Businessman: Biden’s Plans Mean Stagflation
President Biden’s huge “transformation” bill would “drive us over an economic cliff, former chain-restaurant CEO Andy Puzder warns at Fox Business. “Businesses of all sizes are already being buffeted by seemingly intractable supply chain constraints, along with labor shortages, and unusually high consumer demand” that will “cause prices to soar as we get closer to Christmas.” And dumping “trillions of dollars in new government spending of taxpayer money” is “stimulating the demand side of the economic equation without addressing deficiencies on the supply side” and “will only drive prices up while keeping a tight leash on potential growth — in a word, stagflation.”
Libertarian: Enter the Financial-Surveillance State
Faced with pushback over their plan to let the IRS “scrutinize” bank accounts with “inflows and outflows as low as $600,” Democrats have raised the threshold to $10,000, reports Reason’s Matt Welch. Yet “even the higher level gives the lie” to the “progressive talking point” that President Biden’s “invasive financial surveillance state” won’t rope in “all the lower-income people suddenly eligible to have their cashflow scrutinized.” Recall that the 2010 Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), meant to soak “fatcats,” brought in meager revenue while “incentivizing record numbers of Americans to renounce their US citizenship.” Without major public “outcry,” some version of this “vast new financial surveillance state is likely to get built. Those who value financial privacy are best off seeking it in another country.”
Foreign desk: Team Biden Extols Terrorists
“Joe Biden and his administration speak much more harshly about unvaccinated Americans than about the Taliban,” snarks National Review’s Jim Geraghty. The “State Department insists that the Taliban’s conduct is different now than it was a month ago,” even claiming the goons were “candid and professional” in a recent meeting in Qatar, where they in fact declared the Taliban won’t work “with the US government or its allies on containing the increasingly active ISIS” there. “Summary executions, stoning of women, and beheading and cutting off the hands of accused thieves have returned; court cases and juries are no longer part of the legal system. Women’s activists and journalists fear being tortured to death.” That’s Afghanistan under the “candid and professional” Taliban.
Law prof: A Special Counsel for Hunter E-mails
Recently disclosed e-mails linking President Biden to his son Hunter’s accounts and showing a “commingling of funds” from foreign sources may “puncture the media’s cone-of-silence around the scandal,” speculates law prof Jonathan Turley at his site. They also raise “legitimate questions” about the Justice Department appointing a special counsel to probe “alleged money-laundering and tax violations” tied to Hunter, out of “a compelling need for an independent report on the alleged influence peddling operation by Hunter, his uncle James Biden, and potentially his father, President Biden.” The media have “refused to investigate the allegations or even report on emails contradicting” the prez. A report can resolve the issues — and determine if foreign powers have “compromising material” from Hunter’s laptop files.
Education beat: Goodbye, Teachers Union
The “desperate push for critical race theory, and the forcing of teachers to adopt this curriculum, no matter our beliefs, is the final straw,” declares Beth Richardson at RealClearEducation: She’s leaving her California teachers union. “We’re already seeing how these kinds of ideas can creep into the classroom and harm student education.” E.g., some Cali teachers “are pushing to redefine math, taking the focus off of the ‘right answer’ because pointing out a wrong answer is supposedly a form of white supremacy. If we can no longer teach the difference between correct and incorrect, what is the point of teaching?” CRT means “a curriculum that pits groups against one another.” “I’d rather not be compelled to give part of my paycheck to an organization that puts its political agenda above the education of America’s kids.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board