The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/1202802
C-8 Wednesday, Januar y 22, 2020 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 I'm sure a lot of the readers have heard and seen the Taal volcano eruption in the Philippines which happened just this past week. Strangely enough, some of my family on a tour of the Philippines got to see a close up of the volca- no sometime in June 2019. It was a fascinating sight beautiful and tru- ly majestic. Now that it had awak- ened and erupted, a bunch of my relatives and friends who live in the area affected feed us news about what things are happening. It is indeed upsetting to hear many scary and terrifying stories. Examples of what I heard are the rumbles and mild earthquakes they feel as the volcano erupts, the ashes that have fallen to the ground covering everything. Some of the ashes were as deep as three to four feet from the ground es- pecially for the areas near the volcano. I was told was most of the crops like cof- fee, fruits and vegeta- bles and livestock have been covered with the ash. Livestock like pigs, chicken, horses, water buffalos were killed, being choked by the fumes and ash- es. Roofs of buildings and hous- es and other structures had a fair amount of ashes, so they had to shovel them out before they solid- ify from rain or moisture. Appar- ently they will become like mud or cement and they can collapse structures due to the weight. One of the things that real- ly stressed them out was the absence of wa- ter because electricity had quit since the gen- erators could not be operated, and water pumps could not be supplied with power. Evacuations had cre- ated very heavy traf- fic as thousands of ve- hicles headed to safer evacuation centers on the outlying distant places. The rivers available for use were now mixed with ashes and became unusable. I could go on and on and the more I describe their challenges and misery, the Many of you have read of the "proposed" split of the United Methodist Church over the issue of LGBT inclusion and sexuality. These issues are an outgrowth of modernism that began to creep into the church by the late 1800s. If one could sift the issues into man- ageable categories, what becomes the core of the ongoing debate is the personage of Christ and His mission, and the authority of the scriptures. What emerge from this debate are two major groups-one group embraces the historical "ortho- dox" church that embraces the teachings of the church across time. The other group embraces a modern stance and holds that God's word is progressive across time and he reveals His will in different ways for different eras. As a caveat, what the church is experi- encing mirrors Amer- ican culture and pol- itics. Cultural pro- gressives demand the church take a backseat to the mor- al life of America and mind its own affairs. This is similar to the Old Testament cry of "everyman to his own tent," and "everyman did what he saw as right" – "And The Beat Goes On! " A nation and cul- ture so divided can- not endure. In the church and in poli- tics the "middle" has eroded to such a de- gree that it is almost invisible. The middle are individuals who carry enough influence they can bring the warring factions togeth- My Point of View By Dr. H. K. Fenol, Jr., M.D. Points to Ponder By Rev. Ford Bond Volcano The beat goes on Minority View By Walter E. Williams Unappreciated crime costs Continued on page 9 Continued on page 9 Continued on page 9 Continued on page 9 Criminal activity imposes huge costs on black residents in low-in- come neighborhoods of cities such as Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, St. Louis, Philadelphia and many others. Thousands of black Amer- icans were murdered in 2019. Over 90 % of the time, the perpetrator was also black. Leftists and social justice warriors charge that what blacks have to fear most is being shot and killed by police, but the numbers don't add up. For sever- al years, The Washington Post has been documenting police shoot- ings in America. Last year, 933 people were shot and killed by po- lice. Twenty-three percent (212) of people shot and killed were black; 35% (331) were white; 16 % (155) were Hispanic and 201 were of oth- er or unknown races. The high ho- micide rate within the black com- munity doesn't begin to tell the full tragedy. Crime imposes a hefty tax on people who can least afford it. They are the law- abiding residents of black neighborhoods. Residents must bear the time cost and oth- er costs of having to shop outside of their neighborhoods. Su- permarkets that are abundant in low-crime neighbor- hoods are absent or scarce in high- crime, low-income neighborhoods. Because of the paucity of super- markets and other big-box stores in these neighborhoods, some "ex- perts" and academicians have la- beled them as "food deserts." That's the ridiculous suggestion that white supermarket merchants and big-box store owners don't like green dollars coming out of black hands. The true villains of the piece are the crim- inals who make some businesses unprof- itable. By the way, these are equal oppor- tunity criminals. They will victimize a black- owned business just as they would victimize a white- owned business. The high crime rates in many black neighbor- hoods have the effect of outlaw- ing economic growth and oppor- tunities. In low-crime neighborhoods, FedEx, UPS and other delivery Pursuit of the Cure By Star Parker Rethinking Roe v. Wade Lucid Moments By Bart Stinson Thug meets girl Angela Davis wasn't the first un- attached woman to develop an ar- dent romantic connection with a prison pen pal. But George Jack- son was no run-of-the-mill jailbird. If he actually wrote the collected letters in Soledad Brother, he was a talented writer. But in other ways, Jackson was a very ordinary criminal. An incor- rigible thief and streetfighter ed- ucated in Chicago Catholic paro- chial schools, he put his decent, self-sacrificing parents through the wringer until (and well after) he ended up in the California cor- rectional system, graduating from the youth system to adult prisons. He eventually got killed in prison, but not before he got his young- er brother killed in a bloody show- down with police. The tone of his letters home was condescending and sometimes menacing. He often referred to his parents by their first names. He was apparently incapable of gratitude. His prose style is sim- ilar to Black homosexual novel- ist James Baldwin's writing, an- gry and grandiose. He was a nar- cissist who raged that the world, starting with his parents, refused to recognize and conform to his obvious genius. He was always right, and tolerated no doubters. He was a good match for Ange- la Davis, a privileged young Ala- bama-born Communist who had studied on the East Coast and in Europe, and was mentored at Brandeis by Herbert Marcuse. She was an uncompromising supporter of the Soviet Union and the East- ern Bloc police states. Prison Abolitionism (Or Not) It's quite ironic that Davis styles herself a prison abolitionist now- adays. A fter Soviet tanks rolled across Czechoslovakia to crush the "Prague Spring" and 80,000 troops lingered to enforce the cli- ent regime's will, Czech dissidents appealed to her to speak out for the political prisoners there. Her an- swer: "They deserve what they get. Let them remain in prison." When the claustrophobic Sovi- et regime refused to allow its Jews to practice their religion at home and refused to let them emigrate abroad to practice it in Israel, Da- vis was utterly unsympathetic to the refuseniks and prisoners of conscience. "They are all Zionist fascists and opponents of social- ism," she told attorney Alan Der- showitz. She is, to be blunt, a fake prison abolitionist. How to Delegate Revolution Davis is also a fake revolution- ary. She has led a life of extraordi- nary privilege, and has deftly shift- ed others to the front lines to do her fighting for her. A fter Jackson's 17-year-old brother Jonathan visited him in jail twice in a week, Davis bought a shotgun at a pawn shop for the skinny boy. On the following day, the shotgun reappeared at the Marin County courthouse, sawed off, loaded and taped to trial judge Harold Haley's throat in a screw- ball attempt to spring the elder Jackson and other criminals from prison. Women from the jury were bound with piano wire and herd- ed down the corridors as human shields. A fter the inevitable police block- ade, the shoot-out left four dead, including Jackson's little broth- er and Judge Haley, a father of three daughters. Jackson's com- ment about the lad he and Davis put in harm's way: "He was free for a while. I guess that's more than most of us can expect." Malignant narcissists, especially the articu- late and well-educated variety, can dress up the foulest offense in no- ble and self-flattering language. Exploiters and Loafers on Faculty Deploying young people on self- destructive projects was some- thing of a cottage industry for California academics like Mar- cuse, who had moved west to the University of California at San Di- ego, and San Jose State's Harry Edwards, who rode young Olym- pians Tommie Smith and John Car- los to bigger and better appoint- ments. It worked for them, and it worked later for Davis who now draws a six-figure retirement sal- Over the holidays, I read Elton John's biography, "Me." He writes about his friendship with Freddie Mercury, the ultratalented lead singer of the rock group Queen. Mercury tragically died of AIDS at the age of 45 in 1991. Mercury was one of the last people to die of the disease in Britain during the epidemic years. John writes sad- ly and almost offhandedly that if Mercury had lived one year lon- ger, he probably would have sur- vived because of the AIDS med- ication that eventually saved mil- lions of lives. Then, a few days ago, we all read on the front pages of newspa- pers the amazing story that cancer death rates (age-adjusted) have fallen to their lowest level in de- cades. Millions of lives saved. We are winning the race for the cure remarkably quickly. The decline in the death rate is due in part to the considerable drop in smoking, but it's also because of new drug thera- pies and treatments to combat tumors. Deaths from heart disease have also fall- en dramatically in re- cent decades, though in recent years, obe- sity in America has slowed progress. Still, new wonder drugs to deal with strokes and di- abetes have played a major role. According to a report in the Jour- nal of the American Medical As- sociation, the total age-adjusted mortality rates per 100,000 peo- ple changed from 266.5 in 1999 to 165.0 in 2017 for heart disease; from 61.6 to 37.6 for stroke; and from 25.0 to 21.5 for diabetes." The public is roughly twice as likely to survive a cancer diagno- sis or a heart attack to- day compared with four decades ago. Then, I turned on the T V and listened to the politicians vilify drug companies as public enemies. Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren refers to pharmaceu- tical firms as "corrupt cartels" that "rig the rules, insu- late themselves from accountabil- ity, and line their pockets at the expense of American families." Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has likened drug company CEOs to murderers and says when they raise prices too much, we should "put them in jail." Continued on page 9 Continued on page 9 In March 2020, the Supreme Court will rule on the constitu- tionality of Louisiana's new abor- tion law, which requires that phy- sicians doing abortions have ad- mitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the clinic. Under the leadership of House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, an amicus — "friend of the court" — brief supporting the law was just filed, signed by 207 members of Congress, 39 senators and 168 House members. A press release from Scalise summarizes the arguments made and lists a number of conserva- tive organizations supporting the brief, one of which is my organi- zation — the Center for Urban Re- newal and Education. What makes this filing partic- ularly interesting is not just the sheer volume of congressional signatories — almost 40 % of the Senate and House combined; it's also the fact that it goes further than just arguing support for the constitutionality of the Louisiana law to suggest that the widespread confusion regarding abortion law ties directly to the confusing ba- sic premises under which abor- tion was found constitutional in the 1973 Roe v. Wade and the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey de- cisions. The brief urges the Supreme Court to cast new scrutiny on these two landmark decisions that have defined the abortion le- gal landscape. Asking the Supreme Court to reconsider Roe v. Wade is provoc- ative, to say the least. But it is also courageous and on target. How can we possibly function as a nation when an issue as crit- ical as abortion defies consensus as to its constitutional pedigree as well as its morality? Can there be any better evi- dence of this confusion than re- calling the famous interchange in August 2008 when Pastor Rick Warren asked then-presidential candidate Barack Obama, "At what point does a baby get human rights, in your view? " Obama, a Harvard-educated lawyer who would go on to be twice elected president, replied lamely, "answering that question ... is above my pay grade." Yet despite his candor about his inability to clarify the biologi- cal and legal status of the unborn child, he didn't hesitate to be the first sitting American president to address the national meeting of Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion provider, and tell them, "God bless you." There is a well-known expres- sion from the world of computing that says, "garbage in, garbage out." Faulty premises will produce faulty results and output. This is a pretty good summa- ry of what has been happening to American culture since the Roe v. Wade decision. Once sanctity of life and its le- gal protections became ambigu- ous, our entire culture began to unravel. The percentage of American adults married since Roe v. Wade has dropped by one-third. The per- centage of children in households with married parents is down 15% , and the percentage of babies born to unwed mothers up over 300 % . The last decade, according the Census Bureau, is estimated to have the slowest 10 -year growth in the U.S. population since the first census was taken in 1790. The Census Bureau forecasts that by 2034, for the first time, there will be more Americans over age 65 than under 18. And, of course, we cannot over- look the damage our national soul has incurred by looking away as 61,628,584 babies have been de- stroyed in the womb since 1973, as the Guttmacher Institute reports. In the latest Gallup polling, 49 % identified as pro-life and 46 % as pro-choice. Fifty percent say abortion is "morally wrong," and 42 % say it is "morally acceptable." For the 47th time, hundreds of thousands will arrive in Washing- ton for the March for Life, noting the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, Jan. 22, 1973. Heritage Viewpoint By Stephen Moore Why does D.C. demonize drug companies?