The Press-Dispatch
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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 OPINION Race for the Cure By Star Parker Give Me a Break John Stossel Eye on the Economy By Stephen Moore C-2 Wednesday, June 15, 2022 The Press-Dispatch The Loving lie: debunking the fear mongering about overturning Roe v. Wade There's a lot of fearmongering these days about what the leaked draft of a Supreme Cour t opinion potentially over tur ning Roe v. Wade would mean if it is, in fact, issued. Believe none of it. Serious and principled legal minds like professor Akhil Reed Amar of Yale and professor Sherif Girgis of Notre Dame have al- ready done excellent work putting most of these lies regarding the upcoming decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organi- zation to the torch. My task here is more mod- est—to finish their work by dismantling the most recent and most absurd claim: That the draft Dobbs opinion would lead to over r uling Loving v. Virginia, which held that gover nments cannot ban or criminalize inter ra- cial mar riage. This argument has no merit whatsoever. Anyone with even a passing familiarity with the Con- stitution knows it. This issue strikes home for me: I'm in an inter racial mar riage and I could not be less wor ried. I am as confident that Loving will remain good law as I am that the sun will rise in the east tomor row and ever y day thereafter. Why? Because the holding in Loving was compelled by the Constitution's text. The holding in Roe v. Wade, on the other hand, was not. Loving cor rected a constitution- al mistake. Roe was a constitution- al mistake. The leaked Dobbs opinion says the same thing that Loving did: The cour t got it wrong, and it's time we interpret the Constitution as it's written and stop twisting it to mean what we want it to mean. Loving was a 14th Amendment challenge to a law banning inter- racial mar riage. The 14th Amend- ment guarantees the equality of all people regardless of race. Loving held that the amendment meant what it said. For almost a hundred years be- fore the Loving decision in 1967, the Supreme Cour t disregarded that amendment. Beginning with the Slaughter-House cases and United States v. Cr uikshank and culminating in the constitutional abomination that was Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Cour t all but erased it from the Consti- tution. The cour t held that the amendment, which was ratified to make all people equal in the eyes of the law, did nothing of the sor t. The cour t was wrong. Egre- giously, obviously, infuriatingly wrong. Loving was one of many great cases that fixed that er ror. The key mistake in logic made by those who think Dobbs will pose a threat to Loving is that they think that Loving created a right to inter racial mar riage just as Roe created a right to abor tion. It did no such thing. That right is inherent in our nature. Loving simply recognized what the 14th Amendment says: The gover n- ment may not discriminate by race. The Dobbs draft, therefore, has nothing to say about Loving. The draft says, rightly, that Roe was "egregiously wrong" and its reasoning "exceptionally weak" and "far outside the bounds of any reasonable interpretation of the various constitutional provisions to which it vaguely pointed." It says, rightly again, that the cour t "has neither the authority nor the exper tise" to decide de- bates about the inter relationship of science and morality; those are debates for the democratic process. What the cour t can and should do in Dobbs is af firm that the Constitution's text means what it says, which is exactly what it did in Loving. Loving is going nowhere. Anyone who argues other wise is wrong and is either betraying his ignorance or worse, lying to you. GianCarlo Canaparo is a senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foun- dation's Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. Ignoring pressing business; obsessing on Jan. 6 As the House Select Committee to In- vestigate the Jan, 6 Attack on the United States Capitol starts public hearings, we must ask what motivates those on the committee. Is the sole concern the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States? Or is it to get media to attack and undermine political opponents? It is indeed possible that infractions of law can be investigated without a carnival platform designed to mobilize media and national attention. The public material of the committee already reeks of motivations other than seeking truth. The committee has already an- nounced on its website that the Jan. 6 incident was "one of the darkest days of our democracy." Really? Against a civil war where some three-quarters of a million Americans were killed, fighting over what American freedom is about, one incident of a few hours, where law enforcement finally prevailed, was one of our "darkest days"? There are just 24 hours in any day, so time taken on one matter means attention not given to other matters. If these members of Congress really cared about our principles of freedom and democracy, they wouldn't be ignor- ing every day other pressing matters in which the freedom of American citizens is blatantly violated. Take, for example, that as the Jan. 6 investigation monopolizes media attention, on June 3 the Trustees of Medicare and Social Security issued their annual report. Both systems are bankrupt and in dismal shape financially. The cash shortfall of Medicare in 2021 was $409 billion. Projection is that Social Security will be out of adequate cash flow to meet obligations to retirees by 2035 -- just 13 years from now. The Trustees estimate that there are only adequate funds in Social Security to meet 80% of benefits in 2035. The payroll tax, now 12.4%, would have to be raised 26% in order to generate sufficient funds to meet those obligations. In other words, today every working American age 55 and below who plans to collect Social Security benefits at age 67 is paying a payroll tax into a system that cannot provide the benefits promised. Can you imagine a private insurance company sending a letter to policy holders saying that, in 13 years, they will only be able to meet 80% of the payments promised to policy holders? The lawsuits would be flying. Let's forget about the fiscal situation of the system for a minute and whether it is even worth saving this program. How about the issue of freedom that our members of Congress want us to believe they care about so much? Take a young citizen, age 21, fresh with his or her new degree, entering the work force for the first time. Immediate- ly, 12.4% of their paycheck is deducted into a system they involuntarily enter, in which there are inadequate funds to meet promised benefits. Shouldn't this new young worker be able to say, "No, thank you, I don't want to participate"? Even if the system were not broken, and benefits could be met, in our free country, shouldn't everyone be free to manage their own retirement? According to the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, the average return of Social Security over the last 40 years was 1%. Over the same period, average return on stocks was 6%. Back to this new young worker, by the calculations of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, this single worker, if they earned the median national income and were able to invest 10% of their income into a diversified stock and bond portfolio over 40 years, instead of paying the payroll tax, could have annual income at retirement of $55,143 against $19,646 from Social Security. So, hey, members of the Select Committee. Enough of pretending that you care about American freedom. How about wrapping up the carnival and getting down to the real challenges every American faces today? Star Parker is president of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education and host of the weekly television show "Cure America with Star Parker." Beware: 100% green energy could destroy the planet The untold stor y about "green energy" is that it can't possibly be scaled up to provide anywhere near the energy to replace fossil fuels. (Unless we are headed back to the stone ages, which is what some of the "de-growth" advocates favor). Right now, the United States gets about 70% of its energy from fossil fuels. To go to zero over the next 20 years would be economi- cally catastrophic and cost tens of millions of jobs. With gas prices at nearly double their price back from when Donald Trump left office and inflation up from 1.5% to 8% in just 15 months, we are already experienc- ing the economic damage from the green energy crusaders. But we also have to ask whether green energy is even good for the environment. Some environmental- ists are pointing to a little-noticed study by the World Bank showing that moving toward 100% solar, wind and electric batter y energy would be just as destructive to the planet as fossil fuels. This was precisely the conclusion of a stor y in Foreign Policy magazine, hardly a right-wing publication. According to the Foreign Policy analysis, moving to a "carbon-free" energy future "requires massive amounts of energy, not to mention the extraction of minerals and metals at great environmental and social costs." Here are some of the numbers. Going all-in on batteries, solar and wind would require: -- 34 million metric tons of copper -- 40 million tons of lead -- 50 million tons of zinc -- 162 million tons of aluminum -- 4.8 billion tons of iron Those tens of millions of wind- mills, solar panels and electric batteries for cars and trucks aren't exactly biodegradable. So, we will have the most prominent energy graveyard with toxic pollutants that will be 100 times larger than any nuclear waste stor- age. And yet, the Left is worried about plastic straws! I'm all for mining for America's bountiful natural resources of cop- per, lead, magnesium and precious metals. But ironically, it's the greens that want to shut down mines, which is like saying you want food, but you oppose farming. Talk about cogni- tive dissonance. Then, the land space is needed for the windmills and solar panels. Bloomberg reports that getting to zero carbon by 2050 would require a land area equal to five South Dako- tas "to develop enough clean power to run all the electric vehicles, factories, and more." In other words, the liberals are calling for a full-scale industrializa- tion of America's wilderness and landscape. Now, even many of the most liber- al areas of the countr y are shouting "no" to green energy in their own backyard. Vermonters are rebel- ling against unsightly solar panels spoiling their views. According to the Bennington Banner, "Vermont's utility regulator has rejected permits for two 2 MW solar farms proposed in Bennington, pointing to aesthetic concerns and current land conser va- tion measures in the town plan." Meanwhile, a town in Wisconsin is suing state regulators to "stop construction" of what would be "the state's largest solar project," ac- cording to the Wisconsin Journal. Even blue Massa- chusetts residents are fighting green energy projects. Off-shore wind farms are delayed off the coast of Cape Cod, where per capita income is nearly the highest in the countr y, because they don't want their ocean views spoiled from their beachfront villas. In other words, real nature lovers are finally starting to awaken to the reality that wind and solar aren't so green after all. A nuclear plant takes up at most 1 square mile of land. Wind and solar farms require hundreds of thousands of acres. So, to provide enough electric power to keep Manhattan lit up at night would require paving over nearly the whole state of Connecticut with windmills and solar farms. The public is starting to ask: How is any of this green? The Green New Deal strategy makes especially no sense given that by increasing our use of clean-burning and reliable natural gas, we are reducing energy prices AND cutting carbon emis- sions. Add nuclear power to the mix, and we wouldn't need to start building wind and solar farms in our forests, deserts and national parks. Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at Freedom Works. He is also author of the new book: "Govzilla: How The Relentless Growth of Government Is Devouring Our Economy." Biden's real deficit The president now brags that he cut the deficit! "We're on track," he says, to have "the biggest decline in a single year ever in American histor y." It's actually true. But utterly deceitful. President Joe Biden's deficit will be down from last year, but that's only because he spent such gargan- tuan amounts then. For once, the media did not take his remarks at face value. Even CNN ran a "fact check" that quoted a Moody's Analytics director saying, "The actions of the administration and Congress have undoubtedly re- sulted in higher deficits, not smaller ones." Much higher. Despite record tax revenues from last year's booming stock markets, our national debt will increase by about $1 trillion. Sadly, most people don't care. These big numbers are too abstract. This will not end well. During Barack Obama's presiden- cy, I complained about his irrespon- sible spending. Obama practically doubled our debt. What a relief it was when Donald Trump was elected! He looked at the budget and said, "There's a lot of fat in there!" He promised he'd "cut spending, big-league!" Foolishly, I believed him. But Trump cut almost nothing. He bragged that his militar y spending set "an all-time record." Congress was partly to blame, but under Trump, our debt rose by another third. Never trust politicians. Last year, Biden made things much worse. He signed a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief law, saying he was "giving people in this nation, working people, middle class folks, people who built the countr y, a fighting chance." It included $1,400 stimulus checks, increased unem- ployment benefits and increased child tax credits. Then he added the $1.2 trillion "infrastructure" bill, which includ- ed billions in state and local aid, billions for schools, billions for small businesses, $110 billion for infrastructure and $66 billion for Biden's favorite subsidy for the rich, money-losing Amtrak. Biden wanted to spend even more, but his Build Back Better Act failed to pass. Thanks, Joe Manchin. You saved us $2.2 trillion and made our government a little less irre- sponsible. Biden recent deficit-reduction brag didn't mention that he wants to increase the deficit even more. Last week, he put taxpayers on the hook for $5.8 billion in debt from people who attended Corin- thian Colleges. Now he wants tax- payers to pay hundreds of billions more so other students don't have to pay. Biden also bragged about a "record 6.7 million jobs created last year -- the most in the first year of any president in American histor y." But the president didn't create those jobs. In panic over COVID, govern- ments shut down so many busi- nesses that they raised the unem- ployment rate to 14.7%. Biden then slowed hiring further by giving non- workers extended unemployment benefits and fat stimulus checks. For many people, that meant they could make as much, or more, col- lecting unemployment. No wonder they didn't go back to work. Finally, most benefits have run out, so of course, we have job growth now. It's not because of anything good that Biden did. Under Biden, Trump and Obama, government federal spending almost doubled. Hope for future spending respon- sibility is bleak. "Biden's 10-year out- look still would rack up $14.4 trillion in deficits," reports Bloomberg. More money gets printed; infla- tion gets worse; and the national debt grows. Politicians need to make actual cuts to make a difference in our debt. Budget cuts are needed to give our children hope for a prosperous future. But Biden won't do that. John Stossel is creator of Stossel TV and author of "Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media." Heritage Viewpoint By GianCarlo Canaparo