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May 14, 2024

Biden Can Follow FDR and Dump His VP

Almost exactly 80 years ago, a Democratic leader from the Bronx huddled privately with President Franklin D. Roosevelt. As told in the powerful new book by historian David Roll, “Ascent to Power, How Truman Emerged from Roosevelt’s Shadow and Remade the World,” Ed Flynn and other leading Democrats were concerned that his vice president, the far Left…

May 4, 2024

Make Parents Pay for Kids Who Miss School To Curb Chronic School Absenteeism

The COVID pandemic has ebbed, but one of its most damaging long-term effects has not. Chronic school absenteeism — collateral damage from students accustomed to staying home for alleged online learning — persists across the country. In New York City, a stunning four in 10 students — some 353,000 — were chronically absent, for the last full school year…

April 30, 2024

I’m a Conservative But Defunding NPR Is a Mistake. What Should Happen Instead Might Be Surprising

The liberal political and cultural bias of National Public Radio has moved center-stage, thanks to the Free Press essay by Uri Berliner, the former NPR editor who resigned earlier this month. In his essay he correctly observed that NPR news both caters to and reflect “the distilled worldview of a very small segment of the US…

April 22, 2024

John Silber, the Campuses Have Need of You

The anti-Israel demonstrations at Columbia University, among other colleges and universities, may be, for many involved, simply about venting anger or rage. But at Columbia, they do make a specific demand: that the university divest its endowment from firms involved in the Israeli economy. A December 1 document signed by 89 student groups—ranging from the Young…

April 21, 2024

The Real Bias at NPR: Story Selection

Concern about media bias — specifically politically liberal bias — has moved center stage thanks to the cri de coeur by National Public Radio’s Uri Berliner in the Free Press. The network’s business editor, who resigned in the aftermath of his speaking truth to power, wrote that “politics intruded” on a wide variety of coverage, from Covid to “Russiagate,”…

April 8, 2024

Accountability Comes to Public Housing

With little fanfare, the impossible just happened at the Hope Gardens public housing project in Bushwick: the management got fired. Repairs to the project’s high rises and townhouses had been delayed, and, per an official notice, “cost-saving measures to curb ballooning controllable operating expenses” hadn’t been adopted. Such lack of foresight constitutes a typical day…

April 3, 2024

The Fearless Fund, DEI, and Attacks on Philanthropic Freedom

Anyone who believes foundations have the right to decide who and what they fund should be concerned about the lawsuit brought against the Fearless Fund, and its associated foundation, over a grant contest exclusively for Black women. That includes those of us who don’t support race-specific policies and programs. The organization behind the litigation currently winding its way…

March 31, 2024

Can Local Journalism Be Saved?

American local journalism is withering away. Between 2004 and 2019, reports Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, the country lost more than 2,000 newspapers, with the total number falling by about one-fourth, from 9,000 to 6,700. The decline bodes ill for democracy. Americans rely on local governments to provide basic public services, on voters to hold…

March 30, 2024

Preventing Weed Smoking — Not More Weed Shops — Is What NYC Needs Now

There’s no getting around the fact that New York’s retail cannabis rollout has been a mess. A few dozen legal weed shops have been swamped, per the most recent count, by at least 2,000 illegal competitors — the unsurprising result of legalizing pot more than a year before the state Office of Cannabis Management (OCM) issued…

March 21, 2024

It’s Not Just Minority Neighborhoods—NYC’s Entire Property-Tax System Needs Reform

There is good reason to conclude, as the state Court of Appeals did Tuesday, that New York City’s property-tax system leads to disproportionately high tax bills for minority homeowners. But those high taxes aren’t the result of discrimination; they’re just one example of a dysfunctional tax-assessment system that burdens homeowners and discourages new housing construction —…