The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • A14

A14 Editorial The Boston Globe THURSDAY, JANUARY 9, 2014 DAN WASSERMAN Founded 18 72 CHRISTOPHER M. MAYER Publisher BRIAN McGRORY Editor PETER S. CANELLOS Editor, Editorial Page CHRISTINE S. CHINLUND Managing EditorNews Cutting off jobless benefits won't make jobs appear mttSA W. BUT IWM iw Letters to the Editor TIME FOR SHAKEUP IN THE ARMED FORCES? year over year.

North Carolinians in need, once propped up by unemployment insurance, simply turned elsewhere for help. The question of how to steer unemployed Americans back into the workforce swiftly is a pressing one; the US economy will not be fully recovered until more people find jobs. But the presumption that unemployment benefits are what's keeping out-of-work Americans on the sidelines is harmful to the economy as a whole. When Americans with the fewest resources get money in their pockets, they tend to spend it on necessities. That spending has a stimulative effect that, in turn, leads companies to create more jobs.

A failure to extend federal assistance could translate into 200,000 to 300,000 fewer new jobs. About 1.3 million Americans had their federal long-term jobless benefits expire at the end of December, and an additional 850,000 could lose their support before April. Sixty senators voted Tuesday to start debate on a three-month extension of these lost benefits enough time, the bill's sponsors argue, to find spending cuts to offset its cost. That measure deserves passage. While doing otherwise may cause unemployment claims to fall, the example of North Carolina shows it would be for the wrong reasons.

That would ultimately do more harm than good to economic growth and mean hardships for families in the interim. ABOUT SIX months ago, the state of North Carolina slashed its unemployment insurance. Legislators cut the maximum length for benefits from 99 weeks to just 19, and reduced maximum weekly checks from $535 to $350. Should Congress need to see the consequence of failing to renew recently expired unemployment benefits, North Carolina offers a discouraging example. Jobless benefits are meant to provide enough money to keep the newly unemployed fed and in their homes, along with a little extra to fund a job hunt as well as job training when needed.

States offer their own benefits, but about five years ago, as the recession hit, Congress provided an emergency federal extension to aid the long-term unemployed and has extended those benefits several times since. However, some lawmakers, most of them Republicans, fear that this help keeps the unemployed from aggressively looking for work. Indeed, North Carolina saw jobless claims drop dramatically after cutting benefits. Yet that didn't mean that unemployed people in North Carolina were suddenly finding work. Rather, the state's labor force has significantly contracted.

That is, the unemployed didn't necessarily get new jobs; many just stopped looking for work altogether or moved out of the state. Area food banks saw demand almost immediately skyrocket, up more than 15 percent Polar vortex: America in deep freeze Devil in the details if we're going to scrap Air Force JAMES CARROLL, citing a piece in Foreign Affairs by Robert Farley, suggests that we abolish the Air Force, but has no suggestion on how we distribute the pieces, unless he thinks we will just scrap the Air Force in place (Op-ed, Jan. 6). Would he abolish Air Mobility Command and do away with the C-5s and C-17s? I can remember being stationed at Clark Air Base, in the Philippines, and estimating the number of Navy carrier battle groups in the Indian Ocean based on the number of C-5s on the ramp at 1600 hours. Does air defense go away? Do we use only missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles drones, in other words to identify unknown aircraft straying into US airspace? Or maybe pass it to the Department of Homeland Security? What is Carroll's vision for the future? Will we never have to fight a war where we have to defeat an enemy air force? If so, we can go ahead and abolish the Air Force, since the culture and mind-set of fighter and bomber pilots will never again be needed.

On the other hand, if Carroll is wrong, we could take a pasting. And space and cyber? Where do they go? Incomplete. C. R. KRIEGER Lowell The writer, a retired Air Force colonel, was a professor at the National War College.

A nonstarter in today's political climate I READ James Carroll's column "It's time to abolish the Air Force" (Op-ed, Jan. 6) with interest. Unfortunately, today's combative political environment reduces all complex policy efforts to simplistic and misleading sound bites. Our political parties have become two warring corporations interested in little more than market share and appeasing donors. Getting reelected has become the Holy Grail for the men and women of Congress.

There is no room for balanced, reasoned public discussion. Merging the Air Force with other armed forces flies in the face of today's political mood, regardless of any security or savings it might create. MICHAEL RIPPLE Somerville With battle lines drawn, little chance of reforming military REGARDING JAMES Carroll's Jan. 6 op-ed "It's time to abolish the Air Force," I agree that some changes are way overdue. In the late 1950s, when I was in the Air Force, the discussion at the time was that the Department of Defense should be reorganized to be made up of three divisions land, air, and sea.

There would be one uniform with shoulder patches or other insignia denoting which division one belonged to. This would have eliminated the turf wars that have been going on for decades, and would have been more cost-effective and efficient. However, as Carroll points out, there are too many powerful vested interests in and out of the government that are lined up against such a reorganization. ARMAND DEVOE Beverly We owe our way of life to a strong military IT SEEMS obvious that James Carroll hasn't spent a day in his life in military service and doesn't have the foggiest notion of the differences between the service branches time to abolish the Air Force," Oped, Jan. 6).

I'm surprised he's not calling for the Coast Guard to become part of the Navy because both services have boats, or proposing the dissolution of the Marines because the United States already has ground force capability in the Army. The bottom line is that none of what we have in this country is possible or sustainable without a strong military. We're going to need more than Carroll's feckless opinion to undo what has developed historically in the line of fire. What's more, isn't it possible that the inter-branch competition he laments is just what is needed to keep the US military as effective as it obviously is? JIM WILLIAMS Belmont We may not be in tank tops in Boston, but compared to the rest of the country blasted by the rare polar vortex, it's been a veritable Bahamas. Though temperatures here bottomed out in single digits last week and seemed stuck in the teens for much of this week, our weather had nothing on the record 16 below zero in Chicago Monday and 23 below in Minneapolis.

To demonstrate how cold it was, journalists from Minneapolis to Green Bay hurled pots of boiling water up into the air in videos to watch the water fall back to the ground as snow. Frozen breath forms ice around the face of a Minneapolis resident Wednesday. In frigid weather, it's tempting for residents of cold climates to engage in similar stunts, or to brag about their tolerance for sub-zero temperatures. But the risk to human life and health extended far to the south to places like Atlanta, where hats, scarves, and insulated duck boots aren't quite so common. It's noteworthy that the approximately two dozen deaths attributed to the cold weather happened not just in the winter-hardened states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and New York, but South Carolina and Louisiana as well.

Meanwhile, even though Greater Boston was spared the worst of the polar vortex, residents still contended with an uptick in burst pipes and other weather-related calamities reminders that it could have been far worse. JUVENILE MURDERERS Parole board to the rescue? sic prongs of parole suitability will apply regardless of the offender's age at the time of the crime: likelihood of committing a new offense and compatibility with the welfare of society. Teenagers convicted of murder will not suddenly skate out of prison. But those who have been imprisoned for a minimum of 15 years will have an opportunity to convince the Parole Board that they have changed and taken full responsibility for their actions. At the same time, the fact patterns of the crimes must play a major role in the board's decisions.

For example, Joseph Donovan has been imprisoned for 20 years under the state's joint venture law for the 1992 murder of an MIT student. Donovan, who was 1 7 at the time, didn't wield the murder weapon. He would be a reasonable candidate for parole. Not necessarily so, however, in cases of juvenile murderers whose crimes involved deliberate premeditation and extreme ferocity. What the court rulings require from the Parole Board is what the offender and the public alike deserve: fair, thorough assessments of each individual case.

NOW THAT the Supreme Judicial Court has struck down life sentences without parole for juvenile offenders, implementing an earlier decision by the US Supreme Court, the state's seven-member Parole Board will come under increased pressure. It will fall to the board to balance the public's safety with the possibility of supervised release for convicted murderers who committed their crimes at a young age. The change in policy is rooted in scientific evidence on the thinking patterns of juveniles whose actions are marked by "immaturity, impetuosity, and failure to appreciate risks and consequences." Such lack of impulse control is sufficient reason to rethink mandatory life sentences without parole for those convicted of murder under the age of 18. Anything less, according to the US Supreme Court, would constitute cruel and unusual punishment. In Massachusetts, more than 60 such cases are coming up for review early this year.

Parole Board chairman Josh Wall offers an important reminder that the two ba DINA RUDICKGLOBE STAFF Mayor Martin Walsh spoke at his inauguration at Boston College Monday. New mayor has much to do before we become 'one Boston' trict schools. The future, as Mayor Walsh reminded us, comes "one day at a time." But until we confront racial and economic inequality in our schools and neighborhoods, that one day will not find us one Boston. MARY BATTENFELD Jamaica Plain gap between our new mayor's call for educational opportunity and Boston's new student assignment plan. The plan always contained inequity, and the Boston Public Schools' behind-the-curtain wizards have made it worse, giving, for example, Charlestown and North End families priority to their top-tier neighborhood schools.

As for those sweet voices singing "One They came from charter school students. Students from my daughter's school, Boston Arts Academy, performed a gorgeous version of the national anthem. But BAA remains in a deplorable building, in part because charter schools leech funding and facilities from dis AT THE mayoral inauguration, children sang of harmony, and speakers declared us one Boston. It was hard not to feel hopeful. But in the gray light of a rainy Monday, ironies emerged.

New City Councilor Michelle Wu smiled and sat next to Ayanna Pressley, hours before voting against Pressley for City Council president. Wu chose the divisive Bill Linehan, showing herself to be neither progressive nor a unifier. More irony is found in the SENIOR DEPUTY BUSINESS MANAGEMENT Charles H. Taylor MAutrrarcTirmDc Founder Sz Publisher MANAGING EDITORS Wade Sendall 1873-1921 Mark S.Morrow Vice President, Information Technology William Taylor Sunday and Projects James Levy Publisher 1921-1955 Jennifer Peter Vice President, Finance Wm. Davis Taylor Local News Richard E.

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