Econ desk: Price-Gouging Isn’t Driving Inflation
“Lots of Americans are upset about their grocery bills, which rose dramatically during the inflation that followed the pandemic and have never come back down,” notes The Free Press’ Madeline Rowley. Indeed, some 69% of Americans “feel their income hasn’t kept up with food inflation.” But “why have food prices gone up so much? And does price gouging,” as Dem nominee Kamala Harris claims, “really have anything to do with it?” No: “The rising costs of labor, shipping, and packaging have increased more than food prices since the onset of the pandemic,” and “the food companies themselves play a surprisingly small role in the price hikes.” Will this “economic truth matter when people go into the voting booth?”
Campus beat: Rewriting Oct. 7 History
Oct. 7 was “a dark day, and it appears it will only get darker,” warns Commentary’s Seth Mandel. Nearly a year since Hamas’ mass terror attack, some college students already seek to redefine it. Look at the recent “controversy at the University of Maryland that centered on Students for Justice in Palestine,” which planned to “take over a large campus quad on October 7 and revel in the anniversary of the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.” The university revoked its OK for the event, but still: “Within the student body a shocking number of people” wanted “to celebrate the pogrom,” exhibiting “a fetishistic attraction to evil.” “Dozens of Americans were murdered” on Oct. 7, but “the organizers of political-protest culture regard that day not as one to mourn but one to celebrate.”
Libertarian: Kam’s No Middle-Class Champion
“Kamala Harris is positioning herself as the champion of middle-class America, vowing to finally make the wealthy pay their fair share,” marvels Reason’s Jack Salmon, when her record shows that “far from soaking the rich, Harris’ policies have funneled resources to the wealthy and corporations while burdening middle-class taxpayers.” Measures like the “2022 CHIPS and Science Act included $54 billion in corporate subsidies”; “Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) uncapped a slew of energy subsidies” costing “an estimated $780 billion” by 2031. Critics flag the student-loan forgiveness program as “remarkably unfair and regressive.” In all, the Harris-Biden “administration has consistently pushed policies that favor higher-income Americans over lower- and middle-income Americans.” “Far from soaking the rich, Harris’ legacy has been one of feeding them.”
Conservative: ABC’s Free Pass for Harris
“The biggest loser in the first (and likely only) presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Trump was ABC News,” whose “moderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis, embarrassed themselves and their network by, among other things, fact-checking Trump in real time on more than one occasion — sometimes incorrectly — while allowing Harris to spout serial lies and distortions,” fumes Fox News’ Liz Peek. “Some of the non-truths Harris could (and should have been) fact-checked on,” were “saying Donald Trump has opposed IVF;” “saying that Trump’s tax cuts only helped rich people,” and “saying that she and Biden have ‘created’ 800,000 manufacturing jobs,” among others. “Harris lied about her record and about Trump’s and was not challenged on any of it.” The moderators “declined to do” their job.
Justice watch: ‘Security’ Bigs Play Politics
“It’s hard” to believe the Justice Department’s recent election-meddling indictments of Kremlin agents who’ll “never be extradited” weren’t “timed to revive the Trump collusion narrative” and influence the campaign, laments The Wall Street Journal’s Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. “All Justice accomplished was to play up Russian activities” that were “destined to have zero effect” on voting. Yet Russia’s “efforts plus the U.S.’s flagging of them” work together to “exacerbate the distrust and hostility of the pro- and anti-Trump factions of the U.S. electorate.” Voters should hope for a president who’ll “put this corrupting chapter behind us.” But one thing’s clear: “The people who’ve been guiding our national security state” sure “aren’t the people we want managing our perilous future relations with China.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
