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May 23, 2023
Thanks to the debt-ceiling showdown, Republicans appear to have a fighting chance to add a work requirement for those receiving SNAP (food stamp) and Medicaid benefits. They should also turn their attention to another major federal program that fosters dependency and discourages work: housing assistance. Local experiments across the country suggest that requiring those in…
May 19, 2023
With the expiration of the Covid-era rule justifying the expulsion of illegal border-crossers on public health grounds, the Biden Administration, to the dismay of progressives, has gone Trumpish. Absent “Title 42,” Citizen and Immigration Services will now “presume individuals who entered the United States unlawfully are ineligible for asylum.” This turnabout brings us back to…
May 12, 2023
Governor Hochul has floated the idea of banning all sales of tobacco products in New York State, even as she urges New Yorkers to purchase and partake of now-legal cannabis. It’s not easy to see these as consistent views — both, after all, have been shown to be products hazardous to your health. Yet a…
May 8, 2023
Some of us still subscribe to the view that we didn’t leave the Democratic Party; it left us. For such apostates and freethinkers, Fred Siegel was an inspiration and a role model (though I never asked him directly about his party affiliation). His writing was the product of careful observation by one of the best-read people in…
May 1, 2023
Notably missing from the budget the Legislature is passing is a proposal Gov. Kathy Hochul had marked as a top priority: spurring cities and towns to build 800,000 new housing units. It wasn’t fundamentally a bad idea. You don’t have to be an economist to know that if housing prices are too damn high, increasing the…