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The ADVANCE, January 6, 2021/Page 6A
(51?e Ahumtce
A free press is not a privilege but
organic necessity in a great society.
—Walter Lippmann
COMMENTARY
out of
CONTEXT
A compilation of quotations on a variety of
issues by national, state and regional writers,
well-known personalities, just plain everyday
people and from various publications
collected by the editors of THE ADVANCE.
Quote for our Times:
"We know that no one ever seizes
power with the intention of relinquishing
it. Power is not a means; it is an end."
George Orwell, 1984
Mark Andrew Dwyer, writer for Ameri
can Thinker: What denying election fraud
accomplishes.
So, on the one hand, there is plen
ty of evidence strongly suggesting that
the widely observed election fraud took
place during the 2020 presidential elec
tions. On the other hand, all we have are
assurances of the election fraud-deniers
that there was no election fraud, which
were later changed to admissions that
although election fraud did take place,
it wasn't large enough to sway the re
sults. No verifiable facts that would clearly
invalidate the specific election fraud al
legations were presented to the public as
of the time of this writing, while quite a lot
of obstruction of investigations, like denials
to subject the vote-counting software and
hardware to examination by independent
experts, took place. Some of fhis obstruc
tion had all appearances of a cover-up.
Jerome Michaels, journalist for Ameri
can Thinker: A Supreme Court in hiding is
dangerous for our country.
With the 2020 election, there will be
grave consequences following the Su
preme Court's insistence on being left
alone. Earlier, I focused on the beginning
section of the Declaration of Indepen
dence, the part saying a just government
only exists with the consent of the People
through free and fair elections.
The next part of the Declaration has
a much darker side which the Supreme
Court may bring into play if it stays in its
rabbit hole. The Declaration is plain: The
People have a duty to overthrow the gov
ernment if it is not justly based on their col
lective consent. That duty reaches a criti
cal stage when all the institutions fail them.
The Supreme Court may have been our
last hope. So far, the justices have utterly
failed us.
Leah Barkoukis, online features edi
tor at Townhall.com: Perdue responds to
leaked call between President and GA
Secretary of State.
Earlier on Sunday the Georgia Repub
lican made clear his support of his Senate
GOP colleagues in challenging the elec
tion.
"You know when I first saw the magni
tude of the irregularities back in Decem
ber, early December, about our Novem
ber race, I called for the resignation of our
secretary of state, I repeatedly called for a
special session of the General Assembly to
investigate," Perdue told Fox News 1 "Sun
day Morning Futures." "None of that hap
pened, and so I started calling out that
the only thing left for the president is for
us to object and I agreed that I would do
that."
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Behold, the Delivery Revolution
„ THE
RICH
LOWRY
COLUMN
It’s been a terrible year for
the American worker, with a
notable bright spot courtesy of
one of the tech firms in the
crosshairs of regulators and
lawmakers.
If someone had said early
in 2020, “A company is going to
hire hundreds of thousands of
non-college-educated workers
during the pandemic at well
above the minimum wage,”
you’d think there’d be huzzahs
all around.
That’s what the online
retailer Amazon has done, but it
still gets brickbats for how it
pays and treats its workers. Rep.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said
the other day that Amazon jobs
are a “scam.”
If so, a swath of the
American workforce is falling
for the grift. Since July, the
online retailer has hired
350,000 workers, and now
employs 1.2 million people
globally. This is a historic hiring
binge. According to The New
York Times, “The closest
comparisons are the hiring that
entire industries carried out in
wartime, such as shipbuilding
during the early years of World
War II.”
On top of this, the company
provides work for roughly half a
million truck drivers.
It overwhelmingly hires
high school graduates. It doesn’t
ask for a resume, gives its
workers about a day of training,
and then puts them on the job
in its fulfillment centers.
The difficulty of the work
shouldn’t be underestimated —
it is taxing, repetitive and highly
regimented. Yet, we’ve long
complained about losing
assembly line jobs for non
college-educated workers.
Amazon is hiring people for
what is the 21st-century
equivalent of such jobs.
Amazon began paying its
workers $15 an hour in 2018. If
that rate rings a bell, it’s the
number for the federal
minimum wage that Sen. Bernie
Sanders and AOC have long
been lobbying for, to little effect
(it remains $7.25 an hour).
It’s hard to review what
Amazon has done over the last
year and consider it the work of
a corporate monster. The
company had an unlimited
unpaid time off policy for its
workers when the pandemic
began.
It hired temporary workers
to replace them and deal with
the surge of business, then kept
most of them on and began
hiring on top of that.
It’s been offering signing
bonuses of up to $3,000, and
hiring in places in the country
where no one else is.
According to the research
of Michael Mandel at the
center-left Progressive Policy
Institute, Amazon fulfillment
center jobs pay 31% more than
retail jobs at brick-and-mortar
stores, where pay has basically
been stagnant for three decades.
Mandel points out that it’s
wrong to simplistically think of
Amazon and other e-commerce
outfits as replacing brick-and-
mortar stores.
What they are really
replacing is the labor that
consumers undertake on their
own to shop for goods —
driving to a store, walking up
and down the aisles, making the
selection, loading it, and taking
it home. Someone making a
purchase through Amazon
essentially hires a network of
workers to do all of that for
him.
What Amazon, and
e-commerce more broadly, is
doing is selling goods to
consumers at low prices, while
giving them more convenience
than ever before (rapid delivery
to their doorsteps, with the
possibility of easy returns) and
creating new jobs in the process.
By all means, jawbone the
company to treat workers
better, but don’t lose sight of
the scale of its achievement —
and how many Americans are
employed because of it.
Rich Lowry is editor of the
National Review.
(c) 2020 by King Features
Synd., Inc.
GRITTY
One-Legged Tap Dancer
“That fellow was
as busy as a one-
legged tap dancer!”
Several years ago, I
heard a preacher use
that phrase to
describe an act that
appeared on the Ed
Sullivan Show many
years ago. The act
involved a fellow with
12 plates, 12 sticks (24” long) and a long
table.
I actually remember the act, and I’m
sure that some of you who remember the
Ed Sullivan Show may also remember it.
The act started with the fellow standing a
stick on the table and placing a plate on top
of it. He then started spinning the plate and
continued until it stayed there by itself. He
continued this procedure until he had all
the sticks standing with plates spinning on
top of each one.
The most difficult part of the act was
keeping the plates spinning while he
continued to set up additional plates. After
he had all the plates spinning, he had to run
from plate to plate to keep the plates from
falling. That’s why he was said to be “as
busy as a one-legged tap dancer.”
Finally, the preacher used that story to
describe our lives today and how we tend
to get so many worldly things going at one
time. I’m sure you know how easy it is for
us to get so busy and concerned over
something that’s not even worth worrying
about in the first place. And while we’re
talking about worrying, I’m reminded of
something a friend told me a few years ago.
He said his mother was a chronic worrier,
and when he told her she shouldn’t worry
so much, she said, “Well, I can tell you one
thing - it must work, because 90% of the
things I worry about never happen.”
When you think about it, folks, you’ll
probably agree that we all worry about
things that never happen - which, I
suppose, has nothing to do with the fact
that we were worrying in the first place.
You know, folks, I actually think that most
Please see Nitty page 9A
COMMENTARY
Lessons Georgia
Voters Can Learn
from California
One of the
many beauties
of freedom is
there is always
surprise.
Georgia
voters might
consider what
is happening in
California as the
nation’s blue-
state poster child turns purple.
Why?
When the left seizes power, they
don’t know when to stop. But voters
know how to say, “Whoa, enough.”
As British nobleman Lord Acton
noted, “Power tends to corrupt.”
California’s governor, Gavin
Newsom, started this difficult CO-
VID-19 period early in the year by
imposing in his state the most draco
nian shutdown measures in the na
tion — abridging individual move
ment and shutting down schools,
businesses and churches.
While coming down hard on
California’s citizens, Newsom lived
the life of privilege and was discov
ered dining maskless at a $l,200-per-
person dinner party at a tiny Napa
Valley restaurant.
Now he’s facing recall with re
portedly more than half of the 1.5
million signatures needed by next
March already gathered.
In November’s elections, Repub
licans in California regained four of
the eight House seats they lost in
2018. And amid the refrain of the left
accusing our nation of systemic rac
ism, two of the recaptured Republi
can seats were won by Asian Ameri
cans — Young Kim and Michelle
Steele. Kim and Steele became two of
the first three Korean American
women elected to the House. An
other victory went to Mexican Amer
ican Mike Garcia. And David Valadao
recaptured his seat in a majority His
panic district.
Republicans captured these seats
by campaigning against defund-the-
police calls from the left and warning
against the threat of socialism. And
each of these Republican seats was
won in districts that went for Joe
Biden in the presidential election.
Three ballot initiatives pushing
to the left — one raising property
taxes; one that would have restored
racial preferences in government hir
ing, contracting and education; and
another expanding government
power to control rents — all were
defeated.
Another ballot initiative allow
ing app-based transportation compa
nies such as Uber to employ their
drivers as independent contractors
was approved. A victory for capital
ism.
In the beginning of December,
the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to sup
port the challenge of Pasadena Har
vest Rock Church against Newsom’s
restrictions on indoor church wor
ship. Harvest Rock argued that first
amendment religious freedom guar
antees were violated by Newsom’s
restrictions and that restrictions on
churches were more severe than
those on secular entities such as hair
Please see Guest page 9A