From the right: Blame Biden for Rising Costs
Democrats “blame President Trump” for America’s affordability problem “while ignoring their own responsibility for causing it in the first place,” fumes James Piereson at The New Criterion. “President Biden, with the support of his party in Congress, went on a spending spree when he took office,” causing inflation to hit more than 9% in mid-2022. “During Trump’s first term, food prices were generally stable,” but “Biden’s spending policies caused” them “to surge,” with gasoline skyrocketing to $4.84 per gallon in mid-2022. Electricity costs spiked more than 30% during Biden’s term. “There can be no doubt that rising prices . . . were caused by the blockheaded and incompetent policies of the Biden administration.”
Policy wonk: How To Make the FAA Fly Right
“The FAA is designed for stagnation,” frets Sean Tinney at The Hill, because its “centralized monopoly” holds “American airspace hostage to congressional dysfunction.” As a result, “regulatory capture” turns government shutdowns into “body counts.” The United States should follow the example of Canada, which “once faced similar challenges,” but “privatized air traffic control” in 1996. Air traffic control there is now funded by “user fees, not tax revenue,” while “delivering demonstrably superior performance.” The Canadian system’s “safety metrics show real gains,” and it’s “nearly six times safer” in regard to near-misses. “Privatized systems charge airlines and operators directly, creating clearer incentives and lower prices,” while delivering “what bureaucracy cannot: accountability, innovation, and resilience.”
Foreign desk: BBC’s Christian-Slaughter Blinders
“Not for the first time, the likes of the BBC are running interference for violent Islamist intolerance” by diminishing President Trump’s concern over “the violent persecution” of Nigeria’s “Christian minority by Islamist groups,” thunders Kunwar Khuldune Shahid at Spiked. Per a recent report, “more than 7,000” Nigerian Christians were killed “in the first seven months of this year alone.” Yet “too many outlets” are refusing “to accept that Christians are really being persecuted.” “The BBC is a case in point,” running an article that “concluded that the evidence of the killings was ‘difficult to verify,’” while barely attempting “to check” itself. “Nigerian Christians are not merely ‘collateral damage’ of ‘various security crises’, as the BBC would have it. They are murdered with the intent to purge Nigerian society of Christians.”
Business beat: FTC’s Meta ‘Overreach’
The Federal Trade Commission’s “defeat” in its antitrust suit against Meta is “a blow” to those on the “right and left” who seek to “punish politically disfavored businesses,” cheers The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board. “Progressives who loathe large companies made common cause with conservatives” irate at “online speech policing.” The right “had a point,” but the FTC nonetheless “overreached.” It argued that Meta is monopolistic, but Judge James Boasberg cited evidence showing the company actually “competes vigorously with TikTok and YouTube.” Plus, “artificial intelligence and Elon Musk’s ownership of X.com are reinvigorating competition.” Nor are Meta’s “enormous profits” proof it’s a monopoly: “Breaking up a business merely because it’s big, as progressives including Biden FTC Chair Lina Khan want to do, can harm competition and consumers.”
Education watch: Homeschooling Is Soaring
Homeschooling’s “supercharged” growth during COVID hasn’t abated but is expanding, new research finds — and, marvels Reason’s J.D. Tuccille, at three times the rate. “Estimates put the total homeschooling population at about 6 percent of students” nationwide, twice as much as pre-pandemic. Homeschooling expert Angela Watson notes a “fundamental shift in how American families are thinking about education,” with other researchers citing a growing preference for non-public-school options. COVID closures, argues Tuccille, “gave parents a chance to experience public schools’ competence with remote learning, and many were unimpressed.” They’ve also been “unhappy with the poor quality and often politicized lessons taught to their children that infuriatingly blend declining learning outcomes with indoctrination.” Given such experiences, “the shift appears to be here to stay.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
This story originally appeared on NYPost
