Eye on NY: Hochul’s Electric-Bill Posturing

Gov. Kathy Hochul may support “the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act’s (CLCPA) goals, but she clearly doesn’t want anyone to link her to its costs,” snarks the Empire Center’s James E. Hanley. She “declared it ‘outrageous’ and ‘unacceptable’ ” for utilities “to ask upstaters to pay” higher rates to cover “the cost of buying clean energy and promoting energy efficient homes” (as well as replacing “aging infrastructure to prevent blackouts”). It’s “a transparent attempt to distance herself from the consequences of the CLCPA agenda she supports.” In short, “she’s going for the low-risk, low-leadership strategy of trying to give the public freebies, and blaming others when the real costs become known.”

Conservative: To Fight Everyday Gun Violence

“Universal background checks are a prime example” of “gun policy . . . that Republicans and Democrats . . . should support, even if it will not necessarily prevent mass shootings,” argues Tom Joyce at the Washington Examiner. “Most gun deaths (54%) are suicides, while murders are a not-so-distant second (43%), according to Pew,” so “this is where the most potential exists to reduce gun violence in this country.” Background checks enjoy support from “84% of voters, including 77% of Republicans.” And while “improving mental health, preventing substance abuse and improving school security” can help stop mass shootings, “it’s important to combat other forms of gun violence.” Indeed, “it’s irresponsible to pit these issues against one another.”

Libertarian: The Gov’t Gave Us Inflation Crisis

Soaring US inflation is “of human cause” and largely “the result of a flood of government spending intended to offset pandemic lockdowns” as well as attempts “to exploit the health crisis to advance preexisting legislative agendas,” points out Reason’s J.D. Tuccille. Inflation “gnaws at incomes, erases savings and makes budgeting challenging to the point of impossibility” for average Americans, but “among the beneficiaries of cheapened money is the government itself,” as it “pays its bills by creating dollars (or pounds, euros, etc.) and the recipients get devalued currency for their troubles.” President Biden “concedes the need to rein in inflation,” but doing so “may well kneecap the economy by bringing about a recession.” While “politicians will try to place the blame on anybody but themselves,” Americans should “never forget that it was their decisions that placed that hole in your wallet.”

Economy watch: Biden’s Pathetic Excuses

“President Biden wants Americans to know: Curbing inflation is his top, top, top priority,” jeers Liz Peek at The Hill. But his Wall Street Journal op-ed “did contain a red alert, which may have been the point,” warning that job growth will likely slow drastically. Biden calls that “successfully moving into the next phase of recovery,” but Peek notes that at best that’s saying “we must settle for mediocre growth and lowered expectations.” In short, “This is not a White House, or a president, that expects to win.” Biden clearly plans to pin the blame for the slowdown on the Federal Reserve, but “unhappily for Joe, voters place the buck at his door.”

Culture desk: Non-Toxic Masculinity Matters

“The concept of ‘toxic masculinity,’ ” notes Douglas Murray at Spectator World, relies on the idea that “specifically male behaviors are a problem” in themselves: violence, in particular. But when “a woman sitting on the subway” in New York was attacked by a “madman”, “good, decent masculinity” might have allowed “the men in the carriage” to help her. So too for the 19 officers — “one for each slain child” — who “sat around in a corridor waiting for backup while the bad guy had the scene to himself” in the Uvalde massacre. All this “should remind us that society needs men to behave in certain ways at certain times” and that “there must be consequences to telling men that . . . their behavior is wrong, and that all their intentions are tainted by dint of their chromosomes.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board