The times. (Gainesville, Ga.) 1972-current, October 29, 2018, Image 5

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The times., October 29, 2018, Image 5

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Newspaper Page Text5A OPINION ®he £ntics gainesvilletimes.com Monday, October 29, 2018 Shannon Casas Editor in Chief | 770-718-3417 | scasas@gainesvilletimes.com Submit a letter: letters@gainesvilletimes.com The First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Apply same standards to cops, civilians There has been a torrent of speculation about the death of Botham Shem Jean — shot and killed in his apartment by Officer Amber Guyger — most of it based on the limited available evidence and conflicting accounts of what happened that September night in Dallas. Until more details of the tragic event are made public, likely at trial, and we can flesh out the fuller picture of what actu ally occurred, it seems irresponsible to add to the noise. But the shooting has injected some worthy ques tions into the debate about police misconduct — not necessarily as it applies to black men, as is the prevail ing narrative, but as to why police officers in this case and more generally speak ing are afforded a special status when involved in a shooting. First, allow me to stipulate: Most police officers do what society asks of them — exhibit both brav ery and restraint in the face of threat and provo cation, in their professional and private lives. Many go well beyond the call of duty. Fort Worth’s recent loss of Officer Garrett Hull, gunned down while working a dangerous undercover opera tion, is a potent reminder of that. These men and women deserve our support and thanks. But many people, conservatives in particular, seem to confer to officers of the law a “super-citi zen” status; a presumption that whether on or off- duty, by virtue of their chosen profession, police deserve a special dispensation when they make mistakes or errors in judgment — even when those errors have deadly results. Sen. Ted Cruz, otherwise careful with his words on the matter, seemed to align himself with this thinking when he criticized his election opponent and others for being “so quick to always blame the police officer.” Indeed, we should not always blame the officer, but we should presume their innocence like we do with any ordinary citizen charged with a crime — no more, no less. However, we’ve seen a defense of Guyger made all the more troubling because this was not a typi cal police shooting. Guyger was not on duty and therefore not acting in her official capacity as a police officer when she shot and killed Jean, yet she was treated differently than an ordinary citizen would be — not immediately arrested but allowed to surrender to authorities three days later. It’s hard to imagine any other circumstance — or any other profession — that would convey such privilege. Early defenders of Guyger have also argued that by issuing a warning to Jean before shooting him, Guyger was applying her training and fol lowing protocols. But her profession and requisite training is not a reasonable defense of her actions; If anything, they are an indictment of her behav ior — she should have acted with heightened awareness and greater restraint than she exhib ited. In fact, since Guyger had entered another person’s home, under Texas statute, if anyone had a justifiable reason to use deadly force it was not her but Jean, the victim. Without casting aspersions on Guyger’s char acter or drawing premature conclusions about motive or her mental state at the time of the shoot ing, it’s more than fair to say that Guyger’s actions, while quite possibly the result of a horrible misun derstanding, were grossly negligent — regardless of her job status. If both Jean and Guyger are to receive justice in this case, her conduct must be judged before her profession. A person, who happened to be a police officer, shot Jean. She should be held accountable. Cynthia M. Allen is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. CYNTHIA ALLEN cmallen@ star-telegram.com Deceitful promises of politicians Will you be able to retire? Maybe not. Will your state pay what its politicians promised? Almost certainly not. Politicians in Connecticut, New Jersey and Illinois are especially irresponsible when it comes to not funding pen sion plans, but most every municipality has promised more than it will have. “The money hasn’t been set aside for years and years,” says City Journal editor Daniel DiSalvo in my new internet video. “Nobody was paying attention.” His colleague Steve Malanga com plains that the media rarely reports on the coming crisis. “To a certain extent, I have sympathy with the media, because the media’s looking for what happens next,” says Malanga. “This is not something that’s going to happen next week.” But the collapse is coming. Current retirees may find their pension check is cut by 10 percent or 50 percent. “We just don’t have enough money, and the amount of money that we have to put into this is just mountainous,” says Malanga. Neither party wants to make the tough choices involved. “Both Democrats and Republicans have incentives to short the pension fund,” says DiSalvo. “For Democrats, if we can not put as much in, we can free up more money for greater public spending on public programs that we think are good. If we’re Republicans, we probably want to cut taxes.” “Ten years from now, they’re gonna have a problem,” says Malanga. “But 10 years from now somebody else is in office!” Some pension plans are promises that should never have been made, but few politi cians will say that. At most, they talk about making small changes to “keep our promises.” Small changes won’t be enough. Detroit and several Cali fornia cities already ran out of money and declared bankruptcy. “At some point, your debts are so great that you can’t afford to provide basic services to people,” says Malanga. “Police force, fire protection — all will be on the chopping block,” added DiSalvo. Instead of making cuts now to avoid crisis later, some politicians increase retirement benefits. New Jersey passed 13 separate benefit enhancements between 1999 and 2003. I assume politicians make these unsus tainable promises because powerful municipal unions demand them. “Public employee unions regularly lobby and seek to elect politicians who offer them better compensation pack ages. They’ve been intimately involved in the whole system from the beginning,” says DiSalvo. But Steven Kreisberg of AFSCME, the biggest government workers’ union, tells me that unions didn’t create this problem. “There’s plenty of money to pay our people.” What about the $5 trillion in unfunded liabilities? That’s “a figure that’s used by some anti-pension zealots,” replied Kreisberg. “It’s fake news.” But it’s the number (actually, now $6 trillion) you get if you use accounting standards that the federal government demands from private pension plans. Unions fight to keep every penny that politicians promised. But Detroit’s bank ruptcy changed the rules on that. “The federal bankruptcy judge cre ated a precedent that said pensions could actually be cut,” says DiSalvo. “That was a shock to the unions. (It) called into question these strong legal protec tions that public pensions have so long enjoyed. They can’t just sit back and say, well, we’re going to get paid no matter what.” Some politicians hoped that a rising stock market would fund their promises. Many assumed their investments would grow by more than 7 percent per year. Do you make that much on your savings? I don’t. Seven percent seems like wishful thinking. Malanga says it was “more than wish ful thinking. It borders on criminality, frankly. If after nine years of a bull mar ket we haven’t begun to fix this, when are we gonna fix it?” Malanga and DiSalvo argue that the only honest way to fix it is to reduce benefit levels and switch to individual retirement accounts like private sector 401(k)s. That way, instead of a promise backed by nothing more than political hot air, there’s an actual account with money in it, and people can track how well their retirement investments do. The politicians and union bosses, by contrast, would like to ignore the prob lem — until one day, no matter what promises they’ve made, they simply won’t be able to keep them. John Stossel is a columnist for Creators Syndicate. •*9 A JjL JOHN STOSSEL www.johnstossel.com JOEL PETT I Tribune News Service Call for common sense on trans issues Your government officials U.S. government President Donald Thimp, The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20500, 202-456-1111,202-456-1414, fax, 202-456- 2461; www.whitehouse.gov Sen. Johnny Isakson, 131 Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, DC 20510,202-224- 3643, fax, 202-228-0724; One Overton Park, 3625 Cumberland Blvd., Suite 970, Atlanta 30339, 770-661-0999, fax, 770-661-0768; isakson.senate.gov Sen. David Perdue, 383 Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, DC 20510,202-224- 3521, fax 202-228-1031; 3280 Peachtree Road NE Suite 2640, Atlanta 30303, 404-865-0087, fax 404-865-0311; perdue.senate.gov. U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, 1504 Longworth House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515, 202- 225-9893; 210 Washington St. NW, Suite 202, Gainesville 30501,770-297-3388; dougcollins. house.gov U.S. Rep Rob Woodall, 1725 Longworth House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515, 202- 225-4272, fax 202-225-4696; 75 Langley Drive, Lawrenceville 30045, 770-232-3005, fax 770- 232-2909; woodall.house.gov Georgia state government Gov. Nathan Deal, 203 State Capitol, Atlanta 30334; 404-656-1776; www.gov.georgia.gov Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, 240 State Capitol, Atlanta 30334, 404-656-5030; www.ltgov.ga.gov Secretary of State Brian Kemp, 214 State Capitol, Atlanta 30334, 404-656-2881, fax 404-656- 0513; www.sos.state.ga.us I recently spent an after noon watching TeenNick with some kids. Between episodes of iCarly and some cartoons where all the characters passed gas in unison to create some kind of superhero force field, I experienced a socio logical epiphany. There were commercials geared toward girls alone, and commercials geared toward boys alone, and the advertisers weren’t buying into the “alternative genders” Zeitgeist pushed by adults. This was an entirely binary world. It was incredibly refreshing, given the grown-up world’s growing preoccupation with “gender fluidity.” We’ve somehow been forced to accept the idea that biol ogy isn’t destiny, and that we can ignore science in our attempt to reach that personal comfort zone where “identity” matches our heart’s desire. I wonder if some people in the Trump administration have been watching TeenNick, too. This week, a leaked memo from the Department of Health and Human Ser vices revealed proposed plans to roll back the expansive rules that threw science out the window and turned gender into a game of improvisation. The new rules — which are actually the pre-Obama old rules and served us well for decades — provide that gender will again be determined by a person’s biological sex at birth. Unless there is some strong evidence to the con trary, such as DNA proving that your bouncing baby boy is actually your bounc ing baby girl, this scientific standard will be the one used to determine rights, benefits, and identity. It seems pretty common- sense to me. But you’d never know that based on the reaction from the LGBTQ community and its allies. They’d have you believe that Trump ordered something akin to Biblical anni hilation. The headline in the New York Times salaciously read, “Transgender Could Be Defined Out of Existence Under the Trump Administration.” According to the memos, officials argue the federal government should adopt a definition of sex and gender “on a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable.” Here we have an administration not known for its adherence to science actu ally adhering to science. Personally, I’m happy to defer to biol ogy when it comes to classifying a fetus as human. I also believe in the science of climate change, and hope my conserva tive colleagues consider the very real prospect of Alaska melting into Canada and bringing us back to 49 states (unless Hawaii is swallowed by a tsunami). My dedication to science is usually shared by progressives, but not, it seems, when gender is involved. In that case, despite the fact that it’s pretty easy to determine that if a person has a penis, that person has a much bet ter chance at being a daddy and not a mommy, many of those who push for gender fluidity say that biology is not definitive. There’s an evolving school of thought that maintains that “gender” and “sex” are different things. In other words, gender is in the mind, while sex is, um, further south. But here’s the problem. My alma mater, Bryn Mawr, issued a booklet a while ago listing all of the possible pro nouns you could use if you weren’t sure about a person’s gender. Some of them included “Vie,” “Nie,” “Zie” and “Zir.” Bryn Mawr did this because they didn’t want to inadvertently offend someone who identified as something other than male or female. Some might think that’s incredibly civilized, but I consider it madness. People can be whatever they want to be in their private lives, but the govern ment has a right to want scientific stan dards when determining Title IX and gender discrimination issues. That’s just common sense. Christine M. Flowers is a columnist for the Tribune Content Agency. CHRISTINE M. FLOWERS cflowers1961@ gmail.com She Stines EDITORIAL BOARD Founded Jan. 26,1947 345 Green St., Gainesville, GA 30501 gainesvilletimes.com General Manager Norman Baggs Editor in Chief Shannon Casas