Political scribe: Why Obama Won’t Blast Trump on DACA
Then-President Barack Obama vowed to speak out publicly if successor Donald Trump revoked protections for Dreamers. But when Obama did so Tuesday, notes Edward-Isaac Dovere at Politico, he “referred only to the White House,’ ” not to “the president” or to Trump by name. That was a deliberate decision, because Obama has decided that “the best play is to not give Trump any more to play off of than his successor already has.” Indeed, the nine-paragraph statement — purposely attributed to a spokesman, not Obama himself — contains “nothing about what to put in a [DACA] bill, only the principles at stake and the need to do something.” Democrats longed for something stronger, but Obama’s “leaving it to others for now.”
From the right: Mayor Bill de Bolshevik
Seth Barron at City Journal is taken with how Bill de Blasio expressed “visceral” anger in New York magazine over what he claims is the “way our legal system is structured to favor private property.” Indeed, the mayor insisted, most New Yorkers (including him) have a “socialistic impulse” and want City Hall “to determine which building goes where, how high it will be, who gets to live in it, what the rent will be.” Which only “begs the question of who would build anything under these strict conditions.” Not that the mayor cares, says Barron: “Echoing the ‘Communist Manifesto,’ ” he said “people ‘would like things to be planned in accordance to their needs.’ ” But how will “his major political donors — consisting largely of real-estate developers and owners — feel” about his “call for expropriation of their property”?
Security desk: A Path out of the Iran Nuke Deal
An “overlooked element” of the Iran nuclear deal could allow “for at least the beginning of America’s exit from the bargain that defines Barack Obama’s foreign policy legacy,” contends Eli Lake at Bloomberg. It’s the requirement that the administration certify every 90 days that Iran remains in compliance, under which “Trump can decertify Iran even if the US intelligence community determines that Iran is adhering to the deal’s limits on stockpiles of low-enriched uranium and is still allowing monitors to its known nuclear sites.” He can “also determine that the deal itself is not in the national interest because of its structural flaws.” At which point Congress could vote “to re-impose the crippling secondary sanctions that effectively cut Iran off from the global economy.”
Urban student: Congestion Pricing Won’t Solve Woes
Gov. Cuomo’s recent interest notwithstanding, the “perceived silver bullet” of congestion pricing “will not save our subways,” says Rosalie Ray at Gotham Gazette. Supporters point to its effectiveness in London since 2003. But Ray, who has studied that city’s transit policies, says those people miss “the key ingredient to London’s success” — its buses. Ridership on double-deckers is up dramatically: In 2004, “London’s buses carried more passengers than the New York City subway.” And its myriad bus lanes were implemented long before congestion pricing. New York “has just over 50 miles of bus lanes,” with little priority. And “as congestion has risen, bus ridership has fallen as bus speeds have slowed to a level barely faster than walking.” So “while New York has available bus seats, they are not yet good alternatives.”
Sports fan: How the Wild Card Has Ruined Baseball
If “you can’t feel the excitement around baseball’s second wild card spot, you’re not alone,” says David Faris at The Week. Teams in contention “were actively shedding important players” this summer and half of those teams “are in the bottom half” of Major League Baseball’s attendance figures. Fact is, the single-game, do-or-die format is “uniquely ill-suited” to MLB. Indeed, since the entire wild-card system began, “fewer than a third of the 44 teams” with the best league record even made it into the World Series. So teams inevitably decide “they would be better off husbanding their resources for another day.”
— Compiled by Eric Fettmann