The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/1017524
The Press-Dispatch Wednesday, August 22, 2018 B-7 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 During the weekend of Aug. 4-5 (and the preceding Friday night), 12 Chicagoans were shot dead, and 62 others were shot and wounded, the Chicago Tri- bune reported (https://tinyurl. com/yde7jb83). Before last week's mayhem, 1,718 Chicagoans had been shot since the beginning of the year, and 306 had been mur- dered. Adding to this tragedy is the fact that Chicago's clearance rate is less than 15 percent. That means that in more than 85 per- cent of Chicago's homicides, no suspect is charged. Chicago is by no means unique in this lawless- ness. Detroit, Baltimore, Phila- delphia, St. Louis and some oth- er major cities share high rates of homicides. It's not just shootings and ho- micides that negatively impact the overwhelmingly law-abiding black residents of these cities. In addition, there are sky-high rates of burglaries, rapes and property destruction. The schools are no- toriously bad. City budgets face shortfalls. Residents deal with deteriorating city services. All of this causes mass exoduses from these cities by their most capable people. Ordinary decency demands that something be done to ad- dress the horrible conditions un- der which so many black Amer- icans live. White liberals, black politicians and sports figures fo- cus most of their attention on what the police do, but how relevant is that to the overall tragedy? Ac- cording to Washington Post data, as of July 9, 626 people had been shot and killed by police this year. Christianity until the 20th centu- ry had well defined doctrines that were embraced by the faithful, re- gardless of sectarian views. Sin was readily identified, and few argued that the urges of carnal man had to be suppressed echoing the prophet Jeremiah: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and des- perately wicked: who can know it? " The essence of Christianity is to crucify the fleshly desires of the carnal man, which is in opposition to God. Paul makes this clear in his letter to the Romans: "Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." The desires of the carnal man were defined as a spiritual malaise by the Apostle John who wrote: "For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world." The church taught morality with- in discipleship. This is evident in Paul's first letter to the church at Corinth when he admonishes the church about sin: "Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not in- herit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexual- ly immoral nor idolaters nor adul- terers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunk- ards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God." The power of the cross broke the chains of carnality and sin. Paraphrasing Paul's letter to the Romans, he rejoiced in the fact that sin no longer had control over the faithful! Before Christ, all sinned. A fter His resur- rection, the gift of the Holy Spirit was given to provide the spiritual power to live unshackled to sin. However, during the 18th centu- ry, humanism and higher criticism began to creep into the church and challenge the needed regeneration to the point that today excuses or outright dismissal of centuries of teaching about sin are no longer the central core of the church. The most dangerous statement used today to justify what once was deemed sinful behavior is "God made me this way; let Him deal with it." This smacks against the need for regeneration as taught by the scrip- tures and the church. The Apostle Jude warned that this would happen as he wrote: "For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God in- to lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Je- sus Christ." Paul likewise warned those at Ephesus: "For I know this, that af- ter my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Also from among yourselves men will rise up, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after themselves." The scripture is the defense of the Church! God's word does not change. Many within the church chant the church needs to "get with the times" and change! That chant is a response to the hurt that spir- itual truth produces within the re- bellious and offended. The church cannot change the Heritage Viewpoint by Edwin J. Feulner Violence begins in broken homes President Trump administration grabs the wheel Points to Ponder by Rev. Ford Bond Church without a Cross, Part I Conversations with kids My Point of View by Dr. H. K. Fenol, Jr., M.D. I was browsing through some online postings and saw an item that my sister had sent me. Like myself, we both babysit our grand- kids a lot, they are in the early phase of their elementary school- ing. So we get to talking to our grandkids a lot after school when they visit. Years ago when Rose and I were raising our kids, we did not have the luxury of the technology we enjoy or endure today. So now we get so many new ideas about ev- erything. Some are good, some are not that good. So let me focus what my sister had sent me and it caught my attention. The subject was about ideas on what to ask kids when you get to take care of them after school, when they get to connect with us for what ever reason. Many years ago, we would ask standard ques- tions like " How was school today? " To which kids have a standard an- swer-" Fine." Then we follow it up with anoth- er question, "What did you do to- day? " To which you get another standard answer, "Nothing". Hmmmm. I needed more conversation here. "Are you hungry? " Is the third question to which we get a va- riety of responses. " Yes," or "No," or " I just had a snack." So I read up a little bit more on what questions some research- ers found out might stimulate more conversations and get the kids talking. Let me share some of them 1. "What is something you did Continued on page 8 Continued on page 8 Continued on page 8 The Weekly by Alden Heuring Catch that fever Minority View by Walter E. Williams Enough's enough Continued on page 8 Continued on page 8 During the weekend of Aug. 4-5 (and the preceding Friday night), 12 Chicagoans were shot dead, and 62 others were shot and wound- ed, the Chicago Tribune reported (https://tinyurl.com/yde7jb83). Before last week's mayhem, 1,718 Chicagoans had been shot since the beginning of the year, and 306 had been murdered. Adding to this tragedy is the fact that Chicago's clearance rate is less than 15 per- cent. That means that in more than 85 percent of Chicago's homicides, no suspect is charged. Chicago is by no means unique in this law- lessness. Detroit, Baltimore, Phil- adelphia, St. Louis and some oth- er major cities share high rates of homicides. It's not just shootings and ho- micides that negatively impact the overwhelmingly law-abiding black residents of these cities. In addition, there are sky-high rates of burglaries, rapes and property destruction. The schools are no- toriously bad. City budgets face shortfalls. Residents deal with de- teriorating city services. All of this causes mass exoduses from these cities by their most capable peo- ple. Ordinary decency demands that something be done to address the horrible conditions under which so many black Americans live. White liberals, black politicians and sports figures focus most of their attention on what the police do, but how relevant is that to the overall tragedy? According to Washing- ton Post data, as of July 9, 626 peo- ple had been shot and killed by po- lice this year. Of that number, 114 were black. Last year, 987 people were shot and killed by police, of which 223 were black (http://tinyurl.com/ ycn77jkj). To put po- lice shootings in a bit of perspective, in Chi- cago alone in 2017, there were 674 homi- cides, almost 80 per- cent of whose victims were black. It would appear that if one is truly concerned about black deaths, shootings by police should figure way down on one's list — which is not to excuse bad behav- ior by some police officers. Would getting more blacks and Democrats in political office help? It turns out that of the Chicago City Council's 50 aldermen, on- ly one is Republican. One is an in- dependent. Forty-eight aldermen are Democrats, and 19 are black. In fact, most of the cities where large segments of their black cit- izenry live under horrible con- ditions have been controlled by Democrats for nearly a half-cen- tury, and there are many blacks on the instruments of control, such as chiefs of police, superintendents of schools and members of city coun- cils. If Democratic and black con- trol meant anything, these cities would be paradises. How helpful to these desper- ate black communities are the ef- forts of so many black politicians to focus on allegations about Pres- ident Donald Trump's ties to Rus- sia? The leader of the movement to impeach Trump is Rep. Maxine Waters. Her congressional district suffers from high crime rates and failing schools. She, like most other black politicians, claims that she is helping her con- stituency by doing all she can to fight to get more taxpayer money to her district. More money from taxpayers could not fix the problems of these communities. Over the past 50 years, more than $16 trillion has been spent on poverty programs. The majority of those programs have simply made poverty more comfortable by giving poor people more food, health care, housing, etc. What's needed most is to get poor people to change their behav- ior. Chief among the modifications is reducing female-headed house- holds. Female-headed house- holds produce most of our prison inmates, the highest crime rates and disproportionate numbers of high school dropouts and suicides. These devastating factors are far beyond the capacity of Washing- ton to fix. The only people who can fix these problems are black people themselves. Black athletes could be far more productive by going to schools and community cen- ters to encourage constructive be- Pursuit of the Cure by Star Parker Note: this column was writ- ten under the influence of gener- ic antihistamines, so please par- don any resulting incoherence. Once again, despite all my best intentions, all the orange juice, and all the bragging about my im- mune system, I've caught a cold from the girls. And once again, I am the biggest baby when I have a cold, more so than even the ba- by. I've spent the weekend milking my illness for extra time laying on the couch, extra naps, extra cookies, and the opposite of ex- tra chores. Unfortunately, work starts Monday, and I doubt my boss will be as accommodating as my wife. So I'll have to prepare myself for functioning and creating value, even when I'm blow- ing my nose twice a minute. My solution: a weekday survival kit. First things first, and orange juice thermos. Gotta keep pumping the body up with 2000 percent daily value of Vitamin C. Second, extra layers. If I'm go- ing to be hiding at my desk all day typing so that I don't have to drag my snot-filled body out in front of people, I might as well be co- zy and warm doing it. And last, but not least, over-the-coun- ter drugs! Noth- ing will cure a com- mon cold, but lots of things take the edge off. My wife told me to take an antihista- mine, so I said "OK," but I suppose I'll have to find something non-drowsy for my desk. Here's hoping that none of you, and none of my coworkers, catch what I caught. Have a great week! To hear some in the media tell it, the Trump administration's de- cision to freeze fuel-economy stan- dards for cars and trucks is a mas- sive detour from common sense. "Highly problematic," a Forbes contributor puts it. "Hard to jus- tify on economic, social, environ- mental, or legal grounds." CNN Money says "weaker fuel econo- my would mean a world of chaos." And The New York Times editori- al board calls the administration's move "a reckless scheme" that's "based on bad science, bad math, and bad faith." Just the opposite, actually. It was the Obama administration's move to increase CAFE (Corporate Av- erage Fuel Economy) standards that was steering us in the wrong direction. This is simply a case of the current administration grab- bing the wheel and doing a little much-needed course correction. When you consider that CAFE was created in the mid-1970s in re- sponse to the OPEC oil crisis, it may seem surprising that we're dealing with it so many years later. But as Ronald Reagan once said, "A government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth," and the same cer- tainly holds true for a government program. So CAFE standards have not only not gone away, they've done what so many other regulations do: become bigger. And in the pro- cess, they've raised prices and re- duced consumer choice. The Bureau of Labor Statistics measured the quality-adjusted av- erage price of new vehicles and found that from the mid-1990s un- til 2008, when CAFE standards re- mained mostly steady, the average vehicle price fell steadily. Since the Obama-era standards took ef- fect, as researchers Salim Furth and David Kreuter pointed out in a 2016 paper, average new car pric- es have risen to $ 6,200 above the trend line. Can we say categorically that the increase is due solely to high- er CAFE standards? No, but the increase is consistent with what economists predicted would hap- pen when the new standards took effect. And when we look at how vehicle prices had been decreas- ing before the new standards? Seems like quite a coincidence. It doesn't take much to affect prices. According to Mark Jacob- sen of the University of California- San Diego, the total consumer cost of just a 1 mpg increase in CAFE standards after five years is $20.87 billion per year. Who bears the cost? Domes- tic automakers and consumers, of course. But not all pay equally. In fact, the poor are hardest hit by higher CAFE standards. "A fter 10 years' adjustment," Mr. Loris says, "the burden of the regulations will fall most heavily on households with incomes below $25,000." Worse, at least from a govern- ment standpoint, is that Americans just won't buy the lightweight ve- hicles they're "supposed to." They want cars that are faster and more powerful. The government can de- mand vehicles that get 54.5 miles per gallon all it wants, but con- sumers want ones with a decent amount of horsepower, not ti- ny gas-sippers that can't protect them sufficiently in an accident, or enable them to haul the people and the things they need to move around on a daily basis. Not everyone loses under higher CAFE standards, though. In fact, so-called "green" companies make out rather handsomely. As economist Nicolas Loris points out, if you're an electric-ve- hicle maker, and you collect cred- its from other autos, or from pol- icies that reward zero-emissions credits, it makes your balance sheet look pretty good. There's a huge transfer of wealth from pick- up drivers and everyday Ameri- cans to politically connected com- panies and wealthy individuals who don't need a $7,500 tax credit to buy a vehicle. But they get one