Foreign desk: Russia, China Back a Nuclear Iran
“Iran has secured great-power patronage for the first time in four decades,” warn Reuel Marc Gerecht & Ray Takeyh at The Wall Street Journal.
Russia, China and Iran “all want to diminish American power” and “recognize that they need to help each other militarily and economically to achieve common goals.”
So now, thanks to Tehran’s “developing alliances with Russia and China,” it “likely has no significant technical hurdle left to clear on its way to a nuclear weapon.”
Meanwhile, “a growing conventional wisdom in Washington counsels a shift of focus” away from the Middle East and toward Asia.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman “made a sensible calculation with his recent Chinese-brokered compact with Tehran.”
“Without the US, the Middle East is sorting itself out.”
Green beat: Will Electric Cars Do Anything?
“No one really knows,” observes Mark P. Mills at City Journal, “how much widespread adoption of EVs could reduce emissions, or whether they might even increase them.”
States are rushing “to ban the sale of conventional cars,” yet “fabricating a typical, single half-ton EV battery requires mining and processing about 250 tons of materials,” involving huge “upstream” carbon emissions that “dominate” EV’s carbon footprint.
Studies by Volvo and Volkswagen “found that an EV powered on Europe’s grid creates more CO2 emissions than a conventional car until at least 50,000 miles of gasoline-free driving” — and those upstream emissions are rising as higher demand favors “dirtier” production.
“In the end, the rush to EVs could even increase global vehicle-related emissions.”
Weed watch: Tax Dreams up in Smoke
The story of legal weed is also about “greed on the government’s part, which encourages more greed on the part of those willing to break the law for profit,” snarks Merrill Matthews at The Hill.
High tax rates and an arduous licensing process in some states serve to encourage “vendors to ignore the process and begin selling the product” tax-free and without a license.
When tax rates approach 30 to 40 percent, a cannabis consultant told The Wall Street Journal, “ ‘it’s really going to be difficult to compete against the remnants of an illegal market.’ ”
For example, “ ‘just five shops sell marijuana legally in New York City, while 1,400 bodegas, smoke shops and other outlets without licenses do.’ ”
High taxation “encourages a black market where safety regulations, quality controls and sanitation may be lacking.”
Conservative: Soros Aims To Tap Pittsburgh DA
“The Justice and Safety PAC, a national organization backed by liberal billionaire businessman George Soros,” has “invested a whopping $734,000 into electing liberal public defender Matt Dugan as Allegheny County’s district attorney over incumbent Steve Zappala in next Tuesday’s Pennsylvania Democratic primary,” reports the Washington Examiner’s Salena Zito.
Take it “out of the equation, and Dugan has only raised $76,764.17 for his entire campaign, with Zappala raising $226,800.”
And so far “the Pennsylvania Justice and Safety PAC had not yet filed a campaign finance report detailing who else is funding the group aside from Soros.”
Libertarian: Don’t Forget COVID Misleadership
“Public officials, including former Chief Medical Advisor Anthony Fauci and President Biden, are eager to rewrite history” over COVID restrictions, notes Reason’s Robby Soave, but “let’s not let them off the hook.”
Fauci is now pretending that “lockdowns — and school closures in particular — were not his fault,” yet state and local officials “turned to Fauci and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for guidance, and the message they got was that you can’t be too careful.”
Meanwhile, teachers’ union head Randi Weingarten “vigorously opposed President Donald Trump’s plan to reopen schools” and “remained militantly in favor of mask mandates for kids.”
And Biden “ordered a national vaccine mandate for 80 million private-sector workers” a year after he said they should not be mandatory.
“Let’s not forget who was responsible for the awful policies that failed to stop COVID, eroded our freedoms, and made the government much more powerful.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
This story originally appeared on NYPost
