Bangor Daily News, July 26
Gov. John Baldacci opposes the November referendum question that demands the state pay an added $260 million annually for schools to relieve the burden on local taxes. Unaffordable, he says, and suggests instead a plan that would add some $200 million. The difference between the two figures matters in a $5 billion budget, but it doesn’t matter much.
The Maine Municipal Association devised the ballot question, which demands the state pay 55 percent of the total state and local cost of K-12 education, including all of the special education mandated costs. This would shift $260 million from property taxes to state taxes, although MMA erred in not more specifically identifying how it expected the state to fund this shift. The plan would fulfill a 1985 school funding goal, which the state has never met.
The governor has called lawmakers back into session during the third week of August to consider his alternative plan, which would compete on the ballot against the MMA proposal. He would meet the 55 percent goal over five years and set a cap on municipal spending. How this cap would work is not clear. How the governor would meet the 55 percent level five years from now, as measured by the new Essential Programs and Services model for school funding, also is not clear. The fact that his and the MMA proposals are so similar suggests that these are not so much competing measures as questions about timing. …
Maine does not need a prolonged fight over two similar plans, nor is it an efficient use of government to create such a fight. If what matters to the administration is timing, then its question to voters should ask whether they would support beginning the MMA plan no later than, say, Jan. 1, 2009. If lawmakers have significantly different ideas about how to take the burden off the property tax, they should offer them soon.
Break AARP addiction
Palladium-Item, Richmond, Ind., July 24
News reports that the AARP is deciding what a Medicare prescription drug program includes is disturbing.
The nation’s largest organization lobbying on senior citizen issues should have its voice heard. But any group that has the power to dictate to Congress is too powerful.
Congress has an obligation to pass a prescription drug program for needy elderly people that will benefit all Americans, including the young workers who will have to pay for it.
Whether the AARP is right about what it says needs to be done with Medicare is not the issue.
That so many members of Congress are so addicted to AARP support that the lobbying group can decide such important legislation is not only the issue, it is a major problem.
Gun lawsuit misses target
The Star-Democrat, Easton, Md., July 28
A New York judge was on target in his recent handling of a lawsuit brought by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People charging that firearm manufacturers and dealers are responsible for allowing guns to get in the hands of criminals.
U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein threw out the case, contending that the civil rights organization didn’t prove that blacks are disproportionately harmed by gun violence.
But the judge also engaged in some straight shooting when he castigated the firearms industry. …
… Weinstein was right to criticize the firearms industry for not embracing changes that would reduce the number of guns that get in the hands of criminals. Those changes in the law include not allowing sales at gun shows; not selling under a variety of names that make tracking difficult; protecting against theft; and training and supervising employees to prevent “straw sales” to criminals. …
International norms
The Independent, London, July 27
Yet again, the United States has chosen to flout international convention. On Thursday, the Bush administration took the extraordinary step of publishing the gruesome photographs of Uday and Qusay Hussein’s corpses. The declared aim was to convince the Iraqi population that Saddam Hussein’s heirs were dead, and sap the will of resistance groups fighting a guerrilla war against U.S. troops. They have failed and the result is, at best, a military, intelligence and PR botched job. At worst, it shows the U.S. disdain for human rights and the enemy dead.
Bush needs a success
Syria Times, Damascus, July 29
In his meeting with Sharon today, President Bush has the opening to put the peace process back on track by pressuring his Israeli guest into abandoning Israel’s long-held positions that have played the major role to stall the negotiations.
It has been always well-known that a comprehensive settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict requires a U.S. comprehensive involvement … but the problem is that Washington’s role started from a partisan attitude that favors the Israelis’ policies on core issues of occupation, settlement and rejection of U.N. resolutions. …
(The Bush administration seems now in) urgent need for a place where it can declare success. Therefore, a re-examination of America’s attitudes towards the Middle East issues and a major shift in its policy seem urgent and badly needed.
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