COVID journal: A Middle Finger to New Mandates
Health officials “got so much wrong during the COVID-19 pandemic and asserted it with such confidence that they will not soon restore the trust they once enjoyed,” warns The Arizona Republic’s Phil Boas. “In the past two years, confidence in health-care officials has dropped 10 points.” Unsurprising, after Dr. Tony Fauci continually changed his mind and “fudged the truth.” Crucially, after months of condemning conservative outdoor protests, public-health experts OK’d social-justice protests, showing that “American public health had been captured by ideology.” With the new BA.2.86 variant, “it is more important than ever that medical professionals tell the truth and not twist it to produce desired outcomes.”
Libertarian: Get Passport Applications Online
The demand for passports “is now back with a vengeance” after nearly four years of COVID stunting international travel, yet “the US State Department is taking longer than ever to process” applications, groans Reason’s Fiona Harrigan. It takes “10 to 13 weeks for routine processing and seven to nine weeks for expedited processing,” a wait time exacerbated by “the lack of an online option” to renew or apply for passports. Both Secretary of State Antony Blinken and President Biden have supported an online option, and “the State Department launched a pilot program for online passport renewal last year,” but it proved “glitchy, processing times were as bad as with the traditional mail-in method,” and it was “just as expensive as mail-in renewal.” “This is about what you’d expect from a government monopoly, even one that’s been ordered to innovate.”
From the right: The Grim Result of Bidenomics
Thanks to Bidenomics, many “Americans are unable to cover a common but unexpected $400 expense because their cost of living is way up and real wage growth has failed to keep pace,” thunders Andy Puzder at Fox News. A new survey finds “only 46% of Americans” can cover an unexpected $400 bill for ordinary expenses like a car repair or medical issue without going into debt. “A majority of Americans (54%)” live paycheck to paycheck, including “53% of consumers who earn $50,000 to $100,000 per year.” Personal savings have dropped, and “Americans are even draining their 401(k) plans to cover expenses.” Credit card debt has also spiked, with “51% of Americans unable to pay off their” monthly balance. “This is the Bidenomics in a nutshell.”
Iconoclast: Prez’s Afghan-Pullout Shame
“The American pullout was a bloody shambles,” laments Jeff Jacoby at the Boston Globe of the humiliating US withdrawal from Afghanistan two years ago. The prez’s confident assurances proved wrong as “the Taliban overran everything and took ownership of the whole country” and “a suicide terrorist detonated a bomb at the airport’s Abbey Gate entrance, killing 13 US service members and at least 170 Afghan civilians.” “‘I make no apologies for what I did,’” Biden said even after a State Department report conceded “that the departure from Afghanistan had been ill-planned.” Still the White House claims “that it has nothing to apologize for,” yet thousands of “fanatical Islamic State fighters have infiltrated the country” and Afghan women and girls are “subject to countless restrictions.” Biden’s “betrayal is his, but all of us are shamed.”
State Sens.: End ‘Prison Gerrymandering’
In Montana, lawmakers agreed that a “community shouldn’t get a louder voice in state government just because it contains a prison,” cheer Shane Morigeau (D.) & Jason Small (R.) at The Hill. The Census “counts incarcerated people in prison cells rather than their home communities,” painting “a distorted picture of the state, with communities that contain prisons boasting artificially inflated populations and getting more political clout as a result — a problem known as prison gerrymandering.” By crediting an areas with residents who “don’t attend community functions, pay taxes” or vote, this dilutes other areas’ “representation in the legislature.” When the Census Bureau reevaluates policies in “2030, ending prison gerrymandering should be near the top of its list of changes.”
Compiled by The Post Editorial Board