The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/1368373
C-4 Wednesday, May 5, 2021 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 Police reform and personal responsibility It is indeed rare, if not unprece- dented, to see a highly diverse group of organizations such as the conser- vative Alliance Defending Freedom, the liberal American Civil Liberties Union, the libertarian Cato Insti- tute and the Reason Foundation on the same page as the NA ACP Legal Defense and Education Fund on the same issue. But it is happening as the U.S. Sen- ate takes up police reform. The issue is a legal doctrine known as qualified immunity. These diverse organizations all agree that qualified immunity is bad law and should end. The discussion is particular- ly high-powered today because it stands at the center of police reform that many see is needed in the wake of incidents such as the murder of George Floyd by former police offi- cer Derek Chauvin. The nation's first major civil rights law, the Civil Rights Act of 1871, passed shortly after the Civil War, contains a provision known as Sec- tion 1983 that protects citizens from violation of their civil rights by gov- ernment officials. It says that a gov- ernment official who violates a citi- zen's civil rights is liable and can be sued by the injured party. Thus stood the law, until a series of Supreme Court decisions from 1967 to 1982 reinterpreted its application. A new standard, qualified immu- nity, was added saying that it must be shown that rights were violated per "clearly established law." That is, there must be a previous case in which rights were violated the exact same way. So, if a citizen's rights are violat- ed but there is no previous case in which rights were violated in exactly that way, there is no protection. The government official is immune from liability. Although the law applies to viola- tion of a citizen's civil rights by any government official, the hot button today is violations by police. The qualified immunity doctrine makes establishing liability next to impossible, thus removing a serious deterrent against police violating civ- il rights in their law enforcement ac- tivities. Police leadership and unions ar- gue that qualified immunity is essen- tial for them to do their job. This is a tough and dangerous business, they say, and split-second law enforce- ment decisions must be made, often under great uncertainty, sometimes with life-and-death implications. But police officers being able to make deadly decisions, with no sense of personal responsibility and costs, leads to some of the horrors that we are seeing today. Derek Chauvin had 18 complaints against him before he committed his final deadly act against George Floyd. Had the incident, in all its go- ry and tragic details, not been cap- tured on video by a young onlooker, the legal outcome likely would have been much different. Personal responsibility must be the hallmark in a free country, whether we're talking about obeying the law or enforcing it. When right and wrong become ambiguous, when personal responsibility becomes am- biguous, we see the chaos we are wit- nessing today. Police officers perform a vital func- tion in our society. But what does law enforcement mean when law has no meaning? And law has no meaning if officers have free license to violate citizens' civil rights. A creative solution has been pro- posed by the Cato Institute: Require police officers to carry liability in- surance, like other professionals do. This would provide them the cover- age they need. And those who are fla- grant violators, like Derek Chauvin, would be priced out of the market. The only stalwart on the Supreme Court questioning the status quo on qualified immunity has been Clar- ence Thomas. Thomas is an originalist — read the law as written — and opposed to judicial activism. He has written that qualified immunity is "the sort of 'freewheeling policy choice(s)' that we have previously disclaimed the power to make." Thomas has urged the court to take on and review this issue. "I con- Another pro-President Joe Biden union just told it's rank-and-file mem- bers: Sorry, guys, you are all fired. Last week, the United Mine Work- ers of America union endorsed Biden's energy policies. Yes, you read that right. The coal-mining union bosses have embraced a bill that outlaws coal mining. This is about as dumb as the Pipefitters Union endorsing Biden for president. He repaid them with his first act as president — killing the Keystone pipeline. So now we have the Pipefitters Union against pipelines and the coal miners union against coal. Did anyone bother to actually ask the rank-and-file members what they thought? Can they get their union dues back? They should. The livelihoods of more than 50,000 coal miners just got sold down the river by their own union bosses. And for what? So these miners can be given Biden welfare checks, or so min- ing jobs, which typ- ically pay $75,000 a year, can be re- placed with solar panel installation? Ask any miner about that trade, as I have, and they will laugh in your face. United Mine Workers of America president Benedict Arnold — actual- ly, his name is Cecil Roberts — con- ceded that his union members "may lose a few more jobs here," but he defended his capitu- lation to the Biden anti-coal radicals by saying: "We're trying to, first of all, insert ourselves to the extent that we can in this conversation because our people, a lot of coal miners in this country, their families have suffered already some traumatic loss- es." So his solution is to make the trau- ma a whole lot worse thanks to his Neville Chamberlain appeasement to the green energy fanatics of his industry. Venezuela once had a vibrant middle class, despite flaws in gov- ernance. However, as two students who grew up in Venezuela explained in a Heritage Foundation webinar, em- bracing the socialist regimes of Hu- go Chavez and Nicolas Maduro even- tually led to utter ruin for all but that country's elite. Not only was Venezuela impover- ished as a whole, but the middle class saw a severe decline in prosperity. Many became so impoverished they were unable to put food on the table. The two students spoke last Wednesday about their experience growing up in Venezuela and offered a warning about what embracing re- al socialism actually means. Andrés Guilarte, a university stu- dent and outreach fellow at The Fund for American Studies, said his coun- try was once prosperous. He grew up in a stable home without want. Things began to change in a bad way, Guilarte said, when Chavez was elected presi- dent in 1999; the de- cline became swift starting in 2013, so much so that "we didn't even know if we'd have three meals a day." "The government in Venezuela, they didn't care if peo- ple didn't like that, they didn't care if their liberties were going to be tak- en or their lives were going to be left out of options," Guilarte said. It got so bad, he explained, that even middle-class families often were reduced to eating garbage. Jorge Andrés Galicia Rodriguez, also a university student and out- reach fellow at The Fund for Ameri- can Studies, described a similar ex- perience. "When I was a child, I used to have great birthday parties. I used to have the latest versions of my favorite video games. My life was really, really great for me and my whole family," Ro- driguez said, adding: But then since at least the year 2013, 2014, that situation changed almost completely to the point that where in my house, for example, we didn't even have constant water sup- ply. Electricity was constant- ly failing, food was really hard to come by. Rodriguez said he saw his life "transformed" into something dra- matically worse. He recounted a sto- ry about how his family attempted to help a homeless man, who told the family that he was more worried about them. Race for the Cure By Star Parker Continued on page 5 Last Tuesday, April 27, our Med- ical School Class of 1971 celebrat- ed our 50th anniversary by doing a zoom meeting at 9 p.m. (9 a.m. Ma- nila Philippines time). We all graduated from Universi- ty of St. Thomas Aquinas in Manila. Our school was founded in 1611 by the Dominican order , and our med- ical school was founded in 1871. Of our 150 medical school graduates, 75% eventually ended up training in the USA and became medical provid- ers of the United States Health Care professionals. Very few classmates returned home. A few never left the Philip- pines. I know of one who trained and stayed in Germany. Very few went to different parts of the world to work in missions. In the late 60s and early 70s, the USA opened it's doors to foreign graduates in antici- pation of a shortage of physicians, so at that time I took a qualifying exam in order to be able to be accepted into training programs. Fortunately, I made it. Canada was also opening its doors to foreign graduates and recognized US certifying exams. That's how I ended up in our northern neighbor, since it was much easier to obtain immigration papers in that country. In 1973, Canada only had 22 mil- lion residents in the vast land they occupy, while the US had close nearly 211 million resi- dents. Currently, US popula- tion is about 331million. Can- ada now has about 37 million. Readers may find it inter- esting to know the history of how and medical doctors from faraway lands end up here in the US. ••• So, let's zoom on the zoom meeting. It started with a prayer by a Bishop who is a brother to one of my classmates, followed by recognition of those who have gone to eternal rest, and then a paced roll call of ev- My Point of View By H. K. Fenol, Jr., M.D. Who are you? Continued on page 5 Continued on page 5 Continued on page 5 Continued on page 5 Give Me a Break By John Stossel Liberty Winning? Eye on the Economy By Stephen Moore Unions sell out workers for Biden energy plan Editor's note: Ford Bond's weekly column Points to Ponder will not appear this week or in the near future. Bond is on a medical leave and hopes to return soon. Do I live in an alternate universe? The media tell me my side is win- ning. Salon claims, "We all live in Koch- land, the Koch brothers' libertarian utopia." Tucker Carlson says, "Our lead- ership class remains resolutely lib- ertarian." What? Who? Not President Biden. Biden already spent $1.9 trillion on COVID-19 "recovery" mostly unre- lated to COVID. Now, he wants tril- lions more for an "infrastructure" bill, even though most of the spend- ing would not go to infrastructure. He's eager to regulate more, too. Maybe the pundits were talking about former President Trump. He tried to deregulate — a little. But Trump vilified trade and raised military spending, increasing our debt by trillions. We libertarians want to reduce debt and believe trade and immigration are good for Ameri- ca. Above all, we be- lieve the best gov- ernment governs least. That's not what I hear from most Democrats and Re- publicans. So, how can pundits from both left and right say libertarian ideas are winning? "In a way, we are winning," an- swers the Cato Institute's David Boaz, author of "The Libertarian Mind," in my latest video. "Over the past couple of hundred years, we've moved from a world where very few people had rights and markets were not free — to a world mostly marked by religious freedom, personal freedom, freedom of speech, property rights mar- kets, the rule of law." For most of history, no country had those things. As a result, says Boaz, "There was practically no economic growth, no increase in human rights and justice." Kings and tyrants ruled, enslaving people, stealing property and wag- ing wars that lasted decades. Then, in 1700 "suddenly, limited Heritage Viewpoint By Jarrett Stepman Venezuelan students warn about socialism Continued on page 5 Court Brighter Side By Janice Barniak Because people say everything happens for a reason My mother loves Tupperware — is it the lifetime guarantee? The par- ties? The little burp it makes when it's opened? I don't know. So when I heard my mom's Tupperware consul- tant, who is a first responder, saved a life while on vacation, I thought, yes, there's a story I want! What I didn't know at the time was my mother's Tupperware consultant is from Washington, Ind. She agreed to share her story, and it wasn't un- til she rolled into the Donut Bank in Princeton, and had spent an hour to get there, that I found out she isn't from here. This is a story about how every- thing happens for a reason. As a jour- nalist, I feel a responsibility to the stories people tell me; they're like eggs I collect delicately, and then hatch under a heat lamp called edit- ing. I feel like certain people's stories come to me because someone needs them. Maybe that person is you. So I'm going to tell it here, in my column anyway. I also gave the story to her hometown paper so that her boss and friends could know what she'd done. • • • Martin County Ambulance Ser- vice Director Tiffany Whaley, of Washington, shouldn't have been in a Columbus, Ohio-area Pilot Travel Center April 26 — she's gone over the 100 small decisions that led her there so many times in the last few days — if she hadn't taken a detour, if she hadn't stopped in Punxatawny earlier that day, if she hadn't picked the right bathroom stall, a young woman would be dead. Whaley was at the end of a vaca- tion with her son visiting her mother in Pennsylvania. She decided at the last minute she wanted to see the fa- mous Punxatawny Phil and give him a piece of her mind about the errat- ic weather — something her 17-year old son, Stephen, was less than en- thusiastic about. A fter the side trip, it was late, and she was ready to be home. When the GPS told her an accident was ahead, and a country detour would save her 15 minutes, she took the chance. "I never do that because I don't like getting off on country roads," she said. "But it had been a heck of a two weeks and I was tired." Down the road, the duo pulled in- to a Pilot Travel Center for a pit stop and a fill up. In the bathroom, Wha- ley heard a sound. "It's allergy season, and then there's COVID," she said. "I didn't think much of it. Then it happened again and I said, 'no, I know this noise.'" The noise was agonal breathing. • • • Let me note, since this is my col- umn, that when Tiffany explains ag- onal breathing, I can tell how many people have taken their last breath next to her. I can tell it's been too many people. She doesn't meet my eye when she describes the sound. • • • "It's a person's last breath. It's nev- er good," she said. Under the stall, she saw vomit and the woman's arm turning blue. With 19 years as a first responder and certification to teach CPR, Wha- ley sprang into action, first identify- ing herself and telling the clerks to call 911, throwing her purse to her son on the way back to the bathroom, asking for gloves and an AED. Her son went through the at- tached Arbys, and, without permis-