Editorial Roundup

The Providence Journal (R.I.), May 3:

Puerto Rico’s economy has been in dire straits for what seems like an eternity. This week, it sank a little further into the financial abyss.

After Moody’s Investors Service recently reported that the U.S. territory would default on $422 million in bonds, Puerto Rico Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla confirmed the worst. He announced that the Government Development Bank wouldn’t make any payments on Monday. While Mr. Garcia Padilla claimed this was a “painful decision,” he said he had “decided that essential services for the 3.5 million American citizens in Puerto Rico came first.”

The $422 million is a minor part of the problem for an island that already has a bonded indebtedness of approximately $71 billion, and a total pension liability of roughly $44 billion (according to the U.S. Treasury Department).

And it is hard to see how the American territory will ever be able to pay back its enormous debt load.

Because of its poor government and overspending, Puerto Rico is losing population, as people flee its staggering economic burden, steady increase of taxes, and lack of available opportunities for individuals to succeed and thrive. As the Pew Research Center pointed out in an August 2014 study, “144,000 more people left the island for the mainland than the other way around from mid-2010 to 2013.”

Unless something is done, this number will continue to grow by leaps and bounds.

The United States has a couple of options. It could initiate a federal bailout, which would immediately wipe out the Puerto Rican debt. At the same time, this seems grossly unfair to American taxpayers – and is a fiscally irresponsible way of dealing with this problem.

Second, Congress could change the rules and let Puerto Rico formally file for bankruptcy. While this isn’t necessarily a desirable solution, at least the taxpayers wouldn’t be on the hook for tens of billions of dollars (although investors would, and would be wary of helping out Puerto Rico again).

It would also be wise to remove U.S. minimum wage restrictions from the island to help make it more competitive.

During the White House Correspondents Dinner Saturday night, President Barack Obama joked that he only has several more months before he becomes a lame duck. Well, he isn’t one yet – and he should push Congress to help Puerto Rico get back on its feet.

Hartford Courant (Conn.), May 5:

Yale University will come to regret keeping the name of Calhoun College. John C. Calhoun wasn’t merely a 19th-century slave owner. He was the most influential mouthpiece for slaveholders of the time. He laid the groundwork for the Civil War and later segregationist policies. This is not a man Yale should continue to honor.

But Yale President Peter Salovey has said that erasing his name from Calhoun College would risk “downplaying the lasting effects of slavery, and substituting a false and misleading narrative, albeit one that might allow us to feel complacent or, even, self-congratulatory.”

That’s rubbish. Keeping Calhoun College’s name only glorifies the white supremacist who called slavery “a good – a great good.” The university downplays the name’s pernicious effect by leaving it in place.

A “false and misleading narrative” was created when Yale celebrated the slavery apologist in 1931 – 81 years after his death – by naming its new college for him. Yes, this Yale alum was powerful in his time as a vice president and a senator, but he used his power and intellect to spin slavery as a “positive good” for the enslaved. In this, he went beyond other Southerners, who had framed it as a necessary evil.

There are two consolation prizes Yale’s president offers. One is changing the title of “master,” given to faculty who head the 12 undergraduate residential colleges, to “head of college.” The other is naming a college now under construction for a civil rights activist who is an African-American woman – a double first for the university.

These are no consolation, however, to the students stuck in the college bearing the Calhoun name.

Yes, other buildings at Yale are named for slave owners, but none so fervent a defender of the evil institution as John C. Calhoun. But for him and his states’ rights doctrine, slavery might well have ended sooner and without such great bloodshed.

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