Editorial voices from across the country
Editorial voices from newspapers around the United States:
Nothing illustrates politicians’ contempt for average Ohioans more clearly than the shape of the state’s 16 congressional districts. Ohio’s congressional map is among the most blatantly gerrymandered in the nation, drawn to ensure that not one of the districts is politically competitive.
The districts cynically split counties, cities, villages, townships and neighborhoods. The current map splits county boundaries 54 times. Seven counties are split among three or more congressional districts.
Contorted, meandering districts, in Ohio and other states, are a prime reason congressional politics are poisonous – as partisan and ugly as ever in modern times. They encourage extremism, discourage bipartisanship and sabotage efforts to find common ground.
Fortunately, Ohioans soon might have an opportunity to support a statewide ballot issue to end gerrymandering in our state.
A coalition of nonprofit organizations, called Fair Congressional Districts for Ohio, has submitted a plan to the Ohio attorney general to place an issue on the statewide ballot in November 2017 or November 2018.
The proposed plan would take the map-drawing job away from the state legislature and give it to the bipartisan Ohio Redistricting Commission. The commission would be required to draw districts that are compact, do not favor or disfavor any political party, and keep communities together as much as possible.
Ohioans of every political stripe should embrace this opportunity to slay the gerrymander and end rigged elections.
Murders, assaults and suicides have all been available for posting and viewing by nearly 2 billion Facebook users around the globe. Facebook needs to re-evaluate the merits of its live video feature and ask whether the advertising income it generates is worth horrifying audiences.
The posting on Easter Sunday of a gruesome video showing the shooting death of Robert Godwin Sr. in Cleveland was online for more than two hours, prompting outrage from users and an apology from Facebook.
Facebook’s live video format is not even a year old and already has become an unwieldy service that chief executive Mark Zuckerberg acknowledges needs tighter control.
Facebook has legitimate reasons for not wanting to overly arbitrate what users may post, but the consequences of that reluctance are obvious, especially to anyone exposed to such grisly videos.
Media companies have huge platforms that can reach millions, and in rare cases such as Facebook, billions of people. Adhering to basic standards of social responsibility is critical given that reach. Just as freedom of speech stops with yelling fire in a crowded theater, reluctance to intervene online must stop with the depiction of crimes, suicides and assaults.
Zuckerberg started Facebook as a purely social website. But with its success comes the obligation of social responsibility.
When an earthquake devastated Haiti on Jan. 12, 2010, killing a quarter million people, the United States channeled its better angels and let 50,000 Haitian nationals residing here stay until the catastrophe on the island was over.
The problem is that instead of ending when the 18-month period of Temporary Protected Status expired, Haiti’s catastrophe has multiplied.
Which means, America, in the person of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, must react with compassion and common sense and keep the program going by overriding the wrongheaded plan of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to send these folks away in January.
The persuasive case the extension is the hard-luck post-earthquake history of Haiti.
In October 2010, UN peacekeepers from Nepal caused a nationwide cholera epidemic by discharging their latrines into Haiti’s largest river.
Poor Haiti was hit with yet another Biblical-level disaster last October when Hurricane Matthew, a Category 5 storm, slammed ashore, killing more than 1,000 people, destroying infrastructure and crops and threatening malnutrition.
Be a good neighbor. Say yes, Secretary Kelly.