A sampling of editorials from around New York

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — The Plattsburgh Press-Republican on the economic effects of this winter's lack of snow.

Feb. 5

This isn't Florida — or hadn't you noticed?

There aren't many places on the face of the Earth more dependent on the weather than we are in the North Country, and, like the rest of those places, there's precious little we can do about it.

So much of this region's prosperity and security relies on a steady flow of sun in the summer and snow in the winter that, when we are surprised, it is often unpleasantly so.

According to the National Weather Service, we've had less than half as much snow so far this winter as last year. The winter of 2010-11, of course, was a banner year for those of us who profit from outdoor activities this season. It was not one to get used to.

But this winter has been particularly anemic.

Ski areas become more and more nervous as the mild temperatures and bare ground persist. As each day and weekend pass without snow, it puts more pressure on the diminishing days on the calendar to produce the economic bonanza needed to make it through the summer. Ski-center operators have to be starting to wonder if there is enough time left.

And, of course, it isn't only the ski centers that are biting their nails. All the businesses in surrounding areas that cater to the usual flood of skiers coming in must also be bemoaning the empty skies.

Fortunately for the people in and around Lake Placid, that community is built for year-round recreation. They can endure a snowless year better than most because the area offers spring, summer and fall diversions, too.

Generally speaking, though, the North Country economy relies heavily on the region's history, scenery and recreation. History and scenery surely are intact, but, when skiing in the winter and boating and swimming in the summer are marred by the weather, that triumvirate becomes a duo, and it often isn't enough.

Cold summers and warm winters are the bane of the North Country. Throw in a hurricane, or two, with the accompanying flooding, and disaster is at the doorstep.

This area knows as well as any that, if you live by the snowflake — or the sunbeam — you can die by it, as well. You can even have too much of a good thing. Too much snow can discourage travelers, and too much heat can be intimidating.

Just as farmers want just the right amount of precipitation and sun to survive and prosper, so do recreational outlets.

We all know we've had a historically mild winter so far, and many residents hereabouts have rejoiced.

But we all have to realize that Mother Nature withholds her bounty for just so long. We will get snow, sooner or later. For the sake of the people who so desperately need it, we hope it's sooner.

We bill ourselves as a recreational mecca. Let's have some recreation and be grateful for it.

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http://pressrepublican.com

The Staten Island Advance on the lack of value in a Port Authority bridge crossing discount.

Feb. 5

The Port Authority has been trumpeting its expanded toll discount plan on the Goethals and Bayonne bridges and the Outerbridge Crossing as a boon for more frequent-users of these bridges.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has served as the P.A.'s apologist throughout the toll-hike saga, boasted, "You asked for relief and we delivered. This plan will save thousands of commuters hard-earned cash each time they go over one of these bridges, putting more money in their pockets at the end of each month."

Well, that's the P.A.'s story, anyway.

Trouble is, not many people are buying it.

The "new, improved" discount plan took effect on Thursday, but as of that date, just 451 Staten Islanders had signed up for it. The program has been an equally tough sell in New Jersey.

It certainly might seem like a good deal to anyone who doesn't know better. It offers a 50-percent discount off the base $9.50 cash toll to any driver with an E-ZPass account.

The hitch is that participants must pay $47.50 for a 30-day period. That amount is charged in advance to the person's E-ZPass account, which is replenished automatically from the customer's credit card.

That comes out to $4.75 for 10 trips, which is a true bargain — at least in contrast with the full cash toll. But if a person uses the bridges fewer than 10 times in a 30-day period, the per-trip price goes up, because the 30-day rate is still $47.50.

And, you have to use up that $47.50 or lose it; if you don't take all 10 trips, you don't get a refund.

So a driver who uses the Staten Island-New Jersey crossings five times in 30 days would still be paying $9.50 per trip. (Six times would be $7.92 per trip; seven times, $6.79; eight times, $5.93; nine times, $5.27.) Participants get some savings for anything more than five trips in 30 days, but they have to take the Staten Island-New Jersey bridges 10 or more times a month to get the lowest toll.

The discount plan is of negligible value to anyone who doesn't travel between Staten Island and New Jersey on a fairly predictable, regular basis.

So — by design, we suspect — it leaves out people who go shopping or to visit relatives or friends in New Jersey slightly less often — but even as often as every weekend — as well as the owners or renters of vacation houses on the Jersey Shore.

In fact, the only people who can clearly benefit from the Port Authority's much-ballyhooed discount are those who take 10 or more trips per month between Staten Island and New Jersey. That pretty much means weekday commuters.

But five-day-a-week commuters have already been availing themselves of the Staten Island Bridges discount program, which offers the same half-price toll for E-ZPass who use the bridges 20 times in 35 days. They pay $95 for 20 trips, or $4.75 per crossing.

There's no reason for those daily commuters to sign up for the new discount program, and there's not much reason for anyone else to, either. In other words, for most people not already in the Staten Island Bridges program, this is a phantom bargain. The low number of new participants shows this.

There were 18,500 Staten Island residents and 12,500 New Jersey residents already subscribed to the Staten Island Bridges program before this new discount as unveiled. The Port Authority claims that an additional 20,000 Staten Island residents and 13,000 New Jersey residents could take advantage of the new discount.

According to the P.A., at least, 68 percent of the travelers who use these three bridges could benefit, even with as few as six trips in a 30-day period.

Really? Then why are so few people rushing to get in on it? Answer: Because almost everybody who can truly benefit from the new discount program is already getting a discount under the old program.

Port Authority Deputy Executive Director Bill Baroni said the agency will have to "step up outreach and marketing to grow the number of people who realize savings."

The P.A. should save its breath and the money.

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http://www.silive.com

The Poughkeepsie Journal on banning insider trading by members of Congress.

Feb. 8

Under the heading of doing the absolute minimum, Congress is on the verge of passing a law that would ban insider trading and force lawmakers to make more timely disclosures about their financial dealings.

It's absurd such practices have been allowed to continue for so long without congressional representatives doing something about it. Proposals have been kicked around for years, but they drew scant support until a "60 Minutes" segment was aired on the subject late last year.

The "60 Minutes" piece pointed to several examples — including House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. — where lawmakers blatantly benefited financially by having knowledge of information before it became public.

No wonder the public's view of Congress is so low — in recent polls, the American approval rating of Congress was about 9 percent. As a Huffington Post headline wryly suggested after various writers crunched polling data, congressional approval is lower than America's view of pornography, polygamy, the BP oil spill and the U.S going Communist.

With nowhere to go but up, the Senate passed the so-called STOCK Act — Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge — and the House of Representatives is expected to do so next week. President Obama says he will sign the measure. The act will require lawmakers and thousands of executive branch officials to post their stock trades online within 30 days. And the legislation appropriately states that members of Congress and thousands of other federal workers are subject to the same federal anti-fraud laws that prohibit other Americans from making stock trades based on insider knowledge.

In fact, instead of lining their own pockets, congressional representatives should be holding hearings and investigating why not a single person has been charged with any crimes connected to the financial meltdown that almost took this country into another depression. These representatives are supposed to be looking out for the American people, not protecting their own interests or, worse yet, privately profiting on information they received under the guise of being a "public servant."

For these reasons, the STOCK Act deserves support, but Congress still has a long way to rebuild trust with the American people.

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http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com

The Buffalo News on improving disclosure rules for "super PACs" in political campaigns.

Feb. 7

This is the year of the super PAC, a political action committee on steroids that can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money to help a favored candidate — with only the flimsiest of regulations in place.

Super PACs let wealthy individuals, corporations and unions avoid limits on political contributions, spurring concerns about their largely unchecked influence on campaigns and the avalanche of negative TV ads they are unleashing.

Last week's release of their filings with the Federal Election Commission offers our first look at the donors behind these super PACs, and prompts us to question what their growth means for the future of presidential campaigns.

Super PACs developed in 2010 in response to two federal court decisions rooted in the Supreme Court's now 35-year-old contention that political money is speech.

Citizens United overturned the ban on the use of corporate and union funds in political campaigns. SpeechNow.org held it was unconstitutional to set a limit on donations to political committees.

Unlike traditional PACs, super PACs are barred from donating money directly to political candidates, and they can't coordinate with the candidates they support.

But super PACs aligned with a candidate usually are run by former staffers and have close ties to the office-seeker.

Super PACs must identify their donors in regular filings with the FEC, though they have wide latitude in deciding when to reveal this information.

The pro-Mitt Romney Restore Our Future had raised $30.2 million, while the pro-Newt Gingrich Winning Our Future raised $2 million. Gingrich's total doesn't include $10 million the super PAC received in January from Sheldon Adelson, a billionaire casino owner, and his wife, Miriam.

Obama supporters have their own super PAC, Priorities USA Action, which has Buffalo native Bill Burton as one of its founders and reported receiving $4.4 million.

The super PACs raise a lot of money from a small number of donors and use the money to run TV ads and conduct opposition research, serving as "force-multipliers for candidates" in the words of Michael Beckel of the Center for Responsive Politics.

The enormous amount of cash is warping the political game, with campaigns generating much more negative advertising than the campaigns could pay for on their own. Candidates benefit from these ads while distancing themselves from their messages and claiming they have no control over the super PACs.

It's unlikely the Supreme Court, as currently constituted, would overrule itself if a future campaign finance case comes before it. And we can't see a constitutional amendment barring super PACs getting the necessary support.

But there are steps that can be taken to minimize the harm done by these committees.

First, we urge the FEC to close filing loopholes and update disclosure rules that, as pointed out in Politico and other media outlets, allow super PACs to evade scrutiny.

Next, we join those calling on the Internal Revenue Service to withdraw the tax-exempt status of 501(c)4 organizations that exist solely to engage in political campaigns.

And we ask Congress to approve the Disclose Act — which seeks to boost transparency in campaign finance — and we welcome the plans of New York's Charles Schumer and other Senate Democrats to hold hearings on super PACs.

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http://www.buffalonews.com

The Times Union of Albany on Mitt Romney's comment about the poor.

Feb. 5

They're more vulnerable, and less mobile, than he seems to understand.

Mitt Romney, of the upper reaches of the richest 1 percent, able to pay income taxes at a rate low enough to make the people who work for a living drool with envy, wealthy enough to think that some $374,000 in speaking fees isn't so much money, wants his views about poverty to be taken in the right context.

He's entitled to that, too. So little would be served by the hit job politics and sound-bite journalism that would have Mr. Romney continuing to campaign for president as the victim of his own ill-chosen words.

He said more than, "I'm not concerned about the very poor," in a CNN interview last Wednesday. In some ways, what Mr. Romney said was more troubling in its entirety.

Here's what he said in full:

"I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs a repair, I'll fix it. I'm not concerned about the very rich; they're doing just fine."

We'll concede Mr. Romney's last point. He would know, surely.

What bothers us is his confident assessment of the 46 million Americans, 15 percent of the population, living below the government's defined level of poverty — $22,314 for a family of four. Or the 20 million people in what the government calls deep poverty — less than $11,000 for a family of four.

Mr. Romney speaks of them as if they're more theoretical than human, something he might have studied at Harvard Business School.

Talk of repairs to that safety net don't need to be prefaced with the conditional "if." Poverty is growing, and at a rate that far surpasses that of the economy itself.

Failure to change that could have Mr. Romney having to explain how to expand the safety net. Some 51 million people are living in what the government calls "near poverty," meaning that their incomes are less than 50 percent higher than the poverty line. For a family of four, that's $33,571.

Mr. Romney's preoccupation, however, is with the middle class. That makes sense, up to a point. It would, at least, if Mr. Romney had a more promising plan to stop the decline of the middle class.

Where does he think these people are heading, when the median household income is down 7 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars, from $53,252 in 1999 to $49,445 in 2010?

Yes, there's Medicaid and food stamps, as Mr. Romney mentions. But what about jobs — the best way to relieve the stress on the safety net that he says protects the worst-off Americans from utter economic despair?

His platform is full of ideas that do little to dispel his image of detachment from the real world. Abolish Obamacare, he says, but without evidence of how it would stimulate employment or how many jobs it would mean. More domestic energy production, he urges, with no regard for the wildly conflicting claims of how many jobs that would bring.

Cut the corporate income tax rate to 28 percent, he says, without mentioning the taxes paid by the middle class and those who don't make enough to be part of it. Consolidate what he calls the "sprawl of federal retraining programs," without explaining how state-operated programs would yield better results.

It's inevitable that seizing upon remarks that can best be described as glib will make Mr. Romney seem callous — to both the poor he doesn't worry about and the middle class that he says he does care about. Yet the fuller, more sober consideration that he and his views deserve don't portray him in a much better light.

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http://www.timesunion.com