The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/1398862
D-6 Wednesday, August 4, 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 Ben & Jerry's takes liberal distortions global Ben & Jerry's, noted for its ice cream made from "contented cows," has produced not such contented consumers in many circles follow- ing its announcement to stop selling its ice cream in Israel's West Bank and in East Jerusalem. Although the announcement calls these areas "occupied territories," more accurate would be to describe their status as "disputed" territories regarding Israel's sovereignty. These are areas captured by Israel after the Six-Day War in 1967. Let's keep in mind that Israel has been in a battle for survival since its founding in 1948. Israelis are survivors, not conquer- ors. If not for incessant hostility by its Arab neighbors, the Six-Day War, in which these territories were cap- tured, never would have taken place. But the point here is the consisten- cy of the confused minds of liberals, that now Ben & Jerry's shows knows no borders. The history of the company is proudly recounted on the firm's web- site, relating how Ben Cohen and Jer- ry Greenfield started it in 1978 with a $12,000 investment ($4,000 bor- rowed) and a $5 correspondence course in ice-cream making. Prominent in telling their story is their emphasis on how important "core values" are to them. But the "core values" they ignore are the values that made their suc- cess possible. Those are the values of freedom and capitalism that make possible starting a small business and build- ing it into a multimillion-dollar en- terprise. In all likelihood, the grandparents of Cohen and Greenfield immigrated to the United States one or two gen- erations before they were born, most likely from Europe. Like most Jewish immigrants, they came to America for freedom and opportunity. Had their grandparents remained where they were, the chances that their grandchildren would be worth hundreds of millions of dollars today are zero. Yet their grandchildren, who have achieved so much, do not include freedom and capitalism among the values that they list as important to them. Greenfield has been a supporter of socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders. And last year, after the George Floyd incident, the firm announced on their website, "We Must Disman- tle White Supremacy." The announcement reminded their consuming public of the firm's commitment to Black Lives Matter. This is the Black Lives Matter that I wrote about last week that at- tributes poverty in Cuba not to the communists who run the place but to the United States of America. Like so many wealthy liberals, al- though freedom and capitalism made them rich, they want to deprive those who do not have those very values that could make the same possible for them. But Ben & Jerry's is not satisfied promoting moral relativism and big government in the U.S., limiting op- portunity for the poor in America; they want to bring the same mis- guided worldview to the Middle East. Over 100 years ago, when Jews started returning to their ancient homeland, there was nothing there. As author and businessman George Gilder has written, from 1921 to 1943, the new Jewish immigration increased the number of enterpris- es in the region fourfold, the num- ber of jobs tenfold and the amount of capital investment one-hundredfold. Today, Israel's $43,610 per capita GDP is more than 10 times the aver- age of their neighboring countries. This growth has benefited Arabs as well as Jews. But the liberal mind knows no log- ic. Only its distorted worldview. Ben & Jerry's is not interested in condemning mismanaged neigh- boring Arab countries for not pro- viding opportunity for their own cit- izens. They reserve their protest for the one country in the region, Israel, that is working for both Jews and Ar- abs, due to hard work, creativity, and economic freedom and opportunity. Endless rules Politicians just don't learn. People die as police fight drug dealers. Marijuana dealers form gangs and fight among themselves. It's so stupid. Especially because marijuana is relatively harmless. Finally, some states legalized it, hoping to put an end to the black market. But legalization hasn't end- ed the violence. Why? Because many states im- pose so many unnecessary rules. California is one of the worst. "The illicit market is approximate- ly two to three times the size of the le- gal market," says cannabis industry lawyer Tom Howard in my new video. Illegal sales thrive in California be- cause politicians make distribution pointlessly difficult. Howard advises clients who want to open a dispensary, "You have to have a $50,000 safe, a $200,000 se- curity system and a $100,000 consul- tant help you make an 800 -page ap- plication." Every single plant must be weighed, tagged and tracked from seed to sale. This information is "not being used to benefit anybody," complains grow- er Jason Downs. "It's just a waste of everybody's time, money." While legal sellers struggle, clue- less California Gov. Gavin Newsom complains: "Illegal cannabis grows! They're getting worse, not better." His solution: California taxpayers now will spend $100 million to bail them out! Much of what government does is tax people to try to fix problems that government caused. Politicians are so arrogant and ig- norant that they even lose money when they take over profitable ille- gal industries. Bookies once let people bet on horse racing without going to the track. Politicians called them crimi- nals and said government would put an end to the "crime" of off-track bet- ting by running that business them- selves. New York claimed they'd use their profits to "promote the public wel- fare." But the state's rules were so bureaucratic that New York lost mil- lions on its off-track betting parlors. Other states manage to lose tax- payer money running liquor stores (Alabama, certain counties in Mary- land), and even on sports betting (Oregon). Only governments can misman- age so badly. Back to marijuana: Illinois' rules are probably the worst. "Only 'social equity veterans' in Illinois can get a license," explains Howard. In other words, new licens- es are supposed to go to prior "vic- tims of the drug war." But the bureaucrats' rules are so complex that a full year after legal- ization, zero new licenses have been issued. Meanwhile, politically connect- ed people grabbed every existing li- cense. One billionaire from the Wrigley gum family "paid $155 million for six dispensary licenses," says Howard. Illinois is "creating a cartel." Vice News confronted Illinois bu- reaucrat Toi Hutchinson, the gover- nor's cannabis adviser. She denied that her licensing program is a fail- ure. "It's delayed, but it's not done yet," she said. "The fixes that we've been able to do almost in real time ... another thing that is not normal for government. I don't know how to solve for racism and capitalism and structures that have existed for 100 years." She blames capitalism for her fail- ure to allow capitalism to work? Arrogant government workers have little knowledge and no shame. Howard says Illinois is "like (old) Russia, where they had the state pick and choose winners and losers." Other states have bad rules, too. "Florida and Arizona are million- aires' clubs," says Howard. "You have to not only grow it; you have to be able to produce it and process it. You have to own your own dispen- sary. If you have $40 or $50 million, it's great." Massachusetts requires all dispen- saries to black out windows lest any- one see the marijuana. Stores must also check everyone's IDs multiple times. Legalization doesn't have to be stupid. Oregon and Colorado have reason- able rules, and in Oklahoma, "any- one can get a cannabis license," says I have never bought the conspira- cy theories that COVID-19 was a di- abolical political plot to undermine the country. But what is apparent with each passing week is that the virus has been the springboard for the left's agenda to transform Ameri- ca in a way that Sen. Bernie Sanders, Michael Moore or Rachel Maddow could have never imagined. Without COVID-19, President Joe Biden would never have been elect- ed, of course. So, for the left, the vi- rus defeated former President Don- ald Trump. COVID-19 is now the gateway to the left's utopian agenda of multitrillion-dollar climate poli- cies, hyperregulation of the econo- my, the rebirth of the welfare state and a radical redistribution of in- come. Under Trump policies, we had one of the most robust financial and eco- nomic expansions on record, espe- cially regarding minority advance- ment and historic reductions in pov- erty. The entitlement state was in re- treat as income growth and record job openings pushed millions of peo- ple out of the welfare state into work. If the left truly cared about the plight of the poor, they would have cele- brated. Instead, the results showing tax cuts, deregulation and laissez-faire policies work made liberals miserable. COVID-19 made the rebirth of big government possi- ble. Last year, with Trump still in the White House, Con- gress spent $ 6 trillion, much of it (such as the $ 600 a week bonus un- employment benefits) wastefully and ineffectively. But it was emergency spending. The National Bureau of Econom- ic Research recently declared the re- cession ended in April of 2020, and the recovery has been accelerating thanks to the vaccine. We would be aggressively cutting government spending in a rational world, as we did after victories in World War II and the Cold War. Instead, the left has leveraged COVID-19 fears to call for a $ 3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill on top of the $1.9 tril- lion spent in March on wel- fare programs and now $4.1 trillion in public works pro- grams; labor union protec- tions; green new deal subsi- dies; Medicare and Medicaid and food stamps expansions; and bailouts of Amtrak, ur- ban transit and schools. The public schools in many blue states were shut down for a year, yet taxpayers have to give the teachers unions $100 billion. Explain that one. The Congressional Budget Office calculates all of this will add $20 tril- lion of new debt spending over a de- cade — and that is with a massive tax increase. COVID-19 has somehow given a new license to even the nuttiest left- ist ideas. So, we have Democrats speeding forward with a plan to raise tax rates to more than 50 % and im- plement welfare benefits that can pay In 2018, with Donald Trump in the White House and Republicans run- ning the Senate, Democrats regu- larly complained about the judicial confirmation process. In fact, Judi- ciary Committee Democrats issued a report titled "Republican Efforts to Stack Federal Courts." You'd think that since nine of to- day's eleven committee Democrats, including Chairman Richard Durbin (D., Ill.), signed that report, they would take the chance to make the process run as they so loudly said it should. If you'd think that, you'd be wrong. Democrats, for example, com- plained that including two appeals court nominees in the same hear- ing "ma[de] it more difficult to vet and question them." Democrats have already done this in twice as many hearings as Republicans did at this point in 2017. Democrats complained that an av- erage of 131 days from nomination to confirmation was "rushing" appeals court nominees through the Senate. This year, the Senate has been con- firming Biden's ap- peals court nomi- nees in an average of 68 days. Democrats com- plained that Re- publicans "under- mined" the Amer- ican Bar Asso- ciation's role in evaluating judi- cial nominees, but it looks like Dem- ocrats don't actually care much about the ABA's ratings after all. In Obama's first year, judicial nom- inees with a unanimous "well quali- fied" ABA rating received an average of eight negative votes from Repub- licans. In Trump's first year, judicial nominees with the same top rating received an average of 30 opposition votes from Democrats. Democrats complained that "Trump's circuit court nominees have been young, with more than half in their 40s." That seems more like an observation than a genuine complaint, but no matter. The average age of Biden's circuit court nom - inees so far this year is ex- actly the same as the aver- age age of the same number of Trump's first-year circuit nominees. Democrats complained that "Senate Republicans have been rushing nomi- nees through the Senate at a breakneck pace." Even with 40 per- cent fewer vacancies to fill, com- pared to the same period in the Trump administration, President Joe Biden has made more nominations, three times as many nominees have had a Judiciary Committee hearing, and the Senate has confirmed twice as many judges. How's this for a little confirmation irony: current president pro tempo- Race for the Cure By Star Parker Give Me a Break John Stossel Continued on page 7 Continued on page 7 Continued on page 7 Continued on page 7 Eye on the Economy By Stephen Moore Left has used COVID-19 to bankrupt the US Heritage Viewpoint By Thomas Jipping Points to Ponder By Rev. Curtis Bond Dems' ignore their complaints about GOP The deep state is at work Continued on page 7 "Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the big- gest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manu- facture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so or- ganized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so perva- sive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it" said President Woodrow Wilson, "The New Free- dom," 1913. Who or what could this power be? In recent years the term, "deep state," has been coined to explain a dark shadowy force at work in Amer- ica. Webster defines the deep state as "an alleged secret network of es- pecially non-elected government of- ficials and sometimes private entities (as in the financial services and de- fense industries) operating extrale- gally to influence and enact govern- ment policy." The contempt the deep state and "ruling elites," have for citizen "John Q. Public," has been on dis- play during the last several election cycles. A candidate for president in 2008 described people in Pennsylva- nia as bitter, "it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immi- grant sentiment or anti-trade senti- ment as a way to explain their frus- trations." Another candidate for president in 2016 described middle America as a "basket of deplorables." Before Trump's election as pres- ident, the machinery of the deep state spun in opposition. America saw some of this machinery at work. The FBI, CIA, NSA, Justice Depart- ment, members of Congress, Face- book, Twitter, Google, and the na- tional news media locked step in op- position. For four years this infuriat- ed mob of collaborators, traitors, and insurrectionists worked tirelessly to unseat a duly elected president by ev- ery legal and illegal means available. The "deep state" is no stranger to dirty tricks and assassinations. They declared Trump an enemy of the state and he had to go. Ameri- ca is fortunate Trump was not as- sassinated like President Kenne- dy. The deep state viewed Kennedy as an enemy and wanted him gone. It was not until 1976 that the War- ren Commission's Report on Kenne- dy's murder was exposed as a white- wash. The House of Representatives established its Select Committee on Assassinations and re-investigated President Kennedy's assassination. The Committee's report stated that it believed the President's death result- ed from a conspiracy and there was a "high probability" that two gunmen fired at President Kennedy. Howev- er, it could not conclusively identi- fy any conspirators other than Lee Harvey Oswald. Perhaps the Com- mittee members were too afraid to probe deeper. Can we make any sense out of what plans the deep state has for America and the world? Paul writes in Eph 6:12 "For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the au- thorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heaven- ly places." Many people scoff at the idea of devils as an invention of the medieval church to frighten people into conversion. Yet Paul says this demonic power is real. The power that seeks to enslave us Court Down