“There is once again a need for scientists to pass around their ideas secretly to one another so as to avoid censorship,” as was done through the “underground press,” or samizdat, in the USSR, laments Jay Bhattacharya at RealClearPolitics. “I say this from first-hand experience”: During the pandemic, his criticisms of “economic lockdowns, school shutdowns, and similar restrictive policies,” which “disproportionately harm the young and economically disadvantaged,” were “removed from the public square on all manner of social networks” in response to government pressure. “Censorship is the death of science and inevitably leads to the death of people.” “We must reform our scientific institutions so what happened during the pandemic never happens again.”
“It’s not totally unprecedented” for the federal deficit to double “from one year to the next, as it seems to have done this year,” yet such growth generally occurs when there are major problems with the economy. Not this time, screams Reason’s Eric Boehm — unemployment’s low, the economy’s growing and inflation is abating. Instead, the red ink now is mainly due to “poor policymaking: rising interest costs on the $33 trillion national debt, higher Social Security outlays, and more Medicare spending,” all of which “are going to keep getting worse.” “Over the next decade, the federal government will spend $10.6 trillion just to pay the interest on borrowing that’s already occurred or is planned.” These are “structural problems” that will “continue to mount until they are meaningfully addressed.”
“When candidates face lethal threats, as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. did last week, it’s time to give them protection,” demands Charles Lipson at The Spectator. President Biden can order the Secret Service to protect Kennedy if he so chooses; not doing so would be “a dangerous, mean-spirited political calculation,” ranking “up there with Attorney General Merrick Garland’s decision to withhold protection from Supreme Court justices” who also faced “lethal threats.” The Biden camp likely fears doing anything that would identify Kennedy “as a major candidate” — or signal “that there is a contest for the nomination.” Most at risk, however, is the “country’s sense of political stability”: “Our government should do everything in its power to ensure candidates and public officials can do their jobs safely in today’s perilous environment.”
“Democrats have managed to . . . paint themselves into a corner on energy-related issues,” argues the Liberal Patriot’s Ruy Teixeira. In 2017, we saw the formation of the Sunrise Movement, which argued “the globe was teetering on the verge of apocalypse.” In 2019, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “introduced a congressional resolution advocating a Green New Deal” for “everything the radicals at Sunrise could have wished for and more.” But working-class Americans “did not really sign up for the rapid green transition envisioned by Biden and most Democrats” and don’t like it when “their jobs or living standards are collateral damage. They vastly prefer an “all-of-the above approach,” with “cheap, abundant energy from many sources.” If “Democrats do not revise their approach to energy issues,” they can expect more turbulence like the UAW strike.
Last Wednesday “wasn’t a great day for Bidenomics,” snarks David Winston at Roll Call — as August inflation numbers showed a 3.7% year-over-year jump, up from 3.2% in July. Yet President Biden is still taking “credit for deficit and debt reduction, lower inflation and jobs.” “Biden, apparently, doesn’t realize that his economic program has not only failed to fix the economy, it has actually made things worse for average Americans.” Since he “took office, prices have increased cumulatively by 17.4 percent, while hourly wages have increased only 13 percent.” Voters can see what’s going on, as 50% have “an unfavorable view of Bidenomics,” while only 26% rate it favorably. “Clearly, the Biden economic messaging is failing.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board