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EDITORIAL Editorial voices from around the country

Observer-Reporter - 2/24/2018

Editorial voices from newspapers across the United States:

The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch

"We call BS."

It was just one of many highlights of Emma Gonzales' powerhouse speech on Saturday, but it may be the one that best defines a growing national backlash against the gun-rights absolutism that has held sway over American politics for decades.

From the angry survivors of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School to people who are posting and sharing the names of politicians who have accepted donations from the National Rifle Association, support seems to be building for additional controls on the sale of guns. Along with it is a call for more-effective responses when people display the clear signs of mental disturbance and violence that so many saw in Nikolas Cruz, the alleged Florida shooter.

Like so many other social-change movements, it may be led by the young.

Americans of Gonzales' age and younger have grown up with a worry not faced by earlier generations: "active-shooter" drills in school. They are angry that mass shootings continue with no change in the nation's permissive gun laws or in the way society deals with those who appear to be mentally ill and dangerous.

We hope this movement will be strong and sustained enough to counter the voices of those who don't think America has a problem with guns.

The Connecticut Post, Bridgeport, Conn.

Ill-equipped in many cases to meet the challenges of the outside world, released prisoners often revert to the lifestyle that put them behind bars in the first place: criminal behavior.

Nationally, the rate of recidivism ? the return to that criminal lifestyle ? is 43.3 percent within three years. Anything we can do to help ex-prisoners re-enter the workplace is good for them, and good for all of us.

That's why we fully support a bill introduced in Washington last week by U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal that would let inmates join the pool of students who apply every year for federal Pell grants.

Applicants must fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Financial Aid, also known as the FAFSA, a painstakingly comprehensive form whose completion is a sort of annual rite in many American households.

The grant awards are calculated on need. And since they are grants, not loans, they don't have to be repaid.

If our prisons are to be something more than storage facilities for offenders, so many of whom are non-violent offenders, it is to all of our benefit to prepare them for life outside the walls.

The New York Daily News

The Republican Party, which professes to believe in vouchers, consumer choice and the free market for all, wants to convert billions of dollars in food stamps ? which let low-income Americans shop for what they need, when and where they need it ? into a direct-from-the-government box of provisions.

The idea is the administration's way of covering for the fact that it proposes gutting Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits by $17 billion next year.

Who needs to properly fund food stamps, says Trump's Agriculture Department, when half of every recipient's allotment can buy a publicly packaged box-o-goodies that saves taxpayers $130 billion over 10 years?

Except nobody's thought for a second about how to build the costly and complex infrastructure necessary to assemble all those products for the 16 million households that rely on government nutritional assistance.

Or the logistical systems needed to routinely deliver heavy boxes of shelf-stable milk, juice, cereals, pasta, grains, beans, peanut butter, canned meat, vegetables and canned fruits and vegetables to all those doors, including in remote rural areas.

It's all too easy to mock budget director Mick Mulvaney for likening "America's Harvest Box" to Blue Apron, the $140-a-week gourmet food delivery service.

But the corporate analogy isn't just tone-deaf; it's perverse. The biggest reason the proposal offends is because it cynically abandons years of supposed conservative wisdom about empowering the poor by giving them access to the marketplace, replacing that with old-school, big-government paternalism.