Libertarian: Bernie Befuddled on Amazon
“Bernie Sanders thinks that Amazon warehouse jobs are soul-crushing, backbreaking, and exploitative,” but “is steadfastly opposed to any automation that would eliminate these undesirable positions,” marvels Reason’s Christian Britschgi.
Flagging a New York Times story on Amazon’s plans to automate up to 75% of jobs in its fulfillment centers, Sanders tweeted, “AI & robotics must benefit workers, not the top 1%.”
Says Britschgi: “One could argue that” this “is just such an example of robotics and AI benefiting workers,” since it would enable “warehouse workers to transition to less strenuous work in other sectors.”
“Indeed, one can credit the general, slow, steady substitution of labor with capital for automating away countless numbers of dangerous, menial tasks that used to dominate the economy” and replacing them “with safer, higher-paying gigs.”
Centrists: Halting the Rise of Political Violence
“We are living through an age of political violence in America,” warns The Free Press’ editorial board.
Tuesday brought news that Christopher Moynihan, a participant in the Jan. 6 riots, “was arrested for threatening to kill House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries”; the day before, “a 28-year-old Texas man” was “arrested for making death threats” against “conservative media figures in Florida.”
“Moynihan already had a history of political violence, which was excused and then pardoned by the president,” sending “exactly the wrong message.” And leading Democrats “have long called Trump an authoritarian.”
If you suggest that a politician will “destroy American democracy, it logically follows that that person should be stopped by any means necessary.”
Fixing “the division that ails this country” requires “vocally resisting calls to political violence and always refusing to participate in anything that resembles it.”
Conservative: A Smelly Crypto Pardon
Chinese-born Canadian billionaire Changpeng Zhao drew a four-month sentence for felony money-laundering but reportedly lobbied President Trump for a pardon — and last week, grumbles National Review’s Jim Geraghty, “that pardon came.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt suggested the charges were part of the Biden war on cryptocurrency, but prosecutors “would argue that they . . . were fighting a war on fraud” and on a company that facilitated “financial transactions among criminals, terrorist groups, and hostile states,” including “al-Qaeda, ISIS, Hamas, ransomware hackers and kiddie-porn enthusiasts.”
“I’m certain the fact that Changpeng Zhao’s company is helping put billions into the Trump family coffers is completely unrelated to the fact that he just got a full pardon,” snarks Geraghty. “This administration stands for law and order!”
Mideast desk: Freeing Barghouti = Sparking Terror
“The idea of Israel freeing Marwan Barghouti,” the imprisoned Palestinian terrorist leader, “is gaining purchase” to let him replace Mahmoud Abbas as Palestinian Authority chief, notes Commentary’s Seth Mandel.
Huh? That only makes sense “if the West is looking for someone to spark an intifada.” Barghouti “hasn’t actually renounced violence” but “made clear his determination to “focus” violence in Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem.”
Freeing him “is not thinking outside the box; it’s the box.” Barghouti is “not a man of peace or a man of the people.”
He “represents everything the Palestinians will need to leave behind if they are to develop a serious national politics: Personality cults and a taste for terrorism are what got them here.”
From the right: Probe Nonprofits & Political Violence
“Political violence is a deadly problem,” thunders Scott Walter at The Wall Street Journal in defense of the Trump administration’s decision to focus “on the enablers of violence” and “whether nonprofits and their donors are to blame.”
Of course, “no donor or grantee should be criminally prosecuted for speech.” But “a nonprofit that enjoys tax privileges can lose those privileges for supporting unlawful conduct.”
Criminal prosecutions of nonprofits or their donors, however, “face a much higher bar,” though such prosecutions are “not necessarily unjustifiable under existing law.”
Whatever the outcomes of the federal probe, “left-leaning nonprofits and donors should honestly examine whether they are respecting nonprofit and criminal laws alike.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board