#Democrats created urban despair and other commentary

Portland police walk past burning debris during nationwide unrest following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
REUTERS

“Democrats didn’t want President Donald Trump to visit Kenosha to respond to last week’s mob violence, looting and arson,” notes The Chicago Tribune’s John Kass, but if he hadn’t gone, “he’d be guilty of political malpractice.” And despite “what Democrats say,” this year’s violence “did not begin with Trump.” The “road to urban despair was paved over decades and decades, by failed Democratic policy.” It’s Democrats, after all, who “run the public schools in these cities, where special interests, ­including public schoolteachers’ unions, are served first, and the kids come last.” It’s Democrats who “impose high taxes that kill business ­development where it’s needed most,” in low-income and underserved areas. And it’s Democrats who control the cities’ police departments. Dems don’t want a spotlight on that despair.

Iconoclast: Big Tech’s Monstrous Mergers

Neither left nor right, observes Michael Lind at Tablet, pays enough ­attention to the economics that make Big Tech companies’ conduct “indefensible.” Firms like Google and Amazon are trying to revive the conglomerate. Google, for example, owns the world’s largest video-sharing platform (YouTube), a smartphone division (Android), a self-driving car project, a cloud-computing platform, a space-exploration business and other concerns. That “may generate financial benefits for a small number of shareholders and managers,” but “decades of research have failed to show any benefits to the economy from conglomerate mergers, in the form of increased productivity among the constituent units.” For the sake of workers, consumers and society at large, governments must launch antitrust action against such monstrosities.

City beat: The Left’s Con Ed-Takeover Folly

The suggestion from “advocates on the left” — like Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, following Tropical Storm Isaias — that government take over the energy grid is a decidedly “bad” one, argues former Treasury economist Ike Brannon at City Journal. “Democratic socialists may spurn the profit motive, but it motivates people.” It’s harder to reward or punish government workers, and whoever runs the grid would be political. The New York City Housing Authority, which is government-run housing, “has been a fiscal basket case for decades.” Besides, the city lacks the money to buy out shareholders. “None of this is to suggest that Con Ed is perfect; the city should work with the utility to improve.” But the idea of taking over the company is “a pipe dream” — and “not even a good one.”

From the left: Nancy’s Gift to Don

Nancy Pelosi is one of the Democratic Party’s smartest strategists, ­asserts CNN’s Chris Cillizza, so her decision to have her hair done indoors at a San Francisco ­salon, and with no mask, makes “little sense.” ­Pelosi says she believed the salon staff, who said doing so was OK, but that information was wrong — and, as House speaker and “a very vocal critic” of President Trump’s “flouting” COVID-19 rules, “you can’t rely on what a hairstylist tells you. You double check.” Pelosi’s “unforced error” hands Trump “a ­massive gift-wrapped present.” For him and his allies, sighs Cillizza, the episode ­“affirms everything they have been saying these last few years about liberals” and their “do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do culture.”

Analyst: Electoral College Works for Everyone

The case for a national-popular-vote scheme to replace the Electoral College “collapses under close scrutiny,” Trent England explains at RealClearPolitics. “In a direct national election, candidates would still focus most of their time, energy and money in particular areas — and this time it would be the parties’ traditional geographic base, with an emphasis on big states.” By contrast, the Electoral College makes swing states the key, “forcing candidates to move beyond their primary coalitions and speak to average American voters.” Yet which ones are swing states changes: California used to swing; now Wisconsin does. In this system, “both safe and swing states are crucial, and candidates must build a broad coalition to win the White House.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board