Northwest Herald Editorial Board John Rung, Kate Weber, Dan McCaleb, Jason Schaumburg, Kevin Lyons, Jon Styf, John Sahly, Val Katzenstein
OPINIONS SATURDAY
THUMBS UP, THUMBS DOWN
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August 22, 2015 Northwest Herald Section A • Page 11
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SKETCH VIEW
Victory for transparency The Northwest Herald Editorial Board offers this week’s thumbs up and thumbs down: Thumbs up: To Gov. Bruce Rauner for signing House Bill 175 into law, which extends the reporting time to within 60 days of a potentially illegal meeting’s discovery, rather than 60 days from the date the meeting took place. The bill stems from the Oakwood Hills power plant debacle, and is an extra layer to help taxpayers. Thumbs down: To the first positive tests for West Nile virus in McHenry County. Thankfully, no humans have been affected, but there is still plenty of warm weather ahead, including this weekend. Protect yourself and your family with repellent, clothing and make sure to clear your home outdoor area of unintentional standing water where mosquitoes breed. Thumbs up: To Text-A-Tip, an anonymous texting service that connects McHenry County teenagers with licensed, trained clinicians from the Child, Adolescent and Family Recovery Center and, eventually, the McHenry County Crisis Center. The anonymous service is being implemented in the wake of the suicide of two teenagers earlier this year. We hope this serves as a lifeline to prevent more such tragedies among our youth. Thumbs down: To another week with no progress in Illinois’ budget stalemate. Saturday is Day 53 without a state budget. It’s as if House Speaker Michael Madigan, Senate President John Cullerton and Gov. Bruce Rauner are allergic to dealing with urgent matters urgently.
Radiothon support
ANOTHER VIEW
The heroin emergency Not even the federal government can solve the nation’s growing heroin epidemic on its own, but it could always do more. That’s probably the best way to think about the new anti-heroin initiative unveiled by the White House on Monday. A one-year, $2.5 million plan to track the flow of drugs through the Northeastern states and other “high-intensity” regions certainly can’t hurt; but the White House isn’t pretending its new initiative will conquer the problem and nor should anyone else. Two out of every 1,000 Americans were addicted to heroin in 2013, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, double the rate in 2002. There were 8,200 heroin-related overdose deaths in 2013; the number of such deaths per 100,000 people nearly quadrupled between 2002 and 2013, the CDC reports. These figures are especially troubling given that heroin abuse increased at a time when the U.S. made significant progress against so many other stubborn social ills – including drunken driving and teen pregnancy. Even more frustrating, the heroin epidemic is itself an unintended consequence of what previously had been thought to be a great medical advance: the rise of prescription opioid pain medications. Massively prescribed, often for routine ailments rather than cancer or other excruciating diseases, these painkillers addicted hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom eventually turned to chemically similar, but cheaper, heroin. Prescription-opioid addicts are the highest-risk group for heroin addiction, according to the CDC, and controlling the flow of prescription opioids is, accordingly, the most important thing that government – federal and state – can do to prevent it. One key program is the use of state-level electronic databases to track the dispensing of opioids; additional federal funds for these prescription drug monitoring programs were part of $133 million in new spending to curb opioid overprescription in President Barack Obama’s fiscal 2016 budget, and those dollars probably would do as much or more to fight heroin abuse than anything specifically targeted at heroin. It also would help if the federal government could find a way to speak with a single voice on this issue. In 2013, the Food and Drug Administration baffled many officials in heroin-ravaged states by approving a new opioid despite a negative recommendation from its own expert advisory panel. And on Aug. 13, only days before the White House rolled out its latest antiheroin plan, the FDA approved the powerful opioid OxyContin for use in patients as young as 11. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, denounced this as a “reckless act.” The FDA noted, defensibly, the approval may actually inhibit overprescription because it provides more definitive guidance on dosing and efficacy to physicians who already were free to give opioids to young patients “off-label.” Nevertheless, Manchin was understandably worried the FDA did not appoint an advisory panel to screen the proposal and that its decision could be seen as a green light for wider pediatric use by doctors lacking the time or inclination to educate themselves on best practices. The last thing this country needs is more conflict and confusion about how and when the gateway drugs for heroin enter the marketplace. The Washington Post
THE FIRST
AMENDMENT
IT’S YOUR WRITE To the Editor: I would like to take a moment to thank the community for its considerable support of this year’s 10th annual Take a Stand for Turning Point Radiothon. Held once again at Sam’s Club in Crystal Lake, the radiothon was broadcast for 36 hours on Star 105.5 on Aug. 14 and 15. The event helped raise more than $65,000 in support that helps to keep vital domestic violence services and shelter available. An additional $18,000 of in-kind services and volunteer time was provided to keep the costs of operating the event to a minimum, meaning every dollar collected will be used to provide direct services. As McHenry County’s only provider of domestic violence services, this support is critical to Turning Point because victims of violence will continue to have a place to turn to. Turning Point provides services to more than 1,600 individuals annually. We could not have held this year’s event without the support of Tina Bree, Joe Cicero, Frank Mon-
roe, MoJo, DJ Clinto, Ryan Wild and the entire team of interns and staff at Star 105.5. We also would like to thank Sam’s Club in Crystal Lake for providing considerable space in its parking lot. We also would like to thank our sponsors, including McDonald’s, Express Employment Professionals, Southwest, Volo Auto Museum, Bare Bones Chopper, Baird & Warner, Shay for You and Your Home, Country Inn & Suites, Centegra Health System, Medela, Home State Bank and Charter Dura-Bar. We would not have done it without you. Jane Farmer
Executive director, Turning Point
Ranking presidents
To the Editor: Clifford Evenson in his letter (“Obama the worst president,” Aug. 19) wrote the following: “Richard Nixon brought the Korean War to an end, stopped the college fighting with the National Guard, and was forced to resign his presidency to prevent impeachment.” The armistice that ended the
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Korean War was signed in July 1953 and was negotiated under the direction of President Eisenhower. Nixon became president in January 1969. Much of the “college fighting” in 1970 was in reaction to Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia. One such protest at Kent State University in Ohio ended with the tragic deaths of four college students. The local mayor had requested the Ohio governor, not Nixon, send in the National Guard. Nixon did not stop the “college fighting.” He and his policies contributed to it. Evenson’s third point is accurate. Evenson continues with, “Many political analysts consider Obama the worst president since Jimmy Carter.”
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I read an article several years ago that said political analysts and pundits are right about half the time. (It also mentioned the most accurate columnist was Paul Krugman and the worst was Cal Thomas. Note: The Northwest Herald only carries Thomas’ column.) For me, I prefer the judgments of professional historians in rating presidents. Lincoln, Washington and FDR always appear at the top; Grant, Harding and Buchanan at the bottom. Where will Obama, Bush and Clinton finish? It’s too early to tell. Give it 20 to 30 years. By the way, guess where Carter ranks. Just above Gerald Ford. Mark Wilcox Bull Valley
VIEWS
No, Hillary Clinton is not spiraling downward By PAUL WALDMAN The Washington Post There’s no question which is the more interesting and dynamic primary campaign right now, which inevitably leads reporters covering the other one to search for something new to write about. In a race where there’s an obvious (if not quite certain) nominee, there always will come a point at which the press will decide that candidate is spiraling downward, the cloak of inevitability is torn and tattered, the campaign is in crisis, the whispering from party loyalists is growing louder, and the scramble is on to find an alternative before the fall occurs. This is the moment we have come to with Hillary Clinton. First there was the fevered speculation about Vice President Joe Biden running against her, based on secondhand reports Biden has had conversations about the possibility of running. I’m sure Biden thinks about being president about as often as he brushes his teeth, but that doesn’t mean there’s an actual candidacy in the offing. It isn’t only him. ABC News reported “a one-time high-ranking political adviser to Al Gore tells ABC News that a group of
friends and former aides are having a ‘soft conversation’ about the possibility that Gore run for president in 2016.” Gore himself is not interested, but who cares? People keep asking John Kerry whether he’s going to jump into the race, no matter how many times he says, “No.” Time magazine said Democrats are headed for a repeat of the 1968 election, with Clinton cast as Lyndon Johnson and her email controversy offered as a parallel to the Vietnam War (pretty much the same magnitude, right?). Guess what: You put two or three former staffers to just about any major politician in a room, and they’ll have a “soft conversation” about how he really ought to run for president. If there’s one thing stories like these should never be based on, it’s the mere fact people who used to work for a particular politician would like that politician to run. Longtime political figures such as Gore and Biden trail behind them a tribe of former staffers, advisers, fundraisers and the like, all of whom have entertained fantasies about either a job in the West Wing or at least a heady proximity to the most powerful person on earth. If you called up any of them, you could extract a quote that would
make it sound like maybe, just maybe their guy might get in the race. So right now there’s virtually no evidence the Democratic field is going to expand beyond the current five candidates. What about the idea Clinton is in a drastic decline? Bernie Sanders has generated plenty of interest and some support, but that doesn’t necessarily mean Democrats are rejecting Clinton; if there’s any evidence Sanders supporters won’t be perfectly happy to back her if and when she’s the nominee, I haven’t seen it. If you look over the long term at Clinton’s favorability ratings, you do see a drop, but it’s not a huge one, and not the kind of precipitous decline you’d associate with a campaign in free fall. Her favorability is down substantially from when she was secretary of state, but that’s a natural consequence of her becoming a partisan political figure again. A year ago, her favorability was just under 50 percent, and now it’s around 41 or 42 – not what she’d like, surely, but hardly a crisis. As a point of comparison, at this time four years ago, Barack Obama’s job approval was in exactly the same place, 42 percent. You might recall who won the 2012
election. As Nate Silver observes, whether or not the movement in the polls is terribly meaningful, reporters have an incentive to describe it as such, and then run with the implications: “Even if there were no Clinton scandals, however, she’d probably still be receiving fairly negative press coverage. The campaign press more or less openly confesses to a certain type of bias: rooting for the story. Inevitability makes for a really boring story, especially when it involves a figure like Clinton who has been in public life for so long.” Perhaps Republicans will get their wish, and we’ll learn Clinton sent an email ordering the attack on Benghazi to cover up the fact she’s the leader of an al-Qaida sleeper cell whose goal is to enslave all Americans into a satanic Alinskyite death cult. If that happens, I’m sure some other Democrats will declare their candidacies. The other possibility is the race will have some ups and downs, Sanders might even win a primary or two, and, in the end, Clinton will prevail. That’s not as dramatic a story as a reporter covering the campaign might like. But at this point it’s still the most likely outcome.
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