The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: http://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/1184010
C-10 Wednesday, November 13, 2019 The Press-Dispatch OPINION Submit Letters to the Editor: Letters must be signed and received by noon on Mondays. Email: editor@pressdispatch.net or bring in a hard copy: 820 E. Poplar Street, Petersburg A continuation on the book Se- crets of "Longevity- Hundreds of Ways to Live to be 100." I'd like to state most of these Ssecrets" are already discussed in many books, magazines, jour- nals, tabloids, T V ads, internet websites, etc, etc. This subject of longevity has been discussed to death. Pun intended. Do we all really want to live to be 100? Some say yes, some say no, many say I'm not sure. My aim in sharing these "secrets" is to give a little flavor of the oriental eastern thoughts and wisdom and see how it jibes with the Western beliefs. On the front of the book, there were introductory quotes about, "Lower your blood pres- sure with olive oil. Meditate your stress away. Keep cancer at bay with mushrooms. Unclog your ar- teries with love. Take long walks for a long life. To slim down, fill up with soup." Well, I'm familiar with three out six, and three I'm not sure -about olive oil, mush- room and soup. • • • In a typical day, which is a 24 hour span, the author relates he gets at least 7-8 hours of good, rest- ful sleep. I think to that I will very much agree. Research after re- search has shown sleep is a very healing process, and sleep depri- vation causes premature aging and onset of various illnesses. As I have stated in my previous articles, there's wis- dom in seven to eight hours of sleep, and eight hours of work that one hopefully en- joys, and eight hours of catching up with whatever. In our West- ern world, we have de- veloped an unfortu- nate industrial scale of activity that is non- stop. That is, most parts of the world both in the East and the West now operate 24 hours per day. Kind of scary because I think the trend will never be reversed. Points to Ponder By Rev. Ford Bond Civilization in peril My Point of View By Dr. H. K. Fenol, Jr., M.D. Longevity, part II Minority View By Walter E. Williams Disproportionalities: Whose fault? Continued on page 11 Continued on page 11 Jews have been awarded 40 per- cent of the Nobel Prizes in eco- nomics, 30 percent of those in medicine, 25 percent in physics, 20 percent in chemistry, 15 per- cent in literature and 10 percent of the Nobel Peace Prizes. Since the beginning of the 20th centu- ry, there have been just over 900 Nobel Prizes awarded. Since Jews are only 2 percent of the world's population, instead having 22 per- cent of Nobel Prizes, 206, they should have won only two, accord- ing to the proportionality vision of justice. There's an even great- er domestic violation of the pro- portionality vision. Jews are less than 3 percent of the U.S. popu- lation but 35 percent of Ameri- can Nobel Prize winners. Sever- al questions come to mind. Does the disproportionately high num- ber of Jewish winners explain why there are so few black or Hispan- ic Nobel Prize winners? Who's to blame for ethnic disproportional- ity among Nobel Prize winners, and what can be done to promote social justice? Proportionality injustice doesn't end with the Nobel Prize. Blacks are about 13 per- cent of the U.S. population but close to 70 percent of the players in the National Football League. Blacks are greatly overrepresent- ed among star players and high- ly paid players. While the dispro- portionality injustice runs in fa- vor of black players in general, they are all but nonexistent among the league's field goal kickers and punters. Perhaps the only reason why foot- ball team owners are not charged with hir- ing discrimination is that the same peo- ple who hire quar- terbacks and running backs also hire field goal kickers and punt- ers. Proportionality and diversity injustice is worse in the Nation- al Basketball Association, with blacks being over 80 percent of the players. Plus, it's not uncom- mon to watch college basketball games and see that 90 to 100 per- cent of the starting five players are black. Most readers know that I teach economics at George Ma- son University and have done so for nearly 40 years. Howev- er, that doesn't mean the field of economics doesn't have its prob- lems. Many see economics as neither a welcoming nor a sup- portive profession for women or blacks. Former Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet Yellen, in ad- dressing a Brookings Institution audience said: "Within the eco- nomics profession, women and minorities are significantly un- derrepresented. And data compiled by the American Econom- ic Association's Com- mittees on the Status of Women in the Eco- nomics Profession and the Status of Mi- nority Groups in the profession show that there has been little or no progress in re- cent decades. Women today make up only about 30 percent of Ph.D. students. Within academia, their representation drops the higher up one goes in the career ladder. The share of Ph.D.s awarded to A frican Americans is low; and it has declined slightly in recent de- cades." Yellen says that diversity in economics is a matter of "ba- sic justice." Had I been in the audience, I would have asked Yellen whether there's basic justice in the nursing field, where less than 10 percent of nurses are men. What about the gross lack of proportionali- ty in incarceration? According to 2015 figures released by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the overall U.S. prison and jail pop- ulation is 90.6 percent male and 9.4 percent female. The only way Pursuit of the Cure By Star Parker Impeachment about ideology, not the constitution Subsidies not helping the wind industry Last week the lobbying arm of the wind energy industry made an unsurprising, though somewhat embarrassing, announcement. It wants a longer lifeline with feder- al subsidies. So much for wind be- ing the low-cost energy source of the future. Less than a year ago, the Ameri- can Wind Energy Association had with great fanfare issued a press statement that as Bloomberg re- ported: "America's wind farms are ready to go it alone." Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, a Republican who has strongly supported the wind in- dustry since the days of federal sup- port began in 1992, boasted that the wind industry has finally "matured" and that wind farms were "ready to compete." Never mind. Big Wind's change of heart was predictable because when this tax giveaway — which basically re- quires taxpayers to underwrite 30 percent of the cost of wind en- ergy production — was first en- acted, the renewable energy lob- by promised that it would lift itself out of the federal wheelchair and walk on its own within five years. But like clockwork, every five years they have come back to Congress pleading for an extension — much like Oliver with his porridge bowl asking: "Please, sir, could I have some more." What was especially interesting was why Big Wind thinks it is de- serving of "more." The industry ex- ecs mentioned the tough competi- tion from natural gas — which isn't going away. Natural gas is today by far the most cost-efficient source of electric power generation in most markets. Thanks to the shale revo- lution natural gas prices have fall- en by about two-thirds. This means that only with very generous tax- payer assistance on top of local mandates requiring local utilities to buy wind and solar power can green energy compete. Big Wind said that it will lobby for a continued subsidy so wind power will "have parity" with the solar industry subsidies. The solar industry sun gods have even higher subsidies than wind producers get. They are actually right. Per unit of electricity, solar gets five times as much as wind power. And wind gets some five times more than coal and natural gas. So now we have a sub- sidy arms race going on. Over the last 30 or so years, the renewable energy industry has re- ceived well over $100 billion in fed- eral, state and local handouts. Yet these are still fairly trivial contrib- utors to America's overall ener- gy production — supplying some- where between 5 percent and 10 percent of the nation's total. The rational solution would of course be to eliminate all federal ener- gy subsidies and simply create a level playing field among coal, nu- clear, natural gas, solar and wind. But given the current anti-fossil fu- els hysteria and the movement to promote green energy at any cost, the idea of creating an economi- cally-efficient market for energy is about as likely as hell freezing over — which isn't going to hap- pen anytime soon because of glob- al warming. Given the powerful green move- ment's lobby on Capitol Hill, don't be surprised if the federal aid keeps pouring in. But here again we see again the central contradiction of the green energy fad. On the one hand, we here rave reviews of how enormously cost effective green en- ergy has become in the 21st centu- ry. We are told we can require 50 percent, 60 percent and even 100 percent renewable energy over the next decade at no cost to consum- ers or businesses. If so. Why must the subsidies continue ad infinitum? If $100 bil- lion of taxpayer handouts hasn't worked, what will? My hunch is that the lifelines Washington keeps tossing to the wind and solar industry have been more curse than blessing. Subsi- dies can be as addictive as heroin. A cold turkey cut off of taxpayer aid would force the renewable industry Two American women of color. Two diametrically opposed views about America. This clash of world views helps us to understand that what is go- ing on in our nation is not a legiti- mate impeachment process but an attempt to wipe out a sitting pres- ident for personal and ideological reasons. Rep. Rashida Tlaib was sworn in as a freshman Democratic con- gresswoman for Michigan on Jan. 3, 2019. At a reception following the event, Tlaib, speaking about the president of the United States, said, "We're gonna impeach the (expletive)." It had to be unprecedented that a newly elected representative publically used that kind of lan- guage about the nation's president and expressed intent to impeach him, with no support from leader- ship of her own party. Were there grounds for im- peachment? No. The alleged ba- sis was the Mueller investigation, which subsequently found that al- legations that President Trump and his campaign conspired with Russia to interfere with the presi- dential election were false. What happened to the sacred principle of innocent until prov- en guilty? Tlaib had already convicted Trump. He's guilty for being Don- ald Trump and for what he stands for. The law is irrelevant. Months later she held a press conference calling President Trump a racist and again calling for his impeachment. She noted: "I represent the third-poorest con- gressional district in this country. ... I was elected to fight for them." The Bureau of Labor Statistics just issued its October jobs re- port, which the Wall Street Jour- nal called "impressive." "The cur- rent job market is attracting mid- dle- and working-class workers who have been on the sidelines for years," reported the Journal. And, black unemployment ticked down a notch to 5.4% , an- other new historic low. But just as legal facts mean noth- ing to Rep. Tlaib, economic facts mean nothing. Let's now turn to another Amer- ican woman of color, former South Carolina governor and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley. She recently spoke at a dinner at Washington's American Enter- prise Institute. Haley, who as Republican gov- ernor of South Carolina had the Confederate flag removed from the grounds of the state Capitol, said at AEI: "when we retreat into identi- ty and grievance politics, we make the choice for victimhood over cit- izenship. By constantly blaming others, we reject personal respon- sibility for ourselves, our families and our communities." Are you listening, Congress- woman Tlaib? Haley spoke about her parents, who immigrated to the U.S. from India: "We were different. We stood out. And my family felt the pain of being judged by our differ- ence. ... But my parents refused to let it define them. They chose citi- zenship over victimhood." Haley quoted Lincoln, who, in 1862 when the country was torn apart in civil war, called America "the last best hope of Earth." She added: "President Trump is a disruptor. That makes ... some people very mad. But if we are a country that lives by the rule of law, we must all accept that we have one president at a time and that president attained his office by the choice of the American peo- ple." Haley hailed the American freedom and exceptionalism en- shrined in our Declaration of In- dependence and Constitution, and noted how, at the UN, repre- sentatives from despotic countries This morning the alarm went off, and the local news chimed in reporting that three teens were shot overnight on the west side of Indianapolis. The top four news story in the paper of record for Indiana: "Do the right thing, NCA A, and free Memphis' James Wiseman;" "Pur- due continues to show it's more than just basketball;" "IU basket- ball escapes Portland State for sec- ond win," and "HS football round- up: Who won sectional titles and who pulled off the big surprise? " No sign of the continued car- nage of urban violence, just anoth- er weekend in Indianapolis. Sadly, the same goes for Chicago "Mitch Trubisky throws 3 touchdowns as the Bears snap their 4-game skid in a 20 -13 win over the Lions." In reality, since noon Friday in Chicago, there have been 15 shoot- ings. The Windy City has a group of citizens who want to keep the violent crime in the forefront and have created a website that tracks the shootings and homicides, and it is impressive. Sadly, the web site and its track- ing of violence rarely get men- tioned in Chicago press. [It's bad for tourism.] But you can't paint a pig purple and call it a horse. Our major cities are becoming like the "Third World" as in Haiti and Ban- gladesh. The West Coast from Seattle to San Diego [and Hawaii] is teeming with squatters who litter the streets with drug paraphilia and human excrement. Society is breaking down, and no political party or individual wants to step up and tackle the problem. Shootings among the more jad- ed are just considered cutting the herd or local population control: "Nothing worth reporting about here folks; move on." Crime is so rampant in some ar- eas of Baltimore that the local pop- ulous claims unless there is a body, the police won't show up, so crime continues to spiral out of control because of the futility in calling 911. Let that sink in for a few mo- ments. The mayor of Chicago and po- lice chief refuse to attend the Police Chief's Convention be- cause the president is delivering a speech there. Their excuse is his [the pres- ident's] values. Trump remarked, "All over the world they're talking about Chicago. A fghanistan is a safe place by compari- son." Whether the Pres- ident is being bombas- tic and over the top is ir- relevant. Is this factual? Men and women, babies, young people are dying through drugs and violence; what is the number one goal in Washington? Trump must go! This is not true for the three fam- ilies whose children where shot in Indianapolis Sunday morning. The solution is to confiscate guns, right? OK, then how will you address the drug epidemic? Sue the drug manufacturers. What will happen here is that the money will drop into the state treasuries, and we will watch T V ads telling people "Don't Do Drugs! " That is what happened to the tobacco settlement money. The real issue is the darkness Continued on page 11 Heritage Viewpoint By Stephen Moore Continued on page 11 Continued on page 11