Tag: fast takes

Biden worsening ‘root causes’, gov’t agencies failed Paul Pelosi and other commentary

Border watch: Biden Is Worsening ‘Root Causes’

“Critics with regional expertise say Biden administration policies . . . have severely worsened” poverty, crime and political instability in Mexico and the Southern Triangle — his administration’s alleged “root causes” of immigration, reports RealClearInvestigations’ James Varney. How? “The torrent of people moving across the region has delivered billions of dollars to the coffers of human smuggling rings and the drug cartels.” Reports also suggest “more than two-thirds of those making the trek had been victimized by criminals and nearly one-third of the women had been sexually assaulted.” That’s why one expert sees the surge in traffic as something close to an international crime and places “a lot of blood on the hands” of Team Biden “for opening the Southern border on purpose.”

Iconoclast: Dems’ ‘Pro-Democracy’ Morass

Democrats’ message — that only one party in this election is committed to democracy (theirs), and thus there’s only one real choice — “makes little sense,” even if you reject their agenda and record on issues like inflation, crime and immigration, Josh Barro rants at Very Serious. That message “amounts to telling voters that they have already lost their democracy,” and if you insist to voters they “have no choice but you, you had better make yourself a palatable choice — otherwise, they are liable to defy you and choose what you claimed was unthinkable.” Yet “Democrats have not governed” that way. So: “You can see from [Dems’] actions that they are not actually serious about the arguments they’re making now, and I for one am sick of the disingenuous speechifying.”

Libertarian: GOP Should Govern Like Adults

If Republicans win the House and Senate, they’ll face “enormous challenges”: recession, inflation, debt and deficits “as far as the eye could see” — and more, warns Veronique de Rugy at Reason. How can they address them? First, make inflation a “top priority”: Congress and the White House “must trim government spending,” with Republicans avoiding “bloated ‘family friendly’ programs” like child tax credits and paid leave — which studies show “make the lives of families harder.” They should also resist the urge to “pressure [Federal Reserve] chairman Jerome Powell to stop jacking up” interest rates. Oh, and “govern like adults” — and not seek “revenge” by launching probes against Democratic foes. “Investigating the Dems is not on the top of most voters’ concerns this election season.”

From the right: Gov’t Agencies Failed Paul Pelosi

President Biden’s depiction of the assault on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, “ignores the multiple ways that government agencies who have the responsibility to prevent, deter, or quickly intervene in crimes such as this failed in their duties,” huffs National Review’s Jim Geraghty. The intruder who “attacked Paul Pelosi overstayed his visa and had resided illegally in the U.S. for many years.” Pelosi might have been spared the assault “if there were better enforcement of immigration laws,” had his attacker “been deported back to Canada years ago,” if the city and state had better “intervention for those with severe mental-health issues” and if US Capitol Police had “been watching the surveillance monitors.” Government agencies clearly “failed in their responsibility to protect the public.”

Eye on elex: Blake Masters’ Final Sprint

“Less than one week from Election Day,” notes the Washington Examiner’s Selena Zito, “36-year-old venture capitalist-turned-candidate” Blake Masters “has gone from a long shot at best to within the margin of error” against incumbent Dem Sen. Mark Kelly in Arizona. Why? “Democrats’ failure to recognize earlier how angry voters are about the economy, crime, and the border.” Plus, his age: “I’m a whole generation behind, and I actually know what it’s like to be raising a family under current conditions,” notes Masters. Zito adds that Masters has now joined “dynamo” gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake “on the stump,” and it’s helping his numbers. So the race is being closely watched: “If he flips this seat, Masters will almost certainly enter a Republican majority in the upper chamber.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board

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Va. history repeating in NY, … and other commentary

Conservative: Va. History Repeating in NY?

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe likely lost the 2021 election with his debate declaration, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” Now, argues the Washington Examiner’s Hugo Gurdon, Gov. “Hochul may have just gifted deep blue New York to her challenger” with her debate flub, when Rep. Lee Zeldin noted she “hasn’t talked about locking up anyone committing any crimes” and she replied “I don’t know why that is so important to you.” Like McAuliffe’s gaffe, Gurdon notes, it was a “crystalline statement of Democratic insouciance toward ordinary people’s interests.” So: “It can be no surprise” that the polling “trend is fast against” Hochul. If Zeldin wins, “McAuliffe can take consolation in the thought that he isn’t alone in his Olympian blundering.”

Budget watch: Hochul Hiding Red Ink

“Governor Hochul’s budget office has yet to release the statutorily required mid-year financial plan update,” huffs the Empire Center’s Peter Warren. State law requires its release by Oct. 30. Why the delay? Likely because it holds “grim news” reflecting the “economic and financial market downturn.” The Aug. 1 update “projected a sea of red ink in the coming years, with deficits exceeding $6 billion by FY 2027.” By “signing the Green CHIPS legislation” a few days later, Hochul added “another roughly $500 million per year to the outyear annual deficits.” Voters should be able “to see the full impact on the state’s finances of both broad economic and market conditions, and specific policy decisions made by elected officials.” That’s why the law requires them “by a date certain.”

From the left: Big Brother’s Watching You Vote

TKNews’ Matt Taibbi flags the rise of mailers aiming “to remind people voting records are public, and whether they vote next week will be public record.” Some are handwritten with a signature; one creeped-out recipient says, “It feels threatening, as if a neighbor is keeping track of who has or has not voted.” Indeed, Taibbi reports, “the word ‘Orwellian’ came up more than once in interviews” on “so-called social shaming mailers.” Yet the practice “is likely to increase even more in the future” because it works. “Is Big Brother watching? If the wrong party loses next week, someone in your neighborhood probably will be. Welcome to 21st century electioneering.”

Eye on elex: Dems’ Dead-Parrot Denialism

“It’s never a good idea to tell people that what they see before them isn’t real,” warns The Wall Street Journal’s Gerard Baker, recalling the classic Monty Python “dead parrot” sketch. On key issues, “Democratic candidates across the country are performing an uncanny impersonation of the shopkeeper in the sketch who insists that the deceased bird is in fact not deceased, but ‘just resting’ and ‘pinin’ for the fjords.’ ” President Biden, for one, calls the economy “strong as hell,” yet inflation is “rapidly eroding real wages.” And Gov. Hochul’s “I don’t know why” locking up criminals is “so important to you” remark, Baker contends, shows “a detachment from the reality in which so many of her fellow New Yorkers live.”

Populist: GOP Must Learn From Musk

Elon Musk’s top challenge at Twitter “is changing the culture of this large organization without interrupting its business,” Bruce Abramson explains at RealClearPolitics, and “it’s a task at which President Trump failed. Trump often complained about the politicization and corruption of federal agencies . . . but he had zero perceptible impact on the culture of the federal bureaucracy.” Learn from Musk’s “first moves. He immediately removed key members of Twitter’s leadership, including its CEO, CFO, policy head, and general counsel,” axing “the highest profile senior people most identified with Twitter’s culture.” Then he “denied the rumors that he intended to fire three out of every four employees — without providing details about his actual intentions. The combined message is exactly right: Twitter culture is about to change in a significant way. If you’re competent in your job and on board with the shift, we’d be pleased to have you stay.”

Compiled by The Post Editorial Board

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Gov’t idiocy at work, FDA’s dumb plan on smokes and other commentary

From the right: Gov’t Idiocy at Work

“Cities are rapidly inventing new job titles,” reports City Journal’s Steven Malanga, and the “hottest (pun intended)” is “chief heat officer” — whose task is to “enumerate the impact of heat on the local population” and “seek ways to mitigate it.” One popular idea among CHOs: plant trees to boost shade. And one term “you’re unlikely to hear” from them: “air conditioning,” though “warm-weather-related deaths dropped precipitously over the last century” thanks to AC. The problem: “Air conditioning demands electricity” often powered by fossil fuels or nuclear energy, “two unseemly phrases” in government circles. Yet “the biggest threat” is the loss of AC due to rising prices and outages made more likely by government climate actions. Don’t worry: “Your local CHO is coming soon to plant more trees.”

Libertarian: FDA’s Dumb Plan on Smokes

The Food and Drug Administration “wants to prevent smoking-related deaths by making cigarettes less appealing,” notes Reason’s Jacob Sullum. It “plans to ban menthol cigarettes and limit nicotine content” even as it’s “determined to make vaping products, the most promising harm-reducing alternative to cigarettes, less appealing to smokers.” Its policies contain a “condescending assumption that African Americans are helpless to resist menthol’s minty coolness” and “would spur black-market activity” while encouraging smokers “to smoke more”; its vaping stand “is hard to reconcile with its acknowledgment that vaping has great potential to reduce smoking-related disease and death.” Seems the FDA “learned nothing from the country’s unhappy experience with the war on drugs.”

Conservative: Germany Says the F-Word — Fracking

“Germany’s energy crisis is a crisis of choice, or rather a crisis of two choices, the second following directly from the first,” explains The Wall Street Journal’s Joseph C. Sternberg. The Ukraine war already has it rethinking the second choice, to rely on Russia for natural-gas imports. “But Germany is as dependent as it is on foreign fuel only because of the first decision Berlin made: not to tap the country’s substantial domestic gas reserves,” put off-limits by the 2017 ban “on dubious safety grounds” of “the fracking techniques that could reach most of Germany’s gas.” Polling shows just 27% support, though “‘only’ 56% of respondents opposed fracking outright, with the remaining 17% undecided. This after voters have been bombarded for years with antifracking messages.” In fact, Germany’s “perceived resource poverty is more a form of learned helplessness than a geological reality.”

Pundit: My Stealthy, Sexist CNN Suspension

“It came to my attention in July that I had been punished under old CNN leadership — kept off air since January,” writes Mary Katharine Ham at her MK Hammer Time Substack, “for tweeting about Jeffrey Toobin,” who’d left his webcam on while masturbating during a video call with colleagues. “I was never informed of my punishment until it was rescinded recently by new management,” and Toobin “was off air for eight months; I was off for seven. One month was the difference between punishment for” his repugnant action “versus commenting on the inadvisability of” masturbating “at work.” Oh, and: “I was also told I wasn’t informed of the network’s displeasure because I had just had a baby and someone in the old leadership thought I might be a ‘loose cannon.’”

Culture desk: Must You Tip Everyone?

“Everyone wants a tip now. Do you have to give them one?” asks Recode’s Sara Morrison. “Tipflation is everywhere,” with tips “requested at automatic car washes,” for retail purchases, “even for smoothie-making robots, usually through those touchscreen tablets a lot of businesses use.” Thanks to “social pressure” and “a pandemic that accelerated the adoption of contactless digital payment methods, those tablets have become ubiquitous, and so have the tip requests.” Research finds “just the act of asking people to leave a tip can be enough to push some people into doing so.” After all, we all want “to avoid the awkwardness and the guilt of” declining. But take it from the expert: Lizzie Post, Emily Post’s great-great-grandchild, says “there’s nothing wrong with saying no.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board

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Biden screws the frugal, America’s real polarization and other commentary

Libertarian: Biden Screws the Frugal

The problem with President Biden’s student-loan forgiveness “runs far beyond finances,” fumes Fiona Harrigan at Reason: Consider the “many college graduates who made strategic choices to avoid taking on debt in the first place.” Her parents “convinced me that starting my adult life that far in the hole wasn’t worth the tradeoff.” So she “quietly retired the list of schools I truly wanted to attend.” With “$35,000 annually in merit aid” and “some strategic choices, my college education never cost more than $2,000 per year.” “I never lived on campus. I took on heavy course loads and cashed in on AP credits to finish school a semester early. . . . At times, I worked three jobs to afford travel to internship and conference opportunities, as well as the nontuition costs of my education.” Now she’s “wondering which opportunities I unnecessarily gave up in the name of saving and scrimping.”

Populist: America’s Real Polarization

Obsessing about “partisan polarization” misses “the real division” now, argues Michael McKenna at The Washington Times: “the chasm between those for whom society and its institutions are working just fine and those for whom society and its institutions are either not working at all or are actively working against.” That holds not just for the Biden “student loan disaster,” which makes “the working class pay for the education of the well-off,” but also “Inflation Reduction Act” spending: “Just about all of the $380 billion . . . will wind up in the pockets of company executives, stockholders and those well-off enough to buy electric vehicles (average price now more than $66,000), cutting-edge heat pumps, solar panels.” Add the bipartisan CHIPS “legislation in which Congress gave $75 billion to semiconductor manufacturers that, combined, have made nearly $250 billion in profits in the last five years.”

Pandemic journal: No Djokovic at US Open

Novak Djokovic is “arguably the world’s greatest tennis player,” but “tennis fans won’t see him on one of its biggest stages at the U.S. Open” as the feds won’t let unvaccinated noncitizens into America, complains The Hill’s Joe Concha. “And it’s all for nothing”: Djokovic has natural immunity from 2020 and 2021 COVID bouts. And “we’re seeing triple-vaccinated people contracting coronavirus.” If it’s “about public health and safety,” “explain why Djokovic, nowhere near anyone on a court, cannot play while more than 23,000 fans fill Arthur Ashe Stadium” without “showing the same vaccination card Djokovic is required to present.”

Elex watch: DeSantis Foe Must Want To Lose

Ron DeSantis’ Democratic opponent, Rep. Charlie Crist, “seems determined to lose” Florida’s race for governor, smirks Corey DeAngelis at The Wall Street Journal: As his running mate, he chose Karla Hernández-Mats, president of Miami’s United Teachers of Dade and America Federation of Teachers veep. She and the UTD opposed school reopenings in 2020, and the AFT “successfully lobbied the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to tighten school-reopening guidelines, which kept schools elsewhere closed.” She has also “publicly disdained parents” and opposed school choice. “Crist might have learned something from Virginia, where Democrat Terry McAuliffe last year failed to regain the governorship” after saying he didn’t think parents should be telling schools what to teach.

Historian: Dems’ ‘Fascist’ Confusion

“For the Left, Donald Trump is synonymous with ‘fascism’ ” yet did Trump “illegally” nullify $300 billion” in student-loan debt to shore up his base before the midterms? asks Victor Davis Hanson at American Greatness. Or “weaponize the IRS” — sic it on Joe or Hunter Biden, amid evidence of possible corruption on the son’s laptop? “Weaponize the FBI”? Did agents’ texts discuss how to stop Biden’s election bid? Did the ex-prez order a raid on President Barack Obama or Biden’s homes? “In fact, of the last three presidents, Trump was either the most inept or indifferent, or the most obstructed” in using government agencies “for his own partisan political advantage.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board

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