A14| Saturday/Sunday, March 7 - 8, 2020 **** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
When the Least Bad Is the Better Candidate
James Huffman’s “Against Sanders,
Trump is the Lesser Evil” (op-ed,
March 2) claims to know about us
moderate Republicans, but he
doesn’t. I am a moderate Republican,
but not a never-Trumper. I was an
elected Republican, serving three
terms as the mayor of Louisville,
Colo., in very Democratic Boulder
County. I voted for Donald Trump,
not because I liked him, but because
he was the best choice at the time
and said he would nominate judges
who followed the law, not made the
law. Like Mr. Huffman, I don’t care
for President Trump’s manners, but I
like his policies and what he has ac-
complished: a booming economy, very
low unemployment, lower taxes,
great judges, fair trade and, yes, the
border wall. I don’t like President
Trump and the Democratic and Re-
publican Congress spending us into
the poor house.
I will be voting for President
Trump this year like most Republican
moderates because I am not a far-left
liberal like all the Democratic candi-
dates seem to me to be, and there is
just no other reasonable choice. At
least Sen. Bernie Sanders is consis-
tently honest about his views.
TOMDAVIDSON
Thornton, Colo.Congress can function as a brake
on a President Sanders’s radical pro-
posals, but it has consistently proven
over the past three years that it can-
not be a brake on President Trump’s
“rude behavior, narcissism and disre-
gard for the truth.”
EDWARDS.(NED)LIGON
Wrentham, Mass.Mr. Huffman longs for the good old
days that haven’t existed for decades,
if ever. Among the things he claims
that President Trump has damaged
but will be set right when he leaves
office are civil dialogue, tariffs and
foreign relations.
With respect to civil dialogue, how
civil was the despicable smear cam-
paign against Judge Brett Ka-
vanaugh? Was it civil dialogue when
President Obama dismissed a multi-
tude of Americans with: “And it’s not
surprising then they get bitter, they
cling to guns or religion,” or Hillary
Clinton claiming half of Mr. Trump’s
supporters are “deplorables”?
The good old days of Mr. Huffman
consisted of the Republican Party act-
ing as a piñata and letting the Demo-
crats and their media surrogates have
as big a stick as they wanted. Mr.
Trump doesn’t believe in that philos-ophy. It is why Mr. Huffman lost his
race, and why Mr. Trump won his.
Where Mr. Huffman sees a “lesser
evil,” the voters who elected Presi-
dent Trump see a greater good.
MICHAELGRIEVES
Cocoa Beach, Fla.The Congressional Progressive
Caucus includes more than 40% of
House Democrats and supports an
agenda that is closer to that of Sen.
Sanders than that of Joe Biden or Mi-
chael Bloomberg. If we can’t be cer-
tain that Democrats in Congress will
put on the brakes to stop a demo-
cratic-socialist agenda, how can we
be confident that a moderate Demo-
cratic president will be able to put
the brakes on a democratic-socialist
push coming from Congress?
According to a recent Gallup Poll,
76% of Democrats are willing to vote
for a socialist. If their nominee for
president isn’t a socialist, the nomi-
nee may be the one who needs to
show unbending party loyalty after
being carried to victory by voters
amenable to socialism.
There is no shortage of institu-
tional forces stomping their brakes
on President Trump’s policies.
DAVEPALMER
Columbia, S.C.Unfortunately, the thinking of Don-
ald Trump as the lesser evil against
Hillary Clinton in 2016 is exactly
what elected this totally incompetent
and unsuitable man we now have as
president. If Mr. Huffman and others,
who “held their noses” and voted for
Mr. Trump before, vote for President
Trump now, I would argue that there
is no hope for our democratic repub-
lic. How many years it would take to
repair the damage he has done is
questionable, if even possible.
We have a choice between the cer-
tainty of more devastating damage to
our country with President Trump
and the possibility of some social pol-
icies that might actually help people
with Sen. Sanders. Bernie Sanders is
the lesser evil.
JOANH.SHAVER
Des Peres, Mo.Taking Mr. Huffman’s description
of the choices at face value, this mod-
erate Republican would vote against a
“disregard for the truth” even if it
means voting for a socialist agenda. I
accept that truth in politics is rela-
tive; however, I don’t accept the pres-
ident’s assault on it.
GREGACOMPANADO
Wauwatosa, Wis.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.
“One day he could grow up
to be our caregiver.”THE WALL STREET JOURNALPepper ...
And SaltFinasteride May Produce
More Than Hair for Some
Imagine a feature article, in one of
America’s largest and most influential
newspapers, about cigarette smoking,
but without a single mention of lung
cancer. Impossible? Yet the article
about finasteride (“My So-Bald Life,”
Off Duty, Feb. 22) is absent of any ref-
erence to post-finasteride syndrome
(PFS). The article reports in near-
glowing terms on a crop of telemed
startups that allow millennial males to
obtain the prescription medication
with ease via mobile phones. Mean-
while, we get an average of 45 new
PFS patients a month banging on our
digital door from across the globe, up
462% since 2018. Desperately seeking
help and often suicidal, they complain
of sexual dysfunction, cognitive dys-
function and a host of other persistent
side effects that define PFS, to say
nothing of their decimated social lives
and crumbling economic straits.
Their symptoms are validated by an
emerging body of medical literature in
journals ranging from the Journal of
the American Academy of Dermatol-
ogy to Pharmacology, all of which are
prominently housed on our website.
An ever-growing number of these pa-
tients inform us that they were pre-
scribed finasteride, virtually, by Hims,
Keeps or Roman. And virtually with-
out warning of PFS.
PHILIPROBERTS
Post-Finasteride Syndrome
Foundation
Somerset, N.J.Children’s Books Should
Foster Good Language Use
Publishers of children’s books,
take note—librarians, teachers and
parents as well. Meghan Cox Gurdon
makes an excellent point at the end
of “Children’s Books: Sailing Over the
Wall” (Books, Feb. 29): Authors and
editors of children’s books should
take more care to use correct gram-
mar. The books children read or have
read to them serve as models for
their own writing in the future. I
have taught young children for many
years. In the last 10 years it has be-
come nearly impossible to get stu-
dents to write or speak correctly.
This observation applies even in very
“good” neighborhoods and schools.
Children’s incorrect habits of gram-
mar (and apostrophe use) are rein-
forced constantly in conversation, lis-
tening to various audio and video
sources, looking at signs, and now
also in their literature.
GAILH.MACDONALD,M.ED.
Sewickley, Pa.California Steals Its Own Election
B
ernie Sanders supporters who complain
that the Democratic primary contest is
rigged may have an ironic point. Look
how he was denied what might
have been a bigger victory in
California on Super Tuesday
that would have countered Joe
Biden’s Eastern U.S. rout nar-
rative. Blame incompetent
progressive government.
California’s tally at our deadline Friday had
Mr. Sanders with 33.6% of the statewide vote
to Mr. Biden’s 25.3%. But about three million
mail-in and provisional ballots still have to be
counted, and the state has until April 10 to cer-
tify results. So we won’t know how many of Cal-
ifornia’s 415 delegates Mr. Sanders won for an-
other month or so.
Experts predict Mr. Sanders will win most
of the uncounted ballots since young people of-
ten vote late. But the delayed results will
dampen the benefit he might have gained from
his California victory on Super Tuesday’s elec-
tion night. Not that his friends on the left in
Sacramento care. “In the state with the largest
electorate in the nation, the vote count does
not end on Election Night—and that’s a good
thing,” declared Secretary of State Alex Padilla
on Tuesday.
Mr. Padilla is trying to put a positive spin on
California’s voting fiasco.Lawmakers recently
overhauled election procedures in the name of
making it easier for young people and Hispanics
to vote. Yet the result was the opposite, and Mr.
Sanders is the victim.
Start with the state’s 2016 Voter’s Choice
Act, which allowed counties this year to reduce
polling places and instead send absentee ballots
to all voters. The law also expanded in-person
voting and let voters cast ballots at any polling
place in their county. Voters may also register,
or change their party identification or address,
on Election Day.
As a result, polling places were swamped
with new voters and independents who didn’t
realize they had to formally request mail-in
Democratic ballots. Fifteen counties experi-
enced problems trying to connect to online
voter databases. After waiting in line for hours,
many voters had to cast provisional ballots.
The Legislature gave Los Angeles County an
exemption from the 2016 law
after local officials com-
plained it was too expensive to
mail ballots to each of its 5.
million voters following a
$300 million voting system
upgrade. Called Voting Solu-
tions for All People, the upgrade made Iowa’s
caucuses look competent.
Poll workers were supposed to use computer
tablets to look up voter registrations, but the
devices stalled as more tried to connect with
the county online database. Then voters
couldn’t figure out the high-tech voting con-
traptions, which required selecting choices on
a touch screen, printing out a physical ballot,
re-inserting the ballot into the machine and
clicking a final button.
Many voters left without completing all
steps or realizing they didn’t vote. Because ma-
chines repeatedly broke down, many voters had
to complete write-in forms, some of which were
in languages they didn’t speak. All these dys-
functions resulted in hours-long lines, which
one voter compared to being stuck in traffic on
LA’s 405 freeway.
Only two companies bid for LA’s new voting
system because one condition was that it be
publicly owned—i.e., socialized. One was U.K.-
based company Smartmatic, which got its start
developing a new system for Hugo Chavez’s
Venezuela in 2004. The other had developed
ObamaCare’s Healthcare.gov website, which fa-
mously crashed on its launch date. Smartmatic
won. Voters lost.
Even considering uncounted votes, turnout
is running lower than in the June 2016 primary.
So to recap: California Democrats moved up the
state’s primary to make it more relevant and re-
duced voting obstacles to boost liberal turnout.
In the end they disenfranchised many Demo-
cratic voters, and denied Mr. Sanders the flush
of his primary victory. This would be darkly
amusing if it didn’t undermine trust in the legit-
imacy of election results.Voting reforms create an
electoral mess and deny
Sanders a bigger win.
The ‘No Bail’ Fiasco in New York
Y
ou know New York has a problem when
even Mayor Bill de Blasio admits it. On
Thursday the New York Police Depart-
ment held a press conference
to report that major crime is
up 22.5% this February over a
year ago. Both the cops and
the mayor attribute the spike
to the bail reform pushed
through the state Legislature
in Albany last year, which is releasing people
who have been arrested for one crime to go out
and commit another.
“There’s a direct correlation to a change in
the law, and we need to address it, and we will
address it,” Mr. de Blasio said of the increase
in crime. The mayor also said he was “abso-
lutely confident” it will be addressed in Albany
in the budget due April 1.
The Democratic Legislature, with the back-
ing of both Mr. de Blasio and Gov. Andrew
Cuomo, ended cash bail last year. The goal was
to prevent cases such as that of Kalief Browder,
a 16-year-old charged with stealing a backpack.
Because his family could not afford bail he
spent three years in prison on Rikers Island—
much of it in solitary—without being tried or
convicted of a crime. After his release, he ulti-
mately committed suicide.
The sensible part of bail reform was aimed
at preventing injustices such as this one. The
non-sensible part was to deprive judges of the
discretion to keep behind bars criminals who
remain a menace to the community.
The law went into effect on Jan. 1, and the
NYPD numbers are sobering: “In the first 58
days of 2020, 482 individuals who had already
been arrested for committing a serious (felony)
crime such as robbery or burglary were rear-
rested for committing an additional 846
crimes. Thirty-five percent, or 299, were for ar-
rests in the seven major crime categories—
murder, rape, robbery, felony
assault, burglary, grand lar-
ceny and grand larceny auto—
that is nearly triple the
amount of those crimes com-
mitted in the same 58 days in
2019.”
Police Commissioner Dermot Shea under-
scored the main point: “Each number repre-
sents a victim.”
Some on the political left, including a coali-
tion of public defenders, claim the cops are de-
liberately manipulating the figures as “scare
tactics.” Ditto for Assembly Speaker Carl
Heastie, who is blaming the New York Post,
which refuses to take dictation from the city’s
progressive powers. Mayor de Blasio is having
none of it. “They’re wrong,” he says.
Another crime problem that Mr. de Blasio
doesn’t acknowledge is the explosion of minor
offenses since the City Council decriminalized
such antisocial behavior as urinating in public,
smoking marijuana in public, and turnstile
jumping on the subways. This creates a culture
of tolerance for lawlessness that the bail reform
has compounded.
Polls show support for the bail reform drop-
ping fast, and New York’s chief judge says it is
the only state in which judges do not have the
ability to consider whether a defendant poses
a credible risk of danger before releasing him.
There is a simple fix that would take care of the
biggest problem: Give judges the ability to
weigh this risk before letting people out. If Al-
bany doesn’t fix this, we hope the voters run
them all out office.Crime is breaking out
again amid a get-out-of- jail-free law.
Fear and Hope Week
T
he contrast between economic past and
future has rarely been more stark than
it was this week as the coronavirus
panic contrasted with what
has been a strong underlying
economy.
In any other week, inves-
tors would have loved Friday’s
unemployment report for Feb-
ruary, which posted blowout
gains of 273,000 net new jobs. Add combined
upward revisions of 85,000 for December and
January, and the labor market entered 2020
with a roar.
Yet that is backward-looking data while the
coronavirus is showing fear of the future. Mar-
kets finished another down and volatile week,
with equities falling 1% or so Friday and the 10-
year Treasury note hitting an unheard of low
yield of 0.77%. Imagine lending the government
money for 10 years at such a miserly return. The
syndicated loan market has all but dried up as
investors flee to cash, gold, or U.S. Treasurys.
Fear rules the day.
Even if the good jobs news is backward look-
ing, it still shouldn’t be dismissed. It means the
real economy had a strong foundation to with-
stand the coronavirus impact. Construction
added 42,000 jobs in the month, following
49,000 in January, as the housing market con-
tinues to pick up steam after a two-year slow-
down. Lower mortgage interest rates should en-
courage more home buying, which will help
growth even if business spending falls.
The tight labor market also
means that employers might
be slower to cut jobs or lay off
workers. Employers know
from hard experience that if
the virus panic eases, those
workers would be hard to hire
back in an economic rebound. The key dynamic
figure to watch in the coming weeks will be
weekly jobless claims.
The virus shock is the kind of economic
event whose severity is impossible to predict
and for which there is no easy economic re-
sponse. The Federal Reserve cut the fed funds
rate by 50 basis points this week, and the mar-
ket is anticipating another 50-point cut at the
Open Market Committee’s March 18 meeting.
That’s insurance to offset tighter financial con-
ditions, but it won’t help the airline or hotel in-
dustries hurt by less travel and the cancellation
of conferences likethe South by Southwest fes-
tival in Austin, Texas.
The response that matters for the coronavi-
rus is the containment and mitigation strategy
now underway. The best economic policy stimu-
lus in this case is a successful public-health re-
sponse that reduces the spread of disease. The
economy will be poised to bounce back.The jobs report shows
the economy was strong
before the virus shock.
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
OPINION
CORRECTION
Jean Rogers founded the Sustain-
ability Accounting Standards Board
in 2011. The Feb. 17 editorial,
“Bloomberg’s Business Nanny,” said
Michael Bloomberg founded SASB.
Bloomberg Philanthropies made its
first grant to SASB in 2012, and a
representative of Bloomberg LP de-
scribed the company as a “founding
partner” of SASB in an article on the
SASB website.Bernie’s Models on Equality
Regarding John Carlson’s “A Re-
publican Vote for Bernie Sanders”
(op-ed, March 4): I hate to agree
with Sen. Bernie Sanders but I must
admit his Cuban/Venezuelan/Nicara-
guan model is the one proven strat-
egy to reduce inequality. Maybe he
should add Poverty for All to his
Medicare for All campaign slogan.
PETERPRASTHOFER
The Woodlands, Texas