From the right: Bad News for Consumers — and Joe
News that inflation hit 3.5% in March, showing it’s “not subsiding,” took “big media outlets by surprise” even though it’s been rising “steadily for the past six months,” observes the Washington Examiner’s Byron York. And even when inflation slows, “prices still go up.” It’s “terrible news for consumers.” A recent Fox News poll found 55% say they’re worse off financially, vs. just 22% better off. With the new numbers, “the worse-off” are “even more worse off now.” It’s also “more bad news” for President Biden, whose “spending policies” fueled price growth. The poll found the economy the most important issue for voters. And though the prez brags that “‘Bidenomics’ is working,” Wednesday’s news “strongly suggested” that’s “not the case.”
Education beat: Look Who’s Calling Math ‘Racist’
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is underwriting efforts to dismantle “white supremacy” from math instruction taught in K-12 schools, grumbles the Capitol Research Center’s Kali Fontanilla. “Practically everything is “racist” now . . . why not add math instruction to the mix?” A 2021 guide sent to California teachers identifies “‘perfectionism, sense of urgency, defensiveness, quantity over quality [and] individualism’” as “characteristics of white supremacy.” The Gates-funded manual, she fumes, “emphasizes that getting the ‘right’ answer in math should not be the focus; it should be understanding the
concepts and reasoning” — especially ironic when “Bill Gates built his monumental wealth on computer science, a discipline entirely dependent on mathematics.”
Libertarian: Voters’ Push for Presidential Tyranny
A recent AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey found that 48% of Americans “oppose unilateral presidential rule” while 21% favor it, including 17% of Democrats and 26% of Republicans, reports Reason’s J.D. Tuccille. “Only a small minority of Americans actually favor turning the presidency into an elective monarchy, but we’re all getting it anyway” because “many people ask far too much of a government that was originally designed to be limited in its role and hobbled by checks and balances.” “They expect the president to fulfill unreasonable expectations — and grant ever-greater power to the position.” “The danger lies less in the candidates than in voters who use politicians as vehicles for their awful expectations and frankly authoritarian agendas.”
Eye on Ukraine: Russia’s War on Religion
“The issue of religious persecution has emerged as an objection to House Speaker Mike Johnson’s plans for military funding for Ukraine,” sighs Nina Shea at National Review. Republicans like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene have been duped by Russian propaganda into thinking “Russia is ‘protecting Christianity’” in a “war against Satanism.” Ukrainian clergy leaders told a Hudson Institute gathering that “they fear that a victorious Russia would crush their religious institutions.” Christian charity Mission Eurasia found that “almost all non-Orthodox churches in occupied territories were stripped of their right to hold church services,” and the “scale of the destruction of evangelical prayer houses is vast.” “Russian militants calling themselves ‘Cossacks’ have shut down Catholic churches in Donetsk.” Russia’s campaign to eradicate Ukraine’s non-Russian Orthodox churches should alarm all “who care about defending Christians and religious freedom.”
Law desk: End the Special Counsels!
“Few innovations in American law enforcement have done more damage than ‘independent’ prosecutors,” roars former Justice official James Burnham at City Journal. “They have never yielded benefits commensurate with their costs. They should be abolished.” Why? In the “supremely political investigations” they undertake, people “politically hostile to the investigatory target invariably jump aboard.” Add in “unlimited funding, little oversight, and no obligation to pursue other crimes” and “the theoretical benefit of ‘apolitical’ special counsels becomes farcical.” (Look at the “reckless” arguments advanced by Trump prosecutor Jack Smith that have even pulled the Supreme Court “into the political fray.”) Time for the attorney general, “answerable to the elected president and the peoples’ representatives in Congress,” to handle such cases — and “to end the experiment.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board