The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/1456425
C-4 Wednesday, March 2, 2022 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 Blacks saying bye-bye to Biden A new report from Pew Research shows that the sharpest drop in approv- al for President Joe Biden is among the Democratic Party's most loyal and con- sistent supporters - - Black protestants. In March 2021, shortly after he took of- fice, Biden's support among Black prot- estants stood at 92 percent. By January 2022, this was down to 65 percent, a drop of 27 points. Over the same period, overall na- tional approval for the president, per Gallup, was down from 54 percent to 40 percent - - 14 points, about half the drop among Black protestants. Other polls among all Black voters tell the same story. An NBC poll shows Black approval for Biden dropping from 83 percent last April to 64 percent now. A Quinnipiac University poll shows Black approval during Biden's first year in office dropping from 78 per- cent to 57 percent. What's going on? Should Democrat- ic strategists be worried that a sea- change is occurring among voters on whom they could always most depend? Trying to define some new grand re- ality is always a dangerous game in po- litical analysis. But what we can do is note two major areas of great concern to Black Americans where they have reason to be dissatisfied with the lead- ership they see in Washington. One is inflation. The president and his Federal Reserve chairman bear re- sponsibility for the new round of infla- tion now rearing its head and disrupt- ing American lives. The Wall Street Journal recently not- ed in an editorial that the now 7.5 per- cent annualized increase in the price level is the worst in 40 years. During January "some 73 percent of the items saw annual price rises of 3 percent or higher" and "some 55 percent of items saw inflation of 5 percent or higher." A Gallup poll in December showed that 71 percent of households earning $40,000 per year or less reported hard- ship as result of price increases; 28 per- cent reported "severe hardship"; and 42 percent reported "moderate hard- ship". These are households that are disproportionately Black households. According to Statistica, whereas 37 percent of all American households earn $50,000 or less, 55 percent of Black households are in this income category. The Wall Street Journal calls this new round of inflation the result of a "historic policy failure" at the White House and the Federal Reserve. But also, prominent Democratic Par- ty economists and businessmen are calling out this administration. Wall Street businessman Steven Rat- tner, who was counselor to the Trea- sury secretary in the Obama adminis- tration, wrote a piece recently in The New York Times titled "Biden Keeps Blaming the Supply Chain for Inflation. That's Dishonest." Rattner calls on the president to set a priority for reducing spending and the deficit, the complete opposite direction in which they have taken things, despite many warnings. The terrible irony is that a major rationale for all the spending was to allegedly help the very low-income Americans who are now being hurt. The other issue is COVID-19. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, after adjusting for age dif- ferences, the incidence of hospitaliza- tion due to COVID-19 has been almost three times higher among Black than white Americans. And the incidence of death almost twice as high. A new Gallup survey shows 69 percent of Black Americans report- ing being "very stressed" or "some- what stressed" because of threat of COVID-19 infection, compared with 57 percent of white Americans. Morn- ing Consult reported that in the three weeks following Biden's announce- ment of federal rules mandating vac- cines, Black approval for Biden's han- dling of the crisis dropped nine points from 70 percent to 61 percent. Among unvaccinated Blacks, Biden's net ap- proval - - approve less disapprove - - dropped 17 points. One might say that the Biden ad- ministration has been operating in a fashion detached from the very re- al and challenging realities - - day- to-day life and the cost of living, and health concerns during a terrible pan- demic - - with which Black Americans have been struggling. That's good rea- son to believe this is what is causing Biden's approval ratings with Blacks to plummet. The woke AMA The American Medical Association now tells doctors: Use woke language! It's issued a 54-page guide telling doc- tors things like, don't say "equality"; say "equity." Don't say "minority"; say "historically marginalized." Much of the AMA's advisory sounds like Marxism: "Expose ... property rights ... Individualism is problematic ... Corporations ... limit prospects for good health ... people underpaid and forced into poverty as a result of bank- ing policies." This is too much even for some on the left, like writer Matthew Yglesias, whose article about the AMA caught my attention. "Can you imagine anyone actually doing this? " asks Yglesias in my new video. "What would happen if you were in a clinical setting, and some- body starts giving you this lecture about landowners? ... Nobody practic- es medicine like that, and it wouldn't be helpful to anybody! " He points out that while the AMA now tells doctors to call poor neighbor- hoods "systematically divested," not "poor," it has long lobbied for things that hurt poor people, like restricting the number of doctors. The U.S. has fewer doctors than oth- er countries. Per person, Austria has twice as many. "We have the best paid physicians in the world and the scarcest physicians in the world," says Yglesias. "That's not a coincidence." Years ago, in most of America, any- one could practice medicine. Licensed doctors didn't like that. That led to the formation of the AMA. They're a trade group, says Yglesias. "They...advance the interests of their members." Like the teachers union or dock workers union. "It's called a trade association rather than a union," says Yglesias. "But it's never been all that different." In 1986, the AMA called for smaller enrollment in medical schools, to curb an alleged doctor "surplus." In 1997, it even got the government to pay hospi- tals not to train doctors! Today, the AMA supports rules that make it hard for doctors from other countries to practice here. Foreign doctors must complete a U.S. residen- cy program. They don't get credit for having practiced abroad. Such rules preserve America's doc- tor shortage. That shortage allows the average doctor to make more than $200,000 a year. Well-paid doctors can be choosy about where they work. It's why it's tough to find a doctor in rural Ameri- ca, says Yglesias. There are lots of Walmarts and Tar- gets in rural areas because there is no limit on big stores. Walmart and Tar- get compete to serve as many commu- nities as they can. Likewise, "Restaurants keep time that's convenient for their customers. Doctors keep hours that are conve- nient for doctors." I asked the AMA for an interview about this, but they declined. They sent us a statement saying they've worked to approve "approximately 20 new medical schools." Why does the AMA and its "Liai- son Committee on Medical Education" even get to approve new schools? I don't get to approve new T V reporters. The AMA's statement claims it sup- ports "increasing...the number of phy- sicians." If that's true, it's long over- due. A study in Annals of Internal Med- icine says if there were more prima- ry care doctors, 7,200 lives would be saved. Since doctors are scarce, more peo- ple go to nurses for help. But AMA lob- byists push for laws that require nurs- es to be supervised by a doctor. "That makes it much harder to open retail health clinics...(that offer) low- cost, high-convenience treatment," says Yglesias. "Nurses have a lot of training ... there's a lot of useful stuff that they can do." The AMA's lobbying hurts poor peo- ple most. The AMA doesn't like talking about that. Instead, it now obsesses about po- litically correct language, telling doc- tors, don't say, "ex-cons"; say "former- ly incarcerated." Don't say "slaves"; say "enslaved people." It's hard to imagine how that helps patients. Yglesias concludes, "Getting really obsessed with language politics is a good way to position themselves as the good guys, without addressing their own role in creating these problems." What if two years ago, when COVID-19 first hit these shores, our politicians hadn't panicked? What if the government did what it has done every time we were con- fronted with a deadly virus, such as the Spanish flu or polio? Instead of locking down our schools, churches and businesses, the government could have simply informed citizens of the risks of getting sick and urged peo- ple to be extra careful about hygiene, stay out of crowded places and protect the vulnerable. It turns out there was one country that mostly rejected lockdowns and let life go on as normal as possible under dire circumstances. That country was Sweden. There were some restrictions and temporary lockdowns, but they were minimal. The hero of this story is Anders Teg- nell, Sweden's chief epidemiologist. He was Sweden's Anthony Fauci, but unlike the now-widely discredited Fau- ci, Tegnell eschewed lockdowns. The international media pilloried him for not following "the science." At first, it seemed the Swedish live-and-let- live strategy was a miserable failure. Death rates soared higher than in oth- er European nations. But to their credit, the Swedes ig- nored the "mad modelers" such as Britain's Imperial College team, which predicted multiple times that the num- ber of deaths around the world would be more than actually occurred. Sweden made some mistakes at the begin- ning. Like many states in the United States, the Swedes failed to protect elderly nursing home residents adequate- ly, which was a signifi- cant reason that deaths in Sweden were high- er than in neighboring Norway or Denmark. But Tegnell argued that the collateral damage of lockdowns would outweigh what good they do on a societywide ba- sis. He was proven right. Two years later, Sweden's COVID-19 death rate is 1,614 per million people - - much lower than Britain (2,335) or the U.S. (2,836), which both had much more stringent lockdowns. Sweden appears to have achieved herd immunity much more swiftly and thoroughly than other nations. Deaths were higher at the start of the pandem- ic but fell much lower than other lock- down nations in succeeding months. What is clear today is that the Swedes saved their economy. This year, it's projected to be 5% larger than before the pandemic, compared to a 2 % gain for Germany and a 1% gain for Britain. Moreover, the extra debt Swe- den has had to take on is a fraction of that of lockdown countries. So it will not have to spend decades paying for the costs of lockdowns. Swedish schools stayed open with no face masks. Test scores are up, and there is no talk in Sweden about "lost" years of edu- cation. What is sadly ironic about the Sweden story is this should have been the U.S. We're the land of the free, not Sweden. We are the nation of rugged individualism, not Sweden, with its more socialist econo- my and collectivist mindset. We have more solid constitutional protections to guarantee citizen rights against heavy-handed government. But the politicians, from local health officials and mayors all the way up to the top federal medical ex- perts and lawmakers, opted for deadly decisions to shut down the engines of our economy and lock people in their homes. Those policies did irreparable harm that will be felt for many years to come. Those who supported this great mistake need to be held accountable. Sweden's successful response strat- egy reminds us that we must never again shut down our businesses and schools. I just pray we have all learned that enduring lesson before another virus wave arrives. It goes without saying that Olym- pic athletes need clean air to perform at their best. So for this year's Winter Games, China pulled the same trick it had unveiled before the Summer Games in 2008: it shut down heavy industry production for a few weeks ahead of and during the competition to allow pollutants to clear. Beijing's autocratic government does the same thing whenever a ma- jor event comes to town. "China often orders factory shutdowns to cut air pollution, including notably during the Asia-Pacific Economic Coopera- tion (APEC) forum in 2014, which re- sulted in rare clear sky days dubbed "APEC blue," the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post explained in December. There's a lesson here: If you want clean air for a few weeks, an autocrat- ic government may be the way to go. But what if you think everyone, not just Olympic athletes, deserves clean air every day? China's not faring so well at that. "According to the monitoring da- ta from the Embassy of the United States, there was on average 40.5 mi- crograms of PM2.5 particles per cu- bic meter to be found in the air in Beijing during 2021," Statista report- ed this year. To be fair, that's an im- provement from a decade earlier, when the embassy measured more than 100 micrograms of PM2.5. But it is a far cry from American air, which was measured at an average of just over 8 micrograms of PM2.5 in 2020. That's the pollution you can see. When it comes to invisible but im- portant carbon dioxide emissions, China is doing even worse. "China released 10.67 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions in 2020, making it by far the largest world's largest polluter that year," Statis- ta notes. China gave the world the COVID virus, which drove CO2 emissions down almost everywhere else that year, but these emissions, somehow, still jumped in China. At the same time, "in 2020, U.S. green- house gas emissions totaled 5,215.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents after account- ing for sequestration from the land sector," the EPA reported. "Greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 (af- ter accounting for seques- tration from the land sec- tor) were 22 percent be- low 2005 levels." We are moving in the right direction, and China is moving in the wrong di- rection. The difference is economic freedom. "Freer economies are cleaner economies. Many of the indicators that measure a country's overall eco- nomic freedom: property rights, in- vestment freedom, trade freedom and strong institutions, are essential for environmental progress," wrote C3 Solutions last year in its landmark "Free economies are clean econ- omies" report that compared data from The Heritage Foundation's In- dex of Economic Freedom together with Yale's Environmental Perfor- mance Index. "The correct econom- ic and policy environment cultivates a system that rewards innovation, ef- ficiency and stewardship. A system rooted in economic freedom gener- ates more wealth for individuals and societies, so they can invest in pro- tecting the environment." C3 Solutions will be updating the Free Economies are Clean Econo- mies report later this year based on new data from Heritage and Yale. Just last week, The Heritage Foun- dation released its 2022 Index of Eco- nomic Freedom in Singapore, which ranked 1st in the rankings. The In- dex of Economic Freedom aims to determine where economic free- dom is flourishing, and where it is languishing. Congrats to Singapore! As for China, the 2022 Index ranks China as "Repressed," slotting it in as the 158th freest country in the world. "Protection and enforcement of prop- erty rights are weak. All land in Chi- na is owned either by the state or by rural collectives. Land seizures are common," the Index notes. Here is a place where economic freedom matters. People take care of things they own, like their car or house. They don't take as much care with oth- er people's things. Be- cause of what econo- mists call the "tragedy of the commons," indi- viduals in China have no reason to protect the environment because they can't control property. Economic freedom pays dividends to owners. On Heritage's Index, the United States fares much better although progress can still be made. "Driven lower by a sharp decrease in its fis- cal health score, the U.S. has record- ed a 3.0 -point overall loss of econom- ic freedom since 2017 and has fallen from the upper half to the lower half of the 'Mostly Free' category," the In- dex points out. "Business freedom and rule of law are strong, but the economy is being crushed by reck- less government overspending." The U.S. isn't doing as well as it used to do and not as well as it needs to do, but through more principled spend- ing at the federal level, we can quick- ly increase our score. As the Free Economies report con- cludes, "there is no greater source of environmental injustice in the world today than central planning." Economic freedom delivers a clean- er environment today as it promises a better environment in the future. To reduce emissions globally while pro- moting human prosperity, the world will need solutions rooted in econom- ic freedom. By expanding economic freedom, the solutions are endless. Let's get started. Anthony B. Kim researches interna- tional economic issues at The Heritage Foundation, with a focus on economic freedom and free trade. Drew Bond is the co-founder of C3 Solutions Race for the Cure By Star Parker Give Me a Break John Stossel Eye on the Economy By Stephen Moore In the end, Sweden did it right Heritage Viewpoint By Anthony Kim and Drew Bond The growing importance of economic freedom Court