Climate desk: Down With Green Hypocrisy & Hype

From “politicians who fly in private jets but tell the rest of us to consider a world without planes” to “activists preaching that America has to cripple our economy while posting on their iPhones made in China,” it’s clear that “the climate-change movement is full of hypocrites,” fumes Scott Walker at The Washington Examiner. But what about their hyped claims? Relax: “The world is not going to end in 12 years,” even though hypocrites like Al Gore will keep using massive amounts of energy. What the greens really want is to change the nature of the entire economy, as a former AOC staffer all but admitted. Keep that in mind the next time you see a climate-change protest in the news.

Economy watch: NY Fed’s Flawed Wage Report

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York recently published a report pooh-poohing the impact of Gov. Cuomo’s 2013-2018 minimum-wage hikes on employment in Empire State counties bordering Pennsylvania. But those findings were deeply flawed, argues the Empire Center’s E.J. McMahon. In fact, the region’s job numbers “were inflated by major job-creating casinos in two of those counties” and by the inclusion of prosperous Big Apple exurb of Orange County, which differs greatly from nearby counties in both states. Allowing for these factors, job losses in the New York counties relative to the Pennsylvania ones were “worse” than painted. Far from a “slam-dunk” case for raising the minimum wage,” the study was a “quickie” and all too “simplistic.” The report itself noted, “Longer-term effects, if any, remain to be seen.”

Conservative: Impeachers Beclown Themselves

“In general,” muses Roger Kimball at American Greatness, “one tends to admire perseverance.” But Democrats led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the “Get-Trump media” edging toward impeachment “are making fools of themselves.” After all, they spent nearly three years pushing “wall-to-wall lies about Donald Trump ‘colluding’ with the Russians” — to no avail. “They tried the same thing, twice, against Brett Kavanaugh. Again, nothing.” Now they are back to trying to unseat a duly elected president — again in vain, since voters know the score: “A sliver of the population — the antifa thugs, the Hollywood brats, the media sissies, the beautiful people with expensive degrees and, of course, the radical fringe of the Democratic Party — all refused to accept the ­results” of the last election. Still, Kimball concludes, to recognize their impotence isn’t to play down the “threat these forces pose to what we used to be able to call, without irony, the American dream.”

Iconoclast: ‘Shall’ We Impeach Trump?

The Week’s Matthew Walther recounts an old Northumbrian joke ­involving jurors debating the meanings of the words “will” and “shall” in the cry of a drowning man: “I will drown, and nobody shall save me!” Only one juror, McTavish, wonders why nobody “bothered rescuing the poor fellow.” The case for impeaching Trump may likewise turn, in part, on a grammatical curiosity. At a House hearing last week, Democrats grilled Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire over his supposed failure to submit a whistleblower report to Congress. The relevant whistleblower law says that the DNI “shall submit” his findings to Congress. But does “shall” here imply futurity “with an additional element of promise or intention,” or is it “denoting plain old facts about the future?” Depending on the legal authority you consult, “shall” in statutory language could mean “may” or “must.” Walther shrugs: “We need a McTavish.”

Culture beat: Who Killed the Sitcom?

A recent Slate piece “examined the current state of comedy, and somehow the author came to the conclusion that ‘we’re much, much funnier than we used to be,’ ” guffaws Mitchell Blue at the Federalist. In fact, “Today’s sitcoms,” which feature “political correctness or flashy costume design” ­instead of humor, “are simply not as funny as past sitcoms” — as Netflix and other streaming services that are “paying about a half a billion dollars to air old shows” know. But why? “The biggest culprit is cancel culture,” exemplified by SNL’s firing of comedian Shane Gillis before he’d started on the show “because his humor included racial stereotypes.” Perhaps “people will find out how to be funny again” one day, but for now, “it sure seems like everyone is afraid to try.”

— Compiled by Karl Salzmann and Sohrab Ahmari