Newspaper Page (Opinion/Editorial) - HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021726

Name	Role	Context
Jason Robbins	Publisher	Editorial Board member
Gerry Yandel	Executive Editor	Editorial Board member
J. Lowe Davis	Editor At Large	Editorial Board member
Ken E. Ryan	Production Director	Editorial Board member
Onneka Challenger	Circulation Director	Editorial Board member
Kevin Downey	Advertising Director	Editorial Board member
Hedy Szabo	Business Manager	Editorial Board member
Michelle Wilde Anderson	Author/Assistant Professor	Author of 'What a city owes its residents', Assistant professor of law at UC Berkeley
Aaron Chalfin	Economist	Conducted 2012 study on Detroit police spending
Justin McCrary	Economist	Conducted 2012 study on Detroit police spending
Christine M. Flowers	Author/Columnist	Author of 'Mrs. Anthony Weiner is Hillary 2.1', lawyer and columnist for Philadelphia Daily News
Anthony Weiner	Former Congressman/Mayoral Candidate	Subject of op-ed regarding his scandals
Huma Abedin	Wife of Anthony Weiner/Aide	Subject of op-ed, compared to Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton	Former First Lady/Senator/Secretary of State	Compared to Huma Abedin regarding standing by a scandalous husband
Bill Clinton	Former President	Mentioned as Hillary's husband and regarding his scandals
Eleanor Roosevelt	Historical Figure	Mentioned as Hillary Clinton's idol
Franklin D. Roosevelt	Historical Figure	Mentioned in context of Eleanor Roosevelt
Vince Foster	Former White House Counsel	Mentioned in list of Clinton-era scandals
Jennifer Flowers	Clinton accuser	Mentioned as 'Jennifer (no relation)'
Paula Jones	Clinton accuser	Mentioned as 'Paula (a genuine victim)'
Monica Lewinsky	Clinton intern	Mentioned as 'A little bit of Monica'

Location	Context
Virgin Islands
Detroit
Ann Arbor
Washington
East Wing
West Wing
Gracie Mansion
Senate

30 The Virgin Islands Daily News OPINIONS Monday, July 29, 2013

The Virgin Islands Daily News
Founded Aug. 1, 1930, by J. Antonio Jarvis and Ariel Melchior Sr.
Published by Daily News Publishing Co.

EDITORIAL BOARD
Jason Robbins, Publisher
Gerry Yandel, Executive Editor
J. Lowe Davis, Editor At Large
Ken E. Ryan, Production Director
Onneka Challenger, Circulation Director
Kevin Downey, Advertising Director
Hedy Szabo, Business Manager

What a city owes its residents
Michelle Wilde Anderson

Though it is the biggest city in U.S. history to file for bankruptcy, Detroit is only one of 26 urban municipalities that have gone into bankruptcy or state receivership for fiscal insolvency since 2008. Detroit should draw attention and debate to a challenging issue underlying all these public insolvencies: What level of public services will we protect and guarantee for U.S. cities?

The Bankruptcy Court will have to face that question. It will have to determine whether Detroit can cut into current services any more than it already has. Unless the state or federal government steps in with funds for operating costs, the bankruptcy will function as a zero-sum game, with residents fighting creditors for a share of city revenue. Creditors have contracts to monetize what they are seeking, but how should the court determine the public spending that residents need today and tomorrow?

Politicians and judges who manage local fiscal crises speak of maintaining basic services and ensuring residents' minimal health and safety, but these concepts are short on specifics. While our laws provide an entitlement to a public education, and we have long struggled to interpret what constitutes a legally adequate education, there is little to nothing that would tell us what other services the local public sector must provide.

As a matter of law, there is no such thing as a crime rate that is too high or an ambulance response time that is too long. Should there be?

For now, it is left to politics and moral judgment to determine whether it is acceptable that less than one in three streetlights are operational in Detroit or that the city has 80,000 abandoned and blighted structures that it cannot afford to demolish. In Detroit, as in many other struggling cities, dramatic police layoffs mean that the average wait time after a 911 call for a police officer is 58 minutes, and a resident can rarely summon an officer at all if the reported crime is not in progress and violent.

As for other public functions that a high-poverty city (especially one with severe winters) might hope to have — such as reliable bus service, playground equipment, indoor basketball courts, after-school programs, active libraries and community centers for the elderly — these services are decades into deep cuts and widespread closures. Indeed, having curtailed everything beyond emergency services, it would be tempting to refer to a government like Detroit's as a night-watchman state — the libertarian ideal of a government focused only on public safety.

That is, we'd be tempted to use such a term for Detroit, and cities like it, were it not such a cruel irony: Detroit had more than 15,200 violent crimes and 500 acts of arson in 2012. The night watchmen are understaffed and underpaid. According to a 2012 study by economists Aaron Chalfin and Justin McCrary, public spending in Detroit on each police officer (including all wages, benefits and retirement costs) is less than two-thirds what it is just 45 miles away in the prosperous university town of Ann Arbor.

As a political and moral matter, as much as a legal one, Detroit represents an opportunity to take a stand for urban habitability. What belongs on our list of minimum standards for a city? Detroit invites us to have a public conversation about what services and public spaces we expect from city governments for human dignity and for humans to flourish. We have a chance to say that no one should have to wait hopelessly for an ambulance, that a violent crime in a neighborhood every few hours is intolerable.

Paying for such commitments should not just be the burden of creditors. Many of the city's creditors are rank-and-file public employees and retirees who have counted on a public pension and are not eligible for Social Security. Detroit's bankruptcy plan could send them into poverty in their old age.

Basic services and safety in our cities are the responsibility of states, the federal government, the private sector and voters. It is all of them — all of us — who have a role to play in the stabilization that Detroit is seeking through bankruptcy. All of us have a responsibility to help them give basic health and safety real meaning, and to make this bankruptcy a safety net, not a punishment.

— Michelle Wilde Anderson is an assistant professor of law at UC Berkeley School of Law.

Mrs. Anthony Weiner is Hillary 2.1
Christine M. Flowers

I sat there watching the television screen as Anthony Weiner squirmed before the microphones for the second time in two years, and realized that this was a deja vu moment.

At first I thought it was because the former congressman and aspiring mayoral candidate was, once again, apologizing for tweeting and cheating without really meeting. And then I took one look at Weiner's wife and realized that this had absolutely nothing to do with the fellow.

Huma Abedin might have creamy olive skin, beautiful brown eyes and long dark hair, but you don't need to put her in a pantsuit and slap a headband on her tresses to realize that we are now in the presence of Hillary Clinton, version 2.1.

We all remember the pre-Senate, pre-State Department Hillary who inspired both awe and revulsion for her assault on the East Wing. Never before had we been treated to a first lady who so blatantly and brazenly sought equal status with the guy we'd actually elected.

Eleanor Roosevelt, her idol, had exercised a considerable amount of weight behind the scenes. But it wasn't until Franklin died that she really came into her own. Not so Mrs. Clinton, or, rather, Mrs. Rodham Clinton.

It was painfully obvious to anyone paying attention that Bill's wife was hell bent on giving us that two-for-one bargain that the couple had promised during the campaign. Say what you will about her, Hillary was a force to be reckoned with. And praised. And loathed. Even her most strident enemies didn't underestimate her survival instincts.

Health care? (If at first you don't succeed . . .) Whitewater? (Did anyone say rafting?) Vince Foster? (Personal tragedy, nothing more.) And then came the stream of women: Jennifer (no relation,) Paula (a genuine victim) and, of course, "A little bit of Monica."

Anyone who thought that Hillary was going to let the Bimbo Bombs destroy her carefully constructed plans clearly didn't know just who they were dealing with. Our first lady stood by her philandering man and rode the crest of a sympathetic wave into the Senate. Mrs. Wynette Goes To Washington, so to speak.

And who did she take with her on that long and fruitful journey, ever upward, ever more successfully? Why none other than Mrs. Weiner, the lovely, inscrutable Huma.

Hillary once said that she had one daughter, but that if she had another it would be her beloved personal assistant.

Huma Abedin has been by her mentor's side for almost two decades, and it is reasonable to think that she spent a large part of that time taking notes about how to thrive and survive in the political jungle. Therefore, it is not surprising that she (1) chose to marry an animal indigenous to that environment i.e., a cheetah, and (2) figured out how to make sure that she could withstand whatever wounds he managed to inflict on their shared ambitions.

Anthony's wife has taken a page from her pseudo-mama's dog-eared book and has perfected the art of damage control.

First, you assume a posture of dignified disappointment, wherein your whole body seems to just "sigh" under the weight of the offensive conduct. It's a cross between an "I can't believe he did this to me" and a "boys will be boys, God bless their randy little hearts." Then, you gaze sadly at the perpetrator as he stares into the camera and apologizes for the second, third or 13th time for being a pervert with his privates. Then, you allow him to draw a line in the sand where he says he might be sorry but he won't go gentle into that good campaign and is continuing to seek the mayoral prize.

And then you spring into action. You straighten your shoulders, raise your pointed chin, allow a few wisps of that luxuriant velvet hair to fall across your delicately drawn cheek and assume a stoic pose. You love him, you say. You believe in him, you say. You forgive him, you say. You idiot, we say.

But you do not hear us speaking, because you do not care what the peanut gallery thinks. This is not about the crowds massed to watch this public shaming. This is not even about your husband who, truth be told, is probably sleeping in the garage these days, which is why he has both the time and the inclination to tweet.

This is about something far more important to you, perhaps almost as important as the future of the child you and the Tweeter have in common. This is about your political survival.

Huma Abedin learned at the feet of a master, someone who might very well parlay her experience as scorned wife into an office in the West Wing. Huma is a bit more modest, of course. Seems she'd be content to redecorate Gracie Mansion.

— Christine M. Flowers is a lawyer and columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News.

[Cartoon Description]
[Image of a doctor performing an autopsy on a body labeled "DETROIT"]
Speech bubble: "THE CAUSE OF DEATH WAS DEBT, POLITICS AND UNFUNDED PENSIONS."
Body Labels: "AUTOPSY", "DETROIT"
Organs in jars/trays labeled: "DEBT", "POLITICS", "UNFUNDED PENSIONS"
Surgeon Speech Bubble: "UH, OH..."
Signature: ©2013 PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE ROGERS

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Name	Type	Context
The Virgin Islands Daily News
Daily News Publishing Co.
Editorial Board
Bankruptcy Court
UC Berkeley School of Law
Philadelphia Daily News
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette