Editorials from around Pennsylvania

Editorials from around Pennsylvania:

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AMAZON IS WALMART’S ENEMY, NOT HIGHER WAGES, Feb. 10

Income inequality may be an issue in presidential politics, but corporate defenders of the status quo aren’t letting that stop their railing against wage increases. Some are even blaming higher pay for Walmart’s decision to close dozens of stores.

Walmart, which in January announced plans to close 154 stores in the United States, decided last year to raise its average hourly wages from $9.48 to $10.58 for part-time workers and from $12.85 to $13.38 for full-time workers by Feb. 20. That is still below the $14.95 average hourly wage of U.S. retail workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But Andy Puzder, chief executive of fast-food giant CKE Restaurants, which includes the Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. chains, argued that Walmart had “merely priced people out of a job.”

Puzder suggested in a Wall Street Journal commentary that an April raise for Walmart employees led to a 10 percent reduction in earnings per share in the third quarter. He also noted that a Washington city council member blamed pay and benefits for Walmart’s cancellation of plans to build two stores there.

But Puzder is telling only part of the story. While pay, benefits, and other costs affecting Walmart’s bottom line factored into its decision to close stores and cancel openings, the main challenge for Walmart and other retailers, including Macy’s and Gap, is the consumer exodus to online shopping. Walmart is shifting gears to compete with Amazon, and not just in the United States.

Globally, Walmart is closing 269 stores and laying off 16,000 employees. While its reasons include some stores’ proximity to each other, it also acknowledged a need to boost online sales. That makes sense. The Commerce Department’s retail report for December showed a 7.1 percent increase in sales by online and other non-store retailers from a year earlier, while sales at general-merchandise stores such as Walmart grew only a tenth of a percent.

Of course, department stores aren’t the only businesses trying to compete with the Internet. And like Walmart, many are laying off workers to put more emphasis on online sales.

Instead of bloviating about higher wages, corporate leaders could do more good by helping the unemployed become employable in this brave, new world of e-commerce. They need to stop seeing raises through cloudy lenses that obscure the wage stagnation that too many Americans have experienced for years.

The Economic Policy Institute says the biggest decline in wages from 2013 to 2014 occurred among those with undergraduate and advanced degrees. Just think what it would mean to Walmart if those Americans were paid better salaries: more customers in stores and online.

— The Philadelphia Inquirer

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AMERICA LIKE “THE REST OF THE WORLD”? WHY NOT?, Feb. 8

As you no doubt have heard by now, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio emerged bloodied and battered from the debate among Republican presidential candidates that aired on ABC-TV Saturday night. After being hammered relentlessly by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for being rigidly scripted and “a boy in the bubble,” a clearly flustered Rubio responded by repeating one of his talking points about President Obama four times, which Christie made certain to point out.

The gist of the argument Rubio was trying to make is President Obama has not been incompetent, as many Republicans contend, but he has been all too competent, “undertaking a systematic effort to change this country, to make America more like the rest of the world.”

Make America more like the rest of the world? Goodness! Where are the smelling salts?!

By “the rest of the world,” we assume Rubio was referring to the rest of the developed world. And if that’s the case, there’s room to wonder why making America like the rest of the world would be such a horrific development.

We have become a less mobile society than many other nations, including our northern neighbor, Canada. Countries like Finland, Estonia and Canada, again, outdo our students in academic performance, and other nations have surged ahead of us in college completion rates. We put more of our citizens in prison than Russia or China, we pay more for health care and have lower life expectancies than many of our developed competitors, and our infrastructure leaves plenty to be desired, as we have recently witnessed in Flint, Mich. And we have a toleration for gun violence that leaves the rest of the world flabbergasted.

Yes, there are a lot of things that make the United States a special place – it has energy, entrepreneurial zeal and openness you will not find elsewhere. But what’s so bad about making America like the rest of the world if it would improve the lives of most of its citizens? There’s nothing unpatriotic about that.

— The (Washington) Observer-Reporter

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NEW TERRITORY: GOV. WOLF REFUSES TO GRASP THE STATE’S FISCAL REALITY, Feb. 10

Gov. Tom Wolf is caught in a time warp. It’s February 2016, but he thinks it’s November 2015. That’s when he thought he had a “deal” with the General Assembly on a 2015-16 budget.

Earth to governor: There was no deal, there is no deal, and the proof is there is no completed budget for the fiscal year that is seven months old.

Now Mr. Wolf threatens to make matters worse by proposing a 2016-17 spending plan that builds on what he did not get for 2015-16. It’s time to forget the past and move on. Pennsylvania needs governing.

The Democrat picked up his standoff with the Republican-led Legislature where it left off last fall by proposing a $32.7 billion budget for the year beginning July 1. It calls for big tax increases and revival of the so-called “framework” compromise that died in the House. In addition to the $377 million increase in education spending that was in the plan for 2015-16, Mr. Wolf wants to raise the stakes with $200 million more for next year.

House Majority Leader Dave Reed reiterated the position that doomed the current year’s budget and will do the same for 2016-17: “I don’t see any way the House is going to rubber stamp” the governor’s call for an increase in the state income tax from 3.07 percent to 3.4 percent or an expansion of the sales tax to cover more items, enough to bring in $415 million instead of the current $66 million. Mr. Wolf also would raise taxes on tobacco, gas drilling and more.

The details are spelled out in the proposed budget that the governor is mandated to present to the Legislature. He used his speech to warn of a fiscal crisis that he said will hit this year without dramatic changes.

He’s right about that. There is little dispute that Pennsylvania has a structural deficit. So why would Mr. Wolf think the solution to that is higher spending?

In his speech Tuesday, the governor said, “We are going to have to face hard facts.” Indeed. It is a fact that the compromise he favored last fall passed the Senate but not the House, so get over it.

Democrats and Republicans alike must stop looking in the rearview mirror as they try to finish the funding package for the rest of 2015-16 while crafting a spending plan for 2016-17. Pennsylvania is in new territory and the only way forward is a new approach.

— The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

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STUDENTS OVERSTEP BOUNDS, Feb. 4

The pockets of America’s taxpayers are being picked again, but this time more than the government is to blame.

As the Wall Street Journal reported on Jan. 21, thousands of individuals with federal student loans are flooding the government with requests to have their loans forgiven, claiming they were deceived by false promises of a well-paying career once they finished their studies.

They’re using an obscure federal law from 1994 that had been applied only in three instances prior to last year. It’s a flawed, vague law that isn’t even specific enough about proof needed to prove that a school committed fraud.

Student activists discovered the existence of the law last year, and in the past six months, more than 7,500 borrowers owing $164 million have come forward to try to have their student debt expunged.

What should be maddening to any right-thinking taxpayer is that the U.S. Department of Education already has agreed to cancel nearly $28 million of debt for 1,300 former students of Corinthian Colleges, a for-profit chain that liquidated in bankruptcy last year.

Meanwhile, almost all of those applying for forgiveness under the nearly 22-year old measure attended for-profit schools; about 75 percent of them attended Corinthian-owned institutions.

According to the Journal, the student-activist group Debt Collective, claiming that the number of borrowers who have been defrauded by colleges probably is in the millions, wants the Education Department to cancel loans for entire classes of students, instead of individually.

Department officials have said that the eventual forgiveness total could be in the billions of dollars – a fiscal atrocity.

Whatever happened to gratitude, responsibility, individual pride, self-respect and motivation?

The government and taxpayers shouldn’t have to shoulder the higher-education financial burdens of individuals who possessed the intelligence and talents to qualify for college admission but failed to understand that virtually no one’s outcome ever can be guaranteed “going in.”

It can be asked how many of those seeking student loan forgiveness never have had the motivation to travel far and wide in this country to find the job that they seek. Thousands of people from foreign lands come to America each year to seek opportunity.

Meanwhile, many older Americans can attest to having had to seek jobs away from where they lived for decades because of circumstances such as a plant closing or a coal mine shutdown. The personal pride and self-respect of those individuals caused many of them to abhor the fact that it even was necessary for them to accept unemployment benefits temporarily.

On the basis of the loan-forgiveness attempt in progress, should parents who are shouldering parent-plus loans for sons and daughters who have been unable to find work or, worse, squandered their college opportunities, now cry for loan forgiveness too – from whatever the loan source, state or federal?

“Let the buyer beware” is an old principle. Regarding the student-loan individuals in question, “let the student beware” is a principle that obviously continues to be ignored.

Instead of gratitude for having been approved for a federal student loan and the opportunities that loan will continue to make possible for their lives, the individuals in question now are crying “promise broken” rather than accepting responsibility for their college debt in a mature way.

It’s a disgrace.

— The Altoona Mirror

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CAMPAIGN FUNDS ARE NOT INTENDED FOR DEFENSE ATTORNEYS, Feb. 10

Citizens and organizations give to political campaigns to elect officials to office, presumably believing those officials will carry out their duties in a manner consistent with the law.

The Pennsylvania election code is virtually silent on how such funds may be spent. The only limitation appears to be that campaign funds be spent to influence an election.

That should change.

Some officials seem to have interpreted “influence an election” to mean, “If I’m indicted, my re-election could be influenced.”

A recent Pittsburgh Tribune-Review report cites three examples of former state lawmakers who spent campaign funds in defense of corruption charges: Former state Sen. Jane Orie, an Allegheny County Republican, spent more than $110,000 from her campaign account. Former state Sen. Vincent J. Fumo, a Philadelphia Democrat, spent $1.1 million. And former state Sen. Robert J. Mellow, a Lackawanna County Democrat, hit his political donors for $738,000.

The latest Pennsylvania officeholders to spend campaign funds on legal fees are state Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane and Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski.

Pawlowski, according to a recent report by the Allentown Morning Call, has paid more than $80,000 from his campaign account to lawyers representing him in an FBI probe into possible connections between government contracts and campaign contributions.

Although Pawlowski’s transfer of campaign contributions to attorneys is troubling, Kane’s could serve as Exhibit A in the case for outlawing the practice in Pennsylvania.

According to recent reports by the Tribune-Review and the Philadelphia Inquirer: Kane, who was charged in August with perjury and other offenses related to a 2009 grand jury investigation, sent $150,000 from her campaign account to defense lawyers. And it paid $130,000 more to Lanny Davis for public relations advice. Davis briefly served as Kane’s spokesman on issues related to the probe that led to her indictment.

Kane’s campaign has raised $594,000 in 2013 and $75,000 in 2014 toward her presumed re-election bid this year.

She failed to raise any money as her legal troubles mounted in 2015.

And her campaign account’s debt of more than $1 million.

It seems reasonable to conclude that Kane’s donors did not anticipate her indictment and the resulting suspension of her law license when they gave to her campaign fund in 2013 and 2014.

It also seems reasonable to demand that the Pennsylvania election code be changed to prohibit spending on legal fees that are not directly related to campaigning for office.

If a public official believes his or her public service should translate into help with legal bills, that official should set up a legal defense fund for willing donors. Those who contributed to their campaigns should not be considered to have signed up for underwriting an official’s criminal defense attorneys.

Pennsylvania elections are tainted anytime a public official goes to jail on corruption charges. They are further tainted when campaign money is spent on defense lawyers.

Voters and party vetting processes can be on guard against electing those prone to corruption, but only the General Assembly can set limits on campaign spending. It should do so by outlawing the diversion of campaign money to criminal defense funds.

— The Reading Eagle

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