Eye on NY: Record School Spending
“Public elementary and secondary school spending in New York hit a new record high of $29,873 per pupil in 2021-22,” grumbles the Empire Center’s E.J. McMahon, off new Census Bureau data that show the state is “inching closer to fully twice the national average of $15,633 amid a significant post-pandemic decline in pupil performance.” In all, the spending gap between New York and the rest of America “has more than quadrupled since 2000.” Driving the surge are “instructional salaries and benefits — which, at $20,533 per pupil, were 120 percent above the national average of $9,348.” “New York City’s spending of $35,914 per pupil topped all of the nation’s 100 largest school systems.” And New York even outspends neighboring “states with similarly powerful public education lobbies and high living costs.”
DEI desk: The Woke Stanford Takeover
Per a new analysis, “Stanford employs at least 177 full-time DEI bureaucrats, spread throughout the university’s various divisions and departments,” notes City Journal’s Christopher Rufo, a figure that’s “more than doubled” since 2021. “Stanford’s DEI mandate is the same as those of other universities: advance the principles of left-wing racialism” and “suppress dissent on campus” — and it’s “not limited to humanities departments.” “The highest concentration is in Stanford’s medical school, which has at least 46 diversity officials.” DEI at Stanford “will likely keep growing. At each step, it will degrade the quality of scholarship and academic rigor. The question is whether dissenters — professors, students, and alumni who reject the ideological capture of the university — will have enough power to dislodge more than 100 full-time bureaucrats.”
Climate beat: Greens’ Dark-Money Lawfare
“High-stakes climate litigation” across America and worldwide, “purportedly on behalf of children, can be traced to a single, left-wing public interest law firm with big-money backing and ties to longtime progressive activists,” reports Fox News’ Thomas Catenacci. Our Children’s Trust has “filed multiple federal lawsuits, spearheaded legal action in all 50 states and is even involved in litigation in Canada, Mexico, Pakistan, India and Uganda.” It argues governments are harming kids’ futures “by allowing fossil fuel reliance.” And left-wing groups have provided hundreds of thousands to OCT. “Unable to implement policies through the normal processes of representative government,” fumes Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, whose state the group sued, OCT is trying to “use the courts to impose [its] extremist climate agenda.”
Libertarian: RFK’s Terrible Housing Scheme
“If RFK Jr. wants to solve the housing crisis,” argues Ezra Wyrick at Reason, “he should start by understanding it.” His proposed “federal home loans program” would offer “government-backed 3 percent mortgage bonds to anyone unable to afford a house.” This “is essentially a clone of the federal student loans program but for first-time home buyers instead of teenage college students” — and “just look at what happened with federal student loans.” They’ve created “a vicious cycle where college tuition far outpaces inflation, leaving millions burdened with crippling debt and limited financial opportunities after graduating.” Similarly, “if the government makes it easier to buy homes, it will lead to higher prices.” For affordable housing, “a basic grasp of economics” dictates that “to lower prices . . . we should build more homes” instead.
Historian: Ukraine’s Precarious Path to Victory
“It will become harder for Vladimir Putin to see how he can bring the war to an early conclusion, which was certainly his hope before” Congress approved new aid, observes Lawrence Freedman at the Financial Times. But: “Chronic shortages in ammunition and air defences . . . led to limited but potentially significant Russian advances,” and “it will take time to recover . . . and then more before Ukraine starts to benefit fully from new supplies of equipment.” “For now, Ukraine’s best way of keeping up the fight against Russia is to carry on with the sort of attacks it has been mounting regularly of late,” such as using “long-range drones against oil refineries and other targets with some strategic value in Russia.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board