Experts against ‘critical thinking,’ DOJ’s ’24 elex meddling and other commentary

From the left: Experts against ‘Critical Thinking’

Early COVID-era documents by various “academics” and “professional fact-checkers” uncovered via FOIA widely denounce “the practice of doing one’s own research,” notes Matt Taibbi at Racket.

Why? Because “the mere fact of mistrust” of supposedly expert opinion “raises risks of ‘totalitarianism’ (read: Trump).”

Yet “while researchers constantly scan for misinformation/disinformation spread by ordinary consumers,” they never “look at government officials or credentialed experts as possible sources of bad information.”

Consider the fact that a study by Jay Bhattacharya showed the April 2020 caseload in one California town “was around 50 times higher than public estimates,” leading to “dramatic over-counting of mortality.”

In the ’70s, “academics drove VW buses with ‘Question Authority’ stickers. Now they’ve [built] a powerhouse industry around saying, ‘Don’t Bother.’ ”

From the right: DOJ’s ’24 Elex Meddling

The Biden Justice Department’s action last week against alleged Russian state media employees “as part of an effort to crack down on Russian ‘misinformation’” should raise “huge” red flags, warns The Federalist’s John Daniel Davidson.

The “only possible reason” to do it now is to suggest Russian election meddling is “designed to boost” Donald Trump — implying support for him is fake, “paid for by Moscow.”

“We’ve seen this playbook before from Democrats,” with Russiagate in 2016 and Hunter’s laptop in 2020.

Even if these allegations prove true, “the big takeaway” is the timing: Biden’s DOJ is (once again) “meddling” in the run-up to the November election — and in “a far more serious way” than “anyone in Moscow could hope to do.”

Eye on NY: Another Costly Pension Reform

“Gov. Hochul and state lawmakers this year approved a costly giveaway for public employee unions that retroactively hiked pension benefits for employees hired since 2012,” gripes the Empire Center’s Ken Girardin.

That will force higher “contribution rates assessed on local governments, school districts and state agencies” starting next April.

Many employer contributions will rise from an average of 15.2% of pay to 16.5% — and, for police and fire pensions, effectively from 31.2% to 33.7%.

Private-sector employer contributions to “401k retirement accounts average 4.6% of pay.”

And the unions want “further rollbacks of the 2009 and 2012 pension reforms” to allow “employees to retire with full pensions at age 55,” which “would slam taxpayers with upwards of $100 billion in new costs.” 

Libertarian: Kamala’s Speech-Policing History

“Would President Kamala Harris shut down X, the social media site now run by Elon Musk?” asks Reason’s Robby Soave.

Well, “2019-era Harris was positively obsessed with getting Trump kicked off Twitter,” which is “representative of some of the worst tendencies in progressive speech policing and does not bode well for a future Harris administration.”

The 2019 Democratic primary debates featured a “particularly tense exchange” between Harris and Sen. Liz Warren, “when the latter pointedly refused to” agree “that Twitter must ban Trump from the platform.”

As veep, Harris was “complicit in the [Biden] administration’s vast pressure campaign to motivate social media companies to take down contrarian content relating to Hunter Biden, elections, and COVID-19. Her remarks at the debate . . . expose an obsession with policing disfavored speech online.”  

Housing beat: Biden-Harris’ Rent-Cap Delusions

The Biden-Harris administration’s proposal “to limit annual rent increases to 5% for large landlords” will “exacerbate the shortage of available housing units and disincentivize new housing construction,” cautions Alec Mena at The Hill

It “would eliminate depreciation write-offs for landlords with more than 50 units,” unless they “agree not to raise rent more than 5% annually for two years.”

But such “caps are a virtue-signaling measure, not a practical solution.” Were it enacted, “growth in the housing stock would slow,” and “it would disproportionately affect new renters.”

And, “beyond the housing market,” a “rent cap could also impede labor mobility” and “reduce property tax revenues.”

Biden-Harris may not care, as this lets them “claim to be ‘doing something’ about affordable housing in an election year.”

Sorry: “The road to affordable housing is paved with evidence-based, supply-oriented policy” — not “economically illiterate dictates from the top.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board