Behind Sanders’ 5% wealth tax, what’s within the water at CNN, and different commentary
Media watch: What’s in the Water at CNN?
“I can forgive a factual fumble,” but there’s “a difference between that,” quips JP’s Jeffrey Blehar, “and whatever the hell is currently going on at CNN with their coverage of the Gracie Mansion attack.” Tuesday, the network ran its now legendary “ ‘human interest’ story” about the jihadists. Even after that was “widely mocked,” anchor Abby Phillip later wrongly claimed the attack was aimed at Mayor Mamdani. A CNN reporter also implied Mamdani was a “target of political violence,” while contributor Ana Navarro “capped it all off” by characterizing the attack as an “attempt against” him. “I don’t know if this sort of ignorance is ideologically driven, down to simple pig-ignorance, or the product of a black-op psychological experiment involving LSD in the CNN water supply.”
Labor beat: Behind Sanders’ 5% Wealth Tax
Sen. Bernie Sanders’ bill to sock billionaires with a 5% wealth tax, a “litmus test” for Democratic presidential candidates, “has attracted a coalition of supporters — chief among them government employee unions,” observes Aaron Withe at The Hill. And “the logic becomes clear” once you see how the tax directs its “projected revenue — $4.4 trillion over a decade — into an array of new federal spending programs,” meaning “more federal employees, more union-eligible positions and more dues flowing into union bank accounts.” Even if the revenues falter as the wealthy move away, “the government programs” stick around. “The relationship between government union growth and federal spending is no coincidence. Larger government is, quite simply, the business model of public-sector unions.”
Higher Ed: Fixing ‘Studies’ Disciplines
“Big things are happening in higher education,” cheers John Masko at the City Journal of the University of Texas-Austin decision to consolidate four “studies” departments “into a single new Department of Social and Cultural Analysis.” UT Austin’s “administrators know that the ‘studies’ disciplines are really just one discipline — critical theory.” That is, “the ‘studies’ disciplines are not primarily about women, African Americans, America, or whatever their prefix happens to be”; each is merely a pretext for the study of “critical theory.” If this consolidation “is emulated at peer institutions,” it will greatly “improve the climate of American academia,” as more students will learn “how to evaluate evidence, not how to act on assumed political conclusions.”
Persian: Ayatollah Son’s Rise Betrays Revolution
Ali Khamenei’s son becoming “Iran’s next supreme leader” reverses the “very purpose of the revolution,” which was “above all else, a revolt against hereditary rule,” notes Reza Aslan at the Los Angeles Times. The 1979 revolt promised power would be based not on “dynasty, but moral authority rooted in religion.” Now “the premise that clerical rule” is divinely guided is “one of the last pillars supporting the Islamic Republic.” Mojtaba Khamenei is a “mid-ranking cleric whose influence derives largely from his proximity to power,” not from his stature as a giant of learning. His rise makes Iranian leadership “look less like divine mandate and more like dynastic inheritance.” So the revolution did “little more than replace the crown with a turban.”
Liberal: Party ‘Purity’ Ill-Serves America
Gatekeepers “within Democratic and Republican circles” now obsess with crushing “heterodoxy,” grumbles The Liberal Patriot’s John Halpin, assaulting any figure who holds “economic or cultural views significantly at odds” with “activists” and other “ideological enforcers.” Thus, Dems assail any member “saying, ‘Men can’t become women and boys shouldn’t be allowed to play in girls’ sports,’” while in in today’s GOP, heterodoxy” covers “someone who says, ‘I disagree with Donald Trump.’” True believers see “DINOs and RINOs . . . everywhere in their respective parties”; those straying “from the party line,” risk being “punished, demoted, ‘primaried,’ and attacked nonstop on social media.” The great irony: Ever-more “Americans are heterodox” and would eagerly “support a heterodox legislator from the same or opposite party.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board