Foreign desk: Make This Hemisphere Great Again
“It’s no accident that my first trip abroad as secretary of state” kept “me in the hemisphere,” explains Secretary of State Marco Rubio at The Wall Street Journal. “President Trump’s foreign-policy agenda begins close to home.” And though Trump’s “top priorities” include securing the borders, which might “demand toughness,” the region is “rife with opportunities. We can strengthen trade ties, create partnerships to control migration, and enhance our hemisphere’s security.” We can also relocate “supply chains to the Western Hemisphere,” clearing “a path for our neighbors’ economic growth” and our own “economic security.” After all, higher growth for our neighbors “reduces incentives for emigration” and enables them to “more easily resist countries such as China.” Indeed, “making America great again also means helping our neighbors achieve greatness.”
Ed beat: Free Our Schools!
“Another disastrous National School Report card” makes clear that the education of America’s children cannot be left “in the hands of the leftist teachers unions and administrators who have done such damage to our once best-in-the-world schools,” fumes the Issues & Insights editorial board. “Despite massive spending,” our schools are failing. We have “bad public school administrators and even worse teachers unions.” We need “reforms that reinstate the supremacy of parents and the local community” — i.e., “more charter schools, Education Savings Accounts, vouchers, and school choice for parents.” Congress just took “a good first step” toward freeing schools “from the shackles of bureaucracy and leftist dogma” by boosting school choice and making it “easier for parents to pay for kids’ schooling.” “Let’s keep the changes coming.”
Culture critic: Rebels With a Cause
Reason’s Robby Soave spots an age-old trend in New York Magazine’s cover story about “the MAGA-supporting young people who attended the festivities surrounding Trump’s second inauguration”: Kids don’t like doing what their parents tell them to do. “Part of what these kids are rebelling against is the rigid enforcement of language-related cancel culture.” Indeed, New York’s “Brock Colyar spends significant attention on their preference for colorful language.” Such “contrarian and impolite coarseness” may be only natural. Just as “young people rebelled against their parents’ generation” in the 1990s, today’s youth are rejecting the politically correct establishment in favor of the cultural right. “To the extent that this is what’s really going on, it’s almost inevitable: Every dominant culture invites a countercultural backlash.”
Eye on Albany: Hochul’s Medicaid Sleight-of-Hand
Gov. Hochul insists “the current trajectory of Medicaid spending is ‘not sustainable,’” yet “the upward trend is even steeper than she and her budget director have acknowledged,” warns the Empire Center’s Bill Hammond. If enacted, Hochul’s proposal, which omits billions more budgeted through other agencies, “would represent a 20 percent increase over what lawmakers thought they were approving just nine months ago.” State budget makers appear “to be moving money in and out of the ‘other agency’ category in part as an accounting maneuver” — making it seem as if they’re honoring “a self-imposed cap on Medicaid spending.” But to bring Medicaid “under reasonable control,” Hochul will need “to provide a complete and transparent accounting of just how unsustainable it is.”
Conservative: Gabbard the Political Weathervane
Tulsi Gabbard took the practice of Cabinet nominees distancing themselves “from past controversial statements” to “new heights” in her Senate confirmation hearing, argues National Review’s Jim Geraghty. She declared “she no longer held emphatically stated positions she had held, in some cases, just half a year ago” on the killing of Qassem Soleimani, federal FISA spying powers, the Ukraine war, etc. “If the contrast between her past quotes and her present quotes makes her look stupid or like an unprincipled weathervane, that’s not my fault. Don’t get mad at me for remembering what she said then, get mad at her for what she’s saying now.” “Do you get the feeling that all of Gabbard’s positions are negotiable in exchange for a high-powered position in government?”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
