#Beware the ‘work from home’ model and other commentary

The response to the COVID work-from-home “experiment” has been “largely positive” — yet Hyon Chu at City Journal warns that, “taken to its natural conclusion,” such policies could have a “far-reaching” and “ultimately negative” effect on US workers. The arrangement offers “more time to spend with the family, freedom to live virtually anywhere in the world and little or no commute time.” But corporations may realize they don’t need as many “regulars” and opt for less pricey “contract or as-needed workers.” They may also “exchange” current staff for “cheaper offshore versions,” a trend fueled by unemployment and the “weakened” power of the labor force. Chu’s advice: “Proceed with caution. Many who currently dream of working remotely from the beaches of Thailand may find themselves replaced by a Thai contractor.”

Libertarian: Weighing Team Trump’s COVID Stats

The media’s pet statistics suggest “the US has not been all that great at mitigating the pandemic” compared to other developed nations, Reason’s Ronald Bailey observes. But “President Trump’s new coronavirus epidemic adviser Dr. Scott Atlas more or less dismissed these figures as misleading and instead pointed to excess deaths as the better way to measure a country’s success in responding to the coronavirus.” The United States, with 4 percent of the world’s population, has a quarter of global COVID-19. But, Atlas told the BBC, “Europe has done 28 percent worse than the United States in excess mortality,” the proper measure. That stat relies on using the low end of US excess-death estimates, Bailey notes, but mid-range figures show “665 excess deaths per million people for the covered European area, compared with 622 excess deaths per million in the US.”

Campaign watch: No Real Questions For Joe

At Joe Biden’s press conference last week, the press should have jumped at the “rare opportunity” to ask hard-hitting questions of “the man who would be the oldest ever to assume the nation’s highest office,” points out Andrew Malcolm for Impact 2020. But instead of asking about his mask mandate proposal, promise of a nearly $4 trillion tax increase or even his lack of campaign appearances, the reporters “all simply assumed” Biden’s plans “to be good with no need for checking or verification.” The softball questions about statements from the president only seemed to establish one fact, “that Joe Biden is not Donald Trump.” That one fact is enough for “these self-appointed guardians of America’s presidential election process,” but maybe not for the voters.

Culture Critic: The Oscars Go Far Left

The Oscars just “unveiled their latest tone-deaf attempt to curry favor with the farthest fringes of the radical left,” reports The Federalist’s Joshua Lawson, with “cast, staff and plot quotas for race, sex, sexual behavior and disabilities to be eligible” for Best Picture. “While Hollywood needs no aid, assistance, or encouragement to produce films with anti-American, leftist and subversive agendas,” these new rules “reward them for doing so.” But “just as ‘The Color Purple,’ ‘Glory’ and ‘The Help’ wouldn’t work if every role were cast with Caucasian males, so too would films such as ‘Master and Commander’ or ‘1917’ be unbelievably ludicrous if they were exclusively cast with black females.” No, let “genuine storytelling and deference to the original intent of a work’s creator drive casting, not identity politics steeped in leftist ideology.”

From the right: The FBI’s ‘Crazy’ Steele Maneuvers

Buried in a Senate report, notes Eric Felton at Real Clear Politics, is the news that Christopher Steele’s longtime main FBI handler deemed his behavior “crazy.” Yet the bureau still used him “to justify its surveillance of the Trump campaign,” with the central office pretending he was reliable. FBI agent Michael Gaeta testified to his “surprise and disbelief” at Steele’s anti-Trump attitude — not just “crazy source-related stuff,” but “one of the craziest” he’d experienced in decades of handling sources. His leaks to far-left mag Mother Jones led the FBI to “close” Steele as a source — but after Donald Trump won, bureau head Jim Comey revived his utterly unconfirmed allegations as pretext for further investigation via “a back-channel relationship with Mother Jones.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board