Editorial Roundup: United States

Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:

Feb. 15

The Washington Post on Mexico's president attacking the media:

Mexico is experiencing one of the deadliest periods on record for journalists, with five killed so far this year. But instead of addressing these dangers, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador devoted much of his regular news conference on Friday to attacking one of the country's most prominent media figures, Carlos Loret de Mola.

Mr. Loret de Mola, a contributing columnist for The Washington Post's Spanish-language Post Opinión section, is a household name in Mexico, reporting for print, radio and television. A frequent critic of the government, he recently released an investigation into Mr. López Obrador's son, whose apparently lavish lifestyle stands in dramatic contrast to the Mexican president's down-to-earth public persona.

On Friday, in a brazen attempt to discredit and intimidate an independent voice, Mr. López Obrador presented a slide purporting to show Mr. Loret de Mola's income in 2021. He claimed it was 'œ15 times'ť more than the president's salary, though Mr. Loret de Mola says that the amounts presented were false and that he hasn't worked for at least one of the organizations listed since 2019. The public sharing of a citizen's confidential financial information is an unprecedented abuse of power. Mr. López Obrador has also threatened to ask tax authorities to confirm this information, which would violate Mexico's privacy laws.

Mr. López Obrador renewed the attacks Monday, calling those who publish critical articles 'œthugs, mercenaries (and) sellouts.'ť The episode marks a new low in his fraught relationship with the media. He has often complained about critical reporting, calling himself 'œthe most attacked president in the last 100 years.'ť His most recent tirade only emboldens those who attack journalists amid a surge of violence against reporters and whistleblowers - most of whom are not as well known as Mr. Loret de Mola.

Just hours before the news conference, reporter Heber López Vásquez was shot and killed outside his house in Oaxaca. Lourdes Maldonado López - who in 2019 told Mr. López Obrador that she feared for her life - was shot dead in a car in Tijuana last month. Reporter José Luis Gamboa, photojournalist Margarito Martínez and camera operator Roberto Toledo were also killed in January.

Even before this year, Mexico was one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists, with at least seven killed in 2021 and 15 currently reported missing. Most of the attacks on media workers stem from municipal authorities and organized crime, according to government data. Mr. López Obrador's administration has expanded the country's press protection program, but rights groups and journalists say criminals can still commit acts of violence with impunity.

The escalating violence is a stain on Mexico's democratic record. The Biden administration last year committed to 'œprotecting and promoting free, independent, and diverse media around the world.'ť It should condemn the attacks on Mexican journalists and call for our democratic allies to support a free press. If they don't, rogue regimes and bad actors will continue to act as though they have a free hand in their escalating efforts to silence independent voices.

ONLINE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/02/15/mexico-journalists-attacks-amlo-carlos-loret-de-mola-press-freedom/

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Feb. 15

The Wall Street Journal on increased crime in Seattle after police funding was cut:

Democrats elsewhere may be fleeing the defund the police movement, but it lives on in Seattle. Business owners told the City Council last week what the resulting breakdown in law and order means in daily life, and it deserves more attention.

Wednesday's hearing came days after the Seattle Police Department released its 2021 year-end crime report, which showed a 20% surge in violent crime to the highest levels in 14 years. Aggravated assaults rose 24% in 2021 from 2020, and robberies 18%.

The official statistics show a 9% increase in property crime, but business owners testified that the real numbers are much higher. Many victims no longer bother to call the cops. Responses to 911 calls can take hours, and criminals are released soon after they're arrested. Businesses say they fear their insurance costs will spike if they report what's really going.

Seattle's soft-on-criminals policy predates 2020, but after the murder of George Floyd the City Council voted two years in a row to cut police funding. Since Jan. 1, 2020, some 357 cops have retired or quit. It's nearly impossible to recruit officers to work in a city infamous for its hostility to the police.

The lawlessness now hampers Seattle's economic recovery. 'œMajor employers signal that it's not the pandemic that's keeping them away, but it is their ability to keep their employees safe,'ť testified Lisa Howard, executive director of the nonprofit Alliance for Pioneer Square.

Tariqa Waters said crime has forced her to open her art gallery by appointment only. 'œMy building has been broken into multiple times. My personal health and safety has been put on the line more times than I can count removing human waste and needles,'ť she said. 'œI've also been threatened with racial slurs and assault weapons.'ť

Dan Austin, owner of Peel and Press pizzeria, described two break-ins since May 2020 that cost his business $22,000. In one incident, the criminal was out on bail when he broke into Mr. Austin's restaurant, was released again, and went on to burglarize others. 'œIt's just repetitive,'ť he testified. 'œEvery time I watched another business get victimized, I felt re-victimized.'ť

Mr. Austin said in an interview that he also discovered that someone was camping out under the wooden deck at Peel and Press. He called the police, but 'œthey literally said, '~No, we can't handle it until you've told him to leave and he's refused,''ť Mr. Austin recalled. Erin Goodman, executive director of the SODO Business Improvement Area, described how one local business has 'œbeen broken into more than 20 times in a single month.'ť

The testimony revealed business desperation, but don't expect help from Seattle's politicians. In response to a business owner's question about how to address gun violence, City Council President Debora Juarez said, 'œI don't have an answer for you'ť about 'œwhat's going to happen to stop people from getting a gun and coming into your store.'ť

She admitted that black Seattle residents want some assurance of safety. But she added that 'œto be frank with you, I don't also believe that hiring way more police or addressing every issue with a gun and a badge works either. Because we know who gets affected the worst. It's people of color. They get killed.'ť

In other words, as criminals terrorize Seattle, its leaders still think police are the problem. The lawlessness will persist until Seattle voters stage a revolt.

ONLINE: https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-thieves-love-seattle-law-and-order-police-city-council-11644854985

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Feb. 14

Toronto Star on invoking the Emergencies Act to deal with border blockades:

Many will cheer the Trudeau government's decision to invoke the Emergencies Act to deal with border blockades and the occupation of Ottawa. They're fed up with the protests and that's entirely understandable.

But we will not join the cheering. Federal emergency powers may now be necessary as a last resort, but going that route is a shocking admission of failure by governments at all levels.

This was and remains a policing issue. Right from the start, even before the truckers' convoy rolled into Ottawa, there were laws on the books adequate to deal with this.

The situation could and should already have been resolved by good intelligence, smart planning, and effective coordination among police forces.

But in Ottawa, in particular, we've seen none of that over the past two and a half weeks. Instead, we've seen dithering and buck-passing all round. Indeed, until a couple of days ago the federal government's position was that local authorities had 'œall the tools and resources they need'ť to deal with the occupation.

But now, all of a sudden, the federal government is taking the extraordinary measure of invoking the Emergencies Act for the first time since the law was passed in 1988. Even if those powers will be, as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Monday, time-limited, geographically targeted, and don't involve actually bringing in the military.

So what changed? Listening to the prime minister, it wasn't entirely clear. He said the occupation and border blockades are illegal and economically damaging; that's true, but it was true last week and the week before as well.

Indeed, effective and coordinated police action ended the blockade of the Ambassador Bridge over the weekend - without any need for federal emergency powers. And on Monday, RCMP arrested 13 people near the border crossing in Coutts, Alta., and seized weapons, also without those powers.

The problem was not a lack of powers or resources. Once authorities decided to act, they were effective.

But in Ottawa, the failure of local leadership has been total. Ottawa police botched the situation from the get-go; the chief almost immediately admitted his force was outmatched and helpless.

By the weekend, even the federal government (through Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair) said the Ottawa police's paralysis was 'œinexplicable.'ť And local people were taking matters in their own hands by organizing counter-protests.

So how will invoking the Emergencies Act actually change the situation on the ground? Ministers mentioned giving police powers to declare prohibited zones for protests, designating sites like border crossings as essential, allowing RCMP officers more ability to enforce municipal bylaws, and requiring some services (such as tow trucks) to put themselves at the service of authorities.

The government also announced steps to crack down on the money behind the protests, including through crowd-funding sites like GoFundMe. Trucking companies could also find their accounts frozen and their assets (including their trucks) seized. Those measures sound useful, but it's not clear the Emergencies Act was needed to go down that road.

Now we'll see how quickly these new powers stop the blockades and bring the occupation in Ottawa to an end.

The City of Ottawa declared a state of emergency on Feb. 6, and Ontario did the same last week. Simply invoking emergency powers is clearly no solution on its own; it all depends how those powers are used, and how effectively police bring them to bear.

Perhaps the hope is that this dramatic move will stiffen the spine of police and finally make them enforce the law. The Trudeau government should certainly hope so, because it now truly owns this crisis.

ONLINE: https://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2022/02/14/invoking-the-emergencies-act-is-a-shocking-admission-of-failure.html

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Feb. 16

Los Angeles Times on banning new gas hookups:

Appliances are not as obvious polluters as power plants or diesel trucks, but the gas-fueled stoves, water heaters, furnaces and clothes dryers that predominate in California homes and businesses are a major source of health-damaging and planet-warming emissions. To avert disastrous climate change and protect people's health, they must be replaced with electric models powered by renewable energy.

Yet natural gas consumption in California homes and buildings has been rising in recent years. And because there has been a lack of leadership at the state level to electrify buildings, the effort to ban gas and change building codes has been left to cities, leading to a patchwork of progress.

More than 50 California cities and counties that have enacted policies to ban or discourage gas hookups in new buildings. Much of the progress so far has been in the Bay Area, where San Jose, San Francisco and Oakland are among the cities that have adopted policies to prohibit gas in new buildings.

But in Los Angeles there's been little action since 2019, when Mayor Eric Garcetti released a plan calling for new buildings to be 'œnet-zero carbon'ť by 2030, and for the entire building stock to be zero-emission by 2050.

Nearly three years later, Los Angeles is finally poised to act.

In recent months, council members have begun the process to get natural gas cooking and heating appliances out of homes and businesses. City officials are pushing to adopt a ban on gas hookups in new buildings by Jan. 1, 2023, though it's not clear yet how quickly these new codes would take effect. The city wants to start converting existing buildings to electric cooking and heating at the same time it applies electrification rules to new buildings, though many of the details are still being worked out.

But that should not be an excuse to move slowly. Officials should move to phase out gas appliances on an aggressive timeline and make sure that low-income communities of color, renters and others that are hardest hit by pollution and extreme heat receive the benefits rather than the burdens of this shift.

Electrification efforts have faced strong pushback from Southern California Gas Co., an investor-owned utility that serves the Greater Los Angeles area. It views gas bans as a threat to its business model and has aggressively campaigned against them through astroturfing, or setting up fake community groups, and lobbying. That has not been much of a factor in the Bay Area, where the main utility is Pacific Gas & Electric, which has been relatively agnostic about what fuel source buildings use.

There have been worries among community groups, including the LEAP LA Coalition, that focusing too much on shifting to electric appliances in new buildings, without doing enough to address existing ones, will concentrate air quality improvements and other benefits among those who are able to afford them and fuel housing and environmental inequality. Organized labor has raised concerns about lost pipe-fitting work as homes switch to all-electric heating and cooking. That landscape has surely contributed to a City Council that has been timid and resistant to change.

Meanwhile, the state has been little help. Gov. Gavin Newsom has set no target date for ending the sale of gas appliances - as he has for new gas-powered passenger vehicles by 2035. He has proposed nearly $1 billion to help low-income communities replace natural gas appliances with electric models, but such efforts will be rudderless without clear statewide targets.

Starting with new construction is a logical first step. We cannot keep building homes with outdated gas infrastructure that will only prolong fossil fuel emissions. But building codes that apply only to new units will do nothing to reduce pollution and improve air quality in the vast majority of homes.

Los Angeles should also be moving aggressively to retrofit existing homes with energy-efficient electric appliances like heat pumps, which cool interior spaces in the summer and warm them in the winter, and make communities more resilient to heat waves while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Gas ranges are also relatively easy to replace with electric induction models.

But water heaters and furnaces are often emergency purchases. Most people don't replace them until they break down. So it's crucial that rebates and other incentive programs be seamless and easy for people to switch to electric models when their gas-powered ones fail. Special care must be taken to make these programs work for poor communities that often lack the upfront cash for energy-efficient appliances and electrical panel upgrades, and to ensure that landlords do not pass the costs of retrofits onto tenants.

Los Angeles officials are smart to launch these efforts through an extensive engagement process, including a series of public meetings beginning next month and a commission made up of community members tasked with coming up with equitable policies to eliminate climate pollution from new and existing buildings. Officials should incorporate their recommendations to ensure the burdens of this transition do not fall on tenants or workers. At the same time, city leaders must acknowledge they are getting a late start and need to accelerate their efforts to catch up.

Now that Los Angeles is finally moving to ban gas, it should move quickly, but take care to get it right.

ONLINE: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-02-16/gas-ban-building-electrification

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Feb. 11

The Guardian on the Welsh language:

BBC foreign correspondent Jeremy Bowen has spent almost three decades reporting on the Middle East. He is no stranger to division and disputation. But his recent assignment - a three-part series on Radio 4 in which he made 'œa personal journey through Wales'ť, the country of his birth - must still have left him a little shellshocked. Bowen, born in Cardiff but domiciled in England and a non-Welsh speaker, did that most dangerous thing '“ he attacked what he saw as the way the Welsh-speaking minority in Wales dominates the cultural conversation. This argument has not gone down well in the land of his fathers.

The Welsh online media has suggested this is the view from Camberwell, where Bowen lives, rather than Criccieth - a journalist's whistlestop tour of a country he last resided in more than 40 years ago. Fellow BBC journalist and evangelical Welsh speaker Huw Edwards echoed that criticism: 'œWe are all products of upbringing - this take is 1970s Cardiff.'ť Edwards was even ruder about a parallel attack on Welsh, headlined 'œTacsi for a moribund language'ť, by Jonathan Meades in the current issue of The Critic. 'œSo long as it's a hobby language it is as harmless as a Sunday painter,'ť wrote Meades. 'œBut in pockets of Snowdonia and mid-Wales it is a tool not only of communication but of identity and exclusivity, thus of self-harm and curtailment.'ť To which Edwards curtly responded: 'œMeades is a brilliant writer and I have enjoyed his work over many years. I can only assume he's skint. Nothing else can explain this bilge.'ť

Bowen's argument is that because bilingualism has become essential for many jobs in Welsh government and media, the English-speaking majority has been disadvantaged and marginalised. Meades is more concerned with what he calls a 'œtotalitarian project'ť to create a million Welsh speakers (a third of the population) by 2050. At present, only a fifth of the population speaks Welsh regularly. Such views are, however, either outdated or exaggerated. Bowen grew up in an industrial south Wales '“ English-speaking, male-dominated, culturally monolithic '“ that no longer exists, and he seems to some extent to be in mourning for that lost communitarian world. Deindustrialisation in the 1980s robbed the south Wales working class of their identity, based on coal, iron and steel. Poorly paid supermarket jobs did not provide an alternative mythology: there is no shelf-stacking equivalent of How Green Was My Valley.

As industrial English-speaking Wales was losing its sense of purpose, largely rural Welsh-speaking Wales was discovering a new confidence, thanks to the start of the Welsh-language channel S4C in 1982, the growth of Welsh-medium education and all the jobs requiring bilingualism that came with the devolution referendum in 1997. Westminster was taken aback when Guto Harri, Boris Johnson's new press chief, gave an exclusive interview to a Welsh language news site Golwg360. But Welsh-speaking Wales is not responsible for the travails of English-speaking Wales, and the two have to find a way to coexist. The survival of Welsh '“ after centuries of attempted suppression by the English since the Act of Union of 1536 '“ is a miracle, and every Welsh person, whether or not they speak it, should celebrate that fact. It does not solely define Welshness, but it contributes to its many-sidedness and unquenchable hwyl.

ONLINE: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/11/the-guardian-view-on-the-welsh-language-the-unmaking-and-making-of-a-nation