a26 EZ RE the washington post.wednesday, march 11 , 2020
letters to the editor[email protected]local opinionsRegarding the March 7 Metro article “Despite
infighting, House passes anti-gerrymandering
m easure”:
Nonpartisan redistricting a lmost failed in Virginia
because many House Democrats who voted for the
identical legislation in 2019 and campaigned for it in
2019 flip-flopped after Democrats took control of the
General Assembly. They caved under immense parti-
san pressure to support new legislation in 2020 that
would have the effect of delaying nonpartisan redis-
tricting for at least 10 years, giving Democrats unbri-
dled partisan a dvantage to draw d istrict lines in 2021
after t his year’s census.
Only a very few House Democrats didn’t flip,
joining nearly all Virginia state senators and House
Republicans in supporting the legislation. They pro-
vided the necessary margin for approval so the mea-
sure can be decided by voters in November. Three ofthose House Democrats are from Northern Virginia:
Kenneth R. P lum ( Fairfax), Dan H elmer (Fairfax) and
Suhas Subramanyam (Loudoun). Virginians should
thank them for their integrity on this issue.
Jim LeMunyon, Oak Hill
The writer, a R epublican, represented Fairfax in
the House of Delegates from 2010 to 2018 and
co-patroned a redistricting resolution in 2014.On the proposed redistricting commission, only
two legislators of the same chamber and party would
have to object to a map i n order to veto it — practically
a hair trigger to send the maps to the conservative
Virginia Supreme Court. That’s part of why I fear the
amendment will lead to more gerrymandering in-
stead of less. I hope voters will be wise enough to
reject it in November.
Rachel Gatwood, RestonVirginia’s redistricting battle
W
HEN VIRGINIA Democrats flipped both
houses of the General Assembly in last
fall’s state legislative elections, Republi-
cans wasted no time in predicting a
liberal-led political apocalypse. Leftist radicals,
they warned, were coming to confiscate Virginians’
guns and decimate their rights.
That doomsday prophecy proved false.
The results from Richmond are in, and most
Virginians would b e hard-pressed to regard t hem as
radical. Having commanded a majority in both
legislative chambers for the first time in more than
two decades, Democrats used their new power to
enact an agenda that, while sweeping, was squarely
in line with the progressive mainstream.
Not only did the Democrats compromise, make
deals across t he aisle and abandon many of their most
ambitious proposals, but they also helped hand
Republicans, and Virginians, what amounts to a
major victory for good, bipartisan governance on
redistricting reform, which the GOP was loath to do
for most of the past decade. Democrats did that by
forfeiting their power to gerrymander voting districts
— exactly what Republicans had done to them for a
decade.On gun control, the Democrats passed bills
requiring universal background checks for firearms
purchases and allowing law enforcement to take
away firearms from individuals deemed a threat to
themselves or others — but only on a judge’s order.
Both those bills are overwhelmingly popular in the
state. Democrats also capped handgun purchases at
one a month, thereby reinstating a law that was in
effect for nearly two decades, until the GOP
rescinded it in 2012. But Democrats lacked support
within their own ranks to enact their most ambi-
tious proposal: to ban the sale of assault-style
weapons and possession o f silencers and magazines
that hold more than 12 rounds. So much for
radicalism.
Similarly, they took half a loaf on the hourly
minimum wage — it will rise, not to $15, as many
Democratic lawmakers had hoped, but only gradu-
ally to $12 by 2023 — and on empowering public
workers’ unions, which won the right to collective
bargaining if their local government employers
assent. Democrats stopped short of reversing Vir-
ginia’s decades-old right-to-work law — a rule
cherished by Republicans — which guarantees that
employees cannot be compelled to join unions.With Republican backing, Democrats pushed
through a law to decriminalize marijuana. They
enacted measures, similar to those in dozens of
other states, to legalize casino gambling in some
cities and increase the statewide gasoline tax,
which, given plummeting fuel prices, many Virgin-
ians are unlikely to notice.
Some of t he D emocrats’ most contentious victories
involved issues whose effect is mainly symbolic.
Those included a vote to ratify the decades-old Equal
Rights A mendment, w hich is unlikely t o become p art
of the U.S. C onstitution in t he f oreseeable f uture, and
to grant localities the power to remove Confederate
statues, but only after considerable public input.
Some conservatives will see radicalism in the
Democrats’ success in rolling back an array of
antiabortion laws enacted in recent years by pro-life
GOP lawmakers. Some will be outraged if a commis-
sion established by another Democratic-backed law
decides to remove the statue of Robert E. Lee that
represents Virginia in the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary
Hall.
In fact, few of those initiatives will seem off the
wall to most Virginians, who got exactly what they
were voting for last November: change.The Democrats deliver in Virginia
The state’s voters are getting the measured change they wanted.
problems spread to their creditors and stockholders
on Wall Street. There may be a double-edged impact
on the climate, too, since greenhouse-gas emissions
go u p due to extra consumption of cheaper oil — and
go down when production falls in U.S. oil fields. As
both a colossal consumer and a colossal producer of
oil for the foreseeable future, the United States is on
both sides of the world’s biggest trade-off, both
economically and environmentally. A tax on carbon
would enable us to control climate risks no matter
which way the markets move.
In geopolitical terms, Mr. Trump should be ab-sorbing the lesson that Russia’s president is not a
U.S. friend, actual or potential, but rather a despot
willing to play hardball against this country’s vital
interests. The Saudi crown prince, too, has shown
himself to be an unreliable player on the internation-
al stage, putting the U.S. economy at risk when it
suits him, despite the vast military assistance, and
lavish rhetorical support, that the Trump adminis-
tration has given his brutal regime. At a time when
the whole world needs to pull together in the face of a
global public health threat, these two men are
destabilizing it for their own selfish ends.O
N THE surface, the oil price war disrupting
the global economy pits the world’s third-
largest producer, Russia, against the second,
Saudi Arabia. Make no mistake about it,
however: The ultimate loser — and a probable
intended target — is the world’s No. 1 crude produc-
er, the United States. After years of stewing over his
country’s loss of market share to the burgeoning
U.S. shale industry, and the sanctions Washington
has put on Russia’s oil industry in response to
Moscow’s various abuses in international affairs,
President Vladi mir Putin has decided to fight back,
in the form of unrestrained production that threat-
ens to bankrupt many highly indebted U.S. compa-
nies.
The back story to Mr. Putin’s move is a stagnation
in global consumption that has turned into an
outright downturn due to the novel coronavirus. As
de facto chief of the Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries (OPEC), Saudi Arabia tried to
persuade Mr. Putin to cut its production in tandem
with the cartel, so as to prop up prices for them all.
When he refused, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed
bin Salman countered by declaring his country
would run its industry at maximum output for the
foreseeable future. So far, Russia has not bowed to
the pressure, partly because Moscow can balance its
budget a t a much lower price of oil than Saudi Arabia
can, and partly because Mr. Putin smells an opportu-
nity to get even with the United States. Russia’s
oil-exporting partners Venezuela and Iran, already
reeling from political unrest and the coronavirus,
respectively, are likely to take politically destabiliz-
ing hits as a consequence, but apparently those are
lower priorities for Moscow.
President Trump’s immediate response to all of
this was to celebrate lower prices at the gas pump,
which does indeed amount to a tax cut for U.S. con-
sumers. The problem is that what the United States
may gain in consumer purchasing power it will lose
in financial-system instability, as the oil patch’sThe oil war’s
ultimate loser
Mr. Putin and the
S audi crown prince are
destabilizing the U.S. economy.ABCDE
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the Washington post
1301 K St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071 (202) 334-6000Monica Hesse’s March 6 Style column, “Women
saw one of their own in Warren,” nearly moved me to
tears, but I find myself easily on the edge of tears
these days.
The absurdity of readers emailing to inform
Ms. Hesse that Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.),
who recently ended her bid for the Democratic
nomination for president, is a lying liar who lies,
when 20-plus lies issue daily from the maw of
President Trump, is gobsmacking.
I’ve learned to view so much of what is going on in
this country lately as the straight white man’s last
stand. Even the “good” ones, the more woke ones, do
not know what it means on an “in your bones” level
to walk the Earth as a woman or a person of color.
They simultaneously believe that the playing field
already is level (“there’s n o problem here, folks”), yet
they’d better lock down the status quo before too
many uppity minorities gain too much power. Which
one is it, guys?
W here are we today on the Rev. Martin Luther
King Jr.’s arc of the moral universe? I have no idea
whether we’re bending toward or away from justice.
The general election in November will help answer
that question. To o bad Ms. Warren won’t be at the
fore to do the bending.
Meryl Olmsted, FairfaxMs. Warren and the moral universe
George F. Will, in his March 8 op-ed, “Nikki Haley
picks a worthy fight,” an adulation of former
U.S. ambassador and South Carolina governor Nikki
Haley’s defense of unhyphenated capitalism, over-
looked how the rules within which free markets
function are not themselves established by market
forces. Rather, such rules of the game, without which
capitalism cannot function effectively or fairly, must
be established and enforced collectively by law or
custom. There is no freedom in anarchy. Look no
further than building-code regulations that help
protect from unscrupulous contractors the value of
the most important capital investment that most of
us make, namely, our homes. Unbridled and unregu-
lated capitalism is generally a race to the bottom in
which sweatshops would end up producing most of
the clothing we wear.
Enforceable rules protecting the value of paper
assets such as stocks and bonds are particularly
important in capitalist systems in which individual
decisions to accumulate such wealth are distinct
from corporate decisions to invest in the physical
means of production. Such intertemporal decisions
are inherently risky (paying cash today for benefits
sometime in the future). Have we already forgotten
perhaps the most important lesson of the Great
Recession — that of having a lender of last resort
(namely, the Federal Reserve) to underpin our
capitalist financial system?
Chris Gerrard, RockvilleI gather from George F. Will’s op-ed that former
U.N. a mbassador and South Carolina governor Nikki
Haley subscribes to pure, unadulterated capitalism
(as does Mr. Will, I suspect).
Mr. Will wrote: “The $20 billion in new capital
investment she attracted to South Carolina as
governor included five international tire companies
and Mercedes, Volvo and BMW plants. The world’s
largest BMW plant is one reason South Caroli-
na builds more cars for export than any other state.”
So, Mr. Will, how many mega-millions did South
Carolina and its local jurisdictions give in tax breaks
to these automotive companies to entice them to
locate their plants there? This is not my idea of pure
American capitalism. Rather, I consider it to be a
form of socialistic capitalism.
Val Kehl, ManassasCapitalism still needs rules
Regarding Jennifer Fiore’s March 7 op-ed, “Good-
bye ‘soccer moms.’ Hello sanitizer moms.”:
There’s nothing like a bucket of cold water to
bring people to a modicum of sensible conscious-
ness. Of course we want the government to be
medically knowledgeable, prepared and responsi-
ble for its citizenry in the face of a viral disaster,
unlike the hollowed-out structure President Trump
is offering.
Of course we want to know we can be recom-
pensed by our insurance for our costs. No w ay d o we
want to find out that just when we need a firewall, it
has been chopped down.
T here is much to be said for aspects of a socialized
government, but substituting an untried health-
care system for an underfunded one is like the
proverbial empty barn. We still need the horses —
and the sanitizers.
Helen Dalton, PotomacThe coronavirus has reinforced the need for
“health care for all” i n the United States. If we “all”
want to stay safe, then we “all” need to be proactive
in looking after ourselves. With the existing system,
those who can’t afford to stay home from their jobs
or to seek care when they become sick will raise the
risks to everyone else. So maybe this is the final
thing that will persuade those who don’t want
“health care for all” t o get on board.
Brian England, ColumbiaWhile I usually find Dana Milbank amusing,
his March 8 Sunday Opinion column, “Ask Dr.
Trump!,” was downright chilling.
Covid-19 is here; it probably has been for quite
some time. My daughter-in-law, a very healthy
young woman, was very sick with a “cold” over
Christmas. She lives in Portland, Ore.; she’s fine
now, but I wonder.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Director Robert Redfield’s toadyish performance
during President Trump’s visit did nothing to
inspire confidence in an agency repeatedly fum-
bling the ball on detection and containment of this
deadly virus. The tragedy of the gutted agencies and
departments throughout our government is now
coming to bear. The ones who are left are career
professionals who are muzzled or otherwise pre-
vented from doing their jobs.
Perhaps Dr. Trump thinks his stupid wall will
hold back the virus. Perhaps he will retreat to Jeffrey
Epstein’s private island until the White House and
Mar-a-Lago are thoroughly disinfected. One thing is
for sure: He will be looking out for No. 1.
Claire Tieder, CharlottesvilleCovid-19 and U.S. health care
T
HIS IS a moment for plain talk about the
new coronavirus. Do not panic, but do not
ignore it: There is reason to be worried. A
major disruption is inevitable. Smart prepa-
ration can mitigate the risk. That preparation
should be the responsibility of every one of us,
whether we have been alerted by governments,
workplaces and experts or not. Do not wait for the
alarm bells to go off.
What can you do? The virus is infectious and may
be transmitted by someone who has just started to
feel the symptoms. A new study, not yet peer-
r eviewed, also suggests the virus may replicate in the
throat as well as the lungs, meaning that a cough
could easily broadcast it. We need to learn more
about the virus and the illness it causes, but it is not
too early to begin vigorous, careful social distancing.
Avoid large crowds. Workplaces should turn asmuch as possible to video conferencing. Avoid big
meetings and food-sharing. If you can work from
home, do so.
All nonessential large social gatherings should be
reconsidered and, if possible, postponed. Sports
games might proceed without fans, but concerts
may have to be delayed. Political campaigns can
proceed without rallies. A St. Patrick’s Day parade is
a bad idea. Cruise ships are turning out to be virus
incubators — don’t take a spring break cruise. Air
travel poses risks of exposure to large numbers of
people: If you don’t have to fly, don’t. If you’re sick,
stay home so as not to expose others. If you’re an
employer, keep paying your workers who do the
right thing and stay home when they’re sick.
Voting is vital t o the h ealth of our democracy, but it
can be organized to minimize the risks of infection.
Schools are a difficult question. They could prove tobe transmission grounds. But c losing schools means
cutting o ff m eals for needy s tudents and straining life
for parents — including nurses, doctors and other
health-care workers. If schools are kept open, rigor-
ous mitigation measures must be enforced.
Personal hygiene won’t solve everything but is
important. In addition to hand-washing, avoid
face-touching, and follow good cough and sneeze
etiquette. The elderly are particularly vulnerable,
according to early studies of the virus, so extraordi-
nary efforts should be taken to protect them from
possible infection.
T he U.S. health-care system — and especially
hospitals — may s oon be overwhelmed by pandemic.
Front-line health-care workers will be taxed to the
max. All of us have an opportunity to help stave off
the virus and conserve the scarce resources of the
health-care system for those who need it most.Our shared responsibility
Now is the time to take precautions against the coronavirus.
ABCDE
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