Climate war: Europe Nixes Net Zero, US Ramps Up
“You know you’ve stumbled through the looking glass when European politicians start sounding saner on climate policy” than Americans, quips The Wall Street Journal’s Joseph C. Sternberg. Well, here we are: “Europeans are admitting the folly of net zero quicker” than Americans. Scotland has “all but abandoned net zero” after “someone noticed the costs”: It had “reached the point where further net-zero progress would have made obvious and material demands of household budgets.” Other parts of Europe have also seen climate-agenda pushback. Yet “the U.S. is headed in the opposite direction”: President Biden is “pressing ahead with aggressive net-zero policies such as an electric-vehicle mandate” and pouring “trillions” in “hard-earned household money into climate boondoggles.” He’s taking a “big risk” by assuming “voters won’t care.”
Conservative: Kill the Prez-Debate Commission
No fan of the Trump campaign, the Spectator’s Ben Domenech still cheers its fury at the Commission on Presidential Debates, run by a pack of “decrepit ex-politicians” who “lied to us, over and over and over again” in 2020 about the partisan “actions of their moderator that ultimately led to his dismissal and the end of his career.” Plus: “Millennials are the biggest generation living today and there is not one single representative of their generation on the Commission.” And: “Debates do not need to be determined by commissions at all.” They “should be flexible, hosted on streaming platforms” and “available for all and with moderators negotiated between the campaigns themselves.” The CPD is “a Nursing Home for the politically irrelevant” with “no reason to exist.”
From the right: You Pay To Register Joe’s Voters
In 2021, President Biden “issued Executive Order 14019, which directs political appointees at every federal agency to ‘promote voter registration and voter participation,’ ” and “this February, Vice President Kamala Harris announced a slew of executive branch electioneering activities related to Biden’s executive order,” which involves using federal agencies to register voters, notes the Washington Examiner’s editorial board. And the agencies are turning to “the same liberal nonprofit groups Democrats have used for years to boost voter registration among their partisan voters” for guidance. “Biden’s voter registration and participation push is not aimed at the general population” but “the recipients of government programs.” He’s “using get-out-the-vote efforts exclusively among people most likely to support Democratic candidates. And he is paying for it with dollars taken from your pocket by taxation.”
Econ desk: Paul Krugman Hates Normal People
Racket News’ Matt Taibbi flags “a booming new op-ed genre” that “bashes hick voters for their incorrect ‘Perception of the Economy,’ ” and that’s led by Paul Krugman, who six months ago declared on Twitter that “The war on inflation is over . . . We won, at very little cost.” This, observes Taibbi, “a year after he had to write a column called ‘I Was Wrong About Inflation’ ” over his missing “the potential downside impact of a massive monetary rescue plan.” For Krugman, “ordinary people don’t have honest opinions about the economy, just partisan reactions.” The “volk only have vibes, and wrong ones at that.” “It’s one thing to be called stupid and partisan, but having Paul Krugman do it is almost a compliment. Almost.”
Libertarian: Equity Grading = Sham Equality
So-called equity grading “will create a false sense of equity — and make it tougher for colleges to recognize the best students” argues warns Reason’s Steven Greenhut. What is it? Well, “some Bay Area schools have approved ‘equity grading’ ” that offers students “multiple chances to make up missed or failed assignments and minimize homework’s impact on a student’s grade.” It’s near-impossible to fail! And “the California State Board of Education last year approving a new 1,000-page math framework that, as Education Week reported, ‘aims to put meaning-making at the center of the math classroom’ and ‘encourages teachers to make math culturally relevant and accessible for all students.’ ” Make math easier by making it not about math?
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board