Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:
July 12
The Washington Post on young people in America and national service
Polls suggest young Americans are less enchanted with their country than previous generations. Yet even those who want to serve their country, conducting some form of national service, are too often turned away by top programs. The opposite should be true: Volunteer organizations such as AmeriCorps, Teach for America, the Peace Corps and the newly formed American Climate Corps should be well-funded and encouraged. National service could become a pervasive post-graduation option that all young Americans consider.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak this year proposed a national service plan that would have granted young adults the option of enrolling in a year-long military training program or committing to civil service one weekend every month for the same amount of time. The proposal was highly unpopular, with Brits balking at what they saw as the effective conscription of their nation’s youths.
The idea has more support here in the States. A 2017 Gallup poll shows that nearly half of Americans favor mandatory national service. Many teenagers themselves, it turns out, are interested — too many for the system to accommodate. Relevant programs are underfunded, and, as a result, can’t accept the millions of Americans who sign up, even if there’s plenty of useful work those applicants could do. Expanding opportunities for national service is one of the few topics that transcend political affiliation, age and race in the United States. People see the benefits of serving their country, whether it be through the military or helping out at their local soup kitchen. But the costs of doing so can be high — so it’s on the government to reduce them.
To be clear, Congress should not impose a mandate. Forcing a year or two of service from the nation’s next great tech innovators, or star athletes, or cohort of primary-care physicians, or skilled construction workers needed to build new infrastructure, would do more harm to society than good — though such people should obviously be welcome in these programs. Rather, as they and their peers approach their later teenage years, they should discuss with their friends who will go right to college, or directly to graduate school, or immediately into a trade, and who will take a year or two to make the United States more livable, more safe or more healthy, along with millions of others from around the country.
The Unity Through Service Act would make it easier for Americans to find their way into national service, building an interagency council that includes military, national and public service officials working together to inform young adults about existing service opportunities. Heads of agencies such as AmeriCorps and Peace Corps could engage in joint recruitment campaigns. The costs for the council itself, according to one legislative official, are “negligible” and would create the infrastructure needed to support the expansion of service programs while many wait for additional funding.
But passing this modest bill would be only a start. Participating in a program such as AmeriCorps or Peace Corps means sacrificing one or two years in the workforce, and the likely higher salary that would come with a job. Meanwhile, the stipends these programs offer usually do not cover the cost of living — largely because the programs have faced years of sharp funding cuts. National service might never pay as well as a Wall Street internship, but Congress should invest in increasing pay for young people so it’s at least a plausible option for Americans with little money to spare. National service initiatives should also provide flexibility to applicants, allowing them to focus on a particular skill set, say, or geographic location. Doing so would attract Gen Z participants who want to develop skills during their service that could further their career goals.
Yet, a revitalized national service program would help not only young Americans preparing to enter the workforce, or government agencies and organizations that benefit from young Americans’ labor. The most profound benefits might flow to society at large, from instilling in a diverse group of participants a shared sense of service and duty, alleviating political apathy and building unity. If newly minted adults are following President John F. Kennedy’s famous advice, asking what they can do for their country, the country should make sure it has an answer.
ONLINE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/07/12/national-service-young-adults/
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July 13
The New York Times on the attack on Donald Trump
Americans received a sobering reminder on Saturday of the threat that political violence poses to our democracy. It is a mercy that Donald Trump was not seriously injured by gunfire at an evening campaign rally in Butler, a Pennsylvania city north of Pittsburgh, and a tragedy that at least one person at the rally was killed. We hope that Mr. Trump recovers quickly and fully.
There is much we don’t know yet about the gunman and the shooting, which is being investigated as an attempted assassination. But this much is clear: Any attempt to resolve an election through violence is abhorrent. Violence is antithetical to democracy. Ballots, not bullets, should always be the means by which Americans work through their differences.
It is now incumbent on political leaders of both parties, and on Americans individually and collectively, to resist a slide into further violence and the type of extremist language that fuels it. Saturday’s attack should not be taken as a provocation or a justification.
Americans also must be cleareyed about the challenge that is confronting this nation. Saturday’s events cannot be written off as an aberration. Violence is infecting and inflecting American political life.
Acts of violence have long shadowed American democracy, but they have loomed larger and darker of late. Cultural and political polarization, the ubiquity of guns and the radicalizing power of the internet have all been contributing factors, as this board laid out in its editorial series “ The Danger Within ” in 2022. This high-stakes presidential election is further straining the nation’s commitment to the peaceful resolution of political differences.
Democracy requires partisans to accept that the process is more important than the results. Even before Saturday’s events, there were worrying signs that many Americans are failing that essential test. In a survey conducted last month by the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, 10 percent of respondents agreed that the use of force was justified to prevent Mr. Trump from becoming president, and 7 percent said the use of force was justified to return Mr. Trump to the presidency.
Mr. Trump’s political agenda cannot and must not be opposed by violence. It cannot and must not be pursued through violence.
The attack on Saturday was a tragedy. The challenge now confronting Americans is to prevent this moment from becoming the beginning of a greater tragedy.
This election must be resolved by the votes Americans will cast.
ONLINE: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/13/opinion/editorials/donald-trump-rally-shooting.html
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July 12
The Wall Street Journal on Biden’s cease fire deal in Gaza
“Look at the numbers in Israel,” President Biden said at his press conference Thursday. “My numbers are better in Israel than they are here.” These days that’s not saying much, but in fact Israelis prefer a Donald Trump victory by 21 percentage points, according to the July poll from Israel’s leading news channel. Perhaps that will change if Mr. Biden gets the hostage deal he’s trumpeting.
The President took credit Thursday for progress in Gaza negotiations. He recalled his May 31 speech on an Israeli framework for a cease-fire and hostage agreement. “That framework is now agreed on by both Israel and Hamas,” he announced. “There are still gaps to close, but we’re making progress.”
The framework has three phrases. The first would free some 30 Israeli hostages in exchange for a six-week cease-fire and hundreds of terrorists. From there would spring negotiations for the next phases, involving the release of the remaining hostages and a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, then reconstruction.
The sticking point has been the transition from the first phase. Hamas had insisted that Israel agree from the outset on an end to the war and automatic passage to phase two—which is unacceptable to Israel, as it would guarantee Hamas’s victory. Israel wants the option to resume the war after phase one if negotiations for postwar Gaza fail.
Under Israeli military pressure in Rafah, Hamas is finally showing flexibility on this condition. Recall how the President bashed Israel, withheld and delayed weapons, and drew a red line at an invasion of Rafah. White House spokesman John Kirby had even claimed, “Any kind of major Rafah ground operation would actually strengthen Hamas’s hands at the negotiating table.” So much for that.
Hamas now may need a deal, but it’s trying alternative wording to lock in Israel to indefinite negotiations for phase two. This is a point on which Israel needs Mr. Biden’s backing. The President wants a diplomatic success, but a deal that would let Hamas control Gaza—officially or unofficially, as with Hezbollah in Lebanon—would seed the next massacre and war.
Another point of contention concerns the Philadelphia corridor between Gaza and Egypt. When Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, it made the mistake of trusting Egypt to patrol the corridor. Technological solutions were also supposed to block tunnels and keep arms from Hamas—only for Israel now to unearth the extensive Gaza-Egypt tunnels in Rafah.
To stop Hamas from rearming, and strangle a potential insurgency, Israel needs to watch the border. It isn’t in the U.S. interest to pressure Israel to pretend otherwise. Some Israeli statements have left an opening for Egyptian control, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seemed to close that door in recent days. A senior Israeli official tells us, “We are going to be in Philadelphia for the foreseeable future. We’ve made that clear in negotiations.”
Another thing Israel has made clear: It isn’t going to slow the pace of the fighting to smooth the talks. To get a deal, let Hamas negotiate under fire.
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July 11
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch on the candidates for POTUS
It’s deeply ironic, not to mention grossly unfair, that President Joe Biden will spend whatever time remains of his presidential campaign having his every utterance publicly parsed for the slightest slip in syntax while challenger Donald Trump continues spewing his trademark torrents of gibberish and lies to the cheers of his adoring fans.
Biden’s frustrated supporters can blame the media for that double standard, but doing so ignores the political physics at play here: Trump’s derangement is built into his brand, is old news to both the media and the public and is a feature rather than a bug to his chaos-loving base.
More is expected of Biden if he is to appeal to serious voters who know Trump is unacceptable but aren’t comfortable with an 81-year-old incumbent who, it’s increasingly clear, cannot realistically govern America for four more years — and who may not even get the chance to try, based on current polling.
Because of Biden’s cataclysmic debate performance two weeks ago, Thursday’s press conference at the conclusion of the U.S.-hosted NATO summit became a make-or-break test for Biden’s continued candidacy.
He passed it, in a C-minus kind of way. Earlier in the day, he briefly introduced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as Russian President Vladimir Putin, momentarily correcting himself. In the press conference, he referenced former President Trump when he meant his own vice president, Kamala Harris, without correcting it. At one point, he briefly froze up, a la Mitch McConnell.
Still, these were relatively small stumbles. Trump himself gets the names of American and foreign leaders wrong all the time — and he recently admitted he didn’t even know what NATO was until shortly before he became president in 2017. It was one of many comments that would be devastating to any other candidate’s legitimacy, but which Trump’s hypnotized supporters take in their stride.
Biden was being assessed in light of an earlier debate performance in which he was incoherent and clearly confused. He needed to prove that was an aberration. And this one was indeed nowhere near as bad.
But the underlying issues remain: the halting, tentative speech, the raspy, weak voice that grows weaker as the minutes pass, the tendency to ramble off-topic and fail to answer questions at hand.
The truth is, Biden did just well enough to stave off an avalanche of Democratic demands that he end his campaign. That putative success may well turn out to be the worst possible outcome for him, his party and America.
That’s because the microscope will return with each future press conference. Americans know what age-related decline looks like — most have seen it in their own families — and they know it doesn’t get better with time. And now they will be looking for it every time Biden approaches a microphone, whether the media breathlessly promotes it or not.
Ours was among the earlier mainstream editorial pages to call for Biden to hand the torch to younger leaders, starting last fall. It’s a stance that respects what he has accomplished in office but understands that Trump is an unprecedented threat to American democracy. There is no issue more important than preventing Trump’s return to power. And the polls and common sense indicate Biden is no longer the candidate best equipped to do that.
Polls show a dead heat nationally — an ominous enough situation, given Trump’s historic unpopularity. But more alarming is that Biden is trailing in swing states that actually decide the election, according to much of the polling. Since the debate, even some Democratic strongholds are feared to potentially be in play.
We’re aware of the challenges of switching horses at this late date. But an open process that allows a half-dozen younger Democratic luminaries to publicly debate in the coming weeks, then take their case before the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next month, could actually generate interest and appreciation from an American public that has long made clear it doesn’t like its current presidential choices.
That can only happen if Biden comes around and commits the ultimate act of statesmanship by releasing his delegates and then leading the party through the process of finding a new nominee.
Or he — and the rest of us — can just hold our breath every time he faces an unscripted event for the next four months.
As the Republican National Convention begins Monday in Milwaukee, America should be laser-focused on Trump’s hostile takeover of a once-great political party and the malignant plans that he and his backers have in store for the country should he again take power.
Instead, inevitably, much of the national conversation will continue to revolve around whether Biden is physically and cognitively up to the rigors of campaigning for the next four months, let alone leading the nation until he’s 86. That reality isn’t the result of skewed media priorities, but of what Americans themselves have seen with their own eyes these past weeks and months.
The issue isn’t going away as long as Biden remains on the ticket. It’s true, and outrageous, that Trump can (and will) say any unhinged thing he wants from now until November and not lose the bottomless fealty of a bovine GOP. That’s all the more reason Democrats must field a candidate who can make the race about Trump’s manifest unfitness.
Biden can no longer be that messenger. It’s not fair, but it’s a fact.
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July 14
The Philadelphia Daily News/Inquirer on Congress
In a way, it should be no surprise that polls show many Americans have no problem choosing someone convicted of a crime to be their next president. This country is so inundated with felonious conduct that too many of us accept larceny as just another unfortunate fact of life — especially when it comes to politics.
Consider Philadelphia’s laundry list of politicians turned felons that includes former U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah, former City Councilmembers Rick Mariano and Bobby Henon, former state House Speaker John M. Perzel, former State Sen. Vincent Fumo, and former District Attorney Seth Williams, the city’s chief prosecutor.
Larceny has grown to astounding levels in this technological age where the internet, cell phones, texting, and social media have made it easier to fleece the unwitting. That is especially true when it comes to seniors, who last year lost more than $3.4 billion through romance and grandparent scams, technical support fraud, and other schemes.
“ We are at a crisis level,” said Kathy Stokes, a director at AARP’s Fraud Watch Network. “So many people have joined the fray because it is pretty easy to be a criminal. They don’t have to follow any rules. And you can make a lot of money, and then there’s very little chance that you’re going to get caught.”
But it’s not just older Americans who are scammed. The Federal Trade Commission says American consumers lost a record $10 billion to fraud last year, which was a 14% increase over reported losses in 2022. Most of the losses, $4.6 billion, occurred in investment schemes, while another $2.7 billion was bilked through impostor scams.
The FTC says email displaced text messages last year as the most common method used by flimflam artists. Phone calls became the second most common method used by schemers in 2023, which is interesting since for decades phone calls were the most common scam vehicle. Perhaps the telephone’s resurgence suggests it is the preferred communication device of older adults. But some schemes are much more elaborate.
The family of an 80-year-old San Diego man told the Associated Press that criminals stole almost $700,000 from him in a complex scheme involving a nonexistent Amazon order, a fake refund processing center in Hong Kong, and instructions to synchronize his bank accounts to get his refund. The family sued his bank for making several large wire transfers of cash without asking questions of the account holder. But they didn’t win.
“We need our banks to get better because they are the first line of defense,” said the man’s daughter. But banking industry officials say they can’t prevent fraud without more help from the federal government, whose current efforts they described as disjointed and uncoordinated.
Yes, this is yet another problem that Congress should address, but it needs to be with more fervor than it has so far given technology issues involving artificial intelligence and social media sites.
Congress did pass a resolution this year designating May 15 as National Senior Fraud Awareness Day, which notes that “law enforcement agencies, consumer protection groups, area agencies on aging, and financial institutions all play vital roles in preventing the proliferation of scams targeting seniors.” But the resolution offers no plan or promise of funding to coordinate those efforts.
If the writers of the resolution — a bipartisan coalition led by Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins — are serious about what it says, they need to come up with legislation that does more than pay lip service to this problem.
In the meantime, it’s up to us, the vulnerable, to protect ourselves from swindlers.
Accordingly, the National Institute on Aging recommends that you never give out sensitive personal information such as your Social Security number over the phone or in response to an email, social media post, or text message, check bills and statements for charges you didn’t authorize, and never transfer money or buy a gift card to pay someone over the phone.
Scoundrels, including politicians, are waiting for us to unwittingly open the door for their thievery. Many shamed swindle victims choose to accept their losses rather than report them to authorities. Such meekness has become common in a country that too easily accepts being defrauded as inevitable. Our lack of effective safeguards to prevent scammers’ thievery has encouraged grifters to rob us not only of our wealth but our dignity.
It shouldn’t be so easy to do that.
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