November 21, 2024
A Local Option for Natural Gas Fracking
The 2024 election was a referendum on a wide range of issues, but there’s no doubt that increasing domestic fossil-fuel production—“energy dominance,” as Donald Trump now calls it—was on the ballot and won. Kamala Harris backed away from her past calls to ban fracking but nonetheless lost Pennsylvania, where voters seemed to doubt her sudden…
November 15, 2024
JD Vance is Right: Reduce the Power of Big Foundations to Help Charity
In his 2021 campaign for Senate, JD Vance, now vice-president-elect, minced no words in expressing his disdain for two of America’s largest private, philanthropic institutions: the Ford Foundation and the Gates Foundations. Both are, he said, “fundamentally cancers on American society but they pretend to be charities, so they benefit from preferential tax treatment.” Their endowments, he continued,…
November 10, 2024
The Risks of Nonprofit Local Journalism
The decision of Washington Post owner/Amazon founder Jeff Bezos not to allow the paper’s editorial board to endorse a presidential candidate has stirred disappointment cum outrage among the paper’s readers — some 250,000 have gone so far as to cancel their subscriptions. Bezos, with the deepest of pockets, was once viewed as the Post’s savior — now he’s the devil in…
November 9, 2024
NYC Safe Injection Sites Reduce OD Deaths—but Not in the Worst Neighborhoods
There is a glimmer—the slightest bright spot—of good news about drug overdoses in New York. The city’s Health Department reports that overdose deaths in 2023 declined compared to the previous year—but they fell just one percent, from 3,070 to 3,046. A close look at that number reveals not only is it tiny, but that an important indicator…
November 5, 2024
Never Let a Crisis End
New York City’s perennial housing crisis—the city has regularly declared a housing “emergency” since 1971—is back on the city council’s agenda, with two proposals to address it. On the surface, the two plans, one championed by Mayor Eric Adams, the other by City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, seem complementary; both promise more housing. But a…
November 1, 2024
Latest Student Loan Cancellation Proposal Could Be Biggest Yet
The Biden administration unveiled its fourth major student loan cancellation scheme last week. While the administration’s past three cancellation plans have suffered defeats in the courts, officials apparently hope that things will be different this time. The new plan offers loan cancellation to borrowers experiencing “hardship.” If you’re wondering what “hardship” means, so am I. It is…
November 1, 2024
Kamala Harris’s Policy Book Doesn’t Even Mention Immigration
The record surge in illegal immigration during the Biden-Harris administration, its consequences and costs, and what to do about it are all major issues in this year’s election. Recent polling suggests addressing immigration is voters’ second biggest priority, right after inflation and ahead of the economy. Yet Vice President Kamala Harris’s “policy book” doesn’t even mention immigration, much…
October 30, 2024
The Geography of Fertility — Where are the Babies?
Blue states are better for families — at least that’s what many academics and journalists contend. In their book “Red Families v. Blue Families: Legal Polarization and the Creation of Culture,” law professors Naomi Cahn and June Carbone argued that blue states have the liberal values and policies they believe make for strong and stable…
October 29, 2024
The Black Men’s Burden Harris Ignores
In an attempt to shore up support among black male voters, Kamala Harris proposed small-business loans and training programs aimed at steering them toward “high-paying jobs.” Whatever the virtues of her plans, they overlook a real-world situation facing millions of black men: the combination of a prison record and daunting child-support payments they had no way of…
October 25, 2024
How Workforce Education Can Boost Earnings and Fill Jobs
Republicans and Democrats alike agree about the importance of workforce training. They’re right: Despite a recent labor-market cooling, there are still 7.7 million unfilled jobs in the United States. Unfortunately, America’s workforce-education system is a patchwork of dubious efficacy. Workforce programs are underfunded, tangled in red tape, and often fail to achieve their goals. Fixing this is hard: There’s…