Scandal watch: Clinton Team Created ‘Russiagate’
Special counsel John Durham’s indictment of former “Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann . . . is damning on the alleged effort to push a false Russia collusion claim,” explains Jonathan Turley at The Hill — especially the line “we will have to expose every trick we have in our bag” from a researcher ordered to produce a phony finding that “Russia’s Alpha Bank was used as a direct conduit between . . . Trump’s campaign and the Kremlin,” a claim Sussmann brought to the FBI without disclosing that Clinton’s team was his client. In all, the “effort to create a Russia collusion scandal with the help of Justice Department insiders and an eager, enabling media” amounted to a “Nixonian dirty tricks operation.”
Media beat: Facebook’s Two-Faced Transparency
Wall Street Journal reporting reveals “the degree to which Facebook’s own research is at odds with its public statements, and that internally it has recognized the harms the platform causes for society even while publicly touting its benefits,” notes Kalev Leetaru at RealClearPolitics. The Journal highlighted such concerns as “Instagram’s toxic influence on teenage girls,” “the impact of algorithmic changes on political discourse” and “how Facebook secretly shields influential users from its content moderation rules.” Plus, fact-checks’ “may not be as independent as publicly portrayed,” as “Facebook has asked fact-checking partners to retroactively change their findings on posts from high-profile accounts.” None involved will say “how many times have fact-checkers changed their verdicts at the request of Facebook.” Their “silence on the Journal’s reporting reminds us that the public should not expect transparency” on anything touching Facebook.
Economist: The Welfare State’s Hidden Costs
“Can America afford to become a major social welfare state?” asks N. Gregory Mankiw at The New York Times, citing Democrats’ “$3.5 trillion social spending bill” to “expand the size and scope of government substantially.” It “raises larger questions about American values and aspirations.” Atop the tax hikes to pay for Dems’ agenda are “implicit taxes baked into the benefits themselves,” which decline as income rises, discouraging work. France’s GDP is 24 percent lower than America’s; Britain’s, 26 percent. Europeans likely “work less” because of “higher taxes to finance a more generous social safety net.” So: “By aiming for more compassionate economies, they have created less prosperous ones. Americans should be careful to avoid that fate.”
Conservative: Will Adams Bring NYC back?
“Democratic New York City mayoral nominee Eric Adams is promising to turn the page on the era of Bill de Blasio,” declares Allison Schrager at City Journal. “At the top of Adams’s agenda is restoring the quality of life that frayed under de Blasio and especially plummeted in the last two years.” He aims to address gun violence, homelessness and housing affordability, while banking on wealthy “New Yorkers who fled south” returning. “That Adams won last summer’s primary on this agenda suggests that New Yorkers don’t want to hear progressive platitudes anymore; they want a well-run city.” They know that “if Adams delivers on his words, New York could see a return to pragmatic, pro-business centrism—and his success would be the city’s as well.”
Libertarian: Biden’s Money Moles
To ensure “the rich are paying their fair share in taxes,” President Biden “says the IRS just needs two bits of information: all the money that goes into your bank account and all the money that comes out,” reports Reason’s Eric Boehm. But Biden’s framing of “his plan for a more comprehensive financial surveillance state” to help pay for Dems’ “budget-busting $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill” is “wildly off-kilter.” He says it’ll target “the wealthy people who can afford tax lawyers and accountants. But as always, the people who can’t afford those things will probably bear the brunt of the new rules” — which amount to “another way to establish probable cause for a financial stop-and-frisk” and “the end of financial privacy for millions of Americans.”
— Compile by The Post Editorial Board