Politics desk: The Machine That Made Santos
Frank Scaturro notes in The Wall Street Journal that Nassau County, where George Santos’ district largely lies, “is home to perhaps the last remaining large Chicago-style political machine east of the Windy City” — though it’s a Republican machine. That left Santos to face “no primary competition.” Nassau’s GOP chairman has “sole power to make candidate endorsements” and “is so preoccupied with what’s in it for him that he readily undercuts the interests of Republican voters.” Nor is the Santos scandal “an isolated instance of negligent vetting” but a “product of the machine’s toxic combination of illicit tactics to shut down primary competition and a pay-to-play culture. Until this racket is broken,” expect more “betrayals of the public trust.”
From the right: Capitalizing on ‘Blue Flight’
New Census data show that red states gained population in 2022 while blue states lost, report Issues & Insights’ editors. So “there’s a huge opportunity for conservatives.” Actually, people have been “fleeing leftist strongholds such as California, New York, and Illinois for many years.” Yet “far too many” of them “take their ideology with them and push for the same leftist politicians” and policies they just fled. “Blue flight ends up more like a social virus than a win for free markets.” To counter that, “conservatives need to learn how to welcome their new additions” and explain the damage caused by left-wing, socialist policies. “Otherwise, the mass migration will only spread the disease of leftism further and deeper into the nation’s bloodstream.”
Culture watch: How the Left Rules Art
At The Free Press, Rikki Schlott outlines a “bargain” — “pledge allegiance” to lefty orthodoxy or “risk your career” — that “many in the world of American fine arts” now face. “In dance, music, theater, and the visual arts,” the diversity, equity and inclusion movement is “politicizing artistic expression” (though only a few “have blown the whistle”). “Many of America’s arts funders have made social justice the criteria for grants,” including “the Ford Foundation, one of the most influential charitable organizations in the country.” “DEI initiatives for the arts are spreading at the national level” via a Biden executive order. As one Broadway veteran put it, “most of the art today affirms commonly held views.” So it’s “fit in” or “perish.”
Charity beat: Amazon’s Blow to Little League
When Carl Stotz launched Little League 85 years ago, relates the Washington Examiner’s Salena Zito, he got local businesses to pony up for uniforms. Stotz understood that “baseball wasn’t just a game” but “a way to keep young boys out of trouble” and “to provide small businesses a way to be more connected to the community.” Today, parents have been directing AmazonSmile, which donates up to 0.5% of every purchase to a customer-chosen charity, to give to their local team. Yet last week “the centralized monopoly” said it would begin giving only to social-justice and other initiatives aligned with its values. Moral? “Centralizing power is always a terrible idea,” and too often, we don’t see that until the damage hits “the communities we call home.”
Libertarian: How Gov’t Leans on Social Media
The release of the Twitter Files revealed the way the lines between the public and private sector “were consciously eroded during the COVID-19 era in an attempt to eradicate ‘misinformation,’ much of which turned out to be true and all of which was First Amendment-protected speech,” laments Reason’s Katherine Mangu-Ward. Whether it was “suppressing ‘misinformation’ about ‘runs on grocery stores’ ” or flagging “accounts making jokes about the election, resulting in bans for ‘misinformation,’ ” government bureaucrats bent tech companies to their will. No, social-media giants Facebook and Twitter didn’t receive explicit threats, but “every conversation with a government official contains that same warning: You can do it happily, or we’ll make you.” And “employees at Twitter — and Facebook — chose to censor, suppress, and undermine dissenting viewpoints happily.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
