‘War on drugs’ is costing thousands of lives | Guest columns … – Arizona Daily Sun

The following editorial appeared in The Orange County Register on Friday, June 9:

While American foreign policy has for years fixated on the conflict in Syria and the Middle East, just across the border in Mexico and throughout Central America tens of thousands of people lost their lives last year because of the conflict between drug cartels competing to deliver illicit drugs into the United States.

According to a recent report from the International Institute for Strategic Studies, whereas approximately 50,000 lives were lost in Syria last year, approximately 39,000 were killed in Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, much of which is attributable to drug-war violence.

Mexicos homicide total of 23,000 for 2016 is second only to Syrias, and is only the latest development in a conflict that stretches back to 2006, when President Felipe Calderon deployed the military to combat drug cartels.

Although the exact number of people killed because of the drug war in Mexico is unlikely to ever be known, a recent report from the Congressional Research Service cited estimates from 80,000 to more than 100,000 in that country alone.

The cause of this violence is obvious, and it is a direct, predictable consequence of our failed policy of drug prohibition. In the near-half century since President Richard Nixon declared a war on drugs, hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans have been killed in conflicts fueled by a lucrative illicit drug trade made possible by our prohibition of drugs.

This is an insight a certain New York developer possessed 27 years ago. Were losing badly the war on drugs, Donald Trump said in 1990. You have to legalize drugs to win that war. You have to take the profit away from these drug czars.

While Trump may have since lost this insight, the fact remains that the war on drugs does more harm than drugs themselves.

Last year, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos used his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech to call for a rethink of the drug war, which contributed to decades of conflict in Colombia that killed hundreds of thousands.

Rather than squander more lives and resources fighting a War on Drugs that cannot be won including in our inner cities the United States must recognize the futility and harm of its drug policies.

The following editorial appeared in The News & Observer on Monday, June 5:

Presidents are measured by their responses to crises. And in his response to Saturdays terror attack in London, President Donald Trump came up small.

In a moment that called for sympathy and support, the president instead launched a storm of petty and peevish tweets. In one, he criticized the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, a liberal Muslim with whom the president has had an ongoing feud. Trump tweeted: At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is no reason to be alarmed.

Khan was indeed trying to calm his city, but Trumps implication that the mayor viewed the horrific event as no reason to be alarmed was a gross manipulation of what the mayor said and did. The mayor told the BBC that he was appalled and furious that these cowardly terrorists would target innocent people and promised, we will never let them win, nor will we allow them to cower our city.

Once again, Trump simply lost control and blasted away on Twitter without measuring his words.

He even used the tragedy to huff and puff about how we must stop being politically correct and get down to the business of security for our people. He added later, We need to be smart, vigilant and tough. We need the courts to give us back our rights. We need the Travel Ban as an extra level of security.

Oh, yes, the travel ban the one aimed at six predominantly Muslim countries thats been repudiated in U.S. courts.

If only had Trump stopped with the one tweet that was appropriate: Whatever the United States can do to help out in London and the U.K. we will be there. But he didnt.

This attack of course prompts heightened concern worldwide, and should. And it will undoubtedly focus attention on a need for the civilized nations of the world to redouble anti-terrorism efforts, although theyve never backed down from concentrating on that ongoing crisis.

Trump is in a position to lead that anti-terrorism campaign, but when he politicizes a horrible tragedy such as this to push for his travel ban, he weakens himself. Rather, he should focus on working with other countries in a position to help the United States root out terrorist cells and destroy them forever. That will take cooperation with allies and it will be accomplished with diplomacy, not the kind of bullying rhetoric to which Trump seems addicted.

The following editorial appeared in the Star Tribune on Tuesday, June 6:

Competition from the global exchange of goods and services benefits consumers and countries, while unfair competition penalizes those who play by the rules and erodes confidence in the rules themselves. Thats why its essential that international agreements governing free trade are upheld.

Accordingly, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao should heed members of Congress urging the U.S. government to enforce the Open Skies agreement with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

This bipartisan congressional consensus alleges that three airlines from those nations Qatar Airways, Etihad Airways and Emirates benefit from government subsidies worth more than $50 billion, which the congressional members and U.S.-based carriers such as Delta Air Lines believe give the airlines an unquestioned and unfair advantage that threatens the global aviation system and with it good-paying jobs here in the U.S.

In fact, according to an analysis from the Partnership for Open and Fair Skies, which includes Delta, American and United as well as several key airline-sector unions, every daily long-haul, round-trip flight lost to a Gulf carrier due to subsidized competition results in a net loss of 1,500 U.S. jobs.

According to the partnership, from 2011-2016 the Gulf carriers grew capacity at a rate more than six times the global GDP growth rate, suggesting that the subsidies are taking passengers from airlines based in nations working within the Open Skies framework. And the danger of overreliance on these Gulf carriers was clear when Mondays Mideast diplomatic spat between Qatar and five nations disrupted air travel.

Some U.S.-based carriers and air cargo lines that are not part of the partnership disagree with many of its claims, and the Gulf carriers deny the level of subsidies. And some consumers contend that the subsidies lower fares. But the best way to lower prices is global competition operating on a level playing field.

Support for free-trade pacts will decline even further if the public doesnt have the confidence that they will be enforced. Its critical for the airline sector and the economy at large for the U.S. to take the steps necessary to ensure a free and fair environment for airlines.

The following editorial appeared in The Gazette on Friday, June 9:

We dont pay workers to dig holes and fill them in for no reason. Government could do this to create jobs, but it would produce nothing of value at a cost to society.

Yet we talk about jobs provided by competing sources of energy without much concern for the return on investment.

President Donald Trump and other advocates do this when defending the coal industry. They point to coal miners as justification for ending the war on coal. The coal mine, they tell us, supports households that patronize businesses. The little league coach works at the coal mine. The job is reason enough to continue with coal. It is a weak argument, at the expense of sounder economic logic.

Environmentalists counter pro-mining arguments by citing the high and growing employment associated with solar. They quote Januarys 2017 U.S. Energy and Employment Report, which generated a media frenzy about the economic benefits of solar employment.

Solar employed more Americans in 2016 than coal, gas and oil combined. It comprised 43 percent of the electric sectors workforce.

If jobs were a good measure of an industrys worth, we would build roads with human shovel brigades instead of heavy equipment. Construction would cost more, with less efficient output, but would create more jobs.

We cant afford to do this because societys wealth is not enhanced by needless amounts of work. Standards of living improve only when output becomes greater and more efficient, as we find ways to produce more with less effort and expense. That is why we build roads with machines that out-produce hundreds of manually operated shovels. We need the most road miles for the least expense.

In assessing energy, we should focus less on jobs and more on helping end users afford to power offices, homes and cars. We should not fight for coal mining unless the jobs benefit consumers. We should not applaud solar employment as if the jobs are a means to an end.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration reports all those solar workers who outnumber their peers in oil, gas and coal produce 1 percent of the countrys electric needs. One coal miner produces as much energy as 79 workers in the solar industry. Two natural gas workers produce as much as 79 solar employees. One can argue the veracity of the data, but it is clear the industry needs to increase per-worker output.

Theres only one reason that the solar workforce has been increasing so rapidly (25 percent gain last year) despite its dismal record of worker productivity and minuscule share of U.S. electric power government policies that have subsidized the solar industry nearly 350 times more than fossil fuels per unit of electricity production, wrote Mark J. Perry, in an article for the Washington Examiner.

Society needs a surplus of affordable power, from diversified sources, produced and consumed as efficiently as possible with vigilant efforts to protect the environment.

If solar can compete, without massive and eternal subsidization, society will benefit. Solar will become more competitive as it minimizes the number of employees needed to produce a unit of power.

We should not defend any energy source as a means of creating expensive, low-yielding jobs. It is not fair to people who can barely pay utility bills, and it is no means of growing our economy. We should favor energy products that give us the most for the least.

The following editorial appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Thursday, June 8:

Corporate shareholders are using their voting power to influence greater transparency by companies about the financial consequences of climate change. Big investors could turn out to be the environmental movements best friends in pressuring major corporations to address climate concerns.

A surprise vote last week by 62.3 percent of ExxonMobil shareholders highlights the power big money has over corporate behavior. Investors voted to instruct the petroleum giant to be more transparent about the cost of global measures designed to keep climate change to 2 degrees Celsius. The shareholder rebellion occurred at the companys annual meeting in Dallas. A year earlier, a similar proposal got only 38 percent support.

Top institutional shareholders could be behind this shift toward greater corporate environmental accountability. Their support came despite a company campaign that included calling, writing and lobbying shareholders in person to vote against climate-related proposals.

Institutional asset managers typically dont challenge management on social or political issues, but they can and should. Major asset management firms oversee trillions of investment dollars that can be used to reflect growing concerns among shareholders about important issues.

Besides, examined from a purely financial-benefit perspective, rising sea levels and global temperatures could hinder companies like ExxonMobil from operating in certain environments, which would translate into reduced financial performance and lower share values. Companies are required to declare such risks to shareholders if their investments could be affected.

New York Times columnist Gretchen Morgenson wrote recently that giant asset management firms BlackRock and Vanguard, which control a combined $9 trillion in assets, each voted in favor of management-sponsored proposals about 95 percent of the time. The days of automatically yielding to management could be ending.

Rubber-stamping sends a signal that corporations are operating perfectly and dont need to change, which Morgenson noted is an assessment clients would not agree with in some cases. She said they probably would support more transparent operations and better shareholder service overall.

Vanguard and BlackRock refused to disclose their Exxon votes, which came the same day President Donald Trump announced the U.S. would pull out of the Paris climate accord. That decision might have influenced their vote. Similar resolutions on climate change accountability won majority votes at Occidental Petroleum and Pennsylvania utility PPL, and hefty support at other companies, according to St. Louis Post-Dispatch business columnist David Nicklaus.

Nicklaus said investor clout is also being felt in the St. Louis region, with 44 percent of Emerson shareholders supporting a 2016 proposal asking the company to produce a sustainability report. The same percentage of Ameren investors backed a resolution for a climate change report.

Corporations have responded to investor pressure in the past, such as during the boycott movement to end apartheid in South Africa. This is a welcome wake-up call for executives to make climate change a priority concern.

View original post here:

'War on drugs' is costing thousands of lives | Guest columns ... - Arizona Daily Sun