Climate war: Cali May Wreck US Supply Chain
The Environmental Protection Agency is “edging toward greenlighting California regulators’ plan to set net-zero emissions standards for locomotives” — a “scheme” that could spread to other states, “threatening reliable rail transport of goods” nationwide, points out Bonner Russell Cohen at The Hill.
If the EPA blesses the plan requiring zero-emission locomotives, other states (New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, Oregon) may well join in, leading to a “patchwork” of rail rules.
“Freight trains and Amtrak’s long-distance passenger trains currently run on diesel.”
Imagine, write critics James Burnley & Fred Wagner: “a rail network where operators would need to switch locomotives repeatedly when crossing state lines.”
The entire US supply chain “would be threatened.”
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Tech watch: Childhood Rewired — Disastrously
“Six to eight hours per day,” reports Jonathan Haidt at The Free Press, is “what teens spend on all screen-based leisure activities.”
There’s “a huge opportunity cost to children and adolescents when they start spending six, or eight, or perhaps even 16 hours each day interacting with their devices.” (And “researchers’ efforts to measure screen time are probably yielding underestimates.”)
Like losing time “to play with each other or just hang out, face-to-face, to foster social development.” High social media use also predicts “sleep problems and worse mental health at later times.”
Don’t forget “attention fragmentation” as “addiction” to phones increases.
Putting these “foundational harms together,” we see “why mental health got so much worse so suddenly as soon as childhood became phone-based.”
From the right: Joe’s Nickname Mistake
President Biden giving ex-prez Donald Trump the nickname “Broke Don” is “a terrible idea,” warns The Wall Street Journal’s William McGurn.
Nicknames are “Trump’s game, and he’s good at it.”
“Any response only guarantees further escalation.” It will likely backfire, too: “Trump offers many traits that might make for a catchy nickname — his bombast, his patterns of speech, his hair.
But reminding people that he could end up ‘broke’ because of a Democratic state official’s zeal to stretch the law to get the presumptive Republican nominee for president isn’t the best play.
To the contrary, it only vindicates his claim that Democrats are out to bankrupt him by hook or crook.”
Libertarian: Chuck Todd’s Hypocrisy
With NBC News’ hiring of former Republican National Committee chief Ronna McDaniel as an on-air commenter, “many of her new colleagues are fleeing for their safe spaces,” snarks Reason’s Robby Soave.
Chuck Todd went on his old show “Meet the Press” and “savaged the network for hiring McDaniel after all of the ‘gaslighting’ that occurred at the RNC during her reign.”
All the whining by Todd, the “Morning Joe” stars and others ignores “the existence of Jen Psaki” at MSNBC, President Biden’s former press secretary, who “negotiated her move to cable while still working within the administration.”
For cable news, it’s become standard to hire “former Washington insiders to provide commentary,” so “the selective outrage over McDaniel is thus pretty rich.”
In truth, “mainstream media figures dislike McDaniel because of the work she did on Donald Trump’s behalf.”
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UN beat: Biden’s No-Veto Disaster
President Biden’s “gutless performance at the UN” proved that his “administration’s insistence that there is a way for Israel to win this war without going into Rafah, where the remaining Hamas battalions are holed up, is just a ruse,” thunders Commentary’s Seth Mandel.
“Last week the U.S. put forth a version of the resolution that was vetoed by Russia and China” as Russia’s UN envoy in effect said “everyone should be comfortable with telling the hostages to rot.”
The Biden team gave in, as “every minor concession” for the ceasefire “was rejected in favor of ‘an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan.’ ”
This shows that, domestically, Biden “is a doormat” for the hard left, demoralizing “the dwindling voices of moderation in his party.”
And on the world stage, “countries now know that they can simply wait Biden out.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
Source link: https://nypost.com/2024/03/26/opinion/cali-may-wreck-us-supply-chain-how-childhood-got-rewired-and-other-commentary/