The Press-Dispatch

July 19, 2017

The Press-Dispatch

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The Press-Dispatch Wednesday, July 19, 2017 C-13 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 The "cool uncle" has entered in- to pop culture immortality, writ- ten into many recent screenplays and certain to be written into ma- ny more in the future. My cool un- cle was a real man, of course, not an archetype. He died last week. You may have seen him at Win- slow High School alumni func- tions. You may have even gone to school with him, but not ma- ny of you were in shop class with Jim Klipsch, because he was one of only four surviving males from the Class of '49. Whether he was cresting hills in his station wagon, taking crunchy bites from a big white onion, pull- ing out his glass eye or scrubbing poison ivy on his bare arm, always deadpan, he really knew how to im- press us kids. Even his immune system was amazing to us. He was gallant. I know this because he exempted my sister Christie and my girl cousins from his furious, cyclonic dutch rubs. All the rest of us (males) were sub- ject to ambush at any moment. I was in my late teens before I real- ized that "Dutch uncle" has nothing to do with dutch rubs. We didn't have Wikipedia back then. Despite the Teuton- ic surname worthy of a Jasper point guard, he was dark-haired and Latin-looking. When he was slicked up with Brilliantine, I thought he looked like a Mafia hit man in the movies. All he needed was a New Jersey accent: "Boss, you want I should whack him? " Physically affectionate, he raised kids who turned out the same way. This pushed me further down the hierarchy of my grand- mother's favorites—I may have been the anchor man —because they always remembered to kiss her on the cheek. He was loud in his prime. I don't know if he was loud from birth, or if he just forgot to shift gears af- ter coming home from a loud work- place, but there prob- ably aren't many sto- ries of him sneaking up on anybody. The decibels used to startle or even in- timidate us Stin- son kids. Then the Klipsch kids got old enough to be loud, too, and we joined the fun. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Today my sis- ter makes her living being loud, a professor of voice and theater at University of Evansville. He was a lifelong carpenter. I thought that was a puzzling choice of vocation for a guy who lost his right eye to a metal sliver in a ma- chine shop accident in his teens. I wondered if he went into a risky trade like carpentry out of mulish stubbornness (which is never out of the question with a Klipsch) or Children throughout time [and even today in some parts of the world] were not viewed as the bun- dle of joy that we moderns view ba- bies. Boys have been valued over girls. Sorry, that's the way it was/ is. Unwanted girls were either giv- en away or left outside of town to die. Then along came Christianity. The Christian ethnos has al- ways been life is a gift from God. No person has the right to deny or take away life, except God! And the Christianized world embraced this value. A few weeks ago, this headline appeared in many newspapers and internet sites: "Terminally ill in- fant will be allowed to die." That is sad. The parents, Chris Gard and Connie Yates, must have made a wrenching decision to al- low their child Charlie to die. Such a tragedy. That is not the story. Charlie Guard was born with a rare genetic disorder [mitochon- drial disease] that robs him of al- most all movement and the abili- ty to eat and breathe on his own. Britain has National Health, and this is part of the story not getting airplay [another column]. Char- lie is at Great Ormond Street Hos- pital for Children in London, and doctors there have decided all fur- ther care is futile. The parents dis- agree. However, under British law and procedures, the par- ents cannot just move the child to another hospital that will treat him. The hospital pe- titioned the court to allow them to remove life support and let the child die with dignity. However again, the parents do not see this as dying with dignity and object. Judge Nicolas Francis is sympa- thetic, but has agreed with the hos- pital and doctors and given the par- ents time to say their goodbyes. In the light of American doctors and hospitals willing to try treatments on Charlie pro bono, Judge Francis will hear new arguments. Maybe there is hope. The big story here is that in Brit- ain [and many European coun- tries] where at one time the Chris- tian value of life was supreme is gone. A government bureaucrat or judge can determine if you are incapacitated in some way and whether you live or die. In the Netherlands, where doc- tor assisted suicide is legal, per- mitted, and used, surveys among doctors reveal the unnerving un- dertow of doctors assisting pa- tients along in their journey to death without the patient's knowl- edge. This gives an en- tirely new meaning to the Hippocratic Oath, which the physician swears he/she will "do not harm." Harm has to be defined, and exercising a ba- by from its mother's womb or terminating a life would have been unthinkable 100 years ago among most doctors. We already have death panels among insurers. Just last month Derrian Baker, who suffered from Prader-Willi Syndrome his entire life of 26 years, died. This disor- der causes the victim to constant- ly crave food. Experts cite that "PWS causes weak muscles, poor growth, devel- opmental delays, temper tantrums and an insatiable appetite leading to obesity. The result is a loss of control where they can literally eat until their stomachs explode." Get this young man some help. WTHR reported there was hope for him: "Derrian was accepted in- to a unique in-patient treatment program for Prader-Willi Syn- drome patients at the only facil- Continued on page 14 Continued on page 14 Continued on page 14 Continued on page 14 Continued on page 14 Continued on page 14 Minority View by Walter E. Williams The Weekly by Alden Heuring My Point of View by Dr. H. K. Fenol, Jr., M.D. Minimum wage cruelty Points to Ponder by Rev. Ford Bond Death to the helpless Farewell to a real cool uncle Lucid Moments by Bart Stinson Modernizing military requires spending Heritage Viewpoint by Edwin J. Feulner With overall federal budget ex- panding steadily year after year, you'd think not one category of spending has had to suffer. Sure- ly everything that can be funded has all the money it could want or need — and then some. But you'd be wrong. When it comes to defense spending, it's a different story. Lawmakers that can't bring themselves to make tough but necessary cuts else- where, even in areas of dubious federal responsibility, suddenly find they're able to say "no" when it comes to something as vital as our national security. A variety of cuts have taken their toll. Readiness is slipping. Troops are taking more and lon- ger tours of duty. Equipment is be- ing used well past its intended life. Our military is like an edifice that looks great from the outside, but is being eaten away by termites. Ev- erything appears fine and normal — until one day it's put to the test and found wanting. Not because our troops aren't the best. They are. It's because of the cuts they're being forced to deal with. "For years," defense expert Frederico Bartels writes, "the defense budget pri- oritized short-term readiness over mod- ernization and recapi- talization of the force, resulting in a military that is grow- ing old and tired." When he testified recently be- fore the House Armed Services Committee, Defense Secretary James Mattis said the first priority of the fiscal year 2018 defense bud- get would be to fix near-term readi- ness problems. Rebuilding the mil- itary would come after that — in 2019 and beyond. Frankly, though, we can't wait to address the rebuilding. Our own military has been struggling for too long now, thanks to arbitrari- ly low levels of fund- ing imposed by the Budget Control Act of 2011. All the while, we've been asking it to do more. But a high tempo of operations with a shrinking, ag- ing and less-ready force is an unsustain- able combination. Consider how U.S. military power is graded in the Heritage Foundation's 2017 Index of Military Strength. On a scale with five ratings (very strong, strong, marginal, weak and very weak), no branch ranks above "marginal" — and one (the Ar- my) is "weak." Unfortunately, while funding took a holiday, worldwide threats have not. Russia and China con- tinue to sink a lot of money into There are political movements to push the federal minimum hour- ly wage to $15. Raising the min- imum wage has popular support among Americans. Their reasons include fighting poverty, prevent- ing worker exploitation and pro- viding a living wage. For the most part, the intentions behind the sup- port for raising the minimum wage are decent. But when we evaluate public policy, the effect of the pol- icy is far more important than in- tentions. So let's examine the ef- fects of increases in minimum wages. The average wage for a ca- shier is around $10 an hour, about $21,000 a year. That's no great shakes, but it's an honest job for full- or part-time workers and re- tirees wanting to earn some extra cash. In anticipation of a $15 -an- hour wage becoming federal law, many firms are beginning the au- tomation process to economize on their labor usage. Panera Bread, a counter-serve cafe chain, anticipates replacing most of its cashiers with kiosks. McDonald's is rolling out self-ser- vice kiosks that allow customers to order and pay for their food with- out ever having to interact with a human. Momentum Machines has developed a meat-flipping ro- bot, which can turn out 360 ham- burgers an hour. These and other measures are direct responses to rising labor costs and expectations of higher minimum wages. Here's my question to support- ers of higher minimum wages: How compassionate is it to create legislation that destroys an earn- ing opportunity? Again, making $21,000 a year as a cashier is no great shakes, but it's better than going on welfare, needing unem- ployment compensation or idle- ness. Why would anybody work for $21,000 a year if he had a high- er-paying alternative? Obviously, the $21,000 -a-year job is his best known opportunity. How compas- sionate is it to call for a govern- ment policy that destroys a per- son's best opportunity? I say it's cruel. San Francisco might give us some evidence for what a $15 min- imum wage does. According to the East Bay Times, about 60 restau- rants around the Bay Area closed between September and January. A recent study by Michael Luca of Harvard Business School and Da- ra Lee Luca of Mathematica Poli- cy Research calculated that for ev- ery $1 hike in the minimum hour- ly wage, there is a 14 percent in- crease in the likelihood that a restaurant rated 3 1/2 stars on Yelp will go out of business. Fres- no Bee reporter Jeremy Bagott says that even some of San Fran- cisco's best restaurants fall prey to higher minimum wages. One saw its profit margins fall from 8.5 per- cent in 2012 to 1.5 percent by 2015 (http://tinyurl.com/y6wy3gne). Most restaurants are thought to re- quire profit margins between 3 and 5 percent to survive. Some think that it's greed that motivates businessmen to seek substitutes for labor, such as ki- osks, as wages rise. But don't blame businessmen; just look in the mirror. Suppose both McDon- ald's and Burger King are faced with higher labor costs as a re- sult of higher minimum wages. McDonald's lowers its labor costs by installing kiosks and laying off workers, but Burger King decides to not automate but instead keep the same amount of labor. To cov- er its higher labor costs, Burger King must charge higher prices for its meals, whereas McDonald's gets by while charging lower pric- es. Which restaurant do you think people will patronize? I'm guess- ing McDonald's. What customers want is an important part of a com- pany's decision-making. But there are other actors to whom companies are beholden. They are the companies' inves- tors, who are looking for returns on their investments. If one compa- ny responds appropriately to higher labor costs, it will produce a higher investor return than one that does not. That means "buy" signals for the stock of a company that re- sponds properly and "sell" signals for the stock of one that does not, as well as possible outside takeover attempts for the latter. The ancient game, Part III Finally, we come to bidding. Bidding is the crux of bridge and really, the rest is just executing the plan you and your partner put to- gether during the bidding phase. It's also extremely complex and I still don't understand it. I'll start with the basics. Bidding occurs at the beginning of every bridge hand, and its purpose is for you and your partner to communi- cate the strength of your hand to each other, and to plan out how you will play it. On a mechanical level, bidding also determines who will be the dummy hand and what suit (if any) will be trumps. However, before you decide what to bid, you have to have a system for deciding how strong your hand is. I recommend my grandma's sys- tem, which is: Aces are worth four points. Kings are worth three points, if you have at least one other card of the same suit. Queens are worth two points, if you have at least two other cards of the same suit. Jacks are worth one point, if you have at least three other cards of the same suit. Doubletons (a suit in which you only have two cards) are worth one point. Single- tons (one card of a suit) are worth two points. Voids (no cards from a suit) are worth three points. Now then, once you add up all your points, you should have at least 14 to consider really bidding. The higher you go above 14, the higher you can bid. But wait, what are the possible bids? Let's go over the ba- sic ones, and for the sake of brevi- ty I'll let you discover the advanced bids on your own. Most bids are a combination of a number and a letter. For example, 1S is one spade. A bid of 1S, if it ends up being the winning bid, is a con- tract between you and your partner to win at least half the tricks plus one in the coming hand. Since a hand is 13 tricks, that's you saying you can win seven tricks this hand. The bid also sets trumps to spades, meaning that all the spades in your hand can win any non-spade trick if you can sneak them in somehow. You can bid up to 7 in any suit, or in NT: No Trump. No trump hands are weird, because there's no trumps to throw out when you run out of another suit, but they're great to aim for when you have a really strong hand (at least 16 points if you use my grandma's scoring system) Having thus finished my ca- reer after 45 years from gradua- tion from medical school back in 1971, I have been going through a process of an inventory. My think- ing is since I'm now done making myself available in the job mar- ket, I can safely share my experi- ences, from the time of clerkship, to internship and then three years of residency training program in Family practice. I share this in a spirit of humil- ity. One of the things that never leaves me are the unique flashes of events as I journeyed through those years. For instance during clerkship which is the fourth year of medical school, we were given some responsibilities for patient care, mainly observing and record- ing events and not doing decisions of major impacts. It was like soaking in clinical problems and providing explana- tions for what we were exposed to. We could always pass the buck to the interns and residents who were supervising us. We did a lot Down memory lane

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