The Press-Dispatch

May 12, 2021

The Press-Dispatch

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A-10 Wednesday, May 12, 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 Biden's era of big government When I began my work 25 years ago, my vision for fixing our poor, broken communities was driven by my belief in America and what made it successful. It's what I call the 3 C's: the prin- ciples of Christianity, the virtues of capitalism and the rule of law out- lined in our Constitution. A fter the civil rights movement, big government was deemed nec- essary to turn poor communities around. When then-President Johnson af- fixed his signature to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the given assumption was that, although there was new law protecting freedom — civil rights — for all, low-income Black Americans were not prepared to be free and ca- pable of being free. A new era of big government ush- ered welfare-state socialism into these communities. Despite tens of trillions of federal expenditures targeted toward these communities since the 1960s, pover- ty rates are practically unchanged. But major new problems were creat- ed — mainly the decimation of fami- lies. Single-parent homes and out-of- wedlock births have tripled. Today's Democrats want to blame racism for the persistence of prob- lems in low-income communities. In some respect, they are right. It is their own racism that refused and refuses to accept that low-income Americans can and must be free. Now, today, President Biden and his party aspire to the opposite of what I have fought for. Instead of wanting to bring the capitalism of the healthy parts of America to the broken parts of the country, they want to bring the failed welfare-state socialism of the broken parts of the country to the rest of the country. The $ 6 trillion spending blowout of the first 100 days of the Biden ad- ministration, sold under the guise of COVID-19 recovery, has been about using the COVID-19 crisis to sell a new era of welfare-state big-govern- ment socialism that will fundamen- tally change our country forever. The U.S. economy was already well underway to recovery in the lat- ter half of last year, and in the first quarter of 2021, it surged 6.4% , tak- ing our gross domestic product al- most to where it was pre-COVID-19. Contrary to the president's rhet- oric, the case for the connection be- tween prosperity and freedom is about facts, not ideology. Each year, the Fraser Institute publishes its Economic Freedom of the World report, which consistent- ly shows that nations with more eco- nomic freedom — smaller govern- ment, lower taxes, less regulation — have the highest incomes and lowest poverty rates. In his address to Congress, the president assured the American peo- ple that he can finance all this big government by getting the wealthy and big corporations to pay their "fair share." But facts about who foots the tax bill tell a different story than the president's ideology-colored stories. According to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, which used the latest da- ta available from the IRS, in 2018, the top 1% of all taxpayers paid 40.1% of all taxes. The top 50 % of taxpayers paid 97.1% of all federal taxes. And the bottom 50 % paid the remaining 2.9 % . What about corporations? Again, facts tell a different story. Corporate income taxes simply punish labor with lower wages and punish customers with higher pric- es. Boston University economist Lau- rence Kotlikoff estimates that a ze- ro percent corporate tax rate, which would focus taxes only on individu- als, would increase wages 12 % . Giving the nation a civics lesson worthy of one of our failing public schools, President Biden used in his address the opening words of the pre- amble to the Constitution — "We the People ..." — to justify big govern- ment. But that preamble says that the Constitution was established to "se- cure the Blessings of Liberty to our- selves and our Posterity." Sen. Tim Scott, in his response to the president, noted what he ex- periences, and what I have experi- Successful without college Americans took out $1.7 trillion in government loans for college tuition. Now, some don't want to pay it back. President Joe Biden says they shouldn't have to. He wants to cancel at least $10,000 and maybe $50,000 of every student's debt. "They're in real trouble," says Biden in my latest video, "having to make choices between paying their student loan and paying the rent." Poor students! But wait: Shouldn't they have giv- en some thought to debt payments when they signed up for overpriced colleges? When they majored in sub- jects like photography or women's studies, unlikely to lead to good jobs? When they took six years to gradu- ate (a third don't graduate even af- ter six years). Shouldn't politicians also acknowl- edge that it's taxpayer loans that let bloated colleges keep increasing tui- tion at twice the rate of inflation? Yes. But they don't. "Dirty Jobs" host Mike Rowe points out that students' demand for loan forgiveness is "kind of self-in- volved." "I know guys who worked hard to get a construction operation running. Some had to take out a loan on a big old diesel truck. Why would we for- give the cost of a degree but not the cost of a lease payment? " It's a good question. "For some reason," continues Rowe, "we think a tool that looks like a diploma is somehow more import- ant than that big piece of metal in the driveway that allows the guy to build homes that you ... are in." The political class does focus on subsidizing college. "Now everybody is armed with a degree. What kind of world is that? " asks Rowe. "Everybody dreams of being in the corner office, but no- body knows how to build the corner office? " Lots of good jobs in skilled trades don't require a college degree, he points out. "The push for college came at the expense of every oth- er form of education. Shop class was taken out of high school. We have denied millions of kids an opportu- nity to see what half the workforce looks like." It's a reason America now has a shortage of skilled trade workers. Yet, plumbers, elevator mechanics construction managers, etc., make $100,000 a year. MikeroweWORKS Foundation gives young people scholarships to schools where they learn such trades. He seeks to make skilled la- bor "cool" again. One Rowe scholarship recipient, Chloe Hudson, considered college but was shocked at what it cost. "I was like, 'I can't afford this! ' I don't want to be saddled with student debt the rest of my life! " Instead, thanks to her Rowe schol- arship, she learned how to weld, and now she has no trouble finding work. "I've been under nuclear plants ... been in water systems," Hudson re- counts. "Those jobs make me appre- ciate what I have now so much more." "What do you make? " I ask Hud- son. $ 3,000 a week," she responds. She's appalled by today's college student's demand for loan forgive- ness. "There is not a single loan I have ever taken out where I didn't have an expectation put on myself that I was going to repay it," says Hudson. "That's getting up at four o'clock in the morning and making sure I'm at work on time. That's staying late. That's working weekends." But now she will have to help pay for all those college students who won't pay their debts. "I am taxed heavily," complains Hudson. "It's not a good feeling to know that the government thinks that they can spend my dollars bet- ter than I can." Right. Government doesn't spend our dollars better than we do. "For- give student loans" really means workers must pay for privileged stu- dents who don't. John Stossel is author of "Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media." There is something very fishy about the new 2020 Census Bu- reau data determining which states picked up seats and which states lost seats. Most all of the revisions to the original estimates have moved in one direction: Population gains were add- ed to blue states, and population loss- es were subtracted from red states. The December revisions in popula- tion estimates under the Biden Cen- sus Bureau added some 2.5 million blue-state residents and subtract- ed more than 500,000 red-state res- idents. These population estimates determine how many electoral votes each state receives for presidential elections and the number of congres- sional seats in each state. Is this a mere coincidence? These population estimates deter- mine how many electoral votes each state receives for presidential elec- tions and the number of congressio- nal seats in each state. Remember, the House of Repre- sentatives is razor-thin today, with the Democrats sporting just a six- seat majority with five seats currently vacant. So, a switch in a handful of seats in 2022 elections could flip the House and take the gavel away from current Speaker Nancy Pe- losi and the Dem- ocrats. A shift of 3 million in popula- tion is the equivalent of four seats moving from Republican to Demo- crat. The original projections for the Census reapportionment had New York losing two seats, Rhode Island losing a seat and Illinois perhaps los- ing two seats. Instead, New York and Illinois only lost one seat, and Rhode Island lost no seats. Meanwhile, Tex- as was expected to gain three seats, Florida two seats and Arizona one seat. Instead, Texas gained only two seats, Florida only one and Arizo- na none. Was the Census Bureau count rigged? Was it manip- ulated by the Biden team to hand more seats to the Dem- ocrats and to get more mon- ey — federal spending is of- ten allocated based on popu- lation — for the blue states? The evidence is now only circumstantial, but when er- rors or revisions are almost all only in one direction, the alarm bells appropriately go off. Here are some of the strange out- comes in the Census revisions just released: No. 1: New York — We've been tracking the annual population/ migration changes between states since the last census in 2010. Over the past decade, New York LOST about 1.3 million residents on net to other states. (This does not include immigration, births and deaths.) It's been well over a decade since the Supreme Court last decided a meaningful Second Amendment case. That wait is about to end. Although District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) and McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010) answered some foundational questions about the right to keep and bear arms, the Supreme Court's decade of silence enabled lower courts to undermine these core cases routinely. This in turn allowed states to run roughshod over the Second Amendment. We've gotten our hopes up be- fore that the Supreme Court final- ly would stop treating the Second Amendment as a second-class right, unworthy of consistent legal review. Just last term, the high court excited millions by taking up New York State Rifle and Pistol v. City of New York, which was about New York City's in- credibly restrictive laws on trans- porting firearms. That excitement came to a crush- ing end when New York City enacted minor changes to its laws and the Su- preme Court declared the case moot, declining in the interim to take up any of the remaining Second Amend- ment challenges for the term. Ma- ny suspected we might go anoth- er decade without seeing the court hear another challenge to gun con- trol laws. But last week, the Supreme Court agreed to hear New York State Rifle and Pistol v. Corlett, a case that could have much broad- er implications for the future of strict gun control than its mooted prede - cessor. Here are three important things to know about the high court's latest Second Amend- ment case. THIS CASE IS ABOUT THE RIGHT TO CARRY FIREARMS IN PUBLIC New York State Rifle and Pistol As- sociation v. Corlett provides the Su- preme Court with the opportunity to address a very important question it so far has declined to answer: When the Second Amendment protects the right to bear arms, does it mean a right to bear a handgun in public for purposes of self-defense? According to New York and a handful of other gun control-friend- ly states, the answer has been a re- sounding no. In these states, the right to "bear" arms has been effec- tively restricted to a right to possess and handle a gun in your home, and nothing more. If you want to protect your- self with a firearm in public, the state considers it a priv- ilege you can exercise only after showing "good cause" above and beyond a desire to protect yourself from crime in general. In essence, law-abiding cit- izens in these states have no right to "bear" arms outside their homes. The petitioners in the new case in- clude two New York residents who have extensive experience and train- ing with firearms. Both applied for and were denied carry permits for their firearms because they did not "face any special or unique danger to [their] life." It appears the Supreme Court fi- nally has five justices willing to vin- dicate the rights of these petition- ers. We know that Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Ka- vanaugh have publicly decried the court's reluctance to take up cases involving similar "good cause" laws and affirmed that there is, indeed, a right to bear arms. Meanwhile, Justices Samuel Alito Race for the Cure By Star Parker Give Me a Break John Stossel Continued on page 11 Last Thursday May 6, we held a National Day of Prayer service at the Courthouse rotunda. I did not want to miss an import- ant event such as this, so I invited a friend to come along and witness and participate in this blessed gather- ing. You see, we are indeed a unique Country because we can express our belief and our faith in public without fear of being arrested or harassed. In order to understand how bless- ed we are as a Nation, one has to ex- perience what it is like to live in an- other society where belief in God is forbidden or suppressed, or where there is hardly any belief in a Cre- ator. So it was so good to see sever- al Ministers of different Church- es come together in unity and pray openly, and quote passages in the Sacred Scripture, and express com- mon belief and love for our Savior Je- sus Christ. Various topics of concern were brought up regarding our freedom to express our faith, the value of fami- ly and it's sacred design by our Cre- ator, issues about respect for life and protection of the un- born, and the dan- gerous trends in defining our under- standing of gender and marriage. Mention was also made of the need to love and serve one another, to pray for the members of our Military, for the healing of our Nation after this terrible pandemic, and a time for spiritual revival by everyone. We are so blessed because among the nations of the world, we did not have any major problems having a vaccine against COVID. Food and nutrition were not compromised. Health care was available at a very sufficient level, and the list goes on and on. Certainly, these things we have enjoyed did not come to us as by chance, but rather, they are Providential bless- ings, coupled with the char- acter of the American peo- ple to come together and re- spond to the challenges we had faced and are still tack- ling. So, as expressed in the passage 2 Chronicles 7:14, "If my people which are called by My name shall humble themselves and pray, and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sins, and will heal their land." It was good to sing our National Anthem, make the Pledge of Alle- giance to our flag, to sing America My Point of View By H. K. Fenol, Jr., M.D. Prayer and Feasting Continued on page 11 Continued on page 11 Continued on page 11 Eye on the Economy By Stephen Moore Census Bureau added 2.5M more to population Heritage Viewpoint By Amy Swearer Second Amendment's return to Supreme Court Court

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