The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/1032308
The Press-Dispatch Wednesday, September 26, 2018 B-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 While questioning Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh about abortion during his Senate confirmation hearings, Senator Dianne Feinstein grossly misstat- ed statistics about abortion deaths before Roe v. Wade. "In the 1950s and 1960s, two de- cades before Roe, deaths from il- legal abortions in this country ran between 200,000 and 1.2 million. That's according to the Guttmach- er Institute." The Guttmacher Institute has very close ties to the abortion lob- by, but even their numbers proved Feinstein way off base. The Guttmacher study actual- ly reported 200,000 to 1.2 million as the number of procedures. Re- garding actual deaths, in 1965, for example, there were 200, accord- ing to Guttmacher. When corrected, Feinstein was dismissive of the gravity of her er- ror. "So, a lot of women died in that period," she demurred. Feinstein's distortion of data points to the agenda driving this new discussion from the left to derail the Kavanaugh vote by any means necessary. Nothing, certainly not facts, will get in the way of their attempts to control the courts, regardless of any collateral damage done to the reputation of an upstanding and decent man. Thus we can understand the sudden emergence of Christine Blasey Ford and her claim that Brett Kavanaugh sexually assault- ed her in 1982, when she was 15 and he was 17. As reported in The Washing- ton Post, Ford, a vocal progressive and pro-Democrat donor, wrote to Feinstein, the ranking Democrat Recently, Thomas Lambrecht, Vice president of Good News, asked the question: What Is a "Good" Witness? Good News is an organization of United Methodist laity and clergy who are dedicated to maintain a message of evangelism and teach- ings of John Wesley and the histor- ical church, which places the Good News supporters at odds with ma- ny progressives and liberals Lambrecht mentions that as the Methodist church approaches the 2019 General Conference, a Clar- ian Call is being made by groups supporting removing restrictive language toward gay clergy to set aside all differences for the sake of unity and it will produce a "good witness to the world, and that any sort of structural separation would be a bad one." The question arises how is one to maintain a good wit- ness when they are out of step with secular culture and elements within the church? The Progressives quote the prayer of Jesus found in John 17:20 -23:"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you." This prayer set the foundation for the Apostle Paul's writing to the church at Ephesus explaining why God had set in the church apostles, prophets, and others "… to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up un- til we all reach uni- ty in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and be- come mature, attain- ing to the whole mea- sure of the fullness of Christ. " The church became a mature witness cen- turies ago, but in our modern era elements inside and outside the church demand uni- ty for the sake of unity, while dis- membering its transformational power. Lambretch remarks that the unity desired by Jesus within the Heritage Viewpoint by Edwin J. Feulner Feinstein vs. Kavanaugh Upgrading to Tax Reform 2.0 Points to Ponder by Rev. Ford Bond Be a good witness Kids say... My Point of View by Dr. H. K. Fenol, Jr., M.D. Having thus periods of quiet mo- ments since my grandkids have re- turned to school, and now that we have a once a week visit by them especially on weekends, I have some time to reminisce things that reverberate in my mind. Although in med school and dur- ing training and practice I learned pediatrics fairly well, I thought I knew it all. But no, there were ex- periences with my grandkids that I did not find in my books and train- ing. I'm sure many grandparents doing baby sitting and moms and dads raising their kids or grand- kids especially the toddlers, all have some funny things to share. Brace yourselves. Here's some memorable ones I reminisce with glee. Kids say these things. 1. When your mom is mad at your dad, don't let her brush your hair. 2. You can't hide broccoli in a glass of milk. Do not quietly throw them on the floor, it will be found. 3. You can't trust your dog to watch your food. They are fast and sneaky. 4. If your sister hits you, don't hit her back. They always catch the second person. 5. No matter how hard you try, you cannot baptize cats. 6. Don't eat chocolate candies when you're told not to. They al- ways leave a smear around your lips. 7. We're not running and screaming all the time Mom. We just got lots of energy. And we're not sleepy or tired. 8. It's real fun to jump on pud- dles of water. 9. This is a dreadful one. Let's go Continued on page 14 Continued on page 14 Continued on page 14 The Weekly by Alden Heuring Season's turn Minority View by Walter E. Williams Reasoning about race Continued on page 14 Continued on page 14 So much of our reasoning about race is both emotional and faulty. In ordinary, as well as profession- al, conversation, we use terms such as discrimination, prejudice, ra- cial preferences and racism inter- changeably, as if they referred to the same behavior. We can avoid many pitfalls of misguided think- ing about race by establishing oper- ational definitions so as to not con- fuse one behavior with another. Discrimination can be operation- ally defined as an act of choice. Our entire lives are spent choosing to do or not to do thousands of activi- ties. Choosing requires non-choos- ing. When you chose to read this column, you discriminated against other possible uses of your time. When you chose a spouse, you dis- criminated against other people. When I chose Mrs. Williams, I sys- tematically discriminated against other women. Much of it was racial. Namely, I discriminated against white women, Asian women, fat women and women with crim- inal backgrounds. In a word, I didn't offer ev- ery woman an equal opportunity, and they didn't offer me an equal opportunity. One might be tempted to argue that racial discrimination in mar- riage is trivial and does not have important social consequences, but it does. When high-IQ and high-in- come people marry other high-IQ and high-income people, and to the extent there is a racial correlation between these characteristics, ra- cial discrimination in mate selec- tion enhances the in- equality in the popu- lation's intelligence and income distribu- tion. There would be greater income equal- ity if high-IQ and high- income people mar- ried low-IQ and low- income people. But I imagine that most peo- ple would be horrified by the suggestion of a mandate to require the same. Prejudice is a perfectly useful term, but it is used improperly. Its Latin root is praejudicium — mean- ing prejudgment. Prejudice can be operationally defined as mak- Pursuit of the Cure by Star Parker The leaves are still green, but the clouds and the chilly breezes of autumn are here. When the seasons change, it's good for us to change with them, even if just a little. Mark Twain, while living in California, put it this way in his travelogue Rough- ing It: "No land with an unvarying cli- mate can be very beautiful. The tropics are not, for all the senti- ment that is wasted on them. They seem beautiful at first, but same- ness impairs the charm by and by. Change is the handmaiden Nature requires to do her miracles with. The land that has four well-de- fined seasons, cannot lack beau- ty, or pall with monotony. Each season brings a world of enjoy- ment and interest in the watching of its unfolding, its grad- ual, harmonious devel- opment, its culminat- ing graces- -and just as one begins to tire of it, it passes away and a rad- ical change comes, with new witcheries and new glories in its train. And I think that to one in sympathy with nature, each season, in its turn, seems the loveliest." And I agree. So as we tiptoe into autumn, I'm happy to make a few small changes to celebrate. First up is hot breakfasts. Much to my dismay, I normally just take a Pop-Tart to work with me for breakfast. But on the weekends, I take my time and savor a nice bowl of cereal. Now that it's fall, I can start heat- ing up a nice bowl of oatmeal to savor in- stead. (I drink hot coffee all year, so that's obviously not changing.) Second is my work clothes. Now, a facto- ry is going to be warm no matter the season, but we at least drop from the nineties to the seventies over the cold months. So I can put away the T-shirts and break out As I've noted in a couple of re- cent columns, Americans from all walks of life have reason to be grateful for last year's tax cuts. They've proved to be quite a boon. The ink was hardly dry before companies began offering workers bonuses and pay raises. Employ- ment is on such an upswing that jobs outnumber job applicants. The typical household will enjoy a $1,400 tax cut this year. Aver- age wages went up by 2.9 percent last month — the largest wage in- crease since 2009. But lawmakers shouldn't rest on their laurels. They would be wise to lock in the gains that we've been enjoying — and ensure that they continue. Fortunately, some members of Congress have the same idea. Let's look at three crucial ways that we can bring about Tax Re- form 2.0. The first and most obvious: Make last year's cuts permanent. Right now, they aren't. Key pro- visions of the tax cut — such as lower rates, larger standard de- ductions for single and married filers, and a doubled child tax credit — are slated to expire af- ter 2025. That's a mistake. If peo- ple and companies can know that those provisions won't disappear in a few years, they can grow the economy even more. So step one is a no-brainer: Re- move the uncertainty. Get rid of that expiration date, as the Pro- tecting Family and Small Business Tax Cuts Act of 2018 would do. Step two of Tax Reform 2.0 : Sim- plify and expand family savings. Many Americans take advan- tage of the tax benefits of 401(k) s and other retirement savings ac- counts. Yet others, deterred by their complexity and high compli- ance costs, fail to use these impor- tant tools. It's time to change that. "Tax reform 2.0 will work to al- low small employers to pool to- gether to offer retirement benefits, repeal the maximum age for new contributions, add new exemptions from minimum distribution rules, as well as other modifications," writes tax expert Adam Michel. But it's not just retirement sav- ings that need a boost. Tax Re- form 2.0 includes a new univer- sal savings account that would let taxpayers contribute up to $2,500 to invest and spend on their fam- ily's priorities — just like savings for retirement, but without all the strings. $2,500 is better than noth- ing, of course, but why so low? It should be higher. Or what about education sav- ings? Last year's tax legislation made it so parents could use "529" plans for not just college, but for K-12 expenses. Great, but now it's time to expand them to home- schooling and other "non-tradi- tional" education costs. All of these savings reforms — along with one that would allow families to access retirement ac- counts to support parental leave for the birth or adoption of a new child — are part of the "Family Savings Act of 2018," introduced by Rep. Frank Kelly, Pennsylvania Republican. The third component of Tax Re- form 2.0 : Encourage new business- es by lowering start-up costs. Under current law, new busi- nesses can deduct only up to $5,000 of their initial start-up ex- penses. That means they have to write off the remaining costs over the next 15 years. You don't have to be a business owner to realize that $5,000 is ri- diculously low. The amount should be significantly higher. (The American Innovation Act of 2018 would raise it to $20,000.) In an ideal world, businesses wouldn't have to wait years to deduct start- up expenses. The law should be changed to let them do so imme- diately. Last year's tax cut has done a lot of good work so far. As a quick stop at taxesandjobs.com shows, taxpayers in every single congres- sional district are benefitting. But it wasn't a perfect fix. If we want to ensure that the glowing econom- ic news we've been hearing lately Banned Books Week Lucid Moments by Bart Stinson Continued on page 14 Continued on page 14 You may have noticed displays for Banned Books Week in your library. Its promoters, Amnesty International and the American Library Association (AL A), de- scribe it as an annual "awareness campaign" that "celebrates the freedom to read, draws attention to banned and challenged books, and highlights persecuted indi- viduals." It's a week of hyperbole and self- congratulation as the AL A frames itself as the adult in the room, showing film of ritual Nazi book burnings in the 1930s and insin- uating that parental objections to depraved children's books spring from the same impulse. "To Kill a Mockingbird" comes in at number 7 on the AL A's "10 Most Challenged" list this year. I had my doubts about that, as a sta- tistical claim. The list is compiled by the AL A's Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF). So I read an in- terview of OIF Assistant Director Kristin Pekoll, in which she answered some questions about methodology. She admitted that the Top 10 list is "a rep- resentation of the state of book challenges, not a strict statistical tally." She said the numbers aren't rigorously tab- ulated, and that the Top 10 format is "kind of a tradition, and it's how we've always promoted and talked about banned books." So these professionals whom we trust for accurate reports and impartial analysis aren't ob- sessed with data or accurate cal- culations. They re- ly on their overall impressions, and they report factual claims to us based on their preferences and habits of mind. They aren't neutral umpires. They have their own point of view. Pekoll said it's "hopeful" that "there's an AL A Emerging Leaders group [that] is going to work on a project for school libraries about protecting intellectual freedom in school li- braries, particularly for LGBTQ materials."