The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/862179
The Press-Dispatch Wednesday, August 16, 2017 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 Some of the Nobel Prize winners in recent years have been ques- tionable. I won't rain on anybody's parade here by calling them out. The Peace version of it is award- ed by Norway, and they can give it to whomever they like. Based on what I've heard on Prairie Home Companion, it would probably be counterproductive to tell Norwe- gians not to award it to somebody. But I wish I could nominate a great man whose Nobel might not be controversial at all. He's had an enormous impact on chil- dren's health care and medical re- search over a period of several de- cades. He recruited the energy and goodness of diverse, other- wise contentious people in every corner of America to show com- passion to children and parents they never met, who really need- ed it. He not only fought for sick kids' lives and improved their qual- ity of life, he made the rest of us care more about one another. Now that's peace. His name at birth was Joseph Levitch, but you know him as Jerry Lewis. I wish I could nom- inate him, but I can't. The Nobel website lists eight categories of "qualified nomina- tors" and I don't fit in- to any of them. If you know a previous Nobel Peace Prize winner or a sitting Congressman or head of state, or pro- fessor of history, the- ology, philosophy, religion, law or social sciences who's willing to nominate Jerry Lewis for a Nobel, please introduce us. The Nobel Committee receives nominations from September un- til Feb. 1, announces a winner the following October, and convenes an award ceremony that Decem- ber. Lewis is 91 and in frail health. Let's move with a purpose. He seemed an unlikely human- itarian—a loud, chain-smoking, rather arrogant high school drop- out born to Russian Jewish parents in Newark, New Jersey. He was funny, as you know. Hysterically, some- times. And almost from the beginning of his show business career, he had money coming out his ears. He could have led a very comfortable life enjoying his wealth and the perks of star- dom. But for 44 years, he didn't allow himself much comfort. He chose to bear other people's burdens, to share their sorrows, and to keep his shoulder to the wheel so long as a cruel disease continued to pick his little friends off one by one. He was obsessed. A fter emceeing several fund- raising telethons for the Muscu- lar Dystrophy Association during the 1950s, Lewis hosted the na- tionwide Labor Day weekend tele- One hundred years ago, the United States entered a war that was to have ended all wars. It had begun four years earlier when the heir to the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, Archduke Francis Ferdi- nand and his wife were assassinat- ed by the Black Hand, a national- ist's group of Serbians. It seemed for a few weeks that the event would not spark a war between Austria and Serbia. The Archduke, though the heir, was not beloved by his Uncle Emper- or Franz Joseph. But soon events began to spin out of control, and another European war had com- menced. All sides did not seek war, but all sides were prepared. Intense jingoistic nationalism was evident among all the nations involved. The antagonists all felt that the war would be over in weeks, at least by Christmas 1914. How wrong they were. Our world is in turmoil and con- flict, and we are closer to an un- wanted war, which could have drastic consequences; i.e. a nu- clear war. I am not an alarmist; however, I do not have my head in the sand. Unknown is whether the com- ments being made are for chest thumping, political positioning, or actual threats of war. Sadly, there are no major po- litical or religious figures in our nation [or any other] who are warning and pointing out the col- lision course the ma- jor nuclear powers are headed towards. More than one col- umnist has made ref- erence to the 1957 anti-nuclear war nov- el by Nevil Shute On the Beach and used the opening lines: "We've all got to die one day, some sooner and some later. The trouble always has been that you're never ready, because you don't know when it's coming. Well, now we do know and there's nothing to be done about it." He says he will be dead by Sep- tember. It will take about a week to die, though no one can be sure. An- imals live the longest. There is no one alive in the polit- ical structure of the nations of the world who remembers and partic- ipated in World War Two and Ko- rea. What they know, they have read from a history book. North Korea, China, Japan, Russia, and Europe are still pock- marked with remnants of war, but that in itself does not guarantee cooler heads will prevail forever. We know somewhat of the de- struction of an atomic bomb. Hiro- shima and Nagasaki are a 72-year reminder. But those bombs in comparison to today's hydrogen bombs are minuscule. The Hiro- shima Bomb was rated at 15 kilotons; the typ- ical Trident/Minute- men missiles are rat- ed between 100 to 170 kilotons-the largest in the megatons. Caroloslbs.com and nuclearse- crecy.com are two web sites where the curious can pick a city, select a bomb size, adjust a few parame- ters, and obtain a visual of the de- structiveness of today's bombs. It is sobering. I made mention of the fact that the leaders of today are far re- moved from the horrors of war. Both the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War had leaders who knew of war's effect firsthand, and the Cu- ban Missile Crisis demonstrated both sides could show restraint and sidestep nuclear war. Are we entering a new era of Brinkmanship with the limitation that Mutual Assured Destruction is no longer a deterrent? There is no doubt that we are entering in- Continued on page 8 Continued on page 8 Continued on page 8 Minority View by Walter E. Williams The Weekly by Alden Heuring My Point of View by Dr. H. K. Fenol, Jr., M.D. Is college education worth it? Points to Ponder by Rev. Ford Bond Pray for peace Humanitarian deserves Nobel Prize Lucid Moments by Bart Stinson Tax reform essential to unleash prosperity Heritage Viewpoint by Edwin J. Feulner Job No. 1 for Congress, as I not- ed in a recent column, is repealing Obamacare. But cutting taxes is a close second. Of course, the whole system needs an overhaul. We want to un- leash economic growth and pros- perity. Tax cuts are a crucial first step toward that, but we need full reform to get us across the finish line. U.S. tax rates, simply put, are too high. Combined marginal rates for some individuals and capital in- vestments can exceed 50 percent, tax experts Romina Boccia and Adam Michel note in a recent pa- per. Our business tax system is par- ticularly bad. American corpora- tions face one of the highest tax rates in the world. They also must grapple with one of the worst sys- tems for business deductions of in- vestment expenses. Some Americans may hear that and think, well, big deal. Those big companies can afford it. And how does it really affect me? Very directly: 70 percent of all business taxes end up being paid by workers through low- er wages. Remember, we're all in the same econ- omy. Higher margin- al tax rates discour- age additional work. They curtail entre- preneurship. They re- duce savings and investment. That slows economic growth as a whole, and that affects all of us. Or take business deductions. But not allowing the deductions of all expenses in the year they are incurred, Ms. Boccia and Mr. Mi- chel point out, the tax code makes it more expensive for companies to invest. Investors wind up with lower returns. That impedes wage growth and slows job creation. The problem is, we have a tax system so incredibly complex that even the people in charge of enforcing it can't al- ways agree on what it means. It's loaded with so many exemp- tions, deductions, exclusions and oth- er complexities that many Americans are afraid to prepare their own tax returns. We need, as the say- ing goes, a tax system that looks like it was designed on purpose. One that is as transparent and simple as possible. That is why I and other conservatives have of- ten urged the adoption of a flat tax, which would enable Americans to figure out exactly what they owe in minutes and with confidence. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin seems to agree. "We are going to simplify personal tax- es where 95 percent of Americans August is the month when par- ents bid farewell to not only their college-bound youngsters but also a sizable chunk of cash for tuition. More than 18 million students at- tend our more than 4,300 degree- granting institutions. A ques- tion parents, their college-bound youngsters and taxpayers should ask: Is college worth it? Let's look at some of the num- bers. According to the Nation- al Conference of State Legisla- tures, "when considering all first- time undergraduates, studies have found anywhere from 28 percent to 40 percent of students enroll in at least one remedial course. When looking at only communi- ty college students, several stud- ies have found remediation rates surpassing 50 percent." Only 25 percent of students who took the ACT in 2012 met the test's readi- ness benchmarks in all four sub- jects (English, reading, math and science). Just 5 percent of black students and 13 percent of His- panic students met the readiness benchmarks in all four subjects. The NCSL report says, "A U.S. De- partment of Education study found that 58 percent of students who do not require remediation earn a bachelor's degree, compared to on- ly 17 percent of students enrolled in remedial reading and 27 per- cent of students enrolled in reme- dial math." The fact of business is that col- leges admit a far greater number of students than those who test as be- ing college-ready. Why should stu- dents be admitted to college when they are not capable of academic performance at the college level? Admitting such students gets the nation's high schools off the hook. The nation's high schools can con- tinue to deliver grossly fraudulent education – namely, issue diplo- mas that attest that students can read, write and compute at a 12th- grade level when they may not be able to perform at even an eighth- or ninth-grade level. You say, "Hold it, Williams. No college would admit a student who couldn't perform at an eighth- or ninth-grade level." During a re- cent University of North Caroli- na scandal, a learning specialist hired to help athletes found that during the period from 2004 to 2012, 60 percent of the 183 mem- bers of the football and basketball teams read between fourth- and eighth-grade levels. About 10 per- cent read below a third-grade lev- el. These were students with high- school diplomas and admitted to UNC. And it's not likely that UNC is the only university engaging in such gross fraud. Many students who manage to graduate don't have a lot to show for their time and money. New York University professor Rich- ard Arum, co-author of "Academ- ically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses," says that his study shows that more than a third of students showed no im- provement in critical thinking skills after four years at a univer- sity. That observation is confirmed by the many employers who com- plain that lots of recent graduates cannot seem to write an email that will not embarrass the company. In 1970, only 11 percent of adult Americans held college degrees. These degree holders were viewed as the nation's best and brightest. Today, over 30 percent hold col- lege degrees, with a significant portion of these graduates not de- monstrably smarter or more dis- ciplined than the average Amer- ican. Declining academic stan- dards and grade inflation tend to confirm employer perceptions that college degrees say little about job readiness. What happens to many of these ill-prepared college graduates? If they manage to become employed in the first place, their employment has little to do with their degree. One estimate is that 1 in 3 college graduates have a job historically performed by those with a high- school diploma or the equivalent. According to Richard Vedder, who is a professor of economics at Ohio University and the director of the Center for College A ffordability and Productivity, we had 115,000 janitors, 16,000 parking lot atten- Reasons my daughter is crying Flannery is a pretty good kid, but like any small child, she picks odd reasons to cry sometimes. Here are some of them... • We took away the trash can she was trying to dump on the floor. • We folded up her favorite blan- ket. Not even her favorite. • We gave her a blanket. • We wouldn't pick her up. • We picked her up. • We gave her pizza instead of cookies. • We wouldn't let her drink cof- fee. • We wouldn't let her drink dish soap. • We wouldn't let her drink bathwater. • We wouldn't let her drink the cat's water. • We made her wait to finish her bath until we'd cleaned up the poopy she'd made in the tub. • We changed her diaper. • We changed her clothes. • We got haircuts. • We closed the toilet seat. • We closed a door. • We closed the shower curtain. • We closed the dishwasher. • We swept her Cheerios stash off the floor where she'd been stashing it. I'll stop shaming my daughter now. And I have to admit this isn't an original idea—if you want more of this kind of humor, check out reasonsmysoniscrying.com. They didn't pay me to write this or even know I exist, but now that I'm a par- ent... I relate. Anyway, here's the stuff of the week. Coffee: Bushkill Falls Huckleber- ry Coffee Book: Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Tower Television: Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Tower Haiku: Red moon up there— who does it belong to, children? -Issa Health care- expensive? Or more appropriately, health scare. My per- sonal opinion about it. A fter 45 years of trying to under- stand the economic side of health care, I found out something. It is so complex that even our lawmakers who have spent countless hours an- alyzing this giant of a problem have not been able to fix the system. I do not have any magic wisdom to share. I do have some observations which may shed a small light to this ocean of maze. Here's one. If we want the best of care, the best in the world which cur- rently it is, we should be prepared to pay for it. In simple terms, if you want to ride a Cadillac or a Rolls Royce, be prepared to pay for it. Or have somebody pay for it. We do enjoy the very best and the best usually costs a lot. We have tech- nology so advanced, we are the en- vy of the world. A lot of people from all over the world come here to get sophisticated care. I learned for in- stance from some of my sources that the very rich from the middle east and south America fly here for care. So if we invest in very sophisticat- ed machines, and personnel, and fa- cilities, we will pay for it. Should we then scale down on tech- nology? No- if we want to give excep- tional care. We just have to use them very wisely. Another expense that sucks up the pool of money we have is the sector of abuse and misuse. We hear and I saw it with my own eyes the constant "innovative tech- Health scare Continued on page 8 Continued on page 8