Ukraine desk: Joe’s Perverse Energy Ask
The Biden administration has reportedly urged Ukraine to quit attacking Russia’s energy infrastructure, scoff Jonathan Sweet & Mark Toth at The Hill: Seems the White House is “more concerned about keeping global and domestic oil prices below $85 in an election year” than stopping “Russian aggression in Ukraine.”
“It is absurd” to ask Ukraine “to stop attacking Russian wartime energy capacity” all because “paying a ‘Zelensky Tax’ on gasoline during Biden’s re-election year is apparently not acceptable.”
“This is a terrible look for the Biden administration” — especially as “the West does not have an effective response” to Putin’s aggression while “Ukraine has one.” And “more of the same” from Biden and Brussels won’t work, “because Putin is not going to give up.”
Green watch: The EPA’s Electric-Car Fantasy
The Environmental Protection Agency itself admits its new CO2 standards will require electric vehicles to be more than half of new vehicle sales by 2032, note Jonathan A. Lesser & Mark P. Mills at The Wall Street Journal.
More From Post Editorial Board
Sorry: “That isn’t happening anytime soon,” as it would require “an unprecedented and staggeringly expensive expansion of local electrical grids.”
That would including a “huge increase in the production of electrical transformers” and “more power plants and transmission lines to produce and deliver the energy,” more than the country can likely produce.
Millions of homes, too, will need upgrades for chargers.
EPA EV advocates assume market forces will solve all this, but the mandate is really just “another green fantasy.”
Libertarian: The Global War on Free Speech
“A report by The Future of Free Speech” on “speech regulations in 22 democracies since 2015” finds “a grim situation,” warns Reason’s J. D. Tuccille.
Canada’s ruling Liberal Party is pushing “the Online Harms Act, to regulate speech on the internet;” then “there is Australia’s crackdown on alleged disinformation, the UK’s Online Safety Bill, the European Union’s Digital Services Act, Denmark’s revived blasphemy ban, Italy’s libel judgments against government critics, France’s and Germany’s restrictions on pro-Palestinian protests, and more.”
“Restrictive legislation and hollow assurances by the authorities that they’ll use their authoritarian powers wisely are far more the global norm than are American-style protections for speech. We complain about government attempts to muzzle, but open censorship is increasingly common in other countries.”
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Eye on Gaza: Biden’s Still-Mysterious Pier Plan
Though President Biden vowed weeks ago to build a pier on the Gazan coast, fumes the Washington Examiner’s Conn Carroll, he “didn’t have any answers” on key issues.
“Just this week, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant reached an agreement with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin” that the IDF will “provide a ‘security bubble’ ” for US personnel.
Such “details should have been nailed down before Biden announced the project.” Big questions remain: “Who is going to be loading the food off the pier, driving it into Gaza, and then distributing it?”
“If Biden had a stronger track record,” such “unanswered questions might not be so alarming,” but “this is the same administration that ignored multiple warnings” from Pentagon officials that that abandoning Afghanistan would put “American lives at risk.”
Albany beat: NJ’s COVID Lessons for NY
“A recently published independent review of New Jersey’s pandemic response holds lessons for New York,” reports the Empire Center’s Bill Hammond.
It “indirectly shed light” on New York’s “ ‘must admit’ order compelling nursing homes to accept Covid-infected patients being discharged from hospitals.”
Statistical analysis shows a “significant correlation between the number of patient transfers under the policy and higher death rates in the homes that accepted them” in New York.
Despite health officials in both states issuing nearly identical policies, “New Jersey officials minimized the damage by communicating the policy more directly,” “allowing facilities to opt out” and, most important, “reversing course when they recognized their mistake” in just two weeks.
New York state “has not yet produced a reliable account” of its decision-making.
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
Source link: https://nypost.com/2024/03/27/opinion/joes-perverse-energy-ask-the-epas-electric-car-fantasy-and-other-commentary/