The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/1377505
The Press-Dispatch Wednesday, May 26, 2021 D-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 n 1867, American writer Mark Twain visited the Holy Land. He re- corded his impressions in a book ti- tled "The Innocents Abroad." Twain was appalled when seeing the abandoned and desolate land that was the home of the Bible. "The further we went, the hotter the sun got and the more rocky and bare, repulsive and dreary, the land- scape became," he wrote. "There was hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had al- most deserted the country." Some 15 years later, Jews began a movement to return to and restore their ancient homeland. They started rebuilding under hor- rendous and challenging conditions. By November 1947, as Jews con- tinued their process of building and Ar- abs continued their process of hating, the United Nations gave the green light to establish a Jew- ish state and an ad- jacent Arab state. Jews accepted the U.N. partition of the region, declaring the new state of Israel in May 1948, but the Arabs rejected the plan and attacked the newly declared Jew- ish state. Israelis fought and mirac- ulously prevailed in its War of Inde- pendence, and the project of rebuild- ing the ancient homeland moved for- ward. Now it is an officially recognized member of the community of nations. Compared with the des- olation described by Mark Twain, Israel today is a mod- ern miracle, with per cap- ita GDP (gross domestic product) higher than that of Great Britain, France, Italy and Spain, according to the World Bank. As of 2019, Israel had a per cap- ita GDP of $43,589, much higher than that of its immediately adja- cent neighbors: Jordan's was $4,405, The Ammunition Famine The sheriff in my county told a Gan- nett reporter in March that his depart- ment's cost per round of ammunition has risen about 25 percent over the past year. He was paying 23 cents last year, so we can estimate his 2021 costs at about 29 cents per round. Reporter Isaiah Seibert wrote cryp- tically that government ammunition customers "have their own suppli- ers shielding them from the worst ef- fects of the shortage," and apparent- ly he was right: is anybody else get- ting their ammunition for 29 cents per round? The owner of the main indoor shooting range in our city said his cost for ammunition is up "two to three times" (100 to 200 percent) over the previous year. He has had to give up on his conventional suppliers and jump between online brokers or, in a pinch, to arbitrage ammunition he buys at retail. "My normal vendors that I had be- fore, all of our distributors, they're all dry." What about this discrepancy be- tween private prices and government prices for ammunition? It's not necessarily a scandal for manufacturers and distributors to make sure their best customers stay happy with them. They would be fool- ish to alienate a dependable buyer like a government agency. I would expect price breaks and privileged delivery schedules for the kind of customer who can make or break a supplier. But what if a customer can make or break the entire industry? What if a customer can see to it that most other customers are slowly starved of am- munition, making an abundance of firearms irrelevant? The government is not merely a consumer of firearms and ammuni- tion, of course. It is a regulator and a legislator with leverage that no other consumer can muster. It has second- ary tools of hardball financial and cor- porate intervention. And so government purchases are not merely a hemorrhage from the pri- vate supply of ammunition, but an ir- resistible incentive for manufactur- ers and distributors to play ball. It's a carrot they can't refuse, or had bet- ter not. I have an entrepreneurial relative in a distant state who saw opportunity in the ammunition shortage last year. He crunched some numbers and con- cluded that he could sell a lot of am- munition at a reasonable price. There were eager buyers in abundance. He got his licenses, bought machines and leased facilities. But as quickly as he got his brand new machinery humming, he ran out of components, whether primer, casings or projectiles. Eventually he learned that major ammunition man- ufacturers had cornered the market on components, and were preventing new competitors from entering the market by depriving them of any re- liable supply of components. These monopolists were not mak- ing ammunition out of the compo- nents, just hoarding components and pressuring their suppliers to deprive potential competitors of the neces- sary raw ingredients of production. How does a business organization that no longer produces anything nev- ertheless wield the cash reserves to monopolize an industry? I'm afraid we'll have to hope for clarification by some future Wikileaks dump or Proj- ect Veritas investigation on that. The Deep State recently demonstrated in the Arizona legislature's election au- dit that it reserves the right to destroy evidence and defy lawful subpoenas. Suffice it to say that only an an- ti-Second Amendment person or en- tity of vast wealth, probably not the American government, is capable of writing that kind of check in opaque and unaccountable secrecy. Yet it appears that the U.S. govern- ment played the central role alienat- ing major ammunition manufacturers and distributors from the loyal private customers who put them on the map. Like a flashy homewrecking Lothario, government buyers waved flash rolls that persuaded ammunition execu- tives their penny-pinching retail cus- tomers were more trouble than they were worth. On the website OpenTheBooks. com, you can see that our federal gov- ernment spent nearly a billion dollars ($ 944.9 million, adjusted for inflation) from 2015 through 2019 on guns, am- munition and military-style gear for Labor shortage caused by government America has a record 8.1 million job openings. The media call it a "labor short- age." But it's not a labor shortage; it's an incentive shortage. "No one wants to work," says a sign on a restaurant drive- thru speaker in Albuquerque, New Mex- ico. "Please be patient with the staff that did show up." I never wanted to work. I got a job because I had to support myself. That was good for me. It forced me out of my comfort zone. It made me a better person. Had government offered me al- most equal money not to work, I nev- er would have applied. Today, government takes away that incentive. The American Rescue Plan, passed in March, increased unem- ployment payments by hundreds of dollars and extended them for up to 73 weeks. Given the cost of commut- ing, etc., many people find they are better off financially not working. Denmark once offered workers five years of unemployment. Then they noticed that workers found work after exactly five years. So, Denmark cut the benefit to four years. Then most workers found jobs after four years. Now Denmark, wisely, has cut benefits in half. Incentives matter. America's unemployment hand- outs began during the Great De- pression when desperate people re- ally needed help. Still, you could col- lect for only 16 weeks. Barack Obama extended unem- ployment benefits to up to 99 weeks. "There are no jobs! " people I inter- viewed waiting in line for benefits in New York City once told me. But that wasn't true. There were lots of entry-level jobs within walk- ing distance. My staff visited 79 nearby stores. Forty said they wanted to hire. Twen- ty-four said they'd hire people with no experience. People in the unemployment line also said that the government should do more to train them for jobs. But New York already offered "job train- ing" centers, so I sent an intern out to see what they did. The first of- fered to help her get welfare. A sec- ond told her to apply for unemploy- ment. Neither place suggested look- ing for a job. When she insisted that she want- ed work, not handouts, they direct- ed her to yet another building. There she was told she could not receive help because she didn't have a col- lege degree. Finally, a fourth office offered her an interview at the sandwich chain Pret a Manger. The boss there told her she'd wasted her time going to the government Jobs Center because she could have gotten that same in- terview using Craigslist. Some politicians understand that handouts encourage dependence. Sixteen states are now ending extra unemployment benefits early. Mon- tana and Arizona replaced extra un- employment benefits with a bonus for people who find work. Even President Joe Biden has no- ticed the unintended consequences of his party's benefits. "If you're ... of- fered a suitable job, you can't refuse that job and just keep getting unem- ployment," he said. Seems more than reasonable. Yet a New York Times headline says, "Some say it presents an undue hard- ship." The reporter interviewed a "Mx. San Martin, 27, who uses the pro- nouns they and them." Mx. Martin wants to work with pets. They complained that "there simply weren't enough jobs that I would actually want." Restaurant work "is not in my field of interest." Too bad. Bad for all of us when people think they're entitled to our tax money if bureaucrats don't get them the ex- act job they want. 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." Every time I hear Democrats ser- monize about following "the sci- ence," I feel as though I'm listening to members of the Flat Earth Soci- ety. Science is what the left wants to believe to be true. It has become a way to shut off debate, not advance it. Remember: These were the fools who told us to shut down our schools for a year. We are seeing the debasement of common sense in full bloom now on the economic front. When the latest disappointing jobs report was re- leased with unemployment rising, the Democrats refused to acknowl- edge that their high welfare bene- fits kept workers from coming back to work. President Joe Biden made the laughable observation that he saw "no measurable evidence" that the super generous unemployment program is a de- terrent to working. He needs to get out more. My colleague Casey Mulligan of the University of Chicago and I pre - dicted in The Wall Street Journal three months ago that the $ 300 per week ex- tra unemployment benefits would mean 5 to 6 million people not go- ing back to work because the gov- ernment was paying them more not to work. The left laughed at this pre- diction. Now we see record jobs go- ing unfilled, 8.1 million, even when there are 9 million unemployed. "Help wanted" signs at construction sites, factories, stores and restaurant win- dows are omnipresent from Maine to California. All the Biden folks needed to do was stop gazing into their cracked crystal ball and go outside and ask business owners if they can find workers. They would have heard an earful. Instead, the liberals paid at- tention to some cockamamie econo- metric model saying you can pay people more not to work and it won't change their behavior. Brilliant. It gets worse. Sens. Ron Wyden of Mexico may be one of the U.S.'s top agricultural trading partners, but this relationship has plenty of prob- lems. Consider the decree that Mex- ico's president, Andres Manuel Lo- pez Obrador, issued on December 30, 2020, banning genetically engi- neered corn and glyphosate, a pop- ular herbicide. It further undermines agricultural trade between the two nations. This action occurred despite the United States-Mexico-Cana- da Agreement (USMCA) going in- to force on July 1, 2020 (not that it wouldn't have been a problem be- fore). The new agreement was sup- posed to modernize its predeces- sor, the North American Free Trade Agreement. For example, the USM- CA has a section fo- cused on agricultur- al biotechnology, in which the countries "confirm the impor- tance of encourag- ing agricultural in- novation and facili- tating trade in prod- ucts of agricultural biotechnology." There are also new provisions that help to ensure a stronger scientific basis for sanitary (human health) and phytosanitary (animal and plant health) measures imposed by the countries. Mexico's bans would run counter to the USMCA and its recognition of the impor- tance of agricultural biotech- nology and sound science. 1) Mexico would phase out genetically engineered corn for human consumption by no later than January 31, 2024. The rationale for the ban is far from clear. In the de- cree, Mexico cites such jus- tifications as food self-suffi- ciency and public health (an unjus- tified concern). Give Me a Break John Stossel Continued on page 8 This weekend has been a busy one for Rose and me. Our four grand- daughters, ages 2-10 stayed with us for three days. If you notice my typing is sluggish, it's because I haven't taken my ener- gy drink and energy bar yet. I'm kind of tired. It was a mix of fun and ex- citement for the kids. Here's a snap- shot of the sequence of events. First hour: the arrival. The kids were excited to see us. They ran to- ward our door as they exited their van, carrying their backpacks and toys. A fter hugs and kisses and wel- coming gestures, they started ask- ing for our iPads. They always know they can watch programs from You- tube kid videos. Despite our insistence they should eat first, I think they were too excit- ed to have any appetite for a meal. So after an hour of watching their favorite videos, they were ready for Hour Two. We prepared a variety of "healthy foods." French fries, breaded shrimp, spaghetti and cookies were on the menu. To make sure they had a balanced diet, we added pineapple chunks and cran- berry salad. Veggie salad was of- fered but was rejected, for now. Hour three: Back to the iPad for an hour. Hour four: Since the sun was now down and the temperature got cool- er, we made sure they enjoyed play- time outdoors with bikes, scooters, a wagon, anything with wheels so they could spend their energy and pre- pare them for a good sleep. A fter a while, they were get- ting a hot and thirsty, so we headed indoors for drinks and snacks. Hour five: Back to the iP- ads for another hour or two. Hour six: It was bath time to get cleaned up and ready for bed. Last agenda: night prayers and then sleep time. Since it was a weekend, they said that they were allowed to stay up late on Fri- days to watch more videos. We know from their school week schedule that they have to follow a strict regimen of sleep time at about 8 p.m., and no later than 8:30, so we let them stay My Point of View By H. K. Fenol, Jr., M.D. A Diary of Sitting Continued on page 8 Continued on page 8 Continued on page 8 Continued on page 8 Eye on the Economy By Stephen Moore Democrats follow the 'science' Lucid Moments By Bart Stinson Race for the Cure By Star Parker I'm with Israel and against Critical Race Theory Heritage Viewpoint By Daren Bakst Biden should address Mexico's bans on GMOs