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N.Y.’s budget: highway robbery

New Yorkers are getting robbed blind. Gov. Kathy Hochul and the state’s two legislative leaders announced a budget deal Monday night on how much to tax New Yorkers and how much the state government will spend in the coming fiscal year, which starts June 1. From the smattering of information available, it’s likely this deal will necessitate additional tax hikes months from now that could trigger an economic death spiral for the state and its largest city. Here’s the kicker. This is a backroom deal, done in secrecy. No press allowed, and none of the other 211 members of the ...

Philosophy only a leftist could love

In an interview with Time magazine, President Trump explained how he approaches tariffs and trade negotiations. I use the word “explained” with some trepidation because explanations imply a certain delineation of reasoning, facts and logic along with opinion and perspective. If you ask me to explain my support for abolishing rent control and I respond, “Because vests have no sleeves and turtles smell of elderberries,” have I really offered an explanation? Or have I merely revealed what passes for my thinking? “We’re a department store, a giant department store, the ...

Trumps second term might have been sunk by tariffs

Presidential second terms are rarely successful, and on the evidence of his first 100 days Donald Trump ’s won’t be different. The President needs a major reset if he wants to rescue his final years from the economic and foreign-policy shocks he has unleashed. There’s no denying his energy or ambition. Mr. Trump is pressing ahead on multiple fronts, and he has had some success. His expansion of U.S. energy production is proceeding well and is much needed after the Biden war on fossil fuels. He has ended the border crisis in short order. He is also rolling back federal assaults ...

ChatGPT is actually not your friend

I have been deep in conversation with ChatGPT, asking all kinds of questions. Are there direct flights between the U.S. and Queretaro, Mexico? Will Apple give me credit for a 2014 iMac? What color goes with teal? What was France’s GDP in 1998? My fascination with ChatGPT has become a household joke. “All right, Froma,” we imagine Chat saying. “What do you want now? Do you think you’re the only one around here?” But the teal question is where our relationship started cooling. Chat dutifully listed what goes well with the blue-green color and then asked, “Are you thinking ...

Trump to America: Get busy begatting

“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth.” (Genesis 1:28) President Trump is going God one better. God told Adam and Eve to start having children. The president is considering adding an incentive - paying couples $5,000 to begat. The fertility rate in the U.S. has been declining for the last decade. In 2023 it dropped to 1.6 births per woman, the lowest in a century. There are many reasons. The most obvious is abortion. The Pew Research Center sites figures from the CDC: “The last year for which the CDC reported a yearly national total for abortions is 2021. It found ...

Trump’s plans for family policy

The animating beliefs of this administration range from dangerously wrong to head-spinningly crazy. Tariffs are in the first tranche, along with the myth that NATO has been ripping off the United States for decades, that immigrants commit more crimes than native-born Americans and that “He who saves his country commits no crime” (just to name four). The beliefs that vaccines cause autism, that fluoridated water is a public health threat, that threatening allies and neighbors enhances national security, and that taxing foreign holders of Treasuries would be a good way to solve the ...