Culture desk: Cuban Proved He’s Unfit for WH
Dallas Mavericks owner and reputed presidential aspirant Mark Cuban’s initial decision to stop playing the national anthem at home games, argues Cheryl Chumley at The Washington Times, proves “he’s not the right man” to be leader of the free world. “Any American who can’t support the playing of the national anthem is an American who can’t properly represent the nation in the White House.” The anthem, after all, is “unifying”; it embodies the notion that “America is a country filled with citizens from all walks of life, from all regions of the earth, from lands with all ethnicities and backgrounds and beliefs. . . . It’s not for an elitist basketball-team owner to say otherwise.”
Eye on the economy: Joe’s Big ‘Inheritance’
At The Wall Street Journal, James Freeman observes “an odd pattern of dissonance between the economic data the government reports and the president’s characterization of the economy”: first, “encouraging updates from federal agencies,” then “gloomy proclamations from the Oval Office intended to justify massive federal action.” Indeed, December’s job openings, 6.6 million, makes for “the greatest ‘inheritance’ any US president has ever passed on to his successor,” far more than what Presidents Donald Trump and Barack Obama received. President Biden also “decries the problems resulting from lockdowns without acknowledging they are being imposed by governors who enjoy his active support.” He insists massive federal spending is needed, though “every day brings signs of a reviving economy that is ready to roar if only his allies in politics and teachers’ unions will let it.”
Pandemic journal: Who Can Believe WHO?
A new report from the World Health Organization all but ruled out a lab-based source for COVID — yet, charges Spectator USA’s Amber Athey, WHO “has proved itself to be far from trustworthy on matters related to China and the coronavirus.” The organization notoriously echoed Beijing’s false claim early on that the virus doesn’t transmit between humans, and Wall Street Journal reporting suggests “the WHO team intended to build on previous reports by Chinese officials, rather than mount its own independent investigation, and would not focus on the possibility that the virus escaped from a lab.” The only party credulous enough to believe its claims is Team Biden, which has made rejoining WHO a touchstone of its “symbolic anti-Trumpism” — actual “benefits” to Americans be damned.
From the right: $15 Wage’s True Cost
Under Senate rules, President Biden’s proposal for a $15 minimum wage must impact the budget to be included in a “budget-reconciliation bill” and bypass the 60-vote requirement to break a filibuster, explain Andy Puzder and Jon Hartley at National Review. So Sen. Bernie Sanders has cited two studies suggesting the new wage would boost federal revenue $65.4 billion a year. Yet the studies are based on “partisan research”; the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicts a $15 wage would actually add $54 billion to the deficit from 2021 to 2031 — and kill 1.4 million jobs. Sanders’ claim is “grossly misleading,” if not “simply wrong.” Including the $15 wage in a reconciliation bill “would make a mockery” of the rules — and “seriously reduce job opportunities for the people who need them most.”
Conservative: GOP’s Death Greatly Exaggerated
Commentators are “pronouncing the Republican Party dead, or nearly dead, or dying or something,” snarks the Washington Examiner’s Byron York. And yes, with Dems controlling the White House, Senate and House, “no one can argue that the GOP is doing well.” Yet Republicans put up a “remarkably robust performance for a dead party,” with “extremely close” losses. And “a party that came so close to winning everything last November” isn’t likely to be dead in February. Truth is, the “GOP-is-dead talk is coming mostly from groupthink journalists and Democrats” eager for partisan advantage. In the past few “terrible months,” with Trump’s election tantrums, the Capitol riot and the impeachment trial, “the GOP took a serious hit.” But its problems will pass, and “the Republican Party can emerge stronger in the future.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
