About The times. (Gainesville, Ga.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 12, 2020)
CEO OPINION Shannon Casas Editor in Chief The Times ’ Gainesville, Georgia 770-718-3417 | scasas@gainesvilletimes.com Weekend Edition - September 12-13, 2020 Economy begins to recover, thanks to capitalism As Washington has been frozen in debate about whether to pass massive new economic stimulus legislation, something interesting has happened in the real world. In the real world, Ameri cans sent a message to poli ticians saying they can take of themselves just fine, thank you. The Bureau of Labor Statistics report for the month of August just came in saying the U.S. economy is surging forward in strong STAR PARKER recovery mode www.urbancure.org The economy created 1.4 million new jobs, and the unemployment rate dropped to 8.4% — not pretty compared with the 3.5% rate in February, before COVID-19 hit. But compared with where we were in April, at 14.7% unemployment, this is a remarkable recovery. It’s also quite remarkable given where things stood during the attempted recovery from the last recession, which began in 2008-2009. Back then, it took more than three years to get unem ployment below 8%. This was achieved now in less than six months. Great economic news should be exhilarating to everyone. But, for sure, what is great news for normal people is taken as bad news by politicians on the left who want to run our lives. We can recall the sentiment captured in the often-quoted observation of Rahm Emanuel, former chief of staff to Barack Obama and, most recently, former mayor of Chicago. “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” he said. “(I)t’s an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.” If anything, Emanuel gets high marks for hon esty. He was telling us that during times of stress, when many are afraid, those in politics who aspire to attain power and control over the lives of others have an opportunity to move in and take over. It’s exactly what is happening now. Those who want to transform our nation from a free nation driven forward by capital ism to a socialist nation run by politicians see the current time of stress and uncertainty as opportunity. It’s as if we’ve had some kind of interven tion from the heavens. Just at the moment when many in Washington wanted to spend another $3 trillion, extending the generous $600 weekly supplement to unemployment ben efits, the economic data came forth that shows Americans are getting back to work in record numbers. Another $3 trillion spending bill, laced with more subsidies for unemployment, would have been an obstacle, not an aid, to the recovery we now see. Subsidizing people to not work is a very effective strategy for keeping them unemployed. Given the uniform record of success of capital ism, and the uniform record of failure of social ism, it defies logic that so many still buy into the socialist confusions. Crises occur all the time. The unforeseen and the unpredictable are part of the way the world is. The way to deal with this inevitability is to keep things free and let private individuals take responsibility for their own lives. This is the way to adjust, innovate and recover. Layering the economy with more government is the way to stifle recovery. I periodically remind readers about the vari ous indexes that measure economic freedom. They uniformly show that economically free countries grow and prosper. Economically unfree countries don’t. Of course, we’re in a challenging time that’s causing a lot of stress. But, please, let’s not allow ourselves to get seduced by the socialist delusions. Economies work when individuals in them are free to initiate, to innovate, to create, to work, to take personal responsibility for their own lives. There is just no other answer. It’s so seduc tive for some to believe that government can lead the way out, that others can do it for you. That is not true now and never has been true. Let’s celebrate the great economic news and use it to bolster our conviction to remain a free and thriving nation under God. Star Parker is an author and president of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education and a columnist for Creators. Trump aside, Hispanic vote is not a given for Democrats As ambivalent as I am about a Donald Trump vic tory — or, for that matter, a Joe Biden one — there is one scenario I would enjoy: What if Trump was reelected thanks to support from Hispanics? Now, I should say this is only a remote possibility. There’s zero indication Trump can win a majority of Hispan ics nationally. Biden currently has about a 20-point lead among Latino voters nationwide. But the whole reason the thought comes to mind is that Biden is underperforming among the fastest growing demographic group, even at a time when he is generally doing better than Hillary Clinton did in 2016 and has been holding a steady lead over Trump for months now. The biggest worry for the Biden cam paign is that Trump is actually leading among Hispanics in Florida, a crucial state for Democrats and an absolute must-win for Republicans. This is largely because Cuban-Americans tend to be more supportive of Republicans than other Hispanic groups, and Trump’s anti socialist rhetoric probably has special appeal to a community with long memo ries of Castro’s takeover of Cuba. But the fact that Trump is doing well with Hispanic voters in Florida highlights an important point: Hispanics aren’t a monolithic group. Cuban-Americans are very different than Mexican-Americans and Mexican-Americans are very differ ent than Puerto Ricans. This is true culturally — just ask some of them! — but it’s also true as a matter of public policy. The national media often makes it seem like Hispanics generically care about immigration with equal intensity simply by virtue of the fact that they’re Hispanic. But Cuban-Ameri cans historically had a special carve-out in immigration law (until 2017 when Obama ended the “wet foot dry foot” policy as part of his overture to Cuba). Puerto Ricans may care about immigration for principled reasons, but it’s worth remembering that Puerto Ricans aren’t immigrants. They’re U.S. citizens. Anyway, you get the point. So why would I enjoy it if Hispanics voted deci sively for Trump? Because it would make some people look like idiots and force pretty much everyone to rethink their locked-in positions on not just immigration but on identity politics generally. Much of the intensity around the immi gration issue in recent years has stemmed from the belief that Democrats want “open borders” so they can import evermore Democratic voters. There are thoughtful and non-racist versions of this argument and there are dumb and very racist ver sions of it as well. But it’s gotten to the point where it’s mostly just a lazy talking point. But it’s a persuasive talking point to many people because so many Democrats talk as if that is precisely their thinking. As Peter Beinart noted in a 2017 essay for the Atlantic, “As the Democrats grew more reliant on Latino votes, they were more influenced by pro-immigrant activism.” In 2008, he noted, the Democratic Party plat form condemned illegal immigration. In 2016, the platform didn’t even mention it. According to many Democrats, the word “illegal” has a nativist and offensive tinge. I hate most of Donald Trump’s rhetoric about immigration and immigrants, but wouldn’t it be wild if it turned out to be more offensive to rich white liberals than to the actual targets of his diatribes? Meanwhile, the racists who tell me — usually in ALL CAPS — that importing brown people is suicidal and that’s why we must support Trump would, to borrow a phrase from that great Cuban American, Ricky Ricardo, “have some ’splainingto do.” And so would the progressive activists and politicians who think they can summa rize the views and attitudes of a huge, and hugely diverse, group of human beings. Again, I wish Trump wouldn’t use racist rhetoric about immigration. But if Hispan ics voted for him in large numbers despite that rhetoric and despite his immigration policies (or even because of them), it would deal a mortal wound to the claim that wanting to enforce immigration laws or making our immigration system slightly more restrictive is racist. Lastly, Hispanics themselves would benefit in the long run simply by virtue of the fact that both parties would now com pete for their votes. I understand this is a hard argument to make with Trump in office for a lot of reasons, and I personally wish we were talking about a different Republican presidential candidate. And it’s not going to happen this time, anyway. But Trump’s relative success with Hispanics suggests it could happen someday, particularly with a Hispanic GOP nominee. And that’s something to hope for. Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. JONAH GOLDBERG goldbergcolumn@ gmail.com LISA BENSON I Washington Post Writers Group DANA SUMMERS I Tribune News Service Are we prepared for Trump s refusal to accept election results? “We have to win the election,” President Trump told a crowd of sometimes mask-less supporters in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, back in August. “(M)akesure your vote gets counted. Make sure, because the only way we’re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged.” Did you get that? The president of the United States is leaving no room for the possibil ity that he will lose this election fairly or that Vice President Joe Biden will be elected legitimately. That is, to put it lightly, an unprecedented, outrageous and dangerous undermining of our constitutional republic and the democratic values it upholds. As the election inches closer, it becomes clearer with every pass ing moment that Trump will not go gentle into that good night. Practi cally since the day he was elected, he has been using and abusing our democratic institutions for his own benefit, and he shows no signs of letting up. But are we taking him seriously enough? Last week he encouraged voters in North Carolina to be “poll watchers,” to catch Democrats in the act of “thieving and stealing and robbing,” seemingly advocating for voter intimidation. Just this past weekend, Trump again suggested to supporters that they vote twice — imploring them to vote by mail and then also attempt to vote in person as a backstop to test the system. That followed an earlier message to supporters last week to do the same. “Let them send it in,” he said in North Carolina, “and let them go vote, and if the system is as good as they say it is, then obviously they won’t be able to vote. If it isn’t tabulated they won’t be able to vote, so that’s the way it is.” Steve Simon, Minnesota’s sec retary of state, described that idea this way: “It’s like advising someone to try to rob a bank to see if the security is as good as the bank says it is. Knowingly voting twice is a felony. Period.” That didn’t stop Attorney General Bill Barr from exacerbating Trump’s attempts to undermine the elec tion, when, in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, the country’s top lawyer actually said he didn’t know what the law was in each state. Back in July, Trump also sug gested moving the election to a later date, which is not something he can legally do. At the time, a Democratic National Committee spokes woman dismissed the seriousness of Trump’s suggestion, calling it “nothing more than a desperate attempt to distract from today’s devastating economic numbers.” It even cajoled some congres sional Republicans to put Trump in his place. Sen. Marco Rubio told reporters, “He can suggest what ever he wants. The law is what it is. We’re going to have an election that’s legitimate, it’s going to be credible, it’s going to be the same as we’ve always done it.” But I’m not so sure about that. Trump has given us every indica tion that he’ll do whatever it takes to stay in power, the law and the Constitution be damned. Why are we so confident that the system can withstand his repeated blows, when he’s successfully manipu lated the system to stay in power thus far? This is, after all, a president who has already indicated he may not accept the election results, tell ing Fox, “I have to see.” And in the latest effort to save himself in the case of Biden’s vic tory, he has asked the Department of Justice to take over a defama tion lawsuit filed against him by E. Jean Carroll, a woman who claims Trump raped her in a dressing room in the mid-1990s, in hopes that Barr’s involvement will be more favorable for him. From undermining the Russia investigation to his quid pro quo offer in Ukraine, resulting in his impeachment, Trump has proven over and over again that there is no out-of-bounds when it comes to his own self-preservation. You don’t even have to buy former fixer Michael Cohen’s theory — that Trump will resign so that Vice President Mike Pence can become president to pardon him — to believe that Trump will not participate in a peaceful tran sition of power in November if he loses. Instead of dismissing Trump as merely “desperate” to distract us, or professing blanket confidence in our provably vulnerable sys tems, we have to hope Congress, the Justice Department and state attorneys general are taking this threat to our democracy very seri ously, and are ready for whatever Trump inevitably throws at us. Because it’s not a conspiracy theory when he’s told us exactly what he wants to do. S.E. Cupp is the host of “S.E. Cupp Unfiltered” on CNN. S.E. CUPP secuppdailynews@ yahoo.com.
