Pallone's experience warrants another term
EDITORIAL, Home news Tribune from the Web, October 28, 2004
For voters in the 6th Congressional District, the best choice in this year's general election is incumbent Rep. Frank Pallone.
Pallone's experience and seniority as a member of the House of Representatives since 1988 are assets to the district and to New Jersey as a whole.
Pallone has been an especially important voice in the House on environmental issues.
He has campaigned on behalf of the Superfund cleanup program -- whose dedicated funding has not been reauthorized by Congress -- an issue particularly important to this state because of the number of contaminated industrial sites.
At present he is concerned about proposals to build wind turbines in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of New Jersey as sources of renewable electrical power.
While the idea of generating electricity without employing fossil fuel or nuclear power is attractive, Pallone is concerned about a lack of regulation of a project that could have an effect on aquatic life, water quality, and tourism.
He plans to introduce legislation next month that would require federal agencies to conduct an environmental assessment of the possible impact.
Other important goals on Pallone's agenda are a stronger federal hand in clean-air and clean-water issues; wider health-care coverage, particularly for children; Medicare coverage for terminal cancer patients; and a national registry that will help doctors avoid the over-medication of patients.
He has sensibly recommended a revolving federal fund to help stabilize the medical malpractice insurance market, and he favors empowering the Medicare program to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies to get the best prices for drugs required by senior citizens.
He also supports appointment of a national intelligence director -- with authority over the budget for the several intelligence agencies -- as part of implementation of the recommendations of the Kean commission.
Pallone, a Democrat, is opposed in this election by Republican Sylvester Fernandez, an information-technology specialist from Edison.
Fernandez is an independent thinker whose ideas clearly come from his professional and personal experience and not from a partisan doctrine.
He advocates an aggressive policy to retard the transfer of jobs to places outside the United States, and he says that Pallone's relationships have particulary encouraged outsourcing to India.
Fernandez recommends that American businesses be penalized -- based on the percentage of work they transfer overseas -- by limiting their access to public contracts.
Fernandez says Pallone should have been more proactive in trying to save auto manufacturing in Edison when the Ford Motor Co. was closing its plant.
The Republican says he would at least have asked Ford to yield its title to the property, and then he would have courted a foreign manufacturer -- probably one of the three in South Korea -- to make cars in the plant using the existing labor.
Fernandez also advocates much stricter immigration policies and federal regulation of the rates charged by credit-card companies.
He favors a process -- including FDA inspection of foreign plants -- that would make specific essential medications available to senior citizens at greatly reduced prices.
He thinks all of the Kean commission recommendations should ultimately be enacted into law, but criticizes Pallone for not voting for the House bill that included only some of them.
He also envisions -- dangerously, perhaps -- further preemptive military strikes by the United States to prevent the spread of terrorism -- possibly in Malaysia, the Philippines, and Syria.
These and other ideas -- several of which are contrary to the Republican platform -- show Fernandez to be an analytical thinker who should be taken seriously as a candidate for public office.
At present, however, and for this particular office, Pallone is the better choice.
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