Conservative: Hamas Hijacks British Democracy
“The crisis of British democracy is finally here,” thunders Commentary’s Seth Mandel. Last Wednesday, “the opposition Scottish National Party put up a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza,” which should’ve led to a vote, but “the speaker of the House jettisoned the normal process and first allowed the Labour Party to water down the language.” Why? He said “he feared Labour members of parliament would be assassinated by pro-Hamas thugs if they didn’t get the language exactly right.” Labour leader Keir Starmer had asked the speaker to intervene, as he “didn’t want to see dozens of Labour members vote for the SNP’s anti-Israel resolution.” Meanwhile, “MPs facing increased death threats have found their homes targeted by activists.” In America, “legislators act out of fear of losing the support of pro-Hamas voters. In the UK, they vote out of fear of being murdered by the same. British democracy is approaching a truly dark hour.”
Eye on Albany: 1199SEIU’s Money Grab
A review of health-care union 1199SEIU’s disclosures this last decade reveals that “a quarter-billion dollars in Medicaid funds earmarked to improve nursing home care have instead flowed to a pair of benefit funds providing health coverage for 1199 members,” grumbles the Empire Center’s Bill Hammond. And some of that cash was diverted to a union project “sponsoring a multi-million-dollar TV ad campaign in support of higher Medicaid funding for hospitals.” That is: “Medicaid dollars have indirectly financed lobbying for more Medicaid dollars.” Meanwhile, the union’s National Benefit Fund, which had “a pattern of negative cash flow” from 2018 to 2020, restored “fiscal balance by increasing the contribution rates from its member employers — and by securing continued subsidies from the state.”
Pentagon beat: Red Tape vs. Recruiting
With military recruiting already plummeting, warns Owen West at The Hill, the Pentagon has adopted “an electronic screening system inaptly named ‘Military Health System Genesis,’ instantly shrinking the recruiting pool” by barring would-be signups on dubious health grounds. It “scours the cloud, highlighting doctor visits and prescriptions back to childhood. Understaffed health units — mostly civilians today — must investigate all the red flags.” So “the processing time for acceptances has doubled,” while “tens of thousands” of would-be “volunteers file appeals, drop out of the queue or are altogether disqualified.”
Ed desk: Why So Much Plagiarism, Harvard?
“Harvard has a plagiarism problem” beyond ousted prez Claudine Gay and chief diversity officer Sherri Ann Charleston, reports City Journal’s Christopher F. Rufo: Allegations have emerged that Harvard DEI administrator Shirley Greene plagiarized “more than 40 passages of her 2008 dissertation” — “ranging from minor infringements to what appears to be outright theft of concepts and language.” School paper the Crimson has implied these allegations “are motivated by racism — which other commentators have made explicit in defending Gay, Charleston, and Greene.” “Harvard should ask itself a simple question: how did so many alleged plagiarists rise to positions of power at the nation’s most prestigious university?” Possibly because “academics who focus on DEI and advocate lower standards for ‘oppressed’ racial groups might hold themselves to lower standards.”
From the right: Biden’s Student-Debt Boondoggle
“Biden claims his latest executive bailout,” which “canceled the debts of more than 150,000” students “who borrowed less than $12,000 to pay for their degrees” will “stimulate the economy by giving consumers more money to spend, but canceling the debt of college graduates is the worst form of trickle-down economics,” gripes the Washington Examiner’s editorial board. “Too many college graduates incur far too much debt to earn their degrees,” but “the entire higher education system needs to be reformed, and pumping more money into debt forgiveness” will “only make the problem worse because colleges will see the bailout as yet another signal from the federal government to continue raising prices faster than inflation.” The feds “should instead hold higher education institutions accountable for the unpaid debt of their students.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
This story originally appeared on NYPost
