Urban beat: Who Commits Hate Crimes?
“President Joe Biden has been lecturing white Americans about hate again,” sighs City Journal’s Heather Mac Donald. He’s using the Buffalo “tragedy for racial propaganda,” peddling “an entirely false charge.” In fact, whites “are not the biggest source of hate crime and interracial violence in the U.S.; blacks are. From 2016 to 2020, blacks nationally were twice as likely to commit a hate crime as whites” among “suspects whose race and ethnicity were known. Local data tell the same story. In New York City, from 2010 to 2020, blacks were 2.42 times as likely as whites to commit a hate crime.” Los Angeles blacks last year “committed anti-Asian hate crimes at 4.8 times the rate of whites,” anti-gay ones at seven times, anti-Semitic ones at 2.4 times and anti-Hispanic ones at 13.5 times the white rate.
Eye on airlines: End Inflight Masking
To put an end to “Inflight Fight Club,” the pandemic-fueled surge in passengers mfacing off with flight attendants, “let’s once-and-for-all formally end masking” on planes, argues Peter Van Buren at The Spectator. Passengers now “are pre-angered long before taking their undersized seats,” as they must pay a premium for “a normal-sized seat” or to board first and “join the scrum for carry-on space.” The bad mood on board “is made much worse by the infantilization of passengers.” Mask mandates fueled the flames, and the “TSA reported more than 3,800 incidents in the last year involving masks alone, with 2,700 warning notices issued and more than 900 civil penalties levied against passengers.” Aircraft have excellent “protective air filtration systems” to curb the spread of viruses; “as much fun as it is to watch someone combat it out with a flight attendant, all this is unnecessary.”
Neocon: Limits to Dems’ Abortion Opportunity
The “Supreme Court judgment striking down Roe v. Wade might provide Democrats with a reprieve,” notes Noah Rothman at Commentary: “an NPR/Marist survey [after] a leaked Court decision found . . . Democrats surging back into contention.” But their “maximalist opposition to limits on abortion” is “likely to come at the cost of their congressional delegation” as “abortion seems to register less among” voters (for example) in a competitive and heavily Hispanic Texas district “than pocketbook issues and, critically, immigration.” So “as poll after poll indicates that Democrats are shedding support among Hispanic voters, a campaign that devotes itself to leftwing abortion politics . . . risks hobbling itself” with this key demographic. Which may be why “Democrats with an instinct for self-preservation are . . . picking their battles more judiciously.”
From the Left: Biden’s Loose Lips
President Biden’s promise of military intervention if China invades Taiwan, walked back by aides for a third time, fits “a troubling pattern” warns Zeesham Aleem at MSNBC: “While domestic audiences can laugh off Biden’s gaffes and missteps, there is no guarantee foreign powers will give him the benefit of the doubt.” He ran for prez vowing “to restore American credibility. . . . Being careful and consistent with language is an important part of achieving that goal.”
Economy watch: The Fed’s Inflation-Recession Dilemma
“The Fed is raising rates again today, as it has in the past, to stave off inflation — an inflation it insisted was transitory only months ago,” observes The Wall Street Journal’s Gerard Baker. “If the past is any guide, this tightening will soon induce a sharp slowdown in economic activity.” But “if the U.S. enters recession later this year, it will do so with an inflation rate still much higher than it was at the start of the last recession. The Fed will then cut rates at its peril — caught between its price-stability and full-employment mandates.” And as public debt “equals roughly 100% of GDP,” “fiscal pump priming at those debt levels will further exacerbate price pressures.” Simply put: America’s recent “fiscal recklessness” and “monetary indulgence” don’t “come without costs.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board