Old enough to vote, old enough to choose not to smoke -- July 27, 2017 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Nearly half a century ago, Americans decided 18-year-olds were responsible adults capable not only of fighting our wars but also of voting.

In the 21^st century, though, some believe these responsible adults need government protection from, of all things, tobacco. 

A trend has spread from community to community to raise the age for buying tobacco and electronic cigarettes to 21. New Jersey just became the third state to enact a law, after Hawaii and California.

The measures are well intentioned and seemingly sensible. Nine in 10 smokers start before age 18, and most states, including Virginia, allow young people 18 to buy tobacco products. No one wants young people who believe they’ll live forever to take up a habit likely to ruin their health and shorten their lives.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie signed the bill July 21 that will raise the state’s smoking age from 19 to 21 in November. It will give young people “more time to develop a maturity and better understanding” of the dangers of smoking, he said.

But, really, can anyone in 2017 reach the age of majority – 18 – and not know nicotine is addictive and smoking kills?

The Maine legislature passed a 21 purchase age bill this month, but Gov. Paul LePage vetoed it.

If 18-year-olds can be sent to war, they’re “mature enough to make their own decision” and should be allowed to smoke, LePage, a Republican, said in a radio interview.

LePage’s tenure has been fraught with controversy stemming from his racially insensitive and profane outbursts, but this time he’s onto something.

The slogan “old enough to fight, old enough to vote” helped pass the 26^th Amendment in 1971, giving 18-year-olds the right to vote. Using the same rationale, a couple dozen states soon lowered the drinking age to 18.

An increase in deadly crashes involving young drunk drivers followed, and states started reversing course. Then, in 1984, President Ronald Reagan signed a bill linking loss of 10 percent of federal highway funds to states that did not adopt 21 as the drinking age. All states complied.

Tobacco is the latest front in the war to save “kids” from risky behavior. But someone 18 is legally an adult who can sign contracts, get married and be sent to an adult prison. People under 21 serve in combat every day.

Raising the age to buy tobacco is a solution to a problem that’s naturally receding. Smoking rates for teens and adults have been cut in half since the first surgeon general’s report in 1964.

New Jersey, for example, has one of the lowest rates of smoking in the country. About 12 percent of adults 18 to 24 in the Garden State smoke. In Virginia, 18 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds smoke.  

Health concerns aside, it’s surprising that young people especially choose to spend their limited cash on cigarettes. The average cost of a pack of cigarettes nationwide, including state and federal excise taxes, is $6.16.

Unfortunately about 42 million Americans and 3 million middle and high school students smoke. The key, health advocates say, is stopping kids from starting.

The surgeon general last year reported that high school students are more likely to use E-cigarette products than old-fashioned tobacco, including cigarettes and cigars. Most E-cigarettes contain nicotine, the report said.

But is an age ban the smartest course to discourage teens from lighting up and vaping? Big Tobacco wouldn’t like it but raising excise taxes still higher could serve as a deterrent for all ages.

On a practical level, we should consider who’s going to enforce the new laws. I bet most of us would rather our overworked law enforcement officers focus on stopping youth violence than go after convenience store clerks who sell a pack to a 20-year-old.

Do we really care as a society if the teen gang member who’s making our city streets unsafe has a pack of cigarettes in his pocket?

Recognizing that young people have the brains to make the right choices in life is a first step toward creating a responsible citizenry. We should respect our responsible adults, not baby them.  

©2017 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

Fake news? Don't get mad. Get facts -- July 20, 2017 column

By MARSHA MERCER

A Facebook friend shared a quote the other day purportedly from Vice President Mike Pence on Fox News.

Americans need more “Jesus care” not health care, because if people went to church, they’d be healed and wouldn’t need doctors, according to Pence.

The post soon sparked plenty of angry comments. Almost as quickly, though, someone linked to an article by the independent fact-checking site Snopes.com. The quote was wholly fabricated.

Snopes rated the post “False” with a big red X, explaining the image macro, a picture with text, surfaced in May on Fox News the Facebook Page, which used a Fox News logo and lampooned Fox News, but was totally unrelated to Fox News. 

The Facebook page appears to have been taken down, but everything is immortal on the internet.

It was heartening to see the fabrication identified and neutralized so rapidly. Perhaps someone thought the quote squirrely – it was ungrammatical – but instead of moving to the popular video of the dog saving the fawn looked into the quote and found the facts.

That’s what we should do: Check out stories designed to make us mad, find the truth and share it. Fake news is an equal opportunity liar. So, whatever our personal political leanings, we all benefit when sunshine kills the germs.

Facebook is taking steps to combat fake news, but the perps are likely to find ways around changes. That’s why policing social media is up to us.

It’s also heartening to see news organizations persevere in debunking President Donald Trump’s brags and myths – and he has noticed.

“We’ve signed more bills – and I’m talking about through the legislature – than any president ever,” Trump said Monday at the White House.

“For a while, Harry Truman had us, and now I think we have everybody. . . I better say `think,’ otherwise they’ll give me a Pinocchio. And I don’t like those; I don’t like Pinocchios,” Trump said.

The Washington Post’s fact-checkers award up to four Pinocchios for falsehoods. 

Pinocchio-anxiety notwithstanding, Trump was still way off on his numbers. He lags behind Truman and several other presidents in bills signed to date, the Post fact-checkers reported, but they gave no Pinocchios for that flirtation with falsehood.

“He certainly appeared to pause for a moment and wonder if he was right. For Trump, that’s a step in the right direction,” the Post’s Glenn Kessler wrote.

Trump dismisses any news and news outlets he dislikes as fake news.

But fake news is intentional deceit, or as The New York Times put it, “pure fiction masquerading as truth.” Trump more often labels as fake news truth that makes him look bad.

Trump’s long-running war on the news media may yet backfire. Americans’ confidence in newspapers is actually up from last year, the Gallup organization reported last month.

To be sure, it’s nothing to brag about. Just 27 percent of people said they had confidence in newspapers -- but that was up 7 percentage points from a year earlier. Baby steps.

People actually have more confidence in news on the internet than in Congress -- 16 percent and 12 percent, respectively, even though the internet is a fake news incubator.

The mainstream news media aren’t perfect by any means, but when they get it wrong, the incidents are painful. Three CNN staffers resigned last month after the network retracted a story about alleged ties between Russia and a Wall Street financier who is a Trump ally. 

On Friday, Trump named the financier, Anthony Scaramucci, a tough critic of the news media, White House communications director. (Updated 7.21.17)

But there’s a difference between mistakes and deliberate lies. Fake news can have dangerous consequences.

Last December, a gullible 28-year-old man in North Carolina drove 350 miles to investigate internet reports of a child sex ring connected to the Clinton campaign in a Washington pizza restaurant.

He fired an AR-15 in the restaurant -- only to learn he had been misled. There were no endangered children, much less a sex ring. His loaded weapons were real, though, and could have caused real tragedy.

Stopping fake news may be impossible, but we all must do what we can to expose it. The stakes are too high.

©2017 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

30

Dare to eat a peach -- and other summer pleasures -- July 13, 2017 column

By MARSHA MERCER

When author Henry James said the two most beautiful words in the English language were “summer afternoon,” he surely wasn’t thinking about a heat index over 100 degrees.

But not everybody can be like my neighbors who bought a house on a cove in Maine to escape Northern Virginia’s swampy summers.

“See you in late September!” they sang out happily as they drove away in May.

Nor should we hunker down with our news feeds. Many of us stuck in town need to remember that endlessly reading tweets by the Donalds -- father and son – just makes us hotter under the collar.

Fall may not be in the air, but it is yapping at our consciousness. I’ve spotted two “Kaine 2018” bumper stickers in two days, a sure sign autumn and yet another election are coming. Back-to-school sales are in full swing, and Redskins training camp kicks off July 26.

So sit back, sip a cool drink and banish the vexing news from the nation’s capital. Just for a while.  

Here are three ways to seize the (summer) day.

No. 1 – Hit the road – and go slow.

Forget fighting traffic on Interstates. Take the back roads, and head to the mountains. The Department of the Interior named Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park one of the eight best drives in all of America.

The 105-mile road through the Blue Ridge Mountains has “some of the most sublime views in the nation,” the Interior Department says. The 35 mph speed limit is the “perfect speed to roll down the windows and let the wind whip through your hair.”

And, boomers 62 and older, now is the time to buy a lifetime Senior Pass for admission to national parks. The cost is just $10 until Aug. 28, when it rises to $80. Buy the Senior Pass at the park entrance to save time.

You could order online but demand is so heavy it takes nine weeks to get the passes, Interior warns. 

No. 2 – Go partway on the Great American Total Solar Eclipse.

This sounds harsh as the astronomical mega-event Aug. 21 will be the first coast-to-coast total eclipse since 1918. Unless you’ve already made arrangements, though, settle for the partial eclipse, which we should see in Virginia, weather permitting.

People in the know booked motels and campsites years ago in the so-called Path of Totality, including Nashville, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Columbia, S.C.

Plus, more than 200 million people live within a day’s drive of the path. Do you really want to risk viewing the eclipse bumper to bumper?  

If you plan to watch the eclipse, get your viewing glasses ahead of time and don’t bother with your camera. The event will be over before you know it. The moon will cover the sun for no more than 160 seconds in prime locations.

And plan ahead. The next total solar eclipse in North America is just seven years away, April 8, 2024. It will swing from Mexico through Texas to Maine and into Canada. You’ve got this.

No. 3 – Eat a peach.

Dire news reports last spring warned that a late March freeze had ruined the peach crop for 2017. Not to worry. It did -- and it didn’t.

Peaches are far less plentiful in the peachiest states, Georgia and South Carolina, but orchards farther north suffered no lasting deleterious effects of the cold snap.

Virginia, Delaware and Pennsylvania are enjoying an excellent crop, so buy local. Virginia’s more than 200 peach farms expect an abundant peach supply through early 

September.

Add peach pie or ice cream to your menu – and tuck into a taste of summer.

And remember -- President Ronald Reagan declared July 1984 National Ice Cream Month and the third Sunday of July National Ice Cream Day.

“Ice cream is a nutritious and wholesome food, enjoyed by over ninety percent of the people in the United States. It enjoys a reputation as the perfect dessert and snack food,” Reagan said in his proclamation. Not a word about sugar, fat or calories.

“I call upon the people of the United States to observe these events with appropriate ceremonies and activities,” he wrote.

Now that’s an executive order everybody can get behind. Happy summer!

©2017 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

30

Can't we get along and pass paid family leave? -- July 6, 2017 column

By MARSHA MERCER

President Donald Trump, the father of five who boasts he has never changed a diaper, wants to give new moms and dads paid parental leave.

His 2018 budget proposes six months’ paid leave for parents after the birth or adoption of a child “so all families can afford to take time to recover from childbirth and bond with a new child without worrying about paying their bills.”

During last year’s campaign, though, Trump proposed paid maternity leave for biological mothers only. 

“Maternity leave has a 1990s feel to it,” Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, then the Democratic vice presidential nominee, said last September. “It’s not 2016. Because in 2016 not only do women take off to take care of kids when they’re born, but men do too.”

Those who take time off mostly do so without pay.

Under the Family and Medical Leave Act, signed by President Bill Clinton in 1993, workers in companies with 50 or more employees are eligible for 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a baby, sick family member or themselves. Many parents can’t afford to take leave.  

Only 13 percent of private-industry employees had access to paid family leave through their employers in March 2016, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Most likely to benefit: highly paid, full-time, managerial employees who work for large companies.  

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton promised 12 weeks of paid leave for new parents and those taking care of seriously ill family members.

At a time when politicians of all stripes talk about how family friendly they are, first daughter Ivanka Trump has made paid family leave her issue.

Here’s the problem: Almost everybody favors helping moms and dads spend more time with their children in the abstract -- and if someone else is footing the bill.  

Trump wants to run paid family leave through state Unemployment Insurance programs, which means payments are unlikely to cover anything close to full salary. His budget asks for about $25 billion for 10 years and says states will have flexibility on how to provide and finance payments.

The plan has drawn deafening silence on Capitol Hill, where it is competing with Democratic and Republican paid family leave plans.

The leading Democratic plan calls for a nationwide insurance program funded by employers and employees through the Social Security Administration.  Republicans favor tax credits, which could be part of tax reform.

After meeting with congressional Republicans last month, Ivanka Trump seemed to acknowledge a bumpy road ahead.

“Just left a productive meeting on the Hill to discuss issues affecting American working families, including childcare & paid family leave!” she tweeted.

Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida said: “And we’ll see what the next step is, but it’s certainly something we’re going to continue to work on.”

Critics on the left say Trump’s plan is stingy and should cover those caring for sick family members. The business community says requiring employers to pay for paid leave will cost jobs and hurt the economy.

Critics on the right, wary of Ivanka Trump’s bona fides as a Republican, worry about another big government program. A Wall Street Journal editorial May 26 knocked her plan as “The Ivanka Entitlement.”

“As usual the policy sounds unobjectionable but the details are messy. If the benefit is available regardless of income, the government will subsidize affluent families who don’t need assistance. But inevitably the benefit will phase out as income rises like dozens of other federal subsidies. That could create another disincentive for work and advancement that traps families in poverty,” the Journal’s editors wrote.

She responded Wednesday in a letter to the editor: “Providing a national guaranteed paid-leave program – with a reasonable time limit and a benefit cap – isn’t an entitlement. It’s an investment in America’s working families.”

In a sign of our toxic political discourse, that last, innocuous sentence rankled some Republicans because Democrats often cast their spending priorities as investments.

But spending to give workers a helping hand as they start and care for their families is a worthy investment. Democrats and Republicans should put aside their bickering and work together to make paid family leave a reality.

©2017 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

Supreme Court chips away at wall between church and state -- June 29, 2017 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Does anybody want little kids to scrape their knees on the playground? Of course not.

Here’s a harder question: Should taxpayers pay to resurface a church playground to make it softer and safer – even if the state constitution explicitly prohibits spending public money “directly or indirectly, in aid of any church”?

Yes, the Supreme Court said Monday, raising cheers – and fears -- that the court is chipping away at the wall of separation between church and state.

While the federal government does fund faith-based social programs, it traditionally has steered clear of seeming to favor one religion over another.   

The court ruled 7 to 2 in Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Missouri v. Comer that Missouri violated the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution when it denied the church a public benefit purely on the basis of its religious status. 

Put another way: Churches have as much right as any other nonprofit to tap public funds.

  

The lopsided margin doesn’t reflect the differences in attitudes on the court, where justices went toe-to-toe over, well, a footnote. More on that shortly.

The court Tuesday returned four cases related to public funding for private and religious schools to state courts in Colorado and New Mexico, which also have constitutional restrictions against public funds for religious organizations.

Dozens of other states, including Virginia, have similar provisions.

Writing for the majority in the Trinity Lutheran case, Chief Justice John Roberts said it was “odious to our Constitution” for Missouri to exclude Trinity Lutheran Church from a public benefit “solely because it is a church.”

But in a blistering dissent, Justice Sonya Sotomayor wrote: “This case is about nothing less than the relationship between religious institutions and the civil government – that is, between church and state.

“The court profoundly changes that relationship by holding, for the first time, that the Constitution requires the government to provide public funds directly to a church,” she wrote, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Two other liberal-leaning justices sided with the Roberts majority.

In 2012, Trinity Lutheran, wanted to upgrade its pea gravel playground. It applied for a state grant from a program that reimburses the cost of installing a rubberized surface made of recycled tires. The church sought $20,000 for the $30,580 project.

The state denied the grant, citing the state constitution’s provision against using public funds to promote religious views, and the church went to court. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8^th Circuit affirmed a lower court’s decision, siding with the state.

Following the highest court’s ruling in favor of the church, advocates of school choice and vouchers for religious schools claimed victory.

“We fully expect to see governors and legislatures have renewed discussions about school choice programs in their states in light of this momentous decision,” Greg Block, executive director for the American Federation for Children, said in a statement.

But there was that curious, if non-binding, footnote.

“This case involves express discrimination based on religious identity with respect to playground resurfacing. We do not address religious uses of funding or other forms of discrimination,” Roberts wrote.

But Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas wrote they would not have limited the ruling to the playground or child safety. They favor expanding taxpayer funding for religious endeavors.

“The general principles here do not permit discrimination against religious exercise,” Gorsuch wrote, “whether on the playground or anywhere else.”

The court could have avoided the issue entirely. In April, before the court heard oral arguments, Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, a Republican, changed state policy to allow churches to participate in the grant program.

Keeping public money and the collection plate separate is a valuable tradition that benefits both parties, say proponents of separation of church and state.

“This ruling undermines the bedrock principle that no American should be forced to support a religion against his or her will,” Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said in a statement.

That principle is in jeopardy with the Roberts court, which, Sotomayor warned, may be leading us “to a place where separation of church and state is a constitutional slogan, not a constitutional commitment.”

©2017 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

30

Still learning from a Supreme Court justice -- June 22, 2017 column

By MARSHA MERCER

News that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg may become America’s next fitness star takes some getting used to.

Yes, she’s a lifelong champion of gender equality and civil rights.

She wrote the majority opinion in the landmark sex discrimination case United States v. Virginia. The ruling 21 years ago this week -- June 27, 1996 -- required Virginia Military Institute, after 150 years of male-only admissions, to accept women.

Yes, she’s a cultural icon and a hero to millennials, thanks to “Notorious R.B.G.,” a Tumblr blog that went viral in 2013.

A book by that title became a New York Times bestseller in 2015. Her picture is on T-shirts, mugs, shot glasses and hoodies. She’s been making a fashion statement with her signature fishnet gloves for nearly two decades.

Her consequential life is even the subject of a children’s picture book, “I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Makes Her Mark.”

Yes, she’s an author. “My Own Words,” her book published last October, has brought her $204,000 in royalties, she reported in a recent financial disclosure.

But a gym rat – at the age of 84? Yes, that too.  

Ginsburg has been working out with personal trainer Bryant Johnson since 1999, after treatment for colon cancer left her weak and frail. She went back to the gym after surgery for pancreatic cancer in 2009.

 

Johnson’s pushup-and-tell book is coming out in October: “The RBG Workout: How She Stays Strong . . . and You Can Too!”

It’s a sign of how much American has changed that an accomplished jurist and “little old lady in tennis shoes” can also be a model for pumping iron.

Not everyone will rush out to buy Johnson’s book. The court’s most reliable liberal excites foes as well as fans.  

Last summer, she candidly criticized then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. “I can’t imagine what the country would be – with Donald Trump as our president,” she told The New York Times.

Trump responded with a tweet: “Justice Ginsburg of the U.S. Supreme Court has embarrassed all by making very dumb political statements about me. Her mind is shot—resign!”

Ginsburg doubled down. “He’s a faker,” she told journalist Joan Biskupic. “He has no consistency about him. He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego . . .”

After a firestorm of criticism, Ginsburg said in a statement she regretted the remarks – and both sides retreated to their corners.

It didn’t have to be that way. In 1987, Justice Thurgood Marshall ripped President Ronald Reagan on civil rights, saying Reagan was at “the bottom” among presidents.

Instead of blasting Marshall, Reagan invited him to the White House and told him his life story. “That night, I think I made a friend,” Reagan wrote.

Friendship seems a quaint notion in Washington these days, but Ginsberg’s close friendship with the late Justice Antonin Scalia, with whom she amicably disagreed on almost every legal issue, is legendary, literally the inspiration for an opera.

Ginsburg tells an enlightening story about their collegiality. While she was writing the majority opinion in the VMI case, Scalia, the sole dissenter, dropped off a draft of his stinging dissent.

“It absolutely ruined my weekend,” she said in an interview at the Aspen Institute last month but added she was glad to have the extra days to answer his points.

Asked about the current rancor in Congress, she recalled the Senate used to be called a gentlemen’s club. In 1986, that less combative Senate confirmed Scalia, whose conservative views were well known, with no negative votes. In 1993, it confirmed Ginsburg 96 to 3. 

    

Many think had Hillary Clinton been elected president, Ginsburg might have retired. Now, though, she shows no sign of giving President Trump another court pick.

“I will do this job as long as I can do it full steam,” she said at George Washington University in February. “When I can’t, that will be the time I will step down.”

Her regimen of pumping iron means her critics may have to wait a long time for that moment.

 ©2017 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

Don't let town halls be another casualty of shootings -- June 15, 2017 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Washington was badly shaken Wednesday by what appeared to be the politically motivated shootings of Rep. Steve Scalise, R-Louisiana, a top congressional leader, and three others at a baseball field in Alexandria.

The shooter, whose name I will not use because such sickos crave fame, died after a gunfight with police. We may never know his motivation, but he had posted anti-Republican screeds on social media.

In the aftermath of the attack, many politicians curbed their instinct for the jugular and urged an end to harsh partisan rhetoric. 

“We may have our differences, but we do well to remember that everyone who serves in our nation's capital is here because they love our country," President Donald Trump said.

“An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us,” said an emotional House Speaker Paul Ryan, and Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said she prays for all members of Congress, regardless of party. 

“There’s too much, I believe, raw discourse that’s pulling people apart,” Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe said.

It would be nice to think we’re seeing the Thaw of 2017, a melting of the polar ice caps on which Democrats and Republicans sit in frosty isolation, but don’t count on it.

Even though some lawmakers may genuinely want to put aside fierce partisanship, neither party seems willing to risk constituent outrage – and primary challenges -- if it compromises on health care and the budget, to say nothing of stricter gun laws.    

Unfortunately, the most likely result of the gunman’s rampage may be an even more locked-down and remote Congress.

House members already are invoking security as a reason to avoid town hall meetings and other uncomfortable encounters with constituents.

Rep. Dave Brat, R-Virginia, said members may have to “recalibrate” and rethink events like town halls.

“It’s a wake-up call,” Brat told Roll Call, a newspaper on Capitol Hill. “We should not be doing this.”

Brat was heckled and booed at a town hall in his district in February when he defended Trump’s policies.  

Also in February, Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, cited the 2011 shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Arizona, in explaining why he won’t hold in-person town halls.

“Threats are nothing new to me, and I have gotten my share as a felony judge,” Gohmert wrote in a letter to constituents.

“However, the House Sergeant at Arms advised us after former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was shot at a public appearance, that civilian attendees at Congressional public events stand the most chance of being harmed or killed – just as happened there,” he wrote.

Giffords was setting up a “Congress on your Corner” event in Tucson in January 2011 when a lone gunman shot her in the head, killed six people and injured 13 others.

Increased congressional security surely is needed in some settings. Of the 22 members of Congress at the ballfield, Scalise alone had a security detail, assigned because he is the third-ranking Republican in the House.

While Capitol Police protect all members of Congress when they’re in the Capitol complex, they provide 24-hour security only to the House and Senate leadership.

“By him (Scalise) being there, he probably saved everybody else’s life, because if you don’t have a leadership person there, there would have been no security there,” Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, told MSNBC. 

In this era of fiscal belt-tightening, having taxpayers pay for stepped-up security for hundreds of House members and senators outside the Capitol is problematic. 

Lawmakers are exploring other options, such as allowing members to use campaign funds for security outside Washington and of moving district offices to more secure locations.

As we move forward, we would be wise to listen to Giffords, who knows better than anyone the risks of openness. Responding to Gohmert, she wrote in a statement:

“I was shot on a Saturday morning. By Monday morning, my offices were open to the public. Ron Barber -- at my side that Saturday, who was shot multiple times, then elected to Congress in my stead — held town halls. It’s what the people deserve in a representative.

“To the politicians who have abandoned their civic obligations, I say this: Have some courage,” she wrote. “Face your constituents. Hold town halls.”

(C)2017 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

30