and decided to plow through it, regardless. Secrecy seems to be her default position. In this instance, as in the email controversy, it has damaged her credibility and given her critics a cudgel to wield against her.

Whatever her reasons - "I just didn't think it was going to be that big a deal," she told interviewer Anderson Cooper on Monday night - Ms. Clinton must surely realize that public doubts over her trustworthiness undermine her campaign. She should have learned by now that every time she tries to hide something, it seems to backfire.

But let's also be clear that both Ms. Clinton and Mr. Trump have failed to come clean about their health. If anything, Ms. Clinton has done a better job both in terms of her tax records - which she has released while Mr. Trump is hiding his - and health records.

She has released more medical information from her private physician, Dr. Lisa Bardack, than did Mr. Trump in a relatively short and unconvincing letter from his doctor. That valentine could have been written by Mr. Trump himself, boasting about his "strength and stamina."

That's a far cry from the hundreds of pages released by Sen. John McCain in 2008 when he ran for president at age 72. President Ronald Reagan was 74 and equally open with the public when he held a candid discussion with reporters in 1985 about his scare with colon cancer.

And those with really long memories may recall when, in 1955, a spokesman for President Dwight Eisenhower, who had suffered a heart attack, told reporters about Ike's "successful bowel movement."

OK, maybe that's too much information. But clearly the public is better served by candor and transparency than by secrecy and evasiveness, and this year both candidates have failed to be fully open and transparent.

Both campaigns have promised to be more forthcoming about their medical histories, but we have to wonder - as is so often the case - whether Mr. Trump intends to make good on his promise. Constancy has never been his hallmark.

After an initial pledge by the candidate on Sept. 6 to release detailed medical records, campaign manager Kellyanne Conway on Tuesday appeared to take it back: "I don't know why we need such extensive medical reporting when we all have a right to privacy," she told an interviewer.

Why, she asks? Because a presidential candidate is not a garden-variety citizen. Mr. Trump and Ms. Clinton are seeking an office that comes with a high level of public scrutiny. In a democracy, the president's health is not a taboo topic nor a matter of national security.

Voters need to know if the presidential candidates are healthy enough to do the job, and they expect them to be forthcoming. It should be required disclosure for anyone who runs for president. If candidates don't trust the public with this information, voters should not trust them with the responsibility of the presidency.

Online:

http://www.miamiherald.com/

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Sept. 13

The Los Angeles Times on Internal Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen:

The House of Representatives is expected to vote this week on whether to impeach John Koskinen the commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service. It would be the first impeachment of an executive branch official other than the president since 1876.

The so-called privileged resolution to impeach Koskinen, which bypasses usual House procedure, is a preposterous exercise in ideological politics. Defeating it may require some profiles in courage from the GOP leadership.

The effort to impeach Koskinen, which is being led by the far-right House Freedom Caucus, is the latest installment of a long-running controversy over the alleged "targeting" by the IRS of tea party affiliates and other conservative groups that had sought tax-exempt status. In May 2013, an inspector general in the Treasury Department concluded that between 2010 and 2012, the agency had used "inappropriate criteria" - such as the terms "tea party" and "patriot" - in identifying applications for review.

Koskinen didn't become commissioner until December 2013, but had to deal with the political aftershocks of the controversy, including investigations by outraged Republicans in Congress. Those seeking his impeachment claim that he failed to comply with a subpoena for records associated with the scrutiny of conservative groups and that he provided false and misleading information to Congress.

But the bill of particulars that accompanies the resolution proves, at most, that Koskinen wasn't as attentive to the importance of securing records sought by Congress as he should have been. It's also clear that he misspoke when he told a congressional committee that "every email" associated with Lois Lerner, a former IRS official responsible for tax-exempt groups, had been preserved; in fact, IRS employees in West Virginia had erased as many as 24,000 of her emails. (A Treasury Department inspector general found no evidence that the erasures were a deliberate attempt to destroy evidence.) But inaccurate or incomplete testimony isn't the same as willfully lying to Congress.

In short, there is nothing to suggest that Koskinen is guilty of the "high crimes and misdemeanors" the Constitution cites as grounds for impeachment. And even if the House were to vote to impeach him, there is no chance that the Senate would provide the two-thirds majority necessary for a conviction.

The GOP's ire at the apparent targeting of conservative tax-exempt groups is understandable, but that's not the only thing motivating the Freedom Caucus. Instead, the attempt to impeach Koskinen is a political exercise that can't be divorced from longstanding efforts by conservatives to demonize and defund the IRS. More directly, it's tied to Republicans' apparent determination to stop the IRS from enforcing the law barring political campaigns from masquerading as charities. If the House were to impeach the commissioner - or even censure him - the reputation of that body would suffer and members would be tempted to use the impeachment power to push other pet political causes. The only fair outcome is for the House to refer the resolution to the panel the Freedom Caucus is trying to bypass, the House Judiciary Committee. The resolution is likely to die there, as it should.

Responsible Republicans - including Speaker Paul Ryan and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy - need to support that action and stand against this abuse of the impeachment power.

Online:

http://www.latimes.com

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Sept. 11

The Wall Street Journal on Hillary Clinton's recent comments about Donald Trump supporters:

In one of Saturday Night Live's more memorable political skits, Jon Lovitz playing Michael Dukakis in 1988 exclaims after another silly statement by Dana Carvey as George H.W. Bush that "I can't believe I'm losing to this guy!" More than a few Democrats are beginning to wonder if Hillary Clinton could soon be saying that about Donald Trump, of all people.

That's the essence of a Friday story in the Washington Post headlined "Democrats wonder and worry: Why isn't Clinton far ahead of Trump?" The reporters quote former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle as saying that given "all the things that Trump has done, the numbers should be far more explicitly in her favor, but they're not."

The tone is Lovitz-like disbelief, which helps to explain why the polls are tightening. Democrats have convinced themselves that Mr. Trump is such a threat to the republic that they can't recognize that Mrs. Clinton is equally as unacceptable to most of the country. In a year when most Americans want change in Washington, Democrats don't want to admit that they've nominated the epitome of the self-dealing status quo that disdains their fellow Americans.

Consider the reaction over the weekend to Mrs. Clinton's comments Friday night that "just to be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the 'basket of deplorables.' Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic - you name it."

The remarks echo Mitt Romney's comment in 2012 about the 47% on the government dole. The media played up the Romney comments as emblematic of an out-of-touch rich guy, and they probably contributed to his defeat. Mrs. Clinton's comments were arguably worse, attributing hateful motives to tens of millions of Americans, but the media reaction has treated it like a mere foot fault.

Mrs. Clinton apologized, sort of, on Saturday by saying in a statement that, "Last night I was 'grossly generalistic,' and that's never a good idea. I regret saying 'half' - that was wrong." But she went on to say she was otherwise right because some of Mr. Trump's supporters are the likes of David Duke.

Yet the rest of what she said was almost as insulting. She said Mr. Trump's other supporters are "people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they're just desperate for change. It doesn't really even matter where it comes from. They don't buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won't wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they're in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well."

So she thinks half of Mr. Trump's voters are loathsome bigots and the other half are losers and dupes who deserve Democratic pity. It's no accident that Mrs. Clinton said this at a fundraiser headlined by Barbra Streisand, the friendliest of crowds, because this really is what today's elite progressives believe about America's great unwashed.

Mr. Trump has certainly made appalling comments, but Republicans and media conservatives have criticized him for it. They denounced his praise of Vladimir Putin. They assailed his attacks on Judge Gonzalo Curiel and his insensitivity to the Khan family. Some have said they can't support the GOP nominee.

But where are the Democrats raising doubts about Mrs. Clinton's behavior? Mrs. Clinton reneged on her confirmation promise to the Senate not to mix her State Department duties with the Clinton Foundation by doing favors for donors. She maintained a private email server to hide her official emails and lied about it to the public. Yet no prominent Democrat we know has denounced this deception, and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says there's "too much ado" about it.

The great liberal media watchdogs aren't challenging Mrs. Clinton either. They're beating up NBC's Matt Lauer because he spent too much time asking Mrs. Clinton about the emails during last week's military forum. This is best understood as a collective warning to the moderators of the coming debates not to jeopardize their standing in polite progressive company by doing the same.

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As Mrs. Clinton's support has eroded in the polls, Democrats are figuring out that they may have nominated the only candidate who could lose to Donald Trump. But then they didn't give themselves many good choices. Their Congressional leaders are old, and their bench in the states is thin after their election wipeouts of 2010 and 2014. Mrs. Clinton's bid to be the first woman President fit the party's priority for identity politics, and the Clinton machine would do what it takes to win.

Mrs. Clinton is still leading, and Mr. Trump is always a driverless-car accident waiting to happen. But it's also obvious that a majority of Americans do not want to vote for an extension of the Clinton dynasty. They aren't "deplorables." They've seen Mrs. Clinton in public life for 25 years and they know what they'll be getting if she wins.

Online:

http://www.wsj.com

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Sept. 12

The Washington Post on the Syrian cease-fire:

The latest partial truce in Syria got off to a bad start Monday, with the regime of Bashar al-Assad reported to be bombing and shelling the very areas the deal is supposed to cover. Whether the truce will ever get off the ground will likely depend on whether Moscow can restrain its client dictator, who hours before the cease-fire began repeated his vow to recapture all of Syria by force. But Vladimir Putin's regime at least has a motive to succeed: If it does, it will have realized Mr. Putin's aspiration of imposing his will on the United States.

When Russia launched its direct military intervention in Syria a year ago, President Obama predicted its only result would be a quagmire. Instead, the agreement struck by Secretary of State John F. Kerry on Friday with his Russian counterpart offers Mr. Putin everything he sought. The Assad regime, which was tottering a year ago, will be entrenched and its opposition dealt a powerful blow. The United States will meanwhile grant Mr. Putin's long-standing demand that it join with Russia in targeting groups deemed to be terrorists. If serious political negotiations on Syria's future ever take place - an unlikely prospect, at least in the Obama administration's remaining months - the Assad regime and its Russian and Iranian backers will hold a commanding position.

In exchange for these sweeping concessions, which essentially abandon Mr. Obama's onetime goal of freeing Syria from Mr. Assad and make the United States a junior partner of Russia in the Middle East's most important ongoing conflict, Mr. Kerry promises that humanitarian lifelines will be opened into the besieged city of Aleppo and other areas subjected to surrender-or-starve tactics. The Syrian air force will supposedly be banned from dropping "barrel bombs," chlorine and other munitions on many areas where rebels are based - though there seem to be loopholes in the deal, and its text has not been made public.

If that really happens, and lives are saved, that will be a positive benefit. Perhaps it's the only one available to a U.S. policy that swears off, as doomed to failure, the same limited military measures that Russia has employed with success. But Mr. Putin and Mr. Assad have agreed to multiple previous truces, in Syria and, in Mr. Putin's case, Ukraine - and violated all of them. Their reward has been to gain territory and strengthen their strategic positions, while receiving from the United States not sanction but more concessions and proposals for new deals. If the regimes observe their promises in this case, it may be because the time to exploit this U.S. administration - which has retreated from its red lines, allowed Russia to restore itself as a Middle East power and betrayed those Syrians who hoped to rid themselves of a blood-drenched dictator - is finally running out.

Online:

http://www.washingtonpost.com