The Wall St.Journal 28Feb2020

A14| Friday, February 28, 2020 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

The Popular Vote Compact Would Be a Mess

Michael Steele’s defense of the Na-

tional Popular Vote Interstate Com-

pact (NPVIC) is misguided (“Virginia

Isn’t Trashing the Electoral College,”

Letters, Feb. 21). Under the compact,

signatory states would have to allo-

cate their electoral votes to the candi-

date who wins a plurality (not a ma-

jority) of the national popular vote.

Even so, the compact is a recipe

for disaster. Compact supporters

seem to assume that presidential

races will continue to be dominated

by two candidates, one of whom will

get, if not a popular majority, at least

a plurality above 40%—thus showing

some national support. But the Elec-

toral College, as it now works (with a

winner-take-all system in all but two

states), is one reason we’ve had two

dominant parties. If the national pop-

ular vote controls the outcome, we

can expect several candidates with a

chance of winning to be on the No-

vember ballot. We could have a “win-

ner” with only, say, 30% (and maybe

even less) of the popular vote, and he

or she could be someone unaccept-

able to the rest of the electorate.

That’s crazy. It’s like being declared

the “winner” of a presidential pri-

mary with 25% of the vote.

Another problem with the compact

is that when the popular vote is close,

a national recount would be neces-

sary. With the Electoral College, re-

counts are typically required in at

most a few states; the college gener-

ally provides a clear winner. With the

compact, however, the ballots in ev-

ery precinct in the country would re-

quire rechecking. Does Mr. Steele re-

ally wantBush v. Goreon steroids?

EM.PROF.ERIKM.JENSEN

Case Western Reserve University

Cleveland

As your editorial “Will Virginia

Drop the Electoral College?” (Feb. 18)

correctly notes, the scheme is indeed

an “end run” around the Electoral

College, but even worse, it’s a stalk-

ing horse for its abolition. The mas-

sive financial interests behind this

scheme readily admit that their ulti-

mate goal is indeed its abolition. The

NPVIC bill itself even promises to

withdraw its scheme once its goal is

achieved and the Electoral College is

“terminated” (Section IV of the

scheme).

State legislators considering such a

scheme would do well to heed the

words of John F. Kennedy, who in his

now famous 1956 Senate speech de-

fending the Electoral College warned

that abrogating the Electoral College

“would break down the federal sys-

tem under which most states entered

the union, which provides a system of

checks and balances to insure that no

group or area shall obtain too much

power.”

PROF.ROBERTHARDAWAY

University of Denver

The compact makes no provision

for the will of the state’s voters at all.

I live in Virginia, and what the com-

pact’s proponents seek to do is to

outsource my vote to California and

New York City—whose margins for

Hillary Clinton provided the entirety

of the difference in popular-vote to-

tals in 2016. No, thanks. It’s an uncon-

stitutional power grab, and it’s dis-

honest to suggest otherwise.

MICHAELG.YOUNG

Fredericksburg, Va.

Mr. Steele seems to approve trash-

ing our Constitution. Article I, Sec-

tion 10 says: “No state shall...enter

into any Agreement or Compact with

another State.”

I can’t think of any better reason

not to destroy the Electoral College

system than to have two white, male,

East Coast, New York billionaires run

against each other for president of

the U.S.

ELIZABETHB.WATSON

Greenville, S.C.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Letters intended for publication should

be addressed to: The Editor, 1211 Avenue

of the Americas, New York, NY 10036,

or emailed to [email protected]. Please

include your city and state. All letters

are subject to editing, and unpublished

letters can be neither acknowledged nor

returned.

“And were you looking

to recline during the flight?”

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Drug Lobby Fights Tide of History on Prices

“The Drug Lobby Loses Potency

With Lawmakers” (Page One, Feb. 20)

is timely and insightful. My wife has

multiple sclerosis and takes a dis-

ease-modifying therapy drug de-

signed to slow the progression of MS

that costs $7,500 a month. Even with

insurance, our family’s annual cost

for this one drug is over $8,000.

Medications can change lives only if

people can affordably access them. I

volunteer with the National Multiple

Sclerosis Society so I can help tell the

stories of the one million people in

the U.S. impacted by this disease and

the high cost of drugs used to treat

it. Over 200 volunteers will be on

Capitol Hill in March so our elected

representatives can hear these stories

and not just what the Pharmaceutical

Research and Manufacturers of Amer-

ica (PhRMA) lobbyists tell them.

GREGMILLIGAN

Acworth, Ga.

While PhRMA is doing its best to

stop any bills from advancing, its

deep pockets are running headlong

into overwhelming calls for change.

The plain fact is Americans pay

among the highest prices for pre-

scription drugs in the world. A bipar-

tisan solution exists in the Grassley-

Wyden Prescription Drug Pricing

Reduction Act, and we urge the Sen-

ate to vote on it and get a bill to

President Trump.

JOHNHISHTA

AARP

Washington

Pepper ...

And Salt

Slavery Was a Dystopic Form of Socialism

Regarding Jason L. Riley’s “A Bid

to Revise the New York Times’s Bad

History” (Upward Mobility, Feb. 19):

Slavery was always a curse, never a

boon, for the U.S. economy, though it

certainly enriched slaveholders.

Slaves made important contributions,

but slavery itself grossly depressed

their productivity, and the productiv-

ity of many whites, as became abun-

dantly clear when the freed slaves

did more than their fair share to spur

the record U.S. economic growth of

the post-Civil War period.

Slavery was a dystopic form of so-

cialism where slaves faced 100% taxa-

tion and received compensation only

“according to their needs,” as deter-

mined by slaveholders. The end of

slavery eliminated these horrible dis-

incentives and inefficiencies, and can

be viewed as the largest, most suc-

cessful targeted tax cut in U.S. his-

tory. America succeeded despite slav-

ery, not because of it, and only began

to hit its stride when slaves were

free at last.

Much of the confusion about slav-

ery stems from the erroneous as-

sumption that the economy is a zero-

sum system. We’ll never know just

how much talent was squandered un-

der the oppression of slavery. Eco-

nomics is more about cooperation

than competition; human wealth is

inherently shared and generally mag-

nified every time one of us freely

sells, buys or invests. Slavery, which

sabotaged full-scale cooperation,

wasted tremendous abilities, was in-

deed a horrifying curse. Yet, the

slaves and their progeny, have been a

tremendous blessing.

PROF.TOMTACKER

Embry–Riddle Aeronautical University

Daytona Beach, Fla.

Many of Canada’s Native

People Support Gas Pipeline

Michael Taube’s “Pipeline Foes Try

to Shut Canada Down” (op-ed, Feb.

20) raises an interesting question and

shows the shortsightedness of some

environmentalists. First, the Indige-

nous Peoples of British Columbia

have two ruling bodies—the band

councils, led by democratically

elected people, and the hereditary

chiefs. Nineteen of the 20 democrati-

cally elected councils of the relevant

bands have approved the pipeline and

one hasn’t taken a position. Question:

Who are you in favor of, 19 democrat-

ically elected councils or five heredi-

tary chiefs? Second, the pipeline is

being built to provide natural gas to

the LNG Canada project, which will

process and send LNG to Asia, includ-

ing China. If China, one of the largest

threats to the climate due to its huge

number of coal-fired power plants,

has more natural gas, it won’t need to

build as many coal-fired plants, lead-

ing to less pollutants. Do you want

less global warming? Natural gas may

not be the answer long term, but it

sure is better than coal.

RICHARDFAUSETT

Rancho Mirage, Calif.

The Coronavirus Isn’t Partisan

H

ouse Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate
Minority Leader Chuck Schumer
opened a joint statement Thursday on
federal coronavirus policy
with this line: “Lives are at
stake—this is not the time for
name-calling or playing poli-
tics.” As the saying goes, in-
teresting if true. The evidence
so far of bipartisan coopera-
tion in response to the virus isn’t promising.
Actually, it’s depressing.
In the 48 hours before the Pelosi-Schumer
call for an end to name-calling, Rep. Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez mocked Vice President Mike
Pence, named by President Trump to lead the
government’s response, as a science denier.
Elizabeth Warren tweeted that the Administra-
tion’s “bungled response to the coronavirus
outbreak is a mess.” Mike Bloomberg, the self-
described adult in the room, chimed in that
leadership is “sharing the facts, demonstrating
control and trusting the experts. Unfortunately,
not Trump’s strong suit.”
It’s not clear yet whether the Covid-19 virus
will become a significant public-health crisis in
the United States, but it’s not too soon to recog-
nize that Washington is already terminally ill
with political delirium. Sen. Schumer, almost
at the same moment he was joining Speaker
Pelosi in a plea to stop playing politics, went
onto the floor of the Senate to re-rip into Mr.
Trump, recycling his “towering and dangerous
incompetence” line.
At his coronavirus news conference, Wednes-
day evening, Mr. Trump was joined by Anne
Schuchat of the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention and Anthony Fauci of the National
Institutes of Health. These are the government
officials expected to plan and execute the U.S.
response to the virus. Addressing the challenge,
Dr. Schuchat said, America’s “aggressive con-
tainment strategy has been working and is re-
sponsible for the low levels of cases that we have
so far.” She said we should expect more cases
and now is the time to prepare.
That is essentially what Mr. Trump said as
he answered the press’s questions. By and large,
Mr. Trump did a fairly straightforward job of
addressing the medical and administrative chal-
lenges whose outlines are obviously far from
clear. His job as head of the executive branch

is to warn the public to be prepared while reas-

suring the public that there’s no reason to

panic. That’s what we heard him trying to do

even if it included some of his

trademark bragging about his

Administration’s perfor-

mance.

Yes, along the way he also

got off a few shots at Mrs.

Pelosi and Mr. Schumer when

the press baited him with questions about

their criticisms. But we hope we’re not the

only ones taken aback at the level of partisan

vitriol getting poured over how to respond to

the coronavirus.

We suppose it’s to be expected that Members

of Congress would default to arguing over coro-

navirus spending levels, parsing whether the

right amount is $2.5 billion, $4 billion or $8 bil-

lion. Offering his own ideas on the Senate floor,

Sen. Schumer said “affordable” vaccines should

be “available to all who need them,” and few

would disagree with that.

But first the scientific community will have

to better understand the nature of the virus, its

ability to spread, and whether in fact it consti-

tutes an extraordinary threat to the American

people requiring extreme containment mea-

sures. Dr. Fauci said at the White House that we

don’t even know whether the virus could sur-

vive the warmer months and reappear next

year. He said they’re working faster than they

ever have on developing and testing a vaccine

that would be ready if it returns.

It’s a big challenge, but getting those an-

swers right won’t be any easier if the coronavi-

rus becomes no different than any of the other

political footballs kicked constantly around the

capital these days. Here’s a thought: Maybe we

in the media should spend more time talking to

the experts who know something and less time

quoting politicians who know almost nothing

about the virus but see potential gain in exploit-

ing a health crisis.

Here’s another suggestion we’ve heard for

Mr. Trump to reassure Americans: Fly to a quar-

antine site or a hospital treating virus patients,

don a protective suit if need be, and meet with

the ill or the sequestered. Especially coming

from the germ-phobic President, this would be

an act of leadership even Chuck Schumer would

have a hard time attacking.

Maybe we should

quarantine Capitol Hill

until the crisis passes.

The BlackRock Backlash

B

lackRock manages some $7.4 trillion in
financial assets, and CEO Larry Fink has
been flexing his influence by ordering
companies to follow his polit-
ical dictates on social justice
and climate issues. In the pro-
cess he may be putting Black-
Rock and other asset manag-
ers in the political dock.
The Securities and Ex-
change Commission has solicited public com-
ment on two proposed rules that would reform
corporate proxy voting. One would require
more transparency from proxy advisory firms
that vote shares for institutional investors;
Glass Lewis and Institutional Shareholder Ser-
vices control 97% of the advisory market. The
other rule would disqualify ballot resolutions
that an overwhelming majority of shareholders
repeatedly reject. Both are intended to make
public ownership less onerous and less vulner-
able to manipulation by special interests.
Now comes the American Securities Asso-
ciation (ASA), which says in a public comment
on the proposed SEC rules that big asset man-
agers like BlackRock deserve scrutiny too.
The ASA represents retail investors. Passive
index equity funds comprise more than half
of the $8.5 trillion in U.S. equity funds, and
nine in 10 public companies count BlackRock,
Vanguard or State Street as their largest
shareholder.
One ASA concern is what it calls “groupthink”
among asset managers, proxy firms and pension

funds. Many now vote in lockstep on environ-

mental, social and governance (ESG) issues.

Consider Mr. Fink’s letter to CEOs last month

threatening to vote against

corporate directors who don’t

disclose ESG risks. State Street

and pension funds have issued

similar warnings. “We believe

that the horizontal control

BlackRock and State Street ex-

ert over the U.S. equity market should alarm the

SEC and antitrust authorities at the Department

of Justice,” ASA writes.

The Federal Trade Commission and Euro-

pean competition authorities are investigating

whether “common ownership” by asset manag-

ers of public companies in the same industry

reduces competition. There is little evidence

for this, but antitrust regulators may have a

stronger case if asset managers vote the same

way on ESG issues for all companies.

ASA also suggests that the federal Financial

Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) “examine the

impact the homogenization of corporate gover-

nance standards has on financial stability.” Dur-

ing the Obama years FSOC considered regulat-

ing asset managers as “systemically important

financial institutions” like big banks.

Asset managers manage more money than

the big banks, and ASA asks: “If their stan-

dards turn out to be wrong and contribute to

a large number of corporate failures, what im-

pact will that have on our financial markets?”

Would Mr. Fink care to respond?

Larry Fink’s political

machinations invite

regulatory scrutiny.

Bernie Sanders’s Ejection Fraction

D

espite his heart attack last fall, Bernie

Sanders has not released detailed medi-

cal records, the way John McCain did in

2008. Rather, Mr. Sanders has
      posted doctor’s notes attesting
      to his vitality. One example of
      what’s missing, an NBC report
      noted this week, is a metric of
      heart health called “left ven-
      tricular ejection fraction.”
      This figure indicates what proportion of the
      blood in the left ventricle is being pumped out
      during each heart beat. Sixty percent is consid-
      ered normal, says the American College of Cardi-
      ology (ACC). Around 45% would be mild dysfunc-
      tion, and 35% would be moderate dysfunction.
      The measure generally correlates with patient
      outcomes.
      The letters from Mr. Sanders’s cardiologists
      don’t provide it. They offer no hard data at all.
      Everything is characterized in careful language.
      After a blockage in his coronary artery, Mr.
      Sanders “did suffer modest heart muscle dam-
      age,” but thanks to the placement of two stents
      he “has made an uneventful recovery.” Experts
      have to read between the lines.
      What might a low ejection fraction suggest?
      “We do know that after a myocardial infarction,
      after a heart attack, that a lower ejection frac-
      tion does connote increased risk over the subse-
      quent years,” says Hadley Wilson, an ACC trustee
      and a cardiologist with the Sanger Heart and

Vascular Institute. But it isn’t simple, Dr. Wilson

adds, to quantify the absolute risk.

There aren’t any agreed-upon guidelines for

that. Also, people are different.

A lower-than-typical number

isn’t always perilous, accord-

ing to Dr. Wilson: “The clinical

response is much more impor-

tant than the isolated number

of the ejection fraction.”

The good news is Mr. Sanders’s doctors say

he’s “entirely asymptomatic.” Watching him de-

bate on TV for two hours, the phrase that comes

to mind is not “shortness of breath.” Still, there’s

a reason that previous presidential candidates,

especially older ones with a history of health is-

sues, have provided more information.

Fellow 78-year-old Mike Bloomberg released

his ejection fraction on Thursday. Mr. Bloomberg

underwent stent placement in 2000 but never

had a heart attack. His ejection fraction was nor-

mal, 60% to 65%, during a test last summer, his

physician said in a letter passed to the press. A

Bloomberg spokesman challenged Mr. Sanders

to “ask his doctor to do the same.”

So far, Mr. Sanders has been reluctant. “We

released the full report of that heart attack,” he

said last week. Not quite. The real data, includ-

ing the ejection fraction, might be excellent, and

we hope so. But before Americans put him in the

Oval Office through 2024, when he’ll turn 83,

they deserve a closer look.

He says he released a

‘full report’ of his heart

attack. Not quite.

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