Excerpts from recent editorials in newspapers in the United States and abroad: Aug. 6 San Francisco Chronicle on the Sikh temple shooting: As usual, the details are sad and sickening. Wade Michael Page showed up at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wis., just as volunteers were gathering to cook lentils, yogurt and rice pudding for the faithful. He killed six men and women — ranging in age from 39 to 84 — injured three more, and shot a police officer who tried to aid one of the victims. Now all we know about Page is his short and nasty biography — discharged from the Army for being drunk on duty and other misconduct; musician in a variety of white power bands — with names such as Definite Hate and End Apathy — and the trail of tears and terror he left behind. And once again, too many of our elected leaders take to the microphones for expressions of grief and compassion, but with too little resolve to confront the ready availability of weapons to the deranged that is the a common element in these massacres. Far more inspiring is the response of the Sikh temple's surviving members ... The Sikh community in the United States is small but growing, prosperous and peaceful. Unfortunately there's been a lengthy record of attacks against Sikhs since 9/11; that they have responded to this insensible hatred with calm, dignity and patriotism is one of America's great unsung success stories. ... Once again, Americans must ask themselves: Is there something about our culture that is causing the isolation and rage behind these mass killings? We do know this: Guns may not be the source of this sickness, but, once again, they have magnified its lethality. Online: ___ Aug. 6 The Post and Courier of Charleston on Wall Street: When is bad employment news widely perceived as good news for investors? When it's so bad that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke responds by pumping more money into the economy. Thus, the paradoxical spectacle of many financial firms actually rooting for lousy job numbers when they were released Aug. 3. Similar yearning for setbacks in housing, manufacturing, retail sales and other economic numbers also could help trigger yet another "rescue" mission by the Fed. The underlying problem with this familiar scenario: At some point, if the Fed keeps printing money we don't really have to prop up stock-price levels that aren't really justified, the U.S. dollar inevitably will lose value. And as long-term logic warns, if our nation — and many European nations — can't get their massive and still-soaring public debts under control, that collective red-ink flood will remain a rising threat to a sustained economic recovery. Bernanke periodically tries to make that point while urging Congress to adopt effective deficit-reduction measures. Still, after the Fed panel met last, it released a statement assuring that it "expects to maintain a highly accommodative stance for monetary policy." In other words, if the economy doesn't climb out of its rut by the next Fed meeting in six weeks, Bernanke just might prime that pump again by printing more money. You need not be a Wall Street tycoon to find such "reassurance" fleeting at best... And when bad jobs news is regarded as good stock-market news, our investment system needs a more balanced equation. Online: ___ Aug. 6 The New York Times on Syria's future: President Bashar al-Assad's security forces are continuing to kill Syrians in huge numbers, but the opposition's chances of prevailing look better than they did six months ago. The challenge for the United States and its partners is not just to step up the pressure, but also to prepare the ground for a constructive future for Syria. The opposition scored a psychological victory on Monday when Prime Minister Riyad Farid Hijab defected to Jordan. Opposition leaders said that he brought along at least two ministers and three military officers. Hijab, a Sunni Muslim, wasn't part of Assad's inner circle, but he was the most senior civilian official and his defection is another sign of stress on the regime. ... The most viable diplomatic solution was a plan by the United Nations and the Arab League that would have eased Assad out of power and begun a democratic transition. But Russia — with Iran, Assad's main protector — ensured it would fail by arming the regime and refusing to impose sanctions. The Obama administration and NATO have wisely resisted direct military involvement. ... For months, the administration has been increasing its involvement with the rebels — organizing a 130-nation pressure group, working to unify opposition factions, helping them plan a political transition, providing intelligence and medical aid and vetting which groups are extremists and which should get arms. The administration has also begun to think beyond Assad's fall by planning how to cope with a new wave of refugees, maintain basic municipal services, restart a devastated economy and prevent the security forces from disintegrating. American officials seem to have learned the lesson of Iraq, where the government collapsed, leaving chaos behind. There is no guarantee Syria's rebels will want the help, but the administration has to be prepared to invest real money in these plans if they do. ... Online: ___ Aug. 5 The Pueblo (Colo.) Chieftain on U.S. drought: The nation is suffering its worst drought in decades. Only in the 1930s and 1950s has a drought covered more land, a recent federal report noted. The National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., said 55 percent of the country was in a moderate to extreme drought by the end of June. And thus far, despite a few showers here and there, things aren't getting any better. Topsoil has turned dry while "crops, pastures and rangeland have deteriorated at a rate rarely seen in the last 18 years," the climate center said. The percentage of affected land is the largest since December 1956, when 58 percent of the country was covered by drought, and it rivals even some years in the Dust Bowl era of the 1930s, according to the data. Corn, wheat and soybean crops have been hit hard, particularly in the traditionally productive Midwest ... Cattle growers, with little productive rangeland and less corn for feed, have been selling off herds. In the short run, this might cause a dip in beef prices at the supermarket, but over the long haul, those prices are likely to rise. In fact, the U.S. Department of Agriculture anticipates that food prices as a whole will rise by 3 percent next year. That's an unsettling prospect when the economy continues to stagnate. ... Online: ___ Aug. 6 Evansville (Ind.) Courier & Press on jobs and the economy: How you view July's unemployment figures depends on where you sit. President Barack Obama's chief economic adviser, Alan Krueger, said "today's unemployment rate provides further evidence that the U.S. economy is continuing to recover from the worst downturn since the Great Depression." He urged the country to stand by the president's economic agenda and for Congress to pass the remaining parts of Obama's American Jobs Act. GOP candidate Mitt Romney called it "a hammer blow to middle class families." His campaign website makes the extravagant claim that a Romney administration would create 12 million new jobs in four years. (Even Obama, no stranger to hyperbole, only promised 5 million new "green" jobs when he was a candidate.) The Associated Press offered only the faint observation that the new jobless numbers were "a hopeful sign." — hopeful, perhaps, in the sense that they were much better than expected, although still weak, and they could have been worse. ... This kind of incremental, ambiguous improvement in the economy looks to be with us through the election campaign and that will be the battleground for the candidates. Obama's economic policies are a known quantity. Romney's economic platform is a detail-free promise to revive the country through tax and regulatory reform and basically undoing, usually on "Day One," everything Obama has done since taking office. A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll showed 36 percent of voters believe Romney has a better plan for the economy versus 31 percent who think Obama's policies are better. It all depends on where you sit, and from this vantage point it looks like about two-thirds of the voters don't believe either one. Online: ___ Aug. 6 The Charleston (W.Va.) Daily Mail on the U.S. power grid: Everybody and his brother — the Sierra Club, the natural gas industry, the solar industry, the wind industry, President Barack Obama and Lisa Jackson of the EPA — want to design the nation's energy mix and the nation's electrical system. This is dangerous. The nation needs a reliable, affordable energy supply and a tough electrical grid. It's time Americans listened to the engineers. As The Washington Post reported, the super-derecho storm of June 29 was just the latest indication of how badly the nation needs to pay attention to its electrical grid. The system is old, stretched to capacity and failing. India's failure to keep its system up to date resulted in more than half a billion customers losing power. It would be wise, politically, to make sure that does not happen to Americans. The American Society of Civil Engineers reported that Americans need to spend $107 billion by 2020 to modernize their electrical infrastructure. The federal government throws around that kind of money on non-critical projects. It's time for Congress to get this much more important work started. After all, politicizing energy and failing to make critical investments would be expensive as well. "By 2020, the cost of service interruptions will be $71 billion, or if you break that down to households, $565 over that period," the engineering society's president, Andrew W. Hermann, told the Post. Americans will not take kindly to games that affect their jobs and their security at home. Politicians should not risk it. Online: ___ Aug. 5 North Platte (Neb.) Telegraph on "Ulcer Gulch": Just when you think you've seen it all from our lawmakers in Washington, something like this comes along and you realize the situation is even worse than you thought. On Aug. 2, 2011, our federal lawmakers raised the debt ceiling $2.1 trillion, on the condition that they cut spending by $1.2 trillion this year. If they failed to do that — and so far they have failed to do that — automatic budget cuts of $900 billion will go into effect on Jan. 2, 2013. ... Currently in Washington, there is a growing panic over what effects "sequestration" would have on both the military and discretionary spending programs. Most concede that significant action to ward off sequestration is unlikely before the Nov. 6 election. That puts the load on the lame duck Congress, and perhaps a lame duck president, to deal with huge spending cuts at the same time the Bush tax cuts are due to expire, and for good measure, the debt ceiling will probably have to be raised again. Here in the West, we refer to the confluence of such complex events as "Ulcer Gulch." True to form, Congress has now chosen to pass another bill, called the Sequestration Transparency Act, to force the president to specify what will be cut if and when sequestration hits. In other words, having agreed to a deal that would force them to cut spending, and having proven incapable of cutting spending themselves, they now indignantly demand to know how the president plans to cut spending. Maybe after some new senators and representatives are elected in November, Congress can find the courage and fortitude to deal straight with the American people, and not resort to complicated gimmicks to simply spend less. We can only hope. Online: ___ Aug. 5 The Seattle Times on political ad transparency: Celebrate a rare victory for transparency in American politics. Voters weigh candidates in a system awash in money, but it is cumbersome at best to find who wrote the checks. Free Press and other public-interest groups nudged the Federal Communications Commission into providing access to local records of who purchased political ads on television. TV stations have long been required to maintain so-called political files to record who bought ads and how much they paid. But getting into those records was an obstacle course. Barriers included sloppy record keeping and high copying fees. Last spring the FCC was convinced to have broadcasters open online files, which covers new information as of Aug. 2. The four major networks in the top 50 markets launched the process Aug. 2. All other stations in the country must be online no later than 2014. Predictably, the National Association of Broadcasters is challenging the rules, and Free Press is helping push back. Indeed, Free Press is working with the Sunlight Foundation and the New America Foundation to rally volunteers to wade into the exempted files at smaller stations. Spectacular sums will be sent during the 2012 election season to sell candidates to voters. Americans have, and continue to have, precious little information about the people providing all that money for their candidates and their causes. Credit Free Press and others with tugging at the curtain obscuring the facts. Online: ___ Aug. 3 Arab News, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on Syrian refugee relief: Refugees continue to pour out of Syria into neighboring countries as the Assad regime writhes and slashes out in its death throes. There are now some 124,000 people who have fled over Syria's borders. Another million have been driven from their homes by the fighting and are hunkered down, wherever they can find shelter inside the country. The United Nations made clear two months ago that caring for all these luckless people with shelter, food and medicines, would cost it around at least $ 400 million. It called on the world to give generously. As of two weeks ago, only 20 percent of the needed funding, about $80 million, had been forthcoming. Thus the extraordinary fund-raising campaign begun by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah which, through a ground-breaking telethon, raised SR 440 million in aid for the Syrians. .. Saudis and expatriates all gave generously during the telethon. It must be wondered however why so many other countries have chosen to keep their pocket books shut tight. What is happening to the people of Syria at the hands of their own government is a barbarous disgrace. It has been rightly condemned in virtually every world capital, with the notable exceptions of Moscow and Beijing. UK Prime Minister David Cameron described Assad's butchery as "a stain on our world." Fine words, but where is the money to assist the victims of the Syrian regime's savagery? ... Just as there is no excuse for what Assad is doing to his people, so there is no pardoning any country that continues to stand by and watch, waiting for someone else to pick up the tab for one of the most urgent humanitarian challenges so far this century. Online: ___ Aug. 7 London Evening Standard on Syria: Syria's civil war is at a crucial point following the defection to the rebels of Prime Minister Riad Hijab and new reported attempted defections. These suggest a growing nervousness in President Bashar Assad's inner circle. Meanwhile regime forces continue to pound Free Syrian Army rebels in the country's second city, Aleppo. A further twist is the rebels' taking of Iranian hostages, some of whom it says have been killed by shelling: it claims they are Revolutionary Guards. Tehran denies this and claims it will hold the United States responsible for their safety. This row underlines Syria's potential to spark more serious regional tensions and even conflict, not least because, contrary to Iran's claims, the rebels have more important financial backers in the Sunni-dominated Gulf states: Iran's Arab enemies are deeply involved. For that reason, as well as to end the suffering of the Syrian people, we must hope that the regime falls sooner rather than later. Yet while he is now surely finished, Assad could yet fight on for some while. His troops have a massive advantage over the rebels in air superiority and heavy weaponry, and for his inner circle, defeat is a grim prospect indeed. Syria's nightmare is far from over. Online: __ Aug. 3 The Gazette, Montreal, on curbing the global sex trade: Prostitution, always among the most intractable of problems, has become in today's global economy one of the fastest-growing businesses in the world; its estimated worth is $32 billion a year. Hundreds of thousands of people a year around the globe are trafficked into the sex trade. No one knows how many Canadian children and adults are coerced into prostitution, this supposed "victimless crime." But Canada, to our shame, has become a major destination for sex tourism, according to a report last year by the U.S. State Department. ... "In Montreal you can order a girl like a pizza," Det.-Sgt. Dominic Monchamp said recently, to signify how the supply of sex workers in this city has multiplied in recent years. "You can choose her hair color, the color of her eyes, her measurements, her weight, and she will be delivered within half an hour." ... As for a crackdown on clients, a just-published study by researchers at the New York University School of Law looked at the experience in Sweden. In 1999, Sweden became one of the world's first jurisdictions to criminalize clients exclusively, enacting a ban on the purchase of sexual services. Alas, criminalization of so-called johns didn't work as well in practice as it sounded in theory. The New York researchers found that the year the ban was enacted the prevalence of street prostitution was roughly similar in Norway, Denmark and Sweden. But nine years after that, the number of women working in street prostitution in Norway and Denmark was three times higher than in Sweden. They think Sweden's sex market may have just shifted across its borders. .. It didn't reduce prostitution so much as it increased sex tourism. As the researchers looked at various government attempts to control prostitution, they postulated that a key component to success might be in the severity of punishment meted out to the buyers. To work, sanctions might have to hit the client very hard, both in terms of criminal sanctions and loss of social reputation. ... Online: ___ Aug. 7 Herald Sun, Melbourne, Australia, on sports in schools: Australia's poor performance in the pool at the London Olympics has raised concerns that a lack of compulsory sport in schools may be partly to blame. Sport may become compulsory under a planned national curriculum, if all the states agree. But it needs a willingness to change that is not immediately evident. Victoria made "physical and sport education" mandatory in 1994. But does that mean "competitive" sport? Not as some schools understand it. Competitive sport is simply ignored. John Coates, Australia's Olympic chief, argues sport should have been made compulsory on a national curriculum after the Sydney 2000 Olympics. Britain did so, and the benefits have been obvious. The gold standard Coates puts forward goes only part of the way. It must emphasize that sports in schools be competitive. ... But in most cases sport teaches children that success is not everything. While winning might seem to be the purpose of competitive sport, it can be just as much a lesson in losing. James Magnussen, who expected to win gold for Australia at the London Olympics, instead found the character to lose. ... Life is robust and so is sport, and Mr Coates seeks gold medal performances from Australian athletes. He is right to aspire to winning and to create a youth legacy that will see Australians do better. ... Online:
Editorial Roundup: Excerpts From Recent Editorials
— Aug. 8 2:21 PM EDT
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