State Editorial Rdp

A sampling of editorial opinion around Texas:

Jan. 2

The Dallas Morning News on common ground on abortion:

One hopeful feature of the coming Barack Obama presidency is his apparent passion for moving the nation beyond its weary cultural debates over such issues as abortion and gay marriage. The president-elect has talked about finding new ways to look at old issues since his primetime debut at the 2004 Democratic convention.

Common ground, of course, doesn't magically appear, as if found on a map. Obama must make hard decisions, including selecting the right legislation to support as his term begins.

Interestingly, a pro-life Democrat and a pro-choice Democrat offer a way forward. Reps. Tim Ryan of Ohio and Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, after watching past abortion debates end fruitlessly, have a bill that those opposed to abortion rights and those in favor of them can support. It's focused on reducing the number of abortions.

One part of this odd couple's proposal would give women incentives to carry their fetuses to term. It would remove pregnancy from the list of pre-existing conditions insurers won't cover, provide nursing visits to qualifying new mothers and expand the tax credit families can claim when adopting children.

The second emphasis is equally significant. It would try to curtail the number of unwanted pregnancies through grants to local agencies that successfully prevent teen pregnancies. It also would expand contraceptive education and allow Medicaid to finance more family-planning services.

What we like is that this bill should push both sides out of their comfort zones. Pro-choice advocates would end up championing bringing more children to term. Pro-life backers would support contraceptives and other ways to prevent pregnancies. That's breaking new ground for both.

An impressive list of supporters is lining up behind this bill, from such pro-life progressives as the Rev. Jim Wallis of Sojourners to pro-choice supporters like Obama's new chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel.

We hope Emanuel persuades his boss to make this legislation an early priority. If opponents can agree on the nettlesome subject of abortion, who knows? Maybe opponents on other cultural issues can find their own common ground.

A middle ground on abortion?

The Ryan-DeLauro bill would try to reduce abortions through preventing unwanted pregnancies and giving women incentives to bring their fetuses to term.

Supporters include the Rev. Jim Wallis of Sojourners and incoming White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.

The bill includes incentives to adopt children and would expand contraceptive education.

URL: http://www.dallasnews.com

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Jan. 5

Fort Worth Star-Telegram on innocence funding:

The alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme run by Bernard Madoff, once a well-respected Wall Street investor, has claimed many casualties individuals as well as large nonprofit institutions.

A Texas organization that has done an incredible job of helping victims of our flawed criminal justice system has fallen victim itself after learning that its major benefactor's funds had been "managed" by Madoff.

The Innocence Project of Texas, which has exonerated more than 30 wrongly convicted people through DNA testing, received a $450,000 grant last year from the JEHT Foundation of New York to pay for the testing expenses. The foundation announced that because of its losses through Madoff investments it would suspend grants and shut down at the end of this month.

Money already received by the Innocence Project will remain with the organization, which operates programs at Texas Tech University, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Houston and Texas Southern University. But there are many more cases to be investigated and each DNA test costs $4,000 to $5,000.

Innocence Project officials have applied for funding from other nonprofit foundations in the state, including one associated with the State Bar of Texas. By all means the state bar should support the program financially, but as one attorney with the project says, the responsibility of helping to clear these innocent people lies with the state of Texas itself.

Jeff Blackburn, chief counsel for the Innocence Project of Texas at Texas Tech, told the Star-Telegram that the state Legislature could address this problem by spending a small fraction of the $2.3 billion it allocates to operate prisons.

"The prison system is asking the Legislature to give it $500 million more this year for increased salaries to maintain its current level of operations," Blackburn said. "One five-hundredth of that amount $1 million would guarantee that the innocence work in this state could go forward."

We agree. That is a small price to pay to free even one innocent person. In Dallas County alone in the past few years, 19 men have been exonerated by DNA testing.

These wrongly convicted cases are a blot on the criminal justice system in this state, a blemish that is not likely to go away anytime soon. These injustices must be corrected, and the state should join in that effort with the dedicated individuals and nonprofit groups that have been working to rectify such despicable errors.

URL: http://www.star-telegram.com

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Jan. 1

Houston Chronicle on the quest for new biofuels:

An Air New Zealand jet thundered through the sky on a two-hour flight this week on a 50-50 blend of ordinary fuel and one made of seeds from the African desert.

The successful flight was promising for the airline industry, and truly exciting for the environment and the hope for national fuel autonomy.

Tuesday's test was the first commercial air flight to use fuel from the jatropha weed. It performed "well through both the fuel system and engine," Air New Zealand's chief pilot told the BBC.

The flight lasted more than twice as long as the first flight using biofuel, performed by Virgin Atlantic in February 2008. That plane used a 20-percent mixture of coconut oil and babassu oil in one of four engines.

But jatropha, unlike coconut or corn, sidesteps several problems now linked to biofuels.

Combined with pressures such as high gas prices, production of corn-based ethanol helped aggravate global food shortages last year.

Using food for fuel also harms the environment. Several European governments recently ended subsidies for palm oil diesel production. Their Asian suppliers, cutting rainforests to grow the palms, were actually boosting overall atmospheric carbons.

Finally, most food crops use great swaths of land and heavy fertilizer. Runoff from ethanol production has already compromised parts of the Mississippi River.

Jatropha, by contrast, is a sturdy weed that thrives in arid, low-producing land in India, Malawi and Mozambique. The oil in Air New Zealand's Rolls Royce engines came from environmentally sustainable farms.

It's also efficient: Each seed produces between 30 and 40 percent of its mass in oil.

No one expects jatropha to replace jet fuel, in part because it lacks the important hydrocarbon rings that help seal jet engines in flight.

But the humble seed oil does reflect the exciting quest for new biofuels energy that can reduce the need for petroleum with less environmental stress and more bang for the production buck.

This is key for the airline industry; its emissions produce only 3 percent of greenhouse gas but do more damage at high altitudes.

In the long run, however, Tuesday's flight over Auckland is even more meaningful for combating climate change from the ground.

Jatropha, noted Jim Marston of the Environmental Defense Fund, shows the rewards of investing in new, clean energy sources. "Yes, yes, yes, yes," Marston said, of the possibility of jatropha being refined one day for car engines. To encourage such breakthroughs, the federal government should accelerate research into new and efficient alternatives.

Texas should be leading this research. Already, the University of Texas is developing algae as a fuel source. And Continental Airlines is set to test an algae-and-jatropha fueled flight on Jan. 7.

One century ago, Texas oil helped determine how the whole world would travel by land and air. Texas' creativity should now drive the fuel alternatives for the new millennium.

URL: http://www.chron.com

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Jan. 1

San Antonio Express-News on a new political era:

The end of 2008 closely coincides with the end of the Bush administration. Because of that coincidence, there's a sense that more than just a year on the calendar has drawn to a close. A political era also is coming to an end.

President Bush will leave office in a few short weeks. The world that shaped his tenure and which he in turn tried to shape remains. Nowhere was the struggle between Bush and the world more evident than in Iraq.

Today, New Year's Day, a new status of forces agreement between the United States and Iraq takes effect. That agreement, negotiated over the course of the last year, creates a framework for the gradual reduction and eventual departure of U.S. combat forces by the end of 2011.

While the timeline doesn't exactly match President-elect Barack Obama's stated goal of removing combat brigades within 16 months of taking office, it's close enough. After more than five years and the deaths of more than 4,200 American military personnel and tens of thousands of Iraqis, a decent outcome is finally, tenuously possible.

If Obama will inherit an improved situation in Iraq, the opposite is true in other parts of the world. The war in Afghanistan and, more important, the effort to build a functioning society is going badly. The Taliban and its al-Qaida allies are resurgent, especially in the provinces bordering the lawless tribal regions of Pakistan.

In Khost Province last week, a horrifying video captured the breakdown of security. It shows a suicide bomber driving through a military checkpoint and detonating his bomb just as a crowd of schoolchildren walks past. The U.S. military reported the blast killed 16 people, including 14 children.

Obama has advocated putting more combat troops into Afghanistan. In practice, that means more Americans. Despite pleas from commanders and pledges from alliance nations to bolster the 50,000-member International Security Assistance Force, the coalition remains short on troops and equipment and hindered by operational restrictions.

With more than 30,000 Americans deployed in Afghanistan, the United States is already by far the largest contributor to the multinational effort. As combat brigades begin to cycle out of Iraq, 20,000 to 30,000 additional troops may be redirected to Afghanistan.

Renewed and reinvigorated diplomatic efforts of the incoming Obama administration can bolster U.S. interests in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Despite a greater appreciation for multilateral approaches in the final years of his presidency, President Bush's deep unpopularity abroad remained a hindrance to U.S. diplomacy.

A new leader with a new voice can lend new life to the American projection of "soft" power. Soft or not, America faces hard challenges.

Pakistan is a tinderbox of democratic reform and religious extremism. International efforts to halt the nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran have failed, pointing out the smoldering danger of nuclear proliferation. The decades-long conflict between Palestinians and Israelis has flared once again, threatening to create a wider conflagration.

Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne observed this week that social and political epochs rarely match up neatly with the calendar. The world of the 19th century, for instance, really didn't come to an end until 1914, with the outbreak of World War I.

With a historic change in American leadership, Dionne argues, the 20th century will end in 2009, and the 21st century will begin.

America rose to the challenges of the 20th century to become the greatest benevolent power in history. Despite the gravity of the threats facing the nation and the world, there's every reason to believe it will do the same in the 21st century.

URL: http://www.mysanantonio.com/opinion/editorials/

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Jan. 5

Austin American-Statesman on climate change:

The collapse of the nation's financial markets, starting in September and still sending shock waves through the economy, and the presidential election pushed the issue of climate change off the nation's front burner. But the problem did not stop to await the election outcome or the economic bailouts.

In fact, a new report from the U.S. Geological Survey says that previous estimates of how rapidly climate change may be occurring probably have been too conservative. In other words, it is happening faster than expected and Texas might feel its effects in the form of drought sooner rather than later.

The study was commissioned by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, which coordinates the work of 13 federal agencies.

The fundamental question asked by the study was whether climate change will continue to occur at a relatively steady pace or if it might lurch forward. The answer is mixed, because there are different manifestations of climate change.

The report concludes that rapid change in glaciers, ice sheets and thus sea level could occur in this century, and that the southwestern United States already might be beginning a period of severe drought. Already, the report says, climate studies of North America and the global subtropics indicate that "subtropical drying will likely intensify and persist in the future due to greenhouse warming.

"This drying is predicted to move northward into the southwestern United States. If the model results are correct, then the Southwestern United States may be beginning a period of increased drought," the report says.

That's not to say our current drought is the direct product of global warming, though it could be, or has been made worse because of global warming. But the report gives no comfort to those who think that any truly noticeable climate change what the government report calls "abrupt change" is centuries away. Decades is more like it .

This is not a report that tries to blame everything on man-made global warming. It notes, for example, that North America underwent some extreme "megadroughts" between the years 900 and 1600.

Nor is it a fear-mongering study. It concludes that there probably won't be a massive release of methane from the seabed, which could considerably worsen global warming, nor that the Atlantic Ocean circulation system will suddenly shut down.

But it does conclude that sea levels could rise by 4 feet by 2100 versus the 1.5 feet predicted by a United Nations panel on climate change. That's a warning that ought to be taken seriously now especially along the Texas coast.

Unfortunately, it appears Texas government will try to ignore the problem of climate change. Gov. Rick Perry, digging in his boot heels, seems to admit only grudgingly that climate change is occurring, never mind that science has concluded that it is being driven by humankind's use of fuels that produce carbon dioxide coal, oil and natural gas, primarily.

Perry says potential federal legislation to begin limiting carbon dioxide production could harm the Texas economy. But drought and rising sea levels won't? Texas needs to find a way to take the lead on this problem, not try to pretend it will go away.

URL: http://www.statesman.com

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Jan. 5

El Paso Times on a federal gasoline tax:

Western Refining CEO Paul Foster raised eyebrows last week when he told Fortune Magazine that the federal gasoline tax should be gradually raised to $2 a gallon. It's now 18.4 cents a gallon.

On one hand, this is certainly not the time to raise anyone's taxes. We are in a recession.

On the other hand, Foster is thinking of the future. As he said on the magazine's Web site, a higher federal gasoline tax, as is charged in some European countries, would help wean citizens off petroleum products and force everyone's hand at perfecting alternative -- clean -- sources of energy.

It was made clear that Foster was not speaking for his El Paso-based company; his opinions are his own.

Federal taxes on gasoline are now 18.4 cents a gallon, and Texas adds another 20 cents a gallon.

"I think the tax on gasoline needs to be at least $2 a gallon," Foster said. "But I don't think you can go there all at once," he told the magazine.

Of course not. Raising the tax all at once would get the price of a gallon back to $4, and since prices are due to rise again when the world stock markets calm, the price of gasoline would force some people off the road.

The gradual increase, though, is worth thinking about.

It's not the time to decide yea or nay on Foster's theory, but it is certainly past time for Americans to get serious about perfecting cost-effective alternate forms of energy.

Foster's theory is to raise the tax slowly. "If you add a nickel a gallon now, I honestly don't think anybody feels that. And if you add a nickel a gallon for every year, then 30 years from now -- I know that's a long time -- eventually you get to a point where it starts to make a difference," Foster theorized.

We are certainly not proposing the federal government, or the state of Texas, raise its gasoline tax at this time.

However, by an oilman such as Foster airing his theories, it makes all stop and think about how important it is to eventually wean ourselves off the importation of foreign oil and devising ways to power our country with fuels that are renewable, less expensive and kinder to the environment.

Bottom line: Foster said things we should think about.

URL: http://www.elpasotimes.com

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