Progressive era is over, NY’s leaky mega-budget and other commentary

Culture critic: Progressive Era Is Over

“The decline of woke isn’t merely a ‘vibe shift,’” posits Eric Kaufmann at The Wall Street Journal. “It marks the end of the 60-year rise of left-liberalism in American culture. We are entering a post-progressive era.” The cultural left’s push for “next-level DEI policies” sparked “an enduring antiwoke reaction.” Even “immigration attitudes have turned restrictionist after decades of liberalization.” “Confronted by this broad-based rejection, progressive activists have lost confidence and energy.” And making it worse is that “culturally inflected problems elude progressive solutions.” That has cost “cultural progressivism” considerable influence. So, yes, we’re “leaving the age of progressive confidence behind.” But what replaces it “as our cultural lodestar will become evident only in the fullness of time.”

Eye on Albany: Our Leaky Mega-Budget

“New York’s budget has sprung its first major leak just five days after being finalized,” chortles Empire Center’s Bill Hammond. He notes a move by feds to close “a loophole in the Medicaid financing system” exploited by the state. Billions in increased Medicaid spending — plus $2 billion in “rate hikes” for providers — was predicated on revenue from the “newly enacted MCO tax.” The scheme allowed the state to “keep the federal matching aid as net revenue.” The amended rule allows the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to “start withholding federal matching funds for those taxes as soon as the regulation takes effect,” possibly this summer. Without the MCO tax revenue, New York’s Medicaid “fiscal cliff appears to be just two or three months away.”

Liberal: The Dems’ Political Monopoly

“One-party political rule by Democrats in big cities,” notes The Liberal Patriot’s John Halpin, is the “the largest monopoly of them all.” Yet the “anti-monopoly and abundance policy concepts” currently en vogue around housing, energy infrastructure, and transportation aren’t applied to the political monopoly Dems enjoy. “In America’s biggest cities, this translates into enervated municipal governments that coast from election to election with little outside challenge.” So “schools don’t get fixed. New housing or other development gets stalled. Roads, transportation, and other public utility projects get screwed up and delayed with massive cost overruns. Crime goes unaddressed. Public spaces and parks go to seed.” In other words, “concentrated, one-party political power” is just one of many “forms of misrule that lead to poor policy outcomes.”

Conservative: A Sick ICC Coverup

Freshly exposed allegations might explain why International Criminal Court top prosecutor Karim Khan issued “an arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant,” observes Commentary’s Seth Mandel. “A female employee of Khan’s testified that she had been repeatedly sexually assaulted” by him and was bullied into covering it up. After learning of the allegations, Khan canceled trips to Israel and Gaza; “two weeks later he issued the arrest warrants.” The accuser wrestled with coming forward because she didn’t want to derail the warrants; Khan believed they “would insulate him from criticism from many of the ICC member states.” According to testimony, he “explicitly tied the rape allegations to the Israeli warrants.” “There is obviously no defense of the arrest warrants’ legitimacy now.”

Libertarian: Power AI With Nukes!

Nuclear power would “allow the U.S. to make advancements in AI with minimal greenhouse gas emissions,” reports Reason’s Jeff Luse. That’s badly needed: “Goldman Sachs projects that AI will increase data center power demand by 160 percent nationwide through 2030.” Texas, “the fastest-growing consumer of electricity in the nation,” will need to add “the energy equivalent of 30 nuclear power plants by 2030 to meet demand.” The good news? “Last Energy is preparing to deliver . . . 30 of its 20-megawatt reactors in Haskell County, Texas, to service data centers across the state.” Up to now, the company “has focused on growing its business abroad because of stringent federal regulations.” New nuclear energy projects “will only be as cost-effective and efficient as regulations allow.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board