Policy wonk: Kirsten Gillibrand’s 4 Percent Fantasy
Unlike other Medicare for All proponents, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is offering what sounds like a plan to pay for it. The bad news, according to the Empire Center’s Bill Hammond: Her 4 percent tax on income would “fall short of what’s needed by at least $1 trillion, and more likely $2 trillion, per year.” But her use of that “implausibly low figure” is “a strategy, not an accident.” She proposes “a four-year transition where anybody can buy in at 4 percent of their income,” and “it pays for itself.” But the math doesn’t work, whether she means it would finance the whole program or just an optional Medicare “buy-in” (she’s said both). Like so many claims from single-payer believers, Gillibrand’s proposal is “too good to be true.”
From the left: Trump’s North Korea Tactics Are Working
There are “lots of reasons to doubt” whether President Trump can eliminate North Korea’s nuclear capability — but he’s pursuing “the right goal” and should be “cheered on,” contends William Arkin at The Guardian. And for all the jeering from so many quarters, look what’s happened since the process began: Pyongyang has “backed off” from nuclear tests and even long-range-missile tests. Provocations have also “noticeably declined.” One likely reason: Trump vetoed the Obama administration’s military moves meant to “threaten and coerce North Korea in light of its diplomatic failures.” The result: “Two leaders who previously weren’t talking — ever — now are.” And “just getting rid of the war cry is enough to cheer over.”
Law prof: NY Dems Making Case for Manafort Pardon
Paul Manafort is “one of the most corrupt figures in Washington” and “richly deserves a long prison sentence,” argues Jonathan Turley at The Hill. But there’s something “too tailored, too personal about the efforts by prosecutors to guarantee that he spends much of the rest of his life behind bars.” Now New York Democrats are looking to “move aside constitutional protections” and charge Manafort with “state crimes that are based on the same underlying transactions or activities,” in order to sidestep a presidential pardon. Ironically, New York has long been “the gold standard” on the constitutional protection against double jeopardy. But now a succession of New York attorneys general call double jeopardy a “loophole” designed to thwart justice. Yet all they’re doing is building the case for a pardon: This is all about “blind rage,” not blind justice.
Conservative: Labour Defections a Warning for Dems
The UK’s Labour Party is bleeding — nine of its members of Parliament quit the party last week, citing Labour’s anti-Semitism problems — and has little idea “how to cauterize the wound,” argues Erielle Davidson at The Federalist. And this mess offers “a grim warning” to the Democratic Party. One of the most prominent defectors called the party, under leader Jeremy Corbyn, “institutionally anti-Semitic.” Besides Corbyn’s own record, many point to a change in membership rules that “democratized” the party and enrolled “a flood of younger, further left members,” causing a political divergence between moderate MPs and more radical members. Something very similar is happening to Democrats. And “the slow implosion” of Labour could be where they’re headed if they allow their “more volatile, hard-left progressive ranks to swallow the entire party.”
Historian: Obama Library Should Not Ditch Documents
Unlike every other presidential library, Barack Obama’s is planning to contain no physical archive, in favor of fully digitized records, reports The Washington Examiner’s Erin Dunne. Historians rightly argue that this would “limit research,” especially without a “dedicated staff of librarians.” Which is why Obama, “if he wants to live up to his stated goal of increased transparency, should not forgo the physical documents.” Despite their fragility, paper documents “are surprisingly resilient, compared with rapidly changing technology,” and “are easy to search.” Moreover, “part of the importance of archival research is the possibility of stumbling upon something unexpected that turns out to be vitally important.” Ideally, modern archives “should have both physical and digital collections.”
— Compiled by Eric Fettmann
