Sunday Opinion: Irene emergency, teacher cuts, Pakistan
Morning, folks. I’m checking in from New Orleans, where I’m just arriving for a weekend journalism conference. But no Big Easy day for the In Box. Here’s the latest weekend opinion.
The Glens Falls Post Star responds to environmentalist concerns that towns and private citizens might be cutting too many corners when it comes to dredging streams and rivers.
Their solution? Extend the emergency declaration — the period when no permits are required — for another month.
An extension would allow crews to slow down a bit and to make sure the work they’re doing doesn’t create more problems than it solves.
They need to make sure not only that the water is rerouted back to its original channels, but that the surfaces they create on the stream beds and shorelines adequately control the speed of the water and catch sediment…
It’s got to be done quickly. But it’s also got to be done right.
The Burlington Free Press sounds a similar note, suggesting that it’s time to start thinking about the long-term structure of the Irene recovery.
Efforts to repair damages and better protect communities from future storms must consider the impact over the long term and on areas beyond the immediate vicinity of the work. People are already worried about stream work to protect one town merely pushing the threat of severe flooding further down stream.
Shortcuts to environmental protections necessary in the immediate aftermath of the storm have raised concerns about work that may permanently alter the character and ecosystems of our waterways.
The Adirondack Daily Enterprise worries that too many school cuts are being aimed at teacher positions — and not salaries, benefits, building costs, and other expenses.
There are other things to cut that don’t damage education: technology, for example, or sports, or buildings, or equipment, or administration, or wages and benefits. Unions, like administrators, have to help out and not let faculty be downsized so they can get their raises.
To their credit, local schools made some of these sacrifices before they laid off teachers, but they will have to do more, in big and small ways, or else lay off faculty every year – feeding on their own like cannibals, increasing the ranks of the unemployed and weakening each community’s future.
The Watertown Daily Times, which often focuses its editorials on national defense issues because of the proximity of Fort Drum, looks to the situation in Pakistan, where there is growing evidence that the government is aiding terror groups.
The Obama administration has finally admitted what has long been suspected: that our supposed ally Pakistan is aiding the terrorist organization attacking U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, broke with the administration’s long-standing policy and for the first time publicly linked Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency with the Haqqani network known to be launching attacks from Pakistan’s tribal region.
So there it is – another week, another slate of opinions. Your comments welcome as always.
Tags: opinion
I went out to help some folks in southern VT yesterday, and the the idea that streams ‘need’ to be deeper was voiced again. This continues to worry me. The road work they are doing is getting roads opened, but is definitely not looking like a permanent fix. Will we have the money and will to go back in, rip out what was done, and replace it with a permanent solution?
I like how the Post Star’s solution closely hews to its ideological slant that the best permitting is no permitting. The idea that the end of permitting doesn’t give folks carte blanche to do whatever they want is laughable. Anything can be justified to fit into the box of “imminent threat to life or property”.
I would imagine the trout fishing will suck next year. When everyone starts behaving like the Army Corps of Engineers, expect more man made disasters.
As to our allies anywhere, we don’t have any allies. We have made sure of that by sticking our nose into every place on the globe.
The only way you can fight terrorism is with terrorism. An example was the way we killed Osoma. You kill them one by one or two by two and you don’t arrest them. You don’t attack a whole country. If you want to attack a whole country, you obliterate it.
I really agree with the Adirodack Daily Enterprise, teacher positions are the very last thing that should be cut. Teachers are the single most important variable in a child’s education, not the buildings, not the sports, not the administration, not the books, not the counselors and on and on, there is one variable that really matters and that is the quality of the teacher in the classroom.
I think Pakistan’s ISI is who planned and equipped Al-quida to carry out 9/11, the funding, the organization and now we know the affinity for Al-Quida and the protection provided Bin Laden; point to the fact that we probably attacked the wrong stan.
Some have argued that we should have gone to war in Saudi Arabia, but this wasn’t about making sense>
Yeah, but you know I don’t think the government of Saudi had anything to do with it. They are scared out of their wits by Islamic extremists and now they are even more scared of the Arab democracy movement. But Pakistan, now here is a country we know is actively funding terrorism against India for sure and likely others. They probably have also sold nuclear technology to Iran. We all wondered how could this character have pulled of 9/11, the planning, the organization the details and finally the execution? Well if you have the backing of a relatively sophisticated intelligence organization such as the ISI it makes some sense. The Taliban could not have done anything, I think it was indeed Pakistan who helped and coordinated the 9/11 attacks.
Mervel, just to be clear, the Taliban had nothing to do with 9/11. The Taliban were not our enemy. George Bush chose to make them the enemy when there was still some chance that the Taliban could have been convinced to turn bin Laden over. It may not have been possible but Bush never tried.
It is not news that the ISI supports terrorist networks just as it is not news that the CIA worked in conjunction with the ISI to help terrorist networks of one stripe or another in large and small ways — the Taliban is one of those groups, as is Hezb-e-islami ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezb-e-Islami_Gulbuddin ).
The strategy of calling foreign intelligence services or other nations terrorists, or terrorist supporters does very little to resolve the problems on the ground — especially when they know we are complicit in many of the things we complain about.
We need a new plan and it should involve eliminating secrecy in our foreign policy as much as is possible.
“Mervel, just to be clear, the Taliban had nothing to do with 9/11.” The Taliban clearly provided the folks that orchestrated the attacks with safe haven. How is that nothing?
“Nothing” is a poor choice of words. But there is no evidence the Taliban were implicated in planning, or actually carrying out the attacks.
As a juxtaposition look at the Bay of Pigs.
By your reasoning, Paul, the US, Ronald Reagan, the CIA are ALL responsible for 9/11 since the US encouraged bin Laden to locate to Afghanistan and we even funded training bases for him, including caves in Tora Bora.
Also, we helped to create the Taliban.
In this view Bill Clinton looks like the true hero since he tried to bomb bin Laden. At the time Republicans were very critical of Clinton. Maybe it is time for some Republicans to man-up and admit they were disastrously wrong.