About The times. (Gainesville, Ga.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 12, 2020)
(ED OPINION Shannon Casas Editor in Chief The Times ’ Gainesville, Georgia 770-718-3417 | scasas@gainesvilletimes.com Weekend Edition-December 12-13, 2020 LITERS Trump voted out over personality, not accomplishments If President Trump doesn’t serve a second term, it won’t be because Joe Biden is the better leader. It will be because enough people detested Trump’s pesky personality, overlooked his promises made/promises kept record and voted for Sleepy Joe, a do-nothing career politician. ■ Trump promised a big tax cut for individuals and businesses. He delivered a booming economy, record-setting stock market and 3.5% unemployment rate before the pandemic struck. ■ Trump promised to slash onerous federal regu lations. He far exceeded his vow to cut two regula tions for every new one. ■ Trump promised to improve international trade agreements. He negotiated more favorable trade deals with the European Union, Japan, China, Mexico and Canada. ■ Trump promised to secure our southern border. He’s erecting a big wall along the Rio Grande. Mass caravans, originating from Central America, have been halted after trying to illegally enter the USA a couple of years ago. ■ Trump promised to bring back manufacturing jobs. He did, even after President Obama said there was “no magic wand” to make it happen. ■ Trump promised to rebuild the military. He secured a record $738 billion for defense spending. Our troops received a 3.1% pay raise, the biggest increase since 2010. Historic reforms were enacted at the VA, including termination of incompetent employ ees and improved access to health care for veterans. ■ Trump promised to appoint conservative judges to the US Supreme Court. He nominated Neil Gor- such, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, three justices who now sit on the highest court in America. ■ Trump promised to protect life and religious liberty. He has been a staunch pro-life advocate, including being the first sitting president to speak at the annual March for Life. He also became the first American president to convene a UN meeting for the sole purpose of proclaiming religious liberty. ■ Trump promised to support criminal justice reform and law enforcement officials. He signed the First Step Act, which gives nonviolent offenders a second chance. He provided law enforcement agen cies with surplus equipment from the Department of Defense. He championed law and order despite wide spread violence in Democrat-run cities. ■ Trump promised to restore our weakened image around the world. He confronted Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, got our allies to pay their fair share at NATO and secured the return of the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. ■ Trump promised to stand up to Islamic terror ists. He decimated ISIS and ordered the raid that killed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, their notorious leader. He canceled the one-sided Iranian nuclear deal and ordered the deadly hit on Maj. General Qassem Solei- mani, the leader of Iran’s Republic Revolutionary Guard. He also returned hundreds of our troops from Middle Eastern wars. ■ Trump promised to make America energy inde pendent. He approved the Keystone XL and Dakota Access oil pipelines. America is now the world’s larg est producer of oil and natural gas. ■ Trump promised a COVID-19 vaccine this year. He delivered in record time with “Operation Warp Speed.” Thanks, President Trump, for “Making America Great Again!” Dick Biggs Gainesville Trump accomplished much in his 4 years Howard Stacy’s weekend diatribe taking President Trump and our existing Constitution to task illustrates an astounding lack of knowledge of governmental accomplishments and guidance provided by our leader and Constitution. For instance, consider the following accomplish ments of the “clown” who occupied the White House for the last four years. ■ Brokered two Middle East peace accords that had not been accomplished for the past 70 years. ■ First president that has not engaged us in a for eign war since Jimmy Carter. ■ Greatest positive impact on the economy, espe cially to Black and Latinos, of any president. ■ Pressured NATO forcing them to start paying their dues. ■ Neutralized dangers from North Korea. ■ Brought many businesses back from China, reviving the economy. ■ Lowered taxes, increased deductions on IRS forms, and caused the stock market to move to record levels 100 or more times. ■ Fast tracked the development of a COVID vac cine in a shorter time period than has been accom plished by previous administrations having to deal with a serious disease. ■ Rebuilt the military from reductions occurring during the Obama administration. This clown works for free and has lost in the neigh borhood of a billion dollars of his own money while serving America, while facing relentless undermining efforts by the media and opposition party. Consider this while accepting the fact that Obama and Joe Biden became millionaires while serving in office. All the above was accomplished in four years, in spite of no assistance from the Democratic House led by Pelosi. Biden’s accomplishments, creating positive impacts to the American public during 40-plus years in government service are literally inconsequential. Monte E. Seehorn Gainesville If you supported Trump, vote Republicans into Senate In the Dec. 9 Times, Leonard Shipman stated that he did not believe the election Nov. 3 was fair and he suggested that for future elections he would either not vote or write in President Trump’s name in the Senate runoff and hoped we would all do the same. Nothing could harm Georgia or this country more than if citizens stay home and do not vote in this extremely important runoff election. The election in November was the strangest one I have seen in all my 50-plus years of voting, and whether or not it was fairly conducted will probably be answered some time in the future. If you have sup ported the president and his policies the past four years, then vote on Jan. 5 for the Republican candi dates and if not, then don’t vote and hand control over to the Democrats. Judy Chasey Buford Morality of the marketplace could be key to racial freedom Sometimes, the legacy of great men is that the world doesn’t realize how great they were until they are gone. This might be the case with Dr. Walter E. Williams. Dr. Williams passed away last week. He was the John M. Olin distin guished professor of eco nomics at George Mason University, where, for six years, he served as chairman of the economics department. He was a prolific author and columnist (writing for Creators, which also syndicates my column). And he was a dear friend. An African American who grew up poor in Philadelphia, he was raised by a single mother and, at one time, drove a cab. He became hooked on economics when he took his first courses on the subject and went on to earn his doc torate at the University of California, Los Angeles. Williams became one of the nation’s most articulate advocates of American-style liberty and American- style capitalism. He was one African American who truly believed in and wanted what the civil rights move ment claimed as its goal: real free dom for all. He spoke about “the morality of markets.” He put it this way in one interview: “The areas that we have the greatest satisfaction or the fewest complaints are places like the super market or the clothing store, or in computers or cell phones. And what’s the motivation of the producers? It’s for profit. But look at the areas where we are dissatisfied — it’s public education, it’s the city sanitation depart ment, it’s the public trans portation, it’s the motor vehicles department. Look at the stated motiva tion in these areas: it’s where there is caring but where there is no profit motive.” The profit motive, he continued, “forces the producer to try to find what people want, and to produce what they want. At the same time, it forces them to provide human wants in a way that economizes on the usage of scarce resources.” Government, on the other hand, is about “coercion,” Williams explained. The country’s founders understood that there are legitimate functions of government but limited it through the Constitution “because they recognized that the potential for abuse was so great.” Walter Williams saw freedom as the solution and government as the problem. This put him at odds with most Black politicians, who, despite allegedly having the civil rights move ment’s goal of freedom, saw increas ingly more government and political coercion as the means for improving the lot of Black Americans. The result has been more politiciza tion of race, rather than less. The civil rights movement was supposed to be about purging racism and raising human dignity. But there is probably at least as much rhetoric and public obsession about race today as ever. Ironic is that, today, the enthusiasm for the politicization of race may be coming more from White liberals than from young Blacks. The Wall Street Journal recently reported on the increasing number of startups founded by young Black entrepreneurs, who are turning to venture capitalists for funding. It quotes Black entrepreneur Joseph Heller, founder of a startup that “con nects custom-merchandise businesses with manufacturers in China.” “I think access to capital and entre preneurship is the next civil-rights movement,” notes Heller. “If you think about every issue of inequality today, it all stems from economic inequality,” says Heller. “You could talk about policing and things like that, but really that’s an economic issue too. And so the only way you’re really going to address that is through entrepreneurship.” According to the ProjectDiane survey, reports the Journal, as of this year, “female Black and Latina founders... have raised a cumulative $3.1 billion — more than triple the $1 billion they had raised as of 2018.” It’s what Walter Williams called the “morality of the marketplace” — the allocation of resources driven by freedom, merit, creativity and excel lence — that is freeing black Ameri cans, body and soul. More young Blacks are under standing that racial stereotyping, rather than less government coercion and control, is the problem, not the solution. Star Parker is president of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education. Readers can respond to Star’s column by emailing star-parker@urbancure.org. SHENEMAN"*™'-'®**' iRony DREW SHENEMAN I Tribune News Service Texas AGs lawsuit is infuriatingly shameful display of hypocrisy I’m angry. I have been defending the Electoral College and the larger Madisonian vision behind it — often called “federalism” — for decades. As a pointed critic of the president, this put me in the awkward position of defending the legitimacy of his presidency — Donald Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 but won in the Electoral College — while simultane ously arguing he was unfit for the job to which he was legitimately elected. Before I get to why I’m angry, let me explain something. Under the Consti tution, the citizenry doesn’t elect the president; the states do. They do this by appointing electors who vote in the Electoral College. How states allocate their electoral votes is left up their legislatures. Since the Civil War, all states have decided to allot their electors to whichever candidate wins a majority of the vote within that state. But the legislatures don’t have to do it this way. Indeed, prior to the Civil War, South Carolina didn’t have a statewide vote for president. The legislature decided which candidate the state’s electors should vote for. I have no philosophical problem with that approach. If the people of a state don’t want all the drama of a presi dential election, they’re free to ask their elected representatives to decide which candidate should win the state. But that’s not how we do it, and that’s fine too. I’ll spare you all the arguments for why I think the Electoral College is a good thing, in part because you don’t have to agree with me to agree with the point I do want to make. Suffice it to say that one of the core arguments from defenders of the Electoral College is that it’s a bulwark against despotism. By forcing presi dents to cobble together a majority of states (rather than a majority of voters), the “tyranny of the major ity” (or minority) is held at bay. Again, disagree if you like, but that’s a big part of the argument. Which brings me to why I’m so angry. The attorney general of Texas, Ken Paxton, is suing Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Georgia for “unlawful” changes to their election laws in advance of the 2020 presiden tial election. Paxton didn’t choose these four states at random, though if you didn’t know they’re the four battle ground states that delivered Joe Biden his Electoral College victory, you might think he had. Plenty of states changed their procedures to make voting in a pandemic safer and easier. Paxton wants the Supreme Court to invalidate election results in these four states and have the state legislatures decide who gets their electoral votes, on the assumption they’d hand the pres idency to Trump. President Trump has joined the suit because, duh, he wants to stay president by any means. Even in this particularly dumb chap ter in American history, to say that this lawsuit stands out as a shining example of willful stupidity would be an under statement. I won’t focus on all the legal reasons it is deservedly doomed to fail because it would be like trying to list all the reasons 2 plus 2 does not equal a horse. Nor will I dwell on the innumerate statistical hogwash it cites as evidence, even though it’s about as impressive as that equine equation. But philosophically this lawsuit is a betrayal of everything defenders of federalism and the Electoral College claim to believe. The state of Texas has no standing to complain how those other states conduct elections or appoint their electors. If it were taken seriously, it would open a Pandora’s box of asininity in which various states would use the federal government to dictate how other states operate. More infuriating, the driving impetus of this lawsuit — outrageously joined by 17 other Republican run-states — is to steal a presidential election. That’s why you don’t have to agree with me about the Electoral College; the Repub licans supporting this lawsuit have long claimed to agree with me about the Electoral College and its role in the constitutional order. Yet they are throwing that away to aid and abet a president in precisely the sort of con stitutional crime the Electoral College was designed to prevent. It is an act of cynical, unpatriotic, undemocratic hypocrisy unrivaled in American history, a pure power play on behalf of a president whose disregard for the very Constitution these people have long claimed to adore is total. It is shameful. Infuriatingly shameful. Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. JONAH GOLDBERG goldbergcolumn@ gmail.com
