From the ex-left: John Brennan’s Evil
Former CIA Director John Brennan “is the epitome of political evil in this country,” avers American Refugees’ Roger Simon, who knew him in their shared days on the left and finds it a “mystery” that “such a person” “could even be a member of our intelligence community,” much less “director of the CIA.” Brennan was not just a “pretend semi-leftist” in the ’60s and ’70s; he “was a serious leftist for real, as real as you can get, Stalin real.” In 1976, Brennan “actually voted for the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) candidate for president at the time, Gus Hall.” More recently, Brennan “must have known” he was “lying” when he “signed the infamous letter claiming that the Hunter Biden laptop was likely Russian disinformation,” Now evidence points to him “lying” about his past “insisting the agency use the blatant fabrication” of the Steele dossier “as evidence.” But will “this highly slippery character” escape justice?
Eye on NYC: Zoh’s Rent-Freeze Delusion
Zohran Mamdani “believes the solution to Gotham’s perpetual housing crisis is stringent price controls and massive government subsidies,” laments Howard Husock at Reason. Argh! These solutions — regulations and public housing — “have been around in New York” for over a century “and they are policy disasters.” Rent regulation perversely pushes landlords “to remove unprofitable units from the market and to allow their buildings to fall into disrepair.” Mamdani’s “rent freeze could turn the deterioration of the regulated housing stock into a full-blown crisis.” Though New York City is “the nation’s most regulated housing market, with the largest stock of government-owned and subsidized housing in the country,” Mamdani pretends doing” more of the same” is the answer.
Media watch: The Bias Is in the Bubble
“For a glimpse into the sealed world of the establishment media, nothing tops Pauline Kael’s famous observation about the 1972 presidential election,” recalls The Wall Street Journal’s Gerard Baker. The New Yorker film critic admitted she lived in a “special world,” knowing just one Nixon voter, though she sometimes “can feel” others around her. Such “Marie Antoinette-level empathy for how other people live,” smirks Baker, is why “trust” elite news outfits has collapsed. Yet “the valiant attempt now under way to unwind decades of mainstream journalistic bias,” such as by tapping Bari Weiss to head CBS News, may not suffice: “Without structural change — a repopulation” of these “demographically, educationally, geographically sealed units” — real change is “improbable.”
Conservative: Dems’ Migrant Medicaid Lie
Despite denials from Democratic leaders Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, “federal money does” let “states to extend Medicaid to millions of illegal immigrants,” and “Democrats have shut down the government, in part, to keep things that way,” fumes Sally C. Pipes at the Washington Examiner. One way states “funnel federal dollars to healthcare for illegal immigrants is through ‘emergency’ Medicaid,” which reimburses “hospitals for providing emergency care to uninsured patients.” “In 2020, emergency Medicaid spending on illegal immigrants was just $2.06 billion,” but “by 2024, that figure had ballooned to $6.15 billion.” Among the “numerous other ways in which states provide Medicaid benefits to illegal immigrants” to simply deeming them “to be ‘lawfully residing’ in the United States” declaring they have “qualified alien status.”
From the right: Face Down China on Rare Earths
“Western governments mollycoddled China” in hopes “prosperity would civilize power,” warns the Tipp Insights editorial board. This turned out to be a “catastrophic miscalculation” now that Beijing has weaponized its control of crucial rare-earth minerals by restricting exports, and even “deciding what others can trade” by regulating use by non-Chinese factories. Beijng is “tightening its grip” on rare earths vital to defense-related tech ahead of US trade talks, knowing that “whoever controls the inputs controls the outcomes.” Despite “years of rhetoric,” “the West is still deeply dependent on China.” Breaking free “will be difficult,” but subordination to Beijing is “far worse.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board