Politics

Gov. Andrew ‘Nixon’ Cuomo, Trump’s Saudi gamble and other comments

Policy wonk: Cynthia Nixon Has Already Won

Democrats took a big step toward “total control in Albany” and “a progressive transformation of New York” when the state Senate’s Independent Democratic Conference dissolved itself and rejoined the mainline party, says City Journal’s Seth Barron. But that move only gave support to progressive suspicions that Gov. Cuomo “was in fact the engineer, or at least enabler, of the IDC,” given that the merger occurred only after Cynthia Nixon “gained traction on the governor’s left flank.” But “a politically wounded Cuomo reluctant to play moderate spoiler and put his national ambitions at risk will mean a hard-left course for New York State.” Nixon essentially is “taunting Cuomo to join her in a game of ideological leapfrog,” and he’s doing so. So we’re likely to see the Nixon agenda, after all — “disguised as a third Cuomo administration.”

From the right: Why Does Trayon White Get a Pass?

Washington, DC, Councilman Trayon White has become a national figure, notes Jazz Shaw at Hot Air, thanks to his “rather unusual” views on how Jews control the weather and “disastrous” trip to the US Holocaust Museum, where he suggested Nazi stormtroopers were actually “protecting” a Jewish woman being frog-marched through the streets. Yet The Washington Post is giving him a pass, claiming he “spoke from ignorance, not malice.” Asks Shaw: “Who else in the entire spectrum of American politics would be let off the hook for something like this so easily?” Besides, if Jewish weather-control conspiracies truly reflect White’s level of ignorance, he “shouldn’t be running the affairs of the nation’s capital.”

Historian: Will Trump’s Saudi Gamble Pay Off?

President Trump’s recent meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (a k a MBS) “may prove as momentous” as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1945 sitdown with the kingdom’s desert warrior, King Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud, suggests Michael Barone at the Washington Examiner. That first meeting provided “vast flows of money to, and American military protection of, a Saudi elite unsympathetic to American moral values and at odds with important US policies” in exchange for oil. But the fracking revolution is forcing Riyadh to modernize its economy. And both the Saudis and the Gulf states “have clearly been alarmed” by Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. Trump’s support for MBS “must be regarded as a gamble.” But so was Obama’s “tilt toward the terrorist regime of Iran” — and that “has not produced the hoped-for gains.”

Education beat: Media’s Go-To Expert Doesn’t Exist

Drew Cloud is a self-described journalist who specializes in student-loan debt, and he’s everywhere, note Dan Bauman and Chris Quintana at the Journal of High Education. He’s been quoted in The Washington Post, the Boston Globe and CNBC, and his Web site — complete with elaborate biography and backstory — is a fixture in the blogosphere. One problem: “He’s a fiction, the invention of a student loan refinancing company.” The company finally admitted as much after the authors’ inquiries, which were first met with e-mails from “Cloud” claiming “he was traveling and had limited access to his account.” But over the past two years, he’s “corresponded at length with many journalists, pitching them stories and offering e-mail interviews, many of which were published.” Not surprisingly, his advice was always the same: Refinance your loan.

Sports desk: The NCAA Just Fixed . . . Nothing

There are two ways to fix college sports, contends Bloomberg’s Joe Nocera: “Stop pretending that ‘amateurism’ is the heart and soul of a big business” and pay players; the other is to “follow the example of baseball and hockey” and set up a professional minor-league system. To no one’s surprise, however, the NCAA’s Commission on College Basketball — hastily established after a major bribery scandal and chaired by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice — did neither. Instead, “every step forward was followed by two steps backward.” If its proposals are enacted, the NCAA will become “more powerful, more punitive and more bureaucratic.” Indeed, they “exemplify the worst of the NCAA: its lack of regard for due process” and its “constant efforts to reach into areas where it has no legitimate business.” — Compiled by Eric Fettmann