Editorial voices from elsewhere
Editorial voices from newspapers around the United States:
If this month’s tragedy in Las Vegas brought home the need for a national conversation on gun violence, the hurricanes in Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico are shining a spotlight on another controversial topic: climate change.
As President George W. Bush once commented, there’s no doubt “climate change” is occurring; the question is how much humans are affecting the process, if at all. Bush also quipped that by the time we know for certain, he’ll be long gone. Unfortunately, while he was being facetious, that view is a key reason why some folks don’t want to deal with the issue. If we’ll be dead by the time any serious effects can be measured, why worry about it?
The answer: Our children, our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren – and the planet itself.
There’s now a wide scientific consensus that humans have at least some impact on the climate. Logic suggests that if we take tons of material from the earth, like oil or coal, then transfer it into the atmosphere, there’s bound to be a nominal effect, if not more.
Whatever the facts, economic concerns are – no pun intended – trumping the health of the planet and of future generations. That’s understandable to a degree, because widespread job loss in the energy industry could create financial black holes in many sectors. But “clean” energy, while currently more costly, will also create jobs, and letting a handful of tycoons and their bought-and-paid-for politicians set the tone is sheer folly.
It wasn’t all that long ago nobody knew what a payday loan was.
Sure, there were finance companies and small lenders around. But they made installment loans to be paid back over several months, maybe a couple of years.
Then payday loans popped up. You wrote a postdated check and got cash for two weeks at outrageous interest – more than you would pay a mobbed-up loan shark.
Over the years states have cracked down on payday lending. Now the federal government is forcing the issue. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued new rules for the industry scheduled to take effect in 2019. The CFPB determined the biggest issue was borrowers taking out more loans than they can repay and then rolling the loans over and over again by just paying interest fees and not the principal. That means borrowers could pay hundreds, even thousands, of dollars and still owe the entire amount of the original loan. So the new regulations will limit the amount and number of loans a person can take out within a specific time frame.
In our view the Wild West days of payday lending should be over. But there must be a venue for the working poor to get short-term money when they need it.
The United States is a less violent place than it was a quarter of a century ago. According to FBI statistics, the rate of violent crime in our country fell by around 50 percent between 1993 and 2015. The Bureau of Justice Statistics found an even more dramatic decline over the same period: 77 percent. Although violent crime rates have collapsed since 1993, 21 Gallup polls have found that substantial majorities of Americans consistently report that violence is actually increasing.
There are many reasons for this stubborn misperception – from a 24-hour news cycle that emphasizes violence and chaos over practically everything else to improvements in communications technology that allow us to see horrific violence in graphic detail. Of course, it doesn’t help to have a president who falsely asserts that the murder rate is higher than it has been in 47 years.
All of that said, violent crime has actually increased over the past few years – particularly the murder rate. Between 2014 and 2015, the FBI reported a 3 percent rise in overall violent crime and a 10 percent spike in the murder rate. These numbers continued to climb from 2015 to 2016.
Yes, there has been remarkable decline in violence over the past few decades, but we must do everything possible to maintain this trend, especially as crime rates tick back up. Making sure law enforcement agencies have the resources they need is a good place to start.