Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 111, No. 331, Ed. 1 Monday, June 29, 2015 Page: 4 of 18
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OPINION
4A
Monday, June 29, 2015
Denton Record-Chronicle
Denton Record-Chronicle
U.S. favors
half-measures
against Putin
HACKERS R US
Published by Denton Publishing Co.,
a subsidiary of A.H. Belo Corporation
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Founded from weekly newspapers,
the Denton Chronicle, established in 1882,
and the Denton Record, established in 1897.
Published daily as the Denton
Record-Chronicle since Aug. 3,1903.
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f you’re out for a hike and find a deep,
wide chasm in your path, you have a few
options. You might give up and turn
back. You might devise a way to get over it.
You might look for a way around it.
What you would not do is jump halfway
across.
Half-measures are often worse than
none. But when it comes to dealing with Vla-
dimir Putin, they are exactly the ones most
favored by both the Obama administration
and its congressional critics.
The Russian president moved last year to
forcibly seize Crimea from its neighbor and
former republic, Ukraine. Ever since, the
pro-Western govern-
ment of Ukraine has
been fighting pro-Rus-
sian separatists in the
eastern part of the
country — forces that
apparently
some actual members
of the Russian military.
The United States StCVC
and its European allies __
have responded by im- U1 ipffl
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EDITORIAL BOARD
Bill Patterson
Publisher and CEO
Scott K. Parks
Managing Editor
Les Cockrell
Region Editor
Mark Finley
City Editor
Mariel Tarn-Ray
News Editor
PAST PUBLISHERS
William C. “Will” Edwards
1903-1927
Robert J. “Bob” Edwards
1927-1945
Riley Cross
1945-1970
Vivian Cross
1970-1986
Fred Patterson
1986-1999
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Editorials published in the Denton Record-Chronicle
are determined by the editorial board.
Questions and suggestions should be directed to the:
Denton Record-Chronicle
314 E. Hickory St., Denton, TX 76201
Phone: 940-387-3811
Fax: 940-566-6888
E-mail: drc@dentonrc.com
Supreme Court spares
America a cataclysm
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include
ahbelo.com NYSE symbol: AHC
is consistent with the former, and avoids the
latter.”
he U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on the
Affordable Care Act has left the law’s
most ardent detractors with not
much more than a hospital gown for cover.
King vs. Burwell may be the last legal as-
sault on “Obamacare,” the right wing’s bete
noire. If the Republicans still hope to quash
the president’s health care reform, they’re
going to have to elect a Congress and a chief
executive to “repeal and replace” it.
In the upcoming
elections, Republicans
will have to make a
convincing claim that
they have a better plan
to supplant Obama-
care. (Spoiler alert:
They don’t have any
plan at all, and they
probably won’t by No-
vember 2016.) Sure,
they will continue to
throw darts at Oba-
macare, but they will be hard-pressed to
demonstrate that they are more interested in
uplifting the quality of health care for all
Americans than in playing political games.
It’s clear that Republicans consider the
high court’s 6-3 decision a bitter defeat. In
the hours after it was announced, Republi-
can frustration was palpable.
GOP presidential candidate and former
U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, in a statement
echoed by his colleagues vying for the nom-
ination, called the ruling “yet another re-
minder that if we are to rid our nation of
Obamacare once and for all, we need to elect
a conservative president prepared to lead on
day one.”
Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant, a Republi-
can, sputtered about a “socialist takeover of
health care forced down the throats of the
American people.”
Three years ago, Chief Justice John Rob-
erts’ court upheld the constitutionality of
Obamacare’s individual mandate feature.
Now, the court has given its blessing to the
intent of the Affordable Care Act.
The case turned on some erroneously
drafted language that appeared to limit fed-
eral subsidies to people in those states that
had set up insurance exchanges. That clause,
read in the context, contradicts the intent of
the law.
Writing for the majority, Chief Justice
Roberts wrote: “Congress passed the Afford-
able Care Act to improve health insurance
markets, not to destroy them. If at all pos-
sible, we must interpret the act in a way that
T
Other voices
Roberts acknowledged the law’s “three-
legged stool”: regulations on insurers (such
as requiring them to cover pre-existing con-
ditions without jacking up premiums); a
mandate that all individuals must buy cover-
age; and a subsidy to those who can’t afford
coverage.
With all the legs in place, the reform has a
chance to succeed; take one leg away and in-
surance markets will go into a “death spiral.”
Universalizing and strengthening insur-
ance coverage remains a vital priority. The
National Center for Health Statistics reports
that 36 million Americans — 11.5 percent of
the population — remain uninsured. Others
still face costly generic prescriptions, high
deductibles and scant access to reliable basic
Visa abuses harm
U.S. workers
posing economic sanc-
tions in an effort to punish Putin and pos-
sibly force him to retreat.
The sanctions, reports The Wall Street
Journal, “dented the ruble’s value, fueled
capital flight and sent the oil-dependent
economy into a tailspin.”
But the retreat has not happened. So the
administration has provided Ukraine with
“nonlethal defensive security assistance,” in-
cluding medical supplies and night-vision
goggles.
American hawks want more. Sen. John
McCain, R-Ariz., says our refusal to ship
weapons to Kiev is “one of the most shameful
chapters in American history” House Armed
Services Committee Chairman Mac Thorn-
berry, R-Texas, says if we send arms, “Putin
will pay a price for increased casualties —
one he is obviously very nervous about pay-
he fields of science, technology, engineering and
mathematics are where the U.S. job market enjoys
exploding growth. If the domestic talent pool can’t
fill the demand for top-quality engineers and software
designers, American companies have little choice but to
look abroad.
The H-1B visa program was developed to ease employ-
ers’ ability to hire immigrant high-tech experts and re-
main competitive. It made little sense, for example, for
foreign students to study here, gain valuable expertise,
then be forced to leave for lack of a work permit. Once
that happens, the people American universities have
trained become competitors instead of assets.
That’s why The Dallas Morning News has long urged
Congress to raise the 85,000 annual cap on H-1B visas to
keep U.S. high-tech companies competitive. But the pro-
gram was never designed to put Americans out of work
so that cheaper foreign workers could come here to take
their jobs.
A troubling trend among outsourcing companies is to
scoop up vast quantities of H-1B visas and use them to
replace fully qualified American high-tech workers with
lower-paid immigrants.
In Senate Judiciary Committee hearings earlier this
year, Republicans and Democrats expressed anger at the
abuses being exposed in the program. The chairman, Sen.
Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, sent an angry letter to IBM’s
top executive in April after learning that IBM was plan-
ning mass layoffs of Americans even as it was petitioning
for 5,800 H-1B visas.
Others, such as Southern California Edison and Dis-
ney, have drawn heavy scrutiny for giving American work-
ers the boot in favor of lower-paid, and often less-skilled,
immigrant talent. Fossil, the watch and fashion accesso-
ries maker, reportedly laid off about 100 Texas workers,
including many in the Dallas area. Many vacancies were
refilled with cheaper immigrants recruited by an out-
sourcing firm.
After The New York Times published a recent story
about Disney’s plan to do likewise, that company quickly
reversed course.
T
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Mary
Sanchez
care.
Unforeseen medical costs are still major
reason that families declare bankruptcy,
sometimes even when they are insured.
The Supreme Court’s ruling clears a ma-
jor hurdle toward achieving maximum cov-
erage. Had the court ruled for the plaintiff, it
would have gutted the Affordable Care Act
and sent the nation back to square one. At
least now the nearly 17 million Americans
who gained coverage will be able to keep it.
The question is where Obama’s antago-
nists go from here. More than one observer
has noted that Roberts saved the Republi-
cans from themselves.
An adverse ruling would have caused a
major disruption in health care markets.
Yanking chemotherapy and dialysis treat-
ments from the recently insured would have
left the Republicans in a bad odor at election
time.
mg.
But one rule of national security is to be
careful about getting involved in shooting
wars with countries that can destroy you
which Russia, with its hundreds of nuclear-
tipped ballistic missiles, could do to us in, oh,
half an hour.
Another wise policy is to avoid steps that
are optically pleasing but practically destruc-
tive. Furnishing weapons to Ukraine would
expand the bloodshed without altering the
outcome.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest
noted that Washington can’t “provide
enough military support to the Ukrainian
military that they could overwhelm the mil-
itary operations that are currently being
backed by Russia.”
Whatever we do, Putin can do more —
and almost certainly will. Russia has more at
stake in Ukraine than we do and is prepared
to make greater sacrifices to get what it
wants.
The court’s decision permits the GOP to
keep fulminating throughout the upcoming
election season about the savage injustice of
Obamacare without proposing a concrete
alternative.
That conservatives were willing to cause
a health-care cataclysm speaks volumes
about their true intentions. Don’t expect Re-
publicans to propose health-care reform
that puts people’s interests before corporate
profits.
And thank John Roberts’ court that we
don’t have to watch them go through the
charade of doing so.
But the administration has its own fond-
ness for ineffectual gestures. Recently, De-
fense Secretary Ashton Carter said the U.S.
will “pre-position” tanks, Bradley fighting ve-
hicles and artillery in Lithuania, Latvia and
Estonia — NATO countries that used to be
under Moscow’s rule and prefer not to be
agam.
MARY SANCHEZ writes for The Kan-
sas City Star. Her column is distributed by
Tribune Content Agency. Her e-mail ad-
dress is at msanchez@kcstar.com
This step would make it easier to respond
to a Russian attack. Carter asserted that it al-
We stand by the H-1B visa program, especially after
hearing the strong case made by advocates from various
universities, employers and politicians such as Republican
Kay Bailey Hutchison, the former senator from Texas.
Many employers have told us the H-1B, when used prop-
erly, is anything but a money saver, and they’re horrified
to learn that abuses are occurring.
The U.S. Department of Labor makes clear in its direc-
tives that companies seeking to hire H-1B holders must
first take “good-faith steps to recruit U.S. workers for the
job.” Additional conditions mandating equal salaries and
benefits for foreign hires were designed to block employ-
ers from hiring H-1B workers on the cheap.
Congress is correct to scrutinize abusers and consider
ways to plug loopholes. This good program deserves to be
fine-tuned, not overturned because a few employers are
exploiting it to save a buck
so shows the U.S. and NATO “are absolutely
committed to defending the territorial integ-
rity” of the Baltic nations.
The New York Times reported that it’s
meant to serve “as a deterrent the way the
Berlin Brigade did after the Berlin Wall crisis
in 196L”
Oh? That particular U.S. Army unit was
an effective deterrent because its presence
assured the East Germans and Soviets that if
they tried to seize West Berlin, they would be
at war with the United States.
It was a simple statement: “If you want to
take West Berlin, you’ll do it over our dead
bodies.”
This step allows Putin to suspect that if
Russia were to invade, he would not have to
fight the U.S. By declining to place actual
troops in the Baltics, President Barack Oba-
ma gives the Russians a yellow light, not a
red one. It’s a gesture that conveys a fervent
desire to have it both ways: keeping the Rus-
sians out without taking any risk.
In that respect, it fits perfectly with our
original inclusion of these countries in
NATO. We happily extended our security
guarantee to countries like Lithuania, Latvia
and Estonia only because we assumed we’d
never have to make good on it.
Now we find ourselves contemplating the
implications of that decision. Are Americans
prepared to send U.S. troops to die defend-
ing these countries from Russia? Maybe so,
and maybe not. But it’s a discussion Amer-
icans have never had.
The president’s half-measure allows us to
put it off again.
Lacking a solution, he offers an uncon-
vincing facsimile of one. Obama and his op-
ponents disagree on specific policies, but
they share an approach to Russia: If you
can’t do anything useful, do something use-
less.
Letters to the editor
No ‘strategy
SUBMISSIONS
In my opinion and that of many in Den-
ton, the sudden City Council vote Tuesday
night to repeal Denton’s historic ban on
fracking was illegal and should be annulled
immediately. On the council’s June 16 agen-
da, eligible for a vote were two proposed
amendments to the ban ordinance (Item 5
G, ID 15-513) only.
Further, repeal has been described as a
“strategic” action in response to industry
having filed a motion requesting partial
summary judgment. It is difficult to see any
“strategy” by the City Council to replace the
ban.
Letters for publication must include the writer’s
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thorship must be verified before publication.
The Record-Chronicle reserves the right to edit
letters for length. Letters should be typed or
legibly handwritten and be 250 or fewer words.
We prefer email submissions.
Send to: drc@dentonrc.com.
Otherwise, fax to 940-566-6888, or mail to:
Letters to the editor
P.0. Box 369
Denton, TX 76202
— The Dallas Morning News
This day in history: June 29
Briggs, who has worked in a serious and sus-
tained manner to get information to the
public.
The city has an obligation to work dili-
gently not only to get HB 40 overturned, but
also to reinstate the ban on fracking that the
voters of Denton passed.
The city then still has 18 days before it
even has to respond to the June 15 motion,
and such motions are only the very begin-
ning of court procedures. No permits are be-
ing denied. Protesters are being arrested.
The city should take advice from a range
of sources. Only council member Keely
Briggs reached out and she had every right
to abstain from voting. I would like to praise
In 1927, the first trans-Pacif-
ic airplane flight was completed
as Lt. Lester J. Maitland and Lt.
Albert F. Hegenberger arrived at
Wheeler Field in Hawaii aboard
the Bird of Paradise, an Atlantic-
Fokker C-2, after flying 2,400
miles from Oakland, California,
in 25 hours, 50 minutes.
In 1941, Polish statesman,
pianist and composer Ignacy
Jan Paderewski died in New
York at age 80.
In 1954, the Atomic Energy
Commission voted against rein-
stating Dr. J. Robert Oppenhei-
mer’s access to classified infor-
mation.
In 1967, Jerusalem was re-
unified as Israel removed barri-
cades separating the Old City
from the Israeli sector.
— The Associated Press
Today is Monday, June 29,
the 180th day of 2015. There
are 185 days left in the year.
On June 29, 1767, Britain
approved the Townshend Reve-
nue Act, which imposed import
duties on glass, paint, oil, lead,
paper and tea shipped to the
American colonies. (Colonists
bitterly protested, prompting
Parliament to repeal the duties
— except for tea.)
In 1613, London’s original
Globe Theatre, where many of
Shakespeare’s plays were per-
formed, was destroyed by a fire
sparked by a cannon shot during
a performance of Henry VIII.
In 1913, the Second Balkan
War broke out as Bulgaria at-
tacked Serbia and Greece, its
former allies from the First Bal-
kan War.
Jennifer Lane,
Denton
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STEVE CHAPMAN writes for the
Chicago Tribune. His column is distrib-
uted by Creators Syndicate Inc.
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Parks, Scott K. Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 111, No. 331, Ed. 1 Monday, June 29, 2015, newspaper, June 29, 2015; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1125228/m1/4/?q=%22%22~1: accessed July 9, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; .