Recent editorials of statewide and national interest from New York’s newspapers:
The Syracuse Post-Standard on pay-to-play accusations against one of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s closest advisers and the credibility of his administration.
Sept. 23
In his first State of the State address on Jan. 5, 2011, Gov. Andrew Cuomo pledged to end Albany’s pay-to-play culture, taking aim squarely at the scandal-plagued state Legislature. “Every time there’s another headline, there’s another cut on the body politic, and a little more trust has bled out,” Cuomo said.
And when former Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos was convicted on corruption charges last December, Cuomo said, “There can be no tolerance for those who use, and seek to use, public service for private gain.”
Those words ring hollow today as one of the governor’s closest advisers, Joseph Percoco, stands at the center of an alleged pay-to-play scandal of stunning size and brazenness.
Federal corruption charges were filed last Thursday against developers involved in Cuomo’s signature, multi-billion-dollar economic development projects across Upstate New York.
U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, in an 80-page complaint, laid out a complex web of no-bid state contracts awarded in return for alleged bribes funneled through a lobbyist and (legal) political contributions lavished on the governor. Two founders of Syracuse’s COR Development were charged over a no-bid contract to build the state’s “film hub” in DeWitt.
Also charged was the Buffalo developer chosen to build a $750 million solar panel factory there, and the flamboyant president of SUNY Polytechnic in Albany who was in charge of orchestrating economic development projects across Upstate New York. Lobbyist Todd Howe pleaded guilty and is cooperating with authorities; eight other defendants pleaded not guilty and will fight the charges.
Bharara’s complaint does not implicate Cuomo. But the governor is damaged by it nonetheless.
First, Cuomo is no longer able to claim the high ground in his fight with the state Legislature over ethics reforms.
Second, there’s the question of whether more shoes will drop in Bharara’s investigation. Central New York politicians with ties to COR Development or who took political contributions from the company’s principals are running the other way. Who’s next?
Third, the corruption alleged in Bharara’s complaint calls into question the Cuomo administration’s penchant for fast-tracking projects like the film hub with little or no transparency. Now we know why it landed here, seemingly from outer space, and why it remains empty.
The sad irony is that when Cuomo came into office, the state’s economic development efforts were plagued by politics, self-dealing and abuse. Cuomo wrested control from the Legislature based on the premise that the public could trust him to develop a coherent strategy and to invest their money wisely. That idea took a serious blow on Thursday.
Cuomo entrusted hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to the vision of SUNY Poly’s Alain Kaloyeros, one of the eight people named in Bharara’s complaint. SUNY Poly created a private, not-for-profit corporation to conceive, build and manage its research and development facilities in partnership with private companies - largely behind a veil of secrecy and exempt from the scrutiny of the state Comptroller.
On Friday, the governor said SUNY Poly’s portfolio, including the Syracuse film hub and the Buffalo Billion, would be moved under the oversight of Empire State Development. Cuomo said ESD President and CEO Howard Zemsky’s first mission is to “learn from what happened.”
Lesson No. 1 should be: Absolute transparency is a necessity.
With its credibility under fire, the Cuomo administration now needs to convince New Yorkers that its other economic development efforts - the Regional Economic Development Councils and the Upstate Revitalization Initiative - are open and accountable to taxpayers. Central New York is in line for $500 million of URI money. A skeptical public needs to be shown - not told - that decisions about how it is spent are made with local input, based on data and solid planning, and free of corruption.
After Thursday, that’s going to be a tall order.
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Online:
https://bit.ly/2cVBf3i
The Times-Union of Albany on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s recent debate performance.
Sept. 28
One of the more revealing moments in Monday’s presidential debate came toward the end, when Donald Trump cryptically and ominously revealed that he had something to reveal about Hillary Clinton, but that he had chosen not to reveal it.
It was emblematic of a candidate whose campaign has been one long snake oil infomercial, in which the salesman keeps touting all the wonderful things he’s going to tell you about a product to cure whatever ails you. Trump spent the Republican primaries insulting his opponents and bragging about his intelligence, his negotiating skills, his wealth, his knowledge of everything from finance to military strategy, and even his penis. When he needed to, he boasted, he would start acting “so presidential.”
He needed to on Monday. Maybe all he needed to do, in fact, was put on a presidential facade for 90 minutes and try to persuade voters that what they’d heard about him from the media he rails against was wrong.
What a surprise: He couldn’t pull it off.
Ultimately, Donald Trump of the debate was Donald Trump of the primaries - bombastic, combative, self-absorbed. All the qualities and skills that may have served him well in business, reality television and talk radio were, on a presidential debate stage, useless at best, liabilities at worst.
Trump’s propensity for telling outright lies caught up with him repeatedly as he tried to deny matters of fact - that he had, indeed, supported the war in Iraq before he changed his mind, that he has talked casually of letting more nations get nuclear bombs, that he called global warming a hoax invented by the Chinese, and that a court had found New York City’s stop-and-frisk law enforcement program unconstitutional.
His evasion on his personal finances, too, took a new turn. Trump, who has refused throughout the campaign to release his tax returns - something Clinton has already done, and presidential candidates have been doing for the last five decades - is now on his fourth excuse. He said a financial statement was sufficient (it isn’t). He said he couldn’t release his returns because he was being audited (an irrelevant excuse, for which we’ve yet to even see proof). His campaign said the returns were too large. Now he says he’ll release them if Clinton releases personal emails that she already deleted. This bait-and-switch insults citizens’ intelligence. Ask yourself: What’s he hiding?
Clinton has her share of issues, from the cloud of her emails and her own penchant for secrecy to her flip-flop on the pending Trans Pacific Partnership trade pact. But to see her finally side by side with Trump on Monday was to see, on the one hand, a candidate of clear presidential demeanor and temperament, with command of facts, mental agility and statesman-like composure, and, on the other hand, well, Donald Trump.
Credit him for one thing, though: In not acting “so presidential,” he showed America what he is. Or, more precisely, what he is not.
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Online:
https://bit.ly/2cL0kjC
The Gloversville Leader-Herald on the shooting death of a 13-year-old in Columbus, Ohio, this month.
Sept. 26
Thirteen-year-old children should not die of gunshot wounds. That is such a self-evident proposition that debating it would be absurd.
Yet they and even younger children are killed by gunfire regularly in cities throughout the United States. Sometimes they are innocent bystanders mowed down by bullets being traded by gang members. On at least one occasion a child was executed in an attempt to intimidate an adult relative. In some situations they are shot after firing their own guns at others.
But some die because of terrible mistakes.
It happened again a few days ago. This time, the victim was Columbus resident Tyre King, 13.
Columbus police responded to a call about an armed robbery. Officers saw several males matching descriptions of the suspects and attempted to talk to them.
One of the males, King, ran from police and pulled a pistol. Officer Bryan Mason shot him three times. King died.
King was carrying a realistic-looking BB gun. One of the teenagers with him told a reporter King had said he wanted to rob someone, using the BB pistol.
Some in Columbus do not trust the police to investigate the tragedy. They want an independent probe of what happened.
One should be launched.
But what was Mason supposed to have done? Remember, he was chasing someone he believed might have been armed with a real firearm.
A member of the People’s Justice Project in Columbus summed up the frustration many feel: “I can only hope and wish that (city officials) take the time to understand that our children cannot keep dying at the hands of anyone, whether it’s police (or) regular street violence,” she said.
Precisely.
It is easy to say something needs to be done.
But what?
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Online:
https://bit.ly/2d9PK4J
The Press-Republican of Plattsburgh on why it’s important to celebrate an open access to ideas.
Sept. 27
On May 10, 1933, Nazis burned more than 25,000 books as part of what the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum describes as “a massive propaganda campaign to win the loyalty and cooperation of Germans.”
The museum describes what happened this way: “The Nazi Propaganda Ministry, directed by Dr. Joseph Goebbels, took control of all forms of communication in Germany: newspapers, magazines, books, public meetings, rallies, art, music, movies and radio.
“Viewpoints in any way threatening to Nazi beliefs or to the regime were censored or eliminated from all media.
“During the spring of 1933, Nazi student organizations, professors and librarians made up long lists of books they thought should not be read by Germans.
“Then, on the night of May 10, 1933, Nazis raided libraries and bookstores across Germany. They marched by torchlight in nighttime parades, sang chants and threw books into huge bonfires.”
Among the books burned that night were works of Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Jack London, Ernest Hemingway and Sinclair Lewis.
When Helen Keller, who succeeded in life despite being deaf and blind, was told that books she and others had written were burned, she said: “Tyranny cannot defeat the power of ideas.”
It was an eloquent way to describe what books and other writings can represent. And to point out the evil that was brewing in Germany at the time.
But some groups and individuals continue to try to keep people from reading certain books, even today, even in the United States.
The American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom keeps a list of “most commonly challenged books” in the United States, which includes, many will be surprised to learn, the Bible.
The top three reasons for challenging them, that office says, were that they contained “sexually explicit” content, “offensive” language or are “unsuited to any age group.”
The latest Top 10 books that people have tried to have removed from libraries or schools are: “Looking for Alaska,” ”Fifty Shades of Grey,” ”I Am Jazz,” ”Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out,” ”The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time,” ”The Holy Bible,” ”Fun Home,” ”Habibi,” ”Nasreen’s Secret School: A True Story from Afghanistan” and “Two Boys Kissing.”
Parents, of course, should offer guidance to their children about what books are appropriate at what age. That is a family decision.
But no individual or organization should try to tell everyone that a certain book should not be read.
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Online:
https://bit.ly/2drhF3Y
The Daily News on why transparency is essential in police-involved shootings.
Sept. 26
While higher authorities decide whether to criminally charge the cops who fatally shot Keith Scott in Charlotte, the malfeasance of Police Chief Kerr Putney is proven beyond any doubt.
Putney’s defiant, evidence-free pronouncements about the killing, along with his adamant initial refusal to release police video of the killing stand as a textbook demonstration of what not to do under such circumstances.
Authorities across the country must recognize that many Americans have lost faith in the criminal justice system’s capacity to hold errant cops to account.
More than ever, the public demands transparency, plus a credible sense that the investigative deck is not stacked.
In many instances, evidence will clearly show that a cop has fired in self-defense or is clearly guilty of homicide. At other times, as in Charlotte, video recordings will be subject to interpretation.
Wherever a shooting falls on that spectrum, authorities must assure the public that they will make recordings available as soon as possible under the constraints of an investigation.
The day after the shooting, Putney backed the officers and wrongly cited a law as barring release of the video.
When his stance fell apart, Putney claimed releasing the recording would harm an investigation. Rather than pledge to make the information public at an appropriate time, he said he would need “a compelling reason” to do so.
Finally, under national pressure, Putney released recordings that neither condemned nor exonerated the cops. The lesson for authorities is that appearing to cover up and rushing to judgment is a doomed and destructive strategy.
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Online:
https://nydn.us/2dkEYY2
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