Recent editorials from Florida newspapers:
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Oct. 22
Tampa Bay Times on local leaders’ roles in addressing climate change:
The effects of climate change are coming harder and faster, according to a recent report by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In fact, a child born today - if greenhouse gas emissions aren’t cut nearly in half before she’s a teen - will live in a world on track to irreversible damage. That catastrophe would begin just as that same child is graduating from college in 2040, far sooner than previously expected, and at a lower increase in global temperature than earlier thought. Stalling is no longer a viable strategy.
The report’s authors say if greenhouse gases continue to pollute at the rate they do now, the atmosphere will warm up by as much as 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above preindustrial levels in a generation. That would swamp coastlines, ruin crops, worsen droughts and increase the severity of hurricanes and wildfires. The report shows two things should happen: Renewable sources of energy would have to provide up to two-thirds of the world’s electricity, and coal would have to fade from roughly 40 percent today to almost nothing by 2050. “There is no way to mitigate climate change without getting rid of coal,” said Drew Shindell, an author of the report and a climate scientist at Duke University. Unfortunately, President Donald Trump mocks climate change - and as recently as his 60 Minutes interview this month, said he doubts people cause it - while planning to expand the use of coal and withdrawing from the Paris climate accords.
While combatting climate change requires global leadership, local leaders are doing what they can in its absence. Two dozen local governments, stretching from Citrus to Manatee counties, have formed the Tampa Bay Regional Resiliency Coalition, to plan for and fight climate change. This is wise, as a 2014 federal report said Tampa Bay is one of the areas of Florida most vulnerable to rising seas. Officials will deal with real-world implications of changing climate and rising water. For example, how high must a bridge be built to be usable in 70 years? Should it be built at all? Where can seawalls stem the tide of rising water?
As laudable as these local goals are, the best solution is to stop climate change before it’s too late rather than simply reacting to its effects. The winners of this year’s Nobel Prize in economics have worked on the answer. William Nordhaus of Yale has been called “the father of climate-change economics,” and his solution is a universal tax on carbon. His research established a range of potential amounts. Such a tax would provide a marketplace incentive to cut pollution and stimulate innovation without a heavy hand from government. It also recognizes that pollution has a cost, and that the polluter should bear it.
The Nobel co-winner, Paul Romer of New York University, has done research showing how governments can foster innovation. “Many people think that dealing with protecting the environment will be so costly and so hard that they just want to ignore the problem,” he said. “They want to deny it exists; they can’t deal with it.”
He is exactly right that it is time for governments at every level to step up. Solving the problem won’t be cheap or easy, but it is possible. That child born today shouldn’t be handed a past-due bill when she reaches adulthood. The price will only get higher the longer officials wait to act. Start paying now, or be prepared to pay a crushing price later.
Online: http://www.tampabay.com/
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Oct. 21
The Miami Herald on the race for governor:
Andrew Gillum is the best candidate to pull Florida back to the center, back to making sure the middle class and working class don’t continue to bear the brunt of Tallahassee’s misguided spending; back to acting on behalf of the Floridians denied health insurance by the current administration; back to putting public schools, which serve the majority of the state’s children, in the spotlight; back to being a leader in the fight against sea-level rise and the degradation of the environment.
The tenacity, political smarts and commitment to public service that propelled this Tallahassee mayor to victory from the bottom of the pack of better-known candidates in August’s Democratic primary speak volumes. We think that each quality will serve him well as he likely confronts and negotiates with a Republican-dominated Legislature. These lawmakers were used to falling into line behind a governor whose often skewed sense of public service too often matched their own.
Floridians can only expect more of the same should Gillum’s Republican opponent, Ron DeSantis, move into the Governor’s Mansion. That wouldn’t be good for Florida or the people who call it home.
It’s unseemly that, in a race in which the issues should be front and center, DeSantis and his surrogates have tried to paint Gillum as a socialist, an extremist and an anti-Semite. Gillum is none of these things. Though he has received support from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-described “democratic socialist,” Gillum has resolutely and rightly rejected the label. Indeed, his is nothing close to a platform of government ownership of private business.
DeSantis is using worn-out fear tactics to win votes. However, voters should really be alarmed at DeSantis’ close proximity to supporters and contributors who have made racist comments, especially at the candidate’s campaign appearances. His tepid repudiation does not persuade us that he would be the governor for all Floridians. That’s something voters themselves should reject. Gillum has conducted an all-embracing, optimistic and engaging campaign throughout the state, another quality that speaks well of the state leader he would be.
When it comes to the issues Floridians most care about, Gillum and DeSantis offer Floridians a distinct choice.
Gillum would work with the Legislature to expand Medicaid. There are at least 400,000 Floridians who do not have health insurance. Even so, local taxpayers still subsidize the uninsured by paying for the most expensive care - delivered in emergency rooms, where such patients go at their sickest. In providing coverage, Florida would take the burden off local taxpayers by ensuring they get less costly, preventive care first.
DeSantis opposes Medicaid expansion, and while in Congress voted - again and again - to repeal the Affordable Care Act, including coverage for pre-existing conditions. This would have hit Florida residents hard. Now DeSantis wants to lead a state that leads all others in ACA enrollees. The Commonwealth Fund ranked Florida 48th in access to quality healthcare. This is such a hot-button issue that many Republicans are backpedaling, unconvincingly, on their staunch opposition to maintaining coverage for pre-existing conditions and other popular elements of the ACA.
Gillum would push for more funding for traditional public schools. They have gotten short shrift from the Scott administration, with charter schools getting an ever-increasing chunk of the education budget.
Traditional public schools and their students would not prosper under a DeSantis administration. Like Republicans in the Legislature, he would continue to funnel funding to charter schools. We think charters add to the mix of academic choices as parents search for the best way to educate their children. However, these for-profit entities have gotten favorable treatment from the Legislature at the expense of students attending many traditional public schools. Gillum could change that.
Gillum understands the urgency of addressing sea-level rise and other environmental challenges. And it’s heartening to see DeSantis oppose fracking and support building a reservoir south of Lake Okeechobee. This, and his decision to reject sugar-industry donations, helped win him the Everglades Trust’s endorsement. But he is less resolute about banning offshore drilling and his votes in Congress belie his status as a “green” candidate. He co-sponsored a bill that would block federal oversight of waterways and supported slashing both funding and projects that were under the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority.
While DeSantis has not done much to put distance between himself and racist supporters, Gillum has an FBI investigation of Tallahassee City Hall casting a shadow on his campaign. DeSantis has overreached in calling Gillum corrupt, willfully ignoring that Gillum himself is not a target of the investigation.
After eight years of misplaced priorities, it’s time to swing the pendulum back, back to a Florida that works for more of us, that builds on its prosperity and that doesn’t squander its more precious resources, be they fiscal, environmental or human.
The Miami Herald recommends Andrew Gillum for Florida governor.
Online: https://www.miamiherald.com/
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Oct. 24
The Ledger of Lakeland on a study of school performance and spending:
Florida’s K-12 public schools are among the best in the nation.
Find that surprising? Well, if so, you might be mired in the misguided way we have been taught to think about education progress, according to Stan Liebowitz, an economics professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, and Matthew Kelly, a UTD research fellow.
They have authored a new report analyzing education data, which is featured in the November issue of the libertarian magazine Reason, and their study should cause us to rethink what we think of our schools, and our state’s education policies.
Liebowitz and Kelly looked at the best known graders of state education systems - such as U.S. News, WalletHub and Education Week - and how they have led the public to believe “the highest-quality state educational systems tend to be in big-spending states in the Northeast or Upper Midwest.”
The narrative, they write, then becomes: “These places apparently honor and respect teachers, while Southern states inexplicably abhor them. But the cheapskates in cheap states get their just deserts: Sophisticated northern jurisdictions grow ever smarter, while stingy conservative backwaters sink into ever-lower depths of ignorance. The solution is obvious: Pay up or your kids will suffer.”
Well, to Liebowitz and Kelly, the “obvious” is really not all that obvious.
Kids in the low-cost Sun Belt are not suffering academically because of low spending, as we’ve been led to believe by many in the media, politics, the education industry and the teachers’ unions.
Liebowitz and Kelly fault the grading methodology: lumping test scores in with metrics that “distract from true student performance,” such as education spending, graduation rates and pre-K enrollment, which have little to do with what actually occurs in the classroom.
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Liebowitz and Kelly suggest predominantly white states skew traditional rankings because white students tend to do better on standardized tests. …
Liebowitz and Kelly acknowledge in some instances, such as Massachusetts and New Jersey, big spending and educational achievement correlate because those states focus on the needs of minorities. …
But generally, when combining test results, spending and demographics, Sun Belt states routinely outperform their northern counterparts. “They’re getting the most bang for their education buck,” the researchers note.
Florida leads the entire pack, ranking third in quality and first in efficiency, according to the study.
Online: https://www.theledger.com/
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