Kamala Harris’s puzzling change in stance on Israel, her opposition to charter schools, and other reflections on her policies
Conservative: Kamala’s Mystery Israel Shift
“If you are the second-in-command to the leader of the free world, and the odds-on favorite to take over as commander-in-chief in a matter of months, you should put yourself in position to hear the questions” from the media, yet both Vice President Kamala Harris and VP pick Tim Walz are dodging, chides Commentary’s Seth Mandel.
And “Harris doesn’t plan to retain the top [Biden] national-security advisers” if she wins, yet “those advisers are the ones currently engaged in diplomacy around the world, including the Israel-Hamas ceasefire negotiations.”
It’s clear Harris wants “the public to know a shift against Israel is coming. But don’t quote her on that, because she and the public are currently not on speaking terms.”
From the right: Harris vs. Charters
Joe Biden “is easily the most anticharter president in American history,” charges The Wall Street Journal’s Jason L. Riley, noting the prez’s push to cut funds for charter schools.
These schools “have long enjoyed strong support from low-income racial and ethnic minorities,” and “research over the decades” shows they improve student performance.
But school-choice advocate Derrell Bradford argues Harris-Biden are driven not by “what’s best for students” but for powerful (and anti-charter) teachers unions.
Kamala Harris hasn’t said where she stands on charters, notes Riley, but “the enthusiasm of her endorsement” by the unions “doesn’t bode well for low-income children stuck in the nation’s worst-performing schools.”
NY beat: School Spending Soars, Results Sink
“The start of a new school year finds New York’s public education system in a well-funded state of confusion and contradiction,” snarks the Empire Center’s Ken Girardin.
As school spending explodes amid “falling test scores and declining enrollment” and a “plan to weaken graduation standards,” state officials “still can’t tell parents how their students performed in last spring’s assessments.”
New York “is trapped in a destructive cycle where policymakers focus more on inputs than outcomes.”
Gov. Hochul’s plan to “add roughly 2,000 more charter seats will be welcomed by the parents and guardians” of those students “poised to escape underperforming district-operated schools.”
Yet the state still lacks a true choice program “that would allow public education funds money to follow children to a different school.”
Censorship watch: Feds Hiding Own Mistakes
“The thin excuse the censors use to justify their dangerous, authoritarian measures,” fumes Dr. Jay Bhattacharya on X, “is that the proles will spread misinformation amongst themselves if given the right to free speech.”
But the real reason is “to cover up for government policy failure.”
Examples of “what the censors got wrong during the covid era” include “covid is airborne,” “the lab leak hypothesis is not a conspiracy theory, and is the likely explanation of the origin of covid” and “lockdowns are a luxury of the laptop class and do not ultimately protect against infection.”
That is: “The censorship machine suppressed criticism of the government getting all those important points wrong,” with “countless people harmed as a result.”
Eye on Germany: Populists Smash Establishment
Sunday’s voting in the east German states of Saxony and Thuringia humiliated the ruling national coalition, reports Spiked’s Sabine Beppler-Spahl: “For the first time ever, the right-populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) won a state election” by pulling 32.8% of the vote in Thuringia, “nearly 10 points ahead of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which came in second”; AfD won 30.6% in Saxony, just 1.3 points behind the CDU.
And: “The success of the left-populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) is no less spectacular”: 15.8% in Thuringia, 11.8% in Saxony — though “the BSW was only founded in January.”
And the three nationally ruling parties combined for under 15% in Saxony, just over 10% in Thuringia.
The lesson? With voters focused on “rising crime rates, unregulated migration, a sinking standard of living and the growing influence of radical Islam,” clearly “a great number of people no longer believe the established parties will get the country’s many problems under control.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
