Editorials from around Pennsylvania

Recent editorials of statewide and national interest from Pennsylvania’s newspapers:

President Trump impeachment inquiry crucial

The Citizen’s Voice

Sept. 25

Every member of Congress takes an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States,” which has been under assault by President Donald Trump for nearly three years.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s announcement Tuesday that the House will conduct a formal impeachment inquiry is overdue because the Constitution needs that defense and support.

The subject areas for potential impeachment are numerous, from the constitutional “emoluments” clause against self-enrichment, to obstructing justice in Trump’s seeking to terminate former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, to Trump’s imposing on a foreign head of state to interfere in his own country’s law enforcement apparatus to potentially help Trump politically in the next presidential election.

That last transgression is more serious than the 2016 Russian matter, because in strong-arming Ukrainian President Voloymyr Zelensky, and possibly using U.S. aid as leverage to do it, Trump acted as president rather than merely as a candidate.

Trump asked Zelensky eight times to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, and his involvement in a Ukrainian oil company - a matter about which the Ukrainian government already has found no wrongdoing, even though the relationship was unseemly. Hunter Biden should have refrained from it.

Trump often has claimed that Article II of the Constitution enables him to do whatever he wants, which clearly is not the case. The Constitution established the executive, legislative and judicial branches as equal, and designed them to act as checks on one another.

Regardless of the political risk, Congress has not just the option, but the duty to conduct an inquiry to support and defend the Constitution, and to re-establish that in the world’s oldest democracy, no one is above the law.

Online: https://bit.ly/2lyRltr

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Updates to do-not-call law welcome

Easton Express Times

Sept. 25

Consensus isn’t exactly what Pennsylvania state government is known for. But clearly the public’s annoyance with solicitation and scam phone calls, including those dreaded “robocalls,” prompted an exception.

The state Senate voted 49-0 on Monday to update Pennsylvania’s do-not-call law to provide additional consumer protections. When the state House took up that legislation in February, the vote was 174-0. The bill now goes to Gov. Tom Wolf for his signature.

Changes in the legislation include:

. Allowing people to list their numbers on the state’s Do Not Call Registry permanently. Previously, residents had to reregister their numbers every five years.

. Banning telemarketing calls on legal holidays.

. Requiring auto-dialers, the source of robocalls, to give recipients an “opt-out” option at the beginning of the call.

. Allow businesses to register on the do-not-call list the same as residents.

The annoyance that comes with unwanted interruptions is the overriding complaint about phone solicitation and robocalls. But those calls are also widely used in the service of scams and deception aimed at bilking the unsuspecting.

The statistics involved indicate clearly how big the nuisance is. And how difficult it is to regulate it effectively.

The AARP Fraud Watch Network, citing the YouMail Robocall Index, found that more than 1.6 billion robocalls were placed in Pennsylvania in 2018, more than double the number from 2016. The AARP reports that more than half of Pennsylvania adults it surveyed said they receive seven or more robocalls a week.

Federal data shows that Pennsylvanians filed 239,133 complaints about robocalls in 2018. Only five other states had more.

Those complaints reflect that a lot of the people behind the calls are up to no good. A SocialCatfish.com study, using federal data, found that more than 43 percent of robocalls nationally involved scams.

The AARP warned this summer that robocallers are increasingly using “spoofing” technology to make it falsely appear that a call was generated locally. The point is to fool wary recipients into picking up.

The changes approved by the state Legislature are welcome. Certainly a one-and-done signup for the Do Not Call Registry makes sense. People can always remove their numbers from the list later if they wish.

The state reforms will only go so far though, officials cautioned. Many robocalls come from foreign countries and are largely beyond the reach of our laws, and scammers don’t follow the rules.

The best recourse for residents remains common sense. Never give out financial or other personal information over the phone. And remember that if it sounds too good to be true, it is.

Online: https://bit.ly/2nfKaqn

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Remarks that misfired: Not a good reason to derail Sunday hunting

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Sept. 25

Pennsylvania lawmakers should not allow ego and wounded feelings to stand in the way of a bill that would permit hunting on Sunday a few times a year.

Passage of the Sunday hunting bill was expected to be smooth and swift until some unfortunate remarks were made Sept. 10 by the new executive director of the Pennsylvania Federation of Sportsmen and Conservationists - a major proponent of the initiative that has been sought for more than a decade.

Harold Daub, a former leader of Hunters United for Sunday Hunting, was at a legislative meeting with the Game and Fisheries Committee, meant to prime the state House about a Senate bill that would permit limited Sunday hunting. But Mr. Daub rambled into territory considered by some as rude. The Dauphin County resident rapped the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau, urging lawmakers not to allow the bureau to “bully” them. He also made a sarcastic and dismissive remark about the Keystone Trails Association.

Mr. Daub was not diplomatic. Nor was he politically smart.

But this bull-in-the-china-shop behavior shouldn’t derail a good move.

A Sunday hunting ban initially was part of a package of “blue laws” aimed at promoting church attendance, a notion that fails. Many Pennsylvanians are not Christian and Sunday hunting and church-going aren’t mutually exclusive.

Pennsylvania is one of only three states that haven’t lifted a general no-Sunday-hunting ban. Some limited hunting in Pennsylvania - coyotes and crows, for example - currently is allowed. The compromise Senate bill passed in June would have allowed three Sunday hunting days.

A perennial concern has been the safety of walkers, hikers and those who want to otherwise play in the woods. But this is a concern that applies seven days a week. Other states with safety concerns engaged in a test run of Sunday hunting, found it worked fine and lifted their bans.

The Pennsylvania Farm Bureau has opposed Sunday hunting for a reason that applies to the other six days of the week as well: trespass. Some hunters (and others) illegally trespass on private land. For farmers, that can mean crops being trampled at certain times of the year. For them, six days a week of hunting is better than seven days a week. This concern was dealt with in the pending legislation by creating a new primary offense: Hunting trespass. It would be enforceable by police and the state Game Commission and would be punishable by high fines and the possible loss of hunting privileges.

Senate Bill 147 was expected to pass the House with little debate until Mr. Daub’s inappropriate comments.

That’s not a good enough reason for lawmakers to derail a process that’s been in the works for many years.

Online: https://bit.ly/2lalGOE

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With Global Climate Strike, youth are fighting for their future - and our present

Philadelphia Inquirer

Sept. 20

On Friday morning, more than a thousand teenagers in Philadelphia joined youth in cities all over the country and the world to protest the government’s inaction in the face of the existential threat of climate change. The Global Climate Strike was started by 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg. Earlier this week, Thunberg testified in Congress. Instead of submitting a written testimony for the record, she submitted the U.N. report on climate change that predicts that the window to act before damage is irreversible will close in 2030. Her request to lawmakers: “I don’t want you to listen to me. I want you to listen to the scientists.”

Lawmakers in Pennsylvania are not listening to the scientists. While other states like Washington, New York, New Jersey, and Maryland have put forward bold policies to cut down on emissions, Pennsylvania’s divided government has lagged behind. That is particularly concerning because Pennsylvania ranks fifth in state energy-related CO2 emissions in part due to the natural gas fracking industry - a practice that some Democratic presidential candidates propose to ban.

According to a recent USA Today report, nearly 200 new natural gas power plants are going to open nationwide over the next decade or so, 24 of them in Pennsylvania.

In the short term, new plants bring jobs and tax revenue. But while gas production is cleaner than coal, it is by no means a clean source of energy. We need to be clear-eyed about the environmental impact and the costs of being a leading energy state. In fact, many of the costs of climate change are already here.

The Global Climate Strike comes on the heels of a very hot summer. July was the hottest month ever recorded globally and Philadelphia felt the heat - for the entire month the temperature did not drop below 81 degrees. This extreme prolonged heat has a tangible impact on the health of people who don’t have access to air-conditioning, especially elderly who are more prone to dehydration.

The heat is not the only problem that climate change is causing today.

The Philadelphia International Airport is looking to expand. That’s challenging, considering that it is built on the banks of the Delaware River. The planned development of a 150-acre cargo zone would bring more economic activity to Philadelphia but requires that the land first be elevated to ensure it remains usable during storms and as sea levels rise.

Water absorption capacity is critical. A sudden and intense storm over Labor Day Weekend carried trash and raw sewage into Philadelphia’s clean water - a growing problem for a city with an antiquated sewer system after decades of wetter and wetter years.

A hotter and wetter climate comes with a staggering price tag: about $300 billion a year by 2100. It is foolish to believe that we are not already paying a chunk of that.

The impacts of climate change are here, they are now, they are deadly, and they are costly. It’s time for local and state lawmakers to realize that their decisions have a direct impact on their constituents today - but also on Earth itself and our collective future.

Online: https://bit.ly/2ngLzNr

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Where have all the birds gone?

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Sept. 23

Pennsylvania may be dotted by cities and towns, but at its heart, the state is a forest.

It’s right there in the name. Pennsylvania. Penn’s Woods.

The state has always embraced that nature. The Department of Environmental Protection was established in 1995 but traces its roots all the way back to 1901 and the Department of Forests and Waters.

For 118 years, we have prioritized protecting the green leaves and blue waters that surround us.

And so it is sad to see researchers tell us that an important part of that wild wonderland is disappearing.

The birds are going away.

“For years during migration, people have been saying they are not seeing the birds like they used to,” said Jim Bonner, executive director of the Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania.

A new study in the journal Science says people are right. Bird populations are down 29%. Three billion birds are just not here anymore. In Southwestern Pennsylvania, the nuthatch alone is down 33% from the 1986-95 numbers.

The numbers have meaning because birds aren’t just decoration.

When Springdale native and ecological pioneer Rachel Carson wrote her famous book “Silent Spring” about the effect of DDT and other pesticides on the environment, it didn’t start with the impact on people.

It began with dead birds.

Birds were taken into coal mines in the days before carbon monoxide monitors and other air quality measurement. They were sentinels - more sensitive to the changes in the environment. If a bird died, the miners weren’t safe either.

Environmental topics can be touchy as they become more about politics than they are about things everyone can agree on. We all want to breathe safely. We all want to drink water that won’t harm us.

But the politics shouldn’t distract us from what is important. We need to pay attention to those canaries in our coal mines.

And that is exactly why we should care that a third of the birds have disappeared.

Online: https://bit.ly/2lwoPbP