WWW.QNS.COM RIDGEWOOD TIMES APRIL 5, 2018 13
LETTERS AND COMMENTS OP-ED
PRESIDENTIAL
DOUBLE-STANDARD
It is laughable when President
Trump gets up on his high horse and
alleges that Joe Biden has threatened
him with physical assault. What about
the time he said that he would hit “little”
Michael Bloomberg so hard that
his head would spin? Rank hypocrisy.
Robert Berger, Bellerose
REST IN PEACE,
RUSTY
Rusty Staub was a man of all seasons.
Not only did he have a long and
colorful career with the Mets, but he
also dedicated himself to doing charity
work that benefi ted thousands of children
and adults.
He was a very giving person who
never thought of himself fi rst, but
always put his best into everything
he did, both on and off the baseball
fi eld as well.
The sports world has lost another
true icon — a shining star. He will be
missed by the legacy of those thousands
of fans who liked him throughout
his long and distinguished career.
John Amato, Fresh Meadows
GOVERNOR
MUST FIX
NYCHA MESS
Editor’s note: The following is an
open letter by the authors to Governor
Andrew Cuomo.
As you know too well, the tenants at
the New York City Housing Authority
(NYCHA) are in desperate need of help.
In one of the richest cities in the world,
our tenants have endured unacceptable
conditions for years, living in squalid
conditions — apartments infected with
toxic lead and mold, without heat and
hot water, infested with roaches and rats,
trash piling up everywhere (attracting
more vermin), walls crumbling, and
lacking the most basic safety features
(i.e., broken locks and intercoms).
Our rent-paying community has
begged the city and local leaders for
help on humanitarian grounds for
years, and all to no avail. Judicial
determinations have found that the
current NYCHA conditions pose grave
safety and health threats. NYCHA’s
incompetence is now almost a daily
topic in headline news.
NYCHA needs funding. Even
more than funding, NYCHA needs
competent management. No objective
indicators support any rational
conclusion that NYCHA’s current
management is capable of fi xing
the systemic problems faced by
tenants. NYCHA’s leadership and
management needs to change. That
much is evident and clear.
We urge you to deliver on your
promise by issuing an Executive
Order declaring an Emergency over
NYCHA and to appoint an independent
monitor who can bring in a
qualifi ed contractor to make the repairs
necessary. We also want a seat
at the table in making such selections
and in overseeing the process for
selecting both the monitor and the
contractor, because we pay rent and
it is our lives that are being aff ected.
We do not understand why City
Hall is lobbying borough presidents,
the City Council and the State Assembly
to stop you from taking the
action we need. Perhaps it is because
they have not seen the conditions for
themselves.
We hope that Mayor de Blasio and
NYCHA will come to the table. Since
they have not as yet, we ask you to
intervene now.
Danny Barber, Chair of the Citywide
Council of Presidents
Jim Walden, Lawyer for the Citywide
Council of Presidents
Eliezer Hecht of At-Risk Community
Service
Email your letters to editorial@qns.
com (Subject: Letter to the Editor) or
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letter by regular mail to Letters to
the Editor, 38-15 Bell Blvd., Bayside,
NY 11361. All letters are subject to
editing. Names will be withheld upon
request, but anonymous letters will
not be considered for publication.
The views expressed in all letters and
comments are not necessarily those of
this publication or its staff .
Canadian newsprint is not the enemy
BY DAVID CHAVERN
Every day at the News Media
Alliance headquarters, a stack
of newspapers arrives for me
and the staff . But with the Department
of Commerce and the International
Trade Commission currently considering
tariff s on Canadian newsprint,
those days of screen-free reading
could be coming to an end.
The fact that newsprint is being
threatened is the work of one newsprint
mill in the Pacifi c Northwest, NORPAC.
In August 2017, NORPAC petitioned the
United States Department of Commerce
to begin applying tariff s to newsprint
imported from Canada, claiming the
imported paper was harming the U.S.
newsprint industry. But NORPAC is not
acting in the best interests of newsprint
consumers or the U.S. paper industry
at large — they are acting in their own
interest and no one else’s.
The buying and selling of newsprint
has always been regional without
regard for the border. Consumers of
newsprint — from newspaper and
book publishers to telephone directory
manufacturers — tend to buy newsprint
in their region, close to their printing
operations. The printers who typically
utilize Canadian newsprint are those in
the northeast and Midwest, where there
are currently no U.S. mills operating.
But those regions are not newsprint
deserts because of unfair trade by Canadian
paper mills. Rather, newsprint
mills shut down or converted to producing
other, more profi table paper products
when the demand for newsprint
fell, something that has been happening
steadily for decades. Since 2000, the demand
for newsprint in North America
has dropped by 75 percent.
But aff ordable Canadian paper has
helped keep the printed news alive
and fl ourishing well into the 21st century.
With new tariff s, many smaller
newspapers will feel their belts tightening.
The combination of preliminary
countervailing and antidumping duties
increases the cost of imported newsprint
by as much as 32 percent, and a number
of newspapers have already experienced
price increases and a disruption in supply.
If the International Trade Commission
and the Department of Commerce
make these tariff s permanent in the
coming months, it could lead some small
local publishers to cut their print product
entirely — or even shut their doors.
What we’re seeing with the newsprint
tariffs is not a government
acting to try to better the economy
for its citizens. Instead, it is “political
arbitrage” by one private investment
group — where they are eff ectively
looking to use the U.S. government to
tax local and community newspapers
across the United States in order to
bolster their own bottom line.
When considering whether to take
NORPAC’s claims seriously, the Department
of Commerce excluded input from
U.S. newsprint mills owned by Canadian
companies — specifi cally Resolute Forest
Products and White Birch. Excluding
manufacturers who, during the period
of investigation, had three functioning
newsprint mills in the U.S. because they
have sister mills in Canada shows an unwillingness
to understand the borderless
newsprint industry and the restructuring
that has taken place in recent decades.
If the tariff s on Canadian newsprint
are allowed to stand, we’re not only
risking a centuries-old relationship
with our neighbors to the north, but
we’re putting our own U.S. news industry
in jeopardy.
David Chavern serves as president
& CEO of the News Media Alliance.
Chavern has built a career spanning
30 years in executive strategic and
operational roles, and most recently
completed a decade-long tenure at the
United States Chamber of Commerce.
A LOOK BACK
As As
the old jingle went, “You can trust
your car to the man who wears the
star.” The Kaschner service station,
which specialized in Texaco gasoline
and Quaker State motor oil, is pictured
in this May 1934 photo taken at
the corner of Edsall and Cooper
avenues in Glendale. Look carefully
and you’ll see a vehicle hoisted on a
hydraulic lift for service and a sign
in the background for the nearby
Knickerbocker Coal and Ice Company.
Send us your historic photos of
Queens by email to editorial@qns.com
(subject: A Look Back) or mail printed
pictures to A Look Back, ℅ Schneps
Communications, 38-15 Bell Blvd.,
Bayside, NY 11361. All mailed pictures
will be carefully returned to you.
Ridgewood Times archives/Courtesy of the Greater Ridgewood Historical Society
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