Nov 11, 2017 4 min read

Editorial voices from newspapers across the United States:

Dubuque (Iowa) Telegraph Herald

Chances are, every person reading this will know someone whose life has been impacted by Alzheimer’s disease.

And for those who have not yet been hit by the diagnosis of a close friend or relative, 2025 is looming. By then, if no cure is found for the dementia-related illness, more than 7 million Americans over age 65 will be affected – a 35 percent increase over today’s figures.

State and federal health care systems are woefully unprepared for what’s to come. The rise in Alzheimer’s coincides with changes in health care support at both the state and national level. Medicaid remains the only government program that covers nursing home care, something more and more Alzheimer’s patients will require. While many readers might view Medicaid as a supplement for the poor, the reality is that private insurance is unlikely to cover most people through long-term nursing home care. About a third of people turning 65 today will eventually reside in a nursing home. A full three-fourths of long-term nursing home patients rely on Medicaid after personal savings runs out.

Elected officials in all states and federal government must look at the looming Alzheimer’s tsunami and begin to make preparations. Support for Alzheimer’s cure research should be a top priority. Providing a safety net for those who will fall to this devastating disease is something lawmakers must address as well.

The Concord (N.H) Monitor

Sometimes big problems – war, poverty, climate change, political incompetence – have to take a backseat to pet peeves. Today is such a day, a day to vent at being treated like a lab rat or a sheep en route to slaughter by more and more retailers.

Merchants have long used clever marketing strategies to entice shoppers to buy more products. That’s why necessities like milk, eggs and bread are always at the back of a supermarket, often in opposite corners. It’s not a well-meaning way to force a customer with a cart full of donuts to get more exercise. The more time in the store, the more items in the cart is an equation proved countless times per day.

Fine, we can live with that, though it means a lot of needless walking and wasted time. But more and more stores are forcing shoppers to disappear into head-high mazes of racks and shelves loaded with all manner of low- and modestly priced trinkets, baubles, geegaws, snacks and sweets just to pay up and leave the store.

Some of the checkout mazes now have three or more turns and add scores if not hundreds of feet of walking for a customer who may have just one item.

Retailing is tough and getting tougher every day. But retailers are creating and extending mazes, and packing aisles with so many floor displays it’s making shopping unpleasant. We question, now it’s easy to buy almost everything, including groceries, with just one click of a mouse, if it’s time for a different retail strategy – a maze-less future that places a premium on convenience and minimizes aggravation, wasted time and needless travel.

The Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette

After four U.S. soldiers were killed in a Niger ambush, several members of Congress said they had no idea American troops were there.

Wait a minute. The Constitution gives warmaking power to Congress – so why wasn’t the whole legislative body aware of this military operation?

West Virginia’s late Sen. Robert C. Byrd spent decades clamoring against disturbing acts by the White House, Pentagon and executive branch to control combat decisions, robbing Congress of its lawful role. He was also critical of Congress giving too much of its own responsibility to the executive branch.

A glaring question hovers: Why were many members of Congress, the warmaking body, unaware that American troops were risking their lives in Niger – and how can anyone contend that the situation in Niger constituted a “national emergency created by an attack on the United States”?

Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, has called for updating the president’s war powers, although whether Congress will get around to it is anyone’s guess.

Did the president have authorization to have 800 soldiers in Niger? Something doesn’t add up.