#Biden risks ‘special relationship’ and other commentary

Foreign desk: Biden Risks ‘Special Relationship’

President Biden’s “broadside against Britain” is “perplexing,” complains Douglas Murray at UnHerd. Just before heading to England for the G7 summit, Team Biden told “Yael Lempert — its most senior diplomat in the UK — to accuse Boris Johnson of imperiling the Irish peace process over Brexit.” It reflects a “non-pragmatic side to the Biden administration,” one that’s “deeply ideological” and would “risk a diplomatic fallout” to satisfy the Democrats’ “dogmatically pro-Irish reunification agenda.” A year ago, Chuck Schumer even issued well wishes to Sinn Fein, “a political party that approves of terrorism.” Dems would “sacrifice Brexit for a united Ireland,” and Biden’s move suggests his administration “views British democracy as a threat to its own ideological agenda.”

Anti-violence leader: The High Price of ‘Defund’

The anti-violence Woodson Center family just lost one of its own, mourns the organization’s founder, Robert L. Woodson Sr., at The Wall Street Journal. Makhi Buckly, a 19-year-old black student athlete and grandson of “Carl Hardrick, one of our most faithful leaders in youth violence prevention,” was fatally shot on Memorial Day. Carl’s words “broke my heart: ‘It’s my job to keep kids safe, but I can’t even protect my own grandson.’ ” Hundreds of minority families have lost children to “senseless violence over the past year,” yet the press “ignores any victim who isn’t killed” by police. Meanwhile, the “Defund the police” movement has “actually gotten innocent black people killed.” Crime has “skyrocketed,” and “our families” have “paid the price.” “Defund” is “a death sentence for innocent black children.”

Fiscal watchdog: Port Authority’s $1B Workers

Payroll costs for the Port Authority “crossed the billion-dollar threshold” in 2020, report the Empire Center’s fiscal experts, with its 9,000 active employees earning an average of $112,109 each; more than half (55 percent) made six figures, including 607 paid more than $200,000 and 60 more than $300,000. The $1.002 billion 2020 tab marked a jump of nearly $160 million over 2018 and $5 million over 2019. The agency’s police department was its highest-earning group, with 69 employees collecting $100,000 in overtime alone — including 20 percent of lieutenants and 10 percent of sergeants. The PA’s top breadwinner: Det. Richard Paugh, who scored $415,126 last year, including $45,881 in overtime and $91,630 in retroactive pay.

Conservative: Jeffrey Toobin’s Infuriating Return

Woke social-justice warriors who enforce cancel culture typically “permit no room for error, no room for dissent, no room for disagreement or pushback,” so the decision by CNN to bring back Jeffrey Toobin after he infamously exposed himself on a Zoom call is “madness,” declares National Review’s Jim Geraghty. Toobin’s departure “should have opened up opportunities for some other lawyer who can explain legal concepts in layman’s terms.” And since no one was clamoring for his return, the only explanation is that “Jeff Zucker, the president of CNN, wants him back.” It’s a shameless and “almost gleeful celebration of unaccountability, an in-your-face, spiking-the-football mentality that once you’ve reached a certain level of success in the world of television news . . . no one can ever get rid of you, no matter what you do.”

Economist: Infrastructure Deal Isn’t Worth Cost

President Biden and a Senate group are working on a bipartisan compromise to fund traditional infrastructure spending, but “the emerging deal is a bad investment,” warns Benjamin Powell at The Hill. “Republican and Democratic politicians agree that a massive increase in infrastructure funding is a good investment,” and they would be right “if infrastructure spending was financed by cuts in government consumption and transfer payments.” But neither party is proposing that. Instead, “this infrastructure bill would decrease economic freedom through both increased government spending and higher tax rates,” which will strangle private investment and economic growth. Despite the consensus, “the American economy would be better off if the whole deal was scrapped and more avenues for greater private investment in infrastructure were created.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board