Libertarian: De Blasio’s Hate Is the Dem Mainstream

Mayor Bill de Blasio this month told the National Education Association to “stand up against hate,” then promptly declared, “I hate the privatizers, and I want to stop them.” But Reason’s Matt Welch snarks that hate is acceptable if it “is directed at people who successfully educate poor kids without unionized teachers” — namely, charter educators. Unfortunately, “the open prejudice that New York progressives have against charters has already started to take its toll.” Despite the high achievement levels for minorities in these schools, “anti-charter prejudice . . . is rapidly becoming a core Democratic Party value.”

Fiscal watchdog: Unions in Denial on Member Losses

It has been one year since the Supreme Court ruled that public employees can’t be compelled to pay union dues, and now the Empire Center’s Ken ­Girardin says “public-sector unions are concealing their losses by publishing inflated membership figures.” The “purely voluntary levels” of membership were expected to sink contribution rates, but unions have been exaggerating their numbers to make up for the dip. The number of people still paying dues to the CUNY Professional Staff Congress in New York, for example, is actually 23 percent less than it reported, and the PSC is far from the “only government union inflating membership numbers.” The state Public Employees Federation likewise recently boasted of more than 54,000 members — a number that, “between Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s efforts to reduce the state headcount and now” the court’s ruling, the union hasn’t had since 2011. And membership drops will only get worse: Recent polling “has shown public employees largely still aren’t aware of their right to stop paying a union.”

Rick Perry: Ross Perot Had Wounded Vets’ Backs

In The Dallas Morning News, Rick Perry remembers a “little-known part of the life of Ross Perot,” namely, that the billionaire and independent politico was “a tireless, but private, supporter of our wounded veterans.” When then-Texas Gov. Perry met a veteran grievously wounded in Iraq and in need of post-recovery medical transportation, “I knew there was one person to call: Ross Perot. What happened next still amazes me to this day. The next morning, Ross personally called” the family and arranged for his jet to fly them from Austin to Dallas, where the vet “could be seen by leading neurologists at Zale Lipshy University Hospital.” When the family returned home weeks later, “a fully customized luxury conversion van equipped with a wheelchair lift was waiting for them in their driveway.” Perry concludes his tribute: “God bless Ross Perot.”

Foreign desk: Liberals Should Heed Putin’s Critique

Liberalism, the democratic West’s governing philosophy, “is in trouble, and it’s a crisis of its contradictions,” Tim Stanley laments at The Catholic Herald: “Too much freedom can make you unfree.” Vladimir Putin made the point archly at the recent G-20, and liberals recoiled. But it shouldn’t take a Russian strongman to recognize the dangers of an overly ideological liberalism: “When you have open borders, people will come who have no intention of integrating,” and “if everyone has a right to do what they want” in sexual matters, “that right becomes a kind of sacrament, and there’s hell to pay if you criticize it.” Bottom line: “Liberalism has just become a bit silly — and the dictators, like Putin, are laughing at us.” To survive that ominous laughter, “the liberal project needs to return to planet Earth.”

Iconoclast: Epstein Case a Boon to Conspiracy Nuts

How did Jeffrey Epstein get away with his alleged crimes for so long? The answer, Matthew Walther notes in The Week, is “that Epstein knows people. Lots of people. A list of his reported friends, business associates and legal counselors reads like a #MeToo and Manhattan sleazebag All-Star team, with a few stringers pulled in from the media and both political parties.” Walther argues that “we should keep all of this in mind the next time we feel inclined to sneer at so-called ‘low-information voters,’ especially the kookier sort.” After all, “The news that a globalized cabal of billionaires and politicians and journalists and Hollywood bigwigs might be flying around the world raping teenaged girls will not surprise them in the least, because it is what they have long suspected.”

— Compiled by Sohrab Ahmari & Ashley Allen